I assume most people watch it for the tits and arse.Much like The Apprentice then.
extroadinarily violent and pornographic.
Oh yeah it's definitely 18+ IMO. Blood, sex, torture, and I think an occasional use of the c bomb.
I'd never watched (or vetted) a single episode - assuming it was something akin to a US TV version of The Hobbit. They have a TV in their play room - that'll have to go, then.It's better than the Hobbit. S' got female characters, for a start...
spoiler below relates to ep 6, season3
Spoiler within the spoiler(click to show/hide)
Oh yeah it's definitely 18+ IMO. Blood, sex, torture, and I think an occasional use of the c bomb.
Gosh. >:(
Decapitations, disembowelments, hands being chopped off - and not in a cartoon-like way, this is blood gore, agony and screaming.I think we had one decapitation an episode in Season One. If you include the horse, and we did count that.
If you think GoT has blood and gore and sex try watching the recent Spartacus. Makes GoT a bit like the teletubbies.
If you think GoT has blood and gore and sex try watching the recent Spartacus. Makes GoT a bit like the teletubbies.
Yeah, but it's shite though isn't it.
If you think GoT has blood and gore and sex try watching the recent Spartacus. Makes GoT a bit like the teletubbies.
Yeah, but it's shite though isn't it.
I believe they started watching them at school.
Not that the school can do much about it these days I guess; DVDs are easily disguised and I'm not even sure kids use media with anything archaic like physical form.
I shall enquire. My children (certainly) and the school (probably) already have me down as a throwback to 1895; I ask awkward questions about moral rectitude.
Quote from one of the booksHas the TV series got that far yet? I thought it was still on an earlier book.(click to show/hide)
Just because kids say "everyone watches it" doesn't make it right.
erm, yes you can.
I would agree that GoT is more gratuitous in use of sex and nudity at times in a way that say, Rome (another very adult HBO production) wasn't - there was oodles of sex and nudity in that but it worked within the story (in my view).
In a way, I'm with WW- the genie is out of the bottle.
But, Pancho sends his kids away to school so is clearly willing to abdicate some aspects of parental responsibility. What they watch in their free time one of the things he's passed over. All I can say, really, is watch it with them. If they're standard teens they'll die of embarrassment as soon as Tyrion hits the first brothel in episode 1, season 1.
If your kids are young enough for you to mind what they read/watch, then you should be reading/watching with them.
Quote from one of the booksHas the TV series got that far yet? I thought it was still on an earlier book.(click to show/hide)
Just because kids say "everyone watches it" doesn't make it right.
To be fair, I suspect even HBO won't be able to get away with showing that particular plotline. In much the same way that all the kids in the TV series are rather
Older than they are in the books. It gets around certain ummm paedophilia issues.
Yes I suppose they did do the 'flowering' scene and I suppose most girls are younger than 16 when that happens. But the other kids are clearly older than 8 etc. Robb is obviously more than 14 for example. They've deliberately left it unclear I suppose.(click to show/hide)
To be fair, I suspect even HBO won't be able to get away with showing that particular plotline. In much the same way that all the kids in the TV series are rather
Older than they are in the books. It gets around certain ummm paedophilia issues.
You reckon? Speech from Sunday's episode:(click to show/hide)
And it was common for people to be married very young in the past, ie once they were past puberty. Game of Thrones is set in a pseudo early middle ages.
To be fair, I suspect even HBO won't be able to get away with showing that particular plotline. In much the same way that all the kids in the TV series are rather
Older than they are in the books. It gets around certain ummm paedophilia issues.
You reckon? Speech from Sunday's episode:(click to show/hide)
The Ice and Fire Novels (Game of Thrones just being the first) - are excellent books and afik number one bestsellers. I have a UK first edition of the GoT and it's worth quite a lot of money apparently.
Each to their won huh?
And this is on TV? Normal TV?
This is what people spend their Sundays watching?
If so, I am utterly, utterly gobsmacked.
No it's not on normal TV it's on subscription only TV in the US (HBO) and the UK (SKY).First series has been repeated on Freeview. Can't remember which channel, but I remember seeing Syrio Forel fighting armoured men with a wooden practice sword. Damn good scene, BTW.
And it was common for people to be married very young in the past, ie once they were past puberty.I think that might not be correct. I'm sure I read somewhere that most people didn't get married until their late teens and early 20s. When Shakespeare was writing about young teenagers getting married, it was always in a play he was setting abroad and it was him showing how weird foreigners are.
