HBO’s Game of Thrones is definitely one of the greatest cultural phenomena in television history, no one can argue against that. The way fans mobilized to watch it every week, season after season, is unprecedented, specially in the last two years. Every episode was basically the “super bowl of TV”, friends watched it together at home, or at bars and everyone tweeted incessantly about it while watching the show. The world was captured by the complex narrative to a point that even if you didn’t watch it, you knew what was happening in the story. But, as fans, we can’t just talk about the good things in something we love. We need to acknowledge the bad too.
And the show always had a problem. The way it portrays women.
“TFW a decade long series is built on the strength of its female characters but then only 15 lines are spoken by women in the entire series finale” – @LeslieMac on Twitter
Since episode one, GOT has been famous for objectifying women. Now, you may think something like “the show is based on the Medieval Times, it’s being realistic”, but let us stop you right there. This show also has dragons. And magic. So that’s no excuse. I mean, how many naked sex workers did we see in the background of several scenes? How many women being raped in the background? The answer is way too many.
But extras aren’t the only victims. The show has great female characters, but sometimes the lack of women producing it, writing and directing it is crystal clear.
If we told you that the last season to have a female director on the show was the fourth, would you believe it? What if we told you that out of the 73 episodes that were made, no more than ten had a female writer on the team – and only one at a time – would you believe it?
“I decided to take a look at how just many women wrote or directed game of thrones throughout its eight season run. the results? pretty eye-opening.” – @beefcliterature on Twitter
Image Source: @beefcliterature on Twitter
Image Source: @beefcliterature on Twitter
Well, unfortunately you should believe it, because it’s true. Michelle MacLaren directed two episodes on season three (7-8), and another two on season four (4-5) and up until the end she was the only female director to ever work on Game Of Thrones. Out of nineteen directors the show has had in its eight seasons, the fact that only one is a woman is outrageous.
Now, about the female writers, Jane Espenson wrote the sixth episode of season one, all the way back in 2011. Vanessa Taylor worked on two episodes of season two (2012) and one on season three (2013), and the show brought in Gursimran Sandhu as a staff writer in 2019. But, as much as we’re thankful for that, our happiness doesn’t last too long. First, if you don’t know what “staff writer” means, let us explain.
“The final season of ‘Game of Thrones’ had the lowest % of female dialogue in the show’s history, says an analysis by Ceretai. It centered around a conflict between queens Cersei and Daenerys, but women got just 22% of the lines.” – @ajplus on Twitter
Once you become a part of the world of television writers, being a staff writer is the entry-level position, they are at the bottom of the writers’ room hierarchy. This means, in majority of the cases, that they don’t have much space to talk and don’t receive as much credit – take it as an internship sort of thing. Therefore, as much as it is an important step to becoming a successful television writer, and taking into consideration that she was the first woman to receive credits as a writer since the third season, we think it’s pretty safe to assume that Sandhu probably didn’t have a major voice in discussing what would happen on the six episodes she worked on.
So, how having a pretty minimal number of women working and having a voice behind the scenes affects the show?
Our first example happened all the way back in the first season, with Daenerys (Emilia Clarke). She was sold off by her brother, married Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) and was repeatedly raped by him. At least until Dany found a new dynamic to their relationship. Not to mention the entire Dothraki culture and its treatment of women. Yikes.
Example number two is in the fourth season, more specifically episode three, “Breaker of Chains”. Jaime (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) and Cersei (Lena Headey) Lannister meet again for the first time since Jaime returned to King’s Landing. She’s mourning the death of their son, Joffrey (Jack Gleeson), and they have sex. But while the show was trying to depict a consensual sex scene, the whole thing felt very much like rape. It was upsetting to watch, Cersei was asking him to stop and Jaime replied with “I don’t care”.
Example number three is in Sansa’s (Sophie Turner) story arc. Sansa’s been through a lot, she was constantly abused and manipulated and, when Little Finger (Aidan Gillen) arranges her marriage to Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) in the fifth season, she gets raped. For no reason other than to make her suffer, or to show how evil Ramsay was, for shock value. Was that necessary? No. She was already in a bad situation, things would still be the same if she hadn’t been sexually assaulted, she would still escape Winterfell and find Brienne (Gwendoline Christie) and Podrick (Daniel Portman). And, on another note, the decision to show Theon’s (Alfie Allen) point of view in that scene? No, that made it even worse.
And then came season 8. This one divided opinions, but we’re focusing on one scene in particular. After the Battle of Winterfell, everyone is celebrating and having a good time and Sansa and Sandor Clegane (Rory McCann) have a little chat about old times. When he commented how much she had changed since the time she was captive in King’s Landing, she replied with the following line: “Without Littlefinger and Ramsay and the rest, I would’ve stayed a little bird all my life”.
Yes, she’s talking about how much her experiences made her grow, about everything she learned living in King’s Landing with Cersei Lannister and at The Eyrie with Little Finger, but was Ramsay really part of that growth? Or was he just her abuser? Bottom line is, sexual assault shouldn’t be used in your story to develop a character arc. Going through abuse is not what makes a female character strong! This is the sort of little thing that could be resolved by having someone with a different perspective participating in the writing process. Someone like, you know, a woman, maybe.
“Rape is not a tool to make a character stronger. A woman doesn’t need to be victimized in order to become a butterfly. The #littlebird was always a Phoenix. Her prevailing strength is solely because of her. And her alone.” – @jes_chastain on Twitter
We want our favorite shows to be even better, which is why we need to talk about these things. If we keep praising everything just because we enjoy it and refuse to see it’s flaws, then nothing will ever change.