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Are we the television audience getting desensitized to the violence?


Tyrion's Third Wife

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Do you think after Ned's beheading, the Red Wedding, Hardhome, Shireen, etc etc we just are coming to expect something that would normally shock and disgust us? So, now, it's like "ah, so that's who gets it this week"?



Is it too late to truly catch the audience off guard and not just with violence?



Maybe give us an old fashioned "I see dead people" twist?


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  • 2 weeks later...

It does seem that the deaths have become expected but I'm not sure that I'm desensitized. The Shireen burning was pretty heavy but predictable. And I knew about Jon because of the forums. So far, Theon's torturing was hardest for me to watch. This season has a chance to surprise everyone because it's uncharted territory. I look forward to it.

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Shireen was one of the most gut wrenching moments in the entire series.

I think people do expect bad things to happen to characters in GoTs - this doesn't mean they know what to expect.

Does the show need to keep upping the ante to keep it's fan base? I don't know. I think the show does need to keep surprising the viewers to keep them invested now, however. I think the show has set a standard that requires an increasing amount of WTF moments each season.

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I am very unbothered by violence and such and yet this show continues to punch me in the stomach. It's more about context than anything. Oberyn's death in particular really got to me. For one, I thought someone ruined it for me and that he was supposed to be the victor. So all of a sudden it was happening and I was like holy shit! For two, it's just the context of a guy who is nobly trying to get revenge for an awful thing that happened to his sister, and then the same thing ends up happening to him. Horrible.



Also, the Sansa rape got me. I've seen far more graphic rape scenes that occurred on camera (i.e. A Clockwork Orange and The Girl with a Dragon Tatoo, etc.) that were less shocking than the Sansa rape scene. Again, it's about context. You're sort of lulled to sleep, you don't think they'll go there, your normal television / movie watching instincts tell you that Reek is finally going to jump in and save the day. Then it goes off camera and she starts making these awful noises, and my jaw just dropped, I was like OMG.


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So far the most shocking act was the burning of Shireen.

I was not really prepared. Of course there have been heavy hints for two seasons and the Stannis/Shireen scenes made me expect that the show would go at least to the verge of burning her. But until the last moment I hoped against better knowledge that something - anything - would happen. Shireen's cries and then Selyse, this was certainly the most horrible event in the whole series so far.

Why was it more horrible than even the Red Wedding? I was prepared for the Red Wedding, it had been in the books. But the desperate Cat getting her throat slit comes very close to the murder of Shireen. Cat and Shireen was the definite loss of two favorite characters. Sansa's rape was less shocking to me since she is not dead, I never expected her to die at that time, and she has a story ahead of her. Apart from that, once she was married it would have meant to stretch plot armor if she had gotten out of "consummation".

Why was I, being a mother myself, less shocked by the death of pregnant Talisa? I could never really get attached to her character, she was like a figure dropped into an alien timesetting.

Compared to these horror events all slaughter of minor characters was: eeewww, blood on my popcorn! They left me somewhat detached, maybe because of some built-in self preservation mechanism that makes me rationalize if it gets too much: It's only fake blood. And then I proceed to analyse the choreography, the acting and the colour and light choices. And I manage to rationalize with characters less important to me but only with them. Like we are shocked by ten dead children round the corner while thousand drowned somewhere in the Mediterranian are part of the evening news. Am I desentizised? Not necessarily by GOT.

Does it mean that GOT from now on has to top my personal level of violence experience in order to keep me hooked? Not at all!

It all comes down to how much I am invested into characters and their story. Make no mistake, I might be very invested into anonymous villagers slaughtered through horrible crimes of war. I am less invested when soldiers get slaughtered. We all have been desenticized here since we have been taught to forget that these young men are people as well. This is "immersion": We are always in danger, or enjoy blissfully, to eclipse our political brain while focusing on the fictional characters we have come to love. The show created a wonderful five minute gem with Karsi though in "Hardhome".

If a show manages to play the same emotions like real life it has done its job: my pack is all that counts! Let twenty kids drown as long as mine is not among them, let the battle be bloody as long as my favorite survives. If we don't stay awake facing the screen we are down to very basic instincts. Any movie knows this.

Horrible things happening to my favorites need not be shown as bloody gore. We did not see Shireen burning, we heard her. We did not see the wounds in Jon's body, we saw faces, we later saw a pool of blood more black than red. And Stannis' death scene was all about the actor being one with his character, no fake blood needed.

So it's not necessarily cheapening Martin's work for money saving or simplifying if the show concentrates on fewer characters and with it storylines: it is reacting to how we as viewers work: We have to get attached.

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Shireeen was tough. Also if Arya wasn't ruthless then she would just end up like the rest of her siblings dead, crippled or raped.

