Note: I’m reviewing “Game of Thrones” from the perspective of someone who has read all of George R.R. Martin’s novels. This post discusses the events of the May 17 episode of “Game of Thrones” in detail.
All through Sansa Stark’s (Sophie Turner) wedding to Ramsay Snow (Iwan Rheon), I prayed that she — and we — might be spared. In the novels, Ramsay is marrying a girl who’s presented to him as Arya Stark (Maisie Williams). And though she’s a far more minor character in George R. R. Martin’s books, the smaller empathy we feel for her does nothing to lesson the horrors of her marriage bed, where Ramsay uses Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) as a kind of sexual surrogate before raping his new wife himself.
When it became clear that “Game of Thrones” was going to marry the real Sansa to Ramsay, I wrote that I wasn’t sure I could bear to watch this scene play out with a character we’d come to know so well; the heightened emotional pain might have simply been too much. As I watched tonight, I hoped Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane) would arrive first and launch his attack on Winterfell. Maybe we’d be spared the sight of a young woman’s suffering by the sight of grown men turning each other into meat. This is the terrible calculation that “Game of Thrones” has trained us to make. And, as has been the case so many other times, the math turned out against my small and flickering hopes.
But if this scene had to exist, the show’s version of it, written by Bryan Cogman, and shot sensitively and with intelligence by Jeremy Podeswa, managed to maintain a fine balance, employing a dignity and care for the experiences of victims that “Game of Thrones” has not always demonstrated. Sansa is raped on her wedding night, but “Game of Thrones” spares her the experience of being forced to have sexual contact with two men, instead of one. Other than a shot of Ramsay ripping Sansa’s dress open, we don’t see her body during the rape: just her face, and then Theon’s contracting in agony and fear and horrible sympathy. What Ramsay is doing to Sansa doesn’t matter in the slightest. What she and Theon–and yes, there are two victims, though of very different crimes, in this scene–feel about what’s happening is what’s important. The camera refuses to join in her victimization, forcing us to focus instead on the impact of Ramsay’s latest despicable predations.
And Sansa’s rape is a powerful, dreadful scene because it comes at an episode that is full of small kindnesses and emotional cruelties that cut deeper than knives or whips. It’s no mistake that this episode begins with Arya Stark tenderly washing a body in the House of Black and White, and doesn’t quiteend with the scene of Myranda (Charlotte Hope) washing Sansa’s hair with the same care, but with an added dose of malice. Arya is learning compassion towards the dead and dying at a moment when Sansa is learning to keep a part of herself protected and hidden. It’s the only way she won’t end up another body on another, far colder slab than the one her sister tends in Braavos.
The episode begins with unexpected revelations of goodness. “I wanted him to suffer. I hated him,” Arya tells Jaqen (Tom Wlaschiha) about the Hound (Rory McCann) as she finds herself on the losing end, once again, in the Game of Faces. “A girl lies to me,” Jaqen says, slapping her less for the falsehood than for her inability to conceal her affection for the dead man, which is obvious to him, if not to Arya herself. “To the many-faced god. To herself. Does she truly want to be no one?”
All through Sansa Stark’s (Sophie Turner) wedding to Ramsay Snow (Iwan Rheon), I prayed that she — and we — might be spared. In the novels, Ramsay is marrying a girl who’s presented to him as Arya Stark (Maisie Williams). And though she’s a far more minor character in George R. R. Martin’s books, the smaller empathy we feel for her does nothing to lesson the horrors of her marriage bed, where Ramsay uses Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen) as a kind of sexual surrogate before raping his new wife himself.
When it became clear that “Game of Thrones” was going to marry the real Sansa to Ramsay, I wrote that I wasn’t sure I could bear to watch this scene play out with a character we’d come to know so well; the heightened emotional pain might have simply been too much. As I watched tonight, I hoped Stannis Baratheon (Stephen Dillane) would arrive first and launch his attack on Winterfell. Maybe we’d be spared the sight of a young woman’s suffering by the sight of grown men turning each other into meat. This is the terrible calculation that “Game of Thrones” has trained us to make. And, as has been the case so many other times, the math turned out against my small and flickering hopes.
But if this scene had to exist, the show’s version of it, written by Bryan Cogman, and shot sensitively and with intelligence by Jeremy Podeswa, managed to maintain a fine balance, employing a dignity and care for the experiences of victims that “Game of Thrones” has not always demonstrated. Sansa is raped on her wedding night, but “Game of Thrones” spares her the experience of being forced to have sexual contact with two men, instead of one. Other than a shot of Ramsay ripping Sansa’s dress open, we don’t see her body during the rape: just her face, and then Theon’s contracting in agony and fear and horrible sympathy. What Ramsay is doing to Sansa doesn’t matter in the slightest. What she and Theon–and yes, there are two victims, though of very different crimes, in this scene–feel about what’s happening is what’s important. The camera refuses to join in her victimization, forcing us to focus instead on the impact of Ramsay’s latest despicable predations.
And Sansa’s rape is a powerful, dreadful scene because it comes at an episode that is full of small kindnesses and emotional cruelties that cut deeper than knives or whips. It’s no mistake that this episode begins with Arya Stark tenderly washing a body in the House of Black and White, and doesn’t quiteend with the scene of Myranda (Charlotte Hope) washing Sansa’s hair with the same care, but with an added dose of malice. Arya is learning compassion towards the dead and dying at a moment when Sansa is learning to keep a part of herself protected and hidden. It’s the only way she won’t end up another body on another, far colder slab than the one her sister tends in Braavos.
The episode begins with unexpected revelations of goodness. “I wanted him to suffer. I hated him,” Arya tells Jaqen (Tom Wlaschiha) about the Hound (Rory McCann) as she finds herself on the losing end, once again, in the Game of Faces. “A girl lies to me,” Jaqen says, slapping her less for the falsehood than for her inability to conceal her affection for the dead man, which is obvious to him, if not to Arya herself. “To the many-faced god. To herself. Does she truly want to be no one?”

终一无所有


