Game of Thrones – Cersei, Jaime und Vergewaltigung

Eine Game of Thrones Folge, nämlich die dritte Folge der vierten Staffel, hat für Diskussionen gesorgt. Jamie hat dabei trotz Gegenwehr von Cersai und ihrer Aussage, dass er aufhören sollte, weil es nicht richtig sei, Sex mit seiner Schwester-Geliebten.

Die Szene im Buch lief wie folgt ab:

“She touched his face. “I was lost without you, Jaime. I was afraid the Starks would send me your head. I could not have borne that.” She kissed him. A light kiss, the merest brush of her lips on his, but he could feel her tremble as he slid his arms around her. “I am not whole without you.”

There was no tenderness in the kiss he returned to her, only hunger. Her mouth opened for his tongue. “No,” she said weakly when his lips moved down her neck, “not here. The septons…”

“The Others can take the septons.” He kissed her again, kissed her silent, kissed her until she moaned. Then he knocked the candles aside and lifted her up onto the Mother’s altar, pushing up her skirts and the silken shift beneath. She pounded on his chest with feeble fists, murmuring about the risk, the danger, about their father, about the septons, about the wrath of gods. He never heard her. He undid his breeches and climbed up and pushed her bare white legs apart. One hand slid up her thigh and underneath her smallclothes. When he tore them away, he saw that her moon’s blood was on her, but it made no difference. “Hurry,” she was whispering now, “quickly, quickly, now, do it now, do me now. Jaime Jaime Jaime.” Her hands helped guide him. “Yes,” Cersei said as he thrust, “my brother, sweet brother, yes, like that, yes, I have you, you’re home now, you’re home now, you’re home.” She kissed his ear and stroked his short bristly hair. Jaime lost himself in her flesh. He could feel Cersei’s heart beating in time with his own, and the wetness of blood and seed where they were joined.

In der Serie sah die Szene dann so aus (NSFW):

 

Also eine gewaltige Änderung. Zwar sagt sie auch bereits in dem Original „Nein“ und „nicht hier“, und er sagt, dass ihm das vollkommen egal ist, dann allerdings wechselt sie zu „ja“. Bei ähnlichen Szenen wie im Buch war man auf Jezebel bei Wolf of Wallstreet schon mal schneller:

By the end of the movie, things are not going well for Jordan Belfort. He’s pretty unambiguously the worst. He’s greedy and mean and reckless and selfish and addicted to drugs. He’s arrogant. He has basically no sense of human decency. It’s not hard to hate this guy.

And then he rapes his wife.

He’s standing there in the bedroom talking to his wife about the ongoing criminal investigation against him, and then he decides he’d like to have sex with her. And she says no, she’d rather not. And he forces himself on her. She pretty clearly tells him to stop. She tells him no. And he keeps going.

Eventually, she decides to take a little control of the situation and says, „Okay, you want to fuck me? Cum for me baby, fuck me like it’s the last time,“ so he does, and she tells him she wants a divorce. (And then he does a bunch of drugs, punches his wife, and nearly kills his daughter. Because, in case it wasn’t clear, this guy is a huge asshole.)

I’m not surprised that he raped his wife, honestly. Belfort has literally no respect for women whatsoever, and he’s used to getting everything he wants all the time. He isn’t above rape. It’s totally the kind of thing he would do.

What surprises me is that no one is talking about it.

Auch oben bei der Szene im Buch mit Cersei, die im übrigen aus der Sicht von Jaime geschildert ist, kann man ähnlich diskutieren: Sie wollte es nicht hier und dann nur, dass es schnell vorbei ist, weil sie merkt, dass sie ihn nicht abhalten kann. Sie wollte also keinen Sex, sondern nur, dass er, wenn sie es nicht verhindern kann, schnell vorbei ist.

Auch sehen wir weitaus weniger von der Szene und ihrer späteren Entfaltung, sie ist sehr kurz geschnitten, ob er tatsächlich schon eingedrungen ist oder nicht, Wir könnten auch gut noch bei „She  pounded on his chest with feeble fists“ sein. Wenn man die Szene im Buch bei „Made no difference“ abgebrochen hätte, dann hätte die Szene eine andere Ausrichtung. Wenn wir sie noch einmal aus der Sicht von Cersei geschildert bekommen würden, würde sie wohl auch weniger zustimmend klingen. Man sieht auch in der Szene in der Serie , dass sie beim Kuss die Hand recht locker auf seine Wange legt, ihn auch zuerst küsst etc.

