Been sick and bedridden these last few days so I just binged out on Game of Thrones when I was feeling strong enough to stare at a TV screen. Finished season 2.
This could just be me viewing everything through a post-Deadwood lens (definitely been doing it a lot lately) but my opinion on the show has changed a lot since I first watched seasons 1 through 4. At that time, pre-seeing Deadwood, I thought Game of Thrones was just using fantasy to create gratuitous violence and pornography for mainstream television and that it was more or less pointless. Not that this would bother me I'm hardly prudish and not opposed to popcorn entertainment, but I'd always identified the sort of medieval fantasy genre as being less about grit and muck and more about ideals and so on.
But now I think I see the underlying point of Game of Thrones and it seems to be the same point Deadwood was making (and The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance was making the point back in the early 60's to some degree but I only just watched that movie a few days ago) and that point is essentially a rebuttal to idealism.
Deadwood took the western genre with all its heroism, chivalry, morals and ideals and flipped it all and covered it in pig slop. Game of Thrones is doing a similar thing IMO. Romance is a large element in classical fantasy but this series shows that kings and queens simply tolerate each other, every sex scene is tainted in some slight manner, extramarital sex is common enough that bastard children have certain surnames based on where they come from (bastards from Iron Islands get the name Pyke, Winterfell bastards get the name Snow etc), there's incest too. It really does quite a good job at demystifying the fantasy genre.
Anyway I'm rambling. I am tempted to do what I did last time and watch the next season digitally but I think I might wait and buy them on DVD. I've thoroughly enjoyed rewatching it and it really feels like something I genuinely want to own for myself.
