Pop culture tends to be broadly progressive in its outlook, in the sense that history moves in an enlightened direction, and social gains, however painfully secured, are generally permanent. Movies and television also tend to be optimistic to the point of excitability about people who have previously been excluded from power gaining it, convinced that when women or people of color obtain high office that they’ll transform the institutions they inherit, rather than being transformed by them.
Netflix’s “The Crown,” a sumptuous drama about the reign of Elizabeth II (Claire Foy), joins “Game of Thrones” in its skepticism about that second proposition. In “Game of Thrones,” power is a malignancy, eating away at the women who possess it, corrupting their efforts at rebellion; in “The Crown,” at least so far, the office is amber, freezing the young queen in time and separating her even from the people closest to her. Either way, these stories suggest that progress isn’t permanent, and that what seems like a moment of change might be a trap.
The women of “Game of Thrones” have grown up in a viciously misogynist culture. Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) has been subject to more than a decade of marital rape. Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) was abused and sold by her brother, Viserys (Harry Lloyd). Sansa Stark (Sophie Turner), who initially harbored romantic notions about the system in which she lived, was humiliated and abused by her first intended husband, Joffrey Baratheon (Jack Gleeson), married off to his uncle Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) in attempt to humiliate them both, and married off again to Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon), a psychopathic serial rapist.
But while “Game of Thrones” acknowledges their feelings of revenge and liberation, the show is clear-eyed about the extent to which these women play out old scripts and fall into old traps in their quests for safety and freedom.