Every flight begins with a fall: Approaching sexual violence in Game of Thrones

Abstract

Sexual violence has become the backbone of the fourth wave of the feminist movement. For this reason, we must look towards cultural industries, the mass media and social networks to analyze and discuss this violence, either because they reproduce the so-called culture of rape or because they resist it. This paper problematizes the representation of sexual violence in the audiovisual text Game of Thrones (HBO, 2011-2019) from the study of three important episodes in which three protagonists are raped: Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister, and Sansa Stark. The choice of this TV fiction is justified by its cultural resonance and its audience ratings, which have turned it into one of the most watched series in the history of Latin America and the rest of the world. An analysis from the gender perspective allows us to sustain that, although some changes can be perceived from the earliest to the latest aggression, in all cases the selected approach eroticizes sexual violence, inscribes it within a paradigm of idealization of romantic love, or mistreats women as a prerequisite for their empowerment. In this regard, our conclusions prove that David Benioff s and D. B. Weiss production, unlike the literary work by R. R. Martin on which it is based, uses sexual violence as a narrative resource, instrumentalizing patriarchal violence with the sole aim of shocking the audience.