Game of Thrones came under some hot water with how it treated a few scenes involving females this year. However, actress Natalie Dormer, who plays the well-liked character Margaery Tyrell on the hit HBO series, recently noted that she is involved in a field where everyone is objectified—not just the female characters. Here’s what she had to say:
My personal experience has been to work on phenomenal jobs in which the men are objectified as much as the women. Actors suffer from it, too… It’s a visual medium, so to a certain extent you get judged on the way you look.
While there aren’t a lot of naked men that have popped up on Game of Thrones--unlike other pay-cable series Spartacus, for example—a lot of the men on the series are thought of in terms of qualities related to their good looks and the charm that exudes off of them due to those good looks. There are plenty of Jon Snow and Robb Stark memes on the internet to prove that.
Still, there’s a lot of talk about the objectification of women on television, especially as related to the tight costumes Margaery and Daenerys have favored in the past, not to mention the lack of male nudity when women's bare breasts are on the show all the time. The way sex has been depicted—especially related to the way other female lead Sansa was treated in the bedroom during Season 5—has also been criticized on the series. Still, Natalie Dormer is also a staunch defender of the series, telling The Guardian that she believes Game of Thrones tackles topics in a way befitting the fantasy narrative.
But I think Thrones is quite good in that way. The violence is quite naturalistic. It’s not hyper-stylized. It’s not glamorized. And the sex is quite real and dirty as well. It’s about those raw, visceral qualities of human life that make good drama.
Whether or not people are happy about the ratio of male-to-female nudity on the HBO drama, the show is doing extremely well in the ratings and is already gearing up for Season 6. New cast members are signed on and we are expected to learn a lot more about returning characters, including Bran, Arya, Sansa, Margaery, Cersei and the probably/possibly dead Jon Snow. Although new episodes won’t air until 2016, you can find out everything we know about Game of Thrones Season 6; although we can tell you right now that we don’t know whether a penis or two will pop up. Most of the hot dudes on this drama are already dead, anyway.
