TV shows

[End Master]

From what I can tell it seems like a lot of people are agreeing with you somewhat judging by a lot of the comments saying they're quitting the show due to there being no clear good guys and too much darkness. Along with too much gore/rape.

People were starting to root for Stannis a bit, but now that he's a daughter killer, they don't like him at all and he's considered even worse than Ramsay the torture rapist now.

While I'm not so much surprised to hear about the throwing a little girl onto a sacrificial Yule log, I am a little surprised that they took Stannis in that direction since even in the last episode I watched this season he seemed pretty adamant that he unconditionally loved his daughter so it does seem pretty inconsistant.

[dreamshell]

Um yeah, you missed quite a bit, namely my whole post... I explained that I had once scored a goal in gym class, made extra impressive by the fact that I was playing defense during that particular soccer game and the goalie of the opposing team was the school bully. He said "I'm gonna get you for that," and just to save his manly reputation from being defeated by an undersized girl in glasses (the ones he later punched into my face), he rounded up a gang of kids who beat the shit out of me the next day at recess. His humiliation turned into my assault.

I didn't miss your post, Ves. But in my reading, I did apparently confuse your 'humiliation' of a seven-year-old boy as you having been a seven-year-old boy, which threw me off. So that just had me wondering briefly if maybe there was some long-standing gender-based in-joke I'd never been privy to on this forum. I apologize for my misinterpretation and if my response to your unfortunate childhood experience seemed dismissive in any way. That sounds like a really tremendously shitty time. FWIW, I remember I got roughed up in elementary school once by some kid, taller and more athletic than me, only to discover later that he was actually a grade below me, which somehow added to my own embarrassment. Must be more of that bullshit machismo.

I don't know where the scintillating philosophy is supposed to be. ...What philosophy?

While I would hardly argue the show is the epitome of refinement or keen insight into human nature, that doesn't mean it altogether lacks anything interesting to reflect upon. Since I don't have perfect memory recall, I sought out a transcript of the episode and some relevant dialogue to share; I'll forgo the section where the characters weigh the pros and cons of the Big Man and Little Man, as you've already made your stance on the show's representation of that clear and it is the less compelling part of the exchange anyway. It reads pretty much as I remember it, but forgive any errors, they are not mine;

Hizdahr: Yet it's an unpleasant question, but what great thing has ever been accomplished without killing or cruelty?
Tyrion: It's easy to confuse what is with what ought to be, especially when what is has worked out in your favor.
Hizdahr: I'm not talking about myself. I'm talking about the necessary conditions for greatness.
Daenerys: That is greatness?
Hizdahr: That is a vital part of the great city of Meereen, which existed long before you or I and will remain standing long after we have returned to the dirt.
Tyrion: My father would have liked you.
Daenerys: One day your great city will return to the dirt as well.
Hizdahr: At your command?
Daenerys: If need be.
Hizdahr: And how many people will die to make this happen?
Daenerys: If it comes to that, they will have died for a good reason.
Hizdahr: Those men think they're dying for a good reason.
Daenerys: Someone else's reason.
Hizdahr: So your reasons are true and theirs are false? They don't know their own minds, but you do?
Tyrion: Well said. You're an eloquent man. Doesn't mean you're wrong.
[Daenerys?]: In my experience, eloquent men are right every bit as often as imbeciles.

Admittedly, it's not the most brilliant piece of writing and there are plenty of nitpicky tangents one could go on about any single comment - but that's sort of the point. There's something more to chew on there than mindless violence, T'n'A and showy CGI. Or would you say I am just starving for any deeper meaning to take away from the show's otherwise shallow portrayal? Maybe you have a higher standard for the exploration of ideas or a lower threshold for the middlebrow elements of the show than me, but I guess my argument is that different people take away different things.

What troubles me too is that there are so many stupid people out there and that this is the closest thing they're ever going to get to philosophy, mythology, history or even halfway decent storytelling (at least in the earlier episodes that were still heavily reliant on the source material). A more skillful show would whet people's appetites for the real thing.

