The Clash of the Feminist Queens in
HBO’s Game of Thrones
On
Sunday April 1st, 2012, HBO premiered the highly anticipated second
season of Game of Thrones with
the season’s first episode “The North Remembers”. Based off of George R. R. Martin’s series of medieval
fantasy novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, Game of Thrones enters the realm of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros—all of
which are competing for power and the claim to the throne after the death of
King Robert Baratheon in the first season. What may seem like your classic medieval “clash of the
kings” plot, however, has turned into a “clash of the queens” in the first
episode of the second season alone, where the power of women prevails. The three female protagonists (Lady
Catelyn Stark, Cersei Lannister, and Daenerys Targaryen) may all start off the
second season widowed in their respected kingdoms, but they remain strong and
empowering female characters in the midst of the patriarchal restrictions and
sexual exploitations emphasized in medieval societies. They are, “fascinating, admirable,
[and] frightening”; “they are survivors”, “in control of their own destinies”
as “they fight for political and personal power.”[1]
The
show has received a lot of criticism in feminist dialogue due to some of the
disturbing portrayals of women in the show. The show is centered on a time of war where gender lines are
more pronounced than ever. Women
are subjugated to violence and sex at the mercy of the men and are often times
made out to be the victims through the lens of the male gaze. There is an excess of nudity,
prostitution, and sexual assault that is quite unsettling to watch. Female stereotypes are embedded into
the script, from the Susan Douglas’ “warrior women” and “lean and mean” queens,
to your quintessential nurturing, maternal Mother Goose figure.[2] All the patriarchal elements of
medieval society and our very own society are melded into one systematic pot
that can no doubt be considered highly degrading to women. Yet, there is something admirable within
the female protagonists that is empowering, even when women seem to be the
lowest of lows in the Seven Kingdoms.
As the “clash of the kings” plays out on screen, it becomes all the more
evident that Lady Catelyn Stark, Cersei Lannister, and Daenerys Targaryen are
truly the ones that hold the power.[3] Although they may appear to be in the
shadows of men, they are not packaged stereotypes of women in mainstream media
that hold little power. They prove
that they are not only capable of doing what the men do, but that they are
better and stronger at doing what the men fail to do while still “possess[ing]
all the qualities of being” that real women can relate to.[4]
Lady Catelyn Stark
Lady
Catelyn Stark begins the second season as a widow to King Robert Baratheon’s
most trusted advisor, Ned Stark.
When Ned Stark was beheaded by Cersei Lannister and Baratheon’s
illegitimate son and ruthless teen ruler of the Seven Kingdoms, Joffrey, Lady
Stark sought revenge, advising her family to wage war against the Lannisters
and King Joffrey. As a loving and
devoted mother of five, Lady Stark embodies the importance of family and
motherhood, as all women are supposed represent. She is older than the other female protagonists and has a
sound perspective of morality. However,
she possesses other qualities that are not usually associated with maternal
mothers in the media that turn her into a real woman of equal footing to men.
As a widow, she takes on both a female and a male role that is confronted by
issues of family and duty—two issues that the media tends not to mingle among
women.
Lady
Stark’s deceased husband, Ned, had a bastard son who lives with the rest of the
family. His presence is of great
unhappiness to Lady Stark and there are many moments where she makes this fact
known in what many would consider to be a “cruel” and “out of character”
way. Furthermore, she is a “shrewd
political strategist willing to sacrifice,” which is brought to light in the
second season as she works with her eldest son Robb, to win the throne.[5] This is best revealed at the start of
the second season when she interrogates one of the Lannister men, who is now
her prisoner, about his attempt to kill her young son. When he tries to act unthreatened by a
woman, she takes a rock and bashes his head with it. The maternal mother that everyone associated with Lady Stark
shows that she has political will and she is not afraid to use it. Following this moment, her son Robb
comes to her for advice about the family’s political strategy in war. Unlike many depictions of war where men
make all the calls, Lady Stark is confided in because the men know of her
capabilities. Lady Stark’s
character is not limited to her maternal duties as it might appear at first
glance. Rather, her character is full
of rich and empowering qualities that make her just as valuable as her male
counterparts.
