After nearly a season-and-a-half of free passes from the critical world (save for complaints about the frequent sexposition), “Game of Thrones” came under fire this week for its torture scene, specifically the one in which a giant rat is trapped in a pail pressed up against the victim, heated, and basically forced to eat its way through the victim’s chest to escape the fire. It was an unusually brutal and cruel episode overall, but the torture scene amped up the squirminess. One colleague of mine actually quit the show because she couldn’t stomach the brutality anymore, and a couple of other critics have weighed in with their own criticisms.
Amanda Marcote over at The Prospect, for instance, suggested the use of torture scenes to create tension was the tiredest trope on television. She continued:
More importantly, torture scenes violate the audience’s trust that the characters onscreen, no matter how outlandish their surroundings, will behave like human beings. On TV, torture almost always works. The victim usually knows the information, and gives it up immediately. In rarer cases, they know nothing but are able to stop to torture by stating this fact. Either way, they respond positively to torture, and somehow the tormentor magically knows when their victim is speaking the truth.
Alyssa Rosenberg at ThinkProgress continued the argument, taking issue specifically for the reasons — or lack thereof — for the interrogation in this week’s episode:
Joffrey and Harrenhal’s interrogators are torturing people not out of fits of temper, and not because they think there’s information for them to get out of the people they’re targeting. Joffrey doesn’t have questions that he wants to ask Ros and Daisy. The Harrenhal interrogators ask the same set of questions to every person they talk to, no matter where that person comes from or their likelihood of knowing any relevant information. These people are torturing their victims because they enjoy doing so. These scenes are all about giving us information about the torturers, to draw a line between the characters who behave like human beings and those who exist and act beyond the laws that govern the rest of us.
I’ll admit, none of it raised any eyebrows with me, though perhaps that’s because it is such a widely employed trope that I don’t notice it anymore. I’m numb to it. The criticism didn’t even occur to me until I read the above posts; I was more concerned with, as reader Erin pointed out, the fact that “Game of Thrones” stole that torture technique from 2 Fast 2 Furious. But do they have a point? Is torture a tired trope? Is it worse when there’s no real motivation for it? Because I thought that was the point: To further demonstrate what a horrible person Joffrey is. How better to demonstrate that than torture people for no reason. Sure, it was unpleasant to watch, but that was the point.
Did any of you have any objections? Are torture scenes played out? Was the one in “Game of Thrones” effective? Are you more forgiving of it here because you love “Game of Thrones,” as opposed to “24″ where it really did get tired? Or are the critics just being overly sensitive? What are your thoughts on the matter?
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i dont watch GoT, but wasnt something like the rat bucket torture either shown or alluded to in one of the Fast and Furious movies? maybe?
Yup.
Also, this song will be in my head all day now.
Not sure. I better read the post to find out.
Pretty sure the book was written before 2 Fast 2 Furious, sooooo…
Yep:
A Clash of Kings: 1998
2 Fast 2 Furious: 2003
[puts fingers in ears]
LALALALA
I’m fairly certain the rat-bucket torture wasn’t in the book. It’s been about a year since I’ve read CoK, but I don’t remember that.
How true to the book did the movie of 2 Fast 2 Furious stay?
IIRC, in the book it’s a weasel and not a rat, but the method is the same.
This isn’t a new method of torture in the literary world (or in the real world I am guessing). I know it was in the Sword of Truth series of books, which is kind of like Song of Ice and Fire if it were written by an insufferable libertarian. It came well before 2 Fast 2 Furious.
it’s also in the film 1984
Has no one read American Psycho ? It’s the first thing I thought of when I saw that scene.
im pretty sure i’ve been torturing people with bucks and rats and torches for decades. also borat stole the game “when the snake eat the pig” from me too. its shameful how much hollywood steals.
Yeah, my first thought was of 1984 as well. But that had hungry rats in a FACE mask. So, 1984 > GoT when it comes to torture with rodents.
