VIOLANCE 10/10 There are just two warnings that one needs to heed when watching Game of Thrones. One, don’t have dinner/ lunch/ breakfast when the show is on. Two, make sure you don’t have your parents around. The deaths are gruesome and the sex is graphic. There is a third warning, which if you don’t heed will result in retribution, GoT style: add spoiler warnings before you let plot points spill.

Death in Game of Thrones comes in various forms — stabbing, beheading, burning, having molten metal poured over one’s head, throat slitting, poisoning and more. We could have chosen the top 10 important deaths or the 10 most horrific deaths but there is more to the violence in GoT than deaths, though there is enough of just that. So, as a glimpse into why GoT scores 10 out of 10 on the violence count we bring you some of the most gruesome scenes from the four seasons of the show, in no particular order.

The death of Viserys Targaryen:

The snivelling brother of fan-favourite Daenerys, who sold her to Khal Drogo for assistance in his quest for the Iron Throne, definitely got a crown, only not in the manner he had expected. After he insulted his sister and threatened to kill her and her unborn child, her husband the mighty Khal had molten gold poured on his head. Ouch!

The Red Wedding:

The most infamous scene from the series is not just part of the list because of the number of people who died or how they died but the importance of the characters who died. The body count included ruler of the North Robb Stark, his wife Talisa and their unborn child, his direwolf Grey Wind and his mother Catelyn Stark. The first was shot with arrows, stabbed and then later beheaded; the second had a sword run right through the womb, several times; the direwolf was beheaded; Lady Stark had her throat slit. It did not stop with that. The wolf’s head was then stitched on to Robb’s neck and paraded!

The death of Jory Cassel:

Like most of the violence in GoT this one is gory and brutal but quick, and therefore, even more shocking. Eddard (Ned) Stark and Jaime Lannister clash over the arrest of Tyrion Lannister while Stark is exiting the brothel of Petyr Baelish with the leader of the Stark guardsmen Jory Cassel. Jaime orders Ned’s men killed. Jory, after bringing down some Lannister men, engages with Jaime, who traps Jory’s sword and buries a knife, to the hilt, in his left eye!

Torture at Harrenhal:

In the second season, Arya Stark, Gendry and Hot Pie are taken as prisoners to Harrenhal, one of the largest castles in Westeros, where they witness people being tortured by Lannister men. One of them was tortured to (assumed) death by a rat! Yes, a rat was put inside a bucket and tied to the man’s stomach. The bucket was then heated with fire so that the rat tried to escape through the body of the victim, eating its way out. Aaaaargh!

Rodrik Cassel’s death at Winterfell:

When Theon Greyjoy, once a ward of the Starks, attacks Winterfell he decides to behead Ser Rodrik Cassel for ‘disrespecting’ him. The result is a very gruesome death with Theon having to hack thrice at Rodrik’s neck to separate the head from the body and then he kicks it to make the head roll.

Ned Stark’s beheading:

Ned Stark’s beheading was one of the biggest shocks for all those who have not read the book. He was everyone’s favourite, the noble one who got unjustly implicated and beheaded. It is one of the game-changing deaths in the GoT world and the first one of real import. And you don’t like the sight of his head getting separated from his neck. What was even more gruesome was when Joffrey Baratheon forced Ned’s daughter Sansa to look at her father’s severed head stuck on a spike for an interminably long time.

Oberyn Martell’s death:

Episode eight of the fourth season of GoT dealt two blows. One was the death sentence of Tyrion Lannister, but since this is Tyrion we are hoping that he will have a way of getting out of it. The second was the reason for the death sentence. The defeat of Tyrion’s champion for the trial by combat, Oberyn Martell, at the hands of ‘The Mountain That Rides’ Gregor Clegane. It is one of the most gruesome deaths in the series. Oberyn had his eyes gouged out and his head crushed by the bare hands of The Mountain. There is a popping sound, a fountain of blood and then you see Oberyn lying in a pool of blood, his head in bits. A scene that one will have to work very hard to forget.

