Game of Thrones, reflects the corruption of humanity
The HBO series Game of Thrones, which begins its 5th season in three weeks, is successful for one main reason. It appeals to the deepest and darkest nature of humanity that lurks in all of us. Kings and concubines, sons and daughters, and rogues take the lives of others in a treacherous game of life.
By Ray Hanania
Fire and Blood (Game of Thrones) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I never watched HBO series Game of Thrones from the beginning when the first episode aired on my birthday on April 17, 2011 because I thought the concept of knights and ancient swordsmen slaughtering each other was going to be a compelling series to enjoy.
Instead, in early 2014, I binge-watched three past seasons of 30 episodes (10 episodes per season) because a friend told me there was a lot of explicit sexual scenes with some very good looking women.
And why wouldn’t anyone want to watch that?
But I got hooked. Late. And followed season four religiously every week gullibly believing that there was something entertaining about watching treachery at its worst.
To be honest, there has been less and less explicit sex in each subsequent episode. As the season progressed, the producers decided to tame the sexual draw and enjoyed their celebrity. Game of Thrones is immensely popular today and the 5th season is expected to attract record audiences.
Peter Dinklage (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Yet, what is Game of Thrones really about?
This isn’t really a spoiler. For those who haven’t watched Game of Thrones, chances are they won’t bing watched 40 hours just to ready themselves for the new season which starts this April. Yet there is a fundamental truth about Game of Thrones.
The whole problem is about a secret. The King’s wife is having an affair with her twin brother. The king’s children are actually the children of this incest. And as the incest becomes known, the siblings conspire to kill everyone. It helps that their father is the richest man in the Seven Kingdoms, although that doesn’t save him from his ironic and welcoming fate.
The incest twins have one other brother, who really is the big star of the show. Tyrion Lannister, played by Peter Dinklage, who happens to be a dwarf, or more PC a little person. But he is a huge star in this series. He’s probably the only real hope out of everyone in the show, which tells you that in our world, the truth is the best people are the ones you least expect to be good.
Everyone else in the show is either evil to the core, or are somewhat good but end up dead pretty quick. The first seasons sets it all up and the second seasons starts with a shocker, brutality that is unprecedented on television.
Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner HBO’s “Game Of Thrones” Season 3 Seattle Premiere After Party at EMP by spratt504 on 2013-03-21 20:29:56
While Tyrion is really a hero in this dark series, I’d hate to have the name Lannister because it clearly comes to represent all that is evil int he world. His sister, Cersei (played by Lena Heady), and his brother, Jaime (played by Nikolai Coster-Waldau) are truly evil, although Jaime has a soft side, chopped off with one of his hands. Their father, Tywin (played by Charles Dance) is shockingly murdered late in the season just as he is comfortably enjoying his conquest over their rivals the Starks.
Yes, it’s a medieval soap opera, for sure. Filled with blood, guts and some truly gruesome scenes, including the torture of one of the Stark’s adopted sons who really belongs to another royal family that claims the throne.
There is some satisfaction, but honestly, it only comes when the villains are murdered or tortured and killed. So far, there hans’t been any satisfaction from humanity and hope. It just doesn’t exist in the series.
_cover.jpg "Game of Thrones (soundtrack)")
Game of Thrones (soundtrack) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There are also a few dragons, a brief sidebar to the series’ powerful personality of Daenerys Targaryen (played by Emilia Clarke). She’s the series’ the most beautiful women who strips naked and has sex on your TV screens many times, including with a barbarian. And she reigns over the killing of her megalomaniac brother, Viserys Targaryen (played by Harry Lloyd). Viserys is only in six episodes but he goes out in a golden shower, literally, when his sister’s barbarian husbands melts gold in a large pot and then pours the molten liquified gold on top of his skull.
I don’t think I have ever seen anyone killed in a TV series in that manner before. It’s one for the record books.