American Psycho had a hungry rat as well and a habitrail (plastic tube) and a … vagina.
I think Alyssa’s point was counter to Marcotte’s point – the torture scenes in this week’s GoT don’t fall under the same “tired torture tropes” as do Lost, 24, BSG, Breaking Bad, Casino Royale etc. etc. etc. In those shows, torture is an actual interrogation technique or a way for the lead to show how manly they are. Instead, the GoT torture scenes showed us that torturers are inherently sick and vile people, and that torture is how sick vile people get their jollies.
Correct, and it’s important for the development of a storyline, without spoiling anything.
Agreed.
I think in the book they’re tickle tortured by a guy referred to as “The Tickler”, so the rats are a welcome change.
Your comment says truth, your name says gross.
I’d also note that I found the Joffrey scene far more disturbing that the rat scene.
For real.
Agreed. That one seemed like something out of Saw — “Hurt your friend or else I’ll hurt you.”
I didn’t bat an eye at the torture scene but the Joffrey scene actually made want to turn away.
Agreed, King Bitchface’s burgeoning sexual sadist was way way more uncomfortable than the Tickler.
That being said, Ros shoulda kept her dumb whore mouth shut about Tyrion hand picking them.
Yeah, based on the headline, that’s what I thought we were talking about. Hell, that would even be an argument I’d be willing to hear. That whole scene made me feel ill, and I’m almost never phased by onscreen violence.
It’s supposed to make you feel ill, the kid is a literal monster. Every few episodes there should be something horrible to remind you of this to make sure the character remains threatening. I mean, we got a lot of people in the cast and you have to capture the minds f our viewers somehow.
Mind you, the rat scene was more ‘graphic’ as the Joffrey scene just cut away but man, can they make you squirm with the right placed reaction shots and sounds…
Agree. The rat scene was not hard to watch. I squirmed on the couch when my man had his foot taken off with the saw, and I was more than relieved when Roz was just hitting Daisy with that antler adorned sceptor instead of well, you know.
That’s a good argument those ladies make except…It’s set in the goddamn middle ages!
Um…no it’s setting is not in the Middle Ages. It is a fictional universe that draws parallels from the middle age time period of our universe.
NERD!
Yogi = Stannis
Suffering through the tired trope of countless questions at the end of blog post to foster comment production is far more torturous than Joffrey could ever be.
Oops, looked like it worked.
Hi!
“torture scenes violate the audience’s trust that the characters onscreen, no matter how outlandish their surroundings, will behave like human beings.”
Wait, human beings only torture someone when it’s actually going to work? Isn’t it more representative of (horrible, awful) reality to show someone torturing a person without success? And should on-screen characters only do nice things?
“More importantly, torture scenes violate the audience’s trust that the characters onscreen, no matter how outlandish their surroundings, will behave like human beings.”
The Tickler is torturing people to find the whereabouts of a magical knight. Come the fuck on with this reasoning.
Yeh, the show hasn’t really touched on The Brotherhood yet, which is unfortunate, but there IS some reason behind the torture. The Tickler/Polliver isn’t doing this entirely for shits and giggles.
Yeah. And it also establishes his relationship with Arya. It’s not a throwaway thing, it’s actually a pretty damn important piece of her character evolution.
The torture scene was almost exactly as it is in the novel.
Joffrey’s torture is sadism. He is a sadist and a psychopath, that much has already been set up in the series, this is part of his evolution.
Did these ladies speak up with they beheaded a horse ON SCREEN last season?
Now, now, I’m pretty sure that wasn’t a *real* horse. This isn’t Luck!
I don’t think beheading horses on screen is an overused cinematic technique, yet.
Think the point of Joffrey’s torture scene was to show his continue decent into sadistic madness. His absolute power is continuing to eat away his humanity. Likewise, it sends a good message to his uncle. I thought (at least Joffrey’s scene) that it was powerful television.