Well, the books and show certainly whet mine. Granted, I enjoyed all the things you mention before I ever knew about ASoIaF/Game of Thrones, but I think much like the risk of a movie or game or album setting someone off on a killing spree, there are going to be pre-existing issues for people coming in. Those who don't place as much importance on a given setting or entertainment in general will glean a bit, maybe pause and contemplate as they sit on the couch and then move on with their own lives, leaving what they've digested largely to their subconscious. The 'lowest common denominator' types will only get the barest, crudest benefits; the sex and blood and spectacle. If neither of these groups were predisposed to explore the world around them any more deeply before, why should a television program change that? Perhaps one in every few thousand will have a fire lit under their ass, but again, people take away different things. But there is something to be said for the decline in quality art tends to undergo when it enters the public consciousness of the uncritical majority and is reformatted for its consumption.

Elsewhere in your post (as well as in the threads), you touch a bit on the age-old concerns of violence-as-entertainment, its influence on and the general dumbing down and desensitizing of society, which are all certainly worthwhile things to debate and definitely subjects you seem passionate about. I don't necessarily disagree with you in this particular case, but I hesitate to equate the examination of something with its endorsement (another long-standing dispute associated with art, however we define it). One might argue that the show intends (leaving alone its success or failure) to reinforce the need for the exact opposite of its characters' primary mindset, method of governance or what-have-you (i.e. brutal social Darwinism and the general 'might makes right' mentality), at least in its better moments. Remember, it's an oft-repeated detail that unless everyone can band together, the existential threat personified by the Others/White Walkers will likely claim them all. It could also be taken as a long-form object lesson in the Sisyphean (to bring up mythology) struggle against cruelty and despotism.

Or it could just be juvenile bloodsport, which I wouldn't deny it indulges in with frequency, but which could also be another point-in-and-of-itself. It's been a matter of contention since the show began how much of its more repugnant elements are meant to simply shock our sensibilities while satisfying our savage id and how much of that is a purposeful commentary on the entertainment industry's tendency to glorify things like violence and objectification. The problem is things get murky because the results are the same either way insofar as what we see on-screen. I'm inclined to believe it's mainly the former now, regardless of whether or not it ever started out as the latter.

The author of these books is a history buff, and his work of fiction is also geared towards children, except these children have drivers' licenses and jobs and children of their own. Fantasy was long considered a lesser genre because it has always had the habit of stumbling over itself, of sacrificing good storytelling to all the hocus-pocus trappings and easily manipulable plot points.

People, in general, require cultural myths and legends, commonly known and widely spread stories that carry philosophical questions or deeper truths about ourselves and our civilization. ...[I]n these hands you will just have a whole new generation of fucktards who have lost the greater part of themselves. Maybe they won't miss what they've never known, but what they've never known is colossal and dare I say integral to maintaining the fabric of what we call communal existence.

You make some strong points, though I hope you won't throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to SF&F and its merit for telling powerful and thoughtful stories, especially if due to the 'hocus-pocus'; if there was anything I'd consider giving someone the label of 'snob' for, it's that. But the present laziness of our culture in terms of both its entertainment intake (and thus the study of ideas) and work output, as recently discussed by the likes of Simon Pegg and Mike Rowe, are highly troubling nonetheless. However, it bears mentioning that it's hard to grasp the full scope or determine which way the wind is blowing as a single individual in a very media-saturated world. Limited as I am in what I can absorb online and in the zeitgeist due to my rustic surroundings, I see enough to deduce that there are still plenty of people churning out good work and have little reason to think this will ever stop being the case (unless we all die from a massive series of climate change-based natural disasters). The medium is changing, becoming more dense and so the haystack becomes larger, but the needles are still in there, and possibly there are more of them thanks to the ease with which we can communicate, collaborate and shine a spotlight on otherwise ignored subgroups.

While it is of paramount importance to hold on to the aspects of our culture and education and art, etc., that keep us thinking and interacting and being all lovey-dovey hippy-dippy, I sort of think a slide into degradation and depravity and the ruthless and unlamented loss of knowledge is all inevitable, anyway. Fixing the future may be possible, but we're all too busy indulging in bread and circuses. :\

[Vesnic]

Thanks for your thoughtful response, dream. I'm always happy when a real debate can happen here, or a well-considered dialogue.

