Controversy, Sexual Violence and the Critical Reception of Game of Thrones’ “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” (MA Thesis, 2016)

Briony Hannell

Examining the Anglo-American critical reception of “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” (S05E06), the highly controversial episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011-present) in which Ramsay Bolton rapes Sansa Stark, this thesis argues that the paratextual framing of the episode served as a space to think through questions about televisual representations, adaptation and authorship, and broader cultural tensions surrounding sexual violence in film and television. Charting three key themes within the episode’s critical reception, this thesis examines the strict and discursively constituted moral parameters within which visual representations of violence, and sexual violence in particular, may justifiably operate. Within the context of HBO’s Game of Thrones, these parameters are structured by HBO’s masculine brand identity and history of courting controversy. Further, given Game of Thrones’ position as an adaption of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, these parameters are also complicated by questions of adaptation, fidelity, and authorship. Additionally, the paratextual framing of the episode was marked by performative displays of moral disgust that were tied, firstly, to the discomfort associated with the visual and emotional proximity of representations of sexual violence on-screen, and, secondly, to mechanisms of whiteness, class, and respectability. This thesis subsequently demonstrates how television critics’ emphatic and performative expressions of moral disgust in response to the episode were central to the paratextual framing of “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” as one of Game of Thrones’ most contentious episodes to date. More broadly, this thesis builds upon a body of work from feminist cultural studies, adaptation studies, and audience and reception studies to reveal how critical reviews function as sites of ideological struggle that can provide insight into the dominant systems of value in operation regarding sexual violence.

Controversy, Sexual Violence and the Critical Reception of Game of Thrones’ “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” Briony Hannell, BA (Hons) 1st September 2016 This dissertation is submitted to the School of Politics, Social and International Studies, University of East Anglia, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Media and Cultural Politics. Photograph: Helen Sloan / HBO 1 TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................ 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................ 1 LITERATURE REVIEW AND CULTURAL CONTEXT ............................................... 6 Representing and Adapting Rape ...................................................................................... 6 Representing Rape ....................................................................................................................... 6 Adapting Rape ............................................................................................................................... 8 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY ................................................................................ 14 Reviewing Rape .............................................................................................................. 14 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ................................................................................ 20 Bowed, Bent, and Broken? .............................................................................................. 20 “Back up to the HBO fantasy series’ horrific standards”: Context, Gender and the Moral Limits of HBO’s Brand Identity .................................................................................................. 20 “Attention showrunners – you can do better”: Adaptation, Fidelity and Authorship ......... 27 “It was a terrible horrible thing to witness”: Modes of Engagement, Medium Specificity and (the Performativity of) Disgust ........................................................................................... 33 CONCLUSION ......................................................................................................... 39 BIBLIOGRAPHY ...................................................................................................... 42 0 ABSTRACT By examining the Anglo-American critical reception of “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” (S05E06), the highly controversial episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones (2011-present) in which Ramsay Bolton rapes Sansa Stark, this thesis argues that the paratextual framing of the episode served as a space to think through questions about televisual representations, adaptation and authorship, and broader cultural tensions surrounding sexual violence in film and television. Charting three key themes within the episode’s critical reception, this thesis examines the strict and discursively constituted moral parameters within which visual representations of violence, and sexual violence in particular, may justifiably operate. Within the context of HBO’s Game of Thrones, this thesis argues that these parameters are structured by HBO’s masculine brand identity and history of courting controversy. Further, given Game of Thrones’ position as an adaption of George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire novels, these parameters are also complicated by questions of adaptation, fidelity, and authorship. Additionally, it examines how the paratextual framing of the episode was marked by performative displays of moral disgust that were tied, firstly, to the discomfort associated with the visual and emotional proximity of representations of sexual violence on-screen, and, secondly, to mechanisms of whiteness, class, and respectability. This thesis subsequently demonstrates how television critics’ emphatic and performative expressions of moral disgust in response to the episode were central to the paratextual framing of “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken” as one of Game of Thrones’ most contentious episodes to date. More broadly, this chapter builds upon a body of work from feminist cultural studies, adaptation studies, and audience and reception studies to reveal how critical reviews function as sites of ideological struggle that can provide insight into the dominant systems of value in operation regarding sexual violence. INTRODUCTION HBO’s hit fantasy-drama Game of Thrones (2011 – ) has been described as HBO’s ‘most ambitious series to date’ (DeFino, 2014: 206), hailed as ‘one of the best shows 1 on television’ (Goodman, 2012), and is often credited with the increased popularity of the fantasy genre (Williams, 2012). Adapted from George R. R. Martin’s bestselling A Song of Ice and Fire novels, the epic fantasy-drama chronicles the complexity of the dynastic struggles between the noble families of Westeros and Essos, two mythical continents that recall medieval Europe and Asia. To date1, the programme has won over 26 Emmy Awards, including the Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Drama Series. In 2015, Game of Thrones aired its most-watched season to date, and set the new record for the most Emmy Award wins for a television programme in a single year2. However, despite the unprecedented success of Game of Thrones in 2015, the final scene from the sixth episode of the season, titled ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’ (S05E06), in which Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) brutally rapes Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), became the subject of widespread controversy, sparking debates about the politics of adapting, representing and watching sexual violence on screen. In the scene, which takes place on Ramsay and Sansa’s wedding night, the violent and sadistic Ramsay taunts Sansa and proceeds to force her to undress. Frustrated by the speed at which Sansa is reluctantly undressing, Ramsay approaches her and rips the lacing of her dress to expose her back3, pushes her forward onto their bed, and, as Sansa begins to cry, rapes her. The remainder of the scene focuses entirely on the bystander Theon Greyjoy (Alfie Allen), who has been tortured extensively by Ramsay. Theon attempts to leave the bed chamber, but Ramsay forces Theon to stay and watch Sansa “become a woman”. As the scene crescendos, the camera pans in on Theon’s 1 As of the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards, 2015. See <http://www.emmys.com/awards/nominees-winners/2015> for more information. 3 This marks the second occasion in the programme where Sansa has been stripped against her will. In ‘Garden of Bones’ (S02E04), King Joffrey commands a member of the Kingsguard to strip and beat Sansa before the royal court. 