Alyssa Rosenberg: How much violence is too much on ‘Game of Thrones’? {Spoilers}
In some of these cases, a willingness to depict extreme violence or the after-effects of a wound or torture is of direct service in overturning our gilded dreams about golden ages past. Armor might augment the man who wears it, but it does nasty things to that same man when his chain-mail gets bashed into his skin.
And depictions of violence can also be useful in explaining the rules of the world to a viewer. The reason Ned Stark’s (Sean Bean) beheading at the end of the first season of “Game of Thrones” is so upsetting isn’t just because of the blood or violence involved. It’s because Ned’s death lets us know what characters like Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) have done and are willing to keep doing to survive. In a similar way, though I don’t particularly like watching Ramsay Bolton torture and hunt people, a few initial scenes of that nature do help establish what sort of behavior will be treated as tolerable if you’re of sufficiently noble blood and the child of a sufficiently cold fish, which Roose Bolton (Michael McElhatton) certainly is.
But what happens after the audience has gotten the point? I can’t imagine there’s a “Game of Thrones” viewer who doesn’t understand by this point that the series is set in a phenomenally violent world where the rich do hideous things to the poor, and where men claim full dominion over the bodies of women.
When some of us start bumping up against our limits, it’s not so much that we’re asking for the rules of the world to change, but that we don’t need to have the same points reiterated for us over and over again. I think it makes narrative and emotional sense that Ramsay Bolton would kill Walda and her child, and I don’t think “Game of Thrones” should have done something different with this part of the story.
From: How much violence is too much on ‘Game of Thrones’? – The Washington Post
The reason Ned Stark’s (Sean Bean) beheading at the end of the first season of “Game of Thrones” is so upsetting isn’t just because of the blood or violence involved. It’s because Ned’s death lets us know what characters like Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) have done and are willing to keep doing to survive
That is, Rosenberg has no idea why Ned got killed and who did and didn’t want that to happen.Report
I doubt many show watchers (or book readers, for that matter) would know who to, ahem, finger for that particular crime.Report
Even he didn’t expect Ned to wind up dead. The fix was in: Ned would confess to being a traitor and be allowed to take the Black, which gets him completely out of the way (at the edge of the world and sworn not to mess with politics) without starting a civil war. But they didn’t figure on a certain monster whose word was law.Report
The circumstantial case is fairly convincing that somebody whispered in Joffrey’s ear. So who benefits from a dead Ned? Like you say, Ned’s death prevented the quick and relatively bloodless resolution of the war, which was what both the Starks and the Lannisters all wanted. Littlefinger, on the other hand, ungrq Arq sbe zneelvat Png, fcrag gur ragver svefg obbx pbafcvevat gb oevat gur Ynaavfgref naq Fgnexf vagb ivbyrag pbasyvpg, and saw instability and war as a ladder by which he could punish those that he felt had slighted him and achieve the power, love, and social standing that he felt had been denied him due to his low birth.Report
Interesting. I’d never gone beyond “Sure, that’s what monsters like Joffrey do”, but you make a plausible case. Though one of Joffrey’s motives was that he enjoyed being sadistic towards Sansa, and hurting her is one of the few things Littlefinger wouldn’t do.Report
The key in the show was the reaction shot. Varys and Cersei screaming, and Littlefinger sitting there smirking.Report
If Littlefinger was so concerned about causing Sansa emotional harm, he wouldn’t have done, well, anything that he did in the series.Report
It’s all about the goals. Sure she cries a little today, but he’s not someone who tries to win a game of chess on the first 10 moves. He’s got his win marked for move #408.Report
@mike-schilling
Indeed, she managed to get both the decision-maker and the motive wrong. Although, I submit the most shocking death of Season 1 wasn’t Eddard Stark, it was Drogo and Danaerys’s child.Report
This ignores that Cersei had brokered a “confession” out of Ned, in exchange for which he’d get to take the black and his family would get to go home to Winterfell except for Hostage Sansa. Little Joffrey The Pissant ruined it all by insisting on another wolf being slain.
The violence was necessary to the narrative there because Ned alive would have been too strong a focus for anti-Lannister resistance: even untested young Robb inherited that charisma and made a credible bid for independence. Leaving Ned in the picture means too many people agitating for King Eddard, the first of his name, of House Stark.Report
You’re forgetting about the oath that accompanies taking the Black. As much as Robert wants to kill every Targaryen, even children, he has no fear of ones in the Night Watch. And a publicly disgraced Ned, succeeded by his son in lawful fashion, is not particularly a source of outrage.Report
Tywin Lannister summarized it as “Madness and stupidity” and then backed up his sentiments with action by dispatching his most despised child to take charge of Kings’ Landing in his absence.Report
I agree with Mike’s assessment here. In the GoT world, taking the Black really is a magical reset button. It restores family honor, forgives you for murder, removes you as a threat to someone’s power, etc. And Ned was considered the most honorable man in Westeros. If he had taken the Black everyone would have known that removed him from the game.Report
Sean Bean being beheaded wasn’t a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention to his career. If there was any surprise, it’s that it was in the first act, not the third….Report
I think she’s very aware of who the culprit was in that particular case, but also that said guilty party isn’t a factor into the modern seasons. Lady Lannister, on the other hand, certainly ~is~ still a factor and her character weighs heavily on the minds of current viewers.