Cersei Lannister
Cersei Lannister might be a grownup version of what Douglas
would call a “lean and mean” teen girl.
Cersei, who became a widow upon the King’s death, is beautiful, evil,
conniving, and pretty much a flat out ice queen bitch. She has affairs with her brother,
threatens to kill anyone who gets in her way, and will do just about anything
to keep the Lannister family and her son, King Joffrey, in charge of the Seven
Kingdoms. And as the former queen
of the Seven Kingdoms and a member of the royal Lannister family, she holds a
real power that few males would ever contest. She might be seen as “monster” because her girl power
emphasizes her, “pettiness, cattiness, emotional vapidity, materialism, and a
desperate need for a guy.”[6] However, these qualities are often
times misconstrued with Cersei that make her different from Douglas’ “lean and
mean” girls. Beyond her image as
an ice queen, she represents an important gender power dynamic between men and
women and shows that women are just as strong as their male counterparts. As the shows writer-producer, David
Benioff, described her as:
“Cersei
is frustrated by the constraints placed on woman in medieval society, even the
most privileged woman in the land.
She wishes she were born a man so she could fight her enemies in the
open. But she can’t—and so she chooses
other methods of combat.”[7]
This is best
portrayed in a scene from the first episode of the second scene where advisor
Lord Baelish remarks about his knowledge of her affairs with her brother and
the fact that King Joffrey is actually a product of one of those affairs and
therefore an illegitimate heir to throne.
When Lord Baelish reveals this to Cersei in King’s Landing’s courtyard,
Lord Baelish stands up to Cersei and says, “Knowledge is Power”. Cersei responds to this comment by
ordering her guards to kill him until he pleads for mercy and she tells them to
stop. She then exercises her power
by ordering the guards to take two steps forward, turn around, among other
fancy footwork, before telling Lord Baelish that, “Power is Power”, at which
point he retreats. In this scene,
the “lean and mean” queen bee comes out in full force when she hears word of
gossip that could break her. This
is a common occurrence with Cersei throughout the show, making her a hard
character to sympathize with. That
said, there are other attributes of Cersei that have to be taken into account
when judging her character that make the ice queen a lot more humane than most
people think.
When
taking into account other details about Cersei’s life, it becomes obvious that
Cersei has been at the mercy of men before. In season one, the King tells Cersei over drinks that he has
never loved her due to his past love for Ned Stark’s deceased sister, Lyanna
Stark. Most women portrayed in the
media would crumble upon hearing this news, but what makes Cersei’s character
so strong is that she has does not let these falls stop her from being a
powerful and beautiful independent woman. In a follow up scene to “Power is
Power”, King Joffrey confronts his mother about claims of his illegitimacy in
his typical tyrannical fashion. As
King Joffrey is ordering guards around who are busy redecorating his court to
his liking, he attacks his mother about her incestuous relationship in an
attempt to degrade her. In
response, Cersei slaps her own son quite hard across the face—an act against
the King punishable by death. Just
when you think the ice queen has no feelings, she shows that she is in fact
human in a moment when King Joffrey tries to assert his patriarchal control
over his own mother. Although this
moment is a bit controversial due to the issue of hitting your own child, it is
a lash out to the patriarchal norms in medieval society that try to put women
down. Cersei responds fiercely to
these norms with enough convincing emotion that makes you really see the
feminist that lies deep within her.
Daenerys Targaryen
In
the first episode of the second season, Daenerys Targaryen, otherwise known as
Dany, is responsible for leading her former husband’s Dothraki tribe. Dany is Douglas’ ultimate “warrior
woman in thongs”, demonstrating that, “females could, and should, combine force
and aggression with femininity and sexual display.”[8] She has fair skin, long blonde hair, a
fit yet feminine physique, and is often times mounted on a beautiful white
horse. Her appearance, in addition
to her revealing warrior costume, is maintained in the most rough and tumble
moments and even when she has to eat the bloody heart of a stallion for
Dothraki acceptance. Dany is the
epitome of a male fantasy, made undeniable by all of her sexual exploits and
the dragon that was perched on her shoulder throughout the season two’s first
episode.