Being ruthless has nothing to do with being raped. Ruthless people can be raped too. If Arya was in FArya's place, Ramsay would hold her down. She'd struggle more than Jeyne did, but the result would be the sane.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Despite being graphic, I don't think the show desensitizes. I actually find the depiction of violence appropriate and accurate and entertaining. It's one of the characteristics of the show that it doesn't shy away from such things.


"If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen"


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I was prepped for the Red Wedding. I have seen many bloody, traumatic scenes, rapes are saddening and sickening but the Sansa rape broke my heart worst of all. Then, poor little Shireen, JHC, those two scenes this year really, really made me hit bottom in viewership emotion. Awful


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People has become desensitized to characters who are meant to be the villains and consider their violence actions as "cool" (when, in case of the good guys, they condemn them for it). The "Draco in leather pants" trope has caused a lot of damage. It's incredibly the kind of excuses people make in order to justify the behaviour or assholes or plain simple villains, or even psychopaths, specially if the actor is handsome or charismatic.

One thing is to like a villain as a villainous character or as an antagonist; another one, to try to pretend such character is misunderstood and a victim. A bad background can explain a character (or a real person) motivations, but that should be used to help them, not to excuse them.

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People has become desensitized to characters who are meant to be the villains and consider their violence actions as "cool" (when, in case of the good guys, they condemn them for it). The "Draco in leather pants" trope has caused a lot of damage. It's incredibly the kind of excuses people make in order to justify the behaviour or assholes or plain simple villains, or even psychopaths, specially if the actor is handsome or charismatic.

No offence but how the hell would you know what the millions who watch the show are feeling or wether they are de-sensitised or not?

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I think it's both more and less. Our sensitivity is more focused on very particular characters.


We saw tons of women being raped from the Dothraki in season 1 to the mutiny at Craster's keep, but everyone was far more upset when it happened to Sansa after her wedding.


We've seen naked women so often on the show it could be a very effective drinking game but Cersei's walk was disturbing.


This season Dany burned a potentially innocent man with her dragon and killed a loyal freed slave...honestly there was a lot of throat slitting and killing going on in Mereen, but none of it really stood out as upsetting to anyone...what they remember is her dragon ride.


Ramsay flayed people here and there and we didn't blink, ruined an army with 20 men, burned a horse alive and then walked around the battlefield stabbing people with a smile and Theon made Myranda go splat and I'll admit I was mostly upset that Sansa dropped her corkscrew.


Selyse hung--okay because I think I can safely say no one liked her.


Shireen burned--NOT OKAY


Karsi the mighty Wildling warrior who survived many battles and some serious weather gave up the instant she saw zombie children--which was sad because I liked her.


Meryn Trant had a crazy Apocalypse Now kind of death via Arya after buying children to beat on--but he was a bad guy and we like Arya.


Myrcella? Meh


Jon? I want all those men to die and I have more dislike for a child than I'm comfortable with and I'm still upset even though I'm 99.9% sure he's going to be resurrected.



So, as someone said earlier, we get attached to particular characters. But there can be no doubt that the series as a whole is full of violence and graphic content that we overlook to root for our "team".

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No offence but how the hell would you know what the millions who watch the show are feeling or wether they are de-sensitised or not?

I'm not talking about GoT only. If you do some research you will find out is something that happens in pretty much every other media. People feel too much for the villains or authors/writers make the villain too much sympathetic.

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I'm not talking about GoT only. If you do some research you will find out is something that happens in pretty much every other media. People feel too much for the villains or authors/writers make the villain too much sympathetic.

This is the quality of Martin's writing and the show often manages to do the same:

Too much sympathetic? Villains are first of all human beings who have their background story and their experiences. They are no cartoonish landmarks sent from hell to tempt and and trouble the good guys and girls, they have grown within the story.

We perceive some actions as clearly morally villainous, who commits them is a villain. Already in this forum we see different sets of values: the one who has killed a child can be redeemed for some while for others child killing is some kind of moral event horizon. We shape our moral judgement according to liking a character or not: Robb ordered pillaging and burning and yet he stays a "good guy".

And who is the villain, who the hero depends very much from the viewpoint you choose: my villain may be your rightful king, your villain may be my freedom fighter. There are horrible crimes of mankind beyond all doubt but history must have taught us that in hindsight we have to rethink a lot: who were the bad and the good guys in the War Of The Roses?? Lancaster or York? York or Lancaster? Seriously? And in the Dance Of Dragons?

Good literature has always managed to take moral positions about characters' actions while not categorizing the characters themselves into neat folders labelled "villains" or "heroes". The latter would be popcorn movie, lean back and eclipse your brain.

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