He barely had any humanity to begin with.
I could not disagree with the first critic more. “violate the audience’s trust that the characters onscreen, no matter how outlandish their surroundings, will behave like human beings”. That whole statement is complete and utter bullshit. To suggest that as an audience we are owed characters who behave like humans is ridiculous because A) human beings are often FUCKED UP and behave like anything but the people she apparently wishes society was comprised of, and B) where the hell does it say people that create the show owe us a damn thing? No matter how connected we become to a show, it never becomes our show, it will always be the their show and we’re just lucky enough to share it with them. If you don’t like their show fuck off and make your own.
You’re missing the point. People are often fucked up, but people don’t hear magical musical cues to tell them when the victim is telling the truth, as opposed to saying what the torturer wants to hear. Moreover, throughout history torture is used not to obtain intelligence, but to obtain forced confessions – i.e., what the torturer wants to hear – and it works exceedingly well for that purpose and works not at all for any purpose whatsoever.
Marcotte’s complaint is not that by engaging in torture people are not behaving like human beings. It is that the results of that torture – the torturer having magical knowledge about when they aren’t being lied to, either getting the info or realizing the victim really doesn’t know anything; or the victim laughing it off to show how manly they are, rather than collapsing into a puddle of goo and saying anything to make it stop – are unrealistic.
I don’t think I am missing the point, I honestly think she is. Technically, the Joffrey scene wasn’t even torture, it was sadistic brutality. There were no questions, there was no truth to be found. It was the little shit’s dark boner rearing it’s ugly head. Yes I can think of many examples where the point you and she make is valid, but this came up in a critique of this particular game of thrones episode. The main torture scene involved the rats and the Tickler. With regards to that scene her point (that torture magically produces the truth on TV) is irrelevant because it doesn’t matter to the Tickler what information he gets and he doesn’t care if the prisoner dies. Sure he’d probably like information as a bonus, but he’s not even paying attention so how much could he actually care.
so none of this:
–It is that the results of that torture – the torturer having magical knowledge about when they aren’t being lied to, either getting the info or realizing the victim really doesn’t know anything; or the victim laughing it off to show how manly they are, rather than collapsing into a puddle of goo and saying anything to make it stop – are unrealistic– is relevant to this episode. Which makes her argument stupid in my book.
That complaint really didn’t seem to apply to that torture scene anyway, as those people weren’t getting any information, nor any magical cues pertaining to such information’s veracity. And I got the impression that they wouldn’t have stopped torturing anyone regardless of any information they might get. They just wanted to kill their prisoners, and had no qualms with making the deaths as sadistically painful as possible, on the off chance that they might get some information out of it.
I don’t really require that every single character on a show behave like a sane, reasonable person. Most, yes, but not all. There are psychopaths, sadists, and full-blown wacko loons in reality, too, so the occasional inhuman character on a TV show actually rings true, if you ask me.
Joffrey torturing the whores was more about a big ‘fuck you’ to his uncle, Tyrion, than anything about the acts themselves or the whores.
I disagree. Joffrey is a sadistic little cunt and the message to his uncle was merely a byproduct of his sadism. In fact, I doubt either whore would have survived their night with Joffrey if he hadn’t wanted to send a message to Tyrion.
The Harrenhal torture scene had a point, because it showed Arya’s dire predicament and how far from safety she remained and how hellish and lawless the countryside had become. The Joffrey torture scene was offensive because it was totally gratuitious. We already knew he was a seriously sick puppy with no sense of restraint. but this time with nudity!
Look, it’s not cable television, it’s prime time HBO. Anyone complaining about content is just adding to the pussification of America. Next time, instead of watching a show that you’re warned contains extreme violence and nudity, go yell at some little league coach because your kid throws like a girl and only gets one inning playing deep left field.
preach!
We always put the shitty kids in right field. Also, I played right field.
