When Game of Thrones aired on HBO this past spring, there was a lot of conversation and debate about the depiction of sex, rape, and female agency on the show and in the books. How do you feel about the way the show handled those things in comparison with what you tried to do in your novels?
My novels have quite a bit of sex in them. ... I have read some people saying that they added sex scenes, and they did. They also didn't put in some sex scenes that are in the book, so on balance, I think they're the same. A few things were handled differently. Obviously the way I wrote it in the book is the way I would have handled it.
How do you make decisions about the depictions of sexual violence that you include in your writing?
Well, I'm not writing about contemporary sex—it's medieval.
There's a more general question here that doesn't just affect sex or rape, and that's this whole issue of what is gratuitous? What should be depicted? I have gotten letters over the years from readers who don't like the sex, they say it's "gratuitous." I think that word gets thrown around and what it seems to mean is "I didn't like it." This person didn't want to read it, so it's gratuitous to that person. And if I'm guilty of having gratuitous sex, then I'm also guilty of having gratuitous violence, and gratuitous feasting, and gratuitous description of clothes, and gratuitous heraldry, because very little of this is necessary to advance the plot. But my philosophy is that plot advancement is not what the experience of reading fiction is about. If all we care about is advancing the plot, why read novels? We can just read Cliffs Notes.
A novel for me is an immersive experience where I feel as if I have lived it and that I've tasted the food and experienced the sex and experienced the terror of battle. So I want all of the detail, all of the sensory things—whether it's a good experience, or a bad experience, I want to put the reader through it. To that mind, detail is necessary, showing not telling is necessary, and nothing is gratuitous.
Friday, February 10, 2012
In the run-up to season two...
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28 comments:
Poor George...
Instead of letting loose and lambasting the producers of the tv series for cableizing the sex scenes, he has to settle for "The way I wrote it in the book is the way I would have handled it."
Diplomatic, but not satisfying.
What do you mean by "cableize," exactly? Sounds like a useful concept.
This is the video interview in which "medieval sex" is discussed at greater length, around the 25-minute mark:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QTTW8M_etko
Martin presents himself, here and elsewhere, as a Hollywood pro who understands the trade offs. On the other hand, he's said he left Hollywood so that he could control every detail of his stories. My guess is that he does curse and throw things on occasion, in the privacy of his own home.
"Cableizing":
The, what, half dozen half naked prostitutes who accompany Tyrion's first appearance in the series....
The lingering closeup of Danerys's breasts in her first appearance in the series.....
For example.
Really no different from the completly pointless performance of Paz de la Vega in Boardwalk, which would never survive the editor's scissors in a real movie.
It wouldn't make it into a "real movie" because of the MPAA.
But I know what you mean. I, too, find topless shots of women disturbing and try to avoid them whenever possible.
"Would never survive the editor's scissors in a real movie" because it is fatuous and lessens suspension of disbelief.
Stopped watching "Strikeback" because it was too Skinemaxed. A good film is as immersive an experience as a good book. Gratuitous sex, by which I mean explicit "porn star" sex, is gratuitous. While there is and has always been sex, most of it that occurs in our day to day lives is relatively tame. I imagine that it always has been.
I cannot imagine a farmer during the black death, in a poorly insulated home, getting all Cinemax with his wife.
Nudity for nudity sake is staid. Aversion to nudity is also staid. America seems incapable of portraying casual nudity...well except for last week's episode of Up All Night. That -- it seems to me -- got it right.
I don't disagree. This stuff simply bothers me less, perhaps. Many things I enjoy seem to have guilty pleasure elements, so I can't claim to be above all that. True Blood for me is straight up exploitation TV, and I haven't missed an episode.
I remain convinced that this material would be more prevalent in "real movies" if the MPAA wasn't snooping around. Bearing in mind, also, as GRRM suggests, that gratuity is not a precisely measurable quality.
Christian's first line said it better than I could have (I love the word "fatuous".)
