Hygro
soundcloud.com/hygro/
Wellllllll not quite http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posttraumatic_growth
So...is it worth trying to watch the Game of Thrones series?
- Thread starter Kyriakos
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Winner
Diverse in Unity
People over-analysing things.
Mise
isle of lucy
Welcome to CFC! Enjoy your stay!
Ok, I didn't know about that one, I admit. But it's still a long way from saying that rape (for example) makes a woman stronger, which is he was accusing the show of doing (or at least that's how I understood his remark)
Terxpahseyton
Nobody
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Well it certainly can happen. Or not. That is life for you duh
I am also really not sure if we should view GOT as a series of stipulations of psychological or social laws.
I am also really not sure if we should view GOT as a series of stipulations of psychological or social laws.
Mise
isle of lucy
Yeah, even with what's described in that wiki article, the subject of the trauma is growing stronger. It's not the rape making the victim stronger, it's the victim making themselves stronger.
Winner
Diverse in Unity
Tss, just because you joined a few months before me doesn't give you the right to be that condescending
Terxpahseyton
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That seems like an artificial distinction.
Mise
isle of lucy
Hah, I didn't mean to sound condescending, just a joke at our collective expenseTss, just because you joined a few months before me doesn't give you the right to be that condescending
Mise
isle of lucy
What do you mean by "an artificial distinction"? The problem with people thinking that rape is making women stronger is that (a) it denies the woman agency of her own, and (b) glorifies the act of rape as an agent of positive change. The logical conclusion of (a) is that "women aren't capable of growing or becoming strong by themselves", which is misogynistic. The logical conclusion of (b) is "I'm going to rape you until you are strong", which is WTH. Neither of those problems are present if you take the view that I do: that victims of trauma are the agents of change, and that the trauma itself is not a necessary component for that change. The information in the article Hygro posted fits perfectly into my view, but not with the former, misogynistic view.
Terxpahseyton
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The woman in question would have been weaker on the long run without the rape. So rape caused her to be stronger. But of course her own personality also played a significant role. Se we may also say she became stronger despite of the rape. Just different perspectives of the same thing from what I see. The problem here is that her personality and the environmental factor don't actually stand apart when it comes to the actual act of changing her. Hence artificial distinction.
Though you seem to want to communicate some kind of subtext with this differentiation. Well I wasn't thinking of subtext but just the literal statement.
Crezth
i knew you were a real man of the left
Fair point, though i think that these two things are very different in that virtually all the portrayed gender issues have to a varying degree significant relevance in public dialogue today, starting with the fact that they, well, exist.
Most minutiae of medieval warfare on the other hand are - in their practical application anyway - next to non-existent in the developed world and utterly irrelevant to public dialogue. So there may as well be dragons, i suppose.
(Yes, yes, "Dragons" v. "minutiae" - i see that point, you don't have to make it.
Well, really my point was that Martin included the elements because he wanted to, not specifically because he was trying to imitate medieval Europe or something like that. He said so himself that Westeros, Essos, etc. are all a hodge-podge of different real-world inspired things taken from all over history. For goodness' sake, we have the Holy Roman Empire slash Roman Britain slash just-plain-Britain (as it please you), Wales-Euskadi, the vikings, northerners who can't decide if they're Scotch-Irish or Norwegian, Mongol hordes, Persia, the Ming Dynasty, Vijayanagar, 16th century Italy, Carthage, Morocco, Tripoli, and Caribbea shoved in there basically at random.
So while, ordinarily, I'd say that the portrayal of rape and sexual violence against women is not a priori hands-off, and it can be done (if not tastefully) in a way that has meaning and power (see: Stieg Larsson), it does give me some pause to contemplate the argument that he included it just because it's historical. Well, bull-freaking-crap. History ain't got no place here. History has been flayed and beaten and painted over. This is Martin-land. So if there's too much violence against women, history can't be to blame.
For the record, despite my (hopefully, anyway) reputation 'roundabouts these parts as a frothing feminist eunuch, I don't think the books are sexist. I think that point Martin's making is a fair bit broader than that, about the dark heart of the human race, and we see it in the portraiture of his characters. The books are filled with good people doing evil things for good reasons, and the opposite of that as well. If we call it sexist, we have to call it Orientalist, for its portrayal of Essos as a static, unchanging bloc that only experiences Turmoil when Daenerys the
Maybe it is all those things. Maybe Martin is a horrible person and the Song is a horrible thing. But I think the themes of horror, corruption, and brutality run too deep across too wide a vein to shoehorn it into a box like that. The night is dark and full of terrors. Well, that's just life. Loathe it or ignore it, you can't like it.