Again The Ticklers torture was trying to serve a point. He is looking for information on Beric Dondarrion, the leader of the Brotherhood Without Banners.
The Joffrey torture to me seemed gratuitous, but did convey how spiteful he is towards Tyrion.
Either way, I wasn’t bothered by either scene.
What Matt said…was the torture scene in the book before 2 fast 2 furious? Also, I think they’re using the torture as way to make us want to see the bad guys get their comeuppance and drawing a parallel between Joffrey and the folks looking for the Brotherhood. They both torture people for fun and are bad people. I didn’t remember this from 2 fast 2 furious until a lot of people on the internet tipped their hand at watching ignorant. Well play, internet, well played.
A Clash of Kings was published in 1998.
2 Fast 2 Furious came out in 2003.
The question I want answered is why we’re validating the arguments made by pussified douchetards.
Great question.
Kahless bless you Matt, this is the correct question.
I love how this is the scene that “went to far”. So two weeks ago when they were killing babies and showing sperm on a whores mouth, that was okay? How about when they decapitated a horse, or the defenestration of a child for witnessing incest. Grow the fuck up. This is a tv show. And more importantly, this is America. This is the land of the free and the home of the brave. Almost 12 score years ago our forefathers forged our great nation with blood and sacrifice. They all put pen to paper to protest unfair taxation and a representation. On that hot summer day they risked all and gambled with the future of a generation. So that they and their children could live free from tyranny. As TJ said “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” Now after many wars and countless deaths to preserve the tree of liberty, here we sit, offended that some slob got his guts eaten by a rat and aghast that a tyrant king smacks a couple whores around. This isn’t the America I want to live in.
YOU MEAN TO TELL ME PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERING OPINIONS??? FUCK IT, I’M OUT!
Sorry, just pointing out the obvious irony in the pretentious debate you’ve posited, using the Drew Magary method- All caps and Cursing.
Can ladies be pussified douchetards? I never would have thought of that. It doesn’t look like either actually objects to violence or gore on TV, just to how they fit into a particular story. Marcotte is calling out torture as an overused cliche. Her reasoning is terrible but it doesn’t look like she objects to the image itself.
Also like I just saw a commentator say, it’s set in medieval times…where the saying “I’m gonna get medieval on your ass!” comes from..so what did you folks expect?
These critics are really going to hate the Roose Bolton character.
“A naked man holds few secrets; a flayed man, none.”
Ramsay makes Roose look like a teddy bear.
This is true.
I’m actually dreading seeing him on the show. Oh, man, nightmares forever.
Wait wait wait. There are cousins banging each other, horses being slaughtered, and babies being murdered, but this past week was TOO MUCH for some people?
STFU and take your intolerable arguments back to the comments section of Jezebel, where they should find a home under the subculture of “OMG NOT ENOUGH MINORITIEZ IN GIRLZ”
+1000. There was been much worse on this show. These didn’t even show any bloodshed. While violent, it’s all pretty much implied.
I don’t think the Tickler gave a shit if he got useful information or not. He struck me as more Mr. Blonde than anything, which makes him more unsettling.
I bet there’s a PETA version of the article linked to, complaining about rat torture.
They’d probably complain about the dragons being kept in a cage, too.
First of all the rat torture was a real technique used in the middle ages.
Secondly, the critics are missing the point of the two various scenes entirely.
The scenes are basically to get across Joffrey’s state out mind and feeling of entitlement and compare that to how he runs a battlefield from afar.
Joffrey doesn’t get to finish his humiliation or Sansa because Tyrion puts a stop to it, so he takes his uncle’s “gift” as an opportunity to give him one big middle finger while at the same time giving in to his sadistic side. Thus allowing the audience to hate Joffrey even more than we already do, while giving even more hints to Joffrey essentially being the new “Mad King.”
