Back to having to be serious.
[color="#FF0000"]Warning: allusions to instances of sexual violence in this post[/color]
Concerning the red bit in the following.
From the DVD reviews for "Game of Thrones" Season 2 -
Excerpt from one of the reviews on amazon UK's main page, along with some of the user comments to the review:
amazon.co.uk/review/R903NCT4NUPR3/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B005PN8BUS&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283926&store=dvd#wasThisHelpful
And some of the comments to the above amazon customer review, including especially by the same person:
- the Game Of Thrones tv series is mainstream.
- It's highly popular.
- And it's based on the mainstream, highly-popular (but less explicit/sensationalist, as per the above) series of books.
The people who made the TV series did not just choose to throw in that scene - the one highlighted red in the above quoteblock - but have enclosed it in layers of deniability/excuses to protect themselves. Excuses like
- it's "just fiction", just tv, not reality
- it's a medieval-type fantasy, i.e. set in a messy historical (pseudo-medieval) time where people were likely to be oppressed and so rapes may have been more common. I.e. the "we're only trying to be realistic to the fantasy" excuse.
- the rape was not committed by a male - the excuse presumably being that this makes it less reprehensible - "it was committed by a female against another female". But even this crime will be expunged with the addendum "but she was made to do it" by some tyrant in charge, the "Joffrey" character mentioned in the excerpts.
- it was "only implied, not shown"
But the whole *rape* scene was clearly just for the purpose of "tittilation" as the western reviewer observed. That is, rape broadcast for the purpose of tittilation. (Clearly implying that some people get off on this.) I can't seem to get past that one word that I keep re-using, it's where all my incoherent feelings of mental revulsion seem to settle at: Disturbing.
Ultimately it's the same problem as with all the dubious and less dubious rape fantasies in various erotica and "romance" literature, including the kind written by feminists like Anne Rice: these too have carefully constructed fantasies so they can hide behind the excuse that "it's just fiction" - a theoretical setting to create acceptance for what would be crimes in the real world. (And in the case of so-called "erotica"/trash "romance" junk, they will even declare that in their constructed theoretical setting it wasn't really rape because the unwillingness was all pretend.) THe problem is these people are blurring important, really crucial lines. It seems to be okay for them when it all takes place in literature or on tv: they will stomach it then. Indeed, it even becomes 'sexy' in literature and 'tittilating' on tv. So there's no mental abhorrence that these book authors and screenplay writers/creators of such tv drama seem to feel as long as it's all just theoretical. But there's a very real hypocrisy in this discrepancy between their theoretical acceptance that only finds offence when these things manifest in practice in all their ugliness.
Again, there are some truly serious questions that ought to naturally arise and which these people (the types of authors and show creators under consideration) are either too naive to ask or - as I rather suspect - too irresponsible to want to face let alone answer. But if people are going to pretend to be mature members of a mature society, surely these are some of the most *basic* questions that ought to have been addressed. And correctly.
<blablabla - snip>
This statement the Game of Thrones reviewer made in his comment:
Why was the lack of further explicitness a cop-out? What worthwhile something should one have to say about sexual violence and exploitation that we should not already know without the existing (forget increased) explicitness? I thought the reviewer and commenters said the series was R-rated? I think that means the viewers tend to be adults. Yet even non-adults (like teens and younger children) know that sexual violence and exploitation are crimes against others. But it is adults that are hypocrites.
The thing is, that scene - which is not in the book according to the viewers above - was *written* specifically for sensationalist purposes, as admitted above. As is the purpose behind all glorified rape fictions.
In the 1st world/west, Rape - condemned in public and by the law - yet lives a full, elite life of respectability in the pages of fiction and on tv. It is thereby made free from any incensed person throwing rocks at its criminal presence amongst them. It is indeed untouchable: presumably decent people have to even make oaths declaring that they are not prudes before they will dare to criticise it, but they know that even such criticism will do nothing to shake Rape from its enthronement. So from its vantage-point of absolute safety, Rape jeers at the angered humans who are unable to eject it, while it thanks those who put it there and who maintain its secure position by glorifying it on tv and in books.
