The R Word - Women and Game of Thrones

Spoiler/Trigger Warning: 

This blog will analyse the use of rape and sexual assault in Game of Thrones, so if you’re not caught up, or have serious problems with the issues discussed, here’s your fair warning.

Sooo.... Who watched Game of Thrones this week?

Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken is a fairly standard episode (the weak Dorne plotline was compensated by a blistering performance by Dame Diana Rigg, returning as Lady Olenna Tyrell) but it was utterly overshadowed by its final scenes, where Sansa Stark was raped by her new husband Ramsay Bolton, who forced Reek/Theon to watch. To say the internet has lost its hivemind over this is an understatement; it’s got to the point where an actual senator has weighed in, announcing she’s now ‘done’ with the show. But what was it about Sansa’s rape that caused this much controversy?

As a scene, Sansa’s wedding night was lit, framed and staged like a horror film and was as tense as a bow string. Director Alex Graves showed restraint with the visuals and heightened the psychological trauma for both Sansa and Theon. It was very well executed and Alfie Allen nailed his performance as he looked in abject misery as the rape unfolded before him. But however well played and carefully this scene was handled, it was ultimately just another example of sexual assault used as a plot device. 

Though he did perfectly capture the audience's reaction

It’s not the first time that rape has been used like this in film and television, not by a long shot. Often, rape in fictional media reduces the woman to being a passive object who must be saved by the protagonist. By focusing on Theon’s face whilst Sansa was raped, the scene ceases to be about Sansa. It instead becomes the start of a new character arc for Theon, Sansa’s rape the motivation for Theon to claim back his identity. If Ramsay had destroyed a childhood toy, the result for Theon would have been the same; Ramsay crossed a line and now he must pay. Which is great for Theon, less so for Sansa, who for the past eight episodes had been growing out of her victim status and into a character with agency and plots of her own.

It’s also not the first time women have been used as foil for male characters; take the sad tale of Tysha Lannister. In season one, Tyrion tells of the horrific treatment of his first wife Tysha, who was gang raped by order of Tywin Lannister. You don’t pity Tysha (who seems to disappear after this ordeal) but Tyrion, who retreated to wine and prostitutes after this ordeal. Again, if Tywin had destroyed Tyrion’s favourite toy the result could have been pretty much the same if the story demanded it to be so. When Talisa Stark is stabbed in the baby, you don’t mourn her or feel her pain, but linger with Robb Stark, who’s lost his wife and unborn child. You are not expected to empathise with either of these women, but the received pain felt by their husbands.

And of course there were the mutineers at Craster’s Keep. Karl Tanner, when asked what to do with Craster’s daughters, tells his men to “Rape them until they die”.

He also drinks from a skull, in case you didn't get that he was evil.

Sigh.

This is extreme, even for Game of Thrones. The women in Craster’s Keep were props for the mutineers to be nasty to and for Jon Snow’s band of merry men to save. If you replaced each woman with a piece of furniture, the result would have been the same – their sole purpose was to be abused for the sake of melodrama, so as they were not fully developed characters with agency. They had no say in the events before or after the death of the mutineers and chances are they won’t pop up in episodes to follow.

From books to video games, the use of rape can feel sinister. This is because it's used as a way to sneak in nudity under the pretext of drama and yes, that is indeed messed up and gross, it’s not just you. But Game of Thrones doesn’t need a reason for nudity (which is questionable in and of itself, but beside the point of this blog), so rape can be mean more than an opportunity for perverse titillation. For the whole of season one, Daenerys’s naked body is frequently shown, to the point where Emilia Clarke put her foot down and demanded she be fully clothed from then on. But on Daenerys and Drogo’s wedding night, all that’s shown is her face and bare back. It’s not titillating; it’s disturbing and melancholic and begins her arc of gaining sexual agency and power. Daenerys’s rape advances her character, not Drogo’s. No, it wasn't necessary, but at least it had a purpose beyond how it made the men in her life feel.

Game of Thrones is walking a fine line with Sansa. Either she will follow Daenerys’s path to grow into a character who will conquer the Boltons and become the Lady of Winterfell, or she will become a prop to be saved by Stannis, Theon or Brienne. The third option, that it was actually consensual and accidentally edited to look like rape, thankfully doesn't seem to be on the table. As an audience, we can’t tell yet which way the show will fall, but hopefully it will continue to treat Sansa as a three dimensional character, not a destroyed toy or smashed up chair.

Despite this quagmire they've found themselves in, there’s still much to celebrate about Game of Thrones, especially when it comes to its women.  Right now, the main power struggle in Westeros is  between Cersei and Olenna and it’s not a ‘behind the scenes’ puppet show, using men to make their gains – they are literally the most powerful people on the continent. Women like Melisandre, Brienne, Arya and Margaery all have power, character and purpose aside from their men, carrying their own stories within this densely packed saga.   