We also see how the troops are given the freedom by Joffrey to use any means necessary to gain information. The torturers here are trying to get information from the prisoners, but that isn’t the ultimate goal, they are getting their jollies in the same way as their king does. Tywin sees that the torture is less about information than it is sadism, so he puts a stop to it, much as Tyrion did earlier to Sansa’s humiliation.
Also, when you have multiple people to interrogate, isn’t asking everyone the same questions a pretty sound way of sorting out the truth. I’ve seen cop shows.
You’ve got to lie and tell each person that the rest of their group gave that guy up, so he might as well do the same and tell everything he knows.
You mean the one about the Hooker with dysentery?
I didn’t care about the torture. I just wanted him to stop chewing that fucking pear.
I also thought the Tickler scene reinforced the point that was made earlier in the episode (and really the season as a whole) in that the ultimate losers in this giant clusterfuck of a war are the common folk who are being killed or maimed in battle, having their lands and food supplies destroyed, and are being tortured for information they don’t have because rich and powerful people either want to hold onto the power they have or take more of it.
YES! The smallfolk always lose the war, regardless of what side they’re on.
It also reinforces the clash of ideologies at play. Robb pointedly rejected torturing his prisoners, even though they may have information that was useful. The Lannisters, at least in the absence of Tywin, have no such qualms, even if they don’t really care about the information being sought.
behave like human beings. right.
you guys do know that there are FUCKING DRAGONS on this show right?
i thought the scene is needed for aryas’ story but watching the dudes head get pounded onto the stake…. DHAMN
That head getting hammered down was, in my opinion, the most jarring spot in the episode.
I actually saw a nice display at the London Dungeon on the rat torture. It was pretty good display, with the description saying they would starve the rats before placing them on a prisoner’s belly. I was ten years old, so if you can’t handle that as an adult you just suck. Not like I turned out to be a maniac or anything.
*drinks own urine, checks on rat cages*
Reminds me of when I was about that age living in Germany as an Air Force brat and my dad took us to Dachau. I remember seeing a lot of really disturbing photos etc., but what really got me was the room that was for adults only…I can only imagine what kind of frakked up stuff they had in there.
Maybe because of the mother-son connection, but I was probably more jarred by the Mags/Coover Bennet hammer-fest from season 2 of Justified than the rat stuff.
I hope none of these people visit the Tower of London. I was there when I was 14. There’s an entire room full of medieval torture devices, with explanations of how they were used. That was an eye-opener for an impressionable teenager.
If you think the rat torture method is brutal, don’t read about the Judas cradle.
Ooooh, good one.
That could be read sarcastically, but it wasn’t. I thought I knew a lot of torture devices, but I’ve never heard of that one.
Reading Tyrion chapters in the book reveals bit by bit that Joffrey is a sociopath–he enjoys having men fight to the death over trivial things, for instance. I think that the show runners/writers need to make the point both vividly and quickly given the bounds of their medium. The same thing applies to Arya’s jouneys–we gotta pack in the horror that took place over many pages in the books.
I think David Simon mentioned that he doesn’t like “episode recap and discussion” type blogging about his television shows, for reasons demonstrated here–all of the horrific events of this GoT episode serve as development that is seen down the road. You can’t truly evaluate the importance and necessity of seeing The Tickler at work until you see the larger development of Arya. I’m not sure that I agree with Simon; I think it would be great if these critics later said, “O my god, THAT’s what it was about, I was totally wrong.” Going on such a roller coaster and realizing how much fun it was when you get off, even though you almost shat yourself a couple of times, is a great experience. That would require people who aren’t so wedded to their own self-importance that they can’t admit that they were short-sighted.
All this talk of torture and comments on the London Dungeon inspired me to post this.
Nice!
Also, yikes:
[en.wikipedia.org]
They should torture more!!!
Who are Amanda Marcote and Alyssa Rosenberg? Are they professional hand-wringers?
A few years ago The Tudors showed a man being tortured on the rack, and another man was drawn and quartered. I thought “drawn and quartered” meant one thing, and found out that it can mean something even more gruesome.