2 2 horrified expression, accompanied by the sound of Sansa’s discomfort as the episode fades to a close. In George R. R. Martin’s original novel, A Dance With Dragons (2011), the fifth instalment in the A Song of Ice and Fire series, a character named Jeyne Poole is disguised as Sansa Stark’s younger sister and wed to Ramsay to secure his claim to Winterfell, the Starks’ ancestral home. Originally, it was Jeyne, not Sansa, who was raped and brutalised by Ramsay. Jeyne Poole is not a point-of-view or major character in the novel, and her wedding to Ramsay forms part of Theon’s larger struggle to reclaim his identity after being tortured. Game of Thrones’ executive producers, D. B. Weiss and David Benioff, claimed that they decided to substitute Sansa for Jeyne to ‘give Sansa a dramatic storyline and to use Ramsay’s engagement for that very purpose’ (Hibberd, 2015a). Further, ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’ writer, Bryan Cogman, noted on the episode’s DVD commentary that ‘we decided […] it would be hugely dramatically satisfying to have Sansa back in her occupied childhood home and navigate this Gothic horror story she’s found herself in’ (Hibberd, 2016a). However, Sansa experiences extensive trauma throughout the narrative of both the novels and the television programme – including her father’s beheading, being stripped and beaten in front of the royal court, and being forced to wed Tyrion Lannister shortly after the Lannisters and Boltons murdered her brother and mother – and, for many fans and critics, the alteration of Sansa’s storyline in the fifth season, particularly within the context of the culmination of this trauma, had gone ‘too far’ (Vincent & Hawkes, 2015; Fowler, 2015; Ryan & Jackson, 2015). Thus, many viewers and critics were outraged by ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’ (Trolio, 2015; Rosenfield, 2015), and the episode soon emerged as ‘one of Game of Thrones' most contentious episodes to date’ (Vincent, 2015). The episode prompted 3 Scott Berkowitz, President and Founder of the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network (RAINN), to highlight that RAINN’s National Sexual Assault Hotline receives an influx of calls following the portrayal of sexual violence in popular programmes such as Game of Thrones (McNally, 2015). Moreover, popular geek entertainment websites, such as The Mary Sue, declared that they ‘will no longer be actively promoting the HBO series Game of Thrones’ due to ‘its depictions of sexual violence toward women’ (Pantozzi, 2015), and US Senator Claire McCaskill stated that she was ‘done’ with the programme after the ‘gratuitous’ and ‘disgusting’ scene (Cillizza, 2015). Blumson (2015) reported that the episode’s backlash even led Benioff and Weiss ‘to reconsider how the subject is portrayed’ in the adaptation’s forthcoming seasons. Notably, however, these reports were promptly rebuked, as Weiss emphasised that ‘I can literally say that not one word of the scripts this season have been changed in any way, shape or form by what people said on the Internet, or elsewhere’ (Hibberd, 2016b; my emphasis). The Business Insider speculated that this backlash caused Game of Thrones’ ratings to drop by almost 1 million viewers - the lowest rating since the programme’s third season - between the sixth and seventh episodes of the fifth season (Acuna & Renfro, 2015). Further, the episode polarised many critics, to such an extent that it received a rating of 58% on the critical review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 36% lower than the average rating for the critically acclaimed series and the lowest ever rating for a Game of Thrones episode. Therefore, in this research, I examine a sample of Anglo-American critical reviews of the episode to determine both how and why television critics widely considered the final scene of the episode, from what is ‘a notoriously violent’ (Ferreday, 2015: 83) programme produced by a television network that has a reputation for ‘courting 4 controversy’ (McCabe & Akass, 2007), to have gone ‘too far’. While many feminist researchers have conducted cogent and skilful textual analyses of sexual violence in film and television, few have focused on the reception and paratextual framing (Gray, 2010) of such texts. Critical reviews are extremely significant in this respect because, while they do not simply dictate public response, they do influence ideas of ‘what is worthy of being seen’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 28), mediating ‘between texts and audiences and specifying particular ways of appropriating and consuming texts’ (2001: 38). This ‘agenda-setting function’ (Allen & Gomery: 90) of critical reviews therefore has a number of political, cultural, and ideological implications concerning the reception of sexual violence, as ‘one of the most highly charged issues’ (Horeck, 2004: 11) in contemporary film and television. As critical reviews are ‘sites of ideological struggle’ (Warner, 2013: 235), they can provide insight into the ‘dominant systems of value in operation’ (ibid: 223) regarding sexual violence. This research therefore seeks to rectify this gap within existing scholarship concerning the reception of sexual violence in film and television. It also proposes a methodological intervention to critical reception research, which has hitherto lacked methodological clarity, through the use of Braun and Clarke’s (2006) qualitative method of thematic analysis. This research seeks to answer the following research questions: How do critics respond to sexual violence in this episode? What key themes can be identified in the critical reviews of the episode? What do these themes reveal about the politics and process of representing, adapting, and responding to sexual violence on screen? In doing so, it combines feminist media studies, cultural studies, adaptation studies, and audience and reception studies to examine how questions of gender, class, and race, adaptation and fidelity, and the politics of watching and responding to (sexual) violence mediated the critical reception of this episode. 5 LITERATURE REVIEW AND CULTURAL CONTEXT Representing and Adapting Rape Representing Rape Higgins and Silver (1991) argue that there are extremely complex intersections between rape and representation which reveal their inseparability from questions of subjectivity, authority, meaning, power and voice. According to Projansky (2001: 2), audio-visual representations of rape are part of the fabric of what rape is and how it is constituted within contemporary culture. The representation of rape is, in a Foucauldian sense, both productive and determinative, it is ‘functional, generative, formative, strategic, performative, and real’ (ibid.). Rape has been described as ‘a crime that dominates public fantasies regarding sexual and social difference’ (Horeck, 2004: 4), and representations of rape ‘contribute to the social positioning of women and men and shape the cognitive systems that make rape thinkable’ (Higgins & Silver, 1991: 3). Our ‘subjectivity and sense of ourselves as sexual beings are inextricably enmeshed in representations’ (ibid.), and representations are integral to ‘a sense of our own identity’ (Hall, 2003: 3). Heller-Nicholas (2009: 2) notes that ‘sexuality, gender, and power are integral to discourses about rape’. Representations of sexual violence have therefore emerged as an intrinsically rich site for feminist critical investigation. Central to the critical investigation of representations of rape is the feminist concept of ‘rape culture’ (Buchwald et al.,1993). The term ‘rape culture’ is used to describe a culture in which sexual violence against women is a normalised phenomenon, in which maledominated environments encourage and often depend on sexual violence against 6 women, and in which the ‘male gaze’ (Mulvey, 1975) and the sexual objectification of women contributes to a culture that accepts and normalises rape and sexual violence. The concept of rape culture stipulates that rape is one of many experiences of sexual violence that women face in their daily lives. As Ferreday (2015: 22) highlights, the very use of the term ‘rape culture’ indicates the need to understand rape as culture, as a ‘complex social phenomenon’, and as the product of the gendered, raced, and classed social relations and hierarchies central to patriarchal and heterosexist culture. Rape and sexual violence has always had a high profile in Western public life, with a rapt public following for famous trials, as well as controversial literary, filmic or televisual representations of sexual violence (Soothill & Walby, 1991; Greer, 2003; Horeck, 2004). Ferreday (2015: 22) identifies media as a key ‘site of struggle over sexual violence’, and the representation of rape remains one of ‘the most highly charged issues’ (Horeck, 2004: 11) in contemporary film and television. Rape has been described as ‘a more taboo and emotionally volatile crime to portray on-screen than murder’ (Mittell in Bennett, 2010). However, the pervasiveness of representations of rape ‘naturalises rape’s place in our everyday world’, not only as real physical events but also as a ‘part of our fantasies, fears, desires, and consumptive practices’ (Projansky, 2001: 3). According to Cuklanz (2000: 2), analysing the way television represents rape provides ‘important information about how television negotiates positions on difficult and prominent issues’, such as ‘the cultural fixation on the figure of the violated woman’ (Horeck, 2004: 8). Moreover, Horeck also encourages us to interrogate how narratives of rape position men and women in particular ways. Sexual violence is used within contemporary film and television as a particularly versatile narrative element that addresses a large number of themes and social issues ‘to produce and maintain social relations and hierarchies’ (Projansky, 2001: 3). While 7 the form of rape narratives in fiction vary according to culture and historical context, Projansky (ibid.: 95) argues that the sheer number of representations of sexual violence that have appeared in film and television since the 1970s can only be conceived of as part of a deeply entrenched definition of women as ‘sexually victimised’. Representations of sexual violence contribute to the discursive existence of rape in particularly powerful ways, and they are ‘located on a disconcerting threshold between discursive reality