Sexism: Not Okay In Real Life, But Okay In TV Show

As a person who is obsessed with Game of Thrones and can’t wait for the next season, it is defeating to see the sexist and misogynistic views in which the show portrays women. From the way Daenerys comes to terms with her inner power and her inner dragon to the way that she changes the great Khal Drogo, the series sexualizes women and tries to play it off in a positive light. Many people view the show as empowering women because it emphasizes the strength and courage that is possessed by Daenerys and paints her in a positively powerful light. However, they fail to acknowledge the way she came to recognize that strength and the way in which she came to terms with her power. In Game of Thrones, Daenerys realizes her true power only after marrying an important and powerful man. She learns to stand up to her brother only after she realizes that her brother can no longer hurt her because she has Khal Drogo’s bloodriders to protect her. It is only after this that she learns to embrace her status as a Queen and the power that comes with being the “dragon.” Although later in the series Daenerys gains more strength and power on her own, after the death of Khal Drogo, the book originally portrays the strong Daenerys rising as a result of her marriage to Khal Drogo.  

Another instance is when Daenerys changes the feelings of the all mighty Khal Drogo through the power of sex. The series illustrates Daenerys using sex as a tool to make Khal Drogo less “animal-like” and more civilized towards her. At first he only takes her from the back, more in the show than the book, however, once Dany learns how to properly please a man she makes him have sex with her face to face. Why does Dany have to use sex in order to obtain respect from Khal Drogo, her husband? And why is that quickly overlooked by most of the people who watch GoT?  

More upsetting than these instances of sexism and misogyny are the ways in which the series has tried to downplay them and use them to further the plot. The scene in the show/book where Dany forces Drogo to have sex face to face is meant to show the change in their relationship; it is the moment when Dany manages to soften the Khal Drogo and change his ways. However, it is overlooked because it was common back in the time period from which the series is influenced. Many people say it is okay because it is just part of the world that the is created within the series by George R. R. Martin. But this does not make it okay. Why is it okay to be sexist within a fantasy world in a TV show, movie, or book, when it is not okay in real life?  

The formula for your new demon baby

The demonic spawn is a well known symbol that dates back to even the Biblical times with references to demon babies being made in the Torah. They were created to show straying away from God and the consequences that resulted from that. The word in Hebrew used for these children was Nephilim which translates to giants or fallen ones. The demon child is used in a falling from grace in the Albina myth, the King of Tars, and A Game of Thrones. 

In the Albina myth, the women travel to an uninhabited island as a punishment for trying to kill their husbands to avoid being subservient. They become masculine on the island and learn to fend for themselves but are seduced by an incubus and have children who become the giants of Albion or demon children. The women can be interpreted to create these demon children because they have gone on the wrong path. They were led astray and created demon children because of their change in beliefs.

Actual real life image of the giants

In the King of Tars, the Princess of Tars is forced to convert to Islam because of her marriage to the Sultan of Damascus. She becomes pregnant but is horrified to learn that she has beget a child that is a lump of flesh. She and the Sultan try to make the baby normal by using their religions, Christianity and Islam respectively. The Sultan’s methods fail while the Princess’ methods turn the baby normal and the Sultan becomes Christian as a result. The changing from Christianity again causes a demonic baby to be born.

In A Game of Thrones, Daenerys is forced to marry Khal Drogo and covert to his lifestyle and beliefs as a result. As opposed to the King of Tars, Daenerys actually is happier as a result and is supposed to give birth to the “Stallion who Mounts the World”. However, when she tries to change her beliefs again by using blood magic to save Khal Drogo’s life, her child becomes stillborn and looks like a monster. This is in stark contrast to the other two texts when the changing of lifestyles from the predominately Christian one to another creates a demon child. Daenerys does give birth to demon children through a conversion back to her old lifestyle when she hatches dragons over Drogo’s funeral pyre and begins to proclaim herself as the blood of the dragon.

How could Daenerys not love this?

The demonic spawn is used many times to show the effects of falling from what the author considers to be the correct religion. In the Albina myth and the King of Tars, this is patriarchal Christianity while in A Game of Thrones, it is the old beliefs of Daenerys that her family is the blood of the dragon and blood magic that cause her to mother demonic children.. In A Game of Thrones however, it is used more positively when Daenerys hatches the dragons and to make her more powerful as opposed to the the King of Tars which shows the lump child as only causing grief. 

Shockingly, It's Racist

One of the first things that I noticed when watching the first season of Game of Thrones is how unjustly stereotypical the Dothraki were portrayed during the Daenerys Targaryen arc of the show. From the second that the Dothraki and Khal Drogo are put into action, they are placed in a bad light. The first scene that you Khal Drogo appears is when he’s getting to see Dany for the first time after purchasing her from her brother. This automatically places him in the role of the villain in the beginning scenes, the audience immediately revolting after his overtly sexual and what appears to be condescending look when he first sees her.

"Yep. I'd tap that."

