Doing Cultural Studies: Critical Media Analysis on Game of Thrones
Studies in Popular Culture-EDUC 3900
In the article Popular Media, Education, and Resistance (2006), Stack and Kelly look at media as an institution that “…perpetuates various social inequalities” while also being the place where social inequalities can be challenged (p. 5). Female gender inequalities, for instance, are constantly being portrayed in the media through the stereotypical representations of women as weak and needing a man to save them. The TV series Game of Thrones is just one example of how popular media like tv series’ can also be used to challenge these normative gender representations. “The overall plot in GofT is a battle for the Iron Throne. Here, female characters are as ambitious, active and able as men” (Gjelsvik & Schubart, 2016, p. 2). In Game of Thrones we begin to see a change in the way women are being presented. Throughout the show, Cersei Lannister, Catelyn Stark, Sansa Stark, Arya Stark, and Daenerys (Dany) Targaryen, are just some of the female characters who are represented as empowered women in different ways (Jones, 2012, p. 14). Typically, women characters depicted during the time period this series is set in, are portrayed as, “damsels-in-distress, passive ladies who do little but fill in the background space of the castle, or serving only as possessions who produce heirs for their lords” (Jones, 2012, p. 20). While these gender stereotypes are still present within the show, these female characters begin to challenge the roles they are expected to fill and instead start taking positions of power (primarily Cersei Lannister, Sansa Stark, and Daenerys Targaryen).
While these women are depicted as strong, powerful, and ambitious female characters, countering the normative female representation on television, this shift in representation does come at a cost. The shifting representations of women in Game of Thrones as strong and powerful often results in their isolation (Woods, 2017). We see this with several characters in Game of Thrones where powerful women are often “alone, isolated in their own castles, as if victims of their own success: Cersei in the Red Keep, Sansa in Winterfell, and Olenna dying alone in a high tower” (Woods, 2017). While the show does much to change the representation of women, it makes it apparent that while men are idolised for being strong and powerful, the same qualities in women result in their seclusion. There is still much work to be done in the challenging of normative female representations in media. However, many forms of media, like the TV series Game of Thrones, have begun working towards shifting the roles of women and giving them the power that was once only held only by men.
Works Cited
Gjelsvik, A., & Schubart, R. (2016). Women of ice and fire: gender, Game of thrones and multiple media engagements. New York: Bloomsbury Academic.
Jones, R. (2012). A Game of Genders: Comparing Depictions of Empowered Women between A Game of Thrones novel and Television Series. Journal Of Student Research, 1(3), 14- 21. Retrieved from http://www.jofsr.com/index.php/path/article/view/100
Stack, M., & Kelley, D.M. (2006). Popular media, education, and resistance. Canadian Journal of Education, 29(1), 5-26. Woods, H. R. (2017, August 27). Game of Thrones may have put women in charge, but it still can't do female friendship. Retrieved October 24, 2017, from https://www.newstatesman.com/culture/tv-radio/2017/08/game-thrones-may-have-put- women-charge-it-still-cant-do-female-friendship
