TV’s rape problem is bigger than “Game of Thrones”

[ismnotwasm]

I stopped reading GOT at book 4 or 5. I haven't watched the TV show but if it's a dreary as the books, this surprises me not all all. But personal tastes aside, a decent article that even uses the term "rape culture"

In the past few years, an increasingly identifiable trope has been steadily implemented among television’s most buzzed about shows. It’s not the use of anti-heroes, or tokenism, or killing characters, or any other practice that’s become quite as overt. Instead the current go-to twist for TV’s most acclaimed programs is rape.

Technically, rape on TV isn’t anything new, just as rape everywhere isn’t anything new. From Luke and Laura and Edith Bunker to the entire run of Law and Order: SVU, television has portrayed rape in almost every way possible. And it’s not the only kind of media to so. Film continues to use rape in a wide spectrum of ways too. Recently, everything from poorly reviewed schlock like 3 Days to Kill, to critically acclaimed Oscar-winners like 12 Years a Slave have made rape a prominent plot point.

However, the difference between something like 3 Days to Kill and 12 Years a Slave (besides all of the other differences, that is) comes down to how rape factors into the overall narrative. In 12 Years a Slave, rape is part of the society that the characters live in. It’s a brutal but inescapable fact of life.

But in 3 Days to Kill, it’s a plot device. The film’s use of rape has little to do with the realities of rape itself, and instead exists only to move the story forward.

Rape is a fact of lif. While we’ve come a long way from southern plantation owners, rape continues to manifest itself in modern society through many, many avenues. Only now have we begun to scratch the surface on what rape culture truly is and how pervasive it is in all of our daily lives.

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/22/tvs_rape_problem_is_bigger_than_game_of_thrones_partner/

[exboyfil]

1. GoT: Unpleasant people doing unpleasant things to each other

I bailed out half way through season 2. I will occasionally watch clips of key scenes (such as Joffrey taking his last drink). Hold onto your hat. The guy who slept with his twin and produced three children and who dropped a kid out of a tower is one of the last heroic people left in the book series. I kid you not. Martin has spent the last three books rehabilitating Jamie to the point that you are concerned that he is being led into a trap. If the series follows that arc, Jamie will come back from this. I guess it is ok because everybody hates Cersei anyway (sarcasm).

[ismnotwasm]

2. Ugh

I quit reading because i thought they were slow, depressing and took to long to make any point at all.
Figures.

[seabeyond]

3. rape as entertainment. i am always ahead of the eight ball. when we start raping the men, and raping

the children for entertainment? then get back to me that really it is to know just how horrible rape is for us all... oooops, women. ya. that, right.

[ismnotwasm]

4. What a game changer that would be if the historically accurate were depicted on TV

Because boys, girls and men were not off limits, quite the contrary. Martins series is fantasy, but has a period feel to up it. But women get raped.

[seabeyond]

6. exactly. i am so tired of hearing men being entertained by these movies where women being raped is

entertainment for them to say.... gasp... but women get raped.

this is to teach all of us how horrible rape is.

not happening. rape a man. rape a child. then maybe a horror will be felt

and men and boys got raped.... lots. and lots. and lots.

[redqueen]

9. All the claims of historical accuracy as an excuse for rape are bullshit.

Not only because - as you said, men get raped too, and lots of kids, lots - but also, uhhh hello... DRAGONS?



Yeah, you can make up pet dragons, but you gotta keep rape OF WOMEN in there because reality. Yeaaaahhhh, right.

[dawg]

5. The trope that I *hate* is when someone "falls in love" with their rapist.

Game of Thrones did that with Daenerys. I've seen it in soaps, and probably in a movie or two, as well. Just stupid and insensitive.

[seabeyond]

7. true that. and as much as people like to give this to "romance novels" ... that genre left

the station in late 80, 90's. you will not see that in books written for women today. it is totally rejected.

[LanternWaste]

8. After having heard so many good things about the books and the series...

After having heard so many good things about the books and the series, I finally bought seasons one and two last fall. And although it started off promising (I'm a bit of a fan of Sean Bean), the series script seemed to cut against the grain of good script-writing.

In his book, Adventures in the Screen Trade, William Goldman writes as to how plot is moved forward most effectively and most efficiently. 95% of the time, this is through dialog/sub-text. 5% of the time, it's done through action (here's the caveat though-- moving the plot forward via action requires that the action *also* allows us character development; e.g., Jodie Foster's character in the movie The Accused. The rape was central to the plot, yes. But it was eventually even more central to her character's development and growth).

Yet the writers in the Game of Thrones world seemed to be of the mind "advance story-line via either sex or violence, advance character via only dialog/subtext, and never the 'twain shall meet".

A part of me wants to eventually get season three, else I'd have an incomplete video library (and no self-respecting movie geek can allow that), but the (somewhat more) rational part of me says, "give the two seasons to a friend, look up the writers' names and do what you can to avoid their body of work in the future"