why is the violence in those HBO/HBO-style "serious television" shows so disturbing

Obā-san

like i just saw this gif of an exceptionally disturbing thing from game of thrones and now im feeling rather exceptionally nauseous

...How do people watch this?

Anonus

Oh my god, I was just thinking about "Quality Television" earlier today and how I feel weird in that it doesn't appeal to me

Not just because of violence, it just...I don't know, a lot of it feels like it was cranked out of a machine, and still, even the kids' shows you're supposed to "grow out of" feel more creative (or they did at one point?)

Salix Babylonika

People like violence, over the top, unrealistic sexuality, and the mixing of the two.

Why is another question entirely. I don't like it either.

Imipolex G

over the top violence is a way of expressing aggression

over the top sex is a way of expressing being sexy

...I'm going somewhere with this, just wait a sec

Obā-san

man like

i'm not a squeamish guy

i've seen some shit, i can deal with violence

but it's just

it's just such mean, ugly violence, vengeful and thuggish and it seems like characters are written to be terrible just so they can have something nightmarish done to them and you're supposed to be "woo yay terrible person got what they deserved" and it's just

so gross

at least if you see like actual pictures of dead people they aren't accompanied with a strongly implied YAAAAY THIS IS SO AWESOME THEY DESERVED THIS WOOO

Section42L

I do find it rather strange how adult television on the whole feels more cookie-cutter now than it did back in the days before creator-driven programming really took hold, and television executives were explicitly in control of most programming-related decisions.

Imipolex G

^^I admit I don't really get that

^or that

Obā-san

if i want grotesque violence in my fiction i think i'll stick to Dennis Cooper or something

Obā-san

i guess im done with the rant i started this thread with

Obā-san

god i just

i just HATE PEOPLE

Obā-san

There are 387.44 million miles of printed circuits in wafer thin layers that fill my complex. If the word 'hate' was engraved on each nanoangstrom of those hundreds of miles it would not equal one one-billionth of the hate I feel for humans at this micro-instant.

Imipolex G

chill, d00d

Obā-san

im actually totally chill right now

well kinda

im more slumped over face in my pillow and feeling defeated

Imipolex G

at least you have a pillow

Klinotaxis

naney said:

at least if you see like actual pictures of dead people they aren't accompanied with a strongly implied YAAAAY THIS IS SO AWESOME THEY DESERVED THIS WOOO

well... most of the time.

Obā-san

Klinotaxis said:

naney said:

at least if you see like actual pictures of dead people they aren't accompanied with a strongly implied YAAAAY THIS IS SO AWESOME THEY DESERVED THIS WOOO

well... most of the time.

well yeah, but

like

remember osama bin laden? he did very bad things, he hid out, got found, got shot a bunch, people rejoiced. like yeah maybe that's tasteless but it's a totally reasonable chain of events.

compare that to, say "racist man is racist, his hands are held in fryer grease via magic". like yeah racist dude is fucking awful, but that doesn't mean that i want to hear his screams of pain as his flesh is boiled off. But it seems that many people apparently DO want to see/hear just that, and that's what upsets me, more than the violence itself.

Anonus

I guess there's a feeling that television has "denied" viewers this sort of thing for most of its history, so seeing it is satisfying?

Obā-san

Anonus said:

I guess there's a feeling that television has "denied" viewers this sort of thing for most of its history, so seeing it is satisfying?

people don't care about that generally i think

Section42L

naney said:

Anonus said:

I guess there's a feeling that television has "denied" viewers this sort of thing for most of its history, so seeing it is satisfying?

people don't care about that generally i think

He might've been referring to it from the perspective of the writers, and I could absolutely see them thinking that way.

Obā-san

Ahh yes then i guess

Odradek

It's strange that something out of context would cause you to react this way.

Not that I don't fully understand your reaction.

Hexartes

I think the appeal of it is somewhat akin to the appeal of dark humor, and fwiw I doubt the scenes are ever intended to be outright enjoyable or satisying.

