Lieutenant General David Morrison, the retired Chief of the Australian Army who made waves a couple years back when he spoke out against sexism in his nation’s military, is taking aim at a new target: the violence and nudity on Game of Thrones Season 5.
The general went off-script when answering questions at a recent event. “I wasn’t going to use this example, but to hell with it, I am sure everyone will keep my confidence,” he said. “I don’t get Games of Thrones. I get violence, how can I not as a general?”
"“I’m not a prude at all, the use of nudity and the depiction of the human body is absolutely a part of art and has been since the very earliest days. But look, I will tell you now, I was watching part of the fifth series of Game of Thrones, and I was at this late and I am being very honest with you. It is just now the glorification of violence for violence’s sake, and the use of nudity in Game of Thrones is now, I think, pornographic.”"
Game of Thrones has been criticized for its violence and gratuitous use of nudity before, but rarely by someone with Morrison’s reputation for fair-mindedness—elsewhere in his remarks, he called for women, people of color, and people of non-heterosexual orientation to be included in the narratives that define the Australian army.
Whenever this issue comes up, and it does come up fairly regularly, I can usually see the point of whoever’s making the complaint. Some of the violence on Game of Thrones does go beyond what’s necessary to make the show’s point. For example, as involved as I was with the scene, Arya’s brutal killing of Meryn Trant in “Mother’s Mercy” was overly stylized, with too much emphasis on what a badass Arya was for the true horror of what she was doing to come across (it didn’t help that the show went out of its way right beforehand to make Meryn Trant extra-loathsome, either).
And yet, in that same episode, Stannis’ off-screen death is handled very tastefully. It’s hard to predict when the producers will go all in with the violence.
As for nudity, I actually think the show has been more tasteful lately. For example, Cersei’s walk of shame scene made prominent use of nudity, but it wasn’t gratuitous. The producers weren’t parading a naked female body in front of viewers to titillate them—Cersei’s nudity highlighted her vulnerability, and helped us understand her breakdown. It’s been a while since we’ve had a scene that was obviously constructed as an excuse to show some skin, like Littlefinger’s infamous “sexposition” scene from “You Win or You Die” or the scene where Podrick visits the brothel in “Walk of Punishment.”
And yet, we still had the scene in “The Gift” where Tyene flashes her breasts at Bronn in the cells beneath the Water Gardens, so the gratuity isn’t gone.* As Game of Thrones becomes more and more successful, logic dictates that it’ll be less beholden to HBO executives who push the gratuitous nudity angle, so hopefully we’ll see the show continue to tone it down in Season 6. General Morrison isn’t the arbiter of what’s appropriate, and the show will never be able to please anyone, but there are steps that could be taken.
*I suppose you could argue that Tyene’s nudity was justified by the fact that it had a role in triggering Bronn’s poisoning, which set up Myrcella’s death in the finale, but that’s a stretch. Myrcella didn’t need to be flashed for the poison to work.
Next: George R.R. Martin on how he comes up with character names