GRRM didn't seem to think Joffrey was a psychopath, just a classic bully

[Melisandre's White Pubes]

14 minutes ago, thelittledragonthatcould said:

I hope HBO get the rights to that show.

People would freak out when Theon gets declawed.

[sweetsunray]

Theon's torture? We don't get to see that. It already happened. I think you're confusing show with books here. We only learn which limbs have been maimed. It's left up to the readers whether they want to imagine minutely how that went down.

Detailed graphic rape of the brewer's daughter? It's a hearsay passage, and most of that passage is about the taunting of the innkeeper. We merely learn that they raped the girl.

You seem to confuse graphicness with facts about violence. Do we learn are about a lot of violence and heinous crimes and abuse committed to persons? Yes. But we rarely get an extensive graphic description of the event itself for graphicness purpose by itself. With the more succinct hearsay or short synopsis of witness accounts, George leaves it up to the reader how graphic they make it in their mind. So, either a reader imagines it as graphic as they personally want, or they don't. I do the latter. Perhaps you do the first and that's why you think the books are so graphic?

And as far as I can tell you are just using this thread as a platform for cheap graphicness, so this will be my last response to you. I'm off to pot plants.

 

[Melisandre's White Pubes]

58 minutes ago, sweetsunray said:

Theon's torture? We don't get to see that. It already happened. I think you're confusing show with books here. We only learn which limbs have been maimed. It's left up to the readers whether they want to imagine minutely how that went down.

Detailed graphic rape of the brewer's daughter? It's a hearsay passage, and most of that passage is about the taunting of the innkeeper. We merely learn that they raped the girl.

And as far as I can tell you are just using this thread as a platform for cheap graphicness, so this will be my last response to you. I'm off to pot plants.

 

Bullshit.  He describes the sounds she makes, how she seemed catatonic eventually, how Raff the Sweetling flips her over and does her in the ass.  It's probably the most graphic rape scene in the series. It doesn't matter that it's told second-hand, because the detail is still there, just like when Theon describes what Ramsay did to him.  You know what?  I simply described second-hand what Joffrey did to the cat, I didn't describe the graphic details, at least not until you apparently needed a counterexample of what true graphic descriptions of violence can be like.  And I'm not saying that there is no place for graphic descriptions of violence in literature, there is a scene in "All Quiet on the Western Front" where the character describes seeing horses injured by shrapnel that are screaming as they trip on their own entrails. It's a valuable scene because it drives home the horror and unfairness of war, and how it affects man and beast alike.  You are pointless to talk to because you will flat-out lie about the text to make your point.  Intellectual dishonesty is nearly as disgusting to me as hypocrisy, and you are a shining example of both.

In case you come back, here's some real life images to show how disturbing violence to animals can be, from my own experiences over the last few years.  A few years ago, a fledgling bluejay fell out of it's nest and into our yard, and my dog picked it up and was playing with it.  He didn't want to let it go, we chased him around the yard and finally got him to drop it.  Unfortunately, the bird was in really bad shape - one of it's wings was broken almost completely off, with splintered bloody bone sticking out of it's flesh, and it had several deep puncture wounds, but was still alive and conscious and trembling.  I knew from my experiences duck hunting that the most humane way to kill a bird is to grab the neck and pull the head so the vertebrae separate, but I had never done that on a bird so small.  The head came clean off, pulling with it a long stringy length of esophagus.  I threw the body in the dumpster behind our gate, fought back the gag reflex, and went inside and cried for a while.  Bluejays are corvids and among the smartest of the birds, possibly as intelligent or more intelligent than most great apes, so it was like killing a baby chimpanzee in my mind.

