how the Iliad is fairly alone in the western canon in how it treats the reality of war and violence very simply and evenly, revealing the depth of its horror.
It was, and yet, by modern standards, it presented and even illustrated atrocities, cruelty, and war crimes without having to excessively feed the hogs over and over again by emphasizing just how much and how often
spoiler
the Greeks would rape the Trojans and give painstaking detail about how mindbreaking and utterly degrading it would be over and over again under pious pretenses of "well the war criminals have this perspective so let's keep focusing on the war criminals getting off to war crimes"
totally just to reillustrate over and over again that totally strictly just for further illustration and realism and totally not for ongoing hog feeding.
Even the violence in the Iliad, while vivid and visceral at times, doesn't need to go around around again and again under pretenses of realism instead of just presenting it enough to understand it then moving on to the next story beat.
saying this like the first chapter of the iliad isn't about achilles & agamemnon fighting over which trojan women to keep as slaves.
before you call me a treat defender i don't necessarily approve of grr martin, i haven't read his books---but the iliad is not an appropriate riposte. ancient greeks were extremely gung-ho about patriarchal violence and any text which treats women as people is on better moral footing than the iliad
It isn't about what happens in the story beats. I didn't say bad or even monstrous characters aren't allowed to exist in literature. It's how it's presented in the text (and especially on screen considering that's the whole point of visual mediums compared to prose and verse) and specifically what is emphasized and reemphasized.
Come and See would be a lot different (and worse, and probably nazi hog feed) if it was under the pretenses of realism and illustration with an ongoing point of view of nazis directly in the acts of murder over and over again with maximum front-row seat repetitive slaughters from their perspective and opinions over and over again under whatever pretenses instead of it being a thing that happened and can be understood well enough without that being the repetitive focus and emphasis. That would be replacing Flyora's moment
spoiler
with the gang rape victim, covered in blood,
with some illustrative and realistic nazi point of view of the same atrocity as it happened. Maybe you'd go out of your way to defend that too (maybe also claiming to not having saw that for yourself but still wanting to be contrarian against the treat criticizer) but my argument is nothing of value would be added with that choice, not for anyone that I'd care to ever know anyway.
It wasn't a titillating POV shift to Achilles and/or Agamemnon illustrating the realistic outcome of that enslavement discussion with exhausting visceral details of the sexual violence, and it wasn't a returning and recurring emphasis either.
If you're going to try to preempt accusations of being a knee-jerk treat defender, at least try to use the arguments I made in return, instead of the ones you want me to have made because I criticized the treats again and you found that unacceptable, especially for something you claim you don't even read/watch. How is that not knee-jerk treat defending?
the iliad does not have 'monstrous characters'. the moral content of the text is monstrous. explicit depiction ala GOT is not the only bad way to have this stuff, i'd argue its close to as bad or worse to present such things as completely ordinary and okay like the Iliad does.
you're so aggro everytime anyone disagrees with you, thats why i tried to pre-empt but i should've just not engaged. i really have not read GoT.
i have read the iliad, i'm really repulsed by its sexpolitics, and it bothers me that you'd bring it up as a counterexample for bad handling of SV. that's it.
I didn't say it had monstrous characters. I said that even if it did that wouldn't automatically disqualify it to me. I wasn't even casting a moral argument against or even for it. You were. You're accusing me of something that you're doing that has nothing to do with my argument. It's like shadow boxing. Speaking of that...
you’re so aggro everytime
Says you, being the one and only person leaping at me in this thread, with built-in grievances ready to go, defending a treat that by your own claim you haven't even read. You're casting moral judgements against the Iliad and at the same time claiming that it surely must be worse than GRRM (in a category of judgement I wasn't even getting into to begin with, and I made no claim to agree with Homer's particular ethical arguments or lack thereof for that matter, only in how the material is presented and what is emphasized in that perspective), which again you haven't even read the work you're defending, by your own claim.
What are you even doing besides "aggro" knee-jerk treat defending here? You're never going to like my point of view, and you're barely even listening to mine except to find what you think are "gotcha" moments to try nail me with, and by your own admission you know less about GRRM's work than I do, and that's not even a high bar to clear.
What is even your goal here? It looks like a petty grudge to me, especially with how the apparent crux of your argument is "I didn't read the work I'm defending but I don't like you, especially when you criticize the treats that I don't consume. How dare you."
