Reed John wrote: No, missed all of that. Can you explain further?
I've only seen it once and I don't know the names. Might be wrong here but when the mother of the bride, the cheeky one came over to greet that young lass married to the short fellar who was being mocked, she touched her necklace. One with blue gems. In a flash later it looked like one gem was missing.
In other words. One of the gems was posion, the mother and lass cooperated to shit all over the king who now has a queen which can rule on her own? (I haven't read the books)
the mother and lass cooperated to shit all over the king
If, by 'lass', you mean Sansa- it doesn't necessarily follow. They gave her the necklace to wear, perhaps knowing she'd be somewhere at the top table when the substance was required.
Sansa's generally bewildered/suffering role doesn't usually extend to plotting revenge, but it'd be a nice twist if true.
The internets are getting their knickers in a twist over *that* scene (for the sake of avoiding spoilers, I'll leave it at that). I don't know what the fuss is all about. Yes, it's disturbing, but is it any more disturbing than a massacre of women and children? Is it any more disturbing than beheading a man in front of his children? Is it any more disturbing than chopping off someone's penis? I could go on, but I think you get the point.
Contextually, I don't think *that* was uncommon in medieval times. Am I missing something, because I really don't understand the outrage.
Well the show is not remotely historical so however people may, or may not, have behaved in medieval times is not really relevant.
As it goes I think there's an level of sadism in the series which makes me queasy. It's not always, or even often, explicit but it's there nevertheless.
Hopefully we are reaching peak trendiness. Soon it will be uncool to like GoT. The online outrage at every scene will dissipate and the rest of us can get on with watching it in peace.
Haven't seen the episode yet, so although I have lots of thoughts (and have been keeping up with the outrage), don't feel I should comment until I see it (and my wife and friends see it too). By that point, there will probably be some other tv show outrage and/or another GoT episode.
But... I've known this scene was coming, and that it would cause some outrage (among book readers and non-book readers), but I never really felt it was justified in isolation, other than that one of the characters has definitely become a fan favorite. This probably makes it more personal and emotional for many viewers.
OK, gotcha- just typed 'GOT' into google and it came up 1st. That IS an internet panic, then.
My lack of outrage should be clear from the fact I didn't mention it or anything hinting at it in my 1st post about ep 3. That MAY be because I've read the books, and it wasn't unexpected.
I'd certainly say the representation/images etc were not exploiting it visually, compared to other scenes in the series.
Having finally seen Episodes 3 & 4, the scene discussed above came and went so fast as to be completely unremarked upon by my wife and our friends. I was expecting it to be much more (worse, longer, more obvious) based on the reaction online, and to be honest, wasn't really that far from how I interpreted the book scene (and considering the lack of a viewpoint for the tv show, made absolute sense from the performances and the direction). Was it outrage for outrage sakes? I don't know.
Good episodes, really looking forward to this last Sunday's, to get to the halfway point. But - oh my - is there a lot to come still.
Amor de Cosmos wrote: Well the show is not remotely historical so however people may, or may not, have behaved in medieval times is not really relevant.
As it goes I think there's an level of sadism in the series which makes me queasy. It's not always, or even often, explicit but it's there nevertheless.
Think ‘War of the Roses’, think of Burgundy’s rise to power, think of any other medieval conflict, power struggle marriage of convenience and poisoning/decapitation/gruesome death and that is ‘Game of Thrones’.
There’s even the supplanting of one religion for another, heresy, and burning at the stake.
What’s interesting is Martin has neatly captured early modern European power struggles in what is essentially a fantasy genre.
So even with all the dragons, walking dead and magic it is quite ‘historical’.
Sure the show the uses the trappings of inherited notions of a medieval world — as does much fantasy fiction. But it has no actual connection to it. It's a simulation. To me the series is an attempt to illustrate the world that Borges imagined and Baudrillard wrote of:
A great Empire created a map that was so detailed it was as large as the Empire itself. The actual map was expanded and destroyed as the Empire itself conquered or lost territory. When the Empire crumbled, all that was left was the map. In Baudrillard's rendition, it is conversely the map that people live in, the simulation of reality where the people of Empire spend their lives ensuring their place in the representation is properly circumscribed and detailed by the map-makers; conversely, it is reality that is crumbling away from disuse.
There's no connection with reality, past or present.
Like anything it’s about interpretation. Having read all the books the parallel to the historical process that was the conflict between the house of York and Lancaster is striking. I know nothing about Martin, but I wonder if he read early modern English history. He even gets the idea of ‘Bastard Feudalism’ across in the books.
It’s not real as in linked to actual historical events or processes, but the parallels are there for saddos like me to pick out.
It's not sad, it's how all of us find meaning in the world. It's only a problem when people begin to think that GoT — or aspects of it — are a "reflection of profound reality" — to use Baudrillard's term. It's far from it.
It's interesting, there are a number of historical fiction/fantasy shows at the moment and each of them falls on different place on the quasi-realism continuum. At one end you have GoT, which, for me, has no more connection to actual events than any work of fiction. At the other you have Vikings, by Michael Hirst, — who also did The Tudors, Camelot (ugh!) and The Borgias. Vikings goes out of it's way to present accurate historical detail, but like GoT it's still a simulation.
As a show, I prefer Vikings, the story's more compelling, and I've learned bits and pieces about ritual, belief and hairstyles in early Scandinavia. But I'm no closer to any sort of "profound reality" regarding the period. In that sense you could argue GoT is more honest, so long as it and, more importantly, its viewers don't make claims to any insight into an actual medieval world.
"Insight" is relative to what you knew before. If one's mental images of the middle ages were this:
... then it provides a useful correction.
But if you already imagined it like this:
...then this is just illustrating that with a more interesting plot and colorful characters.
I gave up on Vikings early because I had so little faith that it would be renewed, I didn't think it would be worth investing the time to get into it. Maybe I'll catch up.
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