Considering that Gerbner started this “mean world” business back in the 1970s, when violence was spiralling out of control, I’d tend to agree with this. There has always been a “what are you going to believe, your liberal overlords or your lying eyes?” aspect to Gerbner. Just another Commie dupe.

State control of culture in the Obama age is almost unlimited. Government agency, the agency of academia, and the agency of media of all sorts currently combine to reinforce state-approved morality and culture.

The idea of state sanctioned television (and all media and recreation) as a replacement for religion is far more interesting and profound than any particular dark vision — such as Martin’s.

Sometimes particular writers have personal grudges, along with the writing talent to shove them deeply into the public craw.

I thank you for drawing Gerbner to my attention. I had previously known him as a Cultural Marxist. I had suspected him of subverting the USA. While I am not going to write a detailed biography, I retain my opinion that Gerbner was a subversive Cultural Marxist who intended nothing good for the Western world.

In Martin’s case, part of this stems from his move away from unrealistic roleplaying games, like D&D, toward realism-focused games, like GURPS, where the guiding question is always, what would really happen?, rather than what’s fun?, or what’s easy?

Martin’s world feels just like the real one? Just how many people do you know who were raped by their brother next to a corpse in a cathedral?

The lives of those who watch and read GoT bare no resemblance to the fictional lives of its characters. Indeed, it is most popular with the demographic whose lives are the least like the show. It does not correspond to any ‘reality’ they know about-except at a very abstract, intellectual level.

Thus my question: why this thirst for a ‘reality’ that is utterly alien to the values, experiences, and world of the audience? Why do people want to lose themselves in barbarity?

…GoT’s profligate sexuality is one of its hooks, of course, but that is only part of the voyeuristic impulse that drives the show. The allure of GoT is the allure of seeing the worst of humanity, viscerally depicted, without leaving the comfort of your living room. Much like the Saw films, GoT allows the viewer to revel in depravity from afar. GoT is not as gratuitous as Saw and the other Gorno flicks, but its perversion cuts deeper because the viewer has a stronger emotional connection with Martin’s characters. This is Martin’s central literary strategy: get the audience emotionally invested in the characters, then abuse them as graphically as possible.*

We live in strange days. Violence is at global lows, prosperity at global highs. Yet modern upper-class Americans, living at the height of the richest, most productive civilization in history, have succumb to the idea that “real” can only be found in the gruesome, the lewd, and the heinous.