History of Feminism

The problem is that how it was portrayed in the show and what may have ended up on the cutting room floor it was so incredibly subtle that it wasn't rape that it certainly did look like it to most people watching. The director nor the writers changed it to be a rape scene. What ended up as the final cut of the scene did look like a rape scene if you didn't watch very closely and re-watch the scene several times looking for the subtle cues that it wasn't. While Cercei keeps telling him to stop she is also sexually involved and pulling him closer to her. The last clip of the scene shows her gripping the shroud upon which her dead son lays not in fear or agony but in ecstasy.
This could so easily have been cleared up with just her moaning "oh, yes" or something similar, which may have even happened but wasn't included in the final cut by the editors. I believe that the writers and director and even the actors were so steeped in what they believed was being portrayed were incapable of seeing how it would be perceived by those people who only just viewed the scene.

There's also knowing the characters that comes into play. Cercei uses sex either giving it or pulling away from it as her biggest means of manipulating men, and the one man she has manipulated the most and for her entire life since they were kids is her brother, Jamie - the one person she has learned exactly how to sexually push his buttons to get what she wants. It's this scene where Jaimie finally becomes aware that not only has he been used by her all their lives but that she used sex to do it, which is why he accuses her of being an evil woman just before the sex... too him, he was getting revenge for that usury by insisting on having sex with her on HIS terms for once. It's the moment he finally understands that though he loves her selflessly (as a man, not as a brother) and has made all his decisions in life based on being able to be with her she has never loved him in that way but made him believe that she did and mostly through sex with him.

In the books, this is made clear since in the books each major character is written in the first person so you know their thoughts whereas in the show there really is no way to know their thoughts other than through their actions, which is further extremely difficult because most of their actions are the opposite of their thoughts. Also in the books, you're given background of their relationship and that their sex life was a series of sexual encounters that were usually entirely manipulation on Cercei's part that were a lot more like battles... she knew that by accepting and pulling away during their sexual encounters was what broke him to her will, and since she never did really love him as a man this was easy for her to do and intentional since in her mind the sex was almost always a ploy to get what she wanted from him.

It's clear in the scene that once again she wants something from him... the killing of their brother, Tyrion, whom she has always despised and has hated the fact that Jamie didn't as the relationship between the two brothers has always been friendly with Jamie sticking up for Tyrion most of the time when he needs it though he's the only one that does. That brother/brother relationship has always been a threat to her in her mind. Just before the sex scene once again she wants him to do something for her (kill their brother), and this time it is the biggest thing she's ever wanted of him, and once again she tries using the give/repulse sex to convince him to do what she wants. In the show, however, you really don't know that though there are very subtle hints of it in other scenes so far back that most people would have forgotten about them anyway, like when she has too much to drink the night of the Battle of Blackwater, and she tells Sansa that tears are not a woman's greatest weapon but "what she has between her legs".

Most of the uproar of the people that believe it was a rape scene isn't because they were horrified by the rape... there's been plenty of that in the show every season with far more horrific things as well. The uproar was because viewers were so fixated on Jamie being reformed that he would never have raped anyone let alone his sister who he has always been in love with which simply isn't true. As Martin said, how society treated women in the medieval world rape was not only common but neither men nor women believed certain instances of rape even WERE rape. For example, women were sold off by their father's in marriage, and those women were expected to have sex with the men they were forced to marry and however harshly they wanted it, and if a woman had willing sex with a certain man before he was entitled to have sex with her whenever and where ever he wanted and as harshly as he wanted. Women at the time did not believe this was rape anymore then men did believing that once you had sex with a man they were entitled to continue to do that regardless of the circumstances.

Women were raised to believe that they were no more use than the cow in the barn that provided their dairy products and that being sold into marriage for money or alliances was perfectly normal and a woman's duty to her family and the husband chosen for her. How women were treated during this age was completely normal to all of society - men as well as women. What we consider horribly sexist and abusive of women today was not what both genders believed then.

Take for example the bedding ceremony which is not so different than actually what occurred then in our own history. After the wedding the bride is roughly and humiliatingly stripped of her clothes by men at the wedding, carried naked to the marriage bed while the same happens to the groom by women at the wedding party, and when both are put into bed together they stand at the door making rude sexual comments about the wedded couple while the consummation act takes place. The men who strip away the garments of the bride usually include family members and friends though it can be anyone that just wants a view or a grope. Some rare men refused the bedding ceremony though they wouldn't likely because of it being so unnecessarily humiliating to women and much more likely that they just hated the idea of their new wife - their property - would be seen naked and groped by other men since once the marriage vows are taken the wife becomes the property of the husband when before she was the property of her father or next ranking male in the family in the absence of one.

For example, Catelyn Stark tells the story of her own marriage to Ned Stark and that he refused to allow a bedding ceremony because he didn't think it would be right to "break a man's jaw at his own wedding". She actually feels PRIDE in him for refusing to allow this humiliation of her but by his own words it's clear that he just didn't like the idea of other men messing with his property not because he felt it was grossly humiliating and what we believe today to be a violent sexual assault. She finds it perfectly normal that she was married to him without ever having even met him when she had been betrothed to his older brother who happened to die before the wedding. She has no problem being sold off to the older brother in marriage nor to Ned after his death. She explains to her oldest son that theirs was the best of marriages because of their having built their relationship into love AFTER the wedding and despite her having to be open to him whenever he wanted sex. She even says it was her five children that strengthened the marriage, and that's a LOT of years of having to have sex with someone you didn't even know and bear their children until love finally blossoms (if you're lucky enough for that love to have occurred). Yet all of this is considered perfectly normal in that society. Women themselves believed it was all right and proper.