There’s a dissertation’s worth of analysis when it comes to women and Game of Thrones, but ultimately it’s an adult show discussing serious matters against a backdrop of dragons and ice zombies. It’s frank, brutal and true to the environment created by George RR Martin. He included rape and women-as-props in his books, so the adaptation has to do what it can and so far it’s  made for (on the whole) magnificently epic television. The criticisms thrown into sharp relief by this episode are valid and need to be addressed by future episodes, but making excuses for Sophie Turner (who ‘loved the scene’ but is too naive to get it) isn't right, nor is dismissing every analytical thought because it’s ‘just a TV show’. Game of Thrones has carved itself a substantial chunk of the pop culture landscape and whether it still deserves this depends on how they move on from Unbent, Unbowed, Unbroken. But it would be rash to write it off this far into the game. 

Here’s hoping, anyway.

Avengers: Age of Ultron

Avengers: Age of Ultron, 2015, Marvel Studios. Directed by Joss Wheadon. Starring Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Jeremy Renner, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo and James Spader.

Let’s talk about Marvel’s streak; it’s incredible. In the past three years they’ve not put a foot wrong, learning from previous mistakes to polish the superhero formula until it shines - and the best thing is no film is alike. Since Avengers Assemble, we’ve had: a one man army action movie, an end of the world epic, a global conspiracy thriller and a space western comedy and they all rock so incredibly, uniquely hard (my previous low opinion on Winter Soldier changed dramatically from ‘Meh’ to ‘Wow...’ on a second viewing). Can they keep it up? If Age of Ultron is any indication, yes, yes they can. 

Avengers Assemble had Earth’s Mightiest Heroes basically snipping at each other in an airborne office and then punching their way through Lower Manhattan because one guy in a silly hat was in a sulk. In Age of Ultron, Tony Stark unwittingly creates an unstoppable monster robot hell bent on destroying the Avengers, humanity and the world to create peace in our time. The stakes are higher and the canvas is broader, encompassing Hong Kong, Royal Holloway and ‘The African Coast’ (the one thuddingly bum note in the film comes from this bizarrely vague caption). It’s a welcome expansion as the Avengers taking their place as world’s protectors, not just the USA’s.

More impressive than the map are the characters, who are also massively improved from Assemble. No longer does Iron Man hog all the good lines – now, everyone gets in on the act, the opening fight scene allowing our protagonists to strike a flippant, pumped up tone for the film to follow, including a running joke at Captain America’s expense that lands every time. Joss Wheadon, clearly unsure of what to do with Hawkeye before, has him behave more like the snarky, charmingly exhausted agent of the comics, making him someone to actually care about and (more importantly) enjoy having on screen. Thor is louder and happier than ever before, Chris ‘Touched by Angels’ Hemsworth providing the gratuitous male toplessness now expected of every Marvel movie. Black Widow, no longer carrying the only major female role in this series, is allowed to show some heartbreaking vulnerability (as far as Black Widow can) and Bruce Banner... well, Bruce Banner still doesn’t really do much. The Hulk has the best action scenes though, so it’s a fair enough trade. 

Newcomers Wanda and Pietro Maximoff are convincingly corrupted by a juicy backstory and kickass powers, Aaron Taylor-Johnson and Elizabeth Olson game for the silliness unfolding around them. Ultron himself is simply a masterstroke; following Loki can’t be fun for any Marvel villain, but Ultron is both entirely human and entirely robotic, with all of Tony Stark’s wit and occasionally some of his empathy. Wheadon has surrounded himself with fantastic actors, their skill in smaller moments giving as much depth to their characters as any grand standing speech could.

All this character development could make Age of Ultron fall into the dreaded ‘darker, grittier’ sequel trap, but instead it becomes more contemplative. It slows down in some places and lacks Assemble's breakneck pace, but it works. It feels more mature, more thoughtful, but never at the expense of fun. Turns out you can have it both ways. Take an early exchange where Thor and Tony Stark extol upon Pepper Potts and Jane Foster’s achievements in business and science. It’s a fun aside, but shows not only their awe at their smart, powerful girlfriends, but reminds us of their emotional centre at the heart of their one liners and rippling muscles.

Thor? More like 'Phwoar', ammi right ladies? Ahem.

 

You won’t find much in the way of po-faced navel gazing at the human psyche, nor any real query along the lines of ‘Who Watches the Watchmen?’; refreshingly Age of Ultron doesn’t try to ask any questions deeper than ‘How do you calm down a huge green rage monster?’. But by fleshing out the characters and giving them an emotional momentum gives the flash bang fireworks more meaning, more power. Avengers Assemble made you cheer because despite all the odds, it worked as a film. Avengers: Age of Ultron will make you cheer because you care about these characters. 

Gimme Shelter

Gimme Shelter, 1970, 20th Century Fox. Directed by Albert and David Maysles, Charlotte Zwerin. Starring Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Ronnie Wood and Charlie Watts

Albert Maysles was a documentary pioneer, fact. He normalised the ‘fly on the wall’ and reactive style of documentary with his brother David and used it to devastating effect with the off kilter and menacing Gimme Shelter.

