Essay On Game Of Thrones

Game of Thrones is a fantasy medieval television series based on the book A Song of Ice and Fire by George R.R. Martin. Similar to the books, the show has an overflow of gratuitous sex and violence especially when portraying women in positions of power. Heroes die, villains triumph, peasants and slaves suffer horribly but Martin does not shy away from the reality of starvation, rape, and murder that follow in the wake of war. The class stratification and brute injustice of the feudal society are thrown at you with every episode. “Game of Thrones: You win or you die” slogan is accurate to the tee. What does it mean to have power? In today’s society, power means influence. Influence means one’s ability to affect other people and create something valuable through your actions. Power is the opportunity to make positive changes for the greater good (“Power: How to Get It Use It and Keep It”). But power defined in Game of Thrones is the ability to control and the authority to command others. Power is the essential theme of the show and there are many degrees of power depicted such as political power, physical power, and sexual power. Characters go to extreme lengths to obtain or preserve their power through …show more content…
Laura Mulvey explains her theory in Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema. An example of the Male Gaze occurs when the camera lingers over a woman’s body displaying her as an erotic object for the viewers to feel pleasure in (Mulvey). It allows men to appear dominant and woman to appear passive. The Male Gaze strip women of their human identity, redefining their status as a commodity to be admired by men to fulfill their desires and fantasies. The inequality shown can be blamed by the patriarchal society that has existed since the beginning of time. Men created the idea of viewing women as objects and over time these constructed beliefs remained unchallenged allowing them to be accepted as the social norm