Just so you all know, I watch the Game of Thrones.

[boston bean]

And I don't watch it for the SEXXXXXXXXX!

It's a good series, and I'm not usually into fantasy type shows, with castles and winter zombies, dragons, and artificial seasons. But the show itself is very good. The story lines are interesting, and there is enough of what seems to be historical type threading in the show, regarding royalty and kings and queens and princes and princesses and the lowly people, that it keeps me watching.

I haven't watched this season, as I like to watch it in one fail swoop, as there is a lot that goes on, and I don't forget what happened the previous week.

So there, a feminist who watches Game of Thrones!! A feminist who participates in the HoF! Take that broad brushers. HA!

[abelenkpe]

1. I watch it too

Have read the books as well. Would never, ever want to live in that world though.

[House of Roberts]

2. John Amato at Crooks and Liars

puts up a thread on Game of Thrones late on Sunday evenings, if you're interested.

I don't like vampire shows, but I got hooked on Forever Knight, some years back. Sometimes shows just work for some people.

[MadrasT]

3. I don't watch it because fantasy type shows are not my thing.

Although the talk of the SEXXXXXXXXXXXXXX makes it sound more interesting than it would be without it. I might check it out just for the SEXXXXXXXXXXX.

[boston bean]

4. I was bored and decided to watch one episode

then I was hooked, and watched them all.

I'll probably have to watch the prior seasons again, to link back all that has happened.

I'm not usually into fantasy novels or movies, but this one for some reason got me hooked.

There is a lot of sex, and it's brutal. There is also quite a bit of violence toward men and women. But I look at it more as a sign of the times, in a historical context. Not watching it as a porn flick. Although I do think, from what I read on the nets, that it is a reason some may tune in week after week.

[redqueen]

7. lol, well obviously any woman who doesn't want to see brutal sex is just a prude, right?

Sex negative prudes, that's the only kinda wimminz who wouldn't want to see that, yep.

[boston bean]

9. I don't think I said that, did I?

[redqueen]

10. Goddess, no...

I'm referring to the 'logic' employed by those who failed to comprehend the thread they attempted to mock.

[boston bean]

11. Oh, I get it. I agree, that it does have some problems

and I would never mean to mock anyone who felt differently about it.

Sorry, if this post came across badly.

[redqueen]

12. No, no... your post is fine...

you're not mocking anyone.

I doubt your attempt to reason with someone who distorts a criticism of the presentation of something with an aversion to the thing itself will be productive, but I give you kudos for still trying.

[redqueen]

5. lol, why would you even deign to dignify that pile of strawman idiocy with a response?

I posted a thread in which a woman critiqued the way sexual content was portrayed in the series. The fact that it was all pornified and not even slightly shown as it might have been in such a setting.

This criticism of anything sexual, of course, elicited the same dimwitted kneejerking response from the usual suspects. Some people really need to get a hobby.

[boston bean]

6. Oh, is that what got them all tied up in knots?

didn't know that.

I posted because I was sick of the broad brushing that that one takes a bit too much liberty in doing so.

[redqueen]

8. Yep. The usual obsessive compulsion to stalk this group for something to talk about.

There are dozens of threads there like that. It's fucking pathetic.

[sufrommich]

13. I do too. How is GoT a feminist issue?

I don't get it.

I'm also a huge fan of Mad Men.

[redqueen]

15. This review in the New Yorker is what started all this a year ago. Things must be really slow...

http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/television/2012/05/07/120507crte_television_nussbaum?currentPage=all&mobify=0

[sufrommich]

17. That was a good article. Both GoT and Mad Men are

equally adept at showing the soul crushing weight of patriarchal cultures.Not surprisingly,the women are the most interesting characters in both shows.

[redqueen]

21. Yep, she does an excellent job of pointing out the more problematic aspects of the show.

Of course all that got reduced to the same old tired, stupid 'you just hate sex' type reactions but that's hardly surprising.

Just like this was minimized and mocked, as was Anita Sarkeesian's decision to address the portrayal of females in video games, so too will every other instance of anyone addressing the hypersexualization of girls and women.

[sufrommich]

22. Its pretty much the same routine conservatives used

to make "liberal" a dirty word,exaggerate the claims being made and then mock the exaggerated claims. Another thing I see used a lot in regards to feminists is to scour the internet looking for the craziest shit they can find and applying it to all feminists. It's basically just a rerun of every tactic used by conservatives to paint anything liberal as crazy and extreme.