In 1969, the Rolling Stones launched a huge USA tour culminating in a free concert at the Altamont Speedway in San Francisco. Built up as the next Woodstock, the gruesome affair ended when a Hells Angel (hired as crowd control) stabs a spectator right in front of The Rolling Stones performing Under My Thumb. The Maysles don’t reveal this as a twist of tragic drama, but shows it as inevitable from the opening minutes of the documentary, with Mick Jagger and Keith Richards reacting in stunned silence to a radio interview with one of the Hells Angels. These cuts to the Stones watching their own film acts as the interview segments of any other documentary and Jagger’s horror when he sees the frozen image of the Hells Angel with a knife gives more information than any interview ever could. 

And it all started so well, with the crowds in New York getting groovy as the Rolling Stones play on a three foot stage. Everyone is having a good time and Jagger feeds off the good vibrations, giving energetic and carefree performances. When asked at a press conference if staging a huge free concert would be a good idea, Jagger brushes it off; they’ve played massive gigs before and the crowds behaved themselves then, why should this be any different?

For a while, it seems that there’s a lot of fuss over nothing. The Stones play, the crowds have a good time and their lawyer Melvin Belli rings his hands over where the hell this concert will actually take place. But good grief, do things turn nasty when the attention turns to Altamont. For a start, amount of drugs on show is eye-watering, and it seems that every single one of the three hundred thousand attendees were completely off their heads. There're fights, screaming and an impressive amount of nudity, all shown with in non judgemental  silence from the filmmakers. By showing the effects of these drugs on the individuals, the glamour of the Sixties becomes a mess of mind alteration and confused terror, as one man's giggling stupor turns to horror as he stares at the long suffering sound recordist for the longest ten seconds put to film.

Literally everyone is naked and high in this photo

And it gets worse. The lead singer of Jefferson Airplane is cracked on the head by a Hells Angel. The Flying Burrito Brothers stop playing until everyone gets off the damn stage. A doctor is called for on three separate occasions. Jagger kills Sympathy for the Devil and ticks off the fighting crowd like an exasperated primary school teacher. He tells everyone to sit down until the final song and misses verses as he tries to find out from some people in the crowd why one guy was fighting. He stands at a complete loss when it’s clear that no amount of laid back charisma can control this mess of ugly violence.

A rare moment where Jagger could actually perform without naked people crushing the stage

By noninvasively documenting these events in a quiet, dignified style, Albert and David Maysles allow the shock of just how violent Altamont was to unfold without plodding, heavy voiceovers or pompous analysts talking about the end of hippy counterculture and whatnot. Albert Maysles died last weekend aged 88 and he left behind a legacy of astonishing documentaries, of which Gimme Shelter is his crowning jewel.

Next Goal Wins

Next Goal Wins, 2014, Icon Productions. Directed by Mike Brett and Steve Jamison. Starring Thomas Rongen, Jaiyah Saelua and Nicky Salapu.

Next Goal Wins tells the sorry tale of the American Samoa football team. In 2001, they won the world record for suffering the heaviest defeat in FIFA history, losing 31-0 to Australia. By 2013, the best they can hope for is an 8-0 defeat.  They are the worst football team ever. But they still play and love football and drive themselves toward the wild dream of competing in the 2014 World Cup, with trivial things like no resources, a lack of football culture and a limited talent pool no match for their enthusiasm. They are, without a doubt, the ultimate underdogs. So of course you fall in love with them instantly.

 

But every underdog needs a champion, and he comes in the shape of Thomas Rongen, a Dutch-American soccer coach flown in to get the team to the World Cup. His hardnosed intensity sits ill with the laid back lifestyle of the South Pacific. Though not exactly softened by the islanders, he is shown to have just as much passion for the sport as his team, and as he conquers mountains with a cigarette in his hand, you begin to think he might actually get his team to Brazil after all.

Like all good sports films, the secondary plot tackles a wider social problem taken apart by the love of the game. Next Goal Wins has Jaiyah, who belongs to American Samoa’s third gender, fa'afafine, the Way of the Woman. It would have been easy to put all of FIFA’s awful reputation for sexism and transphobia on her shoulders and make her a symbol of the growing need for inclusion in the sport, but this is not the case. Instead of chest thumping declarations of what Jaiyah means for the sport, you see her relaxed, happy and utterly focused on her game, whilst gaining a glimpse of the veritable paradise American Samoa seems to be for a transgendered person. She’s the joyful centre of a very likable group of people and she shines throughout.

Normally, sports films are beleaguered with a need for internal conflict – someone has to leave just in time for it to be dramatically significant for them to come back for the half time oranges, and it’s terribly dull indeed. Not so in Next Goal Wins; by the time the team come to play their three qualifying matches for the World Cup, you want to cheer on each and every one of them because they all know that this is their best chance ever to prove that they can actually play football. Going from the very worst to just one step up is everything for this team, and that’s enough drama to have you chewing your nails throughout the final act.

As a story, it’s a five star classic. As a documentary, it sometimes feels like a film-length training montage, with compelling issues such as the lack of jobs and opportunities for young people on the island never fully explored. But it’s gorgeously shot, beautifully edited and genuinely leaves you with a sense of joy rarely found in modern documentaries. Treat yourself – check it out.