According to GRRM

[james_davis_nicoll]

To leave out the gratuitous rapes in Game of Thrones would be to undermine the essential realism of that zombie and dragon-filled world.

Comments

[boxofdelights]

Not going to read the books, but would like to know: does GRRM's realism encompass rape of men?

[alexseanchai]

*sputter*

[firecat]

Yes.

[brownbetty]

I tend to feel that to be realistic, a lot more people should be dying of dysentery than of decapitation.

[nelc.livejournal.com]

I'm avoiding spoilers as I haven't had the chance to see the series yet, and there's a big spoiler warning at the top of that article, but it occurs to me that there's a difference between setting realism and character realism. Pile all sorts of absurdities in the setting and the creator can be praised to the greenish-hued skies, as long as the characters act realistically (or at least within genre conventions).

This is to say nothing of whether Martin or the producers of GoT needed to depict quite so much rape in the manner they have; as I say, I haven't seen it, but one hears things.

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

There is a strong difference between "realism", meaning a narrative that strives to appear placeable within the perceiver's real world, and "verisimilitude", meaning a narrative that strives to appear believable, consistent, and concrete to the perceiver (that is, the setting and characters could, indeed, exist, but perhaps "not here").

All this doesn't excuse the consistent overuse of torture and rape as props for "character motivation".

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Has anyone written the "I write rape because rape sells!" diatribe?

ISTR one like that for torture a while back.

[bruce munro (from livejournal.com)]

And I'm sure GRRM has extensive rape statistics over a wide range of pre-modern societies to back this up, and isn't just doing an ass-pull on what's "realistic."

[emt-hawk.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the warning. I will not watch, nor read this book, now.

I learned the hard way from "The White Gold Wielder." Any book series that depends on rape to attract the audience's attention was written by a wanker who is desperate to be published.

--Hawk

[nelc.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. That's an old post, btw; there's some background for the ensuing storm here.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

I actually get how one could argue for the prevalence of rape in the story thematically, since the point seems to be that humans are the worst monsters. (The audience is of course still free to decide that that's quite enough, thank you.)

The "realism" argument (as viktor_haag defined the term above) is much shakier and I wish people would stop using it, Martin included.

[avram]

Which is what Martin actually said:

"To omit [rape and sexual violence] from a narrative centered on war and power would have been fundamentally false and dishonest, and would have undermined one of the themes of the books: that the true horrors of human history derive not from orcs and Dark Lords, but from ourselves. We are the monsters. (And the heroes too). Each of us has within himself the capacity for great good, and great evil," the author said.

[ravenskyewalker.livejournal.com]

I've been avoiding reading the series until such time as GRRM ever gets it finished, because I find it a pain to read an ongoing series while it's still being worked on (and he takes forever to get these books out), and the more I've been reading about its/his overreliance on rape as a plot device, the more I think I'll read Seanan McGuire instead (as she doesn't feel the need to have her female characters raped as if that's just good characterization).

And as for watching GoT... I definitely don't need it in my life.

[rimrunner.livejournal.com]

Ah. I did not follow the string of quotes all the way back (this increasingly aged computer complains mightily every time I open a new page).

It does interest me that this conversation is happening at all—and in media like the Guardian and the New York Times, at that. Have other recent programs engendered this kind of discussion? (I honestly don't know since I don't watch much TV or read much entertainment news.)

[pixel39.livejournal.com]

This is exactly why I have a) not read GRRM, and b) not watched GOT. Don't need rape. Really. I much prefer Seanan McGuire, and Ilona Andrews, and Faith Hunter, all of whom manage to be successful and awesome without needing rape as a plot device.

[keithmm.livejournal.com]

Given that GoT is inspired by civil wars such as the War of the Roses, and that I don't believe people in the past were any better than people these days, and given that rape (mass and otherwise) has been well documented in wars in the last few centuries up to the present, I think the argument is on his side here.

[firecat]

I'm reading the books (I'm about 1/3 of the way through book 5), haven't watched the series.

There is less rape in the books than I thought there would be, based on what I've seen on the Internet. Martin actually pulls his punches a bit when writing about rape compared to the amount of verbiage he devotes to lovingly dwelling on disease and other forms of torture.

But he does lovingly dwell on all of it, make no mistake. If being in a state of simultaneous revulsion and titillation doesn't count as entertainment for you, and/or if you disapprove of Martin's claim that he is writing something based in fact rather than interpretation and cherry-picking, then do protest and don't consume.

"History is written in blood" is an opinion, not a fact. If there are more atrocities in a history book than in GoT, as Martin claims, it's because the history book is about events involving atrocities, not because everything notable humans have ever done involves atrocities.

[lynn9mckenzie.livejournal.com]

OK, so if we need rape included for the sake of "realism", how about including homosexual rape and pedophelia? Those things happened, too. But somehow it only seems to be men raping women....

