SUNY series in Feminist Criticism and Theory

How US Audiences Create Meaning across Platforms

Andrea L. Press, Francesca Tripodi

• Publisher: SUNY Press
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781438481975
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Gender Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Feminism can reflect the cultural moment, especially as media appropriate and use feminist messaging and agenda to various ends. Yet media can also push boundaries, exposing audiences to ideas they may not be familiar with and advancing public acceptance of concepts once considered taboo. Moreover, audiences are far from passive recipients, especially in the digital age. In Media-Ready Feminism and Everyday Sexism, Andrea L. Press and Francesca Tripodi focus on how audiences across platforms not only consume but also create meanings—sometimes quite transgressive meanings—in engaging with media content. If television shows such as Game of Thrones and Jersey Shore and dating apps such as Tinder are sites of persistent everyday sexism, then so, too, are they sites of what Press and Tripodi call "media-ready feminism." In developing a sociologically based conception of reception that encompasses media's progressive potential, as well as the processes of domestication through which audiences and users revert to more limited cultural schemas, Press and Tripodi make a vital contribution to gender and media studies, and help to illuminate the complexity of our current moment.

1

Considering the Limits of Extreme Misogyny

Game of Thrones as Feminist?

Introduction

The phenomenal popularity of HBO’s series Game of Thrones offers an ideal place to illustrate the notion of media-ready feminism.1 Game of Thrones is an eight-season serialization of George R. R. Martin’s best-selling five-volume set of novels. The series has drawn attention in the feminist and mainstream press for both its explicit, extreme misogyny as well as its unusually strong women characters. This has sparked online debate about the nature of Game of Thrones’ feminism, best represented by a discussion on Bitch Media’s website: “With every season of Game of Thrones, one question has become more insistent among those in the blogosphere: ‘Is Game of Thrones feminist?’ ” This debate is so salient that even misogynist websites like Return of Kings have featured articles like the one entitled “How Feminism Is Ruining Game of Thrones,” a defensive response to the strength of the show’s female characters. These debates highlight that feminism is currently a contested concept (Johnson, forthcoming) open to a variety of definitions and approaches. The debate over Game of Thrones’ feminist qualities functions as a kind of litmus test among critics and the public regarding what feminism is and whether it’s currently palatable.

The heated nature of these discussions and debates is indicative of media-ready feminism in action. For the most part, Game of Thrones mirrors popular feminism, offering a plethora of individually highly empowered women characters who utilize their sexual prowess as part of their power. Yet the show also pushes the boundaries of popular feminism in characters like Brienne of Tarth and others, while presenting its representations alongside images of extreme misogyny. This unique set of representations offers an unparalleled set of coexisting extremes. In particular, characters like Daenerys Targaryen, Arya Stark, the evil Queen Cersei, and Sansa Stark have sparked conversation about the meaning of “feminist” representation itself. However, the ambivalence regarding how audiences respond to these characters and the pushback the show has received via feminist media provide the perfect opportunity to showcase media-ready feminism in action.

The extreme misogyny featured in the series alongside its strong women characters is also fodder for reflection in this chapter. The show includes multiple instances of sexual violence and other types of violent acts committed against women, including the strong female characters mentioned earlier. The show is also characterized by a notable hypersexuality featuring female nudity. Since this show predated the #MeToo era, it is of interest to this study to consider how the misogynistic violence, hypersexualization, and female nudity included in the show have sparked both criticism and enjoyment and, of course, are perhaps central to the show’s broad appeal and popularity in a patriarchal culture. Also of interest are the many broader public discussions of why extreme and ubiquitous sexual violence is and should be acceptable as presented in this series. Game of Thrones’ texts, and critics’ and viewers’ responses to them, exemplify media-ready feminism in that these commentaries are constantly invoking its feminism while often justifying misogyny. In addition, one characteristic of Game of Thrones’ feminist brand is that immediate pushback against its most powerful incarnations is already embedded in the text in the form of its extreme misogyny.

