HBO adaptation of Game of Thrones - will this be just for nerds? (NO SPOILERS PLEASE)

i daresay thrones would be far more interesting and balanced a show if it were a lot less torture/standard porny.

there's very little torture iirc, and i'd love to see a breakdown of viewership by gender

agree that the strong emphasis on tits & (female) ass is kind of lame, given that the show does feature so many strong & interesting female characters. imagine it would appeal more strongly to women if the softcore were less obviously designed to attract the male eye.

I'm also not at all convinced that there's some sort of corporate memo/note to the show creators saying "more tits plz

I remember reading that Party Down literally got these sorts of notes on their Starz show, so it would not be a stretch to assume that this would happen on other premium channels. There is a lot of network pressure to differentiate the content as "for adults", and nudity and violence are the easiest way to accomplish those goals and appease the suits.

hasnt louis ck talked about how on his hbo sitcom they demanded nudity and since he didnt feel comfortable asking his female costar to do a nude scene he did it himself

Starz definitely has that mandate, and I'm sure HBO probably did as well (the guy running Starz's original programming used to run HBO's). I just think HBO has probably moved away from that kind of need to appeal. Nudity in Luck was brief, in Treme it's been largely non-existent (if its been there at all),

I'm also not at all convinced that there's some sort of corporate memo/note to the show creators saying "more tits plz".

there are literally stories of writers for HBO shows getting these notes

not sure if this was addressed earlier, but i was pretty annoyed that OF COURSE the first significant African-American role in the show is to play a "savage" from the summer isles. i mean, i know they are described as "dark-skinned" in the books, but gtfo.

― heated debate over derpy hooves (jon /via/ chi 2.0), Thursday, May 3, 2012 6:01 PM (28 minutes ago) Bookmark

pretty sure that british soundin dude wasnt american

lmao

not sure if this was addressed earlier, but i was pretty annoyed that OF COURSE the first significant African-American role in the show is to play a "savage" from the summer isles.

Both Xaro Xhoan Daxos and Salladhor Saan seem much less savage to me than your average soldier at Harrenhal.

indeed

summer isles-american

Boardwalk Empire has just as much nudity as GOT, but for some reason it seems more organically integrated with the plot

was this most recent episode the first one without any nudity in the series?

Boardwalk Empire has just as much nudity as GOT, but for some reason it seems more organically integrated with the plot

Haha are you serious.

Some of the sex stuff in Boardwalk made me cringe so hard.

The Wire didn't have a huge amount of sex scenes but any time it did they were pretty cringeworthy too

Some of the sex stuff in Boardwalk made me cringe so hard.

― polyphonic, Thursday, May 3, 2012 6:11 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i mean at least game of thrones hasn't devoted a totally annoying character to the task of showing boobs all the time

Was told that the Quarth dresses were changed from the book so every female wasn't exposing a breast, but idk if that's true.

Totally true. I had forgotten about that.

not sure if this was addressed earlier, but i was pretty annoyed that OF COURSE the first significant African-American role in the show is to play a "savage" from the summer isles. i mean, i know they are described as "dark-skinned" in the books, but gtfo.

The Summer Isles are where the black people come from in this particular world. I don't get your point.

yeah that's weird they took out the one-boob dresses since they've been so boob centric so far

they could have fulfilled the entire season's boob quota in one Qarth-centric episode

i mean at least game of thrones hasn't devoted a totally annoying character to the task of showing boobs all the time

― l0u1s j0rdan (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Thursday, 3 May 2012 23:24 (Yesterday) Permalink

pretty sure Ros fits that bill

She's not totally annoying though, and she works to give some kind of humanity to the legions of bare-breasted prostitutes the show usually serves up as window dressing.

okay lol @ braindead me for "African-American" but this...

The Summer Isles are where the black people come from in this particular world. I don't get your point.

this is what makes me get a little o_O over it. i mean, all he does is mention a "dark-skinned" race of "savages" from the Summer Isles. i think its more your problem if you read that as "black people" instantly.

who have we met from the Summer Isles? are we talking about the pirate or the rich guy in Quarth?

the rich guy in Qarth

all he does is mention a "dark-skinned" race of "savages" from the Summer Isles

Uhh, ACOK has a character whose skin is as "black as polished jet" (pg. 237), what's more, "savage" is being used pejoratively I'm pretty sure by characters whose opinions we're not supposed to accept without question? I mean, I don't think it's out of the ordinary to see the Sumemr Isles as an analogue to Africa?

yeah, medieval western europe wasn't really known for its advanced and enlightened views about other civilisations.

rich guy in qarth (xaro xhoan daxos) hardly strikes me as a caricatured "savage"

yeah. as far as racial politics goes I think the Dothraki are more problematic than that guy.

Guys, I think we're being trolled?

even the southern westeroesians have fancy ethnic sounding names and are all tricky and cruel where northerners are named stark and are v honest and brave

by a heated debate over derpy hooves no less (xp)

can i just nnnnnnnnnghgh at this:

I feel like Martin has a lot more to say about politics, gender, etc. than Tolkien did. It's pretty interesting even if the strokes are broad

also, it seems like structurally any high-fantasy tv entertainment focused on medieval-england analogues is going to resort to, er, 'othering' non-white ppl. and no one is going to put the hbo boob money behind a high-fantasy tv entertainment which isn't focused on white people. -- it's a structural thing, rather than a failure of the writers. (the skeezy dependance on the demographics of boobs is both, i suppose.)

true of the books too to some extent i guess. (tho le guin did have a hugely popular juvenile fantasy series, from decades back, in which the main cast were not white: except when the sci fi channel adapted it, suddenly they were. now that was egregious.)

That film 'Crash' was so racist...

Summer Islanders are generally portrayed as rather civilised in the books.

rich guy in qarth (xaro xhoan daxos) hardly strikes me as a caricatured "savage"

right, but he does go to great pains in the show to describe overcoming his beginnings to get rich. anyway, i was just disappointed because that was not how i read the Summer Isles inhabitants in the book at all.

idk, I just interpreted that as being smarmy in order to get access to dragon

^ otm. the show has not insignificant racial problems; that doesn't rate (to me) as one of them.

Woha Lady in Red delivering that weirdo thing. It didn't seem like fun. Otherwise, I LOVE this show so much. I am not much into "fantasy" but this is so mad awesome. Probably cause it feels medieval to me

I just watched the latest episode while stoned and it seemed like the Muppet show

?
http://img2.lln.crunchyroll.com/i/spire4/fa0125705106919cdf023547d5b347ce1308943998_full.png

right, but he does go to great pains in the show to describe overcoming his beginnings to get rich.

he mentioned that he wasn't born to wealth & power. didn't strike me as great pains, or an indication that he arose from savagery, but today hasn't been my day for figuring shit out so [< heads up, aero]

durnit why don't you l33k already.

oh Ian

was on tonight, but i missed the beginning, so i gotta watch it again before commenting. not a great episode, but not a bad one. mostly just moved the pieces around some.

moyyyyyyyyyyy baaaaabbeeeeee

(dragons)

Osha was pretty badass this ep.

loved the riot scene!

yeah, that was unexpected and very tense. loved tyrion putting joffrey in his place afterwards.