9 for the ask game :-)
9. worst part of canon
THE RACISM!!!! the flagrant cartoonish bone deep racism!!!
many examples. the dothraki, for one, are shown to us (the audience) as a savage, simple, war minded people who lack the sophistication of westerosi (european) culture. they are less technologically advanced. they have a primitive social structure and a barbaric way of life.
despite our white pov character dany forging a meaningful relationship with the man she was sold to as a child sex slave, we get no interiority for drogo, who is a mostly silent, violent charicature with no political acumen or sophistication. he has seemingly acheived his position as warlord by just smashing his fists into walls and yelling. no real depth or strategy needed to command the largest khalasaar of the plains and to have never not once fallen in battle for the whole of your life.
dany's three blood riders, the blood of her blood who have devoted their lives to her, are basically silent over the course of six books. her handmaidens are similarly underdeveloped, though they do talk a bit more.
compare the development and personhood given to drogo, aggo, jhogo, rakharo, irri, jhoqui, and doreah to the development and personhood given to jorah. it's a laughably stark contrast. we know of jorah's great house, of his shame and his exile, of his previous marriage. the only things we know about dany's bloodriders are their names. they have no backstories. no personhood. dany never bothers to ask them, btw, the way she asks jorah.
one other example of the fetishistic orientalism of the text is of course taena. i don't think we ever get a description of her that doesn't mention her generous brown nipples. the concept of her character and the space she occupies in the story is very interesting. her relationship with cersei is one of my favorite parts of the series. and yet she is a two dimensional sex object who is described in objectifying, fetishistic terms that are absolutely the voice of the author and not solely the voice of cersei lannister.
it sucks! and it is not a surface level issue that could be briskly edited away. it is a core component of the text.
choose violence asks