and fictional discourse’ (Larrson, 2016: 18). They are not only scripted – they script (Marcus, 1992). While these representations are often paradoxical, as they may challenge ‘rape myths’ (Jowett, 2010: 220), they also ultimately contribute to the proliferation of graphic depictions of violence against women within contemporary media culture. Moreover, a large number of films and television programmes that include rape as a narrative element often feature ‘gratuitous representations’ of rape which are ‘not even closely connected to the larger narrative’ (Projansky, 2001: 96). Projansky links this to a larger postfeminist ‘backlash’ (Faludi, 1992) against both feminism and women. Adapting Rape The representation of rape in adaptations of novels into film and television adds further complexity to the politics of representing sexual violence. The representation of sexual violence in adaptions has a number of cultural, political, and ideological implications that are important to consider within the context of Game of Thrones and its critical reception. Hutcheon and O’Flynn (2013: 38) describe the adaptation of novels into film as a transformation from ‘telling’ to ‘showing’. They distinguish between ‘telling’ and ‘showing’ as different modes of engagement, both of which are ‘imaginatively, 8 cognitively, and emotionally active’ in distinct ways (ibid.: 23). The telling mode of engagement, the novel, ‘immerses us through imagination in a fictional world’, while the showing mode, such as film and television, ‘immerses us through the perception of the aural and the visual’ (ibid.: 22). Filming ‘inevitably takes away the element of imaginative involvement which the novel reader feels’ (McFarlane, 1983: 1). Each mode of engagement, and the medium to which it corresponds, has its own ‘specificity’ (Hutcheon & O’Flynn, 2013: 24). Different modes of engagement act dissimilarly on our consciousness (Marcus, 1993: 17), as we ‘react differently towards different art forms due to a combination of medium characteristics and conventions’ (Gjelsvik, 2013: 247). As Shimpach (2011: 62-3) demonstrates, viewing, the showing mode, ‘includes hearing and certain phenomenological sensations and can imply embodiment, ideological positioning, subject (re)formation, or simply stimuli response’, while reading, the telling mode, ‘implies a different practice with different associations’. Further, as Gaut (2010) highlights, cinema and television can generate a more immediate and visceral response than can novels, which possess ‘clear textual boundaries’ (Sandvoss, 2011: 246), and different cinematic devices – such as editing, movement, and music – can be used to control the timing and evocation of emotions precisely. We do not just ‘see motion and we are not simply affected emotionally by its role within a plot; we feel it in our guts or throughout our bodies’ (Gunning, 2009: 261; original emphasis). Therefore, viewing, like representing, has been described as ‘a constitutive and productive practice’ (Shimpach, 2011: 63). The showing-viewing mode of engagement ‘offends through its inescapable materiality, its incarnated, fleshly, enacted characters, its real locales and palpable props, its carnality and visceral shocks to the nervous system’ (Stam, 2005: 6). 9 It is in this sense that the showing-viewing mode, like the photograph, has the capacity for violence, ‘because on each occasion it fills the sight by force, and because in it nothing can be refused or transformed’ (Barthes, 2001: 91). This capacity for violence, according to Gjelsvik (2016: 248), is compounded in the ‘phenomenological’ and ‘emotional difference’ between reading and watching controversial representations of violence and sexual violence. Through a variety of cinematic techniques, sexual violence on screen is often portrayed using ‘excessive visceral theatricality’ (HellerNicholas, 2009:1), and is in turn rendered ‘repetitive, forceful, physical, intimate and close’ (Gjelsvik, 2013: 253). Violence toward the human body, and in particular sexual violence, feels more ‘intimate’ (Gjelsvik, 2016: 70) when seen than read, and, as Vaage (2015: 428) notes, is highly likely to elicit stronger emotional reactions in the viewer. Furthermore, visual representations of rape have been described as attempting to ‘cross the divide between the represented and the real’ (Heller-Nicholas, 2009: 1), and sexual violence in the showing-viewing mode is subsequently positioned as ‘close, detailed, concrete and embodied’ (Gjelsvik, 2013: 253). Thus, the impression of representations of sexual violence in the showing-viewing mode is particularly strong because of ‘the relative distinctiveness’ (Rodowick, 2007: 39), specificity, and photorealism of the medium. Adapting rape and sexual violence from novels into film and television, and thus transitioning from telling-reading to showing-viewing, has, as Gjelsvik (2016) emphasises, a number of ideological implications. As Projansky (2001: 96) has argued, visual representations of rape in film and television contribute to ‘a sustained cultural assault on women’, regardless of ‘a text’s general ideological position’ (ibid.: 94), and they have a profound impact on both our culture and on consumers of popular culture. For instance, particularly graphic representations of rape, which are explicit in 10 both their visual and aural depiction of sexual violence against women, ‘can contribute to a postfeminist backlash against women and feminism if they heighten spectatorial anxiety’ (ibid.: 21). Graphic representations of rape have been described as ‘public media spectacle’ (Horeck, 2004: 5), and it is in this sense that they ‘call into question the activity of spectatorship’ (ibid.), particularly given that rape ‘has a function in the construction of the spectator’s sympathy’ (Vaage, 2015: 423). In an adapted television programme, ‘scenes of rape and sexual assault are more likely to be accepted by viewers and critics if they were part of the original text’ (Phillips, 2016: 177). The differences in the reception of violently or sexually explicit adaptations of novels into film and television are the result of what Gjelsvik (2013: 253-4) terms ‘contextualised medium specificity’. This is particularly important to consider in regards to the A Song of Ice and Fire novels and their HBO television adaptation Game of Thrones. The ‘sexual brutality’ (Itzkoff, 2014) of the novels and adaptation4 has been discussed within both the academy (Rosenberg, 2012; Frankel, 2014; Ferreday, 2015; Gjelsvik, 2016) and popular press (Saraiya, 2014; Itzkoff, 2014; Vincent, 2014; Orr, 2015; Rosenberg, 2015). However, the depiction of sexual violence in the novels is described as ‘fairly muted’, in that sexual violence ‘take[s] place offstage or [is] only hinted at in the books’ (Douthat, 2015), and is often ‘viewed through the lens of painful memory rather than happening in the present tense’ (Rosenberg, 2012: 16). Furthermore, while acts of sexual violence are indeed common within the novels, they are also reviled and rendered unforgivable within the narrative, and the manner in which ‘the men in charge treat these acts is an important part of the books’ (Frankel, 2014: 10). In the novels, ‘it’s sexual conduct that signifies monstrosity’ (Rosenberg, 4 See Orr (2015) for a succinct summary of the major incidences of sexual violence in the television adaptation’s first five seasons. 11 2012: 17), and rapists, if not executed, are often castrated or condemned to life imprisonment at The Wall. In the television programme, however, considerably ‘less time is spent on punishments, so it’s not as evident that rape is a terrible crime’ (Frankel, 2014: 10). Moreover, in the television adaptation, prior to the airing of ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’ in 2015, the attempted rape scenes in ‘The Old Gods and the New’ (S02E06)5 and ‘The First of His Name’ (S04E05), and the rape scenes in ‘Winter is Coming’ (S01E01) and ‘Breaker of Chains’ (S04E03), amongst others, prompted considerable backlash from viewers and critics (Saraiya, 2014; Hudson, 2015), particularly given that the scenes in ‘Winter is Coming’ and ‘Breaker of Chains’ were conceived of as consensual in the novels and as rape in the adaptation. As Gjelsvik (2016: 61) argues, the HBO television adaptation of, and lack of fidelity to, the novels foregrounds sexual violence in a way the novels do not, and one may anticipate that this contextualised medium specificity structures the reception of the adaptation accordingly. Thus, within the contextualised specificity of Game of Thrones, the issues of sexual violence, adaptation and fidelity, and ‘medium specificity’ undoubtedly present a number of ideological implications which may mediate the reception of ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’. As Phillips (2016: 177) argues, Game of Thrones, in its addition and adaptation of sexual violence, fails ‘in providing narrative resonance and in staying true to the source material’. Further, the television adaptation ‘not only changes the story, it also changes our modes of engagement’ (Gjelsvik, 2016: 70). By adapting, adding and showing scenes such as Ramsay raping Sansa to the programme, HBO 5 Notably, Sansa Stark is almost raped in this scene during a peasant rebellion in King’s Landing. 12 made changes that ‘have ideological implications’ (ibid.: 71). Furthermore, as we engage with film and television differently than we do with novels – in a sensorial and embodied way – the perception of sex and violence in Game of Thrones ‘comes across as stronger than in the novels’ (Larrson, 2016: 18). The television adaptation, in adapting the imagined horrors of the novels into watchable quality entertainment, has subsequently been described as ‘alter[ing] gendered power relations within the fictional universe’ (Gjelsvik, 2016: 71). Therefore, the addition and adaptation of sexual violence from novel to quality television, such as Game of Thrones, is consequential ‘not only for our televisual culture, but our culture in general’ (Phillips, 2016: 176). 