In diese Richtung geht wohl auch der Kommentar des Direktors Alex Graves:

You say it “becomes consensual by the end.” I rewatched the scene this morning, and it ends with Cersei saying, “It’s not right, it’s not right,” and Jaime on top of her saying, “I don’t care. I don’t care.” It leaves some room for debate. Were you involved with cutting the scene? Was there a longer version of the scene that might have read more like they were both consenting?
It’s my cut of the scene. The consensual part of it was that she wraps her legs around him, and she’s holding on to the table, clearly not to escape but to get some grounding in what’s going on. And also, the other thing that I think is clear before they hit the ground is she starts to make out with him. The big things to us that were so important, and that hopefully were not missed, is that before he rips her undergarment, she’s way into kissing him back. She’s kissing him aplenty.

Die Darstellerin sagte folgendes zu der Szene:

“Yes, so, you know, we spent a long time rehearsing it with Alex [Graves], the director, and myself and Nik and Jack [Gleeson] and you know, of course it’s a very complicated moment for many reasons and what I will say about it is, from my stance as an actor who’s had this character for three years, four years, who knows her intimately…you know you’re standing, as a woman in absolute grief, in pain that she’s never felt before. And you know, she’s staring at the body of her dead son who’s been her sanity and her purpose and she’s joined by her brother who’s also her lover so, you know, we’ve also got bigger problems going on than the ones everyone’s talking about]. And it becomes very messy. And there’s lust and desperation and you know, a need to feel something other than this searing, empty loss. And so that’s where I came from when we were filming. There was this need and it wasn’t right and yet it felt great and yet it wasn’t right and it played out the way it did. And I was really happy with it. I thought it was um, my intention was there and I think people’s reactions are right and opinions are varying.”
I came from this place of grieving and a need to feel connected and alive and you know, this is the only other person, probably the only person she has ever trusted in the world. And she’s shunned Jaime and he’s never stopped loving her and in that moment she’s embracing and she’s rejecting of him in the same breath and you know, if I had not have said “not now, not here,” you know, if there were silence I don’t know how people would have reacted, you know what I mean? But it’s tricky, man, because we could go into this for a long time, I could get personal, we could…you know what I mean? It’s a real fucker of a situation. And I also think, you know, without being too much of a twat about it, we’re talking about a show with dragons, incest, babies taken by zombies, you know…

Das klingt schon sehr so als wollten sie die Buchszene mit erst Widerstand und dann Sex umsetzen, als wäre es sehr kurz geschnitten worden.

Und der Darsteller:

“I spoke with director Alex Graves, with the writers and of course with Lena (Headey, who plays Cersei). It’s a very complex scene, there are many who see it as a brutal rape, but that was obviously never intended. I understand that one can see it as that, but for us it was much more complex, and I think if you’ve seen the whole series and followed these characters and see that so much happens in the scene, it’s more than just a guy who is horny and wants to have sex, which is not what we are trying to show.”
Of course we think it is more than just a rape, and if you watch the rest of the season there is a payoff to this scene. Everything is about their relationship, and their relationship has been extremely complicated.”

 

Ich könnte mir schon vorstellen, dass es auch zum Teil dem Wechsel des Mediums geschuldet ist: Im Buch die Sachen aus Sicht einer Person und nach deren inneren Gedanken darstellen geht eben nicht, die Kamera beobachtet von außen. Darauf stellt auch George R.R. Martin, der Autor der Serie ab:

I think the “butterfly effect” that I have spoken of so often was at work here. In the novels, Jaime is not present at Joffrey’s death, and indeed, Cersei has been fearful that he is dead himself, that she has lost both the son and the father/ lover/ brother. And then suddenly Jaime is there before her. Maimed and changed, but Jaime nonetheless. Though the time and place is wildly inappropriate and Cersei is fearful of discovery, she is as hungry for him as he is for her.
The whole dynamic is different in the show, where Jaime has been back for weeks at the least, maybe longer, and he and Cersei have been in each other’s company on numerous occasions, often quarreling. The setting is the same, but neither character is in the same place as in the books, which may be why Dan & David played the sept out differently. But that’s just my surmise; we never discussed this scene, to the best of my recollection.
Also, I was writing the scene from Jaime’s POV, so the reader is inside his head, hearing his thoughts. On the TV show, the camera is necessarily external. You don’t know what anyone is thinking or feeling, just what they are saying and doing.
If the show had retained some of Cersei’s dialogue from the books, it might have left a somewhat different impression — but that dialogue was very much shaped by the circumstances of the books, delivered by a woman who is seeing her lover again for the first time after a long while apart during which she feared he was dead. I am not sure it would have worked with the new timeline.
That’s really all I can say on this issue. The scene was always intended to be disturbing… but I do regret if it has disturbed people for the wrong reasons.

Also zusätzlich noch der Faktor, dass die etwas geänderte Zeitlinie sich auswirken kann. In der Serie hatte Cersei Jamie schon eine Rede gehalten, dass er eben früher aus der Gefangenschaft hätte fliehen sollen. Sie hatten sich insoweit schon etwas weiter auseinandergelebt und er war vielleicht auch verzweifelter, weil sie ihn, nachdem er lange in Gefangenschaft war und seine Hand  verloren hat, abgewiesen hat. Hier muss man Bedenken, dass seine Hand für ihn als gefürchteter Schwertkämpfer, der auch deswegen immer einen Spruch riskieren konnte, weil er es mit jedem aufnehmen konnte, von noch höherer Bedeutung ist. Mit ihr zu schlafen ist insoweit der Wunsch ähnlich wie im Buch akzeptiert zu werden und vielleicht auch einfach darüber hinwegzusehen, dass sie (auch) ein schlechter Mensch ist. Vielleicht wollte man den Bruch auch etwas deutlicher machen als im Buch, weil man dort eben über innere Ansichten so etwas deutlicher und langsamer ausbreiten kann als in dem Medium Fernsehen.

Das kommt im Buch besser rüber, die Interpretation, dass es für Cersei etwas ist, was ein Trauma hervorrufen wird oder was ihr Leben für immer verändert ist aus meiner Sicht aber keineswegs zwingend. Vielleicht stört sie nur der Ort, die Angst entdeckt zu werden, die Leiche ihres Sohnes aber nicht per se, dass er Sex mit ihr haben will und hat. Es kann also durchaus sein, dass sie, selbst wenn sie lieber keinen Sex gehabt hätte, danach eher deckt „du Idiot, das hätte auch warten können, warum gehst du so ein Risiko ein?“

Und ich glaube auch, dass das einer der Gründe ist, warum so viele Feministinnen die Szene noch fürchterlicher finden: Es könnte eine folgenlose und nicht als das schlimmste, was einem Charakter passieren kann dargestellte Vergewaltigung sein. Eine Nebenszene, die nicht dazu führt, dass sich die Charaktere wesentlich anders verhalten. Zwar kommt es auch in den Büchern nicht mehr zu einem so großartigen Kontakt der beiden, aber eher weil Jaime nicht die Hand des Königs werden will und Cersei ihn daher wegschickt.

Zu der Beziehung der beiden habe ich diesen – auf das Buch bezogenen – Text gefunden:

The entire relationship is built on this delusion that ‘everyone who isn’t us’ doesn’t matter. Jaime and Cersei have built up this idea that all they need is each other, but to completely different points. Cersei still lusts for more; more power, more influence, more everything, while Jaime honestly believes that he has everything he needs. This is why he is so arrogant: he wants for nothing. He has Cersei and believes that she will always be there for him, and that’s how we find him at the beginning of the series, when he is willing to push a little boy out a window for love, or kill Arya Stark, or do anything and everything that she asks him to.

Jaime gives up his entire life for Cersei. He is in love with her as a little boy. When Rheagar denies her, he secretly cheers and then comforts her when she cries for days and days. When she finds out that Robert does not love her and never will, he gives up any chance at a real life, at children or a wife or being Lord of Casterly Rock when his father dies and he gives it up for her. He stays with her and thanks the gods every day that she never fell for Robert instead of her. He kisses her bruises away and he holds her hand and he sneaks around behind everything for her.