[redqueen]

28. +10000000000000000

Exactly.

You summed it up perfectly.

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

32. I have read all the books, and watched the first two seasons

because I found them for sale and don't get TV. Have to wait until season 3 is released to watch more, but read this post yesterday and found it interesting:
http://www.theatlantic.com/entertainment/archive/2013/05/-i-game-of-thrones-i-ditches-the-book/275557/

(maybe I should have responded to the OP?)

[sufrommich]

34. That was an excellent article, I bookmarked it. I've never

read the books so have no idea what deviates from the original books and what doesn't. Thanks for sharing that.

[AnotherDreamWeaver]

36. Your welcome.

A neighbor got me into reading Terry Goodkind, the Sword of Truth series, and when that was finally finished he led me into the Game of Thrones series. We waited so long for Dances with Dragons, and now waiting for the next with no idea when it may come. I have read the two chapters that have appeared on his web page. Waiting for what the crows or ravens have to say about Theon when he is taken to the tree... But if you haven't read the books, maybe I'm spoiling something.

My sister has sent me some books by another author mentioned upthread, but I haven't started them. If I get into a book I seem to spend all day, and most of the night reading until I'm finished and my chores around the place get put on hold.

[BainsBane]

31. I like Tyrion a lot

but much of that has to do with what a fantastic actor Peter Dinklage is.

[sufrommich]

33. I actually think the Lannister siblings have the

most interesting storyline. Diana Rigg's character is my latest favorite.

[Bay Boy]

52. Are they the brother and sister that...

...are/were screwing each other?

[BainsBane]

53. Jamie and Cersei

Tyrion isn't screwing a family member.

[Bay Boy]

54. I've watched enough to know...

...that Tyrion is screwing everything else.

[BainsBane]

55. He's in love with Shae now

but has to marry Sansa.

[Bay Boy]

56. Must be a season three development...

...in the previous seasons he seemed to be concentrating on hookers.

[BainsBane]

57. Yes, and Shae was one too

but he's fallen in love with her. She's now Sansa's lady in waiting. They have a very sweet relationship. Actually Tyrion was previously married to a prostitute, but his evil father had the marriage annulled.

[My Pet Goat]

27. That article told me all I need to never take this show seriously, thanks!

In the première, a ten-year-old boy was shoved out of a tower window. The episode climaxed with what might be described as an Orientalist gang rape / wedding dance.

Wow, guttural violence. How do they get so creative? And it is so different from real life I read in the paper everyday (sarcasm).

[Little Star]

14. Well I'm really bad because I watch Banshee.....

I dvr it and skip right over all the sex scenes. Boring to just watch. Been there done that. It's no fun unless your participating in real life.

Regardless, Banshee is way more sex filled than GoT but I love the show.

[BainsBane]

16. Me too

Comcast had a special allowing you to catch up on past seasons and I got so hooked I actually signed up for HBO just to watch this season. I didn't realize the sex was supposed to be a big deal. There are a couple of perverse sadists in the show. Joffrey needs to get what's coming to him.

[sufrommich]

18. The Theon torture scenes are too much for me,

Frankly, I have no idea what that whole thing is about because I can't watch it, the sex in GoT does not bother me, the violence in some of the scenes has me changing the channel until I'm sure the worst of it is over.

[BainsBane]

19. the violence is far more noticeable and concerning than the sex

I agree. That's true for US TV and movies in general.

[sufrommich]

20. Absolutely.nt

[Hayabusa]

23. As for Theon, it's going to get much worse...

Let's hope some of those wild oats took root, if you know what I mean.

[sufrommich]

24. Ugh, I'll be watching with the remote close by .nt

[JoDog]

29. *Slight Spoiler*

Don't worry, Joffrey does. Does he ever! Looks like that will be in next season on the show.

[Whisp]

25. I watched and enjoyed it too.

I do like a good fantasy story and Martin delivered on that. We were obsessed with seeing the show's first and second (? lost count) seasons. As usual, we were a bit late to the fashionable party of what is good on the tv so we had to do some catching up and stayed up late a lot of nights.

Fantastic show, I thought. But, the long time inbetween the new season made me lose my interest. I might catch up again too but don't have that obsession any more.