13 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY Reviewing Rape Critics perform an important role in pre-shaping audience reception (Barker, 2004), and the ‘intertextual relay’ (Neale, 1990: 49) of critical reviews circulates and discursively defines a text. Klinger (1994: 69) conceives of critical reviews as ‘types of social discourse’ which can aid the researcher in ‘ascertaining the material conditions’ informing the relation between the text and the spectator at given moments. Popular critics offer a frame of reception to the public, providing a set of judgements that work as a powerful normative force to establish the significant features of a text, and ‘build a body of opinion which defines the medium’ (Wickham, 2007: 83). While critical reviews arguably do not simply dictate public responses, their value lies in their mobilisation of terms that attempt to define how a media text will be perceived within the culture at large. Critical reviews offer insight into how audiences are encouraged to understand and address texts. Central to this is agenda-setting theory, which asserts that the media may not tell people what to think, but it can tell them what to think about (Cohen, 1963). Indeed, Allen and Gomery (1985: 90) argue that popular criticism serves an ‘agenda-setting function’ which establishes the terms of discussion and debate surrounding media texts. Kitzinger (2004: 50) argues that this agendasetting function can be extremely powerful ‘when it breaks new ground and allows people to address previously taboo subjects’ - such as sexual violence. It is in this sense that critical reviews are ‘sites of ideological struggle’, which provide audiences with various subject positions from which to understand the text (Warner, 2013: 235). They constitute ‘framing discourses, through the lens of which groups of viewers make sense and build interpretations’ of texts (Barker, 2011: 115). Thus, it is important to 14 conceive of the critical reviews of ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’ as a significant source for ‘social scientific analysis’ (Bryman, 2012: 552). Critical reception studies are a popular form of research within media studies and audience and reception research (Klinger, 1994; Staiger, 2000; Mathijs, 2003; Bode, 2010; Warner, 2013; Projansky, 2014; Woods, 2015). While critical reception research offers highly nuanced and detailed accounts of ‘a text’s reception’, providing ‘insight into the cultural context in which [texts] are evaluated, and the dominant systems of value in operation at the time’ (Warner, 2013: 223), such research often fails to spell out its theoretical assumptions, or clarify how the research and analysis was undertaken beyond selecting and refining the sample of critical reviews. Critical reception research, therefore, lacks methodological clarity. Moreover, while it is indebted to methodological traditions such as discourse analysis, critical reception research distinctly does not name itself as such. The absence of clear and concise accounts detailing the process of conducting critical reception research may unfortunately lend credence to the ‘anything goes’ (Antaki et al., 2002) critique of qualitative research. In order to overcome these limitations, I used Braun and Clarke’s (2006) qualitative method of ‘thematic analysis’ 6, ‘a common approach to analysing documents’ (Bryman, 2008: 530), due to its resemblance to those used, yet left unnamed, within critical reception studies. Braun and Clarke (2006) compare this methodology to methods such as narrative analysis, discourse analysis and grounded theory. They present the method not as an alternative approach to qualitative data analysis, but rather ‘as a strategy for combining other approaches’ (Flick, 2014: 421; original emphasis). It is thus well suited to conducting critical 6 While Braun and Clarke (2006) present thematic analysis as a method for psychological research, Flick (2014: 423) suggests that it is rather a ‘basic method in qualitative data analysis’. 15 reception research, which owes much to a variety of research methods, approaches and frameworks. ‘Thematising meanings’ (Holloway & Todres, 2003: 247) has been identified as one of several generic skills across a variety of qualitative methods of data analysis (Boyatzis, 1998), and Ryan and Bernard (2000) locate thematic coding as a process performed within many major analytic traditions. Furthermore, analysis of texts, such as critical reviews, usually entails ‘searching for particular themes in the sources that are examined’ (Bryman, 2008: 523). While content analysis is often used to analyse such materials, including their online variants, Bryman (2012: 553) argues that the employment of a more qualitative and inductive analysis, such as thematic analysis, ‘allows a greater sensitivity to the nature and content of specific themes’. Braun and Clarke (2006: 79) conceptualise thematic analysis as ‘a method for identifying, analysing and reporting patterns (themes) within data’. They highlight that a ‘theme’ captures something important about the data in relation to the overall research question and represents some level of ‘patterned response or meaning within the data set’ (ibid.: 82). Thus, in my research, I sought to identify ‘related patterns of meaning’ (ibid.: 86) across my sample in relation to the focus of my research questions: sexual violence. Indeed, all critical reception studies involve ‘data analysis inductively building from particulars to general themes, and the researcher making interpretations of the meaning of the data’ (Creswell, 2014: 4). As my research was conducted within a constructivist framework, it sought to examine the underlying ideas, assumptions, conceptualisations, and ideologies shaping and informing the content of the sample. It is in this sense that thematic analysis overlaps with some forms of discourse analysis (Singer & Hunter, 1999; Taylor & Ussher, 2001), where broader 16 assumptions, structures, and meanings are theorised as underpinning that which is articulated within the sample of data. To select my sample of critical reviews, I – like Bode (2010) – used the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes. Rotten Tomatoes listed thirty-one critical reviews of ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’, which formed the population of my research. While this sampling method may not be representative, the review aggregator website provided a convenient means of selecting a sample of reviews. My analysis of the reviews was guided by a feminist agenda, as reflected in the works featured in my literature review. My process of analysis ultimately involved both deductive and inductive coding, as my literature review informed the manner in which I approached the sample of reviews. Tuckett (2005) argues that this can be beneficial for a researcher, as my engagement with the literature has the potential to enhance my analysis by sensitising me to more subtle features of the data within my sample of critical reviews. To analyse the reviews, I followed Braun and Clarke’s (2006: 87-93) step-by-step guide to conducting thematic analysis. This involved repeated reading of the sample as I searched for meanings and patterned talk within the critical reviews. When I was coding the data, I focused on elements of the dataset that involved the discussion of sexual violence within the episode and programme more broadly. As I manually coded the sample of reviews, when I read and re-read the sample to familiarise myself with the reviews, I added annotations and notes to the reviews with each re-read to indicate potential patterns within the data. When I had completed this process for each of the reviews in my sample, I looked at the patterns I had identified across the data and began to look for initial themes to identify. Repeated and significant patterns 17 throughout the sample formed the themes, and my identification, analysis and discussion of these themes was guided by several research questions: 1) How do critics respond to sexual violence in this episode? 2) What key themes can be identified in the critical reviews of the episode? 3) What do these themes reveal about the politics and process of representing, adapting, and responding to sexual violence on screen? Thematic analysis proved to be an accessible method which provided me with a relatively clear and concise way to approach the methodological incoherence within critical reception research. Further, it enabled me to extract information from the data relevant to my research questions. However, I found several elements of the data analysis challenging. One challenging aspect of my data interpretation and analysis was the relation between ‘explicit content’ and ‘implicit meaning’ (Flick, 2014: 360). As Staiger (2005: 2) has noted, ‘to study meaning-making, scholars have to interpret’. What is ‘said’ in a text always rests upon ‘unsaid’ assumptions, so ‘part of the analysis of texts is trying to identify what is assumed’ (Fairclough, 2003: 11). This aspect of my data analysis unfortunately lends credence to the criticisms that have been loaded against quantitative research as being ‘too impressionistic and subjective’ (Bryman, 2008: 391), relying too much on the researcher’s ‘unsystematic’ (Alexander, 2008: 468) views about what is significant and important within the data. This is particularly important in regards to the external validity of my research. However, as Bryman (2008) highlights, while qualitative data analysis often has low external validity, it has extremely high internal validity - which is one of its greatest strengths (LeCompte & Goetz, 1982). Moreover, ‘there is no such thing as an objective 18 analysis of a text’ (Fairclough, 2003: 14; my emphasis). All qualitative analysis is inevitably selective: ‘in any analysis, we choose to ask certain questions about social events and texts, and not other possible questions’ (ibid.). Thus, it is important that I am as clear and transparent as possible about my approach to the research, as a feminist researcher, my theoretical framework, and the assumptions and questions informing my analysis. It is for this reason that ‘reflexivity in engaging the object of study must occur’ (Staiger, 2005: 14) throughout my interpretation and analysis. 