Like I said, Rape lives on - enjoying respectability even - in their psyche and their freedom of speech (fictions and tv). While in spaces infected/infested with christoislamania, rape lives on practically: e.g. christoislamaniacs (and communists, a subset of christianism) regularly gangrape Hindoos and other native religionists in the Indian subcontinent. Western missionaries rape the Hadzabe women*, an African heathen hunter-gatherer community and other African heathens**. Etc. (*See www.eco-action.org/dod/no8/tribal.html, section "Hadzabe: East Africa's Last Hunting and Gathering Tribe". ** See web.archive.org/web/20130602195333/http://freetruth.50webs.org/D4b.htm: 'Christian staff of Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) working in Africa were rapists: "NCA Raping Has Got To Stop! Norwegian Magazine publishes letter from ex-NCA employee woman who states that NCA took no action in Africa to stop staff from using prostitues and sexually abusing young indigenous women. Link")
[color="#FF0000"]Warning: allusions to instances of sexual violence in this post[/color]
[color="#FF0000"]Warning: allusions to instances of sexual violence in this post[/color]
Concerning the red bit in the following.
From the DVD reviews for "Game of Thrones" Season 2 -
Excerpt from one of the reviews on amazon UK's main page, along with some of the user comments to the review:
amazon.co.uk/review/R903NCT4NUPR3/ref=cm_cr_dp_cmt?ie=UTF8&ASIN=B005PN8BUS&channel=detail-glance&nodeID=283926&store=dvd#wasThisHelpful
Quote:32 of 41 people found the following review helpful
A bit like Dallas, but with naffing great swords, 7 Mar 2013
By Crookedmouth ""
[...]
One big deal with the TV series and an aspect that HBO most certainly "beefed-up" is the nudity. There's just as much in S2 than there was in S1 and both are a good deal "saucier" than the books. You can be sure that (with very few exceptions) if a female character is introduced, somewhere along the line you'll get to see her perfectly formed boobs and exquisitely trimmed/waxed thatch. Now as a bloke, I won't complain too much about this, but the amount of shagging (and [color="#0000FF"]some rather explotative sexual violence[/color]) does render the series out of the reach of the younger viewer who may have read the rather less explicit books. Along with the copious amounts of gore, the 18 Certificate is very well deserved. Note that the series itself is rated 18 but the individual episodes carry their own rating - 15 and 18 - depending on the content. Also note that the 15 rated episodes are still fairly explicit. I've added some additional thoughts in this review's comments section, below.
[...]
And some of the comments to the above amazon customer review, including especially by the same person:
Quote:Crookedmouth says:
Regarding the scenes of sex and violence, one might claim that the 18 Cert gives it away - what more (or less) should you expect? Fair comment, I suppose, but I do believe that over the last few years, the explicitness of sex & violence on film has increased considerably so that an 18 today is far more bloody and sexy than a general release 18 from a couple of decades ago. Perhaps I'm wrong, but compare the defining moment in, say, Alien with any one of the C18 episodes from GoT. Alien: some thrashing around, a lot of blood and an exploding tee-shirt (no entrails). GoT - throats and faces slashed open, entrails everywhere, tongues ripped out and held aloft and so-on and so-on.
I am no prude, but I was genuinely shocked that a US-produced TV serial should include such explicit s&v. Perhaps I just haven't been paying enough attention to the trends.
