Sums it up perfectly.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_facto...x_graves_says_the_sex_becomes_consensual.html
Game of Thrones.spent all last season carefully redeeming Jaime Lannister, turning the once villain into something of a hero. Sunday night, director Alex Graves threw that all away by having Jaime rape his sister/lover in front of the body of their recently murdered son. This was not in the books. Yes, Jaime and his sister Cersei do it in front of their childs corpse in George R.R. Martins telling, but the sex, while rough,
is consensual.
By turning consensual sex into a rape, the meaning of the scene changes completely. On the page, it serves as a reminder that this ugly, incestuous relationship is a coping mechanism for two very badly damaged people. Turning it into a rape just turns Jaime into a monster, the kind that would rape a woman he claims to love in front of her dead son to punish her for being hateful.
Apparently Graves thinks that he did something more interesting and complicated than that. In an
interview with Alan Sepinwall, Graves claims the sex becomes consensual by the end because anything for them ultimately results in a turn-on, especially a power struggle. This is nonsense.
If Graves intended to depict consensual sex in the end, he completely failed. This wasnt even one of those terribly clichéd scenes where a man starts raping a woman only to find that she comes around to thinking its hot. Cersei is still kicking and protesting when the camera cuts away. Its as straightforward a rape scene as youll get on TV, unless you buy the ridiculous myth that a woman cant be raped if shes consented to sex with a man before. (Notably, Sepinwall seems to agree with Graves, describing the scene like this: Jaime in turn seizes the moment to finally perform the act he's been denied of since the war with the North began, even if he has to get very rough at first to get what he wants.)
This isnt to say that rape cant be depicted on TV. It can. But Graves inability to see what hes put out there compromises Jaimes character and, frankly, makes a joke of a very serious, very violent act. (Graves calls it a turn on, as if sexy rape is a thing. It is not.)
Prior to this rape, Jaime was a morally ambiguous character whose bad behavior, while deplorable, at least was motivated in ways that the audience could understand. Now he just comes across as another terrible man who abuses women because he can.
Jamie used to be the kind of person who would kill if he felt he had to, but who deplored sexual violence because it was never necessary. Indeed, he started his path to redemption in the third season by cleverly rescuing Brienne of Tarth, a female knight, from being raped by her captors. Now hes just a big mess that doesnt make any sense at all, and the characters arc may never recover.
