This put up discusses plot particulars from the season finale of “Home of the Dragon.”
After placing our young children to mattress Sunday night time, my husband and I made an ill-fated resolution to observe the season finale of HBO’s “Home of the Dragon.” After tuning in for the final 9 weeks and being a bit aggravated right here and there with the present’s clear striving for “shock worth,” I lastly reached my restrict this week.
The ultimate episode of this season begins with Rhaenyra discovering out about her father’s dying and her brother’s subsequent ascension to the throne. The issue? She is her father’s named inheritor. The information sends her into untimely labor — she has pains, is closely bleeding, and her water breaks. What follows is probably essentially the most offensive scene of start trauma and dying within the present.
It’s one factor to observe, as we did within the first episode, a compelled C-section (which was admittedly troublesome, as somebody who has had an emergency C-section). It’s one other to observe a mom be burned alive throughout childbirth, as we did in Episode 6. It’s fully one thing else to observe, in graphic element, a useless child flop on the ground, their mom desperately greedy, clinging and hoping that breath will fill his or her lungs.
When this expertise has been your actuality, watching it unfold on tv with none kind of set off warning is excruciating.
My child woman, my third little one, was born final November after I had a nine-week hospital keep that culminated in untimely labor and an emergency C-section. I don’t keep in mind the second she was born. I didn’t hear her first cries. The epidural wasn’t working quick sufficient, and since she was breech and I used to be six centimeters dilated already, I used to be swiftly positioned beneath common anesthesia.
“Are you certain you probably did it proper?!” I heard the residents arguing with one another. One in all them grabbed my arm, and the whole lot went black.
I didn’t know then that I’d by no means get to listen to her cry. She was instantly whisked away to the NICU — whereas I used to be nonetheless unconscious — and positioned on a ventilator. She died the subsequent day. I’ll by no means see her stroll. I’ll by no means see her graduate kindergarten, get married or have kids of her personal. I by no means even obtained to see the colour of her eyes.
After my first little one was born, I keep in mind telling my pregnant buddies that the best feeling on the earth is having your new child positioned in your chest. However there aren’t any phrases to explain this similar state of affairs when you understand the one cause the medical workforce is even letting you contact your child is that there’s nothing left to do to avoid wasting her.
The machines aren’t working anymore. She is slipping away. She won’t come house with you. I’m solely grateful that my husband and I had been there when it occurred so we might maintain her, inform her how a lot we liked her and say goodbye.
The opening scene of the finale with Rhaenyra’s child have to be surprising even to viewers who haven’t been in that place. But when the unimaginable has occurred to you, watching a tasteless portrayal of it in a present that’s centered round dragons — sure, dragons — is a complete intestine punch. It takes your breath away. It takes you proper again to the day your little one died.
Because of this a set off warning would have been useful. If a set off warning can apply to suicide, sexual assault and consuming problems, why can’t it apply to start trauma and the dying of an toddler? A set off warning offers the viewer a heads-up, so to talk, and the selection of whether or not to observe or not.
Since that scene got here out of nowhere, with no set off warning, and with no actual worth to the plot, viewers like me had been taken without warning. (Fortunately, I watched the season premiere a day late, so I already knew concerning the compelled C-section earlier than watching that episode. I left the room for a part of it).
In a society that’s so uncomfortable with grief basically, and much more so when that grief comes from shedding a toddler, the callous means this present has dealt with toddler and maternal dying is appalling.
“This present has merely changed gratuitous sexual violence with gratuitous start trauma, exchanging one kind of horror some girls expertise for one more.”
Not solely did the graphic particulars really feel egregious and sensational, however the portrayal felt unrealistic. As an illustration, Rhaenyra appears barely scathed after her little one’s dying as a result of she is aware of she should do her obligation and take into account battle and her declare to the throne. She’s even topped throughout her little one’s funeral. Yeah, proper. I don’t care what your sense of obligation is — in case your child has simply died, you’re not instantly plotting your subsequent transfer towards the throne. Or towards something, for that matter.
You’re holding them for so long as you’ll be able to — it’s the one time you’ll ever have on this earth. And for me, weeks later, getting away from bed within the morning was nonetheless a small feat. Eleven months out, I nonetheless have days when getting away from bed looks as if an excessive amount of to ask.
“Home of the Dragon” showrunners claimed in August that their new present would painting much less sexual violence than its predecessor, “Sport of Thrones.”
Ryan Condal stated, “The actual means that we’ve approached it on this time is ensuring that everytime you’re going to have any form of … intercourse or violence on display screen, that there’s a compelling story cause for it, and that it’s a narrative that must be instructed. It’s not being executed gratuitously or to titillate or something like that.”
This assertion now appears laughable. Did that scene actually propel the present’s narrative in a significant means? This present has merely changed gratuitous sexual violence with gratuitous start trauma, exchanging one kind of horror some girls expertise for one more.
Some may argue that on the finish of the day, this can be a fantasy present, and it doesn’t actually matter how these points are portrayed. I’d say that it completely does. The media we eat shapes our attitudes. It additionally displays our values. So, what does it say about us once we venerate TV exhibits that fetishize girls’s start trauma and struggling? Particularly given our present political local weather, this kind of content material is irresponsible.
So I’ll say this: Disgrace on you, HBO. Disgrace on you for not together with a straightforward and apparent set off warning. Disgrace on you to your false pretenses that this present could be much less gratuitous in depicting violence inflicted on girls. Disgrace on you for the best way you painting girls’s lives and our complicated feelings and experiences.
To cite that different dragon present of yours: Disgrace, disgrace, disgrace.
Do you’ve a compelling private story you’d prefer to see revealed on HuffPost? Discover out what we’re in search of right here and ship us a pitch.