Sredni Vashtar

Ironically, the only instance of truly nauseating violence from that show that I can immediately call to mind was intended to evoke precisely the opposite reaction. It's a gruesome show, but more often than not violence is used to say something negative about those that use it, even when that violence is justified or from an otherwise sympathetic person or group. There are exceptions, but those... get complicated in hindsight.

LW

Section42L said:

I do find it rather strange how adult television on the whole feels more cookie-cutter now than it did back in the days before creator-driven programming really took hold, and television executives were explicitly in control of most programming-related decisions.

Were you the one who came up with that line about how they could put a jar of mayo on HBO and critics would still heap praise on it? If so, I have to thank you for that, because I kind of find myself thinking that more and more these days.

I understand that a lot of time and effort go into making Game of Thrones and other big time cable dramas and I would not want to discount that. I also understand that I am not the target audience for those kinds of shows. That said, I am not wild about "serious television" often boiling down to cynical, dark, and edgy television, especially when said television is pitched as being more realistic than say My Little Pony, when in reality it is probably just as fanciful as MLP is.

On a sort of related note, I think having anti-hero and villainous protagonists and/or less black and white morality can potentially make a show interesting. However, I feel like those types of devices can easily encourage the "humans are terrible" mentality if used in excess. I guess there is also the whole "rooting for the purposely unsympathetic protagonist" issue that tends to pop up with those types of shows, but that seems to be more of a fan thing than something TV show producers actually intend.

Odradek

The violence and sexism in GoT may seem extreme to us, but you have to understand that's just how the culture of Westeros WAS at the time.

Yarrun XIX

Violence, sexism and incest. Can't forget the incest.

From my very, very limited knowledge about GoT, the audience is motivated by making some of the terrible people significantly less likable than the other likable people. Namely, Joffrey, who is hated almost universally by fans.

Section42L

^^^ Yeah, I was the person who made that post about mayo airing on HBO. I'm glad that you appreciated it.

For the record, I pretty much completely agree with your post. The only Quality TV shows that I'm really interested in watching are The Wire and Breaking Bad. From what I've heard about them, they're a fair bit subtler and more sophisticated than something like Game of Thrones.

Yarrun XIX

The Wire is basically the antithesis of typical cable programming. I've heard nothing but praise heaped upon it.

I would prefer that Breaking Bad wasn't made with the cast it has, but I'll freely admit that it's well-written and that the actors are on point.

Sredni Vashtar

Odradek said:

The violence and sexism in GoT may seem extreme to us, but you have to understand that's just how the culture of Westeros WAS at the time.

The folks at Ferretbrain once said that as much as they disliked GRRM's work for various reasons, it did avoid most of the creepy misogyny of other "historically accurate" high fantasy in that the horrible things that happen to people were about evenly distributed between the sexes, with the treatment of women in particular never being treated as just and logical. Which is not to say that there are not problems, but it's really not so bad as most people who hate the series make it out to be.

Now, the fact that a good chunk of the characters are really dreadful people or just behaving dreadfully due to circumstance is an entirely different issue. Related, but different. Although Yarrun is correct that the most dreadful people tend to be the ones that most viewers are happiest to see gone, particularly when there is no real justification for their hatefulness. On of the characters actually makes a great speech about people like that, but...

The reason that I think that most people enjoy it has far less to do with the gratuitousness than the fact that nearly every exchange of dialogue is either an excellent illustration of the characters involved or just beautifully written. It's really, really engaging on that level. The grisly bits can be very in-your-face, but the character writing is extremely subtle for the most part.

Sredni Vashtar

Which is to say, I'm really tired of having it assumed that because a show or a book or a comic has sensational qualities that those qualities are always the main selling point.

I mean, really? You're gonna give me that little credit?

Hexartes

Honestly I see that pretense and other pretenses similar to it thrown around here often and it really bothers me.