From that point on, the Dothraki seem to follow a path of stereotypes that try to explain who they are while keeping them less civilized and inferior to the Targaryens. During the first season of Game of Thrones, the Dothraki race was quoted to be written to portray a “Native American-like culture”. Even while they try to explain what they’re doing, they’re doing all the things that an American audience would usually identify with countries that are underdeveloped. From the massive dance/orgy that took place in the beginning at Dany’s wedding to Khal Drogo, to eating the heart of the horse in front of shaman-like woman while she chants things in a foreign language, these are all things that we, as an American audience, identify with cultures that we find inferior to our own.

You mean this isn't how we party?

This is even emphasized during the heart-eating scene, by placing Viserys in the scene. Viserys is our white-imperialist counterpart that needs everything explained to him. He says what we as an audience is feeling in this scene, which by doing, is placing us in the viewpoint of someone who openly and with hostility thinks himself and his culture as superior. They are having the audience identify with the racism that Viserys is feeling.

As Viserys let us know, "Gross".

Khal Drogo the Barbarian

Mongol General: Conan, what is best in life?
Conan: Crush your enemies. See them driven before you. Hear the lamentations of their women.

Conan the Barbarian (1982)

I will take my khalasar west to where the world ends, and ride the wooden horses across the black salt water as no khal has done before. I will kill the men in the iron suits and tear down their stone houses. I will rape their women, take their children as slaves, and bring their broken gods back to Vaes Dothrak to bow down beneath the Mother of Mountains. This I vow, I, Drogo son of Bharbo.

A Game of Thrones (pg 594)

Khal Drogo is a power fantasy wrapped up in a million “barbarian” clichés. I will never stop being disappointed that he doesn’t get to speak more or have more of a personality in A Game of Thrones before he dies in order to provoke Dany’s character growth, because like most other characters who play the “game,” he’s a complicated and morally ambiguous figure. Also, he’s a badass.

His physical appearance, which is most of what we get to know about him, mixes images of strength and virility with images of strangeness and foreignness. When Dany first meets him, he describes him as a head taller than the tallest men around him. He spends the entire show bare-chested to show off his muscles. What’s interesting is how Dany’s perception of his physical size shifts: at first, she is almost more afraid of Drogo than of Viserys (which is impressive), but over time her reaction shifts from “that’s scary” to “that’s sexy.” There’s an uncomfortable way in which his physical strength and his capacity for violence may be tied to his race, like the sultan in The King of Tars is implicitly compared to a huge black hound attacking the princess, but although Martin shows us Dany’s fear, he spends more time showing Khal Drogo as a more heroic figure.

The braid that Khal Drogo wears is perhaps the most perfect mix of strength and foreignness he has. The symbolism of the braid recalls a variety of different cultures, but isn’t particularly Western. During the rule of the Qing dynasty in China, all men were required to wear their hair in a long queue, or braided tail. The penalty for refusing was death, and it is sometimes said that if a man emigrated away from China, he could not return if he had cut his queue off. American Indian children who were forced to go to government-run boarding schools to be “acculturated” had their long hair forcibly cut. Certain religious traditions, including Sikh traditions, require their adherents to grow their hair naturally and not cut it. A man’s hair is also important to his masculinity in a variety of cultures, just as a woman’s hair is important to her femininity. Samson, a character in the Old Testament, famously lost his divine power when his hair was cut. More bizarrely, the Dothraki custom of taking another khal’s bells when you defeat him recalls the giant Arthur fought in HKB who wore a “fur clock [made] from the beards of the kings whom he had slain” (240).

Previously in this class, we’ve discussed the idea of giants as over-sexed, representing some sort of monstrous, uncontrollable sexuality. Unfortunately, Khal Drogo seems to resemble a giant in this respect, too. All the Dothraki men, in fact, are characterized by excessive sexuality. In some ways, Martin portrays this as an exaggerated stereotype: it’s not actually true, from what we see, that they sleep with their horses, and men in Westeros rape captured women as much as Dothraki men do. But the Dothraki are constantly having sex in public, including during Dany’s wedding; Khal Drogo has sex with Dany pretty much every time they’re in the same space; and a lot of their rhetoric blends violence together with sex, as when Dany’s child is described as the “stallion who mounts the world.” The portrayal of all this public sex, both in the book and the show, I argue, always has a tinge of the exotic and the barbaric. At worst, it’s used to portray the Dothraki as a dangerous and animalistic people, driven by their worst instincts and devoid of civilization or restraint. At best, it’s an excuse for Martin and the show writers to titillate the reader/viewer with more women’s breasts and more sex scenes. The fact that these people are darker-skinned apparently means you don’t even have to bother with giving some context for the sex or showing the woman’s face. This goes back to the idea of Drogo as a power fantasy. Partly, he's a fantasy just in that he gets to have a ton of sex. In addition, his strength and manliness are inherently intertwined with virility--there's some sort of evolutionarily-programmed feeling of, "this guy can kill people really well, if we had kids he'd be able to protect our kids really well."