The Spectacle and Reification of Game of Thrones

Abstract

Tortures and executions have been publicly displayed to deter crime, but their staging has also been characterized as spectacle. Public spectacle, and associated technologies, were foundational to the aggregated graphic depiction of Damiens the regicide sentenced to death by torture. Pain was not considered as the sole purpose, but rather to inflict trauma and cause shame. We see that the sovereign holds power over the body, often considered a vessel to be regulated and managed. In this article, the author explores the events surrounding the walk of atonement conducted by Cersei Lannister in Game of Thrones. This article analyzes how power structures use brutality to cause trauma. The queen is confined to a prison cell where she is psychologically and spiritually tortured by religious fanatics using technologies of private disciplinary power. She is then forced to walk naked through the streets of King’s Landing. As she progresses, her body is pelted with fruit, manure, and bodily fluids, and she endures jeers and curses from the public. A septa (nun) follows her, repeating the word shame eighty-eight times. Her body becomes degraded and objectified. The author’s argument is grounded in a unique reading of disciplinary power, which he has conceptualized as traumapower, defined as the use of public (spectacle) and private (confinement) disciplinary power to inflict physical, psychological, and spiritual harm. In Cersei’s confinement and walk, we see the manifestation of traumapower. This article explores how external power structures are operationalized to assert body control through trauma, thus rendering it docile.