Analysis of the representation of gender roles in the female characters of the TV series Game of Thrones and Vikings

Abstract

Gender studies and television studies in the current panorama have been and are the object of study from various theoretical and methodological approaches. The literature on this subject adheres to a high association of women to stereotyped and hypersexualized roles. The emergence of feminist movements in recent years, such as the Me Too, could have been reflected in the audiovisual industry through the introduction of female characters away from traditional archetypes. This study seeks to determine the role assumed by female subjects in two of the most successful productions of recent decades: Game of thrones and Vikings. Through the technique of content analysis and discourse analysis, and according to theoretical criteria of gender, a total of 6 female protagonists of a corpus of 28 chapters have been studied. The work provides a portrait of the evolution of each character's role throughout the series as a whole, as well as a comparison between them. The results reveal a treatment of the female character of power characterized by the implicit assumption of traditional stereotypes.