I was also struck by the conversation among Daenerys, Hizdahr and Tyrion, but more for the fact that it seemed a bit hackneyed and ill placed. I'm not saying I found it completely useless, just rather expository and repetitious. I can choose to take this conversation at one of two levels: as a believable exchange between characters or strictly as content divorced from context. On the first level, I really think it fails. Dany keeps swinging back and forth between extremes, and while this is believable to the extent that she is young, inexperienced and highly inbred, it somewhat damages her credibility when expressing any point of view, especially given Clarke's proclivity for monotone proclamations accompanied by that vacuous thousand-yard stare. As for Tyrion, he is really just a bit too quippy at this point. Does he ever put a foot, er...a tongue, wrong? Hizdahr really got the best lines here, but unfortunately, Dany doesn't really listen to him beyond the point of simple necessity and by extension, neither does the audience. I feel they did the character a pretty big disservice once the shit predictably hit the fan in the pit sequence. He tried to save her despite his whole city turning on him. However, none of the people who had just been expounding on dying for a noble reason bothered to return the favor. On a strictly philosophical level, all I got from this conversation was yet another argument for moral relativism, a modern injection that always rings strangely in a world supposedly run by convictions of a more absolutist nature. As Ves, of course I allow that I say tomato and you say tomahto. As Dany, however, I would disregard you, so I guess it wasn't so unbelievable that she left him to writhe unmourned and unassisted.

Well, the books and show certainly whet mine. Granted, I enjoyed all the things you mention before I ever knew about ASoIaF/Game of Thrones.

Do you think that if you didn't have any frame of reference for this stuff, that you would still want to dig deeper? Strictly conjectural, I know, but the feeling I get is that curiosity for most viewers will tend to end with the last credit sequence of the last episode. I don't make claims that every show or game or movie out there has to have bigger aspirations, but this one certainly could have. I'm disappointed by the sense of lost potential.

I hesitate to equate the examination of something with its endorsement.

I have never equated examination with endorsement. The problem isn't simply desensitization; it's desensitization coupled with an overall lack of intelligence, quality and humanity that I find troublesome. In the case of GoT, I'm just not buying the notion that they're attempting anything subversive or culturally aware or transcendent at all. However, I think they would very much like us, the audience, to believe that they are, and in so doing, to excuse all the cheap trickery they've employed to cushion increasingly flimsy writing and story arcs. That's where the trouble comes in, with the misrepresentation of purpose, with the hypocrisy of so many creators of content jumping on the "witty satire" bandwagon, expecting us to just accept their edgy artistic cred without really examining it. In order for an intended object lesson to be effective, then there needs to be either a preexisting level of repugnance at what is being shown or an in-world alternative that is compelling enough to make people wonder whether might really does make right, regardless of whether or not they've ever heard of Social Darwinism. But where is that alternative in GoT? I saw fragments of it in the earlier shows and possibility for more intelligent development, but the last of it was unceremoniously incinerated last Sunday.

You make some strong points, though I hope you won't throw the baby out with the bathwater when it comes to SF&F and its merit for telling powerful and thoughtful stories.

I am trying, despite appearances. This is certainly a good era for people who favor these genres, so I am attempting to get on board to some extent, to try to see what you see in it. I think anyone with an artistic leaning is sort of obligated to consider the popular forms of their own time and to examine them thoroughly and with as little bias as possible, even if they are ultimately rejected. I am speaking strictly from my own experience with these genres, though I always hope to be pleasantly surprised.

While it is of paramount importance to hold on to the aspects of our culture and education and art, etc., that keep us thinking and interacting and being all lovey-dovey hippy-dippy, I sort of think a slide into degradation and depravity and the ruthless and unlamented loss of knowledge is all inevitable.

The most shocking part of this statement for me wasn't that you posited the likelihood of an unhappy ending for humanity, but that you equated "thinking and interacting" with "being all lovey-dovey hippy-dippy". I know you're being tongue-in-cheek here but I also think those words came flying off your keyboard with such ease because that is exactly the current Zeitgeist. To think, to feel, to have any reverence at all for our own civilization is, well, just kind of gay, isn't it?

If that's not throwing the baby out with the bathwater, I don't know what is.

The most revolutionary thing now would be to just tell a damn good story, plain and simple, without the need for dragons or incest or involuntary organ donation.