With so much carnage and killing, you can’t hang your hat on many favorite characters in the series. They get knocked off quickly. Only a few survive through the 40 episodes of the first four seasons.
The series is complicated, mainly because only a few of the names are easily remembered. It took me binge watching the entire series twice, including Season 4, just to figure out the incestual relationships between everyone.
Still, I recommended watching the entire series, not just because of the sex. It has a lot of climactic surprises, things you wouldn’t expect to happen but do. Usually shockingly. And I assume, Season 5 won’t be much different.
Blogger, Columnist at Illinois News Network Online
Ray Hanania is senior blogger for the Illinois News Network news site. He is an award winning former Chicago City Hall political reporter and columnist who covered the beat from 1976 through 1992 (From Mayor Daley to Mayor Daley). And, Hanania is a stubborn and loud critic of the biased mainstream American news media.
Hanania Chicago political beats and Chicago City Hall at the Daily Southtown Newspapers (1976-1985) and the Chicago Sun-Times (1985-1992). He published the The Villager Community Newspapers covering 12 Southwest suburban regions (1993-1997). Hanania also hosted live political news radio talkshows on WLS AM (1980 - 1991), and also on WBBM FM, WLUP FM, WSBC AM in Chicago, and WNZK AM in Detroit.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media;In 2009, he received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. Hanania has also received two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild, and in 1990 was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
Hanania’s writings have been published in newspapers around the world. He currently is syndicated through Creators Syndicate. He has written for the Jerusalem Post, YNetNews.com, Newsday in New York, the Orlando Sentinel, the Houston Chronicle, The Daily Star of Lebanon, the News of the World in London, the Daily Yomimuri in Tokyo, Chicago Magazine, the Arlington Heights Daily Herald, The Saudi Gazette, the Arab News in Jeddah, and Aramco Magazine.
Hanania's Chicagoland columns are published in the Southwest News-Herald, the Des Plaines Valley News, the Regional News and the Palos Reporter newspapers.
He is President/CEO of Urban Strategies Group media and public affairs consulting which has clients in Illinois, Florida, Michigan and Washington D.C.
His personal website is www.TheMediaOasis.com. Email him at:
[email protected].
Latest posts by Ray Hanania (see all)
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Game of Thrones, reflects the corruption of humanity
The HBO series Game of Thrones, which begins its 5th season in three weeks, is successful for one main reason. It appeals to the deepest and darkest nature of humanity that lurks in all of us. Kings and concubines, sons and daughters, and rogues take the lives of others in a treacherous game of life.
By Ray Hanania
Fire and Blood (Game of Thrones) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
I never watched HBO series Game of Thrones from the beginning when the first episode aired on my birthday on April 17, 2011 because I thought the concept of knights and ancient swordsmen slaughtering each other was going to be a compelling series to enjoy.
Instead, in early 2014, I binge-watched three past seasons of 30 episodes (10 episodes per season) because a friend told me there was a lot of explicit sexual scenes with some very good looking women.
And why wouldn’t anyone want to watch that?
But I got hooked. Late. And followed season four religiously every week gullibly believing that there was something entertaining about watching treachery at its worst.
To be honest, there has been less and less explicit sex in each subsequent episode. As the season progressed, the producers decided to tame the sexual draw and enjoyed their celebrity. Game of Thrones is immensely popular today and the 5th season is expected to attract record audiences.
Peter Dinklage (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Yet, what is Game of Thrones really about?
This isn’t really a spoiler. For those who haven’t watched Game of Thrones, chances are they won’t bing watched 40 hours just to ready themselves for the new season which starts this April. Yet there is a fundamental truth about Game of Thrones.
The whole problem is about a secret. The King’s wife is having an affair with her twin brother. The king’s children are actually the children of this incest. And as the incest becomes known, the siblings conspire to kill everyone. It helps that their father is the richest man in the Seven Kingdoms, although that doesn’t save him from his ironic and welcoming fate.
