Jump to content

GoT and Feminism: What Happens Now?


Damon_Tor

Recommended Posts

So I feel like GoT has built up a considerable feminist fanbase, much of that because of Daenerys.

So what happens now?

This episode reinforces the worst stereotype of women as leaders: that they're prone to emotional, irrational decisionmaking with potentially ruinous consequences. The idea that a female President or Prime Minister would order a nuclear strike because she's "on her period" is a very real problem with how we see women as a society, and here we have Daenerys, ordering the Westerosi equivalent of a nuclear strike because she's having an irrational emotional response.

Also, Brienne breaking down sobbing when Jaime left her. WTF was that? Is that the last we see of Brienne? Is that the conclusion of her character arc, getting pumped and dumped by a Chad and weeping about it? REALLY?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

So the last positive female characters we have left are:

Sansa?

...

Anyone else?

Someone's going to say Arya, but this is still the person who thought it was okay to bake a man's sons into a pie and feed them to him, then poison every male member of his family.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

"reinforces the worst stereotype of women as leaders"

You SJWs are ridiculous. A show where men murder and rape and loot, right up to the men who lead them - but oh, a woman is portrayed negatively! SEXISM!!!

Are you just virtue signaling or do you actually believe this? And your ridiculous talk about that people would think a female president would order a nuclear strike - after nearly two years of media propaganda in the election about how "Trump is too dangerous to trust with the nuclear codes". But you are extremely selective with what you see.

I can tell of course that you are just repeating talking points from some feminist article you read.

Look how badly women have been portrayed in the show! The Mad King wanting to burn the city, Robert Baratheon wasting the kingdom's money and cheating on his wife, psychotic Joffrey, Janos Slynt betraying his duty to side with the Lannisters against the king's Hand, murderous Littlefinger, psychotic Ramsay Bolton, rapist and murdering Dothraki, male slavers, The Mountain being a rapist and monster, traitor Roose Bolton betraying the Starks, Walder Frey massacring his guests at the wedding, criminal Night Watchmen killing and raping women beyond the Wall, Ironborn murdering and raping and invading, Jaime being prepared to murder Tulley's baby if that's what it took to get back to Cersey, the Night King planning to kill everyone in the world. But a woman is shown in a bad light! SEXISM!

Link to comment
Share on other sites

3 minutes ago, Damon_Tor said:

So the last positive female characters we have left are:

Sansa?

...

Anyone else?

Someone's going to say Arya, but this is still the person who thought it was okay to bake a man's sons into a pie and feed them to him, then poison every male member of his family.

"No women are portrayed well!" And you dig all the way back to Arya dishing out revenge to claim that she is portrayed negatively. Nice try. We've just seen an episode of good Arya trying to save a good woman and her good daughter from the slaughter perpetrated by one woman and many thousands of men. "Look, a woman is portrayed badly there! SEXISM!" Is this really how your mind works? Talk about laser focus on digging up what you want to see and ignoring everything else. Even thousands of killers are ignored to look at just one woman being bad.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I don't think there's a feminist fan base around Dany alone. That was never it for me. There is, quite definitely, a feminist theoretical lens from which this story can be analyzed that still holds. It's certainly not about "women should be portrayed doing no wrong." That kind of misses a bunch of overarching themes, which in both the books and show have been introduced, about women and power.

The two things that stick out to me most that can be analyzed using feminist theory are: 1) women holding subversive spaces of power. Tradition is not part of it. It's about creating new ways to wield power. Arya and Brienne are perfect examples of this. And 2) you don't create radical change through traditional, patriarchal paradigms. The same system that oppresses people can't be used to then undo that oppression. You tear it all down and start over. That happened last night. No more King's Landing. No more Iron Throne. A whole new way to rule is beginning.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

44 minutes ago, Damon_Tor said:

So I feel like GoT has built up a considerable feminist fanbase, much of that because of Daenerys.

So what happens now?

This episode reinforces the worst stereotype of women as leaders: that they're prone to emotional, irrational decisionmaking with potentially ruinous consequences. The idea that a female President or Prime Minister would order a nuclear strike because she's "on her period" is a very real problem with how we see women as a society, and here we have Daenerys, ordering the Westerosi equivalent of a nuclear strike because she's having an irrational emotional response.

Also, Brienne breaking down sobbing when Jaime left her. WTF was that? Is that the last we see of Brienne? Is that the conclusion of her character arc, getting pumped and dumped by a Chad and weeping about it? REALLY?

1. Daenerys went nuts because of plot convenience, and because her family are inbred nutters. Not because she's a woman.

2. Cersei is a bizarre and (until AFFC) genuinely interesting case of a misogynistic woman who nevertheless obsesses about her family. A product of Tywin's terrible parenting, not a comment on female leaders.

3. Brienne has genuine reason to be upset. She's developed a strong emotional attachment to Jaime - and vice versa - until plot convenience decided that Jaime ought to completely undo his previous character development.  

Link to comment
Share on other sites

10 minutes ago, Jarl Halstein said:

Are you just virtue signaling or do you actually believe this?

Mostly I'm trying to provoke a conversation. Devil's advocate, so to speak. I'm actually pleasantly surprised by the face-heel turn in a show I had thought had run out of twists, though I have quibbles about the manner in which it was done.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 minutes ago, The Marquis de Leech said:

3. Brienne has genuine reason to be upset. She's developed a strong emotional attachment to Jaime - and vice versa - until plot convenience decided that Jaime ought to completely undo his previous character development.  