19 FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION Bowed, Bent, and Broken? “Back up to the HBO fantasy series’ horrific standards”: Context, Gender and the Moral Limits of HBO’s Brand Identity According to Gjelsvik and Schubart (2016: 4), ‘the controversies surrounding Game of Thrones, as well as its success, are, to a large degree, the result of HBO’s position in popular media culture’. The network has emerged as an increasingly ‘important player in the development of critically acclaimed quality television series since the 1970s’ (ibid.: 4), producing influential series including The Sopranos (1991 – 2007), The Wire (2002 – 2008), and, most recently, Game of Thrones (2011 – ) – which Benioff termed ‘The Sopranos in Middle-Earth’ (Owen, 2011). HBO has established a reputation for breaking ‘the rules in terms of language, content and representation’ (McCabe & Akass, 2008b: 89), particularly through ‘celebrating authorial freedom7 and managing controversy’ as a tool to distinguish HBO’s original programming ‘from other network dramas’ (ibid.: 87). McCabe and Akass (2007: 63) highlight that ‘courting controversy has been institutionalised by HBO, embedded in and through its original programming, as a distinctive feature of its cultural cachet, its quality brand label and (until recently) its leading market position’. In a medium that is often characterised as being overwhelmingly ‘feminine’ in its orientation (Joyrich, 1996: 9), HBO has ‘carefully carved out a niche for itself that is strongly masculine in its programming appeals (Edgerton & Jones, 2008: 322; my However, as established in ‘Adaptation, Fidelity and Authorship’ (pp. 27 – 31), the critical reception of the episode was characterised by a lack of support and enthusiasm for the authorial creative freedom exercised by Benioff and Weiss. 7 20 emphasis). The network’s stylised use of profanity, nudity, and graphic violence as ‘brand differentiation’ (ibid.: 325) has secured its ‘masculine prestige channel identity’ (Woods, 2015: 37), and the network’s ‘male identification strategies are easily recognisable across many of its most popular genres’ (Edgerton & Jones, 2008: 322). Most central to the ‘masculine tone of HBO programming’ (Woods, 2015: 40) is its ‘brutal violence and misogyny’ (DeFino, 2014: 114), which has been described as ‘crucial to its unique brand identity in the marketplace’ (Tait, 2008: 55). Subsequently, HBO has received substantial criticism for its dependency on ‘sexualised violence towards women’ (Framke, 2016) and ‘the portrayal of women in its shows, in particular when it comes to nudity, sex scenes, and prostitution’ (Gjelsvik & Schubart, 2016: 4), leading McCabe and Akass (2008a: 304) to polemically question ‘what has HBO ever done for women?’. Thus, as VanDerWerff (2015) noted, in his review of ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’ for Vox, ‘it’s impossible to watch the scene in isolation’, and it is therefore impossible to examine the critical reception of the episode without taking HBO’s legacy and Game of Thrones’ history of brutal violence and misogyny into account. Accordingly, many of the reviews across the sample situated their response to the episode within a broader debate about Game of Thrones’ ‘mixed record when it comes to sexual violence’ (Egner, 2015) and misogyny. ‘Raping the female characters is sadly becoming a go-to shock moment for Game of Thrones’, wrote Lyles (2015) in his review of the episode, and, as Hill (2015) observed, ‘this isn’t the first time that Game of Thrones has gone to the rape well and it won’t be the last’. Bowman (2015) commented that Sansa’s rape ‘feels bottomlessly awful, in the same way the Red Wedding showed us a pregnant woman being stabbed to death’, which located Sansa’s rape as yet another ‘reminder of just how brutal and visceral’ (Marnell, 2015) 21 the programme can be. Accordingly, Collins (2015), Surette (2015), and Carp (2015) noted the parallels between the ‘horrific sequence’ and ‘Daenerys’ on her first night with Khal Drogo’ in the first season. The most widely cited scene referenced in the sample of reviews, however, was from ‘Breaker of Chains’ (S04E03), where Jaime Lannister raped his sister Cersei8 (Fowler, 2015; Sullivan in Kornhaber, Orr & Sullivan, 2015; Jackson in Ryan & Jackson, 2015). While the reading of this earlier scene as rape was originally, and controversially, disputed by its director Alex Graves, who commented that the scene ‘becomes consensual by the end’ (Marcotte, 2014), Fowler (2015; original emphasis), who referenced this dispute over interpretations in his review of the episode, asserted that ‘this week’s scene however was deliberate,’ adding that it also ‘came after two seasons of Sansa, basically, just always barely escaping something awful’9. Thus, it is within this context that Lyles (2015) lamented that ‘the show keeps finding frustrating and disturbing ways to demean its female characters’, and Bennion (2015) remarked that ‘personally, I’d really like Game of Thrones to be a good 30-40 per cent less weird about women’. The programme was thus described as being ‘[un]equipped to handle’ the repercussions of sexual violence ‘on anything deeper than a story level’ (Adams, 2015), and Yeoman (2015) claimed that Sansa’s rape in ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’ signifies ‘a return to a troublesome trope that the series has had difficulty communicating the repercussions of in the past’. Consequently, VanDerWerff (2015) described the prevalence of sexual violence in the programme as ‘a problem endemic to the show, and one that may eventually tear it down’, demonstrating how ‘taboo and 8 9 See page 12. See page 2-3. 22 emotionally volatile’ (Mittell in Bennett, 2010) the act of representing sexual violence in film and television can be. The ‘brutal and unwarranted’ (Greenwald, 2015) scene in the episode was thus described as ‘one of the bleakest moments of the entire show so far’ (Runcie, 2015), and as ‘back up to the HBO fantasy series’ horrific standards’ (Carp, 2015). Here, the deliberate alignment of the ‘series’ horrific standards’ with HBO is particularly telling, as it encourages the reader to contemplate the episode within its ‘prestige’ context. Furthermore, in their reviews of the episode, Greenwald (2015) and Hill (2015) also located their discussion of gender politics and sexual violence within the programme within the context of the generic conventions of ‘prestige television’ which, as established, HBO has arguably been at the forefront of developing: 'If you watch enough prestige television, you come to realize that the most traumatic thing that could possibly happen to a man is having to suffer the pain of a woman he knows getting raped. It’s not, actually, the most traumatic thing to happen to a woman, likely because it happens all the fucking time, but for a man there’s really no greater indignity. To exist as a woman on a cable drama is to understand that at some point you’re probably going to be raped by someone you know or in the presence of someone you know or as a punishment to someone you know, but it’s okay because in the end, it just gives you something to overcome and everyone knows that having something to overcome is the only way to prove that you are a strong woman.’ (Hill, 2015) Here, the pervasiveness of sexual violence in Game of Thrones is deliberately aligned in Hill’s sardonic commentary both with the gendered politics of representing sexual 23 violence in ‘cable drama’, and with the view that ‘so-called masculine genres’ (Jowett, 2010: 219), as epitomised by HBO, ‘exclude women or else represent men’s importance as far exceeding that of women’ (MacKinnon, 2003: 68). Hill’s response to the episode is reflective of Projansky’s (2001: 120) assertion that film and television often use ‘representations of women’s rapes to tell stories about men’, and resonates with Horeck’s (2004) argument that it is important to interrogate how representations of rape position men and women in particular ways. Further, Hill’s knowing allusion to debates about the prevalence of postfeminist ‘strong female characters’ (Genz & Brabon, 2009: 160), and the frequency at which rape narratives are used to transform ‘a woman into an active, independent agent’ (Projansky, 2001: 99) – as ‘the only way to prove that you are a strong woman’ (Hill, 2015) – speaks to the wider gender anxieties outside the generic confines of ‘prestige’ television with which the critical reception of the episode knowingly engages. Therefore, as Jackson (in Ryan & Jackson, 2015) highlighted, ‘the trust’ in Game of Thrones ‘is pretty low when it comes to a scene like this’, and the programme was subsequently described as ‘long past the point of earning gold stars simply by showing us the worst possible thing’ (Greenwald, 2015). Despite Game of Thrones’ reputation as a HBO production ‘jam-packed with titillation, female flesh and salty banter’, Bennion (2015) notes that ‘I must confess, I found this scene […] enormously unsettling’. What importantly emerges from Bennion’s and Greenwald’s responses to the scene is the delineation of which controversial moments – ‘the worst possible thing’ – can be accounted for by HBO’s masculine brand identity and the generic conventions of contemporary quality television, and which controversial moments ultimately cannot. A number of the reviews across the sample negotiated the moral boundary, or ‘fine line’ (Greenwald, 2015), between the use of brutal violence and brutal sexual violence 24 in Game of Thrones, and the final scene of the episode was frequently discussed in terms of having gone ‘too far’ (Fowler, 2015; Ryan & Jackson, 2015). This important distinction is reflective of Vaage’s (2015: 421) argument that, while contemporary television ‘challenge[s] us as spectators morally in many ways’, sexual violence ‘marks one moral limit we seem unwilling to cross’, despite the conventions of HBO’s ‘prestige’ identity and the network’s stylised use of profanity, nudity, and graphic violence. As Fowler (2015) commented, ‘it’s strange mentioning the phrase “too far” with regards to a show filled with trauma like Game of Thrones, but crimes of a sexual nature are viewed, absorbed, and processed differently’10, and are subsequently, as demonstrated across the sample of reviews, afforded distinct ideological and moral interpretations and responses accordingly. Thus, the sample of critical reviews ultimately established strict moral parameters within which HBO’s masculine ‘prestige’ identity and reputation for courting controversy can justifiably operate, confirming Horeck’s (2004: 11) observation that rape ‘continues to be one of the most highly charged issues’ in contemporary film and television, particularly in regards to its precarious position in relation to questions of sexuality, gender politics, and power. Moreover, the critical reception of the episode suggests that, contrary to Projansky’s (2001: 96) argument that, regardless of a text’s ideological position, its representation of rape contributes to ‘a sustained cultural assault on women’, the ideological position of Game of Thrones emerged as central to television critics’ perception of the programme as disproportionately and overwhelmingly contributing to ‘a sustained cultural assault on women’. Therefore, the critical reception of the episode implies that HBO’s justifying of controversial moments ‘as quality to 10 See pp. 34 – 39. 25 make it acceptable’ (McCabe & Akass, 2008b: 87) has its moral and ideological limits, especially in relation to the prevalence of sexual violence and misogyny in a programme overall. As Bowman (2015) poignantly asks his readers: ‘if every beloved character ends up tortured, mutilated, murdered or raped, does it still qualify as “entertainment”?’. 26 “Attention showrunners – you can do better”: Adaptation, Fidelity and Authorship As Cartmell and Wheelehan (2010: 20-1) highlight, discourses surrounding adaptation and fidelity dominate ‘popular reviews and fan sites alike’, and the question of fidelity remains ‘at the center of the adaptive problem’ (Jenkins, 1997: 6) due to the dominance of ‘the primacy of the novel’ (McFarlane, 1983: 1). Moreover, critics are characterised as concerned not only with fidelity, in the sense of ‘attention to detail and inclusiveness’ (Cartmell & Wheelehan, 2010: 73), but also with additions to the source material. Accordingly, concerns about adaptation and fidelity animated many of the critical reviews across the sample, as critics expressed their concern that Benioff’s and Weiss’ HBO adaptation of Martin’s original A Song of Ice and Fire (1996 – ) novels has departed too radically from the novels in its alteration of and addition to the source material. For instance, Broadwater (2015) commented that ‘what is concerning to me is how far the plot is diverging from the books’, and Lyles (2015) remarked that it’s ‘maddening when the events steered so off from the books’. Moreover, my examination of the sample of critical reviews revealed that concerns about adaptation and fidelity emerged most strongly across the reviews in relation to the addition of sexual violence enacted against major female characters in the television adaptation, as critics such as Cirpriani (2015; my emphasis) questioned ‘why the series has chosen to add yet another rape of a major character into the show that does not exist in the books’. Likewise, Adams (2015) discussed his response to the episode within the context of earlier controversies regarding sexual violence within the programme, commenting that ‘I’d like to think the people who make the show have learned from past mistakes with Daenerys and Cersei, but I could just be lying to myself’. Cipriani (2015; my emphasis) added that ‘when it was revealed that Sansa 27 would be taking the place of a character named Jeyne Poole, […] I thought for sure they weren’t going to let what happens to Jeyne happen to Sansa. And yet.’. Here, it is also important to consider the extent to which whiteness11, class, and respectability are implicated in Cipriani’s (2015) positioning of Sansa’s rape in the programme as worse than Jeyne’s in the novel, as Jeyne is the orphaned daughter of a steward, while Sansa was born into one of the most prominent noble houses in Westeros. As Phipps (2009: 674) argues, ‘a perceived lack of femininity and chastity makes working-class women less credible as rape victims’ – a distinction that is reinforced in Cipriani’s positioning of Sansa’s rape in the television adaptation as arbitrarily worse than Jeyne’s in the novels. Sansa’s rape, wrote Collins (2015; my emphasis), was ‘of the show’s own devising, and it feels every bit the violation it is’, and ‘the show’ was subsequently described as having ‘betrayed Sansa’ (Cipriani, 2015) through its lack of fidelity to the novels. It is this regard that the critical reception of the episode established a hierarchical opposition between the television programme and the novels, indeed maintaining ‘the primacy of the novel’ (McFarlane, 1983: 1). Moreover, the maintenance of this hierarchical opposition throughout the critical reception of the episode speaks to Gjelsvik’s (2016: 61) observation that the adaptation ‘foregrounds sexual violence in a way the novels do not’, and demonstrates how the contextualised medium specificity of the programme, as anticipated, mediated the reception of the episode. While critics such as Broadwater (2015) notably acknowledged the morally transgressive nature of many of the events in the novels – ‘as if George R. R. Martin’s books aren’t cruel enough’ – they also emphasised in turn that Game of Thrones 11 See page 35-6. 28 ‘makes violent scenes even darker than George R. R. Martin’s books’ (Hibberd, 2015b). Broadwater and Hibberd position the addition of (sexual) violence to the adaption as a much greater transgression than the original content of the source material. While HBO’s brand identity12, modes of engagement13 and contextualised medium specificity are undoubtedly implicated in Broadwater’s and Hibberd’s comments about violence, what is particularly interesting throughout the sample of reviews more broadly is the clear association and attribution of this process of making ‘violent scenes even darker’ to the programme’s producers. Moreover, it is also important to consider the means by which this association is used across the sample to reinforce the hierarchical opposition between the programme and the novels, in addition to the aforementioned moral limits of HBO’s brand identity. Therefore, as an extension of the concerns expressed throughout the sample of reviews about adaptation, fidelity, and sexual violence, many of the critics subsequently turned their attention directly toward the adapters – producers Benioff and Weiss – of A Song of Ice and Fire into Game of Thrones. The promotion of authorship and auteurship has been described by Steiner (2015: 190) as an extremely ‘important element in HBO’s marketing strategy – particularly within the realm of the Game of Thrones universe’. Indeed, HBO’s brand identity ‘sees an idea of authorship emerge as about someone with vision enough to take risks and not afraid to buck convention’ (McCabe & Akass, 2008b: 87). Game of Thrones has undeniably established a reputation for breaking with convention and challenging viewer expectations, catalysed by the ‘shocking’ (Hughes, 2011) and ‘foundation-shaking’ (Sepinwall, 2011) sudden death of the noble and sympathetic protagonist Eddard 12 13 See pp. 20 – 26. See pp. 34 – 39. 