[BOOK/TV SPOILERS] The Dothraki, Orientalism, and Race

[Tywin's bastard]

I am absolutely not screaming racism and never have been - very few in this thread are anywhere near to doing that. But the actions of the majority of the Dothraki are a facet of their culture, which has created an entire and perverse moral code to justify their brutalization of others. That makes the culture every bit as toxic as the actions of its people are deplorable.

I don't think to GRRM it is a matter of skin color in the slightest, and I agree that many of the White Westerosi cultures have their own toxicity which is equal to, if not greater than, the Dothraki's - from the Boltons' flaying to the Ironborns' reaving to the general soldiery culture of using "your blood was up from battle" as an excuse for gang rape. I am every bit as judgmental of those cultures as I am of the Dothraki, I don't think GRRM is a racist, and I don't think many (if any) in this thread are, either.

Then I suspect our discussion was born out of misunderstanding as I did not mean to say that you must accept every type of action because it's a part of another culture, I merely wanted to put light on the fact that people that call racism on that often do that out of their own judgemental mentality. I of course do not like killing, raping or other violence (other than consensual as I am a martial artist) in real life although I do find it fascinating to explore in books like these.

[Humble Asskicker]

I'm with those saying that you can't subvert a common trope unless you first address it.

Naturally this is interpretive so there will always be disagreements, but I think the books did a good job of subversion. As to whether the TV series will manage the same remains to be seen.

[TrueMetis]

This is positively asinine and patently offensive. The Dothraki slaughter and rape as a matter of course. I honestly worry about people to whom that is not a cause for moral judgment but rather some kind of strange and foreign-seeming quirk.

I suppose you're cool with real-world societies that practice female circumcision as a matter of course, or those that make a regular trade of child sex slaves? Or is that just strange and different, too?

What we've seen of the Dothraki so far is them killing and fucking, we've seen the Westerosi fucking and one of them push a ten year old out a window. Plus more because unsurprisingly we are focusing on them, but we've also seen the beginnings of an arranged marriage. Pretty much the same thing as what happens to Dany a women be used as currency to form a stronger alliance. Soon enough we will also find out that those types of arranged marriages where used hugely in Westeros and that rape and slaughter are a huge part of Westeros.

Rape and slaughter are a part of the world of Westeros in general they aren't even close to a Dothraki thing, and the differnces between the two groups a pretty much totally imaginary.

[O'san'gar's Razor]

If any group has a complaint, natural blondes do.

I'm not much for "the sins of the father" stuff, but you can't really complaint about historically accurate depictions. If a work of fiction shows Mongols or a culture heavily based on the Mongols (e.g., the Dothraki) raping and killing on an epic scale and you don't like it, tough. If a work of fiction shows Americans or a culture heavily based on us (e.g., Avatar) "stealing" land and killing natives and you don't like it, tough.

The big mistake that I think the HBO people made was morphing the Dothraki from a heavily Mongol-based people to something out of Mad Max (or

, for the slightly younger). People are reacting as if they are a stereotypical charicature because they look like a stereotypical charicature (right now--there is still time for redemption). Martin did a much better job making the Dothraki a distinct people in the books (which makes all the difference).

[Ser Greguh]

What we've seen of the Dothraki so far is them killing and fucking, we've seen the Westerosi fucking and one of them push a ten year old out a window. Plus more because unsurprisingly we are focusing on them, but we've also seen the beginnings of an arranged marriage. Pretty much the same thing as what happens to Dany a women be used as currency to form a stronger alliance. Soon enough we will also find out that those types of arranged marriages where used hugely in Westeros and that rape and slaughter are a huge part of Westeros.

Rape and slaughter are a part of the world of Westeros in general they aren't even close to a Dothraki thing, and the differnces between the two groups a pretty much totally imaginary.

We've seen Dothraki killing and rampantly fucking as an accepted an integral part of their culture. We've seen Westerosi people (so far) killing and fucking as an aberration to their culture. That's the difference. The problem isn't that we see dark-skinned people doing bad things, it's that it's being done as an integral part of their culture, which reinforces some very negative stereotypes.

I agree that in the long run there are a great many Westerosi cultures that don't fare much better, but we haven't really been exposed to them yet in the show.

[O'san'gar's Razor]

No worries, I shan't take it that way. :)

I realized it was actual a different race/gender thread (why are there so many of these popping up! :uhoh: ) and the poster is far more eloquent than I, so I'll just link.

It appears from the opening credits map that Pentos is much closer to Westeros than the heart of the Dothraki sea, and traveling by water was by far the quickest option in the Middle Ages.

[Rinso]

My problem with the Dothraki in the show isn't that their portrayal is racist; it isn't, unless nowadays is racist to have brown people who show unpleasant behavior as much as white people do. It's not racist to have brown-colored villains, after all they have as much right to be bad guys as white people do. Ultimately, people are people, no more, no less, and the Dothraki are not savage because of their skin color. It's not the color of their faces that makes them disgusting, it's the minds behind the faces, so it doesn't matter if they are brown, white, blue or pink.