1

I agree that none of that undoes the power that Brienne holds and has shown throughout the show. Having human emotions is not weakness.

I disagree, however, that Jaime's previous character development was undone. I actually thought his ending served that character development perfectly.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Damon_Tor said:

Mostly I'm trying to provoke a conversation. Devil's advocate, so to speak. I'm actually pleasantly surprised by the face-heel turn in a show I had thought had run out of twists, though I have quibbles about the manner in which it was done.

There are always going to be people (it's usually the same kind of people) who throw fits the minute the word feminism is mentioned. There are reasons for that, but I'll just say that "men are shown as bad too!" totally misses the point. But so does being upset about Dany and Cersei, specifically. This was never about those two particular characters.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

11 minutes ago, SeanF said:

A woman has the right to be as bad as a man.

No man has an atrocity on this scale in the series. This is the worst thing anyone has ever done, book or show. Ramsay has done nothing this bad, or Joffrey or the Mountain or Tywin or Roose Bolton or any Khal. The Nightking himself doesn't likely have this kind of body count.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Any genuine feminist long abandoned the show long before the present development.

I mean, rape literally used and referenced as character development? Case closed.

This show has been misogynistic since at least the first 'sexposition scene'.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

6 minutes ago, Wildling Queen said:

You tear it all down and start over. That happened last night. No more King's Landing. No more Iron Throne. A whole new way to rule is beginning.

Doubtful in a pre-industrial country.  Kings Landing can be rebuilt.  Dany will take over now, however long or short her reign may be.  When she dies there will be temporay chaos then the strongest will take over and contiune the cycle. Maybe the north and dorne stay independant but they are still monarcy's as well.  The vast majority of average joe's have to spend to much time farming to support thier familes to care who's in charge or what type of government they have. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

45 minutes ago, Damon_Tor said:

This episode reinforces the worst stereotype of women as leaders: that they're prone to emotional, irrational decisionmaking with potentially ruinous consequences. The idea that a female President or Prime Minister would order a nuclear strike because she's "on her period" is a very real problem with how we see women as a society, and here we have Daenerys, ordering the Westerosi equivalent of a nuclear strike because she's having an irrational emotional response.

I don't think Dany's actions were brought on by an irrational emotional response. I think she made a conscious decision to use extreme fear to demonstrate her power and solidify her rule. It may seem irrational to observers (Jon and Tyrion and most of the audience, including myself, were like wtf), but I believe she thought her actions were rational and serving a purpose.

49 minutes ago, Damon_Tor said:

Also, Brienne breaking down sobbing when Jaime left her. WTF was that? Is that the last we see of Brienne? Is that the conclusion of her character arc, getting pumped and dumped by a Chad and weeping about it? REALLY?

I didn't take that scene as Brienne being upset that Jaime was "dumping" her - as someone else mentioned, I thinks she genuinely cares about him (not just romantically, but as a person) and the fact that he is basically riding off to his death is upsetting to her. There's no shame in being emotional about that. 

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Damon_Tor said:

No man has an atrocity on this scale in the series. This is the worst thing anyone has ever done, book or show. Ramsay has done nothing this bad, or Joffrey or the Mountain or Tywin or Roose Bolton or any Khal. The Nightking himself doesn't likely have this kind of body count.

Ramsay flays people as a form of recreation;  Tywin and Ser Gregor torture and abuse countless peasants in the Riverlands.  Walder Frey murdered hundreds of people at a wedding celebration. 

Daenerys fits in.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Bradam said:

Doubtful in a pre-industrial country.  Kings Landing can be rebuilt.  Dany will take over now, however long or short her reign may be.  When she dies there will be temporay chaos then the strongest will take over and contiune the cycle. Maybe the north and dorne stay independant but they are still monarcy's as well.  The vast majority of average joe's have to spend to much time farming to support thier familes to care who's in charge or what type of government they have. 

King's Landing is a symbol. Tearing it down is symbolic and a reference to the destruction of traditional paradigms of power.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 minute ago, Damon_Tor said:

Mostly I'm trying to provoke a conversation. Devil's advocate, so to speak. I'm actually pleasantly surprised by the face-heel turn in a show I had thought had run out of twists, though I have quibbles about the manner in which it was done.

Devil's advocate. Ah.

I forgot Dany's brother Viserys Targaryen, who was far more crazy than she was. He was every bit the son of the Mad King. Torturing Dany by twisting her nipples and beating her, threatening her, making demands on the Dothraki - presented as despicable as D&D could possibly make him. Remembering Viserys and the Mad King actually make Dany's snapping at King's Landing more believable, though they had to add an intro to remind everyone that Targaryens are crazy, since they hadn't kept that in  the story in a good way.

As for good women, there's Brienne. Theon's sister Asha Greyjoy. There was Catelyn Stark, betrayed and murdered by men. The prostitute Ros tortured to death by Joffrey. The Go Grrrl Sand Snakes and their mother - misdirected but clearly meaning well, until killed by a man.  The innocent women north of the Wall. The Go Grrrl Ygritte. The Red Priestess - mercilessly focused, but clearly doing it all to save the world from the Endless Night, which she did help with. Missandei. And more, I'm sure. Especially all the constant female victims killed or chased by men.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

2 minutes ago, Lord Varys said:

This show has been misogynistic since at least the first 'sexposition scene'.

If I recall correctly, the first sexposition scene was Viserys and Doreah in the bath. Which certainly portrayed Viserys as misogynistic, but we clearly weren't supposed to be endorsing his view.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Archived

This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.

×
×
  • Create New...