“Tits and Dragons”: Does sex have an important role in Game of Thrones?

In what are now notorious comments made in an interview with The Telegraph about his role in the sixth season of Game of Thrones, Ian McShane provocatively noted that the show “is only tits and dragons,” a statement that riled some fans (and amused many more).

If you’re a Game of Thrones fan, you would likely argue that the books and TV series have a little more to them than the obligatory flash of (typically female) nipple, juxtaposed with huge battles, and as noted, the appearance of dragons. Despite this, McShane’s comments (perhaps somewhat ironically), highlight an interesting dichotomy between explicit representations of violence in television series, and the presentation of nudity, and more specifically sex, in the very same television series. While one is accepted, even expected, the other is generally at worst condemned as ‘pornographic’, and at best met with a lukewarm, vaguely awkward acceptance.

If you’re a Game of Thrones fan, you would likely argue that the books and TV series have a little more to them than the obligatory flash of (typically female) nipple, juxtaposed with huge battles, and the appearance of dragons.

Speaking specifically about the troubled reception of nudity, Melisandre actor Carice Van Houten has spoken openly about its presentation on Game of Thrones many times, questioning why many people are fine seeing violence, but hold different standards for nudity. Speaking to The Guardian, she elaborated: “[Nudity] is still a taboo, whereas violence is OK. You can see someone’s head shot off and that’s all fine. But a nipple? No.”

What Van Houten’s comments accentuate is that the very discomfort, the ‘taboo’ quality of depicting nudity and sex is what makes it so crucial in 21st century televised drama. Nudity and sex are both devices that can be employed by innovative screenwriters of shows as wide-ranging as This is England ’, ’86, ’88 and ’90 to Peaky Blinders, to interrogate many of the dynamics of power, class and control that are at play through the depictions of sexuality; a nexus which compounds and is symptomatic of some of the key concerns in characters’ relationships.

“You can see someone’s head shot off and that’s all fine. But a nipple? No.”

Take Jamie Lannister’s rape of his sister Cersei in the crypt of the Red Keep in Season 4 of GOT, adjacent to the corpse of their recently deceased son, Joffrey. Notably, this scene is not presented as a rape in the George R.R. Martin’s book, indeed, Cersei is depicted as a willing participant, but this scene is deliberately revised by the writers of the TV series. Hence this scene’s depiction of fictional sexual violence is a powerful tool that empowers the show’s writers to access the complex shifts of power and the pathological fractures and perversion of Cersei and Jamie’s relationship, as the overt sadomasochism of Jamie’s act draws attention to the mechanisms of political power and control that have continuously overshadowed their relationship.

His rape of Cersei can be interpreted as an explicitly political in its context, emphasising the Lannister’s personal and political insecurity following the murder of Joffrey more generally, as this is an act which symbolises a forced reclamation of (male) control and domination, of the (female) site and means of reproducing Lannister offspring.

In this sense, sex is a crucial thematic and formal device, which is increasingly being deployed as a means of directly confronting audiences with issues that otherwise might be unrepresented in their complexity, rather than solely to glamourise a show with the hope of ensuring greater commercial success.