The death of Ros:

Everyone took to the red-headed prostitute who turned out to be an informant for Varys, the spymaster, but Petyr ratted her out to Joffrey. Joffrey then proceeded to use her as target practice. She was strung up and Joffrey shot her in the breasts and pelvis with arrows from his crossbow.

Khal Drogo’s fight with Mago:

When Mago, one of the Dothrakis, insults the Khal for listening to Daenerys it leads to a fight. The dialogues, where the Khal proceeds to list all the terrible things that would happen to Mago’s body, were graphic enough, but then the Khal went on to slit his throat and pull his tongue out from that slit and throw it on to a pile of some other human body parts. Eeewwww!

One man torn apart and one disembowelled:

During the Riot of King’s Landing, the High Septon of King’s Landing is attacked by a hungry mob. You can hear his scream and ripping sounds and then you see a skinny man holding aloft an arm and waving it around gleefully. As if that wasn’t enough, The Hound, Sandor Clegane, goes to the rescue of Sansa who is about to be raped by a group of people and ends up brutally killing the assailants, one of whose spilling intestines is very visible.

Arya Stark’s first kill:

A 13-year-old girl reciting a kill list every night before sleep is disturbing enough but when she makes her first kill, no matter how little the death scores on the GoT gore quotient, it is gruesome. Arya makes her first kill at the end of season three when she takes The Hound’s dagger and stabs one of Walter Frey’s soldiers, who was bragging about sewing the direwolf’s head onto her brother Robb’s dead body, again and again.

 

SEX and NUDITY 10/10

HBO is now famous for shows with exceedingly graphic sexual content, from Rome and Spartacus: Blood and Sand to Boardwalk Empire and True Blood. And Game of Thrones is no different. The sexual content in GoT ranges from gratuitous to disturbing covering everything from plain nudity to sexual violence.

Daenerys Targaryen

The nudity

It’s a B to B (breasts to butt) show out there! There is nudity in almost every episode of every season, whether it is of minor characters or the main ones. Many times if a scene is unfolding in a brothel, like when Oberyn Martell and his paramour Ellaria Sand pay a visit to Petyr Baelish, there are a lot of naked women who can be seen in the background. Sometimes it is waist upwards, sometimes full nudity from the back and sometimes full frontal nudity. Some of the characters who’ve stripped on screen include Daenerys Targaryen, shown naked while taking baths, during sex with Khal Drogo and during the hatching of her dragons; Margaery Tyrell when she is trying to seduce Renly Baratheon; Melisandre while she is giving birth to the shadow monster, seducing Gendry, and bathing; Osha when she is trying to seduce Theon Greyjoy so that Bran and Rickon Stark, Hodor and herself can escape Winterfell. Then there is Talisa Stark, Ygritte, Brienne of Tarth and Ros. Some of the men get nude too like Jon Snow, Loras Tyrell, Drogo and Lancel Lannister but while there have been many scenes with full-frontal nudity of women, only Theon and Hodor have been shown in the full monty.
That brings us to the point that disturbs many GoT fans. The eye candy on Game of Thrones is heavily skewed towards female nudity, is exceedingly sexist and often absolutely unnecessary. Even in scenes like the one in which Oberyn, who claims to be bisexual, and his partner Ellaria buy sex at a brothel, it is the female prostitutes who strip and not the male ones. This imbalance in male and female nudity is troublesome especially when GoT has a fanbase that is equally male and female.

Jaime Lannister in an incestuous relationship with twin sister Cersei

The Sex

While a shade less than the nudity, sex plays a major role in every season. It is not just used for pleasure, but also as a tool for power, manipulation, information and revenge. While most of the sex shown on GoT is straight, there have been instances of gay and lesbian sex as well. So, we see Petyr Baelish (Littlefinger) instructing two women in the art of lovemaking and Loras Tyrell having sex with Olyver, who gathers information from Loras and passes it on to Littlefinger. We’ve seen almost all the characters doing it — Robb Stark, Jon Snow, Tyrion Lannister, Jaime Lannister, Cersei Lannister, Daenerys Targaryen, Khal Drogo — on screen.

