helen sloan / hbo
The biggest moment in season 5 of Game of Thrones for me was when Ice Ice Baby Supreme did the “Come at me Bro” gesture to Jon Snow as he and the rest of the wildlings/Night’s Watch floated away in boats:
The whole battle is sick! So pimp! SO BOSS…but according to Daily Mail, HBO received SO many complaints about one particular scene this past season that they’re toning down the sexual violence in the award-winning show. The scene people were pissed about?
The one where Ramsay Bolton rapes Sansa Stark.
Critics and viewers were outraged after Sansa Stark, played by 19-year-old English actress Sophie Turner, was raped by Ramsay Bolton (Iwan Rheon) on their wedding night.
The scene, which aired in May, was part of a story arc which did not appear in the novels. It was criticized for being gratuitous, played for shock value and serving no narrative purpose.(via)
Gee whiz, in a show where innocent villagers and children get murdered on the regular, where Daenerys was raped by Khal Drogo in season 1 and Cersei had some weird incest-rape scene at the foot of her son’s funeral altar a while back, THIS is what people have a problem with??? Hell, the whole rape-part of the scene was even off-camera!
I’m all for whining and bitching about shit, but you at least have to be consistent – and considering the series isn’t over yet, no, you DON’T know that the scene was written for shock value without any narrative purpose. Maybe Sansa rapes him back right before she chops his head off, immediately after she delivers some stupid one-liner like “Now it’s YOUR TURN to try BUTT STUFF.”
Apparently none of that matters though:
But, speaking at an event at Fox Studios Australia, director Jeremy Podeswa, who directed the graphic episode, said ‘a couple of things had changed’ in light of the response from viewers.
Mr Podeswa, who is also expected to be behind the camera on some episodes in season six, said show creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss had been ‘influenced’ by the complaints.
According to the Telegraph, he said the creators ‘were responsive to the discussion and there were a couple of things that changed as a result.
‘They did not want to be too overly influenced by that (criticism) but they did absorb and take it in and it did influence them in a way.’(via)
How much were they influenced? We won’t know until Thrones comes back in April, unfortunately. Until then we’ll just have to watch seasons 1 – 6 and hope that even if the sexual violence is toned down, the rest of the show remains top-notch like it has been…minus parts of season 6 that were dumb (I’m looking at you, Sand Snakes)…. but I’m going to pretend they didn’t exist.
[H/T Daily Mail]
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