The incest twins have one other brother, who really is the big star of the show. Tyrion Lannister, played by Peter Dinklage, who happens to be a dwarf, or more PC a little person. But he is a huge star in this series. He’s probably the only real hope out of everyone in the show, which tells you that in our world, the truth is the best people are the ones you least expect to be good.
Everyone else in the show is either evil to the core, or are somewhat good but end up dead pretty quick. The first seasons sets it all up and the second seasons starts with a shocker, brutality that is unprecedented on television.
Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner HBO’s “Game Of Thrones” Season 3 Seattle Premiere After Party at EMP by spratt504 on 2013-03-21 20:29:56
While Tyrion is really a hero in this dark series, I’d hate to have the name Lannister because it clearly comes to represent all that is evil int he world. His sister, Cersei (played by Lena Heady), and his brother, Jaime (played by Nikolai Coster-Waldau) are truly evil, although Jaime has a soft side, chopped off with one of his hands. Their father, Tywin (played by Charles Dance) is shockingly murdered late in the season just as he is comfortably enjoying his conquest over their rivals the Starks.
Yes, it’s a medieval soap opera, for sure. Filled with blood, guts and some truly gruesome scenes, including the torture of one of the Stark’s adopted sons who really belongs to another royal family that claims the throne.
There is some satisfaction, but honestly, it only comes when the villains are murdered or tortured and killed. So far, there hans’t been any satisfaction from humanity and hope. It just doesn’t exist in the series.
Game of Thrones (soundtrack) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
There are also a few dragons, a brief sidebar to the series’ powerful personality of Daenerys Targaryen (played by Emilia Clarke). She’s the series’ the most beautiful women who strips naked and has sex on your TV screens many times, including with a barbarian. And she reigns over the killing of her megalomaniac brother, Viserys Targaryen (played by Harry Lloyd). Viserys is only in six episodes but he goes out in a golden shower, literally, when his sister’s barbarian husbands melts gold in a large pot and then pours the molten liquified gold on top of his skull.
I don’t think I have ever seen anyone killed in a TV series in that manner before. It’s one for the record books.
With so much carnage and killing, you can’t hang your hat on many favorite characters in the series. They get knocked off quickly. Only a few survive through the 40 episodes of the first four seasons.
The series is complicated, mainly because only a few of the names are easily remembered. It took me binge watching the entire series twice, including Season 4, just to figure out the incestual relationships between everyone.
Still, I recommended watching the entire series, not just because of the sex. It has a lot of climactic surprises, things you wouldn’t expect to happen but do. Usually shockingly. And I assume, Season 5 won’t be much different.
Ray Hanania
Hanania Chicago political beats and Chicago City Hall at the Daily Southtown Newspapers (1976-1985) and the Chicago Sun-Times (1985-1992). He published the The Villager Community Newspapers covering 12 Southwest suburban regions (1993-1997). Hanania also hosted live political news radio talkshows on WLS AM (1980 - 1991), and also on WBBM FM, WLUP FM, WSBC AM in Chicago, and WNZK AM in Detroit.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media;In 2009, he received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. Hanania has also received two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild, and in 1990 was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
Hanania’s writings have been published in newspapers around the world. He currently is syndicated through Creators Syndicate. He has written for the Jerusalem Post, YNetNews.com, Newsday in New York, the Orlando Sentinel, the Houston Chronicle, The Daily Star of Lebanon, the News of the World in London, the Daily Yomimuri in Tokyo, Chicago Magazine, the Arlington Heights Daily Herald, The Saudi Gazette, the Arab News in Jeddah, and Aramco Magazine.
Hanania's Chicagoland columns are published in the Southwest News-Herald, the Des Plaines Valley News, the Regional News and the Palos Reporter newspapers.
He is President/CEO of Urban Strategies Group media and public affairs consulting which has clients in Illinois, Florida, Michigan and Washington D.C.
His personal website is www.TheMediaOasis.com. Email him at: [email protected].
Latest posts by Ray Hanania (see all)
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