Wednesday, 13 June 2012

What did W. ever do to Joffrey?

Apparently something:

As you well know, I'm opposed to violent rhetoric on principle and should be offended, but honestly? A second-long Easter egg that no one notices until the producers point it out in the DVD commentary doesn't really qualify as a pointed rhetorical statement. Not that it won't be spun into one as soon as someone emails that link to Jonah Goldberg or Jeff Goldstein—both of whom will point out that it'd be considered both violent and racist if it were Obama's head—but it's still an Easter egg, which by definition limits its appeal to the Bush-hating, Martin-loving, DVD-commentary-watching crowd, which likely numbers in the tens.

That said, I don't buy the producers' claim that it wasn't "a choice [or] a political statement. We just had to use whatever head we had around." The scenes in King's Landing were filmed in Malta, so I find it difficult to believe they happened to have a plastic replica of W.'s head just lying around. Unless there's a booming Maltese trade in eerily life-like effigies of which I'm unaware, that Easter egg was planted there purposely.

Rhetoric aside, there's all sorts of fun to be had with this, including (but not limited to) questions such as "What's the sigil of House Bush?" I contend it'd be this:

A root-rotten shrub surrounded by all the weapons of mass destruction W. found in Iraq. Feel free to offer your own suggestions in the comments.

Jun 13, 2012 4:18:39 PM | Game of Thrones, Politics, Visual Rhetoric

1 Comment

Kav

Not sure I'd take the 'lying around' to mean literally lying around in Malta. I suspect they meant that when stockpiling props they would need it was just one of many and wasn't (necessarily) picked out on purpose. Though I'd put money on one of the prop hands doing it on purpose even if the director/producers were not aware.

Posted by: Kav | Wednesday, 20 June 2012 at 04:25 AM

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One year later, it's still the greatest novel in the English language. At 8 a.m. on the morning of 16 June 1904, two men woke up. One shaved for class and breakfasted with his usurper and an anti-Semite. The other, a Jew, purchased a pork kidney, ate it, then stared at his wife in the same bed in which she cuckolded him. He left to pick up a letter from his secret sweetheart and chatted with the people he met on his way to the baths. Once clean, he attended a funeral and saw a mysterious man. After the funeral, he tried to place an advertisement in a local newspaper but decided more research was required, so he scooted off to the library where, unbeknown to him, the first of our two men was disquisiting on Shakespeare. Many people walked around, including our Jew, who decided to follow his morning kidney with an afternoon liver. He ogled the barmaids and thought about his wife who, if his suspicions were correct, would soon be cuckholding him again. So he exited the bar with the pretty reminders of his pain and entered another full of anti-Semites. Fists and cans were thrown. Troubled by thoughts of wife and ancient grievances, he wandered seaside way and publicly co-masturbated with a cripple. He later attended the birth of a child and the English language before following our first man into the red-light district. He caught up with him, himself, himself-in-drag, his dead grandfather, Nobodaddy, a giant green crab, a talking hat-stand and ducked out when the police arrived. Chastened, the two men entered a dive and met a drunken sailor. They absconded to the home of the Jew and bonded while urinating under the stars. As 16 June 1904 came to a close, the Jew returned to his troubled marital bed and asked his wife to serve him breakfast in it tomorrow. She considered his request but never decided one way or the other. (Happy Bloomsday, sorry about the spoilers, and I'll return to my regularly scheduled posting about popular culture shortly.)

Scott Eric Kaufman

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