AIBU wondering about age limits for teens & watching Game of Thrones

[thiswashelpful]

My DS (15) is spending weekend at friends after going to see big football game. Message from him this morning saying that they stayed up real late watching GoT box set...That's got me thinking...

What age are teens starting to watch this stuff?

I know it is very violent, torture, rape, explicit sex, nudity, etc.

It is basically soft porn for people who don't think of themselves as consumers of porn.

There's some shite on this thread but that really takes the cake.

Can we do the Walking Dead next?

Ooh I love the Walking Dead. Unlike GoT it doesn't have much of a storyline beyond People Surviving, but I'm a sucker for zombies. And I love a tiger.

Its not about the sex scottishdiem, it is about the violence and the sexual violence and the focus on female nudity for titillation. Or have you not bothered reading the thread?

I'm a coward but I would have brained Negan by now. Just. Shut. The. Fuck. Up.

I have to watch with DH constantly saying 'just twat him - fuck sake Rick!'

It is set in fantasy medieval bloodthirsty times.Middle ages ( if you look back at history), was a bloodthirsty mysoginistic period. So GoT gets it fairly correct.There is much more to the story than that though.
Would I let a 15 year old watch it? Depends on the 15 year old.

I would have given them Gregory's head without hesitation. He's a waste of post apocalyptic resources.

Mine started watching at 15 and the Walking Dead at 14.

I can't stand Negan. I'm just not getting any sense of menace from him it all. Just droning on and on about "How Scary I Am" . And Rick is being so wet right now. I confess, I am struggling this season.

Veryverydarkblue- do you understand the difference between fact and opinion, btw?

I agree with the pp who said Shakespeare wasn't high culture at the time but was written to have mass appeal - I.e gratuitous violence, rude jokes such as hamlet'a "cunt-try matters", fart jokes, shock plots - incest, cannibalism, all types of -icide etc etc.

That said, I would say both "GOT has more better written, fully realised, and interesting female characters than most other tv shows" and "GOT frequently uses female violence and nudity as a lazy storytelling mechanism when the point they were trying to make could have been done far better in other ways" are both equally valid.

Bibbity feel free to judge your friend more if you want, it's been showing on sky over here since it started, about 6 years ago.

I read the books about age 15 - personally they didn't disturb me, however I think that's because even those they are low fantasy they're still obviously fantasy. Things like concentration camp survivor memoirs/novels disturb me far more tbh.

I don't like Negan's leather jacket. It's not like a real biker's jacket. It's like something you'd get from Topman.

I can't stand his stupid cheeseball smile. He looks like he should be selling Salami in some movie Italian Deli somewhere.

I find Negan quite hot. Have gone off Daryl now he is all cowering. My DS watches Walking Dead and has watched just the battle scenes in the last series of GoT (he has an obsession with war/battles and medieval stuff - so loved the big fight scenes). Most of his friends watch twd. It's just zombie gore

Carol will off him eventually. She's got more guts than all of them.

But in regard to the question, I think 15 MIGHT be okay but only just.

Op, why don't you sit and watch GoT with him?

Depends on the teen. 15 is the age I would generally start considering letting them watch that stuff, but there are scenes that make me cringe but that my brother wouldn't blink at and he's much younger than me!

Carol has. Isplaced her mojo. And last weeks episode was dull as all hell. They need to get their shit together or I'm going to fall out of love with the Rickster.

A couple of things that occur to me. A- do we actually want our teens to be unaffected by the graphic portrayal of sexual violence and B- do we actually want our teens to think gratuitous sexual violence to be the norm?

Actually, I think offering to watch it with him is a very good suggestion.. Noting more likely to put him off!

Bertrand/Elspeth

I wasn't my degree at 15, but I was studying Shakespeare. I did 1984 for GCSE, which is full of torture, sex and at least one shocking reference to sexual violence.

I'm not saying those texts and GoT are of equal merit as works of literature (although of course, Shakespeare was miles away from being high culture in his day). That's actually my whole point: that a lot of people who object to GoT so do out of snobbery about quality rather than because of the actual content.

The misogyny accusation is debatable IMO. I fully understand why some people think it's misogynistic, and it's a valid POV, but equally I and many other feminist women would perceive it very differently and that is also valid. I'd certainly expect to be able to have that same discussion with a 15 year old who watched it. If they weren't able to understand those issues at 15 I wouldn't let them watch it - but I honestly don't know any 15-year-olds who aren't smart enough to get to grips with that.

I'm not saying anyone should or shouldn't watch it, or let a teenager watch it. I'm simply saying that I would be fine with it, in response to the OP's call for opinions - and I'm also saying that some of the assumptions people are making about viewers of the programme are simply very silly.

"did 1984 for GCSE, which is full of torture, sex and at least one shocking reference"

Hardly on same scale as GoT. Yes, a teenager can process references to sexual violence but up to you whether you think relentless explicit imagery is OK.

There is a big difference between contextual violence and gratuitous violence. The level of gratuitous sexual violence in GofT is not something I would want to watch, or want my teens to watch.

I love GoT but OP, are you entirely comfortable letting your child watch a scene where a teenage boy forces a young woman to beat and possibly rape another woman's naked rear end with a spiked cudgel, while he makes it quite clear that is going to kill her if she refuses? We later see both women dead, as you might imagine.

A lot of women are raped and sexually assaulted on screen, and it MUST contribute to the drip drip of information to young people that women are on this earth for sexual gratification, not leadership or mutual respect. Saying it is okay for a young person to watch Game of Thrones because it's a particular context is similar to saying Page 3 is okay, because it's all just a bit of fun.

I know I'm being a hypocrite here, because I still think it's a great show! But I'm also nearly 40 and capable of completely Sansa's rape from how I feel about women in general, which a teenager is simply not capable of, I feel. How does a young mind organise how we respond to women in leadership roles when they watch women in leadership roles repeatedly raped on screen?

(Completely separating, I mean)