Game of Thrones 5x06

SPOILER ALERT

TRIGGER WARNING

Last night on Game of Thrones, Sansa Stark was raped. (Probably: There's a chance Sansa's become as good an actress as Sophie Turner has and this was either a show for Ramsay or a test of Reek's character. I doubt it, and I'm writing the rest of this post from the perspective that what we saw is exactly what happened.)

A lot of people don't like this. Either it was pointless shock value, or it ruined Sansa's character by turning her into a damsel in distress for Reek to rescue in place of Jeyne Poole, or they just don't like the whole Rape As Drama trope.

First, I don't think it was pointless shock value. This episode was actually a lot more thematically cohesive than most of the other Game of Thrones episodes, which tend to just advance the plot by an hour, or alternatively ramble about previously-unheard-of cousins who like to squash beetles before treating us to one of the most poorly-edited fight scenes in cinematic history. To get back to my point, Arya, Jaime, Ellaria Sand, the Queen of Thorns (she's back yay), Tyrion, and, yes, Sansa are all wildly out of their element in this episode. Arya wants to be an emotionless anonymous assassin but can't even come to grips with the fact that she didn't hate the Hound. Jaime's on a sensitive and secret mission, but he sticks out like a sore thumb. Ellaria thought she had a cunning plan, but Doran saw right through it and knew who to arrest when things went down. The Queen of Thorns saved her granddaughter from a horrible marriage, but can't save her grandchildren from the Westeros Inquisition. Tyrion has the most silver tongue in Westeros, but he his efforts to bluff the Essos slave-trader into taking them to Meereen go nowhere until Jorah joins in. Sansa's learning how to play the game of thrones, but her plan (understatement of the year incoming) isn't working out quite like how she thought it would. (By that I mean: she knew her virginity was the price of her plan; she just didn't know how much of a bastard the Bastard of the Dreadfort would be.)

So I don't think it meets the "pointless" criteria of "pointless shock value;" I also don't think it meets the "shock" criteria. Book-readers have been expecting a "Dark Sansa Chapter" for quite some time now. Moreover, as I said in my previous post, Sophie Turner's old enough that that scene could have been a lot more graphic than it was. I'm thankful that that scene wasn't more graphic, for reasons I went into in that post, but what we got was, by Game of Thrones standards (see, e.g., Daenerys Targaryen's wedding night), fairly tame.

Second argument: did it ruin Sansa's character? First of all, the rape itself didn't; again, see Dark Sansa Chapter above. If Saint George of House Martin is planning to have her raped in a later book (and I personally think he is, by Littlefinger (although the show's direction makes me wonder if Harry the Heir is the saint he's played up to be either - and btw (TWOW spoilers) he's a bit of a jerk the first time he meets Alayne)), we can't very well say that having her raped constitutes a decision by the show-runners to wreck her character. It's a setback, yes, and chances are what happens to Alayne in the books is going to prove to her that she can't trust Littlefinger and has to play the game for herself. Think about the typical three-act structure to a story and how the protagonist is usually at her lowest point about two-thirds of the way through; I think it fits. Dunno if exactly the same thing will happen in the show.

(EDIT: if there's one thing you should take away from this post, it's the following paragraph)

The real problem is whether they're sacrificing Sansa's character arc in favor of Reek's. Well, the jury's still out on that one. If all they've done is slot Sansa into the Jeyne Poole spot, and Reek's going to find her shivering under the blankets promising to do the thing with the dogs, then yes, yes, a thousand times yes, they have totally and completely and utterly ruined her character. I've said it before in my "critique" of A Dalliance In Doldrums that I really just don't care for Reek's character or arc, so if we have to sacrifice Alayne for his redemption arc, I won't be happy at all.

Third argument: the whole Rape as Drama thing should be a discredited trope and done away with. If you believe that, you're in the wrong place. Not just in the Game of Thrones sense (there's a lot of rape and attempted rape in the source material), but in the entire science-fiction/fantasy genre sense. Name a feminist fantasy, or a feminist-leaning fantasy, and I'll show you a Rape as Drama element. Buffy the Vampire Slayer? Spike tries to rape her in Season Six. Battlestar Galactica? Sharon "Athena" Agathon is either assaulted or raped depending on which version of 2x10 you watch. Honor Harrington has an attempted rape in the title character's backstory, and that incident's shadow looms over the first four books. Aliens doesn't explicitly have it, but the subtext is pretty clearly "rape survivor copes with her trauma by picking up a gun and fighting back." (No, there was no Alien3 - although Game of Thrones fans saddened by the departure of the Best Hand Ever might want to watch such nonexistent film for its excellent application of Charles Dance.) Are some of these handled better than others? Of course; the Buffy example is the series' lowest point, and the BSG example is used as a means to get the Galactica and Pegasus crews shooting at each other. But that's my point: sometimes this trope is used well, sometime's it's not.

Ultimately, I'm not ready to pass judgment on that scene yet. I want to see how the rest of the season plays out.

Edit: Completely unrelated to That Scene, but I'm sorry to say that the Sand Snakes fight was about as poorly edited as the Viper/Mountain or Brienne/Hound fights last year.