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*Warning: Spoiler alert.* This article discusses a scene that occurs in Breaker of Chains, the third episode of Game of Thrones' fourth season.
It seems ridiculous to think Game of Thrones can still have a scene that actually shocks and upsets people.
We’re talking about a show that featured incest, a beheading, the attempted murder of a child and a rape all in the very first episode; that saw the main character executed before the end of the first season and included the unforgettable scene known simply as “the Red Wedding”.
Yet a scene from the latest episode, Breaker of Chains, has managed it without even killing off a main character:
Jaime, who, in the show, has been in King’s Landing for some time, joins Cersei in the sept where she is crying over Joffrey’s body. She tells him Tyrion was the murderer and asks Jaime to kill him.
Jaime comforts Cersei, and they kiss, until Cersei realizes Jaime's golden hand is touching her and she recoils in horror. Jaime’s response is angry, “You’re a hateful woman. Why have the gods made me love a hateful woman?”
He forces her to the ground, where, while she begs him to stop and tells him it’s not right, he refuses to listen and ultimately rapes her right next to the corpse of their son, the son she is crying over.
The scene is based on one readers of the books will know:
In the books, Jaime does not arrive back in King’s Landing until after Joffrey’s death. When he finds Cersei in the sept, they are seeing each other for the first time since before he was captured and lost his hand.
When Cersei asks Jaime to kill Tyrion, and Jaime protests. While she is trying to convince him, she kisses him. The kiss leads to sex.
There is a small moment of protest from Cersei. She murmers, “not here. The septons...” and Jaime responds by kissing her. By the end, she is actively helping him inside of her, "quickly, quickly, now, do it now, do me now. Jaime Jaime Jaime." - a large difference from her repeatedly shouting “it’s not right” while Jaime shouts “I don’t care.”
The sex in this scene is meant to carry a certain amount of horror. Incest, fornication, desecrating the sept right next to the dead body of the child born of the incestuous relationship, and Cersei is on her period.
All of these break religious laws regarding sex, and it’s supposed to create a scene that is the ultimate example of forbidden, unholy passion.
What it’s not supposed to involve, however, is rape. In the books, the sex is consensual.
So why the change, and what’s the problem with the change? This wouldn’t be the first change the show has seen, and it’s not like Jaime Kingslayer screwing-his-sister attempted-to-murder-a-ten-year-old-boy Lannister is exactly a pure and holy character.
Well, for a start, Jaime, for all his past crimes, has just started to become a sympathetic character.
He regrets the attempt on Bran Stark’s life, though admittedly more because it’s caused him more trouble than it was worth than anything else. Losing his hand has humbled him, and turned him from a rash man of constant action to a thoughtful man who is beginning to understand his brother’s respect for books.
Even his relationship with Cersei has become sympathetic. Jaime boasts that Cersei is the only woman he has ever loved – and the only woman he has ever bedded – which, in a sense, raises his honour above, say, Ned Stark, who fathered a bastard.
Jaime’s love for Cersei actually becomes almost the purest example of love we see in the whole series. A fact that is, of course, wonderfully ironic.
Most of all, he saved Brienne from rape.
So to see him go from that to raping the woman who he’s supposed to love above all others, a woman who has already spent a lifetime being raped by her hated husband, is quite awful, and feels like an unnecessary change to the book Jaime.
Especially considering the fact that George R. R. Martin himself has distanced himself from the change made to this scene. From his blog:
“The setting is the same, but neither character is in the same place as in the books, which may be why Dan & David played the sept out differently. But that's just my surmise; we never discussed this scene, to the best of my recollection.”
“That's really all I can say on this issue. The scene was always intended to be disturbing... but I do regret if it has disturbed people for the wrong reasons.”
Still, it’s important to remember that Game of Thrones is not a story about “goodies” and “baddies”. Every single character, (except maybe Joffrey,) is a shade of grey.
I dislike this change from the books, but I would also like to believe that, if any show can tackle a topic as delicate and disturbing as rape, it’s Game of Thrones; and I was cautiously hopeful to see why the series made this surprising move.
Unfortunately, the director of the actual scene, Alex Graves, doesn’t seem to understand he directed a rape scene. In an interview with the Hollywood Reporter, he referred to it as “forced sex”, while he told Hitflix that “it becomes consensual for them in the end”.
When asked by Vulture how the ending of Cersei saying “It’s not right, it’s not right” and Jaime on top of her saying “I don’t care, I don’t care” is consensual, Graves responded that it’s Cersei’s body language that shows consent. “She’s kissing him back. She’s kissing him aplenty.”
Meanwhile actor Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime, has described the rape as “an act of powerlessness” in an interview with The Daily Beast. When asked if it is rape, he responds “yes and no”.
And this is what is most disturbing about the scene.
Not the fact that it’s a change from the books. Changes have been made before and they will be made again.
Not the fact that it’s a rape scene. No topic is taboo, and Game of Thrones has been dealing with rape, as well as murder, incest, infanticide, war, death and countless other horrifying topics from the start.
Not even the possibility that it was put in simply to cause controversy and generate ratings. The show had a pregnant woman stabbed in the womb. I think we know that they use shock tactics.
It is simply the fact that this rape, like so many others, is being defended and denied.
It’s not really rape, it’s “forced sex” that “becomes consensual in the end”.
It’s not really rape, because while her lips say no (loudly and repeatedly), her body is claimed to say yes.
It’s not the rapist’s fault. He was powerless.
The fact that whether or not holding a woman down and forcing yourself into her while she shouts for you to stop is “really rape” is actually being disputed, and the fact that even those involved with the scene are claiming it wasn’t really rape, is just plain depressing. It makes you wonder what does count as rape.
It’s also an indication that we might not be able to expect much in the way of how this scene is dealt with, which is a pity.
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