No Social Media and Comment on Racist Game of Thrones Leaks
I’m queuing this post because I will not be on social media today. There have been spoilers and leaks for the first three episodes, and I’d like to avoid those and just enjoy the episode without it being spoiled.
Now my comments on the leaks:
Yesterday we had a very interesting exchange on Twitter discussing the leaks the claim that Missandei will be killed and that the Unsullied will go crazy and kill the women and children of King’s Landing. Most of you are white and you might not have been able to see the inherent racism in such a theory but I’m here to tell you it’s there, loud and clear.
After mulling it over a bit more after the discussion I got myself worked up because the more I thought about it, the angrier it made me. In the past, the show has been tone-death to its portrayal of people of color (POC), more specifically the Mhysa moment in season 4. I will leave the Dothraki out of this particular discussion because that’s a problem inherent in the books as well. However, after some backlash from the Mhysa moment I believe the show has been much more conscious about how POC are portrayed.
In fact, in the first two episodes of this season, the show went out of its way to show how the North reacted to the foreign army, mostly composed of POC, of Daenerys, and it was with fear and disdain also known as xenophobia and racism. We had two such scenes where the only two characters who are POC got to experience that fear and disdain first hand. To the point where they had a discussion that after the war was over, they would return to Missandei’s homeland of Naath.
Now, we have these leaks that claim that the Unsullied, a group of a highly trained, highly disciplined soldier, who are mostly POC and are the unsung heroes of the Battle of Winterfell are going to suddenly lose their minds and attacked innocent white women and white children. So, after showing the unsullied being treated poorly by white people, the show is going to turn around and have the white fear justify, by having this army of POC attack, innocent white people. Do you see what the problem is?
I can already feel that someone you want to reflectively justify this by saying that color doesn’t matter, and this is just war and people lose it sometimes. But I’m here to tell you that it does matter because it was shown to matter by the show itself at the beginning of the season and because in our real world these visuals do matter. Game of Thrones is a very white show, it has exactly two speaking roles filled by POC, and is going to kill these two roles off by having one be the sacrificial lamb for the other one to go crazy. Thus, by the end killing off all the crazy brown people.
If you cannot see how racist as fuck that is, I don’t know what to tell you.
P.S. While I’m at it, I want to address the misogynist portion of this leak. Because apparently, this leak wanted to hit all the sweet spots.
A lot of the criticism surrounding Daenerys has been misogynistic in nature. She’s judged by a different metric as male characters and her actions are viewed through the lens of, is she a crazy power-hungry female because in our patriarchal society, women who are ambitious, women who want power, women who are not deferential to men, have to be crazy. The worst part is that this is intrinsic to our society so women like this get criticized by both men and women.
So, Daenerys is going to go crazy at the end, because this is a theory that has existed since the character first appeared. There is zero new about this. However, in this scenario Jon Snow has to put Dany out by, can anyone guess? Stabbing her with his sword. I guess we are still not done with Nissa Nissa.
As misogynistic as this already is, let me point out the grandeur misogyny here:
By the end of this series, we will have two powerful queens, who will both go crazy, both have to be put down by men so that a man can rule peaceful now that the power-hungry woman is gone. Though, there’s an alternate leak where Sansa takes the throne, because reasons. By the way, having Sansa take the throne doesn’t make this any less misogynist.
I think HBO is well aware of how this could come across but more importantly, I know GRRM is well aware of the double standards in which his female and male characters are judged. He did not just have Jon and Daenerys go through parallel journeys for fun. There’s more going on there if you care to look into it.
Okay, and now I am so done.
