The Aristocrats: The graphic arts of “Game of Thrones.”
Don't have cable myself so I can't watch it, though I imagine I wouldn't find it interesting enough to put up with yet more of the ubiquitous women-as-props tedium. I did find this review interesting enough to think it was worth sharing.
The graphic arts of “Game of Thrones.”
by Emily Nussbaum
For critics, sorting through television pilots is an act of triage. Last year, when “Game of Thrones” landed on my desk, I skimmed two episodes and made a quick call: we’d have to let this one go. The HBO series, based on the best-selling fantasy books by George R. R. Martin, looked as if it were another guts-and-corsets melodrama, like “The Borgias,” or that other one. In the première, a ten-year-old boy was shoved out of a tower window. The episode climaxed with what might be described as an Orientalist gang rape / wedding dance. I figured I might catch up later, if the buzz was good.
(snip)
It’s true that “Game of Thrones” is unusually lurid, even within the arms race of pay cable: the show is so graphic that it was parodied on “Saturday Night Live,” with a “behind-the-scenes” skit in which a horny thirteen-year-old boy acted as a consultant. To watch it, you must steel yourself for baby-stabbing, as well as rat torture and murder by molten gold. But, once I began sliding in disks in a stupor, it became clear that, despite the show’s Maltese vistas and asymmetrical midriff tops, this was not really an exotic property. To the contrary, “Game of Thrones” is the latest entry in television’s most esteemed category: the sophisticated cable drama about a patriarchal subculture. This phenomenon launched with “The Sopranos,” but it now includes shows such as “Deadwood,” “Mad Men,” “Downton Abbey,” and “Big Love.” Each of these acclaimed series is a sprawling, multi-character exploration of a closed, often violent hierarchical system. These worlds are picturesque, elegantly filmed, and ruled by rigid etiquette—lit up, for viewers, by the thrill of seeing brutality enforced (or, in the case of “Downton Abbey,” a really nice house kept in the family). And yet the undergirding strength of each series is its insight into what it means to be excluded from power: to be a woman, or a bastard, or a “half man.”
(snip)
“Game of Thrones” is not coy about the way the engine of misogyny can grind the fingers of those who try to work it in their favor. An episode two weeks ago featured a sickening sequence in which King Joffrey ordered one prostitute—a character the audience had grown to care about—to rape another. The scenario might have been scripted by Andrea Dworkin; it seemed designed not to turn viewers on but to confront them with the logical endgame of this pornographic system. It echoed a very similar line-crossing moment in “The Sopranos,” when Ralphie beat a pregnant Bada Bing girl to death. But while the scene may have been righteous in theory, in practice it was jarring, and slightly incoherent, particularly since it included the creamy nudity we’ve come to expect as visual dessert.
As with “True Blood,” the show’s most graphic elements—the cruel ones, the fantasy ones, and the cruel-fantasy ones—speak to female as well as male viewers. (One of the nuttiest quotes I’ve ever read came from Alan Ball, “True Blood” ’s showrunner, who said that a focus group had revealed that men watched his series for the sex and women for the romance. Please.) But there is something troubling about this sea of C.G.I.-perfect flesh, shaved and scentless and not especially medieval. It’s unsettling to recall that these are not merely pretty women; they are unknown actresses who must strip, front and back, then mimic graphic sex and sexual torture, a skill increasingly key to attaining employment on cable dramas. During the filming of the second season, an Irish actress walked off the set when her scene shifted to what she termed “soft porn.” Of course, not everyone strips: there are no truly explicit scenes of gay male sex, fewer lingering shots of male bodies, and the leading actresses stay mostly buttoned up. Artistically, “Game of Thrones” is in a different class from “House of Lies,” “Californication,” and “Entourage.” But it’s still part of another colorful patriarchal subculture, the one called Los Angeles. ?
Read more http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2012/05/07/120507crte_television_nussbaum?currentPage=all&mobify=0
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Probably more women than men, overall (since one of the plotlines includes a brothel). Maybe three to one? I haven't kept score, really.
I would say the depictions of sex in the brothel are over-the-top in terms of detail, so yes, a little porn-y - but it is rare (over the course of a season and a half, I think there have been three scenes that I would consider pure 't&a' types - more sex scenes than that, but those are contextual, include full-frontal male nudity as well as female, and actually have something to do with the storyline).
I'll say here and now that I'm now thrilled by the brothel sex scenes they've shown; one, because I have an active enough imagination to not need to SEE it to know it's happening; and two because they are add-on scenes that are not necessary - a brothel plays a fairly major role in the plot machinations - the PLACE and the conversations that happen in it, not the fact that it's a brothel - but HBO decided to add the sex. Sometimes I think they do it just because they can. Not good, but I'm not willing to toss the baby out with the bathwater in this case (for some programs, that's more than enough).
