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Jun. 3rd, 2014 12:07 pmCan't believe I'm actually going to talk about Game of Thrones:
And massively spoil it:
The beetle scene was genuinely good, maybe the first genuinely rather than relatively good thing that's happened on the show, so was of course immediately followed by the grossest, Games-of-Throniest scene ever. But if I'm not wrong its goodness may make that worst of scenes kind of good too.
I'm usually not that impressed with the acting of the Lannister brothers, and am not sure I was here either, but the first sign was that they were trying a little harder. Dinklage was fucking up the upper crust British L and emphasis patterns much less than usual and the other guy gave the impression he actually wanted to be in the room.
The actual speech works on a few different levels: against fate/the gods, against a violence-glorifying social order, against their father, against the writing. Not necessarily against the tv writers themselves, either, record-breakingly yucky as they made the next scene - I checked, and this is wholly original to the series, so it's hard to not take it as an attack on the novelist. Conceivably a good-humored one, but adapting this show must be a wearing, finally disturbing experience: at the scene level it frequently seems cruel for cruelty's sake, and famously has an ending that may either never arrive or render all the foregoing disgustingly meaningless. And the story's not all that good, yet well-enough protected by fans and whatnot that only limited alterations are permissible. And presumably even these need to be run by the author, since who knows what even tiny ones might upset in the unwritten later-on. The realization that the surface attractions (mashing up Middle Earth with actual Middle Ages war practices, the chance to take tv somewhere new to it, the sideshow indulgence of myriad lizard brain fantasies) might be all that there is to this franchise, and that all of these things are finally pointless ... if it hasn't motivated covert rebellion it really should.
The release of the bug works as a rejoinder to Tyrion's brother, who thinks bugs' sufferings don't matter next to those of people. To be fair that position's not far from the traditional humanist formulation - we should care about their sufferings first, he's saying, rather than endorsing hurting bugs. Tyrion agrees but implies that that "first" becomes "only" if we're not careful, hence humanism may be a halfway house to the family-first or nation-first thinking that's behind these endless-looking civil wars. You stop suffering where you can, cause unnecessary suffering never.
Now suppose you carried this over even to fictional persons. If you're locked into adapting these particular books there's no way you won't be complicit in fictional mass murder, but you can at least make clear at as many points as possible that each of these bugs is the suffering kind: your mission isn't to prevent suffering but to remind that it's always what it looks like, that pain must never be a signal of anything but itself. Which, again, good luck - that lizard brain or culturally constructed lizardish mindset or monstrous combo of the two: these want the other kind, want us/them thinking to be allowed, revenge thinking, modes which even if we eventually winkingly repudiate them we want running off the leash a while. If the novelist's goals seem to be to not show good people winning (or something), such that his story can go on theoretically forever as their quests are cut off while the much less good devour both them and one another, the adaptors' are to humanize even that process, by dwelling on the causes and reality of suffering. Making this meaningfully distinct from that ceremonial catching of the unleashed lizards we're used to in action movies (you get to shoot the apprehended villain only if he tries to shoot you first, oh good he did heeheehee), the tacked on hence entirely undisturbing and ineffective moral, is not necessarily something the series writers are able to do often. Understandably, between genre and network demands.
But the placement of the scene right before the gross one, if I'm right, means they're telling us they're about to try.
Oberyn represents a pro-sex, pro-gender equality, pro-different or disabled, pro-openness, pro-defense of the weak, pro-truth place. He's liberal thinking personified except for his drive to revenge. His overconfidence is presumably a shot at one of the faults dark-heart-of-man liberals perceive in (e.g.) social constructivists: that they don't understand their enemy. The Mountain's final impulse is not to beg for mercy but to crush more beetles - to this view, conservatives aren't just underinformed rational agents but embracers of excuses to exclude, even kill. A strain is us can wish to kill even more than they wish to live. Presumably this is present even in Oberyn as that revenge drive, which may even be powering his various life-affirming energies. The gross death is in one sense earned by his blindness to human nature and its paradoxical cultivation of a reactionary, homicidal strain in him - you're against all suffering or you're finally for it - but...
