The Minds Behind Vikings, Masters of Sex Take Issue With “Soft Porn” Game of Thrones
Winter Is Coming
You know we love Game of Thrones around these parts, but its attitude toward sex is something we’re not so enamored with—whether it’s its nudity imbalance or its tendency toward the male gaze and sexualized violence towards women, the latter often manifesting in incidents that weren’t in the books. The giggity-giggity of Game of Thrones has some other skeptics, too: The stars of Showtime’s Masters of Sex and the showrunner of the History Channel’s Vikings separately spoke about the show’s famous sexposition in a less-than-glowing manner.
First up let’s hear from Vikings creator Michael Hirst. Asked about similarities between his show and Game of Thrones, he said in an interview with TIME that “Game of Thrones is a very, very different show. It is a fantasy show, and it has a lot of things which are very appealing to an audience. It is soft porn, and it has a lot of gratuitous stuff in it, but it’s still very well-written and I don’t — you know, I don’t watch it because I don’t ever want to be accused of being influenced by it.”
Very diplomatic. And accurate—there is a lot sex in Game of Thrones that has nothing to do with the plot, if things aren’t quite to the level of the infamously bow-chicka-bow-wow heavy True Blood. And hey, nothing wrong with sex in a show. It’s all in how you handle it.
That’s the criticism Masters of Sex co-star Lizzy Caplan had. “Our show is about sex and intimacy, whereas other shows are about other things, maybe dragons,” she said at a TV Academy panel. “No disrespect at all, but it does feel at times that it’s like, time out dragons, let’s watch these people get it on with each other.”
Via The Huffington Post:
Caplan noted that while there’s plenty of sex on her show, it always serves the story and it never degrades women. “Our show is led by women, so they understand,” Caplan said referring to executive producers Michelle Ashford and Sarah Timberland.
Man, do I need to start watching Masters of Sex now?
(via: The Huffington Post, The Huffington Post)
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