Game of Thrones addict...

[Wildeybeast]

Quick caveat - Haven't read the books, so don't know much about how the breakdown of that relationship is portrayed.

But could it be a method of showing the shift with limited scenes, for plot reasons. Incredibly rubbish method, but a plot device type thing? (not defending the scene)

Basically, they just sort of drift apart. Jamie is actually growing as a person an developing something resembling moral fibre, and realises after Cersi's indiscretions with Lancel and her revulsion about his lack of hand that maybe she isn't who sphe thought she was. This takes all of that away from him.

Yeah the scene was mishandled, the director has said it wasn't supposed to be a rape scene because she consents towards the end which highlights one of the things the scene says about our culture. The characterisation makes the scene look even more gratuitous though:

Character A is known to dislike sexual violence
Character A is seriously injured defending Character B* from sexual violence
Character A sexually assaults Character C**

...what? It's just a mess.

*Ha
**Ha!

I didn't notice her struggling, but other than that I didn't notice her consenting.

It was also very incongruous with the previous scene, which had a rare moment of Tywin not being a complete sh1t and actually trying to look after his grandson (though in a typical out for himself sort of way). Just a massive misstep by a show that has otherwise handled the sex element fairly well. Very disappointing.

[eldargal]

She says 'no, it's wrong' at one point and he says he doesn't care.

[Gotthammer]

I did appreciate GRR Martin's response on the situation:

I think the “butterfly effect” that I have spoken of so often was at work here. In the novels, Jaime is not present at Joffrey’s death, and indeed, Cersei has been fearful that he is dead himself, that she has lost both the son and the father/ lover/ brother. And then suddenly Jaime is there before her. Maimed and changed, but Jaime nonetheless. Though the time and place is wildly inappropriate and Cersei is fearful of discovery, she is as hungry for him as he is for her.
The whole dynamic is different in the show, where Jaime has been back for weeks at the least, maybe longer, and he and Cersei have been in each other’s company on numerous occasions, often quarreling. The setting is the same, but neither character is in the same place as in the books, which may be why Dan & David played the sept out differently. But that’s just my surmise; we never discussed this scene, to the best of my recollection.

Also, I was writing the scene from Jaime’s POV, so the reader is inside his head, hearing his thoughts. On the TV show, the camera is necessarily external. You don’t know what anyone is thinking or feeling, just what they are saying and doing.
If the show had retained some of Cersei’s dialogue from the books, it might have left a somewhat different impression — but that dialogue was very much shaped by the circumstances of the books, delivered by a woman who is seeing her lover again for the first time after a long while apart during which she feared he was dead. I am not sure it would have worked with the new timeline.
That’s really all I can say on this issue. The scene was always intended to be disturbing… but I do regret if it has disturbed people for the wrong reasons.

Mind you I skipped the scene when watching so for me it never happened...

[Wildeybeast]

She says 'no, it's wrong' at one point and he says he doesn't care.

Does that count as consent? As soon as she says 'no' in a sex scene, it creates a range of problems. Is she voicing an objection to the location/time/presence of their son's corpse or to him (given her disgust at his hand) or to the actual act of sex? If any of the above are valid, surely she has still said no to sex at that moment in time. For him to then over ride that with 'I don't care' seems fairly clear it's rape. Either I'm missing something, or the director is really pretty stupid to not see that this clearly looks like rape.

I did appreciate GRR Martin's response on the situation:
Mind you I skipped the scene when watching so for me it never happened...

That is a well explained response if why it came out like it did and I'm glad to see he hasn't ignored peoples concerns, but it really needs Benioff and Weiss to come out say 'sorry, we effed up. That didn't come out how we meant to, we apologise'.
I wish I had done what you did. I really enjoyed that scene with Tywin and Tommen, it was his best since his sparring with Arya in Harrenhal.

[Gotthammer]

I luckily knew it was coming up and was very badly done (no means no is carved in stone in our society so really hard to read the scene any other way) so once the talking stopped jumped ahead. And like you said the Tommen/Tywin part of the scene was actually really well done.