Though I might take her to task for saying “to survive”….. She is clearly not just surviving, she is reaching for every bit of power she can.Report
Tywin’s child knows well the need for power, in order to survive. Does she reach for it as a sort of protection? Of course — for well she knows what lot the powerless have in life, adrift on the fated winds like thistledown.Report
When you play the game of thrones, you win, or you die.Report
Game of Thrones is supposed to be a deconstruction of the sanitized medieval world of the typical fantasy novel. It goes to far in the other direction at times though.Report
You know, I’ve never seen an episode of Game of Thrones and probably never well. One day I am going to work on essay on why the Internet seems to make pop culture a compulsion.Report
@saul-degraw
Wasn’t a lot of the high-culture that you prefer to consume actually the pop culture of its day?Report
Some high culture used to be the pop culture of it’s day but a lot of it was high culture and remained so. During the late 19th century pop culture was vaudeville, music hall, sports, and early movies. The popular theater were melodramas were basically spectacles on stage rather than Ibsen or Chekov.Report
So then, it wasn’t that Saul prefers old pop culture vs. new pop culture…it’s just that he thinks our low culture is dumb.Report
I contend that he hasn’t the experience to judge game of thrones without watching even a second of it.
It’s one thing to say “that sounds stupid” (Lord knows, I do it often enough) — but don’t judge a film until you’ve at least sat through 15 minutes of it.Report
I also think Beowulf, which I was assigned to read at least twice in college, was certainly the GoT of its day. There are plenty of like examples.Report
A fine point that. I wonder if we have any examples of Arrested Development, from ages past and gone?Report
Ea Nasir was the Bluth enterprises of his day.Report
The Canterbury Tales…Report
Not rich enough. Sure it’s humor, but it lacks the depth.
Canterbury Tales feels a lot more like Saturday Night Live, doesn’t it?Report
In that it tends to go on too long after the point has been made? Yes, I agree.Report
Which is entirely up to you. But can you see how off-putting it is when you say it that way?Report
It’s better than dune.
But if you’ve never seen Lynch’s Dune, you owe it to yourself to watch it — simply for the set design and worldbuilding.
Lynch given a budget does amazing work.Report
When I was a kid, we regularly had access to books that talked about pop culture and how wicked it was. Lyrics of “rock and roll” songs were listed (and the phrases from the songs that were played backwards) and scenes from popular movies, television shows, and even Saturday Morning Cartoons were dissected.
Look at this album cover!
Look at this stage outfit!
Read what Papa Smurf said!
Those provincial rubes.Report
I never understood this aspect of Protestant Christianity. The Catholic Church exerted a great deal of moral censorship but it wasn’t as total as what some Protestants went for. The Catholic Church was perfectly fine with secular entertainment as long as it wasn’t too against the teachings of the Church. So something like a Frank Capra movie or Frank Sinatra would be fine for Catholics to watch or listen to. Some of the Protestant Churches went completely against all secular entertainment. If it wasn’t about Jesus, it was evil and immoral.Report
“The Catholic Church was perfectly fine with secular entertainment as long as it wasn’t too against the teachings of the Church.”
…dedicating an opera to the devil himself was a bit too far.Report
And that was before the internet! Imagine how useful a list of “Don’t let your children watch this film! Especially not the part starting at 23:17, when her low-cut top slips down” would be.Report
I think it’s interesting that we pretend our world isn’t just as violent and disgusting as the world of a Song of Ice and Fire.
We describe it as a violent fantasy, when it is in fact simply realist.Report
There was a lot more casual violence in the world in the past but it wasn’t as gritty as Game of Thrones made it out to be either. The idea of law and order was important and most people really didn’t like being hurt or killed back than either.Report
Lee,
The princes of the day were paranoid sadists (see shooting animals that were in fences and couldn’t get away). The Powers that Be haven’t deviated much from that in the present, either.
The idea of law and order is always important… for keeping the little people in line.Report
You sweet summer child!Report
What I find distasteful about the whole line of inquiry the subject article forwards is the underlying notion that everything is for everybody.
If I am dismayed by moral depravity announced as the the triumph of man by Kenny Rogers because I am strictly opposed to gambling, then I must be looking a little too hard for something to whine about.
Which is what’s going on with this thing.
If the amount of violence in GoT is the biggest thing you’ve got to worry about– or even big enough to make it onto your radar– life must be pretty good.
That is, when I say that the writer of this Post piece should go to hell, I mean that in the nicest possible way.Report
Nonsense. Alyssa Rosenberg is an old friend to this very site.
Writing about pop culture is her job. She’s pretty good at it, too.Report
Will,
Indeed, I suggest you worry about college football instead.
[The humor in this is very deep and subtle. I find I enjoy a rather layered humor.]Report