I think 'gratuitous' is the word that the less sophisticated use to cover the same concept, and I share Martin's irritation with the word. Of course Martin gets paid a great deal of money to grapple with the public...
Its a horrifying thought that movies would be more like Cinemax if the MPAA weren't involved. I guess things could always be worse.
Not sure how much suspension of disbelief is involved watching, for example, Transformers 3, or how that would be effected if emotionall 14-year-old Michael Bay was permitted to showcase his leading ladies as he would surely love to.
Suspension of disbelief = Noticing that the filmmakers are manipulating people who aren't you.
When Mark H. and I were doing our "Guy Movies" piece we theorized that genres of film entertainment could be distinguished by the stage of development at which their respective fans were arrested -- on the assumption that there are no true grown ups, only people stuck at various levels of immaturity who protest too much. Guys who most enjoy films about groups of guys on missions are still 10-year-olds pasting "no girls allowed" signs on their tree houses -- and you can probably work out the other categories for yourself. Not a structure that does much to illuminate Ozu or Bergman -- or even Whit Stillman -- but a serviceable metaphor for most pulp or pop product.
A pretty good theory that explains a lot -- about male audiences at least.
Also explains at least part of the incongruity of cableized programming -- presenting the "Song of Ice and Fire" audience with occasional signs of arrested development is a category error, at least, and may actually (if you are, say, a sophisticated, bien pensant, female viewer) push you right onto some other channel.
As an aesthetic first principle consistency is pretty hard to beat, IMHO. One of the few sensible thing I ever read about depictions of sex (uncolored by personal squeamishness, etc) was basically to write about it the same way you'd write about (or by extension film) anything else. That panning over to the drapes, or stopping at the bedroom door in a supposedly hard boiled and realistic novel, will make you look sillier than anything the scene is likely to contain.
Martin's claim is that he writes consistently -- i.e. at the same level of gratuitous detail -- about food, clothing, violence and sex. He is an entertainer more than artist and all these subjects are elements of entertainment value.
I remember how shocked some were at Colin Firth's leap into the pond in the BBC production of "Pride and Prejudice" about twenty years ago (and his dripping wet emergence).
A category error (making physical attraction in Austen explicit) that turned out to be the forerunner of a whole new way to approach the classics on television. We now have, mist recently, Gillian Anderson as Miss Havisham in Great Expectations....
Some of the things we like best, including "literary mysteries," could be described as category errors. A small-minded and limiting notion, IMHO. But a promising title for a future William Gibson novel.
Oh, I'm not talking about whole genres, which I think would be limiting in the same way that 'getting above your station' or, conversely 'slumming' are limiting and small-minded notions.
On the other hand, if someone cableized Downton Abbey by adding an explicit sex scene between Lord and Lady Grantham... It would be a failure of taste and of aesthetics. The point about the HBO version of the Martin books is that the producers' lack of confidence in their audience creates a lot of grating moments and ultimately, as it turns out, is self-limiting.
a failure of taste and of aesthetics
Inconsistent, IOW?
It's Dick! On a somewhat related subject.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/movies/2012/02/taking-it-off-for-the-holocaust.html
Inconsistency is not the problem. Not realizing what you're doing or wanting to do something that's contextually offensive is the problem. In a much more sensitive context, you're right that this is the same problem noted by Brody. Although Schindler is much less offensive that the surprisingly large number of movies in which the Holocaust is merely the melodramatic backdrop to some love story or, God forbid, comedy.
You could also, if you wanted to, think about the last three minutes or so of Don Giovanni, after he's dragged down to hell, that is..
Something like: Inconsistency is almost always a problem aesthetically. In extreme cases it's also a moral issue.
One of the most powerful things about the recent film noir "Drive" was that the sex in the movie was entirely limited to two actions.
The first was the holding of hands. That holding of hands was the most powerful sex scene of the year. It was fully immersed in the reality of the film and remained true to the "driver's" character.
The second was a kiss that takes place after certain obstacles to romance have been removed, but a new more powerful one has been added. One can even argue whether the kiss itself actually occurred, as it actually causes the reality of the world of "Drive" to change with its occurring.
