Today’s post is facetious – I know the answer is that men and men’s desires control Hollywood. But, as I watch Game of Thrones, I end up seeing so many breasts and so much female pubic area that it just ends up making the ridiculous absence of penises pretty abundant. Especially in the scene in which a guy is purposely taunted to get hard ….. no wait…this happens twice and both times with bad results. One time, the dude’s penis gets cut off and the other time a leech is attached to it. Neither time is it shown. Yet during a scene at a whorehouse, we see an acrobatic girl essentially put her vagina right into the camera.
I know at least 3 women are regular readers of this blog. Perhaps it would reveal too personal a bias to ask, but do you feel shafted? (No pun intended) Are you jealous of all the titillation on screen for male audience members or is that one way in which men and women are different? (Meaning you don’t desire to see a penis on screen in the same way we desire for breasts or pubic area – which is another area that isn’t fair, I guess. It’s certainly no big deal for a man to be topless…) (BTW – here’s a count of all the nudity in GoT S3)
2 responses to “Where’s the reciprocal nudity on Game of Thrones?”
I have only read the first book, and watched the first two seasons of the show (though for the life of me, I can’t remember what actually happened). I am not a fan, and I don’t understand why this series got so popular (except that the show has a lot of sex and naked women).
Game of Thrones in general has gotten a lot of criticism for being sexist (and racist). The arguments being it’s based on medieval times/reality and people really do have sex and the female characters are actually strong. I think these are terrible reasons. People also go to the bathroom but you’re not going to show every restroom break they take. And you can base all you want in reality, but once you start creating dragons and those creepy guys beyond the wall now it just seems like cherry-picking the pieces of reality you like.
But more on topic – nudity – I personally don’t want to see penises any more than I want to see vaginas. Mostly (and this sounds weird/prudish and not intended that way) they’re just weird looking parts of the body. Like top half and butts, you get some nice lines, you can get them looking toned – it’s not so much the same with lower half frontal nudity.
Side note – I believe Rome had a lot of gratuitous full frontal male nudity. I only watched a couple episodes, so no comparison to how much female nudity. But definitely more male.
I can’t speak for everyone, but I actually like Game of Thrones in SPITE of all the nudity and sex. Obviously, I’m in the minority or all the HBO shows wouldn’t be chock full of nudity and sex. I’m not terribly into vampires, but I tried to get into the show as something I could watch together with the wife (who’s really into vamp shows). I couldn’t get past the gratuitous sex in the first episode. Long time readers will know that I am perfectly fine with artistic or purposeful nudity and sex. (eg Important to the story for someone to lose their virginity or overcome a fear or sex or something) But gratuitous sex just grates on my nerves. I’m also not a consumer of porn, which I think a lot of this borders on.
As for your critique of the sexism’s apologists, you raise a lot of the same issues with Tarantino’s Django. He claimed the violence and racial slurs were necessary for the realism, but then has magical gun skills and anachronisms. I felt that it was a little more necessary to the artistic integrity of Django (Tarantino’s storied past with the n-word notwithstanding) while I feel that Game of Thrones might be said to go too far. I hadn’t really considered it until you just mentioned it. I just accepted it since it’s a “period” piece, fantastical though it may be.
Finally, on the final paragraph – thanks for the data point. I can definitely agree with you on the strangeness of body parts. I think it’s but one of the reasons that there tends to be a LOT less male nudity in drawn artforms. It’s just something that ends up on the wrong side of the uncanny valley. Having seen some explicit comics, I find that things just start looking way too weird when it’s drawn – see some of Brandon Graham’s early erotic work before he started doing more mainstream comics, for an example.