...as presented...
It isn't earned at all. This too was a failure of information. Information, communication's what isolates that darkness, reveals it at last to be just a straightenable tangle of worms. But there can't be a let-up - you need to keep reminding yourself, need to get it out to as many others as possible. No one has a good idea how to do that, pre-Renaissance, so the adaptors are stuck showing how the characters might come to know, show them getting glimmers of it or unwittingly instructing us how to. The too-gross death gets HBO its lucrative attention, but it also says "you really don't get to say this was deserved, not for a second." The Mountain was earlier presented as a psychopath from childhood, but the stressing that the crimes Oberyn's revenging wer committed under orders generalizes some of his cupability to the social order and associates the rest with Orson Lannister, who crushed bugs because there was something wrong with his head - till he was himself crushed by another unculpable animal. The scene's attacking the concept of personalizable blame. The person is the sufferer, the brain and social order the aggressors to the extent their purposes diverge at all from maximizing those pleasures permitted by absence of pain. This is Singer, both early (include animals dammit) and late (there is shit inside us that will make all of this difficult, and ironically require us/them, Kate/Nan thinking redirected at ourselves).
Tyrion gets it, even if he has no power to work in its behalf. Oberyn, who did have that power, squanders it by not getting it, but who can blame him? You need all the lessons or everything you've learned may serve what you don't.
I suspect the tv show played up Oberyn's good qualities, presumably even his liberal ones, which made the scene even more unbearable and was hence maybe not tactically a great idea, since people take the unbearable in all kinds of unoredicatble ways - like showing a dismaying ability to learn to bear more. A lot of aspects of the scene (the drinking, the helmet issue) show that we're even supposed to take it as black comedy on a rewatch, if anyone can bring themself to rewatch that. Perhaps that happened in the books, or operates in their spirit, satirizing the lone, potent hero. But that's not the only thing operant. We end with the pity of the bug, and how it would always be better to watch it go free. Or at least that was the intention, and it was good to see something intended on this show.
And massively spoil it:
The beetle scene was genuinely good, maybe the first genuinely rather than relatively good thing that's happened on the show, so was of course immediately followed by the grossest, Games-of-Throniest scene ever. But if I'm not wrong its goodness may make that worst of scenes kind of good too.
I'm usually not that impressed with the acting of the Lannister brothers, and am not sure I was here either, but the first sign was that they were trying a little harder. Dinklage was fucking up the upper crust British L and emphasis patterns much less than usual and the other guy gave the impression he actually wanted to be in the room.
The actual speech works on a few different levels: against fate/the gods, against a violence-glorifying social order, against their father, against the writing. Not necessarily against the tv writers themselves, either, record-breakingly yucky as they made the next scene - I checked, and this is wholly original to the series, so it's hard to not take it as an attack on the novelist. Conceivably a good-humored one, but adapting this show must be a wearing, finally disturbing experience: at the scene level it frequently seems cruel for cruelty's sake, and famously has an ending that may either never arrive or render all the foregoing disgustingly meaningless. And the story's not all that good, yet well-enough protected by fans and whatnot that only limited alterations are permissible. And presumably even these need to be run by the author, since who knows what even tiny ones might upset in the unwritten later-on. The realization that the surface attractions (mashing up Middle Earth with actual Middle Ages war practices, the chance to take tv somewhere new to it, the sideshow indulgence of myriad lizard brain fantasies) might be all that there is to this franchise, and that all of these things are finally pointless ... if it hasn't motivated covert rebellion it really should.
The release of the bug works as a rejoinder to Tyrion's brother, who thinks bugs' sufferings don't matter next to those of people. To be fair that position's not far from the traditional humanist formulation - we should care about their sufferings first, he's saying, rather than endorsing hurting bugs. Tyrion agrees but implies that that "first" becomes "only" if we're not careful, hence humanism may be a halfway house to the family-first or nation-first thinking that's behind these endless-looking civil wars. You stop suffering where you can, cause unnecessary suffering never.
