Game of Thrones
Apr. 21st, 2011 07:56 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shapinglightOkay, I've never read the books and I'm a long way from remembering everyone's names, but I thought I'd make a quick post about it.
Spoilers for ep 1 within (and I should probably nip over to![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
queenofthorns's LJ and nab some icons.
First of all, I'm not nearly as much of a fantasy fan as I used to be. As a child I lapped up the Narnia books and Tolkien, and moved on from there to discover other writers, notably Ursula K Le Guin, who I think is by far the best writer out of those three. However, although I still will occasionally read some fantasy (I love Terry Pratchett and Diana Wynne Jones), I've not that much interest in the genre these days, or rather in certain permutations of it. I may never read the source material for this series, and I came to it as someone who is a little impatient with the rather po-faced Tolkienian version of fantasy.
As such, there were moments when watching ep 1 of A Game of Thrones when I found myself desperate for a bit of humour, or when my brain started making up sarcastic comments. However, there weren't many such moments, because it was just so well made and beautiful to look at -the prologue set in that snowy landscape beyond that wall thing, was brilliantly done. Also, I had enough trouble trying to keep track of who all the characters were - and there were an awful lot of them.
I think by the end I was pretty clear on who was who, and was already beginning to decide who I liked and who I didn't. In the like column, Sean Bean's character, the bastard son character (gotta feel sorry for the bastard son), most of the women, especially the careworn looking mother of the family, and the dwarf. The dwarf was my favourite. In the not-sure column, all the other male characters, the Queen and the blonde girl, though I felt desperately sorry for her. In the loathe and want to condemn to the fiery pits of hell column (there are three columns, who knew?) the blonde girl's horrid brother.
There was also a lot of rather iffy stuff in the ep, including some of the racial casting and the amount of female nudity. I have thoughts about that too - in that, though there were an awful lot of boobs on display, on one notable occasion, to be all 'wahay!boobs!' about it, you would have to be looking at them from the position of a very nasty abusive character. I also understand that one of the sexual incidents in the ep was a lot more rape like than in the book, but have to say the way it looked to me, to make it less rape like could well have made it more offensive, not less. Still, it's a very fine line. And some people are still going to be 'wahay!boobs!' about it because they don't care if they're identifying with an abuser, in fact it may turn them on.
I would like to know what the makers' reasoning was for the changes they made. Were they thinking about anything like that, or was it just that they felt they were showing a medieval-type patriarchal world in which women have to find other ways of exercising power and they thought that was one way of showing it? I dunno.
Anyway, I'll definitely carry on watching. I think trying to bring something this big and intricate to the small screen must be very difficult and so far I'm impressed (though occasionally weirded out, and occasionally inclined to mock).
Spoilers for ep 1 within (and I should probably nip over to
queenofthorns's LJ and nab some icons.First of all, I'm not nearly as much of a fantasy fan as I used to be. As a child I lapped up the Narnia books and Tolkien, and moved on from there to discover other writers, notably Ursula K Le Guin, who I think is by far the best writer out of those three. However, although I still will occasionally read some fantasy (I love Terry Pratchett and Diana Wynne Jones), I've not that much interest in the genre these days, or rather in certain permutations of it. I may never read the source material for this series, and I came to it as someone who is a little impatient with the rather po-faced Tolkienian version of fantasy.
As such, there were moments when watching ep 1 of A Game of Thrones when I found myself desperate for a bit of humour, or when my brain started making up sarcastic comments. However, there weren't many such moments, because it was just so well made and beautiful to look at -the prologue set in that snowy landscape beyond that wall thing, was brilliantly done. Also, I had enough trouble trying to keep track of who all the characters were - and there were an awful lot of them.
I think by the end I was pretty clear on who was who, and was already beginning to decide who I liked and who I didn't. In the like column, Sean Bean's character, the bastard son character (gotta feel sorry for the bastard son), most of the women, especially the careworn looking mother of the family, and the dwarf. The dwarf was my favourite. In the not-sure column, all the other male characters, the Queen and the blonde girl, though I felt desperately sorry for her. In the loathe and want to condemn to the fiery pits of hell column (there are three columns, who knew?) the blonde girl's horrid brother.
There was also a lot of rather iffy stuff in the ep, including some of the racial casting and the amount of female nudity. I have thoughts about that too - in that, though there were an awful lot of boobs on display, on one notable occasion, to be all 'wahay!boobs!' about it, you would have to be looking at them from the position of a very nasty abusive character. I also understand that one of the sexual incidents in the ep was a lot more rape like than in the book, but have to say the way it looked to me, to make it less rape like could well have made it more offensive, not less. Still, it's a very fine line. And some people are still going to be 'wahay!boobs!' about it because they don't care if they're identifying with an abuser, in fact it may turn them on.
I would like to know what the makers' reasoning was for the changes they made. Were they thinking about anything like that, or was it just that they felt they were showing a medieval-type patriarchal world in which women have to find other ways of exercising power and they thought that was one way of showing it? I dunno.
Anyway, I'll definitely carry on watching. I think trying to bring something this big and intricate to the small screen must be very difficult and so far I'm impressed (though occasionally weirded out, and occasionally inclined to mock).