HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - will this be just for nerds? (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

They've aged up a few people and sidestepped a HUGE amount of sexual/sexualized violence and barbarism. That scene where Danaerys saves the captured women, you see a corpse being dropped into a pile of corpses? That's supposed to be a pile of women who have already been RAPED TO DEATH. And so on.

I mean they aged up Danerys, too, she's supposed to be...fourteen? That would be JUST TOO SHOCKING, I guess, although having two whores finger each other on camera apparently...isn't?

episode 8 was the first time i cared for sansa. not just because she stood up for her father, but because we saw and could empathize with her confusion in her situation. she's previously been portrayed simply and lazily as a "brat".

cersei is portrayed well imo. i've not read the books but she has a good range of manipulation. the scenes with her and sansa she does this kind of big sister thing, it's quite creepy.

xxp: well in fairness, that's what whores do

also the show plays up a connection between Ned and Sansa that I missed in the book (largely due to hoping Sansa would die every time she popped up), namely the infatuation with honor

arya being all cool and swashbuckling like the male starks makes her "fit" the family more than her sister but yeah i think the thing to remember is that from her parents' pov arya is a weird and even slightly alarming anomaly and sansa is the girl who's been successfully brought up to be a princess.

sort of unsurprising that the sexual initiation and rape of a 14-year-old girl might be more shocking than two (presumably adult) prostitutes getting it on...

Yeah I was going to say...

That scene where Danaerys saves the captured women, you see a corpse being dropped into a pile of corpses? That's supposed to be a pile of women who have already been RAPED TO DEATH. And so on.

― Back up the lesbian canoe (Laurel), Thursday, June 9, 2011 1:05 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

yeah, i was surprised by how daintily this scene was presented, given its obvious subject: the gang rape of a village's women. you could hardly tell what was going on. show is usually much more brazen abt such stuff.

No I know that was just my momentary annoyance at the show defanging the things that are actually supposed to be shocking/show real depravity/create contrast to other or later scenes and people.

xxxp

/cersei is... brittle, which is probably right./

i think lena heady is kind of great as cersei. she's a straight-up villain, but her human motivations are clearly apparent. we saw the lingering traces of tender affection she bore for her late husband even through the years of betrayal and contempt that hardened her heart against him. we see the cruelty of her manipulations, but also the anxious familial devotion that drives them. i like that, the way she portrays the struggle between cersei's more humane impulses and the ruthless ambition that ultimately overwhelms them.

I agree! can't wait to see how she does upcoming cersei

i don't really have a problem with them dropping explicit explanations of things like the pile of raped women because (A) i thought they were often kind of callow and leering in the books and (B) the SAVAGE NOMADIC HORSE LORDS are taking settled women as prisoners, what do you think's happening to them

that said if there is ever a brutal extended rape scene i just hope someone talks exposition continuously over the top of it

yeah, i didn't need to see extended barbarian raep scenes, but it looked more like herding sheep. odd decision, when the point could easily have been made cinematically w/out wallowing in it.

in general, though, less rapey is better...

My wife knew exactly what they were doing to those women without having it spelled out. She found it pretty noxious as presented.

I'm not looking for it to be more horrifying, was just expressing irritation with the whole "violence violence, that's totes fine, let's rip out some tongues on camera, guys!" but, like, Sansa and Danaerys have to be aged up and have the sexualized parts of their stories softened/erased because the pretty-much-historical truth of marrying off 14-yr-old girls and what happens to them afterward is too difficult to make titillating.

too difficult?

fair point. can see why they'd shirk away from it tho.

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It's not stopping me from enjoying the show or anything. Obv.

I agree with you (Laurel). Also find the gratuitous nudity and violence to be kind of distracting and unnecessary in general. Almost wishing AMC would have made this show in a way. Gotta love HBO's budget, though.

xxxp's

was just expressing irritation with the whole "violence violence, that's totes fine, let's rip out some tongues on camera, guys!" but, like, Sansa and Danaerys have to be aged up and have the sexualized parts of their stories softened/erased

oh yeah no argument here, welcome to america

the tongue ripping was totally o_O

Lol as I saw someone say on a comment thread recently, "How do you like America? Have you been here long?"

I think one of the lines this show has been walking (and is not the first to walk it -- we're rewatching the Sopranos recently and it has similar issues) is that on one hand there's this heavy theme of the consequences of noble politics. so you've got the butcher's son being killed, or the woman being raped/killed as consequence of war ("this is what war is") or the other casualties that come about because of the machinations of these nobles. at the same time, tho, there's this very real risk of aestheticizing in a pleasurable way these things we're supposed to find repulsive. in the Sopranos that's getting all hyped up and excited whenever the show shows violence. I think that show handled it by trying to implicate us in our own enjoyment (generally thru these proxy witness figures of Carmella, or Melfi), but it's less convincing when Daeny is horrified partially bc of what ppl are noting (that the full horror is not brought home) but also bc she seems to get it both ways. She gets to stop the horrifying stuff and still become the agent of those actions. I kept waiting for Drogo to put his foot down here, that it's impossible to keep an army running if you undermine their traditions of militancy (OT a little but very interesting article recently about how rape in war creates kinship bonds between soldiers -- http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/05/is-rape-inevitable-in-war/239480/). I'm not particularly upset about this, bc really who wants to see that much gritty realism in a television program? But I think the Sopranos, which is atm a superior show (tho who knows where GoT will end up in a season or two) didn't shy away from those uncomfortable elements.

