SALON

Thursday, Jun 14, 2012 7:50 PM UTC

“Game of Thrones” sticks it to Bush

HBO's "Game of Thrones" puts the ex-president on a pole -- and stirs up a ruckus

By

Topics: Game of Thrones, HBO, George W. Bush,

It’s one thing to decapitate Ned Stark and to murder little children. But if you put George W. Bush’s head on a stick, you’re going to have to say you’re sorry. And so, HBO has found itself in the unusual position of having to issue an apology for skewering our 43rd president like so much corn dog at a carnival.

Earlier this week, a poster on Reddit noted that on the DVD commentary for the first season of “Game of Thrones” — which came out, by the way, three months ago — the show’s lead producers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss just happen to casually mention that in one scene, “The last head on the left is George Bush.” They go on to explain, “George Bush’s head appears in a couple beheading scenes. It’s not a choice; it’s not a political statement. It’s just, we had to use what heads we had around.” When they put it like that, it just sounds practical. What else are you supposed to do when you’re a medieval fantasy series and you need lots of body parts, if not use whatever heads you’ve got lying around?

It’s a common enough tactic, one generally accepted in the entertainment industry. Prosthetic heads don’t grow on trees. And you don’t ever hear William Shatner demanding retribution for his face being outsourced to Michael Myers. But then io9 picked up on the little nugget of trivia on Wednesday, and suddenly the notion that “Game of Thrones” was subliminally advocating violent revolution went viral.

As news of the “Game of Thrones Shocker” and the way the network “parades President George W. Bush’s decapitated head on a stick” started making the rounds, HBO suddenly found itself in damage control mode. In a statement late Wednesday, the network said, “We were deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste. We made this clear to the executive producers of the series who apologized immediately for this inadvertent, careless mistake. We are sorry this happened and will have it removed from any future DVD production.”

Even if you’re not trying to make a political statement, the old head-on-a-stick device has been one, oh, ever since the beginning of civilization. So whatever you think of George W. Bush, if you’re going to spear his melon, you should probably keep that information to yourself.

Yet the absurd part in all of this is that it’s not even really a Dubya head. As Benioff and Weiss explained in their own statement Wednesday, “We use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, et cetera. We can’t afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk. After the scene was already shot, someone pointed out that one of the heads looked like George W. Bush.” In other words, no actual fake-president heads were shoved on poles in the filming of that episode. A sly dig, maybe, but if you didn’t know better, would any viewer likely note the resemblance between the last head on the left and our former president? No. But looking at that slack face and tangled hair you might wonder instead — has anyone seen Steven Tyler lately?

Mary Elizabeth Williams

Mary Elizabeth Williams is a staff writer for Salon and the author of "Gimme Shelter: My Three Years Searching for the American Dream." Follow her on Twitter: @embeedub. More Mary Elizabeth Williams.

Next Article

Related Stories

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Lisa Montgomery embraces her nephew Thursday after a tornado tore apart her home in Cleburne, Texas. The twister killed six people and destroyed entire swaths of the North Texas town.
    Credit: AP/LM Otero

  • Jack McMahon, the defense attorney for abortion doctor Kermit Gosnell, speaks outside the Criminal Justice Center Philadelphia Tuesday. His client was convicted of killing three babies in his clinic, and will serve multiple life sentences.
    Credit: AP/Matt Rourke

  • A photo taken Monday captures Vice President Joe Biden's response to a Milwaukee second-grader's innovative proposal to end America's epidemic of gun violence. This guy!
    Credit: AP/Jenny Aicher

  • Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., flanked by a grouper-eyed Michele Bachmann, addresses the IRS' admission that it targeted Tea Party groups in advance of the 2012 election. In an op-ed for CNN Thursday, the Kentucky senator slammed the president for his faux outrage.
    Credit: AP/Molly Riley

  • Ousted IRS chief Steven Miller is sworn in on Capitol Hill Friday. Miller testified before the House Ways and Means Committee on the extra scrutiny the agency gave conservative groups applying for tax-exempt status.
    Credit: AP/J. Scott Applewhite

  • Attorney General Eric Holder pauses as he testifies on Capitol Hill before the House Judiciary Committee Wednesday. Holder is under fire, among other things, for the Justice Department's gathering of phone records at the Associated Press.
    Credit: AP/Carolyn Kaster

  • O.J. Simpson sits during an evidentiary hearing at Clark County District Court in Las Vegas, Nev., Thursday. Simpson, who is currently serving a nine-to-33-year sentence in state prison for armed robbery and kidnapping, is using a writ of habeas corpus to seek a new trial.
    Credit: AP/Las Vegas Review-Journal/Jeff Scheid

  • Major Tom to ground control: On Sunday astronaut Chris Hadfield recorded the first music video from space, a cover of David Bowie's "Space Oddity."
    Credit: AP/NASA/Chris Hadfield

  • When it rains it pours. President Barack Obama speaks during a news conference Thursday with Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, inexplicably inspiring an #umbrellagate Twitter meme.
    Credit: AP/Jacquelyn Martin

  • A smoke plume rises high above a road block at the intersection of County A and Ross Road east of Solon Springs, Wis., Tuesday. No injuries were reported, but the the wildfire caused evacuations across northwestern Wisconsin.
    Credit: AP/The Duluth News-Tribune/Clint Austin

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

Comments

 42 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: So long, Sookie Stackhouse

Recommendations