[color="#800080"](Strange how often people feel they need to qualify that they are "not prudes". Worse still when you think that it's come to people having to first make that qualification before mentioning that they feel they need to draw the line at sexual violence at least.)[/color]
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted on 12 Mar 2013 15:12:07 GMT
Last edited by the author on 12 Mar 2013 23:58:59 GMT
Crookedmouth says:
Then there's the sex. Perhaps the defining scene in GoT is the "Joffrey's birthday present" scene. I found it very interesting that the build-up of that scene included some shots that are most definitely soft-core material - perhaps a little too long-shot to see much detail, but defnitely verging on porn. The [color="#FF0000"]culmination of the scene is where Joff makes one of the ladies rape the other with his sceptre. That part of the scene is NOT shown - the camera looks elsewhere and the screams are brief.[/color] [color="#0000FF"]I thought that was a terrible cop out by the producers who could have used the scene to say something worthwhile about sexual violence and exploitation, but no - in the end it was there for nothing more than a bit of gratuitous, exploitative tittilation.[/color]
I honestly wonder, if this is representative of a real trend in attitudes towards this sort of content, where it will end up and how soon it will get there.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In reply to an earlier post on 22 Mar 2013 14:30:48 GMT
Mr. C. Murray says:
I believe that a lot of the 18 rated films from the 80's would attract no more than a 12 rating today.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In reply to an earlier post on 27 Mar 2013 09:51:02 GMT
Last edited by the author on 27 Mar 2013 09:55:41 GMT
Sam Woodward says:
I suspect it's down to Spartacus, which unashamedly appealed to the lowest common denominator in order to get noticed. I feel it wasn't necessary for GoT to take the same route since it had a lot more going for it from the offset, such as a huge fan base inherited from the books & a much better story. But there you go.
A certain amount of savagery is consistent with the feel of the books, where heroism doesn't guarantee a characters' survival in the same way it usually does in books/films. This is the attitude which I feel is becoming/has become a trend in TV shows, books & films - HBO's other series, The Walking Dead, also covers this theme, although I'm more familiar with the graphic novels than the TV series. But personally I don't think it justifies HBO shoe-horning in additional explicit content, all filmed close-up in HD widescreen. I certainly don't recall the sceptre scene being in the books.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In reply to an earlier post on 27 Mar 2013 09:56:53 GMT
Crookedmouth says:
"Spartacus" - I acidentally tuned into that once and saw a couple of large, muscular men with nae clothes on.
And when I say "large"...
Anyway. I quickly switched back to Cash in the Attic, I can tell you.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
In reply to an earlier post on 27 Mar 2013 10:25:07 GMT
Sam Woodward says:
To Cash In The Attic via Bulging Sacks (Of Cash) In The Basement
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Alison Towers says:
I can't help but feel sorry for all the actors who have to strip off and perform in order to give us a few minutes to nip off and put the kettle on and make a brew before the story gets going again.
I enjoyed the first series on Sky, which I've since unsubscribed but the sheer, relentless, overwhelming volume of the nudity and sex was really beginning to irritate me, and constantly interrupting the pace of the story .
Was thinking of getting the DVDs for series 2, but maybe I'll wait until it all appears on Lovefilm, as not sure I'd ever wish to actually plough through or repeatedly fast forward past all the heaving and grunting more than once after I'd caught up with the story.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
- the Game Of Thrones tv series is mainstream.
- It's highly popular.
- And it's based on the mainstream, highly-popular (but less explicit/sensationalist, as per the above) series of books.
The people who made the TV series did not just choose to throw in that scene - the one highlighted red in the above quoteblock - but have enclosed it in layers of deniability/excuses to protect themselves. Excuses like
- it's "just fiction", just tv, not reality
- it's a medieval-type fantasy, i.e. set in a messy historical (pseudo-medieval) time where people were likely to be oppressed and so rapes may have been more common. I.e. the "we're only trying to be realistic to the fantasy" excuse.
- the rape was not committed by a male - the excuse presumably being that this makes it less reprehensible - "it was committed by a female against another female". But even this crime will be expunged with the addendum "but she was made to do it" by some tyrant in charge, the "Joffrey" character mentioned in the excerpts.
- it was "only implied, not shown"
But the whole *rape* scene was clearly just for the purpose of "tittilation" as the western reviewer observed. That is, rape broadcast for the purpose of tittilation. (Clearly implying that some people get off on this.) I can't seem to get past that one word that I keep re-using, it's where all my incoherent feelings of mental revulsion seem to settle at: Disturbing.