The sex scenes did make my eyeballs pop wide open! Wasn't really expecting it to be, erm, so real. My pearls are still intact tho!

[ismnotwasm]

26. I don't watch it

Last edited Wed May 8, 2013, 04:55 PM - Edit history (2)

And it has nothing to do with feminism.
I've been a fantasy/sci-Fi fan for years. And I think I got through the first four books before calling it in. I've also done this with Robert Jorden and Terry Goodkind. Although I think I got to books 5 or 6 with them.



(It has sex?)

Nothing was as dull as GOT, I understand the TV series is good, but I don't like TV series. So there you go. I'll go back to reading Lilith SaintCrow, who writes badass urban fantasy--my escapism of choice this year--or steampunk or cyberpunk or decent Sci-Fi. I can always watch reruns of "Battlestar Galactica" if I have to....

Anyway enjoy!

[BainsBane]

30. I'm a huge Battlestar Galactica fan

I love it.

[ismnotwasm]

35. One of my daughters got me into it

I'm not a 'TV snob'--I just don't seem to have the right kind of attention span, So I don't watch much.
It is an excellent series.

[seabeyond]

37. i cannot tell you how tired i am of graphic rape, sexualized is continuously used for entertainment

for the masses today.

i am told, it is historically accurate.

rape of men. rape of children is historically accurate also.

and we are not fed graphic, sexualized images of rape of men, continuously.

[redqueen]

38. Those other historically accurate forms of sexual assault just aren't as crowd pleasing. nt

[seabeyond]

39. point. full nudity. well, ya know, i am pretty sure men get fully naked. not seeing that on

camera either.

[redqueen]

40. Well apparently this lack of balance simply doesn't bother enough people.

So I guess it won't be changing anytime soon.

Now I'm wondering at other issues related to balance. I've seen a lot of porny lesbian pictures posted from this show. I wonder if anyone could clue me in in how many porny scenes between gay men they show.

Then again, maybe it wasn't lesbians... Maybe it was pictures of hot actresses and men with long hair and delicate features.

[seabeyond]

41. yes. the lesbian sex also. geez. no agendas here, women. nt

[seabeyond]

42. normalizing hetero male porn in mainstream media. rape, only female nudity, woman on woman sex,

sexual degradation and torture of women.

tell me how it is different than porn. only normalizing it for the masses as mainstream.

[redqueen]

46. Yep. I won't watch shit like that.

Not because of "THE SEXXXXXX"

Because of the way the sexual content is portrayed (i.e. in a sexist, objectifying way that contributes to misogyny / misogynist views of women).

[boston bean]

43. Hey sea,

it is one thing to recognize that rotten disgusting behavior took place many moons ago, as well as it taking place now aday in similar ways. That isn't making an excuse for it.

My point, was it wasn't pornographical, at least for me. As a matter of fact the scenes re-inforce what we know to be true about how women are treated, both historically and today on different levels and sometimes the same, as you see with those sickos in Cleveland. A fact that can't be denied.

So, I think we might be discussing two different aspects, hope you understand.

[seabeyond]

44. i do get it. i hear it often. and i am seeing more and more of these shows putting rape out as

entertainment. and always with the reasoning that it is merely showing how horrible it is. but, i am also seeing body positions, oiling, light, angling of camera showing the horror in a sexually stimulating manner. not for you and i. but watch rape porn. no different. and the men get off.

take deadwood. an excellent series. and rape. prostitution. you know. historically accurate. as were rape of men, .... repeatedly, when no women around to rape. we see none of that horror. yet hollywood and hbo particularly like to put out rape, regularly, graphically, that get men off, the same as rape porn.

tired of rape being entertaining. and no, it is not meant to get you off.

[boston bean]

45. I think what you are missing is that the rape or flat out raunchy sex isn't entertaining

at least for me. I'll agree that it might be for some.

There really is much more to the show. But, I hear what you are saying. I think there is also a distinction to be made at least with this show.

There is an extreme amount of violence, against men and women both. The story is good, and these acts although quite graphic, add to the story as it is part of the characters and shapes them.

[redqueen]

49. Another complaint about the portrayal of sex I've seen online is over the lesbian/gay imbalance.

Half the time people are complaining that the 'lesbian sex as background scenery' stuff isn't in the books and is gratuitous so its bad... the other half of the complaints just request some gratuitous gay sex to balance it out, or at least more male nudity.