Brilliant!
The rutting at the beginning of "Strikeback?" Fatuous. It's silly. It isn't offensive. It isn't gratuitous. It's just plain absurd and I can't for the life of me figure out why it is there.
Why the open rutting at that point? Where does it add to the narrative? To character development? It is akin to the "Smoking Cheat" that Jody wrote about yesterday.
I have actually found the "Game of Thrones" stuff less silly, though they made one relationship more explicit in the show than in the book. That's neither here nor there. Nudity at a brothel seems natural. Casual nudity in a long married couples bedroom seems natural.
Rutting over a sink as an introduction to a character? Laughable.
No puzzlement at all, for me, l as to why boisterous sex is a staple in Strike Back: On Cinemax? Please. This is a commercially calculated "guy show," excellent and even daring in exploring the cramped psychology of men of action and the complexities of international trafficking and violence -- gratuitous seriousness, IOW, in terms of this kind of show this fundamentally is.
If you're looking for pure and fairly egalitarian exploitation TV, you could give Spartacus a squeeze. Major male as well as female nudity in every episode, along with gruesome historical anachronisms and geysering aerial eruptions, executed with gusto by Raimi and company. What's not to like?
Check out the "Theon" chapter of Clash of Kings that begins about 16% of the way in, with the phrase "There was no safe anchorage at Pyke..." Sexposition at its purest, way more graphic than anything that's been on the show so far -- or could ever be. So when Martin says he prefers the scenes as he wrote them, he may not be suggesting what you (both of you) seem to assume.
I criticized neither Martin, nor Spartacus BTW, my rage is directed at "Strikeback" which I find puerile in its representation of sex. It is exactly what Dennis means by "cableizing." Spartacus has some "cableizing" moments, but most of the sex serves a narrative/thematic purpose as the sex in "The Borgias" served a narrative purpose.
I'm not opposed to some "cableizing," but I am adamantly opposed to it when it is silly and unnecessary.
To add actual sex to "Drive" or to "Double Indemnity" is to waste time and narrative tension. Yes, it is better in noir to stop at the door or with the couple post coital. Better yet is to never get to the bedroom.
Noir is about suspense and tension. There should be little if no release until the end.
As for your defense of "Strikeback" as "boy show." I don't know many boys, let alone men, who don't find the show silly.
There's a famous blog (in some circles) where people cook everything in SOIF. You've given me an idea.....
You'll like the Valentine's Day picture here, which rather combines both important elements:
http://www.innatthecrossroads.com/
A mistake to assume that people take seriously everything they enjoy. In my case, some kinds of entertainment are perfectly effective in spite of being "silly" -- in fact, silliness itself can have entertainment value. And taking some things too seriously can be worse than silly.
I like my silly stuff silly, my serious stuff serious, my fun stuff fun, and for any efforts at entertaining to have had actual effort applied in their creation.
Jerry Lewis at his best is a master of the silly. At his worst demonstrates why silly and trivial are synonymous.
"Strikeback" was a show that feigned seriousness and fell into silliness. I could almost hear the Benny Hill and/or Calliope music kick in during some scenes. Much like the Roger Moore Bond films.
Bum ba da bum bum ba pa ba da ba ba da.
For a recovering critic I seem to have very lax critical standards -- or maybe that's why. I understand the difference between intentional and unintentional silliness, and in a couple of Sully's more poorly motivated biosterous copulations that line is indeed crossed. In other cases they seem motivated enough by the release-of-stress hypothesis. And on a couple of occasions (the trysts with Rachel Shelley and Orla O'Rourke) they seemed justified to me the viewer on the grounds of spectacle alone. There just isn't as much as stake here as there is in, say, that example from Schilnder's List. I'm more content than I otherwise might be to let a few things slide.
Stephen King: "I recognize terror as the finest emotion and so I will try to terrorize the reader. But if I find that I cannot terrify, I will try to horrify, and if I find that I cannot horrify, I'll go for the gross-out. I'm not proud."
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