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.