Last year my father-in-law showed me something very disturbing.  There are a lot of feral cats in our neighborhood, and one of the neighbors dogs got out and mauled one - a kitten, maybe 6 months old.  I only saw the aftermath, but it was horrible enough - it was partially suspended in a hedge next to my father-in-law's house by it's own intestines, dead with it's eyes still wide open in a look of panic and a portion of it's intestines in it's mouth.  My father-in-law said the dog grabbed it and let it go almost immediately, but it had already punctured it's belly and a bit of intestines protruded.  The kitten tried to run and hide in the bush but it's intestines got caught on a branch, and it pulled out more and more of them as it struggled, and it started biting and chewing at it's own intestines to try and get free.  My father-in-law witnessed this but didn't know what to do, fortunately it had died by the time he had chased off the dog.  I was furious at him for showing it to me without warning me what I was about to see, but I guess something that horrible is just too much to bear alone and he had to share it...I could tell he was bothered by it too.

Real life is often more disturbing than fiction.

[WhitewolfStark]

Somehow this debate of what is or is not "too graphic" reminds me of the the old debate between "Terror vs Horror" in Gothic/Gothic Romance/Horror/Ghost Story" fiction.

Quote

 

Ann Radcliffe, "On the Supernatural in Poetry," The New Monthly Magazine (1826): 145-52.

[Ed. note: Radcliffe's essay is in the form of a dialogue between Willoughton, "the apostle of Shakespeare," and Mr. Simpson, "the representative of Philistine common sense."]

[W____:]"Who ever suffered for the ghost of Banquo, the gloomy and sublime kind of terror, which that of Hamlet calls forth? though the appearance of Banquo, at the high festival of Macbeth, not only tells us that he is murdered, but recalls to our minds the fate of the gracious Duncan, laid in silence and death by those who, in this very scene, are reveling in his spoils. There, though deep pity mingles with our surprise and horror, we experience a far less degree of interest, and that interest too of an inferior kind. The union of grandeur and obscurity, which Mr. Burke describes as a sort of tranquillity tinged with terror, and which causes the sublime, is to be found only in Hamlet; or in scenes where circumstances of the same kind prevail."

"That may be," said Mr. S____, "and I perceive you are not one of those who contend that obscurity does not make any part of the sublime." "They must be men of very cold imaginations," said W____, "with whom certainty is more terrible than surmise. Terror and Horror are so far opposite, that the first expands the soul and awakens the faculties to a high degree of life; the other contracts, freezes and nearly annihilates them. I apprehend, that neither Shakespeare nor Milton by their fictions, nor Mr. Burke by his reasoning, anywhere looked to positive horror as a source of the sublime, though they all agree that terror is a very high one; and where lies the great difference between horror and terror, but in uncertainty and obscurity, that accompany the first, respecting the dreaded evil?

 

And here I think the little debate between whether something being witnessed first hand vs. second-hand retelling comes a bit into play. While second-hand retelling exists IMO somewhere between terror and horror as defined here (a kind of middle road between the two), I do think it tends more towards terror than it does horror.

Horror is watching the mutilation occur. Terror is hearing the screams from behind a wall. In one (horror), you're shocked and certain of the evil before you. In the other (terror) it is left to your imagination to piece together just exactly what happened. Mrs. Radcliffe would ultimately argue that terror is of greater value than horror (again because she'd argue that the imagination being sparked by terror is better writing). It goes back to her little quarrel with Matthew Lewis (author of The Monk) which prompted her to write the essay in the first place. The Monk puts on display, nudity, gore, sex (rape actually, IIRC), violence, and bloodshed, all for the read to experience by way of the protagonist either witnessing or participating in such things.

Mrs. Radcliffe argued that merely suggesting such things, but keeping them off screen, was the mark of a better writer--for the mind can trick the reader into all sorts of flights of fancies that are far more terrifying due to the uncertainty and obscurity, rather than the sheer shock into respecting a dreaded evil of horror.

Ultimately I'd argue that Martin, while he dips his toes in horror, leans much more towards Terror rather than horror.

The show? Horror. Horror all the way. But quite frankly terror is much harder to capture on film or TV. It is a visual medium after all. In order to properly capture "terror" as Mrs. Radcliffe describes it you usually have to live in the protagonist's mind or see them seeing hallucinations of their mind trying to piece all the puzzle pieces together, or experience a lot of dream and nightmare sequences where their fears play out visually so that the audience can see and imagine along with the protagonist.

