Recap: Will ‘Game Of Thrones’ Actually Give A Shit About Women This Season?
The premiere was full of strong ladies but, in this universe, that may not mean much.
This is a recap of the latest episode of Game of Thrones. Spoilers!
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As I write this, I’m wearing my favourite necklace. The one with the big red stone. It hasn’t been a great day, to be honest. I’m really starting to doubt what I’ve been seeing when I stare into the flames at the screen. Instead of recapping the Game of Thrones season opener for this youth-focused website, I’d really rather take off my necklace and head to bed.
As season six kicks off, my fellow redhead Melisandre also deserves some shut-eye. Yeah, I know stab-happy Ser Alliser Thorne only gave the decidedly dead-looking Jon Snow’s loyalists until sundown to come quietly, and Ser Davos is counting on the Red Woman for some serious shadow magic. (He’s counting on Ser Alliser for mutton.) But I say: let Melisandre sleep on it. Surely this whole Wall clusterfuck will look better in the morning. After all, the night is dark and full of terrors.
Maybe she’s born with it… maybe it’s Melisandre.
The episode’s final twist — that the seductive Melisandre is secretly OLD AND GROSS, EWWWW! — is flagged in this week’s title, ‘The Red Woman’. But the episode is actually full of female characters who’ve got red on them. Cobble-mashed psycho Myranda, who turns out to have been Ramsay Bolton’s soulmate, enjoys in death the same fate that she rejoiced to deal out in life — getting fed to the dogs. Stubborn Queen Margaery is languishing in jail and refuses to spell out her scarlet letter for the fanatical Sparrows. Cersei Macbeth is certain that the old witch Maggy the Frog was right with sweet, dead Myrcella’s blood on her hands.
After last year’s intense criticism of the violent sexploitation that Game of Thrones deals out to its female characters, this episode seems clearly intended to flag a more empowered, feminist approach. Just look at Sansa Stark-Lannister-Bolton’s flight from Winterfell with a newly ballsy Theon Greyjoy, and her salvation — at last! — by Brienne of Tarth, who slays Boltons left and right to fulfil her oath to Sansa’s butchered mother Catelyn.
Deep wells of tradition and emotion run beneath the chivalric ceremony in which Sansa hesitantly – and occasionally prompted by Podrick Payne — accepts Brienne as her knight: “I pledge to ask no service of you that might bring you dishonour”. That’s a weighty promise in a world that perpetually dishonours women.
But it’s just a shame that the show’s feminist gestures come off as profoundly cynical and tokenistic. For every Sansa and Brienne there’s a Gross Old Melisandre, or Varys and Tyrion strolling through Meereen like the paving stones are their own personal property, shaking their damn heads over what an incompetent queen Daenerys Targaryen has been.
“You used to Khal me on your cell phone.”
Sure, she’s come a long way from getting felt up by her own brother and raped on her wedding night — but here Daenerys is again, helpless among the Dothraki. Luckily, her loyal footsoldiers Ser Jorah Mormont and Daario Naharis — aka Ser Friendzone and Ser Bone Zone — are hot on her trail. Will greyscale-infected Jorah live to see his Khaleesi on the Iron Throne before he becomes Ser Stone Zone?
I hadn’t realised how much I’d missed the Dothraki. Their gutteral language! Their multi-banded ponytails! Dangling carcasses of meat! Lewd, hostile stares! And their stolid insistence that “It is known”. I especially adored the Conan the Barbarian-esque scene in which Khal Moro and his bloodriders argue about whether seeing a beautiful woman naked for the first time is best in life. (It’s definitely in the top five.)
Sadly for Moro, Daenerys is in no mood to settle this argument. She’s a queen now — by birth, marriage and conquest! But of course the show takes pains to put Dany in a corner: she may not be Moro’s slave, but in patriarchal Dothraki society, a widowed khaleesi is worthless. It’s off to Vaes Dothrak to live forever among the discarded women! Of course, this seems like a pretty great option in Game of Thrones, but as it doesn’t involve dragons or executive power, Dany is already scheming about how to get out of it.
The episode’s other terrible, embarrassing-to-feminism plotline takes place in Dorne, where Ellaria Sand and her idiot daughters continue to fuck up everything. “Weak men will never rule Dorne again,” says Ellaria. Sheesh, like the Sand Snakes are strong? Game of Thrones clearly wants us to rejoice in this Strong Female badassery, but the Sand Snake subplot was one of last season’s biggest disappointments, and I’m annoyed that they’re continuing to blunder their way through another season.
Dorne of the Planet of the Snakes.
The Sand Snakes are the show’s worst written characters. Like their serpentine namesake they strike impulsively, out of rivalry with one another as much as any perceived threat. And they seem to have no personalities or motivations, other than avenging the far more charming Oberyn. While undeniably shocking, their orgy of killing in this week’s episode carries no dramatic heft. It seems intended more to prune down the cast than to achieve strategic aims.
Readers of the novels may join me in my frustration at how vaguely characterised Prince Doran Martell, his son Trystane and their loyal guard Areo Hotah have been in Game of Thrones. (Prince Doran’s legitimate daughter Arianne doesn’t even appear in the show.) Wasting Doran so casually was a sad waste of Alexander Siddig’s talents. And poor Trystane didn’t deserve to be depicted as such a milquetoast — although there’s a certain grim irony in his getting speared through the eye just as he was painting eye-pebbles for his beloved Myrcella.
Arya can relate.
Perhaps the most intriguing storyline in Game of Thrones is Arya Stark’s antihero’s journey. Throughout the series, we’ve followed her inner life as she’s subverted gender expectations. She’s been a Westerosi noble, an outlaw urchin boy, a Braavosi coster girl and now a blind beggar, but Arya has always struggled to be No One.
Still only a teenager, she has an inner strength of character that can emerge as arrogance, self-pity or cold rage and it’s this sense of self that the smug, “cuntish” Faceless Girl has delighted in breaking. I don’t think I’ve hated a single character on Game of Thrones more than that Faceless Girl — but that’s because I want the show to reward Arya for striving to be better.
Arya may be one of the few female characters whose strength isn’t circumscribed by her sexuality, and whose punishments for failure aren’t sadistic spectacles, but teachable moments. She’s not like the Sand Snakes, who mindlessly lash out with violence. Or Melisandre, whose power comes from a magic necklace. Or Cersei and Margaery, who wield dynastic and class power. Or Brienne, whose power comes from a masculine sense of honour. Or Sansa and Daenerys, who needed to have the meekness traumatised out of them.
As Game of Thrones moves further away from the terrain George RR Martin has already mapped out, it’ll be interesting to see whether the series is genuinely interested in women’s inner lives, or whether it wants to represent only the kind of female empowerment that requires youthful fuckability.
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Game of Thrones is on Showtime at 11am and 7.30pm every Monday.
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Mel Campbell is a freelance journalist and cultural critic. She blogs on style, history and culture at Footpath Zeitgeist and tweets at @incrediblemelk. Read more of her Game of Thrones recaps here.