Its not just the White Walkers who lurk unseen beyond Game of Thrones Wall its fictional serial killer Patrick Bateman.
Shades of American Psycho both Bret Easton Elliss brutal horror-satire novel and Mary Harrons fine feminist film adaptation have been subtle parts of the shows palette for some time. Take Littlefingers infamous lesbian love-coaching scene from Season One, for example: just a camcorder and a full-length mirror. (Play with her arse is the new Sabrina, dont just stare at it, eat it.) In this season weve seen Littlefinger quietly coerce Ros back into service with veiled threats about recouping his investment, echoing Batemans coaxing of a sad-eyed streetwalker hed previously abused back to his place with the almighty dollar.
But if Game of Thrones had only exchanged business cards with American Psycho in the past, in last nights Garden of Bones, written by Vanessa Taylor and directed by David Petrarca, the show strapped on its see-through raincoat, grabbed the nearest ax, and just kept chopping. By the end, nearly all our remaining delusions about the system of kings, lords, knights, and honor that bind the shows fictional society are left in tiny, bloody pieces on the floor. And as in American Psycho, torture and sexual violence reveal the cruelty and rot beneath societys golden surface.
Ironically, Littlefinger himself comes across as slightly more human in this episode than normal, almost to a fault at least until he seamlessly segues from proclaiming his undying love for Catelyn Stark to lying to her face about the status of her daughter Arya. But Lord Baelish must now bow to King Joffrey as the shows most Batemanesque figure. Raised in a system specifically designed to help people like him thrive, Joffrey nevertheless cant feel happiness unless hes using the power that system has given him to inflict suffering on others, and here we see just how far gone hes become. Having Ser Meryn beat and strip Sansa Stark a highborn lady, a valuable hostage, a child, and his fiance all at once in front of the entire court is both a horrible crime against Sansa and a grievous error in the game of thrones. As his uncle Tyrion, points out, Westeros has had a Mad King before, and things didnt end well for him.
So Joffrey turns his sexualized fury against people for whom society offers no protection: whores. Borrowing a technique from Harron, who had to figure out a way to bring Elliss unfilmably violent book to the screen, Taylor and Petrarca use the power of suggestion dear god what does he want her to do with that things antlers and leave the full magnitude of Joffreys depravity to the imagination of the viewers.
What makes these scenes even more dehumanizing for the women involved is that theyre not even Joffreys real targets. Sansa is beaten and humiliated, Ros and Daisy raped and tortured, to send a message to other people specifically other men, Tyrion and Robb Stark. Theyre not the subjects of the cruelty, theyre just objects, means to an end.
Thats the way it is with torture, as we see again the new Lannister field HQ at the immense ruined castle of Harrenhal. (Quick aside: You wanna convey the potential power of Daeneryss dragons? Show the ruins of the single biggest building weve seen yet, then tell us dragonfires what ruined it. Well played, Game of Thrones.) The Lannister goons rat-based method of choice is another AP nod, I think: The scene in question didnt make it into the movie for obvious reasons, but suffice it to say it involves a habitrail and its one of only three times* Ive had to actually put down a book in horror.
But its also a callback to the rat-in-a-cage sequence from George Orwells dystopian masterpiece 1984, and thats the key comparison. As with poor Winston Smith, most of the hapless peasants and Nights Watch refugees tortured to death by the Mountain and his men have no clue about anything their chillingly blas torturers are asking them about. Hell, even the ones who do are tortured to death anyway. Arya, Gendry, poor pants-pissing Hot Pie and the rest of the captives have no power over their lives, no agency at all, not even by meekly submitting and answering what theyve been asked.
Dont think the Norths necessarily nobler, however. A naked man has few secrets, a flayed man none, says the sinister and soft-spoken Lord Roose Bolton to his commander King Robb, gently suggesting that they skin a few Lannister prisoners. Small wonder Robbs so intrigued by Alyssa, the gutsy nurse he bumps into on the battlefield. By healing rather than killing, and by challenging Robb on the cruelty of war, shes doing and saying things this very young warlord desperately still needs to believe in, even though saying so to a man like Bolton carries a political risk.
Halfway around the world, Daenerys and her khalasar are at the mercy of others, too, but here it feels fanciful and fun rather than frightening. The Thirteen rule the heavily fortified desert oasis of Qarth, and they look and sound like staff members at a Tarsem Singh theme park. Danys arrival at their city diverges from the book in virtually every way, but those differences make for good TV. The stakes are higher, for one thing: Dany and company will die if the Thirteen shut them out, while Xara Xhoan Doxos, the merchant prince who vouches for them, will die if they screw up once they get in.
More importantly, the Qarth scene injects a welcome, weird dose of Eighties arch-fantasy your Legends and Labyrinths and what have you into a show thats been working its like the stuff in The Two Towers where the orcs burn villages, only with fewer orcs and more gushing throat injuries sweet spot for fourteen episodes and counting. Quite simply, the Thirteen are a blast to watch, whatever changes the show had to make to author George R.R. Martins meticulous worldbuilding to get them there.
Which brings us to Garden of Bones single most stunning rupture of the rules that hold the Seven Kingdoms and this story together: Melisandres shadow baby. What seemed at first like another welcome showcase of actor Liam Cunninghams lively interpretation of Ser Davos Seaworth (something of a dud in the books) takes a turn for the WTF as Melisandre drops trou and gives birth in writhing ecstasy to a swirling, screaming shadow demon. Its balls-to-the-wall television, disturbing and transgressive and highly eroticized and highly fantasy, a dark mirror image of Dany and her dragons at the end of Season One. And it marks the arrival of real, hardcore magic not just big animals and big walls and a zombie or two, but something Sauron himself would be proud of in this realistic world. The fact that this magic isnt glorious but repulsive says a great deal: Joffrey isnt the only king capable of things that simply should not be.
* Clive Barkers Jacqueline Ess: Her Will and Testament and Paolo Baciagalupis The People of Sand and Slag. Have fun!
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