evergreen tweet
while enjoying this product meant for entertainment purposes.
well that’s the thing, isn’t it? Humans often listen to songs that make them sad, or watch documentaries that make them mad, or read books that make them think. The vague assertion that something is “entertainment” implies that anything gross or excessive being depicted by said “entertainment” is intended to be enjoyed for its exploitative qualities, like some kind of gladiatorial bloodsport.
Entertainment leads to the provocation of various emotions, both positive and negative, which leads to reflection on the part of the audience. Entertainment often makes us uncomfortable. It’s not purely for enjoyment or titillation. The depiction of people with complicated lives and problematic behavior is often misconstrued as an endorsement of said behavior or even an exploitative attempt at titillating sickos. I think this might somewhat be the case with Gambo Thrones, so I’m not gonna stick my neck out too hard to defend it, but I find this analysis has its limitations. I endorse exploitation-free entertainment, content warnings, and people being free to not watch things that disturb them. But I don’t think a depiction of something problematic is inherently meant to “titillate” regardless of context.
I agree with everything you said here, especially the stuff about the exploitation of the actresses, in particular Emilia Clarke, and keep in mind I was making a much more abstract case about so called “entertainment” in general, and not about these particular banker inheritance hogs. I even said
I think this might somewhat be the case with Gambo Thrones, so I’m not gonna stick my neck out too hard to defend it
I don’t want to defend any of the exploitation that went into this particular show.
there’s a possibility that her character assassination in the final season was a sort of retaliation against her for that.
The banker inheritance hogs David and Dan are really really shitty writers and really really shitty people who didn’t know how to end a story once they ran out of source material from the novels. They upward failed their way into an even bigger writing contract and so shortened the final seasons of GoT so they could be done with it. But you’re probably right that they were also retaliating against Clarke. That wouldn’t surprise me. There’s actually another example where they admitted they were doing that. I remember seeing an interview with them where they were talking about how an actor (the old guy who plays Ser Barriston Selmy) approached them about the poor writing surrounding his characters’ death and Dan Weiss (or David Benioff, I get the two confused) said “that made me want to kill him even more.” (i.e. kill his character off so he didn’t have to work with the actor anymore) As though the protestations of the actors against the shitty show running was justification for petty retaliation. So you definitely might have a point there. I had actually forgotten that and your commend reminded me.
