Game of Thrones: House of the Dragon!

[Ouch!]

Characters in work of fiction are allowed to express worldviews without the implication that said worldview has been endorsed. George R. R. Martin is routinely criticized because he writes about a world where women are regularly brutalized and raped, and it is often written in a matter-of-fact tone. He's writing in a medieval setting where women do not have the same basic rights that men do, and despite writing multiple female characters who manage to take power for themselves in that world, he is often regarded as a misogynist just because bad trout happens to women in his books. Characters can say and do things that disgust you. Sometimes that's the point of a character.

It's like saying that Lolita isn't one of the best books ever written because the main character is a twisted pedophile. Doesn't make the book any less amazing.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that anyone is accusing the show itself of being misogynist or that it's not allowed to have characters who are, but it is a step that I've seen far too many people take.

[Pike]

Characters in work of fiction are allowed to express worldviews without the implication that said worldview has been endorsed. George R. R. Martin is routinely criticized because he writes about a world where women are routinely brutalized and raped, and it is often written in a matter-of-fact tone. He's writing in a medieval setting where women do not have the same basic rights that men do, and despite writing multiple female characters who manage to take power for themselves in that world, he is often regarded as a misogynist just because bad trout happens to women in his books. Characters can say and do things that disgust you. Sometimes that's the point of a character.

It's like saying that Lolita isn't one of the best books ever written because the main character is a twisted pedophile. Doesn't make the book any less amazing.

To be clear, I'm not suggesting that anyone is accusing the show itself of being misogynist or that it's not allowed to have characters who are, but it is a step that I've seen far too many people take.

You need to come and say this in the Wakka thread because we're having this exact conversation over there right now.

[Del Murder]

It's like saying that Lolita isn't one of the best books ever written because the main character is a twisted pedophile. Doesn't make the book any less amazing.

Um, yeah it does.

[Loony BoB]

There are a lot of things well beyond misogyny that occur in Game of Thrones that are not something I endorse nor like seeing other people endorse, but if the entire show was all about how to plant trees and cuddle then I probably wouldn't watch it. Zach's right.

There are many books where the main character is a murderer, a druggie, a whore, etc. which are fantastic. I don't see how a book about pedophiles or misogynists or anything like that are somehow not amazing purely because of them being about that kind of person.

[Ouch!]

It's like saying that Lolita isn't one of the best books ever written because the main character is a twisted pedophile. Doesn't make the book any less amazing.

Um, yeah it does.

And yet somehow it's still frequently ranked as one of the best novels ever written and highly regarded for the quality of its writing and how it engages the reader with the mind of a morally reprehensible narrator. I would argue that Lolita is amazing and engaging because the subject matter is so disturbing. It's about how Nabokov writes that lets you interact with the narrator when every little bit of you is condemning him.

If you only read/watch stuff that affirms your own moral worldview and does not make you uncomfortable, you're missing out.

[Cuchulainn]

Terrible episode. No Stannis.

[Del Murder]

If you only read/watch stuff that affirms your own moral worldview and does not make you uncomfortable, you're missing out.

I read Lolita. It's a classic, but not something you read romantically. I was mostly trolling you on that one, though. Obviously if Lolita was about a guy who just loved playing hopscotch with little girls it wouldn't have the same impact. Lolita is a classic and the moral reprehensibility of the main character is pretty much the fundamental theme of the book. It's just not as good as other well-written books without morally represensible main characters.

Back on subject, I've also read A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings. I liked them, but I think they would have been better without the rape, brutality, etc. I'm guessing from the sound of things it gets a lot worse, too. My beef with this series that differs from Lolita is that the gratuitous immorality in GoT is not critical to the central theme of the series. A lot of it is just in there for effect and it's hardly written as well as Lolita is. The two aren't even comparable.

There are several other examples in fantasy where the author uses obscenity and vile characters for dramatic effect and I just find it unncessary. It's a crutch almost. It doesn't have to be all peaches and rainbows, but if you're going to include a rape or torture scene, make it about something.

[The Man]

The immorality is central to the themes of the series, though. Game of Thrones is about a world that treats women utterly abysmally, and the gigantic psychological toll that aspect of their society takes on its characters. One of Martin's clear goals is to shine a light on the misogyny of our own society by presenting a society based on ours where the misogyny is, if anything, even worse than ours, and spelling out in explicit detail just how much harm that causes women and men alike. One can certainly criticise him for a lack of finesse in dealing with the issue in cases, and one can argue that he could have handled the matter more elegantly, but to claim the misogyny is not central to the themes of the books is missing a major theme of the series. It is one of the central themes of the series.

