The highly-anticipated Game of Thrones prequel House of the Dragon has landed on streaming services and one particularly graphic childbirth scene has left critics wondering if the gory details were necessary.
Host of ABC Radio podcast Stop Everything! Beverley Wang described it as "the bloodiest and most horrific and traumatic birth scene" she has ever seen on screens.
She sat down on her podcast with TV and film critic Wenlei Ma, and journalist and author Jenna Guillaume to discuss.
SPOILER WARNING:
This article covers events from the first episode of House of Dragon, so now's your chance to leave if you haven't seen it yet.
What's the scene that has caused this reaction?
If you're not across the new series, it rewinds the clock 172 years before the birth of dragon-riding Daenerys Targaryen and follows the House Targaryen civil war, or the 'Dance of the Dragons'.
In the first episode, which HBO said drew in a record 9.9 million viewers, a childbirth scene sees King Viserys (played by Paddy Considine) order a caesarean to be performed on his wife Aemma Arryn (Sian Brooke) while she is conscious in an attempt to save the male heir.
The episode cuts between this scene and a jousting sequence between Prince Dameon (Matt Smith) and Criston Cole (Fabien Frankel).
In true Game of Thrones fashion, it's pretty graphic.
I'll spare you the gory details but Aemma doesn't survive the birth and neither does the baby.
Was all the blood and gore necessary?
All of the blood and gore wasn't justified, according to Ma.
"I think you can show it was brutal and horrible and viscerally violent without some of those lingering camera frames," Ma says.
"I know the argument is 'this how it was in medieval times', I think we're also at a point now where we know how it was."
She says the directors could have chosen to show a shot of Aemma's face and the top of her body rather than a wide frame with lots of blood.
As someone who has been through an emergency caesarean, Wang says she found the scene hard to watch.
She says other people who have also had that experience might feel the same.
Comparing the birth to other violent scenes
Guillaume says she found the contrast between two violent scenes particularly interesting.
“What I think was interesting was the way it was juxtaposed with the jousting tournament that was happening at the same time, which was quite violent as well but the birth was so much more violent and bloody,” she says.
"It was an interesting contrast between these men who are playing at war and this woman who is literally fighting for her life and dying.
“I think that was quite a fascinating combination. I think they could have achieved that message with a little less blood on the screen.”
Veering away from historical accuracy
Critics say the show's directors have insisted on including graphic and uncomfortable scenes for the sake of historical accuracy, but Wang says when a fantasy show includes dragons, historical accuracy is less important.
Ma says it's a fine line between what should and shouldn't be shown on TV.
"Dragons didn't exist in medieval time so I think we can take some creative license in terms of veering away from 'so-called historical accuracy' around sexual violence in our own past. But it is a fine line. The industry is dealing with this reckoning of what you should and shouldn't show," Ma says.
You can listen to the full episode of Stop Everything! with Beverley Wang on RN here
