my mom: *gets mad at my dog for exhibiting dog behaviors*

A friend of mine is also a fan of GOT and we were discussing the shitty season 8 writing. I brought up the topic of racism, specifically regarding the death of Missandei, and she didn't seem to see the issue about it. She said that "the whole issue of Missandei dying had nothing to do with race or that she was a woman. It was just an important part of Dany changing the way she did. It was part of the storyline. I wouldn't have read that deeply into it". (1/3)

She further stated that “if we were to apply that everywhere then any person of colour would be exempt from dying and it wouldn’t be about the characters or story anymore it would be abour race”. As a person of colour myself, who emigrated to a country with a white majority, it was difficult to find positive representation on mainstream media. (2/3)

And with her dismissing that point so easily, I wonder whether I’m just being too overly sensitive about this issue? Especially since it’s coming from a friend. (3/3)

Hello,

I’m sorry this happened to you because it’s very unfortunate. I understand this person is your friend but that doesn’t exclude them from being ignorant, and frankly, their response to your concerns was extremely ignorant both of history and literature. 

First, we should talk about representation. By season 8 of Game of Thrones, there are exactly 2 speaking roles for people of color, one is Missandei and one is Grey Worm, that’s all the representation that minorities have by the end of the series. The entire Dorne plot was completely butchered by the show, so any representation from there was eliminated in season 7. So there’s a serious lack of diversity and while the books have their own issues, there’s much more diversity there, so this is not a case of the casting being dictated by the narrative. 

Second, the death of Missandei has all kinds of tone-deaf/ racist symbolism surrounding it. We see the trope of the black friend dying to further the white friend’s narrative. In the books, Dany has a large entourage had they, not shrunk is so much their killing of Missandei wouldn’t have been so egregious.  But having the only woman of color die to further her best friends descent into madness, is not only racist, but it’s also sexist and misogynist to boot. Then you have Missandei, a woman who was once a slave, chained up. Really? It apparently occurred to no one that these visuals are well beyond offensive. 

It’s not like black characters can’t be killed off, that’s a starman argument. What the issue here is that the representation of people of color is so poor in films and TV that killing one of the two speaking roles for people of color in the entire series is pretty fucked up. Further, she didn’t die because of any choices she made, her death had nothing to do with her as a character, her death was solely created to further the narrative of Daenerys character. Missandei can’t even “earn” her own death. 

The writing for season 8 has led to a lot of frustration for a lot of people because it was so poorly constructed.  But aside from that, there are real issues of racism, sexism, and misogyny throughout the season and the series. As @ladyofdragonstone mentioned yesterday, we’ve been giving the series a pass for a long time because we were so enthralled in the story but now that it’s all over we really need to look back and question some of the narrative choices made, that did not have to be made. Because the message that they send is harmful. 

I think your friend should read up on how difficult it is for people of color to get roles in TV and movies, it’s even harder to get speaking roles and this is due to both unconscious bias (which your friend seems to be displaying) and conscious bias. Racism is very much still alive, having a black friend doesn’t make you immune to it. 

TTFN