[viktor-haag.livejournal.com]

I think that this might be a very fair point made by GRRM, and probably has the corollary "if you don't want to encounter rape, torture, and mutilation, then don't read narratives themed on war and projection of force to keep and maintain power, as if those items aren't at least given some examination, then the teller is likely being 'fundamentally false and dishonest'." This may be a worthy argument.

However, that still is no good answer to the question of whether we have any need at all for more narratives whose principal treatment of female characters is to have them raped, whose principal treatment of disadvantaged in the power struggle is to have them tortured and mutilated and horribly murdered if they're lucky. That's a separate issue, although related.

Not to mention that the themes and details of setting and character you use to achieve verisimilitude can be overused to the point where they verge on the fetishistic (if draped in mysticism) or the pornographic (if draped in carnality), and then they stop being at all useful for their original purpose and become tropes, at best, and prejudicial stereotype objectification at worst.

[felila.livejournal.com]

Years ago I decided I could not read GRRM because his books were depressing. I'm already a glummo, don't need my gloom exacerbated. What I have read about the books and TV series has given me no reason to change my mind.

[kithrup.livejournal.com]

The TV show has had surprisingly little rape in it. A few attempts, and a more happening off-screen.

Far more on-screen torture than on-screen rape so far. <pause> I could have done without the torture as well.

[glaurung-quena.livejournal.com]

"History is written in blood" is an opinion, not a fact. If there are more atrocities in a history book than in GoT, as Martin claims, it's because the history book is about events involving atrocities, not because everything notable humans have ever done involves atrocities.

GoT was in part inspired by the War of the Roses and similar medieval wars of succession. If GRRM limited himself to saying that it reflects the real-world history of such times of long and bloody civil wars that left the nation weak and the populace decimated, then he'd be right.

It seems to be a very good portrayal of how bad things sometimes got in medieval society when a stupid conflict got out of hand and left the social contract in tatters, the countryside pillaged, and a relatively high proportion of the populace dead or displaced.

But, if he is saying that GoT reflects real-world history, full stop, without qualifying that there's a huge difference between the history of protracted civil wars (of which there are only a few examples because by and large even the most selfish nobility weren't so stupid as to let things go that far) and the (far more prevalent) history of times of relative peace and stability, then he's wrong.

[sean o&apos;hara (from livejournal.com)]

I have two fundamental problems with Martin's reasoning.

1) Part of the book deals with the Night Watch, a sworn brotherhood that lives in the frigid wastes, defending the kingdom from ice zombies and other monsters. The organization is 100% male, no women allowed even in support roles. Many of the members are convicts who signed up to avoid worse punishments. Realistically the Night Watch should be a hotbed of man-on-man rape. It's not. There's never been a hint of it, even with characters who would be prime targets for sexual assault. So Martin's "realism" is highly selective.

2) Another part of the story concerns a pseudo-Mongolian people called the Dothraki. The Dothraki are presented as a culture of rape. Rape is what Dothraki men do on Saturday nights. It's what they do on Sunday morning. Monday? Also a good day for rape. All Dothraki men are presented as rapists. All of them. No Dothraki character ever says, "Sorry, I'm not into rape." Until the white pseudo-European princess turns up and tells them, "Rape is bad," the thought seems to never have crossed any of their minds.

Now, the pseudo-European setting of the main narrative is also rife with rape, but there's a huge difference -- it's not presented as an intrinsic part of Westeros culture. There are characters, generally evil bastards, who rape, and then there are characters who don't. It's a choice they make, not something they automatically do because they're from Westeros the Land of Rape. The men of Westeros have agency to decide right and wrong, while the Dothraki are a horde of rapists.

[torrain.livejournal.com]

The TV show has had surprisingly little rape in it. A few attempts, and a more happening off-screen.

It is true that after they opened with the teenage girl getting raped onscreen in the first episode, they cut back on the rape a bit, and given the opening that was surprising.

[rosefox]

There are definitely girls being married off or otherwise seen as viable sexual conquests as soon as they reach menarche. In the books Daenerys is 13* when she's married. Arya, age 9 or 10*, is disguised as a boy by her protector to keep her safe from rapists. And Tyrion threatens to either rape young Prince Tommen or have him raped as part of a political ploy, as I recall, though I think the reader is meant to doubt that Tyrion would actually go through with it.

On the homosexuality front, though, Martin is downright coy for the first few books; I think the first overt mention of consensual gay lovers is Jaime saying something snarky and euphemistic to Loras about Loras's relationship with Renly, well after Renly is dead and Loras is in the Kingsguard. (The show, in contrast, shows Loras and Renly in flagrante during the first season.) I don't recall any mention of homosexual rape other than the above-noted threat of Tyrion's, but I wouldn't be surprised if the general aversion to actually talking about Teh Ghey likewise led to that significant omission.

* I've never quite understood how years work in a place where "year" doesn't mean "complete cycle of seasons".