29 Stark (Sean Bean) at the end of its first season – a moment described as having ‘changed TV’ (VanDerWerff, 2016). Steiner (2015: 182) therefore argues that ‘the construction of authorship as an indicator of quality’ has played a ‘crucial role in the success’ of Game of Thrones. However, my examination of the sample of critical reviews revealed that the critical reception of the episode was characterised by an overwhelming lack of support and enthusiasm for the authorship of the programme. The creative freedom exercised by Benioff and Weiss was conceived of throughout many of the reviews as damaging the ‘sanctity of the novels’ (Hill, 2015), and HBO’s enthusiasm for ‘authorial vision’ and creative freedom (McCabe & Akass, 2008b: 87) in its programming was ultimately not matched in the critical reception of the episode. For instance, Sullivan (in Kornhaber, Orr & Sullivan, 2015) emphasised that ‘the showrunners can be very clumsy in their handling of sexual violence’, and Greenwald (2015) said that, while he appreciates ‘Benioff and Weiss’s willingness to do unpopular things’, in reference to HBO’s and Game of Thrones’ reputation for breaking with convention and challenging viewer expectations, ‘there’s nothing essentially brave about violence, no intrinsic depth to pain’. Likewise, Carp (2015) commented that ‘Game of Thrones never shies away from telling the difficult story and, you can argue that this is the logical outcome of putting these characters into this situation, but the writers didn’t have to create the situation in the first place’. Lyles (2015) asserted that ‘attention showrunners – there’s other ways to get viewers buzzing’, and added that ‘let’s burn the rape section of the show plot lines grab bag’, as the ‘showrunners’ can ultimately ‘do better’. Thus, questions of authorship, ideology, and adaptation and fidelity emerged as one of the central features of the controversy surrounding sexual violence within the critical reception of the episode and the programme more broadly. Critics condemned Benioff 30 and Weiss for ‘their choice – their need, it seems, to continually alter Martin’s story to include more rape’ (Cipriani, 2015; my emphasis) and ‘even more messed-upness’ (Broadwater, 2015), casting the producers’ motivations, and creative and authorial capabilities in a suspect light, and revealing, as Hutcheon and O’Flynn (2013: 92) observe, how adapters ‘not only interpret that work but in doing so they also take a position on it’. This is particularly pertinent, as the literature review and critical reception demonstrates, in regards to the politics of adapting and representing sexual violence. The deliberate positioning of Game of Thrones as an adaptation of ‘Martin’s story’ (Cipriani, 2015) throughout the reviews upholds the sanctity of the novel as a point of evaluative comparison, and reinforces the hierarchical opposition between the novel and the programme – and their respective authors accordingly. ‘I continue to be astonished that showrunners Benioff and Weiss still apparently believe that their tendency to ramp up to sex, violence, and – especially – sexual violence of George R. R. Martin’s source material is a strength rather than defining weakness of their adaptation.’ (Orr in Kornhaber, Orr & Sullivan, 2015; my emphasis) Orr’s astonishment in response to the episode reflects this consensus, as he positions the prevalence of violence and ‘especially sexual violence’ (my emphasis) as the ‘defining weakness of their adaptation’ of ‘George R. R. Martin’s source material’, revealing how central the prevalence of violence, and sexual violence in particular, is to the parameters within which HBO’s prestige brand identity may justifiably and morally operate within the reception of a text. These moral parameters are further complicated within the context of adaptation and fidelity, as the sanctity of Martin’s novels emerges as a standard against which the prevalence and depiction of ‘sex, violence, and – especially – sexual violence’ in the adaptation is tested throughout the 31 critical reception. Further, Orr’s use of the phrase ‘still apparently believe […]’ speaks to the programme’s and network’s legacy of courting controversy, and suggests that the process and politics of adaptation and authorship also complicates HBO’s method of courting controversy. Moreover, Orr’s (in Kornhaber, Orr & Sullivan, 2015) request, in the ‘short version’ of his review of the episode, to ‘stay classy, Benioff and Weiss’, and his allusion to taste and class – or rather a lack thereof – in reference to their authorship, reveals the cultural distinctions and taste formations at play in the classification of the ‘disgusting’ (Lyles, 2015) episode and its authors throughout its critical reception. As Bourdieu (1984: 28) highlights, critics often influence ideas of ‘what is worthy of being seen’ and ‘the right way to see it’. Critical reviews ‘are products of specific taste formations, and also function specifically as gate-keepers or guardians of specific taste formations, mediating between texts and audiences and specifying particular ways of appropriating and consuming texts’ (Jancovich, 2001: 38). Orr’s remarks demonstrate how such taste formations are arguably amplified in relation to adaptation and authorship, the sanctity and primacy of the novel, and the corporeal and ‘embodied’ (Gjelsvik, 2013: 253) horrors of watching representations of sexual violence. 32 “It was a terrible horrible thing to witness”: Modes of Engagement, Medium Specificity and (the Performativity of) Disgust The final scene of ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’ was emphatically described throughout its critical reception as ‘an incredibly disturbing scene to watch’ (Marnell, 2015; my emphasis), and as ‘a terrible horrible thing to witness’ (Surette, 2015; my emphasis). The ‘excessive visceral theatricality’ (Heller-Nicholas, 2009: 1) of portraying sexual violence in the showing-viewing mode of engagement thus emerged as a significant source of discomfort and disgust throughout the critical reception of the episode. ‘Did they really need to go there on Game of Thrones? Did we really need to see Ramsay Bolton rape Sansa Stark? No, we absolutely did not’ (Robinson, 2016; my emphasis) Like Robinson (ibid.) above, who said that ‘we absolutely did not’ need ‘to see Ramsay Bolton rape Sansa Stark’, a number of the critics across the sample discussed the audio and visual components of the ‘visceral’ (Marnell, 2015) scene in terms of excess, being ‘more than enough’ (Hibberd, 2015b), and having gone ‘too far’ (Vincent & Hawkes, 2015; Fowler, 2015; Ryan & Jackson, 2015). Hibberd (2015; my emphasis), for instance, commented that ‘we see Theon tearfully watching. We hear Sansa crying. And that’s enough (if not more than enough)’, and Jackson (in Ryan & Jackson, 2015) said that ‘it’s the combination of sex and violence in a rape scene that makes me not want to watch’. This led Greenwald (2015), in his review of the episode, to remark upon the complexities of spectatorship and engaging in this mode of engagement, commenting that there are ‘moments when Game of Thrones steps outside of itself and nudges you about how, precisely, you should be watching it’. 33 Yet, despite Greenwald’s remark, Hill (2015; my emphasis) commented that ‘I’m upset at being forced to watch that scene’, which reflects Barthes (2001: 91) observations about the intrinsic capacity for violence in the image, as it ‘fills the sight by force, and because in it nothing can be refused or transformed’. The impact of violence in this mode of engagement was likewise reflected in the denial and disbelief expressed by Carp (2015), Egner (2015), and Hibberd (2015b) in their reviews of the episode. Carp said that ‘I keep telling myself that the episode ended, not the scene, and maybe Sansa manages to save herself (and Reek) from the sadist’, and Egner commented that ‘it almost seemed like maybe things wouldn’t be as bad as we thought…but no. They were’. Hibberd (ibid.) also highlighted his disbelief throughout his review of the episode: ‘And from the very first episode, Sansa’s focus was an innocent and relatable one: Who will she marry? Sansa was then passed—with increasing sadness and anger and resentment—from Joffrey, then Tyrion, then to Littlefinger, all the while keeping her virginity (and some inkling of hope) intact. Now she’s married to the biggest monster in Westeros. And the girl who dreamed of an idyllic wedding all her life instead gets … it’s like I can’t even type it: Sansa Stark gets raped.’ Above, Hibberd (ibid.) draws upon Sansa’s femininity, virginity, and white girlhood, as ‘the girl who dreamed of an idyllic wedding all her life’, used in conjunction with an ellipsis to mimic his shock and speechlessness, to ‘produce and deepen pathos’ (Projansky, 2014: 218) in his review of the episode. Sansa’s ‘white virtuousness’ (Dyer, 1997: 127), while tellingly invisible in the critical reception of the episode, 34 combined with her respectability14, hegemonic femininity, and girlhood, positions her as ‘an image of a pure and vulnerable social subject’ (Projansky, 2014: 218) – an image central the construction of critics’ sympathy and disgust throughout the sample of reviews. The critical reception also questioned the implications of the visual proximity of this mode of engagement, and the ‘embodied and sensorial engagement of the viewer’ (Larsson, 2016: 18) that accompanies it. Game of Thrones ‘has deeply hurt Sansa, and by extension, has deeply hurt us’, wrote Hibberd (2015b), while Nguyen (2015) questioned the positioning of viewers ‘as voyeurs’ during the final scene of the episode. Nguyen (ibid.) also wrote that the scene ‘is the rape of someone we’ve grown to care for’, and is thus positioned, through the viewer’s emotional and visual proximity to Sansa, as ‘personal, and therefore, even more traumatising’. ‘We all just watched Sansa get raped,’ wrote Fowler (2015), ‘and that is a very heavy thing’. Thus, the medium specificity of the showing-viewing mode of engagement, as discussed in “Adapting Rape”15, rendered sexual violence in the episode ‘repetitive, forceful, physical, intimate and close’ (Gjelsvik, 2013: 253; my emphasis), and its ‘inescapable materiality’ (Stam, 2005: 6) and proximity to the viewer – rather than reader – positioned it as ‘offensive’ and ‘close enough to make us feel disgusted’ (Ahmed, 2014: 85). Accordingly, Lyles (2015) described the rape scene as ‘stomachchurning’, and Sullivan (in Kornhaber, Orr & Sullivan, 2015) remarked that, after viewing the episode, ‘my stomach is still in my throat—and not in an “Oh, this is exciting, I wonder what they’ll do next” kind of way’. Likewise, Bowman (2015) questioned whether he would ever ‘manage to stomach the scene’. Rozin and Fallon 14 15 See page 28. See pp. 8 – 13. 