Game of Thrones (HBO) TV Show • Page 381

Maisie decided how much was shown. The scene unfolded the way she wanted it to.

 

I know. I think if you’re directing that scene, directing an actress you’ve been directing since she was 12, there’s an angle that takes that discomfort out of the equation at least nearly entirely. I get that they wanted to show her scars but this character is still like 16 or 17 in the fiction of the show, so if I’m in control of that scene, that plays a factor in how much nudity I portray to the audience

 

She’s 18

 

But the director wasn't the one who decided what would be shown. The grown adult woman starring in the scene did. I just don't get where this "discomfort" is coming from, I guess is my point. Discomfort for us as an audience? Why should we be discomfited if she isn't? She wanted to do this. She has agency here. It all happened on her terms.

 

Also, Arya is currently 18 in the world of the show.

 

I didn’t realize Arya was supposed to be 18 by now until reading it this morning. I think if the show was more clear about its timeline less people would be uncomfortable with it.

 

I’m not uncomfortable with the situation of the scene. I like the portrayal of Arya as a character acting with sexual agency. I’m uncomfortable watching someone who I’ve been watching since she was 12 get naked. I’m uncomfortable with Hollywood portrayals of nudity involving actresses who were recently of age. I’m uncomfortable with a show that has treated women’s bodies as sexual objects almost constantly and not understood directing those scenes responsibly (remember when Jamie raped Cersei in a scene that they didn’t even understand was rape? Didn’t they joke that they couldn’t wait for Sophie Turner to turn 18?). I know that Maisie was in control of the scene now, I didn’t when I first watched it. But it’s not like this show has earned the benefit of the doubt in its handling of female nudity and excuse me for rolling my eyes when fans clamor to explain that actually the character is technically 18, because while I don’t doubt the intentions of anyone here it’s not exactly an argument that people are making for well intentioned reasons across the internet or across other mediums of art.

 

I still don't understand what's so uncomfortable about allowing the actress to be in control of the scene and filming it the way she wanted it. I've seen it around the internet a lot today. Just really strange, is all. We don't own what Maisie Williams gets to do with her body just because we've been watching this show for 8 years. She doesn't owe us any protection from discomfort.

 

Lot of people clamoring to defend portrayal of a naked 21 year old girl as a double standard haven’t really addressed the more pressing double standard IMO

 

Everyone needs to stop with the terrible takes about Maisie Williams’s own agency or I’ll have to jump on the Arya/Gendry train just out of spite.

Also seriously, if you were upset about last night but cheered her on during the Frey scenes, I don’t know what to say. Those were some of the most upsetting things that happened on this entire show, and she was even younger.

Her story is incredibly sad and horrifying from the start, but this is bad from a writing standpoint, not a content one.

 

Who said I was cheering her on with the Frey’s? I’m not conflicted about what the character did, I’m conflicted about how the show handled the real life people involved, given the history of the show, and the history of how the nearly entirely male field of producers and directors handle female nudity (hint: it’s so very rarely as Maisie said it was for her), and I’m conflicted about watching a human being I was introduced to when she was 12 take her clothes off, which I wasn’t aware would be such an outlandish sentiment

 

I think there might be a misconception about people’s discomfort with the scene. I’m sure some people rooted Arya on as a killing machine and were suddenly not okay with her showing sexual agency. That is worth critiquing. There are also people who were uncomfortable seeing nudity from a woman who we met as a literal child who was not even 21 when the scene was shot. I also think some people are misdiagnosing and dismissing the former discomfort as the latter, and I don’t think that’s fair and obscures a real point of concern.

 

Yeah as I said earlier, I think it’s just a bit of a paternalistic thing where the discomfort come from....which we can have a whole discussion on how societal factors play into that and how we view young women and etc.

I mean I was cheering her on while also feeling uncomfortable about seeing her strip down to get some D...id like to think I’d feel the same about Bran if he were doing it haha

 

I get that this is why you’re uncomfortable, for the record. I’m saying that a grown adult woman with agency over her body chose what you would see, and your complaint with that sounds like you’re trying to dictate what that grown woman does or doesn’t do with her own body as an actress. Whether you intend it that way or not.

 

Oh that part wasn’t trying to single you out specifically. But I’ve seen it mentioned lots of other places today and I know the general fan reaction to her arc has been really problematic and misses the point of what she’s gone through.

I totally agree that the show is one of the worst offenders for how they portray sexuality in general and for women specifically, which is why I’m not happy with how this story has come about. But making the conversation about Maisie herself or what she has clearly chosen to do is not any better.

 

The fact that Grey Worm, a man who had his ability to physically have intercourse stripped away from him when he was a boy and trained to be a mindless killing robot for his entire life, doesn’t spark this kind of debate when he begins to act on his feelings for a woman says all you need to know about the various levels of outrage and uncomfortability with the Arya scene, IMO

 

She does have a point. Outfits were on point.

 

I loved that costume she looked badass as hell

 

Hope they showcase some bad ass armor for the dragon riders.

 

Gave me a ‘Hellraiser’ vibe. Really great outfit

 

Their stories are super similar. I’ve been thinking about that comparison all day. I wish that they hadn’t rushed so much so Arya could have had a similar path to readjusting to this human side. His story has fallen off terribly this season which is such a shame, but the way they built it up originally is one of the few times they succeeded in portraying a complex romantic relationship. When I look at Arya this season I see basically if Grey Worm had had his first scene with Missandei and then disappeared for years only to suddenly pop back up with no personal issues to have their sex scene. We wouldn’t necessarily dislike the pairing, but skipping the middle of his character development wouldn’t have made sense.

 

Then I’ll clarify: I don’t have a problem with her dictating how the scene went. But there’s an inherent inequality in this show and in entertainment as a whole, in that female actors are nearly constantly asked to portray nudity. Male actors nearly never are. Especially on this show. Given the wider context of an actress coming of age in entertainment and of the way audiences will view her, I genuinely think she should probably have not have even been asked how much, if any, nudity she was comfortable portraying, I think they should have avoided explicit nudity at all. I know that gets into “It’s her body she’s an adult she should be able to show whatever she wants” territory, and that’s true, but again it’s a situation male actors never even have to think about (not to mention an argument exploited by predatory men). It’s an inequality that should change, but won’t change as long as actresses are continuously put in that situation in the first place. It’s basically impossible to make this argument without sounding like a prude, but even if Maisie had control in this scene, that is so incredibly rarely the case and I put the onus on 40-60 year old directors and showrunners to be more aware of these dynamics and try to avoid them. Because you can say they “learned their lesson”, but I don’t think that’s what happened. I think it’s far more likely that they’ve known Maisie since she was 12 and felt weird about asking her to get naked, which they would have just done straightforwardly with any other actress, and they put in her hands, which is fine, but do you think they asked Joe Dempsie or even Kit Harrington how much dick they were comfortable showing in their sex scenes? Or was it implicitly understood that there’s a standard for male nudity that they don’t push the boundaries of, that isn’t there for female nudity? (When there is male frontal nudity in this show, as with Hodor, Allie Allen, and the slaver, the context is very different)

 

It was suuuuuper dark and kinky and amazing. Agree that she could have been a Cenobite.

 

I wish I could be a weirdo and dress up IRL like I was a character in some fantasy series, everything always looks so hella dope