[Spoiler Alert]
I refused to watch Game of Thrones for the longest time. All I knew about the show was that there was a lot of graphic sex and violence and that did not seem like the kind of show I would enjoy watching. During my last 2-week break between summer and fall quarter, I did not have anything better to do, so I finally signed up for the HBO 30-day trial and started watching Game of Thrones.
The first episode ended with a little boy, Brandon, being pushed down a tower by a man, Jaime. Why? Because Brandon saw Jamie and Cersei have sex – and Jamie and Cersei are twins, so they did not want their incest to become public.
Thus, I was not very fond of the show. I had promised myself, though, to push through more episodes and not judge it that quickly. So, I kept watching. What I found was more violence and gory, dead animals – and lots of sex. I also realized that “sexposition” is a thing in GOT – there is so much exposition to be told but they put it in the sex scenes so that people will keep watching.
What aggravated me the most was the portrayal of women in the show. There is Sansa, who just wants to be a married woman and serve her husband. Her little sister Aria is the exact opposite: She wants to learn how to fight, but most people are not very supportive of her and she is constantly called “boy” in reference to the fact that she does not act like “lady” should be acting – like folding clothes nicely, being able to sew or dressing nicely. It is nice to see, though, that her Dad ends up organizing “dance lessons” for her, which is code for fighting lessons.
Cersei is the king’s wife. She is sleeping with her twin-brother and tries to take on power, but she is not doing that great in the beginning, but she ends up being one of the biggest power players of the show.
Another important female character is Daenerys. She is being sold to Khal Drogo, the leader of the Dothraki, by her own brother (who I hated for many, many reasons!). Khal Drogo promises to give Daenerys’s brother an army in exchange for his sister. So, she is not in control of her own destiny either but has to follow what men tell her to do.
Lastly, there are a lot of prostitutes. A lot.
Clearly, the female characters are not in a great position in the beginning of the show and that did not really contribute to my fondness of the show. I kept watching anyway. In the first couple of episodes, the meetings about different power strategies are held by men. I still did not stop watching – the show had caught my interest. Slowly, some of the characters started taking on more power and my interest in the show grew – until I became obsessed.
One of my favorite scenes in the entire show is when Daenerys gets her army of Unsullied. A man in power, of course, tries to trade his army for one of her dragons and knows that that would be a bad deal for Daenerys – but a good deal for him. He does not know though that she actually speaks the language that he had been using to insult her the entire time. The moment when she gets the army, hands over the dragon to him, he looks at the dragon in confusion because the dragon will not listen to him and Daenerys then says “Dracarys” will always give me goosebumps! Daenerys has definitely become one of my favorite characters because she knows what she wants and does not steer away from her principles.
Another female character that I have grown to love is Sansa, because she started out as an annoying, little girl, who only wanted to get married but through all her awful experiences where she was married off to one guy after another, she grew into a very strong lady. She is ready to rule Winterfell on her own.
Now, in the latest season, all the female characters are in positions of power. There is so much great character development and it is amazing how much all of these women have grown. They have shown strength and resilience and determination. All of a sudden, the important meetings where wars and politics are discussed are being led by women. Most of them women have had to go through horrible things such as rape, but they learned from their experiences and grew into strong, independent characters who do not have to wait for men to tell them what to do!
It was tough for me to get through the first episodes, but it is worth to keep watching to see how all these characters (the men and women) grow, defy stereotypes and all try to reach their goals.