What bothers me about the show - and admittedly I LOVE the show as well as the books - is that typical of HBO or Star or Showtime, etc. they always have to parade around a lot of naked attractive women as well as throw in a bunch of sex scenes that are sometimes so pornographic as to make me feel like I really was watching a porn flick. The only major male character that showed any nudity was the actor that plays Theon Greyjoy, and in those cases it's just a quick glimpse after having sex. Yet every single major female actress save children had to either show her breasts or full frontal and even have her breasts groped by another actor male or female and engage in full sex scenes. The only female lead that hasn't shown her bits is Lena Headey that plays the character of Cercei, but she has also had to be involved in sex scenes. Yet the gay male sex scenes don't even have anything more than closed mouth occasional smooching while they talk or are doing something other than having sex whereas the lesbian sex scenes were not only full out pornographic but forced on them in the most pornographic scene. Worse that particular scene was entirely gratuitous.

All this gratuitous sex is part and parcel of the major movie cable networks. I was disgusted by the series The Tudors with all the constant sex scenes when that isn't at all how people behaved then particularly women. One of the reasons that Henry VIII started hating Anne Boleyn was because in order to keep him for so many years before they finally wed was to do sexual things that Henry was disgusted by like tongue kissing (which is why it's still referred to as "French kissing" today as then it was considered a ghastly thing that only the "wicked" French would do). It was the main reason he believed she was a witch... he blamed her for using sorcery to "make" him enjoy those things at the time they happened and which he chastised himself for afterward. It was just convenient to use his true feelings of what he believed to be actual sorcery that was blown out of all proportion and used against her in order to get rid of her for wife number three.

In fact, I believe that the character of Cercei in the Song of Ice and Fire book series Martin used Anne Boleyn to model this character not just as using sex to get what she wants but also portrays a women who is personally ambitious which at that time was just unheard of for women. Women could be ruthlessly ambitious but not for themselves but for their family or their children. A woman not only having personal ambition but making no bones about it was so bizarre to people at that time of both genders they probably wouldn't have been any more surprised if she had sprouted a second head. This was also what astounded people about her both noble and commoner alike because it was considered so nuts they really did believe she was something other than human, and in those extremely religious times meant a witch.

Back to Game of Thrones though... what does bother me a bit between the show and the books is that Martin's entire approach to his characters is so very different from typical fantasy literature in that there really is no completely evil or completely righteous character... they're all shown very human as being mixtures of both depending on their circumstances. Yet the show has crapped on that quite a bit by making characters that ARE perceived as completely evil or completely good, or when a perceived completely evil character goes through circumstances that change their attitude in a lot of ways they're portrayed in the show as being fully redeemed, hence the outrage of so many people that believed that scene in the show was a rape scene. Not because it portrayed rape but because they believed it was not something what they believed was a totally redeemed character would do. Those are the ones missing the point of Martin's writing and what the show has done too much of with this change. What makes the book series so interesting that the show tends to fall flat on is that the characters are imperfect and very believably human... they aren't good guys vs. bad guys that is what is so typical of the fantasy genre.

What is so strange to me about those people just appalled that there was what they perceived as a rape scene is just so bizarre with this show. There are TONS of things that occur continually that equal to or even far outweigh the evil of rape, yet not a one of these people were outraged by any of it... incest, torture, slaying of babies, rape, prostitution that portrays the prostitutes as all gorgeous and happy hookers, skin flaying, domestic violence, genital mutilation, the repeated stabbing of a pregnant woman in her belly, etc., etc. The level of violence is huge though pretty accurate for the times, but this show shows it all, and no one has ever had the slightest problem with it. Though so appalled by this so-called rape that certainly wasn't given how the two characters behave with each other afterward in subsequent scenes with them, they also seem to have no problem that this is an incestuous relationship of a brother and sister that produced three children of which the father has utterly no love of - to him they just exist. He never even had any familial love for them as the other brother so obviously does. It's weird.

I do think that the director's comments about it not being a rape scene because she gave in at the end (the most crucial moment of penetration) was just worded incredibly badly. He needed to expand on that because not doing so makes his comments appear as though he doesn't understand that this "giving in" isn't at all. "Giving in" at the crucial moment of penetration is just helplessness, terror and despair of not being able to do otherwise - it's nothing in the same universe as consent. HIS meaning of her "giving in" at that moment and even just before meant that SHE had decided herself that she wanted the sex with him despite her not being able to manipulate him in doing what she wanted in killing their brother before the "giving in". In the books it was clear that she DID want the sex with him as in the books it was the first time they saw each other after a long separation though it wasn't in the show, she just didn't want to in the sept (church) next to her dead son's body and mostly because of the fear of being caught. She was always in great fear of their relationship being discovered not just because it would be considered so horrible it would have been the utter end of her own ambitions but likely that of her entire family though the biggest would have been her death by treason since her child that inherited the throne was not the son of her husband but her brother making him no legitimate heir.

As you can tell, I'm a HUGE fan, which is really odd seeing I've never much liked the fantasy genre.