35 (1987: 23) identify the sensation of nausea, a distinctive physiological manifestation, and revulsion, a characteristic feeling state, as two key elements of the ‘disgust experience’. These two elements are identifiable both in Sullivan’s and Bowman’s remarks in particular, and across the sample of critical reviews more broadly. The final scene of the episode, for example, was described as ‘nausea’ inducing (Orr in Kornhaber, Orr & Sullivan, 2015), ‘deeply unpleasant’ (Adams, 2015), ‘upsetting’ (Collins, 2015), ‘uncomfortable’ (Otero, 2015), and ‘incredibly disturbing’ (Marnell, 2015). However, despite the prevalence of these elements of the disgust experience throughout the critical reception of the episode, as Collins (2015; my emphasis) highlighted in his review, ‘whether you want to see what’s there or not, it’s hard to look away’. Thus, as Miller (1997: x) highlights in The Anatomy of Disgust, even as the disgusting repels, ‘it rarely does so without also capturing our attention’. It ‘imposes itself upon us’, and ‘we find it hard not to sneak a second look, or less voluntarily, we find our eyes doing “double-takes” at the very things that disgust us’ (ibid.). Collins’ (2015) response to the scene highlights the ambivalent and contradictory nature of disgust, and lends itself to Projansky’s (2001: 96) description of representations of sexual violence, regardless of a text’s ideological position, as contributing to ‘a sustained cultural assault on women’, and as a fundamental part of our ‘desires’ as much as our ‘fears’ (ibid.: 3). Despite this, the controversy surrounding the episode, and the population of reviews within my sample, undoubtedly demonstrates how integral the performativity of disgust is to responding to representations of sexual violence, particularly within critical reviews, which, as discussed previously, are the product of ‘certain taste formations’ (Jancovich, 2001: 38). As Ahmed (2014: 84) has noted, ‘disgust involves not just 36 corporeal intensities, but speech acts’. The performativity of disgust, and of ‘moral disgust’ (Vaage, 2015) in particular, was demonstrated throughout the sample of reviews in the ritual of denouncing the episode as disgusting, as ‘the most horrifying scene to date’ (Nguyen, 2015), or as inducing the aforementioned ‘disgust experience’. This process of naming something as disgusting, writes Probyn (2000: 131; my emphasis) functions ‘to distance ourselves from this uncomfortable proximity’, and, ‘in uttering the phrase, we call upon others to witness our pulling away’. For example, Lyles’ (2015) remark that ‘I’ll start cranking out this recap as soon as I’ve taken about a dozen hot showers to wash away the visual of that disgusting final scene’ emphasises how the ‘uncomfortable proximity’ (Probyn, 2000: 131) of the ‘visual’ of sexual violence in the showing-viewing mode of engagement heightens the performativity of disgust within its reception, as ‘the closer one is to the disgusting object the more one’s body will pull back in abjection’ (Gorton, 2009: 62). Not only does Lyles wish to distance himself from the ‘disgusting’ visuals of the ‘final scene’ in his review, he wishes to permanently wash them away. Therefore, my examination of the critical reception of the episode reveals how the visual and emotional proximity of the showing-viewing mode of engagement complicates the reception of sexual violence. The proximity of this mode of engagement, as the critical reviews of ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’ demonstrate, is inevitably accompanied by disgust, which is inherently performative in its nature. Furthermore, the performativity of disgust involves the desire to publicly distance oneself from the uncomfortable proximity to sexual violence in the episode. This process of distancing subsequently catalyses the development of controversies, through the creation of ‘affective epidemics’ (Gibbs, 2001: 257), which generate ‘a community of those who are bound together through the shared condemnation of a 37 disgusting object or event’ (Ahmed, 2014: 94). Thus, the critical reception of the episode suggests that ‘the right way to see’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 28) and respond to the episode is primarily through shared ‘speech acts’ (Ahmed, 2014: 84) of condemnation and disgust which, as Cipriani (2015) anticipated in her review of the episode, all but ensured that ‘the end of Episode 6 is going to be a controversial one’. 38 CONCLUSION The decision to research the critical reception of sexual violence in ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’ was ultimately a successful one. While the sample of reviews selected from Rotten Tomatoes was relatively small, the depth and richness of the data produced and analysed has massively expanded my own understanding of the politics of representing, adapting, and responding to sexual violence on screen. Further, the research expanded upon a number of disciplines to remedy a notable gap within existing scholarship concerning the critical reception of sexual violence within contemporary film and television. What emerged from my analysis, first and foremost, is that there are strict and discursively constituted moral parameters within which graphic representations of violence, and sexual violence in particular, may justifiably operate. Within the context of Game of Thrones, these parameters are structured by HBO’s masculine brand identity, prestige context, and the network’s history of courting controversy. Further, they are also complicated by questions of adaptation, fidelity, and authorship. For instance, the sanctity and primacy of Martin’s novels emerged as a standard against which the prevalence and depiction of sexual violence in the television programme was tested throughout the reception, and the hierarchical opposition between the novels and the programme frequently casted the creative and authorial freedom exercised by Benioff and Weiss in a suspect light throughout the episode’s critical reception. This opposition between the novels and the programme subsequently positioned sexual violence within ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’ in terms of excess, and as having gone ‘too far’. My examination of the sample of reviews also revealed how Sansa’s ‘white virtuousness’ (Dyer, 1997: 127) and girlhood, while markedly absent and invisible in 39 many of the reviews, was central to the production of both sympathy and disgust in the critical reception of the episode. My research findings subsequently suggest that mechanisms of whiteness, class, and respectability are tied up in the cultural distinction and classification of the episode, and in its position as the programme’s ‘most contentious’ (Vincent, 2015) and controversial to date. This points to the role that whiteness and respectability plays in the perception of ‘a victim’s credibility’ (Phipps, 2009: 675), and the spectator’s sympathy and disgust. Given television critics’ aforementioned role as agenda-setters (Allen & Gomery, 1985: 90) and ‘gate-keepers’ (Jancovich, 2001: 38), who influence ideas of ‘what is worthy of being seen’ and ‘the right way to see it’ (Bourdieu, 1984: 28), the classification of this episode in this particular way has significant political and ideological implications. Furthermore, my research suggests that contextualised medium specificity and modes of engagement are also undoubtedly implicated in the classification of the episode as having gone ‘too far’ throughout its critical reception. The inescapable materiality, intrinsic violence, and undeniable proximity of the showing-viewing mode of engagement played a crucial role in the reception of the episode, prompting many of the critics to refer to their disgust experience, citing feelings of nausea or discomfort, in reference to the final scene of the episode. My research also revealed how central the performativity of disgust is to responding to representations of sexual violence, as critics throughout the sample of reviews sought to distance themselves from the uncomfortable proximity of the showingviewing mode of engagement. The process of distancing oneself from the proximity of the medium reinforces and maintains the episode’s controversial reputation, as the performative condemnation of the episode worked throughout the reception to establish a community of those bound together through collectively distancing 40 themselves from the object of disgust: Sansa’s rape, encouraging the reader to approach the episode within this context in turn. Given sexual violence’s position as ‘one of the most highly charged issues’ (Horeck, 2004: 11) in contemporary film and television, and as ‘a more taboo and emotionally volatile crime to portray on-screen than murder’ (Mittell in Bennett, 2010), this process of distancing takes on a distinctly politicised form in the critical reception of ‘Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken’, and reveals how contextual, complex, and performative responding to sexual violence in contemporary film and television can be. 41 BIBLIOGRAPHY Acuna, K. & Renfro, K. (2015). ‘'Game of Thrones' ratings are falling: Here are two possible reasons why’. Business Insider. Retrieved from <http://uk.businessinsider.com/gameof-thrones-season-5-ratings-2015-5?r=US>. Accessed 25th October 2015. Adams. E. (2015). ‘Game Of Thrones (newbies): “Unbowed, Unbent, Unbroken”’. A.V. Club. Retrieved from <http://www.avclub.com/tvclub/game-thrones-newbies-unbowedunbent-unbroken-219566>. Accessed 19th May 2016. Ahmed, S. (2014). 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