"Game of Thrones"

-created by david benioff and d.b. weiss
2011-2019
Confound this damned show.
Loved it, and hate that i loved it.
Winning characters, sparkling dialogue...and a bankrupt moral center. Violence-glorification is nothing new, but it's a deeper problem here. GOT is a celebration of the culture of honor, a mindset from which most of the world's democracies have long-since evolved. In honor culture, one defends one's reputation by any means necessary. You can see echoes of this in our south and west, which explains America's outsized homicide rate. Subtract those regions, and the U.S. is comparable to Europe.
As for feminism, GOT takes two steps forward and two back. Despite strong female characters, one gets the sense that these are strong wimyn - as defined by MEN. Machismo has always played well, because of the disempowerment that 99% of citizens feel in industrialized corporate states, where true democracy has never existed. We need to escape reality through onscreen heroes. We need them to kick ass, and never apologize. It's understandable, yet it keeps us from rising more quickly out of our own barbarity. Shows like GOT are more insidious than obvious crap like CARLITO'S WAY, because they're so...charming.
Though let's not delude ourselves, we wouldn't have cared half as much about this show without the nudity. Without it, i would have seen one or two episodes at most.
What entertainment do you create for a sexually-repressed, disempowered culture? One could devote a college course to the evil genius of this show. So tantalizing that you get sucked in, caring deeply about the characters, even though they represent the worst of us. Did i long for a lost identical twin of that redheaded northern love of jon's, no matter how hopelessly cheesy? Did i hope for ample final-season nudity from the stark sisters? Did i want arya and the hound in a spin-off buddy comedy? Yes - all of that! Did i want full frontal from tyrion? Of course. I don't mind the show pandering to our sexual repression (in fact, i'm grateful), but let's be fully and finally done with double standards.
Hollywood, you suck.