Game of Thrones is a Megabuck Dreadful

In 19th Century Britain there was a market for cheap pulp fiction that was published in the form of small paperbacks known as "penny dreadfuls". They were so named as the cost one pence a piece. They often feature lurid tales of crime and depravity. Several versions of "Sweeney Todd the Demon Barber of Fleet Street" circulated in this format. These low brow entertainments sought to peek the prurient curiosity of the Victorian bourgeois.

My daughter is a big fan of "The Game of Thrones". I recently indulged her by submitting myself to watching all three seasons of the series in a matter of weeks. I now know why author Salmon Rushdi dismissed the series as "crap". I contend that this HBO production is a multi-million dollar "dreadful". I have not read George R.R. Martin's books, nor am I likely ever to do so. This is therefor not a review of the novels, but rather a brief evaluation of the made-for-cable television series.

As is the case with so much cable entertainment, it is overtly and gratuitously violent, lewd and offensive. It is salted with the words that one can not say on broadcast television for no better reason than to prove to the viewer that he or she is watching cable and not broadcast faire. They exist for the same reason that networks watermark their logos in the lower right hand corner of every broadcast. There is provocative materal inserted into scenes even when it has no bearing what so ever on the plot. The producers seem to find it necessary to develop plot points or exposition with bare bodies littering the frame. The violence of this series isn't just the sort of hewing away with swords that one would expect in cinematic versions of  Shakespeare such Kenneth Brannaugh's "Henry V" or Ian McKellan's "Richard III".  Even Roman Polanski's "Macbeth" wasn't quite so gross and bloody. "GOT" goes over the moon into the realm of the tomes of Sade. There is some really sickening stuff in this show that would only appeal to twisted minds. I believe that the line between exposition and pandering has been crossed.

While watching the entire series completed to date I would analyze each episode and deconstruct its source material. One scene might be lifted from "Dune", a plot device might be derived from "Dragon Riders of Pern", or an appalling slaughter comes straight out of the history of the Medici. There is absolutely nothing in in "GOT" that is new. Everything in it has either been plucked out of the annals of history or other (better) writers' imaginations. I tried to interest my daughter in the BBC miniseries version of Robert Graves' "I, Claudius". Every Byzantine coniving that one can see in "GOT" can be witnessed in "I, Claudius". She couldn't get past the first episode because of its relatively low production values. This is similar to dismissing Shakespeare because his stage works were low tech.

"The Game of Thrones" is so susceptible to ridicule that even the creators of "South Park" made fun of its glaring shortcomings. At the end of the third season climax I found myself muttering "a voice from the Outer Worlds". If the dragon action doesn't materialize in the fourth season I won't be along for the ride.