Although perhaps the image of the distant scream we're not privy to seeing is instead one model of how to do a slow creeping terror on screen.

In any case, second-hand accounts might come with a few gory details, however they still, IMO leave enough to the imagination to qualify a bit for terror.

Sorry this debate simply reminded me of this other debate.

[Grissom]

22 hours ago, Sullen said:

The cat incident was the product of curiosity, and a child experimenting. It's no different from children pitting insects against one another or burning ants with a looking glass. Or making their Sims die of hunger/exposure. That "bad" something is simply bullying. If George had meant it to be something like rape I highly doubt he would have called Joff "just a classic bully". Stannis being shocked by the whole cat thing sounds more like confirmation bias than anything. "Oh, remember when Joff killed a pregnant cat? That was totally because he is an abomination of incest! (Which makes me the rightful King)"

He doesn't lack empathy, he very clearly loved and wanted to emulate his emotionally distant father, was distraught by his death, and kept him as something he aspired to be after he died. Him turning on his mother means absolutely nothing, I'm sure he still felt for her, he simply thought she was out of place once the power rose to his head.

Yeah dawg gutting pregnant cats is the same as killing sims in a damn videogame.

[Grissom]

22 hours ago, Protagoras said:

Morality is not science. Morality cannot be part of science.

The human mechanisms and their intended purpose is not relevant at all. What is, is how empathy actually work in practice and I can tell you that there is no objective definition of ethics despite all those mechanisms. If it were, we wouldn´t have this discussion.  Moral beliefs and practices have always been bound up with customs and conventions, and these vary greatly between societies. 

That some scientists fail to get this but instead try to figuring out moral truths with the scientific method are tragic. If these mechanisms all point in one direction -  why have so many people seem to have failed to discover the one true moral code. 

Again, you need to prove this objective and I think the fact that so many disagree means there is no inherent understanding of right and wrong. Just saying that everyone not susceptible enough means psychopathic behaviour is a weak, self-justifying argument mostly held by annoying rationalists, who refuses to analyze these questions as careful as they do with other data.

Are you some kind of psychopath desperately trying to justify that your abnormal brain isn't a mental disability? I'm not trying to offend, i'm legitimately curious.

[kimim]

8 minutes ago, Grissom said:

Yeah dawg gutting pregnant cats is the same as killing sims in a damn videogame.

idk if this is pertinent, but my neighbor has a son who tortured and killed a feral cat when he was seven, then dug up our dead cat a year later. He called me over to look at what he'd done, and laughed hysterically at my reaction. Eight years later, he's a normal human being. Happily, he did not have Cersei as a mother, and, most important, he did not have absolute power. He was forced to adjust, and he did. I realize that some people don't, or can't. I also get completely what GRRM says about Joffrey.

[Grissom]

Just now, kimim said:

idk if this is pertinent, but my neighbor has a son who tortured and killed a feral cat when he was seven, then dug up our dead cat a year later. He called me over to look at what he'd done, and laughed hysterically at my reaction. Eight years later, he's a normal human being. Happily, he did not have Cersei as a mother, and, most important, he did not have absolute power. He was forced to adjust, and he did. I realize that some people don't, or can't. I also get completely what GRRM says about Joffrey.

High-functioning sociopath. He just got smarter.

[kimim]

59 minutes ago, Grissom said:

High-functioning sociopath. He just got smarter.

lol a terrifying thought.

[Protagoras]

1 hour ago, Grissom said:

Are you some kind of psychopath desperately trying to justify that your abnormal brain isn't a mental disability? I'm not trying to offend, i'm legitimately curious.

Are you some kind of spoiled, substandard, third-grade philosophy-wielder desperately trying to justify that your oversimplified pseudo-morals isn´t a mental disabilty? I´m not trying to offend, I´m legitimately curious. 