[End Master]

I still think they should ultimately end the series with a panned out view of King's Landing (Whoever finally won the throne) and then the clear blue sky, then the continent of Westeros, then the world and then it ultimately shows that everything did in fact happen in the eye of some blue eyed giant named Macumber.

[Vesnic]

That would be the sweetest thing ever, if only the show didn't take itself so damn seriously! At the very least, they need to give Hodor the last word.

[dreamshell]

My own personal theory is that the red comet will strike Westeros in the seventh book and wipe out all life in the setting. ^_^

Continuing our tangent...

I don't know about expository, but I'll agree the conversation was a thematic reprisal of moral relativism (as you highlighted) that the show regularly comments on with various characters (and degrees of skill). Hizdahr did indeed deliver what I thought to be the winning retort ("They don't know their minds, but you do?"), only to be promptly bullied into silence by Dany's dreamy bad boy. But lest we make him out to be too much of a good guy, it's just as easy to call his attempt to save Dany opportunism, as his would likely be one of the first heads to roll among her collaborators were she to die in the pit. He was a more compelling Hizdahr than the one in the books, though, so for that I'm unhappy to see him go. Then again, I'm just as unhappy with how the Sons of the Harpy have been used on the show. And nary a mention of the Green Grace, who some readers speculate to be the real Harpy.

I'm not sure what to make of your comment about the show being in a world "run by convictions of a more absolutist nature." I suppose we do see less self-doubt or shifts in ideology from the show characters, but I'd probably chalk a good deal of that up to keeping things simpler for the viewers.

Do you think that if you didn't have any frame of reference for this stuff, that you would still want to dig deeper? Strictly conjectural, I know, but the feeling I get is that curiosity for most viewers will tend to end with the last credit sequence of the last episode. I don't make claims that every show or game or movie out there has to have bigger aspirations, but this one certainly could have. I'm disappointed by the sense of lost potential.

Well, this works into my point about what people come into the show with in terms of their own predilections and how much work they're willing to do mentally. If I personally hadn't known about the things that influenced the setting, I'd almost certainly have dug deeper - because I'm me. What we're really bemoaning here is how we hate that other people don't care to broaden their horizons and cultivate their minds (at least as we define it). I'm fully in agreement with you, and yet it's a purely subjective problem and there's little for the show to do to solve that. They could (and, as we might argue, should) write something more sophisticated that would make us much the happier, but the show might not do as well with the general public, especially when you add the black mark of being an icky fantasy program with magic and dragons against it. This is not to say I'm advocating any pandering to the base, but I don't find it surprising either, and still maintain the show's got a lot of good points in spite of such evils.

That you might hold the show too strongly reinforces or even favors an especially vicious and atavistic ethos, that it does so to the exclusion of any real others and that it no longer even does a suitable job are all reasonable complaints worth considering. I don't necessarily agree on all accounts, but that's okay. It's probably fair to say most of the movers-and-shakers in ASoIaF are either hard for us to sympathize with, or struggle all the more in their world when we can. The smallfolk can perhaps afford to be gentler, forgiving, more compassionate (though not always), but the players in the game of thrones don't usually have that luxury, at least if they like breathing. I can't completely refute some bungling and reductionism on the part of the show in expressing all this. However, I feel as if you might have been more inclined to see nuance if you were on board with Dany's story arc, but you've made it pointedly clear by now that's not the case. :P Completely your prerogative to have that opinion. Nor do I know your feelings on Jon Snow.

It's also worth noting the series was originally a response to fantasy's earlier propensity for moral absolutism vis-à-vis Tolkien, Lewis, et al. in the form of binary thinking, good vs. evil, etc., but its own 'grimdark' perspective has since been adopted by several other prominent authors in the genre. Nonetheless, in books or TV, it's common enough for media that delves this deeply into unpleasant subject matter to suffer backlash from an audience that's simply grown tired of what it finds to be pointlessly (and poorly) concocted misery.

I am trying, despite appearances. This is certainly a good era for people who favor these genres, so I am attempting to get on board to some extent, to try to see what you see in it. I think anyone with an artistic leaning is sort of obligated to consider the popular forms of their own time and to examine them thoroughly and with as little bias as possible, even if they are ultimately rejected. I am speaking strictly from my own experience with these genres, though I always hope to be pleasantly surprised.

