A Song of Ice & Fire on HBO
i think the problem is not the fact that they're showing rape scenes, but rather the confusing implications of these rape scenes for the moral development of the characters. the audience expects that if someone does something bad they have to be punished for it. and the rule applies straightforwardly in the case of the mutineers, they're all unambiguously evil characters who are killed off within an episode or two - they do terrible things and quickly get what they deserve.
whereas with jaime, his whole character arc since losing his hand (actually, more or less since pushing bran out the window) is that he's gaining insight into himself and, you know, becoming one of the good guys. so the rape scene jars because is it really the kind of thing the new, good jaime would do? is he to face no reckoning for it? and why doesn't cersei seem angry about it?
[book not-really spoilers]
i read the books (a few years ago admittedly) - and i remember the scene as not being rape. cersei's reluctant to begin with because of the whole being in the church with the dead son lying in state thing, but she goes along with it; breaking taboos turns them on. also, the timing is different. iirc, it's the first time they've met since he's returned from his various travails, and maybe what follows makes more sense in that context than what we see in the TV version, where there's no obvious reason for his... urgency.
in the book you don't get the impression that jaime's character is stained in any way by the episode, or that retribution is in store. he's been thinking about this moment of being reunited with cersei all the time he's been away. if there's something not quite right about it, the impression is that it's because they both sense that their relationship has already begun to collapse (they've already showed this happening in the TV show). but the estrangement has more to do with the ways the two characters have changed since they last saw each other than with any specific grievance arising out of that scene.
so i don't know, unless they've got a whole other character arc in mind for jaime, i tend to think they fucked it up by showing something they didn't really intend to show.
Just on the controversial sequence from that episode...has there been no controversy over the systematic repetition of the same behaviour by the mutineers at Craster's Keep..?
or does the fact that they/their victims are some kind of underclass representatives make it Ok/acceptable..?
or does the fact that they/their victims are some kind of underclass representatives make it Ok/acceptable..?
whereas with jaime, his whole character arc since losing his hand (actually, more or less since pushing bran out the window) is that he's gaining insight into himself and, you know, becoming one of the good guys. so the rape scene jars because is it really the kind of thing the new, good jaime would do? is he to face no reckoning for it? and why doesn't cersei seem angry about it?
[book not-really spoilers]
i read the books (a few years ago admittedly) - and i remember the scene as not being rape. cersei's reluctant to begin with because of the whole being in the church with the dead son lying in state thing, but she goes along with it; breaking taboos turns them on. also, the timing is different. iirc, it's the first time they've met since he's returned from his various travails, and maybe what follows makes more sense in that context than what we see in the TV version, where there's no obvious reason for his... urgency.
in the book you don't get the impression that jaime's character is stained in any way by the episode, or that retribution is in store. he's been thinking about this moment of being reunited with cersei all the time he's been away. if there's something not quite right about it, the impression is that it's because they both sense that their relationship has already begun to collapse (they've already showed this happening in the TV show). but the estrangement has more to do with the ways the two characters have changed since they last saw each other than with any specific grievance arising out of that scene.
so i don't know, unless they've got a whole other character arc in mind for jaime, i tend to think they fucked it up by showing something they didn't really intend to show.
Comment