Mise
isle of lucy
I see. Well I can see why you would call it an artificial distinction as in most situations it's much of a muchness. But within the context of this discussion, the distinction actually leads us to two radically different places. One place is where we should be raping women to make them stronger, while the other place is where women are empowered to respond to traumatic events in whatever manner they wish. I think it's an important distinction in this context.
I wouldn't call it subtext though, I'd call it reductio ad absurdum. Put another way, I'm trying to bring the distinction out of the subtext and into the fore.
Terxpahseyton
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Life is also full of joy. Or at least can be. Just saying...
@Mise
For what it is worth:
Even if it was a fact that rape makes every woman stronger (which seems ridiculous) - I would be very suspicious about "stronger" actually meaning desirable in this context. Because this kind of strength may easily go hand-in-hand with a price being paid not worth the greater strength.
There might be a possible distinction between the two, but I'm not sure it was actually achieved, because the rape is still portrayed as the catalyst; the agent of change. And without the distinction being clearly made, it is kinda like the show is trying to say that it was this agent of change that precipitated a positive change. So unless it's contended that the show perfectly portrayed the distinction, I don't think it's unreasonable to see it as a fairly misogynistic portrayal.
(a couple of crossposts)
Tahuti
Writing Deity
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Hah, I didn't mean to sound condescending, just a joke at our collective expense
You truly think CFC is overanalysing? You obviously haven't heard of media scholars.
Traitorfish
The Tighnahulish Kid
I've noticed that "over-analysis" always seems to coincide with "taking analysis one step further than I, the speaker, feel personally comfortable with".
Funny, that.
Funny, that.
Human: Hi there Ant, i would like to tell you a bit about how Plato theorised that Fire was composed from the harsher-edged of the regular polyhedra.
Ant: My friend just got killed by a strange phenomenon (editor's comment: the ant refers to Fire). You are over-analysing things. Run away!
I think something is over-analyzed when it's discussed beyond its level of importance or when it's discussed beyond the intended significance the author or director intended. This is one of those things where your mileage may vary a lot.
I don't think it's necessarily over-analyzed but I do think people are unfairly insisting that the show follow their gender politics. The last episode did kind of push me to that side a bit because I felt like they went a bit over the line with that scene in the town near the Wall at the end. Maybe because I wasn't paying such close attention to the show and I haven't read the books so I didn't even really understand what was going on.
I don't think it's necessarily over-analyzed but I do think people are unfairly insisting that the show follow their gender politics. The last episode did kind of push me to that side a bit because I felt like they went a bit over the line with that scene in the town near the Wall at the end. Maybe because I wasn't paying such close attention to the show and I haven't read the books so I didn't even really understand what was going on.
Mise
isle of lucy
I really can't see how rape is portrayed as the agent of change. To me, it's simply portraying Daenerys as a strong character. She's strong, she's always been strong, she overcame a traumatic event by being strong (character-wise), and she continues to use her strength of character grow stronger and stronger materially. That's what it says to me, and I really can't see how anyone can view it as "Daenerys is weak, then she gets raped, and now she's strong". Honestly, I'm not saying that you're wrong or stupid for interpreting it in that way, but I have literally no idea how such an interpretation could come about. I've only ever read that interpretation in feminist criticisms of films and TV programmes, and never from any other source. That's not to say that people in general don't interpret it in that way -- perhaps this interpretation is so common that society in general need not elucidate it, or perhaps it is so distasteful that the interpretation works on an unconscious level, without us ever realising what we're doing -- but I'll need far more convincing for me to believe that.
I can certainly imagine a story in which it is made perfectly clear that the victim is the agent of change, and the way traumatic events are portrayed in the vast majority of film and TV shows fall far short of this. However, I am not convinced that it is necessary to make clear that, when a human being undergoes a change in personality, that the human being is the primary agent of this change. I mean, I can take basically any story in which a character changes and ascribe that change to their circumstances instead of their agency. I can take Mufasa's death in The Lion King and say that, since Simba's entire character development is based on that moment, The Lion King glorifies murder. We should all go round murdering fathers so that their sons grow strong, says Disney's The Lion King. I don't believe that this is a valid criticism of The Lion King.
So, is there any way of reworking your/BvBPL's criticism of Game of Thrones such that it doesn't also apply to The Lion King? Or actually, is Disney's The Lion King (and by extrapolation, the overwhelming majority of western art) genuinely glorifying traumatic events?