I do mind however that the Dothraki look is ridiculously inconsistent even within the show's own borders. They mashed in everything from "vaguely-brownish-but-absolutely-Caucasian" to "her-grandparents-were-from-which-African-country-again-?" The explanation that Dothraki swallow another tribes and nations doesn't hold water, because Dothraki culture is arrogant and hostile towards others - they enslave or mass-murder those they conquer, they don't breed with them.

[Talleyrand]

I do mind however that the Dothraki look is ridiculously inconsistent even within the show's own borders. They mashed in everything from "vaguely-brownish-but-absolutely-Caucasian" to "her-grandparents-were-from-which-African-country-again-?" The explanation that Dothraki swallow another tribes and nations doesn't hold water, because Dothraki culture is arrogant and hostile towards others - they enslave or mass-murder those they conquer, they don't breed with them.

It could be that the Dothraki absorb other Dothraki tribes when they defeat them. Do we actually know how big the Dothraki sea is? If not then we could rationalize that the heavily tanned white guys are from a different tribe far in another direction to the more brown members

[Rinso]

It could be that the Dothraki absorb other Dothraki tribes when they defeat them. Do we actually know how big the Dothraki sea is? If not then we could rationalize that the heavily tanned white guys are from a different tribe far in another direction to the more brown members

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. All those people in this picture are all supposed to be not only from a single race, but from, more or less, the same tribe. Yeah... No matter how big the Dothraki Sea is, those are different races altogether.

[O'san'gar's Razor]

The Dothraki also suffer under the needs of Daenerys's character arc. Part of her growth is breaking free of a culture that has a very deep closemindedness as one of its primary faults, something perfectly summed up in three words, "it is known."

[Commodore]

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. All those people in this picture are all supposed to be not only from a single race, but from, more or less, the same tribe. Yeah... No matter how big the Dothraki Sea is, those are different races altogether.

like the Carthaginians?

[Talleyrand]

They say a picture is worth a thousand words. All those people in this picture are all supposed to be not only from a single race, but from, more or less, the same tribe. Yeah... No matter how big the Dothraki Sea is, those are different races altogether.

I'm going to go with "A wizard did it!"

Your move

[Rinso]

like the Carthaginians?

How are Dothraki comparable to Carthaginians? C'mon, plain and simple, they messed up with them, every other explanation is redundant and needlessly convoluted. Which, in itself, is no biggie. It's not like the Dothraki incoherent look ruins the show or anything like that.

[Tb0ne]

So far, it's only been one episode and there's already some controversy over this. Anyone surprised? Not me. I thought this was already one of the more problematic parts of the books on the face of it. I mean, tiny blonde white chick sold off to brown barbarian horde (which has a tendency to roam the continent raping and pillaging other tribes), where first she gets her romance novel plotline on for a while until her husband dies, and then she magically takes control of a culture which she only recently got to know anything about, becoming a powerful leader who everyone loves.

Her Khalasar is on the run after Drogo dies, if Dany doesn't make nearly suicidal march across the Red Wastes she and her followers will be absorbed by another Khalasar at best, killed at worst. Her following is composed of children, the sick/injured, and the old. Her Khalasar is not far from a group of refugees. She only becomes powerful after going to Slaver's Bay and her Khalasar has little if anything to do with it. True her Dothraki followers are 'hers in a way they were never Khal Drogo's' but we all know the reason and everyone who watches the show up to that point will see more or less exact same thing happen. Replace the Dothraki with a similar group from Riverlands, Stormlands, Eyrie, Mountains, Beyond the wall, Dorne in a place to witness Dany walk into a fire and return without being harmed, carrying the Westeros equivalent of 3 nuclear bombs and the result would not be all that different.

[AquariumDrinker]

...Replace the Dothraki with a similar group from Riverlands, Stormlands, Eyrie, Mountains, Beyond the wall, Dorne in a place to witness Dany walk into a fire and return without being harmed, carrying the Westeros equivalent of 3 nuclear bombs and the result would not be all that different.

Thoros raising Beric comes to mind, without the nukes. But raising Beric from the dead lead to a loyal following on the level that Dany had.

[luinnar]

Both Turkic and Mongolian armies that came in contact with Europeans comprised people of different ethnicities and physical appearances. For example, among Huns there were Ostrogoths and other Germanic tribes, though they weren't assimilated, I think, since they were speaking their own language. So it makes sense the Dothraki are made of different races, I just wish they wore different garbs as well.

[TrueMetis]

We've seen Dothraki killing and rampantly fucking as an accepted an integral part of their culture. We've seen Westerosi people (so far) killing and fucking as an aberration to their culture. That's the difference. The problem isn't that we see dark-skinned people doing bad things, it's that it's being done as an integral part of their culture, which reinforces some very negative stereotypes.

I agree that in the long run there are a great many Westerosi cultures that don't fare much better, but we haven't really been exposed to them yet in the show.

