pikapaula asked: I'd love to hear your take on the treatment of Lollys Stokeworth. Every time I re-read the bits about her, I feel really uncomfortable at the way her situation is almost played for comedic value. It's an incredibly tragic set of events, particularly considering she's pretty much an innocent by-stander, and yet I get this joke-y vibe off the whole thing. I just don't know what to make of it, especially since I would ordinarily defend GRRM against the usual charges of making light of rape, etc.
I am very used to really grotesque brutality played as black comedy — this is a feature of virtually all of my favorite shows, The Sopranos first and foremost, but also Breaking Bad and parts of Twin Peaks and moments in Deadwood and even, recently, Homeland — so the deadpan treatment of Lollys’s rape didn’t come across to me as demeaning to her. On the contrary, as is the case with most thoughtful use of blackly comic violence, it’s a condemnation of either the individuals or the society that enabled it.
This is different from just plain playing violence for laughs, where you’re intended to find suffering amusing, rather than the satirization of the people who make others suffer.