The disturbing part of the sexual content in GoT is the theme of incest. In the very first episode of the first season, we see twins Cersei and Jaime having sex, which is witnessed by young Bran Stark who is then pushed off the tower by Jaime (violence against children in GoT is a whole different matter), a plotline that is of major prominence for the entire series. In fact, all of Cersei’s children, including Joffrey Baratheon, are from Jaime. We also see Theon Greyjoy sexually touching his sister, but he only realises later that she is his sister. There is a very disturbing sequence where we meet Craster, a Wildling and an ally of the Night’s Watch, who marries his daughters when they are old enough and has more daughters with them. He leaves his newborn sons in the forest for White Walkers. Thankfully he is stabbed with a dagger in his throat that pierces the roof of his mouth!

 

Sansa Stark is almost raped

The sexual violence

There is war in Game of Thrones and there is rape and pillaging, sights that are often horrific. GoT has been pushing the envelope for a long time with sexual violence and it reached a grotesque peak with the third episode of the fourth season where Jaime Lannister rapes his sister Cersei Lannister next to the just-dead body of their son Joffrey Baratheon. Though the directors have denied that it is rape, it was quite apparent to the viewers and it evoked a lot of ire from even hardcore GoT fans.
The latest incidence of rape has also forced people to take a look at the way women are treated in the series, where apart from some characters like Cersei, Daenerys Targaryen, Arya Stark and Brienne of Tarth most women are shown as either powerless or scheming and generally using their bodies to get their way. Even Daenerys’s first time with Khal Drogo was marital rape, because though she did not say no aloud, she was afraid and you could see her weeping as Drogo had sex with her.
There was the almost-rape of Sansa Stark during the Riots of King’s Landing, Ramsay Snow’s victim who was first shot through her calf and then torn apart by his dogs, and the almost-rape of Brienne.

The sadistic scene where Joffrey makes Ros, a prostitute, torture another prostitute for his amusement was another low for the show.
While there are some instances of sexual violence against men as well, the most horrific is the torture of Theon Greyjoy, who is almost raped, then has his penis chopped off.

Yes, GoT often crosses the line — almost always below the belt.

Would you have watched GoT if it had no sex and nudity? Tell t2@abp.in

FANS ON VSN IN GoT

I would still watch the show if all the gore was not there. But I cannot lie. I am a big fan of Tarantino and Guy Ritchie too, and they sure know how to show blood and gore on the big screen. If it’s acceptable there, then why not here? It’s an R-rated show. It’s not for kids. I think there is no reason to fuss about it. It’s a true reflection of society. Past and present. That’s what makes it so real. People watch the show because of the storyline, the spectacular performances, the plot twists. Not just the blood, gore and promiscuity — Meghdut RoyChowdhury, head of operations at BlooperHouse Studios

I think a show like GoT works largely due to the presence of nudity and violence. It’s great that HBO gives space on public television for such an explicit show. I feel the graphic nature of that whole universe demands blood and naked bodies. So I’m all for it. We were all pretty happy when Joffrey choked to death at the Purple Wedding. And death at weddings is something established in season one itself at the Dothraki wedding. The element of buying sex also seems natural. Littlefinger owned a pleasure house. So a pleasure house without nudity doesn’t seem very convincing
— Nischay Parekh, singer-songwriter

Even if I am in my room, I make sure my door is shut when watching GoT and I usually end up watching it at night. The sex scenes are pretty intense, so much so that I have to keep the volume very low. There is always this feeling that my parents will walk in and mistake one of the best shows on TV for some medieval pornography — Debdeep Banerjee, student of St. Xavier’s College