Now suppose you carried this over even to fictional persons. If you're locked into adapting these particular books there's no way you won't be complicit in fictional mass murder, but you can at least make clear at as many points as possible that each of these bugs is the suffering kind: your mission isn't to prevent suffering but to remind that it's always what it looks like, that pain must never be a signal of anything but itself. Which, again, good luck - that lizard brain or culturally constructed lizardish mindset or monstrous combo of the two: these want the other kind, want us/them thinking to be allowed, revenge thinking, modes which even if we eventually winkingly repudiate them we want running off the leash a while. If the novelist's goals seem to be to not show good people winning (or something), such that his story can go on theoretically forever as their quests are cut off while the much less good devour both them and one another, the adaptors' are to humanize even that process, by dwelling on the causes and reality of suffering. Making this meaningfully distinct from that ceremonial catching of the unleashed lizards we're used to in action movies (you get to shoot the apprehended villain only if he tries to shoot you first, oh good he did heeheehee), the tacked on hence entirely undisturbing and ineffective moral, is not necessarily something the series writers are able to do often. Understandably, between genre and network demands.
But the placement of the scene right before the gross one, if I'm right, means they're telling us they're about to try.
Oberyn represents a pro-sex, pro-gender equality, pro-different or disabled, pro-openness, pro-defense of the weak, pro-truth place. He's liberal thinking personified except for his drive to revenge. His overconfidence is presumably a shot at one of the faults dark-heart-of-man liberals perceive in (e.g.) social constructivists: that they don't understand their enemy. The Mountain's final impulse is not to beg for mercy but to crush more beetles - to this view, conservatives aren't just underinformed rational agents but embracers of excuses to exclude, even kill. A strain is us can wish to kill even more than they wish to live. Presumably this is present even in Oberyn as that revenge drive, which may even be powering his various life-affirming energies. The gross death is in one sense earned by his blindness to human nature and its paradoxical cultivation of a reactionary, homicidal strain in him - you're against all suffering or you're finally for it - but...
...as presented...
It isn't earned at all. This too was a failure of information. Information, communication's what isolates that darkness, reveals it at last to be just a straightenable tangle of worms. But there can't be a let-up - you need to keep reminding yourself, need to get it out to as many others as possible. No one has a good idea how to do that, pre-Renaissance, so the adaptors are stuck showing how the characters might come to know, show them getting glimmers of it or unwittingly instructing us how to. The too-gross death gets HBO its lucrative attention, but it also says "you really don't get to say this was deserved, not for a second." The Mountain was earlier presented as a psychopath from childhood, but the stressing that the crimes Oberyn's revenging wer committed under orders generalizes some of his cupability to the social order and associates the rest with Orson Lannister, who crushed bugs because there was something wrong with his head - till he was himself crushed by another unculpable animal. The scene's attacking the concept of personalizable blame. The person is the sufferer, the brain and social order the aggressors to the extent their purposes diverge at all from maximizing those pleasures permitted by absence of pain. This is Singer, both early (include animals dammit) and late (there is shit inside us that will make all of this difficult, and ironically require us/them, Kate/Nan thinking redirected at ourselves).
Tyrion gets it, even if he has no power to work in its behalf. Oberyn, who did have that power, squanders it by not getting it, but who can blame him? You need all the lessons or everything you've learned may serve what you don't.
I suspect the tv show played up Oberyn's good qualities, presumably even his liberal ones, which made the scene even more unbearable and was hence maybe not tactically a great idea, since people take the unbearable in all kinds of unoredicatble ways - like showing a dismaying ability to learn to bear more. A lot of aspects of the scene (the drinking, the helmet issue) show that we're even supposed to take it as black comedy on a rewatch, if anyone can bring themself to rewatch that. Perhaps that happened in the books, or operates in their spirit, satirizing the lone, potent hero. But that's not the only thing operant. We end with the pity of the bug, and how it would always be better to watch it go free. Or at least that was the intention, and it was good to see something intended on this show.