Obā-san

hun i never said that was the main selling point, i just said that what i've seen of the violence in these sorts of shows has disturbed me a good deal and i gave reasons as to why

except for hannibal, i've liked what i've seen of the violence in that

not sure why that's the show that gets me seal of approval but it does

Section42L

I haven't seen Hannibal, but I think it helps that he's actually a somewhat sympathetic character in general.

Sredni Vashtar

naney said:

hun i never said that was the main selling point, i just said that what i've seen of the violence in these sorts of shows has disturbed me a good deal and i gave reasons as to why

I wasn't talking about you, though; I was talking about the vibe I was getting from Odradek, Section and Yarrun's posts, mainly.

Actually most of the posts here that weren't yours, honestly.

PatchAwful

This was actually one of (many) reasons I gave on Game of Thrones.

Oddly enough one of the things I found most uncomfortable, which kinda fits in with what naney has said, was more a drawn out sequence where the violence, while extreme, was more implied, but was in the name of comeuppance, which the person I was watching with was really getting behind. I guess I should specify that while the scene was perhaps intended to be uncomfortable, it was the reaction which set it for me

Aliroz

I really regret reading the Song of Ice and Fire books.

As for the "historically accurate" thing, no.

Klinotaxis

aliroz, he said "how the culture of Westeros was at the time", not the culture of europe. it's a joke, he already knows how silly the historical accuracy thing is.

Aliroz

I know, I just wanted an excuse to rant about how much I dislike Game of Thrones.

And to link to medievalpoc.

...in human history, people will put up with a LOT of tyranny but it has to come with stability...that’s how Empires even happened at all on any continent in the Middle Ages.You can’t just have a war and kill all the farmers. Everyone will die. Any survivors will leave, society will collapse, and you’ll be the happy king of nothing, and then you’ll die of starvation..

...

Basically what I am saying here is that ASOIAF/Game of Thrones, is absolutely a post-colonial projection of colonial brutality into a quasi-Medieval setting. Westeros...is a product of specifically white and Eurocentric speculative fiction: because what if colonial-level horrors had been visited upon Medieval white people by Medieval white people?

...

And it is very sincerely a fantasy; the resources and circumstances for that...cannot be replicated in a Medieval social structure with that degree of instability, war, and cultural nihilism combined with a lack of social supportive structures. 

...we live in a post-colonial society, and this skews and warps our idea of what the actual European Middle Ages were like. In regard to gender, ability status, economy, race, religion, production, level of acceptable violence…just about everything.

Now…I’m not saying that you couldn’t cobble together a pastiche of every atrocity that happened in Europe(ish) between the fall of the Roman Empire and the 18th century and come up with something remotely like Westeros, but only after cherry picking and removing both original context and subsequent backlash.

Klinotaxis

can't fault you for that

oh geez you didn't need to delete anything

Aliroz

Don't worry, I can restore it easily.

Yarrun XIX

It's funny how often medieval fantasy handwaves religion away. 

Aliroz

Yarrun XIX said:

It's funny how often medieval fantasy handwaves religion away. 

I know.  It permeated everything of the medieval europe area in a way we can't really comprehend very well.  It was like sight; not a thing, but the thing by which everything is seen and defined.  As central to society's structure as the concept of wealth.  

(not that I'm saying the medieval era was better than today's more secular society.  Religion was used as an excuse to justify stupid terrible crud like the crusades, and its power and station were often a tool of the ambitious)

(to be fair, it's really hard to write such a religion-permeated worldview and have it work for a modern audience.)

Klinotaxis

i think it's cos people don't get church politics

i mean it's sorta limited to "big evil catholic church equivalent"

and then when i read name of the rose, by ~a real medievalist~, there's all this stuff about conflicts between fraternal orders and burning people who whip themselves alive and shit, way cooler then WOOOO PRIEST IN SPOOKY VESTMENTS WOOOOOO

MetaFour

I recall watching a French film about Martin Guerre (it may have just been named Martin Guerre but I don't remember). There's a scene where the church officials are discussing the ongoing trial and some aspects that don't completely make sense. One of them raises the possibility that the defendant is demon-possessed. And everyone treats the suggestion so casually, because back then, demonic possession was just a thing that happened sometimes.

