Jamie White

I’ve not been able to see the film yet, but this seems to have confirmed some of my suspicions about how well the film was made. Nice concise article btw.

I’m glad you’ve enjoyed it! It’s been really mentally stimulating talking with you. Hopefully I get to read an article of yours, which I’m sure will be every bit as intelligent as this discussion has been. Valar morghulis.

The Brienne scene in some ways pulls the wool over our eyes with this, as her femininity and showing as such through her naked body is a genuine “weakness” of hers that she hates showing. I don’t think the showrunners have always shown nudity as a female vulnerability, but definitely more so than not and by a long way.

Another good point on cultural differences. It is often easy to forget that Mel is not from Westeros because she is just so comfertable (confident is maybe a better word) around everyone. I really like this scene because it brings together so many elements of nudity and nakedness: prurience, authenticity, cultural context as you so rightly pointed out, and now there is the theorisation that Mel was in her true form (the old woman from the S6 premiere). This brings in a completely new element to the scene. Selyse being a true believer and not needing to seeing the beautiful Red Woman, while the viewer (the objectifying viewer) still needs the beauty to be convinced to go along with Mel; it is not until the audience wants and “needs” her most that she reveals her true self to us (which was a great scene, too). The audience is willing to not care who she is or what she looks like for one thing everyone (seemingly) wanted – Jon Snow.

I see what you mean when you say the audience is meant to be “aroused” by Cersei’s humiliation, but I believe a better word to use would be schadenfreude (taking pleasure in others’ pain/humiliation etc.). The one issue i have with this scene, Cersei’s all too perfect body. We’ve scene recenlty with OAP Mel that an accurate depiction of an elderly woman was done excellently, but why couldn’t they have done this with a mother of three? If we had seen the toll of three pregnancies on Cersei’s body it would’ve been a scene much more focused on her punishment than on her nakedness being a main focus.

Very, very well said and argued. I completely see your point now. The argument can be made then that it is the audience need to lter their expectations rather than how the show portrays nakedness and nudity. Of course, this isn’t the whole case, the show still uses nudity only as sexual. In fact, the only non-sexual example of nakedness on the show I can think of is that one brief scene where we see Hodor’s penis. Saying that, he is also a non-sexual character, simpleton, and a male (not that he cannot be found “sexy”).

I still think Qarth is an odd place. I completely agree with your statments on cultural differences and historical contexts, and if a one boob out Dany was in Mereen or Yunkai I would definitely agree, but Qarth just seems too civilise, on the show that is. Obviously, they still have their own rules and standards because of their culture, but it is probably the most Western city in Essos, and hence I still feel the boob out attire would still feel a little off. Something like this has to be established very early on, and I don’t believe we are given any hints that the fashion is ridisculously different copared to what we’ve already seen – I think in the context of the show the way Qarth was portrayed was to make a substantial distinction between them and the only other culture we’d seen up until that point – the Dothraki. So I belive that if some form of fashion staement with a breast exposed would’ve blurred the lines between sophisticated Qarth…eens(?) and the Dotjraki.

I ususally watch the show before my brother does and when he gets home he will usually ask me a couple of questions, and normally one is about whether there was boobs in the show. This annoys me to no end A) because he supports the notion of only viewing nudity as sexual and B) the nudity shouldn’t be one of the primary interests of the show.
I do believe that some examples of nudity in the show isn’t sexual, but this is probably just from my sole perspective (hetero male viewer btw). Unfortunately, my brother embodies the majority that sees all boobs as sexual, and that’s just so disappointing.

Thanks for your comment and thanks for disagreeing! (I really mean it)

I think the notion of prurience in Essos is a very relevent matter. The Dothraki, for example, are not considered as such for their clothing and sex scenes because of their tribal nature. Qarth is a more sophisticated place, more akin to Westerosi cities, so I do believe that nakedness in Qarth would more likely be considered prurient. All i meant by it being a good decision not to shows Dany’s breasts as was done in the book was because there didn’t seem to be any reason to do so.

Re sansa stuff: 1. The undressing does not mean that her character changes, but how we as the audience look at her. She does not become any less innocent etc, but we see her in a different way.
2. Yeah, fair point. i definitely should’ve included Tyrion’s nakedness in there.
3. This is just a devil’s advocate here, BUT it was probably because no nudity was actually shown. I still thought that because her character was underage they still couldn’t show something. Apparantley not the case…
4. I think someone has actually not some statistical analysis of book vs show nudity and I beleive the bok came out on top completely. I’ll try and find the link. The white male audience will also be pandered to, whether intentionally or not, and that is quite sad. I do believe that this is getting better slwoly, though.

I’d have liked to have heard what you disagreed with regarding the Jaime/Brienne scene and what you thought about Mel’s and Cersei’s scenes.

Also, never feel you have to apologise for having a different opinion. In fact, I’m glad you did disagree with most of what I said.

Thanks for your comment and thanks for disagreeing! (I really mean it)

I think the notion of prurience in Essos is a very relevent matter. The Dothraki, for example, are not considered as such for their clothing and sex scenes because of their tribal nature. Qarth is a more sophisticated place, more akin to Westerosi cities, so I do believe that nakedness in Qarth would more likely be considered prurient. All i meant by it being a good decision not to shows Dany’s breasts as was done in the book was because there didn’t seem to be any reason to do so.

Re sansa stuff: 1. The undressing does not mean that her character changes, but how we as the audience look at her. She does not become any less innocent etc, but we see her in a different way.
2. Yeah, fair point. i definitely should’ve included Tyrion’s nakedness in there.
3. This is just a devil’s advocate here, BUT it was probably because no nudity was actually shown. I still thought that because her character was underage they still couldn’t show something. Apparantley not the case…
4. I think someone has actually not some statistical analysis of book vs show nudity and I beleive the bok came out on top completely. I’ll try and find the link. The white male audience will also be pandered to, whether intentionally or not, and that is quite sad. I do believe that this is getting better slwoly, though.

I’d have liked to have heard what you disagreed with regarding the Jaime/Brienne scene and what you thought about Mel’s and Cersei’s scenes.

Also, never feel you have to apologise for having a different opinion. In fact, I’m glad you did disagree with most of what I said.

i really think it was the best season for a while now. I particularly loved the Garrison-Trump story arc and, of course, the Canadians. From a social, political, cultural etc standpoint, it was very well done. I think the continuity in the episodes (which is nothing new for SP by far) was a little over done, though. They had so many storylines going by the last three episodes it just kind of tainted it for me a tiny bit. Still a great season though.

I think while the semantics may change (heterosexual to homosexual/multicultural families etc.) the syntactics remain the same. Generally how a family oriented show works stays the same; the roles and stereotypes within the family are the same. Recently, inModern Family Claire has become the real breadwinner for the Dunphys. It even began to parody the switching of stereotypes with Claire the breadwinner and Phil the doting, trophy wife.