After
being mistreated her whole life by her brother, Dany is well aware of the
patriarchal restrictions put on women.
In the second season, however, she recognizes that with her husband and
leader of the Dothraki’s dead, she has a lot of power and must be smart about
wielding it in the presence of her tribe.
When the tribe sets out in search for shelter across the barren Red
Waste at the beginning of season two, she faces her first big dilemma when the
tribe has no luck. Dany remains
strong and empowered in this moment, and uses her power to order her men to go
search for shelter in opposite directions. Her orders are well received in this moment by both men and
women, and although there will clearly be bigger hurdles in upcoming episodes,
it broke down the fantastical illusion of her representation as a sex symbol
and shed light on the fact that woman is most influential figure right now in a
highly patriarchal tribe.
Lady
Stark, Cersei, and Dany could have stayed in the shadows of men, but they
emerge in the second season stronger than ever before as a reminder that,
“women have their own way of fighting these battles of politics and power that
is not necessarily more or less valid,” than men.[9] They are not your average female
stereotypes of a maternal mother, a grown up version of a “lean and mean” teen,
or a fantastical warrior woman.
While they each exhibit some of these qualities, these three widowed
women prove that they don’t need a man by their side in order wield power in a
historically restrictive patriarchal society. As the war over the Seven Kingdoms intensifies, these women
will only take on more responsibilities and duties of equal importance as those
of the men. Writer-producer David
Benioff admits that, in the second season, "it's not always going to be
the women who survive…There are bloodbaths ahead. Characters from each gender
are going to go down into the dirt."[10][11]
Works Cited
Boucher, Geoff.
“‘Game of Thrones’ duo: ‘Anxiety and insomnia but no complacency’. Los Angeles
Times. http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2012/03/31/game-of- thrones-benioff-weis/
(accessed April 5th, 2012).
Douglas,
Susan J. Enlightened Sexism. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2010.
Gekas,
Alexandra. “'Game of Thrones' Is For Women, Too.”
Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alexandra-gekas/game-of-thrones- women_b_1395410.html
Keveney,
Bill. “In 'Game of Thrones,' women are winning”. USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/story/2012-03-28/game-of- thrones/53836540/1
(accessed April 5th,
2012).
Perle,
Elizabeth. “The Real Fantasy.” Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-perle/game-of-thrones-mad- men_b_1401290.html?ref=entertainment&ir=Entertainment
(accessed April 5th, 2012).
Silverman, J.
“’Game of Thrones’ is Bloodthirsty and Depraved, but its Pleasures Shouldn’t
Feel Like Guilty Ones.” Capital New York. http://www.capitalnewyork.com/article/culture/2012/04/5611609/game-thrones- bloodthirsty-and-depraved-its-pleasures-shouldnt-feel-g
(accessed April 5th, 2012).
"It's HBO
GO. It's HBO. Anywhere." HBO GO. http://www.hbogo.com/ (accessed April 5th, 2012).
[1] Keveney, Bill. “In 'Game of Thrones,' women
are winning”. USA Today. http://www.usatoday.com/life/television/news/story/2012-03-28/game-of-thrones/53836540/1
(accessed April 5th, 2012).
[2] Douglas, Susan J. Enlightened Sexism. New York: Henry Holt and Company, 2010.
[3] Perle, Elizabeth. “The
Real Fantasy.” Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/elizabeth-perle/game-of-thrones-mad-men_b_1401290.html?ref=entertainment&ir=Entertainment
(accessed April 5th, 2012).
[4] Keveney. “In 'Game of Thrones,' women
are winning”.
[5] Gekas, Alexandra. “'Game of Thrones' Is For Women, Too.” Huffington Post. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/alexandra-gekas/game-of-thrones-women_b_1395410.html
[7] Boucher, Geoff. “‘Game
of Thrones’ duo: ‘Anxiety and insomnia but no complacency’. Los Angeles
Times. http://herocomplex.latimes.com/2012/03/31/game-of-thrones-benioff-weis/
(accessed April 5th, 2012).
[9] Perle, “The Real
Fantasy.”
[10] Keveney. “In 'Game of Thrones,' women
are winning”.
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