Game of Thrones seems to me, at this point in my viewin sojourn, to be a cliched retread. It seems to me to contain bits of I Claudius, bits of Mediaeval power struggle tales, bits of Alexandrian, Roman, Byzantine, and Mediaeval conspiracy tales, bits of the history plays of Shakespeare, bits of HBO's Real Sex (with the "real sex" left out), bits of sophomoric scatological humour a la Caddyshack (with much of the frat boy humour left out), and bits of Ray Harryhausen postmodernist bricolage, making Games a pastiche of a pastiche. Games appears to me to be the perfect TV show for the postmodern set, those twenty and thirty somethings with little knowledge or sense of the history of television, films, literature, and the genres that underlie all three.
There seem to be a number of problems with Game of Thrones. It has way too many characters and narratively it is far too sprawling. Epic films and TV adapted from books are typically much better when they are honed down. Additionally, narratively and visually speaking Game of Thrones seems to me to work largely on a literalist or fundamentalist level of filmmaking and television making. It is as though a bunch of fundamentalists with their literalism and misogynism decided to get together and make an x rated film in which a stiptease joint/brothel was an important setting and surface level vulgarity, in its many forms, abounds. Needless to say, subtlety is not one of Game of Thrones' strong points.
I am not sure why the makers of HBO's Game of Thrones decided to bring the vulgarity for vulgarity's sake. Is it because the TV show parallels the books the show is adapted from and the books of George RR Martin are vulgar? It is because the vast majority of contemporary filmmakers, including those who made Game of Thrones, do not have the ability to move beyond the simplest and most literal and unsubtle levels of film making? It is because the show wants to be "realistic", though how a fantasy can be realistic is a question that also needs to be asked? Is it because the target demographic for the adaptation is young males who like their television and films to be vulgar seeing genius in low humour and who get vicarious joy from seeing lots of blood, breasts, and pubic hair? Or is it some of the above or all of the above?
Given the levels of female nudity in Game of Thrones, given that female nudity is in every episode save, if memory serves, only three between seasons one and four, and given that female nudity far outnumbers that of male nudity in show, one has to ask why there is so much female nudity in Game of Thrones. Is it institutional? Did the suits at HBO demand the female nudity? Were and those who made Game of Thrones misogynous? Was the audience Games was targeting misogynous so the makers of the show decided when in Rome? All of the above?
The reason there is so much female nudity in Games certainly isn't because, as some apologists for the show have suggested, that that was how it was during the time in which Games is set. Presumably those who make this argument mean that Games is set during the Mediaeval era since Games is obviously, at least in part, grounded in notions of what the Mediaeval era with its power struggles, violence, patriarchy, and sexism was like. The problem with such an argument should be obvious to anyone, however. Games is is not set in the Mediaeval Era in Europe. It is a fantasy, a fantasy with dragons and female leg and underarm shaving, things all that were hardly common in the Mediaeval Era despite the fact they are common in Game of Thrones.
One gets the impression that many of the female actors, particularly females playing minor roles, were hired less for their acting chops in Games, which seem to have been minimal in the case of most of the female actors who appeared in the nude. Some of them don't even say a word. Others do little but moan. They are essentially part of the mise-en-scène of the show, a rather perverse and nasty mise-en-scène at that, in which the camera, like many, one presumes watching, leer over female tit, pussy, and arse (female nudity for female nudity's sake). One instead gets the sense that females playing minor characters were hired--cheap European female labour willing to take it off for profit?-- instead for how they would look naked bathed in a kind of softcore Penthouse and Hustler ish like "period" lighting scheme that dominates the shows nude scenes which brings us back to the question of misogyny again.
It seems likely that the copious amounts of female nudity in Game of Thrones has something to do with economics, demographics, and culture. Sex sells, as I am sure we don't need to be reminded of at this point. What director and writer Howard Ramis's said in the featurette on the making of Caddyshack on the Caddyshack DVD seems as relevant today as it was for Caddyshack when it was made in 1980. Ramis, in the featurette, notes that when he asked Cindy Morgan if she would appear nude in the film she said she preferred not to. When producer Jon Peters found out that Morgan did not want to do nude scenes, according to Ramis, he found a way to make sure that Morgan did do them. While Ramis doesn't say flat out that the reason Peters wanted Morgan to get naked was to put dudes in the seats of the cinemas showing Caddyshack. That seems to be the same reason for the female nudity in Game of Thrones.
Whatever the reason for the substantial levels of female nudity in Game of Thrones the show seems to me to to be a Charlie's Angels, Three's Company, and Police Woman for the brave new millennium. Game of Thrones, thanks to its significant amounts of female nudity and its going through the symbolic women's power motions, wants, just like Charlie's Angels, Three's Company, and Police Woman, to have its cake (faux female power and eat it too (female nudity for the boys in the watching band).
Given Game of Thrones penchant for a literalist and surface approach to film making, its vulgarity, and the fact that it is like watching a movie made in the era before MeToo--think Caddyshack again--I am not sure I can make it to season eight of Games. What I am sure of is this. When I watch Game of Thrones I hear a voice telling me that Game of Thrones season two, episode three contains four breasts and one large bucket of blood. I hear, in other words, the voice of Joe Bob Briggs telling me that Game of Thrones melds the low brow drive in slasher film (without the horror), frat boy soft core porn, low brow Animal House and Caddyshack sophmoricism (without the limited humour), and high brow or middle brow aristocratic romance (with but little of the chivalry left in). All that sells, Joe Bob tells me. We really haven't come a long way baby.
Postscript, More Musings, 29 August 2019
I have finally gotten somewhat interested in Game of Thrones during season seven. It seems to me that the measure of interest I have in the show goes up when the misogyny and female nudity quotient goes down and it goes down as the number of female breasts and the misogyny of the show goes up.
Since what goes down must go up, I have it from a reputable source that the brothels and female nudity are back again in season eight, the final season of the show. What that shows quite clearly to me is the lack of imagination of those involved in the making of Game of Thrones, something that probably explains the fact that the show is, in the final analysis, a rather mediocre or average one with a significant touch of misogyny in it. I suppose we could debate why the misogyny in the show. I assume those involved thought lots of tits, cunts--a term this often vulgar and hence often unimaginative throws around so much one wonders if it was meant to break a taboo on American screens--and mostly female asses would sell the show to the young adult nerds who never met a tit, a pussy, or a female arse they didn't like.
What can't be debated, it seems to me, is the widely variable quality of the writing and acting of and on Game of Thrones. Some of it is not bad; the show uses a slew of British actors after all. What is less good is the fact that I can't help think that many of the actors, perhaps from poorer semi-peripheral countries or peripheral countries who are trying to make some money and get some attention, are being used simply as nude get those demographics to watch bait geek bait. I can't help think, in other words, that these actors are being exploited once again by a core nation corporation. And that makes Game of Thrones both a purveyor of tragedy and farce.
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