The point is that “Game of Thrones” isn’t the first show to depict torture without a positive resolution. Get over it, critics.
Idiots are complaining about something gratuitous and/or violent happening in Game of Thrones? Really? Have these people even seen a GoT episode?
Seriously, we could spend hours listing all the horrible things from the first episode to now.
Why do so many seem to think that beheading a horse is the ‘worst’ thing the show has done?
I felt worse for the prostitute that was beaten. Those dudes tortured by the rat was bad, but damn, at least they were somewhat expecting to be tortured.
That Amanda chick sounds like someone who double majored in Women’s Studies and English. She should be thankful she has a job, and is able to inflict her opinions on the internet. As I am thankful that I have an internet connection, a private office, and nerd rage.
I was just glad that Joffrey only wanted Ros to beat Daisy with the blunt implement. I thought for a second that he was going to make her take it the hard way.
seconded
Me too. I was almost relieved when I heard a *whack* instead of, well, unbearable screaming.
Agreed. I was actually relieved when it was just a good old fashioned beating.
I got the impression that “the hard way” was exactly what happened.
That was my fear as well.
Joffrey doesn’t think like that. Beating her with it is all his brain would know to do.
So, removing a guy’s tongue, stabbing a guy in the eyeball, pouring molten gold on a guy’s head, having a wolf eat a guy’s fingers are all actions done by people behaving like normal human beings?
Don’t forget horse decapitation.
The more uncomfortable scene was the Joffrey one making the one whore beat the other whore. The rat thing was just run of the mill GOT. It’s a TV show, so if you make a fuss you’re probably retarded.
I think the thing about the Harrenhal torture is they do it in front of the other prisoners to get them to talk, not the person they are torturing. I would assume they know people will say anything if they are getting tortured and not to trust them. But if they sufficiently scare the shit out of the people who are watching, they might be able to get something worthwhile from them.
Plus the group of men in Harrenhal are Lannister’s seriously fucked up lackeys. They are probably doing it to pass the time as much as anything else.
Exactly. Take two prisoners up in a chopper and toss one out without saying a word. The second one is usually in a talkative mood after that.
Honestly, GOT doesn’t go nearly as far as so many other shows on HBO have. That series pays lip service to moral dilemmas, but most of the characters are either good, bad, or play an archetypal character, the rogue, the thief, the dishonored warrior, the prodigal son, etc. I often expect that a character on got will say, “Execute him” or something, but no, the good guys don’t do it. Take another look at Deadwood, or The Sopranos. Some of those shows have NO good guys, only people choosing lesser degrees of bad.
Are we forgetting what happened to Wallace? We didn’t see it but they sure described it.
Wasn’t the whole torture scene meant to show a contrast between the honorable Robb Stark and the heartless Joffrey Baratheon/Lannister?
Early in the episode Robb flat out denies any suggestion of them torturing prisoners. He says his father outlawed it and that they wouldn’t even discuss it further. Then when we see the Lannister camp we are treated to dishonorable men torturing prisoners just to torture them. I thought it was clear what they were doing with those scenes.
I don’t particularly understand why torture has to have a meaning to be done. It just shows that The Mountain and by association almost everyone that is allied with the Lannisters are awful people that revel in making other people suffer. There very well could have been a reason, like if The Brotherhood is real or not, but I felt that the point was to display that people can be fucking terrible. I don’t really understand why it ruffled feathers.
I just finished reading the book linked below. Your arguments are all invalid. And yet valid.
[goo.gl]
I literally had no problem with the scenes. Why? Because they FIT.
Joffrey gets his gratification from the suffering of others. They could have spent an entire episode trying to spell that out, but this was pretty good shorthand.
