Game of Thrones Sucks

Really, the post title says it all. I am hesitant to even add to it in case I dilute the core message. So I will return to it from time to time, lest anyone doubt the true meaning of this post. Imagine me intoning in my best Gregorian chant "Game of Thrones sucks. Amen."

I am not going to get into the nitty-gritty here of why I hate Game of Thrones, that ubiquitous piece of cultural trash that people try to pretend is anything other than deranged fantasy fulfillment. I had been happy to leave the show behind, but then I read an article about the sister-rapiness of the last episode, yep, you read that correctly, and felt the need to chime in for those who might be tempted by the omnipresence of the artifact to assume that it did anything other than totally suck. ("Game of Thrones sucks. Amen.")

By way of clearing my throat allow me to catalog briefly my experience with the show and book. Show: I watched the first two seasons, roughly. Book: I threw the first book across the room in disgust after 100 pages and then just threw it away. Literally, threw it away. I never do that, but I didn't want someone to pick up a copy at the Salvation Army under the assumption that the book did anything other than totally suck. ("Game of Thrones sucks. Amen.")

You will hear the defenders of the show, and they are legion, tell noobs like me that unless you have pored over every jot and tittle of the doorstop books, watched and rewatched every episode on HBO, and perused the Wiki page for the show than you have no business critiquing it. To which I say, posh. How many bites of an elephant turd sandwich must one take before we are convinced that it is an elephant turd sandwich? Maybe one more bite will redeem it all! Or, to stick with my theme, sometimes my suck meter just doesn't take that long to start blaring. ("Game of Thrones sucks. Amen.")

One of the common defenses of the show it that its "gritty" and "real." While I wonder if the people who praise its grittiness have ever done or seen anything gritty in real life themselves (nota bene: living in New York decidedly does not count), I also do not think this is in any way a credit to the show. In the latest episode, which again I have not watched, a brother rapes his sister over the grave of their incestuously conceived son. Can you taste the grit? Huh, can you? You know what else is real and gritty? Child pornography. Perhaps HBO should team up with NAMBLA for their next big hit. Ooh, ooh, ooh, or how about a real and gritty show about sex tourism in Thailand or forced prostitution anywhere in the world. Hey, hey, hey. Don't be shocked. This is real life, man. People rape their sister, people cut off other people's ding-dongs, people regularly use women of ill-repute for target practice. That's life, bro. ("Game of Thrones sucks. Amen.")

One of the defenses I read for the sister-rapey episode was that it was all from the book. As if this man somehow represented some moral standard. Indeed, people treat George R.R. Martin as if he were some modern day Dostoevsky. To which I say, maybe, if Dostoevsky was a bad writer, pure id, and a sexually-deviant imp. But so far as I know he was none of those things. Moreover, this defense is stupid. Just because a twisted sex act is described in detail in a book, there are probably 8 kabillion other things in the books that don't make it onto the screen. But penis flagellation and sibling on sibling rape made the cut. Because, for all anyone might say otherwise, the gratuitous sex and shocking violence of the show are precisely the point. Without regular and ample displays of breasts and rutting and without gory and over-the-top violence, this show is just some fantasy show. But people try to pretend that anything other than gratification draws them back. ("Game of Thrones sucks. Amen.")

Which brings me to my final comments and then I shall be done. People also praise the show for its shock value, not just with sister-raping, but with untimely deaths of beloved characters. And I will readily admit that the death of Ned Stark, the show's hero and moral center, at the end of Season One shocked me greatly. But here's the thing, shock can be shticky and predictable just like the happy ending of an episode of Full House. In other words, once you declare that everyone you love will die it is no longer surprising when they do. Further, it does not take creative brilliance to kill off lead characters. At a certain point it becomes a gimmick. Ned's death was shocking because unexpected. Can that really be said for any other character after that point? This ends poorly, then, carries about the same weight eventually as, this ends with smiles, hugs, and a nice life lesson. Again. . . ("Game of Thrones sucks. Amen.")

Part of me is always just kidding around writing things like this (as in the elephant turd sandwich bit). But part of me is deadly earnest. This show really does suck, really is corrosive to your moral sense. We like to pretend that unfettered media consumption has no effect on our understanding of the world, but we are naive to believe that. At least give art enough respect to acknowledge that it is affective. We are shaped by what we consume, what we love, and what we sacrifice to have. Horace issued a famous dictum for art a couple of thousand years ago: "The aim of the poet is to instruct or delight." I think he is precisely right and my fear in the popularity of shows like Game of Thrones is not that we have abdicated as a culture the ends of art as relayed by Horace, but that they are all too fulfilled in garbage like Game of Thrones. In other words, we are both instructed and delighted by things like Game of Thrones. Which is all the more reason to declare once more with feeling: Game of Thrones sucks. Amen.