Tyrion and his whores and Ned executing a guy as the first thing we see him do. Pretty much the equivalent to what the Dothraki are doing. We've seen some perfectly acceptable killing and fucking from the Westerosi, and then we saw some fucking that would be aberrant among the Dothraki as well though the killing of Bran might not be..

[Kat]

Her Khalasar is on the run after Drogo dies, if Dany doesn't make nearly suicidal march across the Red Wastes she and her followers will be absorbed by another Khalasar at best, killed at worst. Her following is composed of children, the sick/injured, and the old. Her Khalasar is not far from a group of refugees. She only becomes powerful after going to Slaver's Bay and her Khalasar has little if anything to do with it. True her Dothraki followers are 'hers in a way they were never Khal Drogo's' but we all know the reason and everyone who watches the show up to that point will see more or less exact same thing happen. Replace the Dothraki with a similar group from Riverlands, Stormlands, Eyrie, Mountains, Beyond the wall, Dorne in a place to witness Dany walk into a fire and return without being harmed, carrying the Westeros equivalent of 3 nuclear bombs and the result would not be all that different.

I agree with you-- if you read my whole first post, I ended up saying that there's more to Dany's storyline than the bare-bones summary would suggest. And I agree that she would not have been able to do it without the help of her dragons; Beric is an imperfect parallel* of someone being able to retain leadership only because of a magical element.

But on the face of it, Dany's character arc is similar to other ones we have seen elsewhere, where an outsider rises to power in a way that an insider was never able to. I mean, it's a pretty common trope in all sorts of literature, not just fantasy, and it's not always a racial thing. And I'm fairly certain GRRM was aware of this trope while writing, because there are a bunch of things he does to subvert it, as described above. Still, audiences familiar with the trope, if Dany's plot isn't handled with care, may see just the trope and not the subversion of it. Since we've only seen one episode so far, we don't know how well the producers are going to draw attention to that. I do think that GRRM was trying to veer from the trope by not having Dany take her husband's position entirely, since most of the khalasar is totally unconvinced that she'll amount to anything on her own and leaves.

I think the producers, when they get to the end of season 1, and going into season 2-3, should really emphasize just how much her power relies on having dragons in the first place, and how the Targaryens, when they invaded Westeros, were only able to do so because of their magic superweapons. I mean, that is the point that the book tries to get across, but too much emphasis on Dany staying in control because of her own skills- wit, charm, whatever-- would downplay the importance of dragons too much and would start heading back toward the Magic White Chick trope. I do think that Dany is smart, but even she admits that the smartest things she's done involve keeping her dragons. Without them, she'd be in Viserys's position of her only possession being her birthright, and in this world, that gets you nowhere. The cards are very much stacked against her, since she's 1) an outsider, 2) still building military power, and 3) a woman, and if the show downplays the significance of being backed up by big magical creatures, it tips her arc into totally unbelievability. So I hope that the dragons are, literally, awesome when SFX'ed.

*Re: Beric Dondarrion, he is, so far, one of the only other leaders retaining his position because of magic. Stannis is another, but having Melisandre often seems to hinder him as much as help him, since IIRC no one's specifically joined him because of Mel, but he has lost a few lords because they didn't believe she was good for him. OTOH, so far, he's the only one who's wiped out an enemy faction using magic. ut I think that both Beric and Stannis are imperfect parallels because they came with built-in followers. Ned gave Beric a bunch of men and told him to go after the Mountain, and Stannis had all the lords sworn to Dragonstone. Magic certainly has helped them, as noted above for Stannis, and the fact that Beric keeps coming back to life is a reason to keep following him (or a reason to go join the Brotherhood if you have nothing else) and a major bummer for his enemies. But in having men sworn to them already, and being lords in their own culture, and being men-- neither of them is in nearly as precarious of a position of power as Dany is, where after Drogo dies, she would have had really only Ser Jorah and her handmaidens left, and even the handmaidens could have gone off with their own people instead of sticking by her side.

ETA: Actually, the person who should have the closest parallel to Dany in terms of going from nothing to a leader may be Sansa, but it's unclear whether she's ever going to have overt power like Dany, or if her power is going to be derived almost entirely by pulling strings behind the scene like her mentor does. Just speculation, though.

[Commodore]

How are Dothraki comparable to Carthaginians? C'mon, plain and simple, they messed up with them, every other explanation is redundant and needlessly convoluted. Which, in itself, is no biggie. It's not like the Dothraki incoherent look ruins the show or anything like that.

Carthage was made up of many different ethnic groups because of its location as a trading hub and their extensive use of foreign mercenaries.

I agree the Dothraki were not very well realized in the pilot. It just came off as a mishmash of poorly executed tribal cliches.

[Rinso]

Carthage was made up of many different ethnic groups because of its location as a trading hub and their extensive use of foreign mercenaries.

But the Dothraki are neither traders, nor they use any sort of mercenaries, and they aren't even located in a constant location.