Game of Thrones S4

[pocochina]

Int: Does it worry you to lose your two best villains in the show this season?

Benioff: Absolutely.

Weiss: Who’s the second?

Benioff: Joffrey.

Weiss: Well, I don’t think Tywin is a villain.

Benioff: That’s a fair point. If you read the story from the Stark point of view…

Weiss: …then I guess he would be a villain.

Benioff: But Tywin isn’t torturing

Comments

[local_max]

I haven't read the books (obvs) but I think I know what you're getting at with the Tyrion scene. I didn't have a "problem" with it per se, though I also kind of agree -- I mean, the scene is definitely shot to allow us to retain sympathy for Tyrion. And I don't think that's necessarily a wrong choice, not because domestic murder is okay!!! but because all characters are on some level sympathetic to themselves and on some level have their reasons, even if they are shitty ones. Still, if you want to honour that, honour that. The fact that Tyrion wants to be and much of the time is a good guy doesn't mean that he can't do bad things, and I think the confrontation with Tywin works better if we recognize that he really *has* internalized some of his father's sense of entitlement and anger at "lesser" people and willingness to turn on people he claims to love at any time, even though *most* of the time Tyrion's better angels and outsider-status means he works to combat it

[local_max]

I think that's sort of the paradox at the heart of the Tyrion thing and the Jaime thing for me. Psychologically, not only do they have the right to be extremely, overwhelmingly angry, but recognizing their right to "have anger" is even a necessary and healthy step to even improving their lives *without* hurting others. I don't think Jaime's a particularly moral fellow, but I think that the slight tinges of moral (re)awakening with Brienne actually make it easier for him to feel anger about how (genuinely) terrible and screwed up his relationship with Cersei is. Tyrion obviously has every right to be angry about his treatment, not just by his father et al. but by society, and Shae's betrayal really *should* stir up feelings of shock and anger. The problem is that "anger" here gets directed toward personal violence, especially in ways that resonate pretty deeply and frighteningly with our culture. Since I'm pretty unconvinced that the incest is meaningfully consensual, it doesn't mean Jaime "should" meaningfully be angry at Cersei,

[local_max]

The problem, I think, is that I get the impression that this attitude that I'm describing is something that, *at best*, one could get to in a Zen place after working through one's own *natural emotional responses* of rape being way worse in a fictional character than attempted child-killing or whatever -- and that it may in fact be that even this is suspect. I think about the general category of what one's emotional response to fictional (and real life, for that matter) horrible actions should be, and I *think* that I believe, in a fundamental way, that anyone is capable of doing terrible things given the right circumstances, and I find that horrifying but ultimately less horrifying than the idea that certain people do bad things just because they're "made" bad in some way, or (what basically amounts to the same thing) that some people are capable of choosing to be bad and others aren't. The problem comes that this goes into conflict with the necessity of "openly opposing" it when people do horrible things, or, rather, I seem to have

[pocochina]

Right. And I think that's something that people kind of....diligently know they should give lip service to, that of course people are morally gray? but we're less comfortable with that in practice. Understandable, but it can make conversation very frustrating.

[pocochina]

Agreed with your ETA, and I do think that's the case for a lot of people. But for whatever reason people won't just say "yeah it's a violent show but this one just went too far for me" and instead invent all these gross victim-policing "objective" justifications for that reaction.

Is it possible that some people just didn't know about Benioff's quote? I think the other quotes were more accessible, especially to more casual viewers (I heard about them without going looking for them, they just came into my field of vision/hearing--mostly through the promoted articles on the LJ homepage--whereas I only just now found out what Benioff had said, through your link.)tbh, I think those quotes were more accessible in large part because they were repeated a lot because they were what fandom wanted to hear - "oh, whew, this can be about how THE WRITERS are TOTALLY WRONG!!! and therefore I don't have to check myself at all!" And I think if we're going to fit someone for a black hat the way fandom was so gung-ho to do about Benioff and Weiss