[John Suburbs]

I have to laugh whenever anyone brings up the cats to explain Joffrey's psychosis, or lack thereof.

Joffrey was buggering his younger brother. In any age, that is a sign of an unbalanced mind.

 

[Sullen]

2 hours ago, Grissom said:

Yeah dawg gutting pregnant cats is the same as killing sims in a damn videogame.

On a pure basic level, yeah, in both cases the endgoal is Schadenfreude. One is simply more graphic, and more alive, but the concept remains the same.

Thing is, we don't even know if Joff did it out of fun, out of genuine curiosity, or out of a desire to impress his father, which makes it even more doubtful that the incident with the cat is a sign of psychopathy.

[Knight Of Winter]

28 minutes ago, Sullen said:

Thing is, we don't even know if Joff did it out of fun, out of genuine curiosity, or out of a desire to impress his father, which makes it even more doubtful that the incident with the cat is a sign of psychopathy.

By itself, maybe (maaaaybe) not. But coupled with everything else: Joffrey's noticeable lack of empathy, sadism, reveling in causing pain and humiliation etc. - surely yes. There's a limit of an amount of bad behaviour which can be explained by simple "spoiledness" and bad parenting.

[Sullen]

Just now, Knight Of Winter said:

By itself, maybe (maaaaybe) not. But coupled with everything else: Joffrey's noticeable lack of empathy, sadism, reveling in causing pain and humiliation etc. - surely yes. There's a limit of an amount of bad behaviour which can be explained by simple "spoiledness" and bad parenting.

He was a cruel child to begin with, add to that the environmental factors and, boom, you've got cruel unhinged Joffrey.

[The Ned's Little Girl]

3 hours ago, Grissom said:

Yeah dawg gutting pregnant cats is the same as killing sims in a damn videogame.

 

1 hour ago, Sullen said:

On a pure basic level, yeah, in both cases the endgoal is Schadenfreude. One is simply more graphic, and more alive, but the concept remains the same.

Really? I can't see how anything of Grissom's two examples is the same, conceptually or otherwise. The whole "more alive" bit makes all the difference - or should, anyway.

 

[Clegane'sPup]

1 hour ago, Sullen said:

 Schadenfreude

That word had never entered my vocabulary until just last week when I finished reading Lousie Penny's, A Trick of the Light.

[Sullen]

Just now, Clegane'sPup said:

That word had never entered my vocabulary until just last week when I finished reading Lousie Penny's, A Trick of the Light.

It's a beautiful, beautiful word. One that is so precise, yet so useful.

2 minutes ago, The Ned's Little Girl said:

 

Really? I can't see how anything of Grissom's two examples is the same, conceptually or otherwise. The whole "more alive" bit makes all the difference - or should, anyway.

Both are motivated by enjoying to pain/misery of another being, and the thing is, we're not even sure fun was Joffrey's motivation for what he did to the cat.

A cat in the mind of a developing 5-6 year old might be just "alive" and able to feel pain as a Sim is.

[Sullen]

2 hours ago, John Suburbs said:

I have to laugh whenever anyone brings up the cats to explain Joffrey's psychosis, or lack thereof.

Joffrey was buggering his younger brother. In any age, that is a sign of an unbalanced mind.

There's absolutely no proof that Joffrey was sexually assaulting Tommen.

Tommen never finishes what he was going to say, people tend to want to believe the worst of characters they dislike, and so they fill the gap with sexual molestation and the like. I highly doubt George would have called a boy who sexually assaulted his little brother from an early age "Just a classic bully". If anything, Tommen was simply going to allude to Joffrey regularly bullying him.

[ravenous reader]

23 hours ago, Kaguya said:

Even if he is worse in the show, Jack Gleeson also thinks Joffrey is a product of his environment 

 

http://www.gq.com/story/jack-gleeson-gq-june-2012-bad-guys-portfolio

Given that Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen were exposed to the same environment, upbringing, and social mores, etc., how do you then go about explaining the glaring differences in their eventual personalities? GRRM intentionally juxtaposed Joffrey with his siblings, who are not cruel, in order to show that, despite sharing a common background, they were able, nevertheless, to have very different relationships to others, particularly animals.

