OH FANDOM YOU NEVER DISAPPOINT: Game of Thrones edition
So about five months ago, I had every intention of writing about at least one narrative decision which I love and which fandom hates. And then I got sidetracked from the meme (not sure why, since opening up this document I see that I had several of them either planned or done???) but also, which decision? I've already talked about plenty of roundly
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Yes! I loved that scene as well, for those reasons. Like, it says really good things about Oberyn that he values the idea of not hurting little girls, and that he was willing to make his comment about all little girls and not just the special snowflake princess. But he was still speaking from a place where his aristocratic and male privilege allowed him to buy into Dornish exceptionalism in this way. And Cersei has the factual right of it, even though it's coming from a place where she knows because she has had a lifetime of trying to be the one woman in the world who's exempt from misogyny and it hasn't worked.
And of course fandom would rather Oberyn be right, that there's this one group of people you can align with and feel good about morally. It would rather Cersei's experience be exceptional. But we're very wrong to adopt this viewpoint.
I also think it's really hard to miss that point in the books, that Dorne is less unequal rather than equal? Arianne's understanding that she needed to be the perfect princess and learn conventionally feminine subservience and compliance, and that her cousins were very special for not needing to do so, says that gender roles are still a big deal in Dorne. Her knowledge that she could be passed over, rather than the unthinking entitlement that a male heir in her situation would have, shows an awareness that this greater equality is conditional. And the Dornish have historically been willing to intermarry their princesses with the princes of the Iron Throne, which has the most misogynistic laws of succession and makes those women extremely vulnerable to misogyny. We forget that Doran's and Oberyn's lesson learned from their sister's death was to put Arianne in that exact same situation. It's really loaded. But if fandom doesn't get that after having it spelled out in black and white, how is the show supposed to do it in the limited time it has?
it often happens unconsciously (and IMO the Instant Reblog/Like nature of Tumblr interaction contributes to the phenomenon), but the effect is unfortunate, regardless.
Yeah, totally agreed. I think in part because it becomes way too easy for people to publicly commit to those knee-jerk impulses, which leads to that much more interest in doubling down and rationalizing them.
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YES EXACTLY.
It's completely reasonable and natural and enriching characterization for a girl in Arya's position, and to lay an embargo on her character having that bias is unnecessarily and even unfairly restrictive, IMO.
Ugh, yes. I mean, I get that it can be a fine line, but still, at some point it becomes "women and girls must be X virtuous to be worth our time." If the only acceptable representation of women is one where we're basically born impervious to the effects of internalized misogyny - not even having worked through internalized misogyny to a reasonable extent, given that ARYA IS 12 - we are not going to have many recognizably human women on our screens! We talk a good game about ~representation, but GOD FORBID people actually get the chance to empathize with a woman or girl who's working things through.
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