Do you perhaps need/want any recommendations? I'd be happy to try and provide a few.

The most shocking part of this statement for me wasn't that you posited the likelihood of an unhappy ending for humanity, but that you equated "thinking and interacting" with "being all lovey-dovey hippy-dippy". I know you're being tongue-in-cheek here but I also think those words came flying off your keyboard with such ease because that is exactly the current Zeitgeist. To think, to feel, to have any reverence at all for our own civilization is, well, just kind of gay, isn't it?

Well, in all honesty, that only really "flew off my keyboard with such ease" because I was running out of the appropriate brainpower to make myself sound passably eloquent. But you may not be wrong, though phrasing it as "revering" one's "own civilization" smacks a little bit of a stereotypical White Power or National Socialist diatribe. :P But yeah, if all that stuff is gay, then we're both huge superfags. I watched an interview that David Foster Wallace had done a couple years after 9/11 earlier and he talked about the culture of consumerism and creature comforts in the West and how that undercuts a lot of our impetus to do anything beyond constantly seeking self-gratification, up to and including putting extra mental effort into processing and reflecting on difficult or distressing ideas. If that sounds simplistic, it's because I'm simplifying and probably forgetting an interesting element or two, but it seems as good an explanation as any for the zeitgeist of which you speak.

[dreamshell]

Additionally...

The most revolutionary thing now would be to just tell a damn good story, plain and simple, without the need for dragons or incest or involuntary organ donation.

(Is that last one an allusion to rape?)

Sure, but if you take away the dragons or vampires or spaceships, then you're no longer writing science fiction and fantasy, but rather general fiction. If that's what engages you more, that's perfectly fine, but it's not exactly fair to criticize SF&F writers simply for using the tools of their trade. It's whether or not they use them well that matters. And if someone finds them childish or counterproductive to telling a "damn good story," then - at the risk of sounding exclusive - they probably shouldn't be reading the genre.

[Vesnic]

Well OK. To keep you happy, dream, I'll leave the dragons be and have myself a chuckle at your organ donation joke. That wasn't meant to be a slam against SF&F specifically, just against lazy writing in general that relies on huge traumatic plot points to advance sluggish narratives. That's really all. Dragons are great in my book, just not as crutches. They'd make shitty crutches anyway since they'd just incinerate whatever was left of your bashed-up legs.

[End Master]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dhWUFXvaZjo

Oddly, it's probably the best Game of Throne parody I've seen done so far.

[Vesnic]

LOL yeah I'd caught that before, but I agree it's one of the better parodies out there. And what is the Game of Thrones if not just a big round of musical chairs anyway?

For the record, I always sucked at that game. Couldn't understand why me and the other guy couldn't just share the remaining seat.

[Vesnic]

David Foster Wallace...

Funny you should mention him. I've been thinking of taking a page out of his book.

[dreamshell]

Funny you should mention him. I've been thinking of taking a page out of his book.

This is either a setup for a waggish literalist punchline or an intimation of thoughts of suicide via self-asphyxiation. Either way I disapprove.

[Vesnic]

I guess it was meant to be a double entendre. It would be sad to off myself over my disagreements with a TV show's trajectory. Then again, there are so many more compelling reasons, none of which you'll see on TV because they have to do with the quieter side of things, the part that is always there but not flashy or explosive enough to make for good viewing. A girl can only take so much estrangement.

[dreamshell]

Interestingly enough, that same interview I mentioned also had a brief tangent where the interviewer discussed a friend of hers (Wallace urged for a more conversational exchange) who she'd always dread hearing from due to the friend's depression. Wallace pointed out that the friend probably understood this to be the case even though she'd make the calls, and that "there's a lot of narcissism in self-hatred."

So I'm not saying you're a narcissist, buuuut... you're probably a narcissist. :P No need to be 'estranger' as well. Ho ho ho (puns trump entendres).

[Vesnic]

That's funny, I always thought there was a lot of narcissism in people who just can't be bothered to "deal with" the people in their life who are depressed or otherwise suffering through something, because doing so would be such an inconvenience to their perfectly crafted little lives, the ones which leave no room for expansiveness, generosity or compassion.

Puns aside, since when does depression equal self-hatred?