Yarrun XIX

Aliroz said:

Yarrun XIX said:

It's funny how often medieval fantasy handwaves religion away. 

I know.  It permeated everything of the medieval europe area in a way we can't really comprehend very well.  It was like sight; not a thing, but the thing by which everything is seen and defined.  As central to society's structure as the concept of wealth.  

(not that I'm saying the medieval era was better than today's more secular society.  Religion was used as an excuse to justify stupid terrible crud like the crusades, and its power and station were often a tool of the ambitious)

(to be fair, it's really hard to write such a religion-permeated worldview and have it work for a modern audience.)

I use fantasy religions a lot in my fantasy universe that's never going to be written into books, and I think it's just a matter of combining religion with modern/medieval politics. It's not a perfect solution, but it gets the same sense of a group that's focused on higher ideals and is yet overly ambitious.

Sredni Vashtar

While compelling, there is a problem with the argument Al cites: It misses the fact that the story is set at a massive breaking point during a short timespan rather than a stable period. It's implied that the history of Westeros and Essos stretches back thousands of years, with very long stretches of relative stability punctuated by the occasional large-scale war or massive cataclysm that takes out a huge chunk of the population. We don't see or hear much of the quiet, stable parts of the world or its history because the protagonists (and antagonists) are rarely in those places.

This argument also ignores basically everything that happens on Essos, as if there are no non-white people in this narrative or their presence is irrelevant or something. Which is not to say there are not problems there, but those lead to an entirely different set of issues and questions - mainly about the misanthropy of the series and how it uses cultural norms to illustrate it, which is a little thornier than affords an opportunity to point and scream j'accuse! and run away.

I'm not saying there aren't problems with this series and how it treats violence on a personal and cultural level. But I really don't like feeling like every point I make is evoking a collective eye-roll, or like I'm being framed as some kind of perverse devil's advocate or obnoxious crypto-chauvinist.

Sredni Vashtar

Klinotaxis said:

i think it's cos people don't get church politics

i mean it's sorta limited to "big evil catholic church equivalent"

and then when i read name of the rose, by ~a real medievalist~, there's all this stuff about conflicts between fraternal orders and burning people who whip themselves alive and shit, way cooler then WOOOO PRIEST IN SPOOKY VESTMENTS WOOOOOO

Probably worth noting that Martin does do a more than passable job in illustrating the varying degrees of religious piety and fanaticism and the friction between certain sects and ideals, although at points things get a bit flattened in the series - apparently Melisandre is way more sympathetic in the books despite being basically Savonarola in a skirt.

Eco does this better, however, but Eco does a lot of things better than most people.

Obā-san

hun i think you're being maybe a wee bit overly defensive?..

Salix Babylonika

criticism of something you like is not necessarily criticism of you.

Also, the reasons you enjoy something may not be the same reasons it is popular.

Sredni Vashtar

Because I like having people actually respond to things I say instead of ignore them. I mean, I prefer being agreed with, but sometimes just feeling like someone is listening even if they think I'm totally off-base is nice.

Although this does stem from the fact that it feels like it's being insinuated that I am somehow in the wrong for liking something that other people don't - despite the fact that most people here haven't even watched the thing. Sure, I have things that I won't watch because they skeeve me out in principle, but I at least try to listen to arguments in their favour and concede that the issue is sometimes with me.

Crystal

Vash is definitely being talkative, though I fail to see how that's any different from how he usually is (which I mean positively). To me, this just looks like him going "Yeah guys, Game of Thrones isn't like X, it's actually like Y, can we talk about the Y instead please." And/Or that, at the very least, there are some misunderstandings about it.