This depends on (1) when in the past, & (2) who in the past. Mediaeval marriage ages were different (earlier) from those of the 17th & 18th centuries, for example, & as said, aristocrats often married very young - though very early marriages were commonly not consummated until much later.And it was common for people to be married very young in the past, ie once they were past puberty.I think that might not be correct. I'm sure I read somewhere that most people didn't get married until their late teens and early 20s. When Shakespeare was writing about young teenagers getting married, it was always in a play he was setting abroad and it was him showing how weird foreigners are.
It was Pick TV but they only showed the first three episodes. It was a teaser by SKY to get you to sign up for their subscription service.
Has anyone noticed the GoT landscape is quite clearly UK and Europe? I like the details like that.Since it's a superficially mediaeval fantasy world, apparently (from references in the books to its own history) rather static economically & technologically for a few thousand years, trying to relate the sexual practices shown to their historical context in the real world is probably doomed to failure.
Not sure exactly when it takes place though - hard to pin down exactly which period we are in, to validate the acceptability or otherwise of the various sexual practices in their historical context.
(click to show/hide)
To be fair, I suspect even HBO won't be able to get away with showing that particular plotline. In much the same way that all the kids in the TV series are rather
Older than they are in the books. It gets around certain ummm paedophilia issues.
You reckon? Speech from Sunday's episode:(click to show/hide)
And this is on TV? Normal TV?
This is what people spend their Sundays watching?
If so, I am utterly, utterly gobsmacked.
It really isn't gratuitous though - it's a pseudo-mediaeval universe, this is what people were like back then, like it or not.
Who hasn't got rattingly drunk and leered at a questionable-age girl before slurring "I am the god of tits and wine!" and slumping into a pool of piss and vomit? Eh?Well, that's my work leaving do planned.
It really isn't gratuitous though - it's a pseudo-mediaeval universe, this is what people were like back then, like it or not.
Hmm. Not so sure. More like it's what GRRM fantasises things were like back then.
It really isn't gratuitous though - it's a pseudo-mediaeval universe, this is what people were like back then, like it or not.
Hmm. Not so sure. More like it's what GRRM fantasises things were like back then.
People have continued to be people throughout history, a mixture of good and bad. It would be wrong to assume that people always thought in the exact same way we do now* but they seem to have acted for good and ill in a way not much different from present times.
The period that most often gets mentioned in reference to Martin's books is the War of the Roses - rife with conflicts, murders and executions so I don’t see some of the more adult events and themes in his book to be too out of place for his mostly high medieval influenced ‘period’.
That aside, speaking as someone who is trying to write historical fiction there is a real quandary on how to approach murder, rape and other sexual violence. We can sure that it was going on, especially during wars when laws are often less enforced or ignored (see the end result of many sieges throughout history) but as a writer of fiction do you ignore sexual violence completely or find a way of addressing it?
There's a character in the book I'm trying to write that there is documentary evidence that shows he was a pretty nasty piece of work, including murder, theft and at least one rape (of a nun). I'm 'lucky' in this particular case that the person in question, while a named character doesn't appear in person in the main narrative I've written but needs to be mentioned for context (he's an important character and although dead by the time of the main story has had a significant effect on the earlier events and the subsequent actions of other main characters (including royalty))**.
What I would hate to do would be to write about sexual violence in a sensationalist or exploitative way but not mentioning it sall eems to be too much of a cop-out and a bit too Victorian in its bowdlerisation. So I'm unsure how differently Martin should approach it. I think it would be fair to say he wasn't writing for the screen and as I said previously, I think that for some the take on sex and nudity in GoT on screen is perhaps more gratuitous than in similar productions by HBO such as Rome.
Researching medieval law can be interesting to reveal just how similar our society is rather than how different to earlier times. Even a lot of our current laws on sexual violence are incredibly recent and when you read about how courts undermined new or existing laws against rape in medieval times, some similarities are as striking as they are unpleasant to read - The Statute of Westminster in 1285 had a specific section on rape that supposedly codified rape as one of the serious crimes of the land. In practice local courts either ignored or undermined this law by deterring complaints through attacking the reputation of women who brought claims, unpleasant pre-trial processes such as virginity checks, acquitting defendants and bringing claims of false accusation with subsequent severe punishment against women whose claims were not proven.
Apologies about the lengthy reply, not getting at you in any way just something I have been thinking about since this thread started.
*There's a tendency in a lot of medieval historical fiction for characters to be quite anti-clerical in a way that would rarely have been the case - yes at particular times of dissatisfaction with the church and clergy but not a generally held opinion all the time. There are often characters in medieval historical fiction that are pretty much displaying a post-enlightenment view of the world, which conforms more to our view of the world now than the medieval one. Bernard Cornwall is particularly guilty of this one.
** It's set in the late Anglo Saxon period/Norman Conquest - narrative is mostly on events after 1051 but reference is made to events at least as far back as the mid 900s.