Game of Thrones’ feminism is invoked, critiqued, and celebrated in a variety of ways by different media outlets. Popular press and feminist media have shown interest in many of the characters, and for different reasons. In the following section we discuss a series of variations in the way these press outlets have commented on the show and the issues concerning feminism the show has raised. Following this, we contrast the comments of audience members gleaned both from online forums and drawn from our interview data, again focusing on their response to the show’s extreme brand of popular feminism. We conclude with a discussion of how media-ready feminism describes the unique nature of the show’s contradictory text and makes sense of both the online and media reception of the show, and much of the audience response to it found in our interviews. While in the chapters that follow we focus on the coexistence of everyday sexism and media-ready feminism in response to representations rooted less in the genre of fantasy, in this chapter on Game of Thrones, our focus is on examining media-ready feminist reception of the combination of moments of breakthrough feminism with the extreme misogyny in the text.

Methods

The reception data on which this chapter is based was collected by Sarah Johnson-Palomaki between seasons 5 and 6 of the show. Johnson-Palomaki investigated both online reception and interviewed actual viewers. To sample the show’s online analyses, she adopted a strategy of nonrandom purposive sampling of internet articles engaged in this conversation, finding these sources in the top two hundred links in a Google search for “Game of Thrones feminist.” After eliminating duplicates, shorter articles, forum pages, and so on, she composed a final sample of forty-two articles published or distributed through a wide variety of websites, including from explicitly feminist sites (Jezebel), to broader popular culture–related sites (Buzzfeed), to more traditional venues for media critique (Vanity Fair).

In addition to the textual data, Johnson-Palomaki conducted in-depth interviews with forty viewers. She initialized data collection with a series of nonrandom purposive outreach techniques (e.g., listserv emails through the local university, posting flyers around town) and used snowball sampling to find additional interviewees. Her final sample was sixty percent female and seventy-two percent white, and interviewees ranged from eighteen to seventy-three years old (with a median age of twenty-eight). In-depth interviews varied in length, ranging from forty-five minutes to just under three hours. Johnson-Palomaki conducted interviews with both individuals and groups (comprised of two to five interviewees), with group interviews drawing from those who had a regular “viewing group” and often watched and discussed Game of Thrones with fellow interviewees.

The interview schedule had an hourglass structure, first discussing the show broadly, then moving to discuss the specific gender politics respondents see as relating to the show, before finally broadening out again to a discussion on feminism in the media, culture, and society. Using Sarah Johnson-Palomaki’s analysis of the show and responses from her focus groups, Press and Tripodi then analyzed the data according to the “media-ready feminism” theoretical framework they had developed in conducting the research and analyses that comprise the rest of this book.

Reception of Game of Thrones in the Press: A Focus on the Characters

Game of Thrones’ breakthrough feminist moments hinge on the way it quite originally presents a spate of exceptionally powerful female characters who take leadership in the extremely misogynistic society pictured. In addition, several of the most important of these characters are queered in interesting ways. Both popular and feminist media tend to focus on these powerful and queered characters, noting the ways they defy traditional representations of feminine sexuality and feminine power. We take some time to introduce the most-discussed characters before analyzing media and audience responses to them.