I'm not sure I've fully thought this out, but just some ideas...

tbh if you're waiting for Drogo to put his foot down, you've misread the Drogo/Daenerys relationship

Sansa and Danaerys have to be aged up and have the sexualized parts of their stories softened/erased because the pretty-much-historical truth of marrying off 14-yr-old girls and what happens to them afterward is too difficult to make titillating.

― Back up the lesbian canoe (Laurel), Thursday, June 9, 2011 1:23 PM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark

well, it wouldn't be difficult to much such stuff titillating, though. it's just that we're extremely uncomfortable w/ that kind of titillation. tbh, given the initial comments itt about the rapeyness of the books, i'm kind of glad that the show has soft-pedaled this aspect.

"...it wouldn't be difficult to make such stuff titillating..."

Like are Littlefoot's two lesbians comparable to the strippers at the Bada Bing Club? The former seemed designed to titillate the audience and only failed to do so bc of how obvious that attempt was. Compare to the exchange between Ralphie and the stripper in Sopranos where the conditions of violence + depravity they live in practically made it impossible to ever enjoy watching them dance. xp

Maybe not put his foot down but would he really destroy his kingdom bc she asked him too?

You should imagine my whole last line in the driest tone possible, fyi. Yeah, I don't want to see an HBO-icized 14yo Daenerys get raped in public in front of the entire Dothraki population either, or any number of other horrifying things that are going to happen later in their full appallingness. I think our discomfort at that kind of scene is the GOOD and right thing. I do wonder a bit if it will start to undermine later elements, though.

Maybe not put his foot down but would he really destroy his kingdom bc she asked him too?

the significance of the "he can dominate everyone, if you dominate him it will drive him wild" conversation seems to have been undersold

basically Daenerys is an embodiment of the "magic punani" trope

um, i hope that wasn't spoilerz? sadface. xp

No, that was already supposed to have happened but the show took it out!

what exactly happened in the books + when?

on one hand there's this heavy theme of the consequences of noble politics. so you've got the butcher's son being killed, or the woman being raped/killed as consequence of war ("this is what war is") or the other casualties that come about because of the machinations of these nobles. at the same time, tho, there's this very real risk of aestheticizing in a pleasurable way these things we're supposed to find repulsive.

i think that in stories like this, we expect demonstrations of outrage at the human consequences of noble politics, but that such demonstrations are often mere pretense, social pleasantries adopted to disguise the fact that we enjoy the carnage, the spectacle and cruelty of power. we wouldn't build so many of our stories around ruthless rulers if we didn't find something fundamentally exciting about them.

tbh if you're waiting for Drogo to put his foot down, you've misread the Drogo/Daenerys relationship

― DJP

"Maybe not put his foot down but would he really destroy his kingdom bc she asked him too?"

the significance of the "he can dominate everyone, if you dominate him it will drive him wild" conversation seems to have been undersold

― DJP

stuff that should have already happened

Mordy, maybe I made that up/transplanted it from another book??? I'm not finding references to it online now and I haven't read Bk 1 in a long time, but I thought that at some point Drogo had to um well that it had to be in public under the stars, in the manner of the horses that are the Dothraki lifesblood. It DID happen, didn't it??

he's whipped. that's all they're saying.
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jeez, I thought ppl were antsy about spoilers on the Doctor Who thread

we wouldn't build so many of our stories around ruthless rulers if we didn't find something fundamentally exciting about them.

I actually stopped reading the books because there wasn't anyone in them that I really found admirable, except maybe Arya. (I don't know why I don't find the Night's Watch compelling, but I don't.) Having actual human beings in the roles makes it easier.

If I hadn't read the books I don't know that I would like people to be correcting me, or telling me what actually happened, every time I tried to discuss the show. More fun to discuss when everyone has the same data.

So yeah I guess we need two threads for this now? One for those who've read the books and one for those who haven't?

not having read the books tho, i have no problem being brought up to speed on things the series might have omitted.
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my comment was based entirely on what was presented on the show

I mean seriously, what has this board come to if I can't use several cryptic posts to set up a "magic punani" joke

Going back to the show ... did anyone else hate the scene with Jon Snow and the undead wight? Didn't work for me.

well it didn't bother me...

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