And his life is nothing but her forever. Keeping her safe, tempering her lust for power, just watching over her. And when he is far from her, he doesn’t feel whole. Because in his mind she is all he needs. Hell, she is all he has. But that’s fine, because whenever they come together again, he feels wanted and needed and that is all he wants from life.

Cersei, on the other hand, loves him, yes, but she wants more than that. She wants to be Queen. She wants other to fear her. She wants everything that Tywin wants for the family. She wants all of the men who chose Lyanna over her to crumble to dust beneath her feet. And Jaime fits in that plan. Jaime will head her Queensguard and sit by her side and the Kingdoms will be their children, in an open way that Joff and Tommen and Myrcella can never be.

Because this is what she wants, it never occurs to her that Jaime might want something different.

And then what happens is this: Jaime gets captured, and each of them realizes something that they never thought of before. Cersei realizes that she needs him far more than she ever realized. When he is gone, she is in a panic, she is screaming at Tyrion and she wants him back and she doesn’t have the power to get him back and she can’t deal. And Jaime realizes that Cersei isn’t all he needs. He needs Catelyn and Brienne and he needs to change. He needs to open up. He experiences an awakening.

But life goes on for Cersei. She wants power more than ever. She needs it, now, because Jaime’s absence has shown her just how weak she really is. So she does what she has always done: she fucks and fucks and fucks to get what she wants. Because sex to Jaime is how he stays close to her. He has never touched another woman. But to Cersei, it’s how she gets power. It’s how she convinced Jaime to give up his life for her, in that seedy inn when she dressed as a common girl and fucked the living shit out of him.

So he comes back and he isn’t in her control anymore. He still loves her and he wants her but he wants to save her. He wants to take her away and marry her and just love her and not care what people think because hell yeah it’s wrong but he is tired of all the politics. He just wants to be with her.

But no. Never and always no. That could never be enough for Cersei. And so Jaime devotes himself to rectifying corruption. To being the best goddamn Lord Commander of the Kingsguard ever, because he fucking can. Because his life was a sham before. Empty and dead and even when Tywin gives him a chance to back out, Jaime is like fuck no. He turns over a new leaf. He tries to do the right thing.

And he waits around. Poor, sweet Jaime, always waiting for his beautiful golden fool. Always there, in his itchy, uncomfortable armor, just because Cersei asked him to.

This relationship is so tragic because of how cheated Jaime is. His entire life was taken away from him, and then halfway through he came to understand how cheated he truly had been. He thought it was enough to be beautiful and strong and rich and to love a woman, even privately. He thought that saving Cersei was enough.

But he wasn’t saving her. She was damning herself even as she fucked him, even as she used him again and again and again until one day he woke up and realized that there was nothing left inside her that he could love or hold or take or want.

That at the very end of everything, just as him needing her wasn’t enough to make her his, her needing him wasn’t enough to make him waste any more of his life on her.

Auch hier wird deutlich, dass Cersei nicht unbedingt diejenige ist, die Sex nicht als Mittel ansetzt und insoweit große Vorbehalte hätte auch wenn sie nicht will mit Jaime zu schlafen (was ihn natürlich nicht dazu berechtigen würde, sie zu vergewaltigen). Sie setzt Sex und auch deren Verweigerung als Machtmittel ein. Es wäre aus meiner Sicht auch besser für die Serie gewesen, wenn man hier Jaime dieses „Gute“ gelassen hätte, wobei die Sexszene ja anscheinend durchaus näher am Buch hätte sein sollen und insofern wohl zu kurz war.

Allgemein geht allerdings George RR Martin mit seinen weiblichen Hauptcharakteren in dieser Hinsicht sehr vorsichtig um: Mir ist nicht bekannt, dass eine wichtigere weibliche Figur abseits Cersei bisher in dem Buch vergewaltigt worden ist, und das trotz vielfältiger Gelegenheiten über Gefangenschaften etc. (Daenerys Targaryens Hochzeitsnacht ist aus meiner Sicht keine Vergewaltigung, es ist eine politische Hochzeit in einem für mittelalterliche Verhältnisse normalen Alter in der die Ehe eben auch vollzogen werden muss – natürlich kann man das als Vergewaltigung sehen, weil die Hochzeit in dieser Hinsicht ein Geschäft ist und nicht auf ihrem freien Willen beruht, dann legt man allerdings heutige Maßstäbe auf eine vollkommen andere Zeit an).

