Television has a history of stereotyping and underrepresenting female characters. Female characters in movies and drama shows routinely end up sidelined or overly sexualiized. The TV series Game of Thrones, based on the hit novel written by George R.R. Martin, features numerous female characters that have a prominent role in the story.
In the film industry, men usually have stronger and more prominent roles than women. In 2014, 12% of protagonists and 29% of major characters were female (Cipriani, 2015). “The study, released by the Annenberg School for Communication & Journalism at the University of Southern California, examined the 100 top-grossing fictional films from 2012. Out of 4,475 speaking characters, only 28.4 percent of them were
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Many characters, but mostly women, experience sexual abuse and rape. The vast amount of female nudity and sexual violence in the show, which is even greater in the books, has caused some viewers to perceive the series as misogynistic. Others argue the portrayal of women is justified because the show portrays realistic aspects of the medieval time period. George R.R. Martin himself classifies himself as a feminist and in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, he explained “The books reflect a patriarchal society based on the Middle Ages. The Middle Ages were not a time of sexual egalitarianism. It was very classist, dividing people into three classes. And they had strong ideas about the roles of women” (Hibberd, 2015). Anne Kustritz argues that romantic fairy-tales with happy endings negatively affects expectations of the roles of women in stories. They set up unrealistic imaginations of characters that encounter very few or no obstacles and have a perfect resolution. “The happily-ever-after ending receives criticism as both too dangerously oppressive and too unrealistically positive both for women and for politics. Yet, such criticisms needlessly foreclose possibilities for both the personal and political imagination of different futures made possible through utopian storytelling” (Kustritz, …show more content…
Although she is often ridiculed because of her masculinity and unattractiveness, she is a venerable and capable warrior. She is able to hold her own in many fights and even managed to best The Hound, one of the most powerful and feared fighters in Westeros. “Brienne of Tarth, a woman who — in yet another twist on the traditional fantasy formula — may embody the ideals of the prototypical male fantasy hero better than any other character on the show, whether they be male, female, living, or dead” (Majka,