What I found slightly disingenuous about the article you posted was the complete denial of strong women - she may have watched the show, but she apparently did it with blinders on if that's all she saw. As I said, the plot actually works on the strength of the female characters. The men get killed off pretty quickly, overall - even major characters - the women survive (hell, if they follow the books, one of them dies and comes back to life - more or less - to continue fighting on . . .). They are smart, savvy, strong (physically, emotionally, intellectually), and determined. Not all of them are 'nice' - a couple are pretty nasty personalities - but even in that, HBO has actually gone one-up on Martin's portrayals and given them a roundness of character that you don't see as clearly in the books.
The most interesting character in the series (imo) is a little girl, who has to survive on her own. She has a fascinating storyline and I'm really curious to see where Martin takes her. Yes, she's a bit of a tomboy - but hell, so was I. I don't have any issues with girls who'd rather be doing things other than embroidery.
Yes, there is a lot of sex and there's a lot of bloodshed that pushes the envelope of what we consider acceptable (the murder of the infant, the guy who was killed by rats). I'm an historian, so I tend to put it into an historical context in that regard - it's nasty stuff, but nasty stuff happened whether we like it or not. But it is far, far better than the Borgias or (gag) the Tudors. It offers an incredibly complex and interesting story that very much depends on the strong female characters. I don't know if you'd like it, but I do think you should give it a try (or read the books) before considering it another stereotypical female-bashing exercise in misogyny. After seeing/reading it, you still might - I just have a different opinion of the show than the woman who wrote the article (whose name I don't recall - sorry!)
The one bit I'd start off with is:
There has long been this divide in the movie industry: high-paid sought-after female actors who could eschew the seamy side of how women are treated in the products and the industry, and the underclass who get to do the dirty work -- sometimes as stand-ins for the higher-class women.
Of course, there are the high-class women actors who think doing some of this stuff is art, and stripping for the cameras (in films in which their male counterparts seldom do) is, you know, honest and brave and true. But the real sexual drudgery is done by women who are essentially working as prostitutes in order to be employed in film. That respected women actors participate in these productions and this system is unfortunate.
We go in for big drama in my house. I gave Deadwood a shot. It kinda turned my stomach after two episodes. Sopranos was something the co-vivant got to watch while I worked evenings. I could not abide it. Pimps, just for starters, are the shit of the earth, and I'm really just not interested in spending a second letting someone manipulate me with dishonest fiction into thinking for an instant that they are human beings like the rest of us.
The criticism of Downton Abbey, hm. It actually is about some of the more unpleasant aspects of patriarchy and feudalism. Yeah, it's a chocolate box, and it's not exactly consciousness-raising art, but it really isn't in the same class as Game of Thrones. And the BBC does produce a whole lot of women-centric drama, especially period drama -- starting back with Tenko in the 70s, and this year Call the Midwife, about women in impoverished post-war East End London, with an enormous amount in between -- so it gets a bit of a pass from me. Not all television can be expected to be only about marginalized populations.
I'm interested in The Borgias being lumped in too. I'm ashamed to say I never watched it -- it is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation's extravaganza of the decade (the public broadcaster here) and it sold all over the world. The CBC is not exactly Hollywood when it comes to women's interests and generally reflects Canadian values, equality being up at the top of that pile -- I don't think someone arguing that "bitch" is mainstream would find much on the CBC to bolster that claim, for instance.
Anybody remember Xena? Lots of gorgeous bodies -- male and female -- and woman-centric as all hell. Download it for your daughters.
I also worry about young adults and the growing children who are exposed to all of this all the time. The idealized woman of today is almost an impossibility for most women. I was watching a movie that just came on the TV one day after something I had watched. My husband and I were both on the computer doing stuff but occasionally looking up. After about an hour I asked him if he knew what was going on. He told me he did not partly because he had no idea who was who, the young women all looked alike. That was exactly what I was going to say to him. If you really paid attention you could see one had darker hair or maybe larger eyes but side by side there were 6 of them that looked the same and all of them were perfect, perfect! Thin but no ribs sticking out, curvy but not a curve with a bump, great cheekbones, perfect pouty lips and long straight hair that was cut exactly the same. I know how they do that in print media but how do they do that in movies? To add to that, they all looked plastic. Maybe just because they were the same. It makes me sad.
As for the porn, well if you grow up on that or watch a lot of it you will certainly expect that kind of behavior in bed. Who here wants to be that woman? You know what I mean, we all want to be desired and pleasing but to do and say and act like they do? All the time? I wonder what young people expect and what must be exacted from another to meet those increasing needs?
I do not have the time to be better with this post as I would like to be so I will just leave it as it is. I find the conversation here so interesting. I have little of significance to add but my personal experience. It is worth something sometimes and often not but the conversation that comes from all of this just blows me away.
I especially love, that in light of the scrutiny and comments in another group, you all just keep it up. THIS is what we fought for, the right to have our own ideas in our own place and the actual chance to not give a fuck what the others said about it. This is where our power as human beings is laid out, where we do our work in sisterhood and solidarity. We have the right here, we just need to get it everywhere.
Now I have to run, I have a party to throw tomorrow and as a woman I have to say I am not good at doing that. Hmmmmm, I must have been raised by wolves since we are supposed to be able to do this kind of thing with ease. I will be peeking in as I can. 