You can feel the misogyny oozing out of the pages.
I suspect that's pretty accurate from a lot of history.
Who hasn't got rattingly drunk and leered at a questionable-age girl before slurring "I am the god of tits and wine!" and slumping into a pool of piss and vomit? Eh?
Researching medieval law can be interesting to reveal just how similar our society is rather than how different to earlier times. Even a lot of our current laws on sexual violence are incredibly recent and when you read about how courts undermined new or existing laws against rape in medieval times, some similarities are as striking as they are unpleasant to read - The Statute of Westminster in 1285 had a specific section on rape that supposedly codified rape as one of the serious crimes of the land. In practice local courts either ignored or undermined this law by deterring complaints through attacking the reputation of women who brought claims, unpleasant pre-trial processes such as virginity checks, acquitting defendants and bringing claims of false accusation with subsequent severe punishment against women whose claims were not proven.
That aside, speaking as someone who is trying to write historical fiction there is a real quandary on how to approach murder, rape and other sexual violence. We can be sure that it was going on, especially during wars when laws are often less enforced or ignored (see the end result of many sieges throughout history) but as a writer of fiction do you ignore sexual violence completely where it would have existed or find a way of addressing it?
Personally, I'm uncomfortable with the depiction of women in GoT, so I'm surprised that so many politically savvy women I know watch and enjoy it. But that's their lookout.
Fboab is a big fan of both feminism and GoTs - maybe she'll chime in and say how she feels about it.
If you want some interesting stories about the brutality of mediaeval rulers, look up quite large parts of Byzantine history. Gouging out of eyes features very heavily. :sick:Approved Byzantine technique for blinding weren't always quite so crude. They had plenty of practice to get it right, & from what I've read, hot irons were commonly used. Not as messy, but just as effective.
'cool with it' is a bit misleading. I love Game of Thrones. I make jokes about it all the time. I don't, however, think it's something impressionable young people should be watching without a hefty dose of awareness of where the lines are drawn between fantasy and reality, and what's OK and what's certainly not.Fboab is a big fan of both feminism and GoTs - maybe she'll chime in and say how she feels about it.
Fboab is one of the politically savvy women I was thinking of. If she's cool with it, I feel no need to tell her she shouldn't be.
I don't, however, think it's something impressionable young people should be watching without a hefty dose of awareness of where the lines are drawn between fantasy and reality, and what's OK and what's certainly not.
It's fantasy. One of the functions of fantasy fiction is to ask us to review our own society and compare and contrast to invention. It's one of the things that make it interesting.
Episode 10.(click to show/hide)
Episode 10.(click to show/hide)
Having tried the box set of the first series and been bored rigid in the first 20 minutes, I decided to try the books instead and have now nearly finished the first book. Each chapter is about a different character - Eddard, Catelyn, Daenerys (she's my favourite so far, and Arya and Bran) etc. It took me a good two or three repetitions of each character before I started to get into it but now I'm at the stage where I don't want to go to work so I can stay and finish it.
Look up chevauchée. It was an accepted tactic of mediaeval warfare. William the Bastard used it in 1066, & it was still common 300 years later.It really isn't gratuitous though - it's a pseudo-mediaeval universe, this is what people were like back then, like it or not.
Hmm. Not so sure. More like it's what GRRM fantasises things were like back then.
Excellent. Another four books and you can join in the seemingly endless wait for the next one :thumbsup:::-)I worked with a woman called Tirion who was bloody annoying, so no chance. ;D
The books are, as always, better by far than the series - I don't know how anyone who watches the series and hasn't read the books has any clue as to who is who - I know my other half doesn't really follow the vast number of characters very well.
You're clearly not reading it right though - it is traditional for either Tyrion or Arya to be favourite, so there :P ;)
(Mine's Arya)
You're clearly not reading it right though - it is traditional for either Tyrion or Arya to be favourite, so there :P ;)
(Mine's Arya)
I like how Daenerys has just got on with things. She's in a pretty difficult situation, married off to a bloke though neither of them share a language, covered in pressure sores from being on a horse all day, really whiny brother threatening her and giving her a hard time, having to drink fermented mare milk instead of tasty wine, cut off from everyone she ever knew, and she doesn't whine or complain or feel sorry for herself, she just becomes more and more conscious of her feminine strength and power and gets on with what she has to do.(click to show/hide)
Jon Snow. Well. He knows nothing.
Jon Snow. Well. He knows nothing.
I've requested a library reservation for the second book.
I've requested a library reservation for the second book.
I am annoyed by the name Catelyn. GRRM obviously has no idea how Caitlin is pronounced.