Rat torture appears in several other media (typically a rat in a bag or dropped in someone’s pants). In this case it was a good way of showing what kind of guys they are without showing actual blood, piercing, or other mangling. Just a bucket, a torch, a magician-like flash of the danger before it’s concealed, and your imagination!
I think that’s the part that cracks me up. “Oh, what horrible torture!” Excuse me? Someone on a tv show put a bucket to someone’s chest and your brain filled in the rest!
At least the bonesaw scene had a sound effect to make you cringe. And that’s the only scene that elicited uncomfortable giggling from me.
Agreed; when you look back on what you actually saw, it wasn’t terribly graphic. Just a lot of the right sounds and the right reactions to trigger that emotion.
You had to do something, the dude eating the apple (whose suppose to be the book’s Tickler) is part of Arya’s list of names that she’s building. He’s suppose to be a completely inhuman person who asks the same question of everyone, over and over again, and killing every single one by day’s end. The rat and bucket thing was kinda lame cause it was used before, but still, it wasn’t a trope meant to be scary, it was meant to show how inhuman men at war can be
I don’t think either of these critics argued that the torture itself was “too far”, as in too violent or depraved or whatever, at least based on these excerpts. The first seems to miss the point that plenty of real people torture for no other reason then they are sadistic and power crazed. The second seems to actually contradict the first.
Might’ve missed the boat on this forum as I just found this article, oh well.
Anyways, apparently Martin bases a lot of the way the Game of Thrones world operates on feudal Europe hundreds of years ago (but with dragons and what have you). When I read the books, I was appalled at the amount of pain and suffering inflicted upon, well, everyone. However, I think it fits perfectly well with how human history has been shaped. It’s only until relatively recently that it wasn’t considered pretty much the norm for shocking acts of brutality to run rampant. Saying there’s too much torture in the show is essentially censoring the amount of violence that would be expected to exist in a war of this nature. Also, having read a few of these threads about too much violence in the last few days people keep bringing up the horse getting decapitated. Am I the only one who was completely unfazed by this but instead just thought “WHOA. The Mountain is HARDCORE.”
These critics are fucking idiots. One of the main themes of Clash of Kings is the price that ordinary people pay when their “betters” play the game of thrones. War zones are bleak, dirty, bloody, frightening places where innocent people are often hurt and killed for no reason other than the cruel twist of fate that put them in that location. The fact that Martin has the stones to show this is one of the things that makes this story great.
And Joffrey is a psychopath with the power of the crown. There’s nothing he’ll do on this show that hasen’t been topped in real life in the 20 years by dictators and their offspring.
You said it well. I said it much more angrily and in a long winded manner.
Those critics don’t know DICK about the books, and it’s reflecting in their hasty conclusions about the show. This isn’t 24. It’s all based on source material and has relevance – except most of the sex scenes (which is just HBO being HBO)
The episode used torture to differentiate the mindset of 3 important characters:
1) Robb is the idealist. He refuses to allow Roose Bolton flay Lannister prisoners because i) it is outlawed (and immoral); and 2) he doesn’t want to give the Lannisters incentive to harm his sisters;
2) Joffrey is the sadist. He has Sansa publicly beaten (and fully disrobed in the book) for the mere reason that he is angry at her brother. He also has Ros torture the other prostitute for his sadistic amusement (and to send Tyrion a message… which is that he is a brutal little prick); and finally
3) Tywin is the pragmatist. He stops his men from torturing the small folk, but for practical and not moral reasons. He sees torture (in this case) as a waste of resources, and seems amused by his soldiers’ stupidity but otherwise doesnt give a shit.
Having watched this a second time, I think we’re bringing a lot of our own baggage to the scene with Ros and her poor friend. Sadistic as he is, I think Joffrey is also still afraid of sex, and covering for it a bit. He’s cruel, but I don’t it would occur to him to actually have that hooker violated with that mace. There’s a relationship between his sexuality and his sadism, but he’s still a boy.