Einer der Gründe, warum es im Feminismus gerade bei Jamie einen größeren Aufschrei gab als bei sagen wir Drogo, ist sicherlich auch der Umstand, dass man Drogo ruhig hassen kann, Jamie aber ein extremer Sympahtieträger der Show ist. Hier eine Stelle dazu:

Jaime Lannister, in the context of the show, is now a rapist. And that means that Broken Chains has the dubious honor of the show’s first case of male character assassination. Because Jaime Lannister, as he appears in the books, is not a rapist. And I don’t just mean “he never rapes anyone.” Jaime Lannister, as a character, is staunchly against rape. His disgust towards rape and his understanding of the horror of it is one of the driving forces of his character: one of the reasons he despised King Aerys is that he was forced to stand guard outside the door while he raped his wife and was forbidden by the other members of the Kingsguard to stop him. He loses his hand because he protects Brienne from being raped when they’re captured by the Bloody Mummers, even though he disdains Brienne and tried to kill her in a swordfight the day before. He says that, if he were a woman, he’d rather die than be raped. Most of Westeros’s knights barely give it a thought, or consider it an acceptable part of war, but Jaime is one of the few male characters who is actually empathetic and honorable in that regard. Sure, he’ll shove children out of windows, attack Ned Stark in the street and make crass comments whenever he pleases, but he is not a rapist.

Except, according to the show, he is. A remarkable change, considering the fact that, Joffrey excepted, the show has always changed male characters to make them appear more heroic. Tyrion has been transformed into a true heroic protagonist. Robb Stark became a bold crusader instead of a lost boy king. Even morally grey Theon was given a far more sympathetic treatment in the show than in the books. He betrayed the Starks, but the show gave us plenty of insight into his inner turmoil and his confused point of view.

Why, then, would the show completely destroy the character of one of its main, sympathetic male protagonists? Nikolaj Coster-Waldau’s name is now second in the credits. He’s been given a lot of screen time, and the entire last season focussed on transforming Jaime from a villain character into a fan favorite. Why would they ruin all that by making Jaime rape his sister/true love next to their dead son’s body, when the scene is consensual in the books? Why would they make him do something so out of character, and so unforgivable?

Jaime ist mit dieser Tat also in den Augen vieler Feministinnen nicht mehr als Held tragbar, auch und vielleicht gerade wenn er seine Tat selbst gar nicht als Vergewaltigung sehen würde, sondern nur als ignorieren ihrer Einwände gegen die Begleitumstände und nicht gegen den Sex mit ihm an sich. Es ist ein erstaunlicher Gedankengang: Er hat ein kleines Kind ermordet, aber das kann man verzeihen. Diese Szene aber soll unverzeihlich sein, weil es eine Vergewaltigung ist und es da keine Grauzonen gibt und eine Szene dieser Art daher unverzeihlich sein muss. Ich vermute ehrlich gesagt, dass die meisten Frauen, die die Serie schauen, ihm recht problemlos verzeihen werden. Was es um so schlimmer macht.

Auch eine andere Stelle sieht Jamie als Feministen:

Whatever dishonorable things he’s done, Jaime was a man who still always had his own code of honor: he protected his family and the innocent — in that order. And as far as his naturally brash nature is concerned, Jaime has calmed down significantly since his capture; his losses last season led him to a place where he seems much more sad than angry and vengeful. Because of this, the rape scene feels like the showrunners’ forced attempts to be “edgy,” rather than a culmination of Jaime’s pent up anger and frustrations.

Jaime idolizes Cersei. Even aside from his new, calm demeanor, at this point in the story we know that Jaime would never even hit Cersei, let alone rape her. Jaime would never rape anyone. While watching the show, we’ve learned that Jaime thinks rape is so abhorrent that he saves Brienne from getting raped — even though he was trying to kill her only a few days earlier. He acknowledges to Brienne in that same episode that if he were a woman, he would sooner fight his captors to his own death than let them rape him.

Jaime Lannister is a feminist. Because of his love and respect for Cersei, he doesn’t objectify or dehumanize women the way that so many other Westerosi men do, but rather he treats them as three-dimensional, perceptive, formidable human beings — even the women he doesn’t like.

