There’s an old story, perhaps authentically native American, about a young brave on a quest to prove himself who climbed to the top of a tall mountain. As he sat there enjoying the view for a moment he heard a voice calling to him. He turned to find a rattlesnake laying there, cold and weak.
“Please,” the snake said, “when you leave this mountain please take me with you. It is so cold up here that I can barely move, and there is no food to be found even if I could catch it.”
“I won’t come near you,” the brave said. “You are a rattlesnake, and you hate my people. If I come too close you will bite me, and I will die.”
“Not so,” said the snake. “I am so weak with cold I can’t even resist. I will die if you don’t help me. I would be forever grateful if you would help me, and I wouldn’t harm you.”
The brave resisted, but the snake pleaded and pleaded, promising everything would be okay if he just helped him down off the mountain. Finally the brave relented and agreed to carry the snake down to the bottom of the mountain.
“Please, put me inside your shirt where I will be safe and warm,” the snake said. The brave hesitated, but finally picked up the snake and put it inside his shirt, then began the difficult climb back down the mountain. Finally he reached the bottom.
“We are here now,” he told the snake. “I will take you out now, and we may part company.” As he put his hand inside his shirt to take out the snake the rattlesnake bit him on the hand.
As the poison coursed through the brave’s body he cried out in shock and betrayal, “But why? I helped you!”
“I am a rattlesnake,” the snake replied as he slithered free. “You knew what I was when you picked me up.”
I am reminded of this story when I read about the backlash over the recent “Game of Thrones” episodes and its reported rape scene that has finally moved some fans to swear off the show. Are they seriously surprised? They knew what it was when they picked it up, or at least by not long afterward. To have come this far and still be surprised at what depths such a show will sink to makes me wonder if they were really paying attention. And just where is the line is that made all the previous rape scenes acceptable and this one not? In the light of the prevalent public discourse on sexual assault, this apparent stance seems particularly clueless.
I don’t watch the series, never seen an episode. I don’t watch much TV at all any more. And from what I’ve heard of the series I would never want to watch the series or read the books. Why would I want to escape an unpleasant world by signing up for a completely brutal one where good not only doesn’t triumph but gets you killed early in the story? It seems pretty obvious to me what this series is. No matter what it may promise, I see nothing to compel me to pick it up.
This is a cable television series based on a brutal book series. And from what I understand they even go farther than the books do in their brutality. Why would anyone be surprised five seasons in to find that there is yet another scene of sexual assault? Why would this one suddenly be too much to take? You didn’t see this coming?
This is a cable series. Cable is already not bound by any formal standards, and series live and die on their willingness to push the boundaries of what their audiences will accept. The most successful shows are the ones that push the edge continually. So are people seriously surprised that Game of Thrones is going to keep getting nastier and nastier? The showrunners and the apologists can hide all they want behind “artistic integrity”, “message”, “setting”, etc., but it still comes down to making sure they’re talked about around the watercooler the next day, and that means they continually have to deliver more, to break new ground, to keep the same old brutality from becoming the same old same old.
So does it mean that I’m some sort of exceptionally bright, perceptive–even prescient–person now because I’ve known to avoid the show in the first place? Sen. Claire McCaskill claims to have been surprised by how far the series is willing to go, and has now decided to discontinue watching. Does this mean that I’m brighter and more perceptive than a US Senator? We’ll have to assume that, because if I’m only average it doesn’t speak well of her. Seriously, Senator, you had no idea what type of show this was, or you didn’t think the show would ever go there? It’s already gone there on multiple occasions. I’m not sure what made this scene so special–and I don’t want to know, thank you, please don’t enlighten me–but surely you weren’t surprised.
You knew what it was when you picked it up.
yep. never read or watched it & not interested to but it’s hard not to hear that everyone in it suffers brutally in many, many, many ways right from the start, so it can’t be that much of a surprise & this is what tips one over the edge finally?
Can’t stand how these people are surprised time and again by the duplicitous media machine. They “stand” for all sorts of rights and such, but then turn around and violate their core beliefs constantly in their product. They would roast any food company that purported to provide organic produce in their food, but instead slipped in poison and excrement. Just in the name of art, of course.