It was, and yet, by modern standards, it presented and even illustrated atrocities, cruelty, and war crimes without having to excessively feed the hogs over and over again by emphasizing just how much and how often
spoiler
the Greeks would rape the Trojans and give painstaking detail about how mindbreaking and utterly degrading it would be over and over again under pious pretenses of "well the war criminals have this perspective so let's keep focusing on the war criminals getting off to war crimes"
totally just to reillustrate over and over again that totally strictly just for further illustration and realism and totally not for ongoing hog feeding.
Even the violence in the Iliad, while vivid and visceral at times, doesn't need to go around around again and again under pretenses of realism instead of just presenting it enough to understand it then moving on to the next story beat.
saying this like the first chapter of the iliad isn't about achilles & agamemnon fighting over which trojan women to keep as slaves.
before you call me a treat defender i don't necessarily approve of grr martin, i haven't read his books---but the iliad is not an appropriate riposte. ancient greeks were extremely gung-ho about patriarchal violence and any text which treats women as people is on better moral footing than the iliad
It isn't about what happens in the story beats. I didn't say bad or even monstrous characters aren't allowed to exist in literature. It's how it's presented in the text (and especially on screen considering that's the whole point of visual mediums compared to prose and verse) and specifically what is emphasized and reemphasized.
Come and See would be a lot different (and worse, and probably nazi hog feed) if it was under the pretenses of realism and illustration with an ongoing point of view of nazis directly in the acts of murder over and over again with maximum front-row seat repetitive slaughters from their perspective and opinions over and over again under whatever pretenses instead of it being a thing that happened and can be understood well enough without that being the repetitive focus and emphasis. That would be replacing Flyora's moment
spoiler
with the gang rape victim, covered in blood,
with some illustrative and realistic nazi point of view of the same atrocity as it happened. Maybe you'd go out of your way to defend that too (maybe also claiming to not having saw that for yourself but still wanting to be contrarian against the treat criticizer) but my argument is nothing of value would be added with that choice, not for anyone that I'd care to ever know anyway.
It wasn't a titillating POV shift to Achilles and/or Agamemnon illustrating the realistic outcome of that enslavement discussion with exhausting visceral details of the sexual violence, and it wasn't a returning and recurring emphasis either.
If you're going to try to preempt accusations of being a knee-jerk treat defender, at least try to use the arguments I made in return, instead of the ones you want me to have made because I criticized the treats again and you found that unacceptable, especially for something you claim you don't even read/watch. How is that not knee-jerk treat defending?
the iliad does not have 'monstrous characters'. the moral content of the text is monstrous. explicit depiction ala GOT is not the only bad way to have this stuff, i'd argue its close to as bad or worse to present such things as completely ordinary and okay like the Iliad does.
you're so aggro everytime anyone disagrees with you, thats why i tried to pre-empt but i should've just not engaged. i really have not read GoT.
i have read the iliad, i'm really repulsed by its sexpolitics, and it bothers me that you'd bring it up as a counterexample for bad handling of SV. that's it.
I didn't say it had monstrous characters. I said that even if it did that wouldn't automatically disqualify it to me. I wasn't even casting a moral argument against or even for it. You were. You're accusing me of something that you're doing that has nothing to do with my argument. It's like shadow boxing. Speaking of that...
Says you, being the one and only person leaping at me in this thread, with built-in grievances ready to go, defending a treat that by your own claim you haven't even read. You're casting moral judgements against the Iliad and at the same time claiming that it surely must be worse than GRRM (in a category of judgement I wasn't even getting into to begin with, and I made no claim to agree with Homer's particular ethical arguments or lack thereof for that matter, only in how the material is presented and what is emphasized in that perspective), which again you haven't even read the work you're defending, by your own claim.
What are you even doing besides "aggro" knee-jerk treat defending here? You're never going to like my point of view, and you're barely even listening to mine except to find what you think are "gotcha" moments to try nail me with, and by your own admission you know less about GRRM's work than I do, and that's not even a high bar to clear.
What is even your goal here? It looks like a petty grudge to me, especially with how the apparent crux of your argument is "I didn't read the work I'm defending but I don't like you, especially when you criticize the treats that I don't consume. How dare you."
You're doing nothing but "aggro" here. Stop.