One would have to be pretty blind to het privilege, and also blind to all the pandering to the male gaze, to somehow fail to notice the imbalance.

[boston bean]

50. I agree, with both you and seabeyond.

The culture certainly can be quite sick. We all live in it daily, right?

I don't think I'll stop watching GoT as I do, personally make a distinction, but I can certainly understand the points and concerns on the otherside. It's not that I disagree, know what I mean!?

[redqueen]

51. Oh, definitely...

The story is compelling and well written from what I've heard so I certainly get it

I'm a fan of rock, rap, and hip hop music so I totally get the idea of enjoying part of something despite the problematic aspects of it.

To me, the most important thing is to be conscious of the problems.

I don't like to contribute financially, so I won't buy a CD, or pay to see a movie if it is really sexist. And I'll of course write letters and let companies and producers etc. know why I won't do so. Same thing with ads, and as we've seen, that can be very effective.

[redqueen]

47. You reminded me of this part of the review.

Then, of course, there are the whores. From the start, the show has featured copious helpings of pay-cable nudity, much of it in scenes that don’t strictly require a woman to display her impressive butt dimples as the backdrop for a monologue about kings. (The most common fan idiom for these sequences is “sexposition,” but I’ve also seen them referred to as “data humps.”) These scenes are at once aturn-on and a turn-off. At times, I found myself marvelling at the way that HBO has solved the riddle of its own economic existence, merging “Hookers at the Point” with quasi-Shakespearean narrative. In the most egregious instance so far, Littlefinger tutored two prostitutes in how to moan in fake lesbianism for their customers, even as they moaned in fake lesbianism for us—a real Uroboros of titillation.

Viewed in another light, however, these sex scenes aren’t always so gratuitous. Like “Mad Men,” “Game of Thrones” is elementally concerned with the way that meaningful consent dissolves when female bodies are treated as currency. War means raping the enemy’s women; princesses go for a higher price, because their wombs are the coin of the realm, cementing strategic alliances. It helps that the narrative is equally fascinated by the ways in which women secure authority, and even pleasure, within these strictures, and that in the second season its bench of female characters has got even deeper—among them, a seafaring warrior princess, a butch knight, and Tyrion’s prostitute girlfriend.

“Game of Thrones” is not coy about the way the engine of misogyny can grind the fingers of those who try to work it in their favor. An episode two weeks ago featured a sickening sequence in which King Joffrey ordered one prostitute—a character the audience had grown to care about—to rape another. The scenario might have been scripted by Andrea Dworkin; it seemed designed not to turn viewers on but to confront them with the logical endgame of this pornographic system. It echoed a very similar line-crossing moment in “The Sopranos,” when Ralphie beat a pregnant Bada Bing girl to death. But while the scene may have been righteous in theory, in practice it was jarring, and slightly incoherent, particularly since it included the creamy nudity we’ve come to expect as visual dessert.

It is when scenes showing rape and abuse are depicted with this "creamy nudity" or in a porny/pornified way, as I prefer to put it, that they are showing rape and abuse as entertainment.

I wonder if they ever did dare to show any of those less crowd-pleasing forms of rape and abuse (that means rape and sexual abuse of men and children), would they porn it up. (Yeah, no, I really don't. Cause fucking duh.)


(Emphasis added - fer peepuhl hoo downt reed to gud.)

[LanternWaste]

48. I finally watched seasons I & II about a month ago.

So many of my friends were going on and on about it (more specifically, the books, but the series too) that I caved and bought seasons I & II and spent a few Saturday mornings watching them. Also, I think Sean Bean is a wonderfully minimalist actor (check him out in the Sharpe's War television series in which he plays a Napoleonic-era British soldier raised from the ranks to officer status)


Maybe, like Lord of the Rings, one has to first read the literature to find the broader appeal in the film because to be perfectly honest, I'm not enthralled with GoT. It's certainly not bad-- I don't feel as though I wasted the money picking up the set, but my appetite was whetted by Band of Brothers and Rome-- two of the best series I've ever seen and also produced in part by HBO; and I was expecting that same... ambiance which I didn't find.

I'll say this-- the last two episodes of season two *were* what I was expecting, and if season III is more like those two episodes, I will indeed be hooked.