Daenerys (Dany to fans) is a central, much-discussed figure on Game of Thrones. Much of the feminist excitement about this show in the media has hinged on discussion of her character. At the time of the interviews2 Dany was the most salient feminist character in the show, and the most obvious place to start as we examine the show’s feminism is with her. Daenerys was initially presented as a young victimized girl, sold by her brother and raped by her new husband, notably in an incident absent from the books but inserted into the show as a particularly egregious example of its extreme sexual violence. Despite the rape, Daenerys grows to love her husband and comes into her own as a powerful woman and ultimately even a contender for the throne. When her husband dies, she walks into his funeral pyre with one of their wedding gifts, three long-fossilized dragon eggs. From this fire she then emerges, naked and unharmed, with three small live dragons. Daenerys rules over her followers with the help of her three dragons, to whom she is a “mother” figure. She is also committed to justice for the needy and defenseless. With her dragons and now undyingly loyal followers, she goes on a series of campaigns to free slaves and the disempowered from their unjust rulers. While her desire to lead the world as a just ruler is honorable, she ultimately is not able to escape her bloodthirsty family past, which leads to her undoing in the final season. In this way, despite her immense strength and commitment to justice, Daenerys’s story is ultimately a tragic one, warning viewers of the threats associated with female power as the truly mega-powerful Daenerys succumbs to the influence of her power-hungry family. Though she reaches a height of power over the course of the show, she meets with a tragic end that, given the extent of her prior success and power, is quite unexpected and hits viewers by surprise. Such a stereotypical punishment meted out to a powerful woman undercuts the breakthrough feminist quality of Daenerys’s political and military power.

However, throughout the series, media and viewers were drawn to Dany as a powerful woman figure for a variety of reasons, pointing to her intelligence, integrity, and femininity as indicators of the show’s inherent feminism. In doing so, reviewers and viewers often discuss the extreme misogyny Dany has faced, remarking on her strength and growth. A writer for the prize-winning group blog BoingBoing, overtly grappling with Game of Thrones’ feminism, points to Daenerys as evidence of the ways in which the show offers an unusual and noteworthy advocacy for women, saying that “by exploring the ways women push back against the limitations of a male-dominated society, Game of Thrones has created some of the most compelling female protagonists on TV. … Daenerys Targaryen—the woman who stands the best chance of actually ruling Westeros—combines her inherent intelligence and morality with the physical power of her dragons.” While the article also uses a feminist perspective to criticize the nudity and sexual violence of the show, the discussion about Daenerys exemplifies the ways in which Game of Thrones provides images which, in their definition, fulfill our criteria for what counts as a media-ready “breakthrough feminist moment” in its portrayal of women characters. However, in this fantasy world, everyday sexism has been replaced by a graphic representation of rapes and lethal violence against women. Yet, interestingly, media accounts of the show find the power of Daenerys’s representation to be such that it overcomes such misogyny and holds their interest. We therefore argue that the series contains a feminist quality that eclipses other popular fantasy book-to-screen series such as Lord of the Rings on this dimension, given that neither of these feature a series of powerful women characters rivaling Daenerys and other leading Game of Thrones females.

In discussing Daenerys as a feature central to the show, viewers consistently note her unusual power and success. In one reception pattern, viewers identify the extreme and structural misogyny facing women in this fantasy world, and then praise the unique and creative ways Daenerys in particular is able to face this oppression. This is best seen in the following passage from the HBO Watch fan site in their official description of the show:

A young woman in a world created and run by men, Daenerys is denied her humanity, physically and verbally abused, and traded as a piece of property. Then she starts to take over the world. She’s a more adult, more complicated (and arguably more flawed) character than Hermione [the main female character in the Harry Potter series], and I can’t get enough! … Daenerys is playing the war game, and to do so she needs to fight to kill, but otherwise her leadership is marked by a love for humankind and a moral fight to right wrongs and fight oppression. … Why do I love her so much? Dany breaks the mold, both in terms of the roles assigned to gender, and the definition of leadership. She leads with compassion and love, and earns respect, instead of instilling fear in her followers to force their allegiance. She also has great instincts, the courage to follow her gut, and the moral obligation to fight oppression. As long as she can marry her intellect with her compassion, she has the capacity to be the most fearsome contender for the throne, one that would bring balance and harmony to the seven kingdoms, as she is the type of leader people would gladly and proudly join ranks to fight alongside her. (Keyham 2013)

We see in the first section of the passage an identification of structural misogynistic oppression faced by women as a collective, followed by the praise for a complex, agentic representation of female leadership. This passage perhaps surprisingly critiques gender roles and gendered notions of power without devaluing the often-feminized values of “compassion and love.” Instead, these traditionally feminine values are incorporated into a new vision of powerful leadership that we see embodied in this character, at least until the show’s conclusion.