[Denzark]

I don't think it glorified rape or talked it up. It just looked like rape. Maybe it was offensive to a lot of people. The directors said it wasn't supposed to be a rape. Take the extra context from GRRM above and also the book scene as written, and it just seems like they hashed it. I personally found it a lot less shocking than the Red Wedding. On my scale of personal disgust pregnant ladies getting knifed in pregnant belly is higher than rape.

[Wildeybeast]

I don't think anyone is suggesting that it glorified or talked up rape. The problem is it was unnecessary, out of keeping with the show and characters and just handled in a very cack handed way. They tried to make a scene shocking and succeeded for totally the wrong reasons. It would actually be better if they had intended to make it a rape scene; what is more worrying is that everyone involved in making that scene didn't see anything wrong with it and didn't pick up on how audiences would react.

[daboarder]

I'm curious as to the why now?

As in why now has the show crossed your (general your) moral event horizon?

Is it because the director made that statement claiming he didnt intend it to look like rape? Or is it merely the depiction of rape in and of itself?

If its the first then sure I can see why you would be upset by the directors thoughts on what constitutes rape, but then your responce should concern the director not the show itself.

As for the latter, do people really think that the depiction of rape is worse than the depiction of torturing children to death? because thats happened in this show.

Was the aggression in the scene unnecessary, sure I think it was, but its not by far the worse thing thats depicted in this show.

Hell in the same episode you have a bunch of people eating a child's parents in front of him, before killing him.....so....yeah....

[eldargal]

It was unnecessary and gratuitous and the fact that the director doesn't even know what rape is just shows what a problem how society has with rape culture when we think a man can force himself on a woman and if she doesn't resist in exactly the right yet undefined way it doesn't count as rape.

The problem with rape vs the other horrible things that happens on Game of Thrones is that all of those are either fictional entirely or so rare in the modern world that they are basically hypothetical to most people. The chance of being murdered in the UK is 1.2 in 100,000. The chance of being raped is about 1 in 5. Murder doesn't leave traumatised survivors who can be triggered by scenes like this, rape does. Most of the other hyper-violence in GoT is so obviously fictional it is easy to separate from reality. Rape isn't. Rape is a common, daily occurrence which is not taken seriously by society, its perpetrator are not punished and the onus is places on the victim not the aggressor. Rape is absolutely not something which should be used inserted into a show just to shock people because there are large numbers of people who have had hteir lives ruined by sexual assault around today to see what they suffered through being used as a cheap narrative trick in a television show.

Then there is the issue that it was completely inexplciable for Jaime to behave that way. He lost his hand defending Brienne from sexual assault, he is known to hate sexual violence and in the books the scene was consensual. So why wasn't it in the show? Because the men writing it don't understand what rape is, basically, and that is the issue. It isn't that GoT is bad it is that the people writing it have a poor record of dealing with this issue. They turned Drogo asking consent of Daenerys on their wedding night into a cruel joke (he didn't know what no meant), Ros was murdered in a highly sexualised way by Joffrey which was also unnecessary and now this. In contrast you had the scene with the raped and murdered village girls and their rapists who were killed by Brienne which was brutal but not gratuitous.

Also when people are talking about GoT in this regard we aren't criticising the show, the show isn't some kind of sentient being responsible for this. It is short hand for the people responsible for making these decisions. It wasn't even deliberate, that much is obvious but the problem was they mishandled it terribly and instead of owning that they are deflecting it and giving fodder to the many rape apologists coming out of the wood work on media sites and even tumblr. Its really horrible. The responses by the director and even Jaimes actor are onl serving to continue to mislead people as to what actually constitutes rape because they genuinely seem to think Cersei gave consent when she kissed Jaime despite struggling and crying and saying 'no'. You even have people saying she deserved it because she is a bad person or that because Jaime had done bad things somehow that excuses rape. The scene itself was bad, the reaction to it has been horrific.

[Psychosplodge]

I read on tumblr that they have given people personality transplants in the series one with this rape scene.
Another with the hound with the wood choopping in a village (in the books when asked to leave he does so peacefully)
They seem quite major personality flips...
Though I haven't seen the series