Jaime has proved time and again that he is one of the few people around King’s Landing who judges others purely for who they are, without external biases. He is able to see the value in the people that others easily dismiss. He respects Tyrion’s cunning and Cersei’s strength of will as matches to his own physical strength. And while others discount Brienne because she’s a woman, Jaime always saw her for who she was: at first a boring, stubborn, powerful opponent, and later an honorable and trustworthy knight.

Die Einschätzung, dass Jaime nie Gewalt gegen Cersei einsetzen würde und insoweit auch gegen sexuelle Gewalt ist, ist aus meiner Sicht in dem Buch nicht unbedingt gedeckt (No,” she said weakly when his lips moved down her neck, “not here. The septons…” “The Others can take the septons.” He kissed her again, kissed her silent, kissed her until she moaned. Then he knocked the candles aside and lifted her up onto the Mother’s altar, pushing up her skirts and the silken shift beneath. She pounded on his chest with feeble fists, murmuring about the risk, the danger, about their father, about the septons, about the wrath of gods. He never heard her. He undid his breeches and climbed up and pushed her bare white legs apart“). Wir wissen schlicht nicht, was er gemacht hätte, wenn sie nicht von „No“ auf „yes“ umgeschwenkt wäre und es sieht nicht aus als hätte er viel auf ihre Einwände gegeben.

 

Zudem haben wir noch andere Stellen in den Büchern:

Game of Thrones:

“Stop it,” she said, “stop it, stop it. Oh, please …” But her voice was low and weak, and she did not push him away. Her hands buried themselves in his hair, his tangled golden hair, and pulled his face down to her breast.
A Storm of Swords:

He had pulled her into his lap.
„Let Robert do as he pleases. I’ll go to war with him if I must. The War for Cersei’s Cunt, the singers will call it.“
„Jaime, let go of me!“ she raged, struggling to rise.
Instead he had kissed her. For a moment she resisted, but then her mouth opened under his. He remembered the taste of wine and cloves on her tongue. She gave a shudder. His hand went to her bodice and yanked, tearing the silk so her breasts spilled free, and for a time the Stark boy had been forgotten.

Die Beiden haben also durchaus eine Vergangenheit, in der sie häufiger Nein sagt, aber anscheinend Ja meint. Auswirkungen auf ihre Beziehung scheint es nicht gehabt zu haben.

Und auch die Schilderung von Brienne ist aus meiner Sicht falsch, denn am Anfang versucht er sie zu provozieren und ist sich sehr bewußt, dass sie eine hässliche Frau ist. Ihr Verhältnis ändert sich erst allmählich, auch weil sie aufeinander angewiesen sind.

Auch interessant, wie in dem Artikel die weitere Entwicklungsmöglichkeit des Charakters dargestellt wird:

If this rape is going to be turned into a story point, it means that going forward in the show, our beloved Jaime has become either a) a terrible human being who thinks it’s okay to rape his sister when she refuses to put out, or b) a psychotic person who has finally lost his moral compass. And either of these options would be fine, logistically at least, if this became a dramatic turn in Jaime’s narrative arc — one that the characters would have to deal with within the confines of the story.

Auch hier wird wieder das eigentlich Problem deutlich: Eine solche Szene muss aus feministischer Sicht immer ein erheblicher Wendepunkt sein. Dass es danach relativ normal weiter geht und Jaime sich nicht als Vergewaltiger sieht und insoweit dennoch in anderen Fällen gegen eine Vergewaltigung oder andere unmoralische Taten sein kann ist außerhalb jeder Wertung. Das kann man zwar, wenn man zum Selbstschutz einen 10jährigen umbringt (da kommt anscheinend die Wertung „(a) a terrible human being who thinks it’s okay to murder a Child if the Child sees something it shouldn’t have, or b) a psychotic person who has finally lost his moral compass“ nicht in den Sinn).

Insoweit passt die Aufregung über diese Szene in einer Serie voller Gewalt, vielen tausend Toten, einer Frau, der schwanger in den Bauch gestochen wird, einem Mann, der brutal durch Häutungen gefoltert und dann dann später entmannt wird, in das Grunddogma des Feminismus, dass nichts schlimmer sein darf als sexuelle Gewalt und nichts sexuelle Gewalt entschuldigen darf. Nicht umsonst ist die Rape Culture eine der ganz wesentlichen Theorien in der feministischen Theorie, weil sich eben mit ihr unbewußte Ängste ansprechen lassen, die männliche Sexualität dämonisiert werden kann.