This pattern of acknowledging Daenerys’s intelligence, integrity, and, interestingly, her femininity was also seen throughout discussions of Game of Thrones’ feminism in the popular press, as in this passage from Huffington Post:

Let’s not forget about Daenerys, who despite being initially controlled by the men in her life, has risen to the top pretty much by herself—her dragons don’t count as men because well, they’re not—and she has no qualms about killing people who get in her way, handing out mercy where it’s needed and she entertains the opinions of the girl from Hollyoaks even though she was once a slave and doesn’t deem herself worthy. Again, a woman with more balls than a lot of the men in the program. (Hopper 2015)

Perhaps not surprisingly, in the explicitly feminist press, Daenerys’s image in particular has inspired a lot of debate and even confusion because of what is perceived as its extreme feminist qualities. There is often an acknowledgment of Daenerys’s power, as in an article in Feminspire, which remarks on how Dany is “an example of how a character and a person can be strong without being physically capable and a testament to the power that everyone has within them” (Payne and Henderson n.d.). Daenerys is presented visually as a very “femme” woman who is not particularly physically strong but embodies stereotypical notions of female beauty with her long blond hair and voluptuous figure. Some might say this tempers her power, but Feminspire finds a way in this passage to note that, in fact, this representation can be seen to expand notions of how female power is embodied.

Media often focus on other Game of Thrones characters as well, as they articulate the way feminism is referenced within Game of Thrones’ representations. Two of these characters, both warriors so often discussed in tandem, are Arya Stark and Brienne of Tarth. Arya is a young girl born to royalty who, after the criminalization and execution of her father in season 1, must live life on the run in an attempt to stay alive. Brienne, while a smaller character, takes up considerably more space on the small screen as “an androgynous, loyal, ridiculously tall” knight-like woman who fights on behalf of various protagonists throughout the series (as discussed in Hopper 2015). Like Daenerys, these women characters are often discussed in the popular press as women fighting extreme misogyny in feminist ways. Unlike Daenerys they embody a type of “female masculinity” (Halberstam 1998) in their muscular physiques and their demonstrable prowess as warriors. For example, WhatCulture, in an article entitled “5 Characters That Prove Game of Thrones is a Feminist Show,” argues that Arya “will push the boundaries of what is expected of young girls” (Meadows 2013), and Buzzfeed calls Brienne “a gender-bending, fierce knight who has to fight 10 times as hard as her male counterparts, which she welcomes” (Arthur 2013). Both of these pieces allude to the boundary-breaking feminist qualities of these characters.

Influenced by the calls for an intersectional and queer feminism, feminist media have remarked explicitly on the female masculinity of Arya and Brienne as further evidence of Game of Thrones’ feminism. Feminspire argues that “Arya is immediately set up as a character who rejects the social constructs of femininity and gender roles and is very much her own person, despite her young age.” They go on to discuss Brienne as “deep and complex,” stating that she “chose to be a knight, chose to defy the norms, and chose who[m] to ally herself with. She was not pushed into it, nor used, nor played with. Everything she does is her own choice, and it’s bizarrely rare to see a female character have such agency.” Blogger The Feminist Femline argues in a list of “10 R...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1 Considering the Limits of Extreme Misogyny: Game of Thrones as Feminist? (with Sarah Johnson-Palomaki)
• 2 Prudes, Sluts, and Sex: The Classing of Female Sexuality in the Era of Media-Ready Feminism
• 3 Balancing Work and Family: What “Choice” Conceals
• 4 Swipe Right for Consent: Hookup Culture, Tinder, and Structural Sexism
• 5 Wikipedia: Sign(s) Say Keep Out
• Conclusion: A World Beyond Media-Ready Feminism
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover