For Mature Audiences Only

I watched the premiere of Game of Thrones on Sunday Night. I have to say, it was excellent, incredibly well done, and the hype was totally deserved. However, I did have one nitpick. Well, two really, but they actually tie in together. For those who don't want spoilers on the pilot, read no further.

So, the show so far is incredibly faithful to the book. There were a couple of changes, but nothing I really minded, except for one really big thing. When Daenerys Targaryen makes love to Khal Drogo on their wedding night, she is believably terrified. This was also in the book. However, unlike in the book, he takes her forcefully and it's clear that, while she's not resisting, she is not happy about this. And the scene ends there. That's the end of her storyline for the pilot. This was not okay with me, for a very major reason.

In the book, Daenerys is terrified, nervous as hell. She knows she has to do this; as his bride, it's expected of her on their wedding night. However, he totally rocks the foreplay. He touches her, runs his hand along her shoulders and back and breasts, totally lubes her up, awakening her to all this sensation she's never even dreamed about. Then, after doing this for a while, he asks her "No?" This seems to be the only word he knows in her language, and for the first time it's a question. Her reply is "Yes." And then she takes his hand and draws it south for him to finger her.

Now, I have like zero investment in watching straight sex in and of itself, but this scene was so well written in the book that I wanted to be a terrified virgin bride. The real thing about this scene that's so powerful, though, is that it's the moment that Daenerys begins to become a woman. Not that sex makes you an adult -- actually, more on that point later -- but her awareness of her body and the ownership of it that she takes, owning her part in the pleasure and guiding Drogo's hand, it was the first beat in a storyline that would continue in a later scene where she dictates their position during sex. And he goes with it! It is after this moment that she starts to act more self-possessed and active. It is this moment that starts her arc, setting her feet down the path that will lead her to standing up to her brother Viserys, who up until this point in her life called all the shots and made everything about him, even going so far as to arrange her marriage (for his own political gain) in the first place. It's a huge moment that is, given the context, incredibly feminist and empowering. The girl steps toward a man of her own volition, initiates herself to sexuality on her own terms, and becomes a young woman.

But HBO just had her all but raped. Why? Because it makes the scene grittier? More fucked up and shocking? Really, HBO? Really?

And this was the other problem I had with the show. George R. R. Martin does not shy away from violence and sexuality in his book. The story is full of it: greed, murder, adultery, incest, intrigue, whores... it's all about corruption and sin, and it's great! But Martin uses it where he needs to use it, and not sparingly. There were certain scenes in the pilot that I do not remember from the book. Granted, I'm not done with it yet, but even if those scenes occur later, why put them there? Was there not enough sex up front? I couldn't help but feel that HBO amped up the sex just to amp up the sex.

As if there wasn't enough of it already.

Don't get me wrong, the cast is brilliant and every single scene was magnificently acted. The debauchery at the Dothraki wedding, I was all for that, and there was some additional nudity I was totally fine with. But there were certain scenes, some with sex, some without, where you could have swapped out every single line with "This isn't Lord of the Rings" and the scene would still make perfect sense.

We come to what I've dubbed "HBO Syndrome."

HBO, and later Showtime (and eventually some basic cable channels), have sort of become the new bastions of quality television, shows that are fresh, original, smartly-written, and uncensored. These are not shows that have to think of the children. These are shows intended for reasonably intelligent, usually at least partially educated adults who want to see quality material. So, to prove it, to prove just how not for kids they are, these shows will often push the envelope, not to make a point, not because it needs to be pushed, just to prove how hardcore they are. It's the same reason almost every other student in my first-year film class tried to make a horribly pretentious angst fest that ended with someone either killing him/herself or contemplating it. I made a romantic comedy about how expectations tend to get in the way of happiness, but that's neither here nor there.

I call this problem,which so many writers, directors, and producers seem to suffer from, "The Rule of Fucked Up."

The Rule of Fucked Up states that everything, even dramatic satisfaction, takes a backseat to doing the most fucked up thing possible, the less predictable, the better. Some might call that edgy. I call it cheap entertainment. No nutritional value. It's not that I'm against shock value. That phrase contains the words value and for good reason. However, there's a big difference between a shock that has weight and a shock that does more harm than good. It has to be more than the narrative equivalent of "Ha! Made you look!" And it's usually not. HBO Syndrome has countless shows following The Rule of Fucked Up (though FX's Nip/Tuck is probably the worst offender in this regard).

"Let's have the main character be an adulterer or be otherwise horrible to someone for no reason. You know, just to prove how flawed/bad-ass/cool he is."

"Let's do something horribly politically incorrect, relevant to neither the plot nor the characters, so that our audience knows we won't be cowed by anyone! Let's be offensive just to prove we're not pussies!"

"Look, Ma! Boobies! Cursing! Sex! You can't ground me anymore! I make the rules now!"

Everyone reading this knows what I'm talking about, and if you don't, why are you reading my blog? And I think this really illuminates my problem with a lot of stuff. I am no prude. I am no goody two-shoes. My characters swear and have sex all the time. I don't flinch from it, I don't even try to side-step it, but I don't do it just to do it or to prove some kind of juvenile point. This, to me, expresses the entire conflict at hand here: the difference between mature content and Mature Content.

See, mature content is content that requires a certain degree of social, psychological, and emotional maturity to digest and appreciate, as opposed to Mature Content, which is basically just, you know, anything that makes thirteen-year-old boys go "Oh, snap!"

mature content... a sex scene. Beautiful or dark or even funny and frivolous, but important in some regard.

Mature Content... a gratuitous sex scene. Don't even try to defend it. We all know why you put it there.

See, few people want their kids to be exposed to graphic depictions of sexuality (if they're comfortable with them being exposed to sexuality at all) and loads of swearing. Violence tends to be okay, because it's fine for a child's fragile psyche to see someone being senselessly eviscerated and dying in a pool of his own blood, but an act of love and pleasure could scar the kid for life. For... some reason.

Because of this, swearing, sex, and violence were deemed -- and in most cases, rightfully so -- the province of adults, of mature audiences, of people who would watch these things without going off and trying to emulate them in an inappropriate context. Thus, "mature content" was a signal to parents everywhere that what they were about to see was not intended for and might not be best for the kiddies. I leave that decision in the hands of the parents. It's their job to make that call, not the MPAA, not the government; the parents. But the warning is sensible and appreciated. Here's the problem.

In logic, the only math unit in high school I actually liked, we learned that while A might imply B, B does not necessarily imply A. In this context, while mature content may imply the presence of swearing, sex, and violence, those things do not make something mature or adult. Hate to burst your bubble, kids, but sex does not necessitate maturity. There are teen parents across America that are living proof of this.

Everyone wants their work to be taken seriously, and since people, erroneously so, seldom take kids seriously, removing something from the realm of kids is considered shorthand for this. And in these people's mad dash to show everyone how quality and not juvenile their work is, they figure sprinkling some blood and titties on everything will really get the message across that this work isn't for kids, and thus deserves a greater degree of respect. And if it's not this motive, they're really just flipping their middle fingers up at their parents for trying to censor their own entertainment when they were growing up. "Repress this, assholes!"

And so, maturity in entertainment has become synonymous with a laundry list of topics and features, rather than how those topics and features are approached and handled. This always makes me think of when a friend of mine worked in a video store back in high school, and kept mistaking the "Mature" section for "Nature" and would head over, looking for Discovery Channel specials and just found... not that. Ironically, the Discovery Channel stuff would've been more mature, even if it wasn't Mature.

Like I said, I'm no prude, but I just find all this in-your-faceness to be rather tedious. I mean, really? A best-selling novel series featuring intrigue, murder, sex, and politics... that's not enough? We gotta crank it up somehow? Really? For whom? I mean, I humbly suggest that anyone who's not happy with that is not really the audience you want. I mean, I know it's a business and the only audience they ultimately care about is a big one, but Jesus, you're HBO. Grow up a little, will ya?

Grow up and ease up a bit on the Mature Content. The entire selling point of your product is based on the principle that you're holding yourselves and your audience to a higher standard and not just pandering to the masses. Act like it.

And for all those writers and directors and producers out there, I leave with you with some words of wisdom from Inara Serra, possibly my favorite character in all of Joss Whedon's works. While in the afterglow with Inara, a young man who's just lost his virginity asks, "Aren't I supposed to be a man now?" And she tells him quite kindly, "A man is just a boy who's old enough to ask that question. Our time together, it's a ritual, a symbol ... but it doesn't make you a man. You do that yourself."

Think about it.

Conflicts of Interest

There are all kinds of stories: funny ones, moving ones, the kind of that can awaken something in you that you'd long thought dead. They can be small character studies, sweeping epics, simple, or layered with meaning. However, for all the variety, all the contrast, there is one thing that all stories must have.

Conflict.

We need it. We crave it. All stories are built on it. There's just one problem. Most conflict is fucking boring. Have you ever been sitting around, watching your favorite show, and then realized within about five minutes not only where the plot is going, but why you're going to end up groaning for the next hour? It's because the conflict sucks. There are a lot of reasons this happens and not just in television, though TV does tend to be the worst offender.

The reason for this is that most conflict is false. Most conflict is about shit that just. Doesn't. Matter. When you've got to talk yourself into why the stakes are high, they're not. False conflict is all around us, infesting our fiction like rats.

I want to be perfectly clear, false conflict is not the same as fantastic conflict. Trekking into Mordor so that the One Ring can be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom: this is a fantastic conflict, but the emotions it fuels are real. The struggles and choices the characters make would affect most real people in exactly the same way, given the circumstances.

False conflict is the kind of conflict where, if the characters behaved with even a modicum of maturity for, like, thirty seconds, the plot wouldn't happen. This can occur by many means.

1) The characters could become very stubborn about an issue that it is positively ridiculous for them to be stubborn about. Sure, people can have sore spots or even a petty issue here and there, but there are some things where, if anyone really feels that strongly about it, the character just becomes irritating or altogether less likable. "But we need them to disagree! We need our conflict!" You need a different conflict that isn't predicated on bullshit.

2) Miscommunication. Oh, the comedy of errors, a classic! To some people. To me, they rarely come off well. Maybe it's the product of being raised in a household where miscommunication led to substance abuse problems and loads of family therapy, but I don't find it very amusing. In fact, I don't appreciate misunderstandings in a story unless the entire point of them is "misunderstandings are dangerous." To me, miscommunication is the stuff of tragedy, because what is tragedy ultimately but really sad shit that could have been avoided?

If Carol gets mad at Frank for something she thought he said, rather than something he actually did say, then the conflict is essentially a lie. It's cheap. It's empty-calorie conflict: no nutritional value. Now, if Carol gets mad at Frank for something he said but didn't mean, that's another story, because whether or not he meant something, he still made the choice to say it, thus Carol is angry with Frank's choices. What you have is a clash of beliefs or ideologies. Carol's either mad at what Frank is expressing or just the fact that he would say such a thing, whether he meant it or not. Either way, her anger is based on something real, not a bad game of telephone.

Some writers try to handwave this by having the offender try to explain to the misinformed and fail. For instance, Frank tries to explain that he never said what Carol's friend told her he said, but then Carol refuses to listen to his explanation or even hear him out at all. Or she's being so irrational about the whole thing,Frank decides he doesn't owe her any explanations, and refrains from clearing things up on principle. And the truth is cockblocked, sustaining the false conflict.

Right about this time, you want to throw your remote at the TV, and with good reason. Because on some level, no matter if it's a sitcom, no matter how wacky or comical the characters, at the end of the day, we want to invest in what's going on, and we can't if we don't respect the characters. I challenge any of you to respect someone who's acting like a tool.

To prove that I'm capable of seeing the good as well as the bad, I'd like to offer an example of a show that more often than not gets it right. Tonight on Parenthood, the character of Haddie was talking with her boyfriend, Alex, who is nineteen, about going to her junior prom. He didn't look thrilled with the idea. Now, since this exchange occurred within the first five or so minutes of the episode, I immediately clenched, but rather than waste an hour dragging out this fairly stupid problem, they dealt with it right then and there. Rather than have Alex dig in his heels about how stupid he thinks prom is and how he really, really doesn't want to go, he expresses the point once, and upon Haddie explaining how much she's looking forward to it, decides that a few hours of bad punch and overplayed music, while not his first choice for a Saturday night, is hardly worth taking a stand against.

This frees us up for the actual plot, Haddie's parents worrying about her possibly having sex on prom night, especially given how much older Alex is. Double-interesting because Haddie is a level-headed girl who's not the type to be talked into anything she doesn't want to do, and her parents genuinely like Alex. This now creates two legitimate conflicts, Haddie's parents dealing with the possibility of her becoming sexually active and, what for me is the far more interesting and on-theme dilemma, her mother trying to figure out how to deal with this situation and how to be a good parent without her daughter hating her, resenting her, or otherwise finding her lame... if that's even possible.

