The power dynamic between them literally flips in the moment that she forces him to change positions in bed to put herself on top. She educates herself in the art of seduction and uses these tools to earn Khal Drogo’s love and respect. Throughout the first season of Game of Thrones, we watch Daenerys evolve as a woman. The focus on her body is no longer about her physical beauty, but her metaphysical power. The water is boiling hot, but it does nothing to Dany. The further she dips in, the less of her body the frame can see, and the more we understand the latent magical power surrounding her. After Viserys leaves her to take her bath, she slowly sinks into the steaming hot water. To make matters more uncomfortable, there’s a pretty sunset in the background.ĭany’s very first scene also teases that maybe - just maybe - this way of ordering the world could be up-ended. To that point, the last look we get of Dany in the pilot is of her being raped on her wedding night by the Khal. Her value is wrapped up in her physical beauty and not much else. She’s being sold to a Dothraki war lord named Khal Drogo (Jason Momoa) to further Viserys’s ambitions. That’s partly because that’s what Dany’s role is at this point. It’s what we’re supposed to see when we look at her: her body through a domineering male’s eyes. The camera lingers on the character’s breast as if to make sure that’s where our eye goes. In her very first moments onscreen, her older brother Viserys (Harry Lloyd) undresses her and appraises her body with uncomfortable sexual desire. She is an ethereal sylph of a girl, fond of staring out at the horizon and trembling when spoken to. The Mother of Dragons is a conqueror with a mission and that mission is to “leave the world better than our fathers left it.” In fact, if you want the best overview for how Game of Thrones has (or hasn’t) improved its approach to sex and nudity, look no further than Daenerys Targaryen’s journey.ĭaenerys is introduced in the very first episode of Game of Thrones. So times are changing, but the culture of the fictional world on Game of Thrones has changed as well. There has to be thought behind it, or else it looks lazy. Also, as streaming services have taken over the television landscape, nudity taken by itself is not as exciting as it may have once been for an American viewer. There was both highbrow criticism of the show’s reliance on nudity, sex, and sexual violence and online petitions to dump the show over its incessant depictions of sexual assault. What sparked this shift? You could look at a variety of instigators for the transition. In fact, the last three big female nude scenes - Cersei’s sorrowful march through King’s Landing, Melisandre’s magical necklace reveal, and Daenerys’ fiery murder of the Khals - all used nudity to tell us something important about the characters. Last season, the prostitutes who popped up tended to wear more clothing, we got male full frontal nudity, and the few scandalous scenes we did see seemed to serve a narrative point. It’s been a subtle evolution, but it’s there. Who were these people? What were their stories? Why were they naked? Why?īut recently, something has changed on Game of Thrones. Occasionally, these characters would only be introduced to be maimed, beaten, raped, killed, or discarded. When in doubt, it seemed, the show would just toss in a naked lady or twelve for some very basic titillation. Think of Littlefinger (Aidan Gillen) giving a long monologue about his Machiavellian worldview while he coerces prostitutes in his employ to pleasure each other or the random naked sex worker who just so happens to act as an armrest (and appetiser) for Bronn (Jerome Flynn) before The Battle of the Blackwater. When you look back at early seasons, nude women were often used merely as set dressing. It is true that Game of Thrones has had a complicated relationship with sex and nudity over the years. The schoolyard-esque slam is that the show only rose to its insane levels of popularity by giving the people what they really want to see: gratuitous female nudity and super cool dragons. GAME of Thrones has an unofficial nickname in pop culture and it’s “tits and dragons.”
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