As for the Tickler, that *could* be a valid critique, but it’s not. The way they torture is neither predicated on getting real information, nor is it pure sadism. They know damn well that the information the tortured give is not necessarily accurate, but they follow up on it anyway. They do this both to create a climate in which supporting the Brotherhood is scary and to maybe uncover information, with a complete disregard for the consequences. This is exactly why authoritarian regimes and others employ torture. And because torture doesn’t actually work very well, I think it’s an excellent depiction of the logical consequences of embracing it as a tactic. Hopefully we’ll get enough of the dynamics in the Riverlands to show that more clearly.
Dude, is this a serious topic? Did you read the books? Stop me because I’m about to be on a roll of shutting their arguments the fuck down. Spoilers will follow. The chief interrogator or torturer is called “The Tickler” for a reason. The show hasn’t addressed that, but the book does. It makes subtle allusions to what he does to people while he is torturing, “tickling” them with blades. Had they shown what the book says he does, it would have been much more gruesome. Think open cavity chest surgery. This is HBO. It’s R-rated material. The gnawing of stomachs was offscreen. It wasn’t bad.
Alyssa and Amanda, your so-called colleagues, are very uninformed. Torture is not a tired trope – it’s a critical component of the book. Believe it or not, this character ****SPOILER**** goes on to be important later on. It’s not HBO doing torture for torture’s sake – it’s for the plot. In fact, this criticism has only come up because the show has apparently done sex for sex’s sake to draw viewers in. The scene was not as brutal as it truly is. Shit has been seriously toned down.
When did WG get so sensitive? This is a classic case of jumping to hasty conclusions (on A+A part). I can’t entirely fault them because they clearly haven’t read the books. But the crux of their argument – that this torture is a tired trope – is INHERENTLY flawed. It’s part of the story, an integral one even so.
What you will read from here below is another spoiler:
***SPOILER***
These characters are not arbitrarily torturing. The questions they ask have to do with something called “The Brotherhood.” If you listen closely you will hear that. The Lannisters are conducting interrogation on POW’s to figure out if the villagers have any knowledge of the Brotherhood without Banners. This is a vigilante group that is led by Beric Dondarrion, and was originally assigned by Ned Stark to pursue the Mountain and bring him the King’s Justice in Season 1. With Ned dead, the group becomes a vigilante outfit, and continues to harass the Lannister troops and kill them. They are fucking badasses and become even more important later on.
So in the future, don’t jump to conclusions about what HBO is doing when it comes to violence in the show. Westeros is a very, very violent place, and the show has done a good job of demonstrating that.
Well, there are two things that aren’t totally clear from the scene itself:
1) Contra Rosenberg, they are looking for information (though I think that should be at least a little clear, as you point out).
2) Contra Marcotte’s general argument (though I’m not sure she’s actually saying this about GoT), there is a very good chance that the guy they get to spill the beans on some-miller-or-something who’s allegedly supporting the Brotherhood actually has no idea what he’s talking about. They get false information all the time. And they follow up on it anyway, because they don’t really care and maybe the next person they torture will actually know. If you really want to embrace torture as a tactic, that’s what you have to do (which is one of the many reasons people shouldn’t torture). It’s very well-played in the books; hopefully that will come through on screen.
Overall, I think this mostly results from their oversensitivity not to the gruesomeness of torture scenes but from their oversensitivity to tropes. Worrying about that shit too much — whether the tropes are ultimately subverted or not — is a dead end.
The only problem I had was that we didn’t get to see the aftermath of the rat chewing through the poor guy.
a quick wiki search shows ”rat torture” was really used historically around the world hundreds of years ago. game of thrones did not steal this from fast and the furious, thats completely outrageous
Really? Anyone who is offended by these scenes in the show should NOT, I repeat NOT, read the books, unless you have the magical power of being able to not imagine/visualize what you’re reading. ‘Cause honestly, this isn’t even the worst thing in THIS book, let alone the series. Wait until next week …