If we're talking show interpretation, for what it's worth, D&D do explicitly refer to Joffrey as a 'psychopath':

Quote

DEADLINE: What arcs in the last season made you most proud?
BENIOFF: I’d say the Theon Greyjoy for both of us has been really something …

DEADLINE: He’s the reluctant conqueror who sacked Winterfell to please his father, was betrayed by his men, taken prisoner and spent the last season being tortured mercilessly.
WEISS: So much of it is due to Alfie Allen’s vulnerable performance. He’s a character who’s doing horrible things in a world where people are doing horrible things, and he’s just digging himself in deeper. And you’re with him every step of the way and you understand why he’s doing what he’s doing but you’re also saying “please don’t do what I know you’re about to do.” Because you know it’s going to make things worse, not better.

DEADLINE: Because he knew it was wrong.
WEISS: Joffrey, for example, is a character who’s doing hateful and horrible things and he’s a psychopath; I can’t look at Joffrey and say I understand at a gut level why you are doing the things you are doing as a human being. Because I don’t think I’m a psychopath. Yet, but ask me again in Season Six. But Theon was doing terrible things, and yet it’s so easy to understand what was driving him to do those things. On all sorts of different levels I thought that was a very satisfying thing.
BENIOFF: So much of it comes down to the actor. You want to find someone who can not only fit the role but do something with it that no one else can. And that was true with Lena Headey. When we saw her for Cersei we saw dozens of actresses. All of them were playing the typical “ice queen.” And Lena came in and she was funny, in a nasty way. She made us laugh, and no one else had. She broadened our view of what that character could be. So when she wants to be charming she can be, and even people who should know better get drawn in. Once you find those actors, it becomes a great privilege to help their characters grow.

http://deadline.com/2013/06/emmy-q-a-with-game-of-thrones-david-benioff-and-d-b-weiss-532200/

From the actor's point of view, I don't think it helps to label ones character with a potentially pejorative and restrictive tag. Good actors, like Jack Gleeson, Charles Dance, or Michael McElhatton, don't go around thinking 'I am playing a villain'..! A good actor always seeks to find the motivation behind the character, and to try and understand how that character might make sense of him/herself, and his/her place in the world. Psychopaths are human beings, not 'monsters.'

Similarly, Carice van Houten, who plays Melisandre, doesn't approach her character struggling with moral arguments over the burning of children, and birthing shadow-assassins, because that's not how Melisandre would make sense of it, from her perspective:

Quote

While the actress understands that many will think of Melisandre as a cold-blooded killer, she only kills because of her devotion to the god and his path. "That's the way I try to play her because it's boring to play a killer that's just a psychopath. That's a different character, I think," van Houten says. "The fact that she thinks what they have to do is for the better, that's scary enough as it is. These big villains as we know them, they don't see themselves as villains. They see themselves as heroes."

http://www.tvguide.com/news/game-of-thrones-melisandre-gift-carice-van-houten/

[Sullen]

2 minutes ago, ravenous reader said:

Given that Joffrey, Myrcella, and Tommen were exposed to the same environment, upbringing, and social mores, etc., how do you then go about explaining the glaring differences in their eventual personalities? GRRM intentionally juxtaposed Joffrey with his siblings, who are not cruel, in order to show that, despite sharing a common background, they were able, nevertheless, to have very different relationships to others, particularly animals.

Different people react differently to different circumstances.

Different people have different personalities in general, Joffrey was naturally mean-spirited, Tommen naturally nice.

Saying they were exposed to the same environment, upbringing, and social mores would not exactly be true either, the Crown Prince is treated very differently than any daughter or second son, not to mention that Cersei was especially doting on Joffrey while arguably neglecting Tommen and Myrcella.