Ultimately it's the same problem as with all the dubious and less dubious rape fantasies in various erotica and "romance" literature, including the kind written by feminists like Anne Rice: these too have carefully constructed fantasies so they can hide behind the excuse that "it's just fiction" - a theoretical setting to create acceptance for what would be crimes in the real world. (And in the case of so-called "erotica"/trash "romance" junk, they will even declare that in their constructed theoretical setting it wasn't really rape because the unwillingness was all pretend.) THe problem is these people are blurring important, really crucial lines. It seems to be okay for them when it all takes place in literature or on tv: they will stomach it then. Indeed, it even becomes 'sexy' in literature and 'tittilating' on tv. So there's no mental abhorrence that these book authors and screenplay writers/creators of such tv drama seem to feel as long as it's all just theoretical. But there's a very real hypocrisy in this discrepancy between their theoretical acceptance that only finds offence when these things manifest in practice in all their ugliness.
Again, there are some truly serious questions that ought to naturally arise and which these people (the types of authors and show creators under consideration) are either too naive to ask or - as I rather suspect - too irresponsible to want to face let alone answer. But if people are going to pretend to be mature members of a mature society, surely these are some of the most *basic* questions that ought to have been addressed. And correctly.
<blablabla - snip>
This statement the Game of Thrones reviewer made in his comment:
Quote:culmination of the scene is where Joff makes one of the ladies rape the other with his sceptre. That part of the scene is NOT shown - the camera looks elsewhere and the screams are brief. I thought that was a terrible cop out by the producers who could have used the scene to say something worthwhile about sexual violence and exploitation, but no - in the end it was there for nothing more than a bit of gratuitous, exploitative tittilation.
Why was the lack of further explicitness a cop-out? What worthwhile something should one have to say about sexual violence and exploitation that we should not already know without the existing (forget increased) explicitness? I thought the reviewer and commenters said the series was R-rated? I think that means the viewers tend to be adults. Yet even non-adults (like teens and younger children) know that sexual violence and exploitation are crimes against others. But it is adults that are hypocrites.
The thing is, that scene - which is not in the book according to the viewers above - was *written* specifically for sensationalist purposes, as admitted above. As is the purpose behind all glorified rape fictions.
In the 1st world/west, Rape - condemned in public and by the law - yet lives a full, elite life of respectability in the pages of fiction and on tv. It is thereby made free from any incensed person throwing rocks at its criminal presence amongst them. It is indeed untouchable: presumably decent people have to even make oaths declaring that they are not prudes before they will dare to criticise it, but they know that even such criticism will do nothing to shake Rape from its enthronement. So from its vantage-point of absolute safety, Rape jeers at the angered humans who are unable to eject it, while it thanks those who put it there and who maintain its secure position by glorifying it on tv and in books.
Quote:I honestly wonder, if this is representative of a real trend in attitudes towards this sort of content, where it will end up and how soon it will get there.
Like I said, Rape lives on - enjoying respectability even - in their psyche and their freedom of speech (fictions and tv). While in spaces infected/infested with christoislamania, rape lives on practically: e.g. christoislamaniacs (and communists, a subset of christianism) regularly gangrape Hindoos and other native religionists in the Indian subcontinent. Western missionaries rape the Hadzabe women*, an African heathen hunter-gatherer community and other African heathens**. Etc. (*See www.eco-action.org/dod/no8/tribal.html, section "Hadzabe: East Africa's Last Hunting and Gathering Tribe". ** See web.archive.org/web/20130602195333/http://freetruth.50webs.org/D4b.htm: 'Christian staff of Norwegian Church Aid (NCA) working in Africa were rapists: "NCA Raping Has Got To Stop! Norwegian Magazine publishes letter from ex-NCA employee woman who states that NCA took no action in Africa to stop staff from using prostitues and sexually abusing young indigenous women. Link")
[color="#FF0000"]Warning: allusions to instances of sexual violence in this post[/color]