[Del Murder]

I think finesse and elegance is basically what I'm arguing though. It's fine for it to be a central theme of his novels, but man, he deals with it so coarsely. I also took a little offence to Ouchers comparing Martin to Nabokov. Come on now.

One of Martin's clear goals is to shine a light on the misogyny of our own society by presenting a society based on ours where the misogyny is, if anything, even worse than ours, and spelling out in explicit detail just how much harm that causes women and men alike.

Did he state this somewhere? Cause most of the time it seems like he's doing it just because it's his novels and he can put whatever he wants in them.

[The Man]

Well, the point is to depict a very coarse world that has no finesse in how it treats its women. It wouldn't be so shocking if the actions themselves weren't shocking. The whole point is to shock the reader - this in turn, the thought process goes, is likely to trigger reflections in the reader about how these events affect the characters. If people were just rude to women it wouldn't trigger as much awareness. The violence and brutality is what drives the whole point home.

And I don't think I need to go into the fact that we have an awful lot of violence and brutality in our own society; much of it is just hidden under the surface, although in the age of the Internet this is changing somewhat.

Also I don't think Zach was intending to say Martin should be regarded on the same tier as Nabokov. Obviously Nabokov's prose is superior to all but a handful of other 20th century writers'.

Did he state this somewhere? Cause most of the time it seems like he's doing it just because it's his novels and he can put whatever he wants in them.

I can't remember if he's explicitly said it (I think he's implied it at least) but if you read interviews with him it's obvious that he's put a lot of thought into why the women are treated the way they are and many of them, such as ADWD spoilerCersei being paraded naked through King's Landing, are based on actual historical events. The texual evidence for this is pretty strong, anyway, since you'd have to be an oaf to miss how much the women in Martin's novels suffer, and how much of this suffering is directly consequent of the misogyny of the setting.

[Pike]

Speaking of this whole conversation:

[Del Murder]

Shock and vulgarity is one of the most effortless ways to get your point across. It requires no real talent. So you can suck my dick. See? Took no effort on my part. I guess I don't give a lot of credit to writers who use shock and vulgarity because it's so easy. Going back to the Lolita example, Nabokov used anything but shock and vulgarity to describe that obession. So when Martin does it, it just makes me roll my eyes rather than underscore any theme of the story.

[chionos]

I don't think it's just about shock value. It's an attempt at stark reality. Since when does rape in the real world make any sense? Since when does it have purpose? It's ugly and painful and there's absolutely no finesse or elegance or poise or beauty about it whatsoever. Why should the novel be different? (not rhetorical, a case could be made for the novel needing to be differentiated from reality in certain situations, but I haven't really heard anyone make the case for this particular set of stories)

Also, is it this next episode or the one after that's going to be completely mindsmurfing terrible-awesome?

Some of these stories are getting to places I really wanted to see.

EDIT: Keep in mind that these are not "novels" in the same way that Lolita is a novel. The latter is literature, and the former is fantasy/genre fiction. Each requires a different approach and a different set of tools to confirm the narrative.

[The Man]

Yeah, it's not just that it's shocking; it's that it's shocking and that it mirrors events in our own world. Rape and torture like those depicted in the novel are disturbingly common even today. Perhaps not as common as they seem to be in Westeros, but then, we're not in the midst of a war in this country. Rape and torture happen all the time in war.

[Ouch!]

I wasn't suggesting that Nabokov and Martin deserve to be considered on the same level as writers, and you know that, Tmoney.

Frankly, one of the problems I have with a lot of fantasy is that it's often afraid to touch on some of the stuff that Martin touches on. The world is not a nice place, and fantasy far too often falls back on a generally pleasant population with all the evil in the world wrapped up into a single character (or group of characters) who serve as the main villains and are the source of almost all misfortune in the world.

Martin has always tried to take a step away from that. Bad stuff happens to good people. Good stuff happens to bad people. Stuff happens for no reason. It's why a young boy is crippled not even a quarter of the way through the first book. It's why there's a house whose sigil is a flayed man, and the family is notorious for torture. It's why a young girl is beaten by knights sworn to protect at the order of the king. It's why a queen struggles so hard to prove that she belongs in a world of men. The world's ambivalence to good and evil, and the brutality of man is absolutely central to just about everything that happens in the book. If you strip that away, if you take away the rape, the incest, the misogyny, and the bigotry you take away most of what makes A Song of Ice and Fire different from most other fantasy, because when you take all of that away, a lot of the characters very quickly become very boring.