HB Oh…

James Petty

It is no secret that sex and violence are entertaining. They have occupied imaginary and visive spaces in human cultures for ages; violence and sex have been occurring (as spectacle) for a long time. However, our capacity to be exposed to sex and violence has increased exponentially at several relatively recent historic intervals: the invention of the printing press, the invention of cinema and television, of the Internet, and perhaps most critically, at the birth of the Home Box Office (HBO).

I’m not sure if it was The Sopranos that first brought gritty, realistic (and arguably problematised) sex and violence into the domestic viewing sphere but it was certainly my first exposure to it. I must have been fifteen (I was a squeamish teen) and I remember sitting down to watch TV late one evening. I saw that The Sopranos was on and had a vague notion that it had something to do with gangsters.

I came into the episode about half way through and suddenly, before I could get a sense of what the show was like and what it was about, I was watching a character named Ralph verbally abusing a young exotic dancer before violently beating and stomping her to death in an alleyway behind a strip club. I hastily turned the television off, discomfited, somewhat traumatised and absolutely sure that the show was not something I was interested in watching.

When I was a bit older a friend recommended I watch the show, I explained my reluctance and she said I should give it another chance, ‘there’s more to it than that’. And I guess she was right, I have since watched the series again and enjoyed it thoroughly for its complex character development, (somewhat accurate) insight into the awful worlds that men create and for the engaging and dramatic storytelling. However, that scene was my first exposure to American cable television network HBO and the ‘realistic’ sexualised violence it offers, and I won’t forget its initial effect on me.

Since then, this kind of gratuitous and uncompromising sex and violence—which are rarely separated from one another i.e. arguably there are few non-violent depictions of sex and non-sexual depictions of violence in HBO shows—has become the core ingredient of HBO’s recipe for success. In fact it could be argued that HBO are no longer even in the business of making television drama series. What HBO is selling is gratuitous sex and violence (no longer problematised or reflexive); the shows are just a vehicle for the real product. Unconvinced? Watch True Blood.

HBO didn’t even bother disguising this; True Blood‘s advertising was essentially “Sex and Violence by Alan Ball”. The presence of this kind of sex and violence has, for many reasons beyond HBO’s influence, become the marker of quality viewing, it is the assurance that what you are about to watch is worth your time. The most recent example of this is the series Game of Thrones, based on the books by George R. R. Martin, which are admittedly extremely violent, often in a sexual way

But something changes in the transition from words to filmic images. In the books the violence is horrifying—thought I won’t deny it is often satisfying as well. However, I think the violence in the books highlights the way that women and children (and the poor) are so often forced to bear the consequences of the choices men in power make.

In contrast, the television show revels in the violence it depicts and encourages the audience to do so as well—my housemates and I all had a hearty chuckle when Sandor Clegane threatened to rape the corpse of any man who died with a clean sword. But the scene where King Joffrey forces a prostitute to beat another to death at crossbow point (which isn’t in the books) served little purpose other than indulging the audience in showing off just how cruel and depraved he can be or what they can get away with given the show’s fantastical social context.

The often sexualised violence that was undoubtedly entertaining, yet confronting, unflinching and arguably ‘honest’ in earlier series like the The Sopranos seems to have become indulgent, gratuitous and commodified in series’ like True Blood and Game of Thrones. What once felt daring, non-patronising and (at least somewhat) ideological now feels immature and gauche, like a couple of kids seeing just how far they can take a joke, not realising that a restrained hand often makes for better humour.