Mmm... that was tasty. False conflict, not so much.

So, to all my fellow writers out there, a word of advice and caution. Sometimes our characters are petty people who make petty choices. Sometimes the stay of execution arrives too late. Sometimes Romeo drinks the poison. Sometimes people don't articulate everything as well as they probably could, and it creates a huge clusterfuck of fail. That's life. But life is not fiction, so be careful how you pick and choose when to use false conflict, because, sure, you might keep your story going. People might stick with it to see how it ends, but they'll probably be so pissed off at either you or the characters, that they won't be coming back for the next one.

Do us all a favor. Don't be a lazy fuck. Real conflict. Write it.

The Unconventional Wisdom: Welcome to my blog

My name is Michael Salvatore Mammano. I am a writer. I've been published... sort of... but mostly I've been hungry and poor... and often without heat in whatever apartment I'm living in. This blog is not about literary success. That's something I'm still working on. It's not about the result; it's about the process.

Now, everyone's process is different. What's true for me won't work for some people, and that's fine. My personal motto is "whatever gets you there," and indeed, while my opinions tend to be very strong, they are just that: opinions. I would urge anyone reading this not to dismiss anything they might find of value just because we disagree on other points. Take what you need. Leave the rest.

 While this blog was largely created to create a professional identity separate from my personal life, there are some things about me that I will put out there, as they inform who I am, what I write, and how I write. So, here are a few things you might want to know before we get this party started.

I am fascinated by adolescence. Always have been, always will be. For no other period of your life do you get a free pass for how you dressed, what you said, or how you behaved. There's also no other period where every detail, every action, no matter how insignificant, has weight. Everything is epic. Everything matters. Drama isn't something teens create. It's something they can't escape. Adolescence is also a time when everything exists in absolute terms. Moral ambiguity is an adult construct, one we need to develop in order to cope with the realities of life. Teenagers don't have that problem, and so it creates an atmosphere of heightened tension, temptation, and consequences. For these and many other reasons, I love to write about teenagers, and in fact, about 80% of my work is about them. For this reason, much of my work could be classified as Young Adult Fiction, and I have no problem with that designation, but given my tone and content, I think it would probably be more accurate to say I write adult stories about teenagers. It's a subtle distinction, but nonetheless significant.

My work tends to be rather homo-inclusive. As a gay man, in my world view, there's always at least one gay person in the picture. It doesn't mean I'm going to shoehorn a gay character into a work just to have one there, but then again, to me, having gay characters around is just as organic as having straight characters. I have little interest in telling stories where gay people have no place or relevance. There are already enough of those out there. That being said, unless a story is about a group of gay characters (and I have more than one), the cast will be fairly straight-heavy, as the human population, well... is.

On the matter of diversity in general, I tend toward it. If I can diversify by changing a character's race, gender, religion, or sexual orientation, I'll do it so long as that new background doesn't derail the character in any kind of fundamental way. I mean, I'm not going to make a Klansman Asian, even though that would be really funny. I'm not about tokenism and I have no desire to create a Benetton ad, but there are enough straight male WASPs in fiction. It couldn't hurt to trade out a few here and there for a little variety.

I love red hair. Love it. I guarantee you will find at least one character in any work of mine -- could be a guy, could be a girl, could be a major role, could be a cameo -- sporting the ginger. It's my own way of signing my work. Think of it as the Where's Waldo? of my writing.

I think epic. I once had an idea for a short story. It is now a planned pentalogy of novels. I shudder to think at what would be involved in the realization of an idea that had been planned as an epic from day one. So, when I'm discussing an idea for one of the TV shows I've come up with and I'm talking about something that happens in Season 5, rest assured that I'm actually thinking that far ahead. I don't know how not to.

Lastly, I'd like to talk a bit about a term you will hear me use with a fair degree of frequency. That term is "the conventional wisdom." For those who don't know, the conventional wisdom is, for the most part, opinions that have been put forth and generally accepted as truths on the merit of their popularity. Popularity has never been a yardstick by which I've measured my beliefs and/or actions. Never will be. As such, there will be times when I challenge the conventional wisdom. I think you'll enjoy them.

That about does it. And now, on to the blog!