Deswegen gibt es natürlich auch Stimmen, die wie oben bereits angeführt, auch die Szene im Buch als Vergewaltigung sehen:

In this scene, Cersei asks Jaime to stop, at one point resorting to physical force in an attempt to get away. They have sex because he physically overpowers her and refuses to let her go. When she finally relents, Jaime has already „pushed her bare white legs apart“ and ripped off her underwear. Granted, the scene on television did not include Cersei eventually saying yes as she does in the novel — but that doesn’t make the preceding incidents any less sexually violent. Any reason is a good enough reason for a woman to not be forced into sex: Cersei gave five. „He never heard her.“

Why are the authors of these articles so curiously forgiving of Jaime’s forcefulness in the novel and so willing to equate Cersei’s eventual acquiescence to consent? Since when is repeated, adamant refusal to perform a sex act compatible with „clear consent“?

(…)

Is the „Breaker of Chains“ scene „more rapey“ than the novel’s? Perhaps — but that’s not a conversation I’m willing to prioritize, because it requires the use of trivializing words like „rapey.“ The conversation we should be having starts with these questions: Why are we so unwilling to expand our conversation about consent? Why does eventual acquiescence matter more than „No, not now, please don’t“?

Auch Cathy Young schlägt in die gleiche Kerbe:

Apparently, this is what many feminists including Slate.com’s Amanda Marcotte—who not long ago argued that any man who cannot prove his partner’s clear, explicit consent can be considered a rapist—regard as consensual rough sex:

The woman, Cersei, kisses her brother/lover Jaime; when he begins to take things further, she “weakly” protests—“No, not here”—and starts to say that they could be discovered by septons, the priests of Martin’s world. Jaime dismisses this and silences her with more kisses, then lifts Cersei up on the altar and pushes up her skirts: “She pounded on his chest with feeble fists, murmuring about the risk, the danger, about their father, about the septons, about the wrath of gods. He never heard her.”

After a few moments, when Jaime has already undone his clothing and pushed her legs apart, Cersei starts to encourage him with both words (“Hurry, quickly, do it now”) and actions, and once the sex begins she repeatedly says “yes.” But if “no always means no,” hasn’t he already committed sexual assault and attempted rape? If this was a real-life case involving, say, two college students—hopefully in less freakish circumstances—Marcotte and plenty of others would be certain to argue that the woman’s expressed consent was meaningless: the man had clearly refused to respect her “no,” and she may have been going along and faking eagerness out of self-preservation.

In the TV version, Cersei’s protests are somewhat more vehement, and she never switches from “no” to “yes” but keeps saying “this isn’t right.” The episode’s director, Alex Graves, has nonetheless said that he sees the scene as one in which the sex “becomes consensual by the end,” which has people up in arms about rape-condoning atittudes. (By the way, Cersei’s body language in the TV scene is still somewhat ambiguous: after saying “no” and “stop,” she kisses Jaime twice, presses her hands to his face, and at least once seems to pull him closer instead of pushing him away.) Time reporter Eliana Dockterman expresses dismay at the notion that a sexual encounter can become consensual if it’s forced at the start—but she, too, thinks it was consensual in the book. (…)

So much for their claims that there is no such thing as token resistance, no gray areas or “blurred lines” (as it were), and that the slightest expression of ambivalence or reluctance should immediately halt all sexual advances. “Rape culture” dogma allows for no context or nuance: nonviolent physical advances after an uncertain “We shouldn’t be doing this” are no different from forcibly overpowering someone who shouts, “Stop!” But context matters; nuance matters; whether a person is in physical danger matters. In a different context, Jaime’s actions in the book would also cross the line into assault—not just from a radical feminist but from any non-Neanderthal point of view.

 

Hier wären also einige Feminstinnen in eine klassische Falle getappt: Weil es so verführerisch ist, die Serie der Rape Culture zu beschuldigen haben sie in gewisser Weise eine Grauzone der Vergewaltigung akzeptiert, die sie sonst niemals akzeptiert hätten, sie haben etwas als Zustimmung hingenommen, was sonst niemals Zustimmung gewesen wäre.