By RACHEL M. BOLTON
Arts Editor
Women in the media have been getting more attention these days, from Miley Cyrus’ antics at the VMAs to Wendy Davis and her epic filibuster. I feel that now is a good time to talk about another aspect of the representation of women: the killing off of female characters on television shows.
The death of a well-loved character is always controversial, and can result in angry fans jumping ship. The loss of the character can have other issues when it comes to the gender of the deceased. This is a wide reaching topic, so I will merely stick to two examples. *Spoiler Alert* for the third seasons of Downton Abbey and Game of Thrones.
The killing off of a female character is problematic when it is done to merely shock the audience and to further the plot of a male character. Comic Book Writer Gail Simone, termed this “Women in Refrigerators.” Not to say that killing a female character for shock value is intrinsically bad, it is simply a matter of doing it well.
The recent television season saw the deaths of Lady Sybil from Downton Abbey and Talisa Stark from Game of Thrones. Both losses are similar because they were done to surprise the audience. They are also two of the most disturbing deaths I have seen on a television show, due to the fact that they took pregnancy and turned it into an element of horror. However, one was handled far better than the other.
Lady Sybil’s is a slow building tragedy that made me bite my nails watching the episode, because I knew it was coming. She had eclampsia, a form of high blood pressure in pregnancy, and sadly, the doctors tending to her argue whether or not she had it until it is too late.
The worst part is that she appears fine for a few hours after delivering her daughter, and then she goes into graphic seizures and dies surrounded by her family in a matter of moments.
While audiences sobbed at the death of the kind-hearted Sybil, it moved the plot along and its far reaching effects drove the stories of the remaining season. It is a not perfect, but good example of how to kill off a character, make the audience mourn, and not screw it up big time.
Now we come to Talisa. My opinion on why her death was poorly done, is because I read the books Game of Thrones is based on. The first problem is that Talisa was created for the show. Robb still breaks his vow to House Frey and marries another woman in the books, but she is very different from Talisa. Neither is she pregnant, and nor does she die.
During the Red Wedding, the betrayed Freys stab a pregnant Talisa repeatedly in the stomach while she watches and screams. Her death is overly violent even for a blood drenched show like Game of Thrones.
Her manner of death is unique to her in a moment where hundreds are being butchered. Talisa is singled out because she is a pregnant woman, it turns what is a normal part of the human existence into gore-porn. Unlike Sybil, she was a character merely created to die, unlike her literary counterpart. Her murder is meant to shock the audience and clutch their own bellies, and that’s it. Sure, Robb gets to hold her after she’s dead, but that’s not the point of the scene. It is his tragedy, and she is collateral damage.
Compare this to Catelyn Stark, another woman who dies in the same sequence. Her death is the culmination of her character arc and nor is it the end of it, unlike T
alisa’s. Cat is also killed in a way that has nothing to do with her being a woman, and is still chilling.
The biggest difference between Sybil and Talisa’s deaths is that Sybil is mourned by the whole cast and discussions of it create good character drama. It is not a one-off that the audience rages at and is forgotten the next episode. The writers showed how it impacted her family and friends, and not just her husband.
That’s the problem with Talisa’s death. There is no one left to mourn for her. Poor Robb doesn’t get long to be sad, and he is the only one who is. Yes, this happens in reality, but this is television, where people expect fantasy and instead it reveals bad choices by the writers.
Why is this important you say? Because violence against women is a huge problem in real life and we should be wary when it is turned into entertainment. While you may think that I am standing too high on my lofty soapbox, I believe that you must be critical of the media you consume. Do you want to watch things like a couch potato or someone with a brain?
In future, I want writers to focus on creating good drama and to show that event A always leads to consequence B,C, and D. This is true of killing female characters, who need to die as developed characters and not as an unsettling “haha made you watch that!”
