HBO's highly popular (and deservedly so) series Game of Thrones is a drama about political machinations set in a fantasy medieval type of world. On rare occasions, the writers use isolated acts of violence associated with this type of society in order to move the plot along.
One such example of violence is portrayed in the last episode of the first season, where an evil youthful king displays to his reluctant fiance the heads of his enemies (including that of his fiance's father) mounted on pikes. One of the severed heads is that of George W. Bush with long hair.
The producers of the show, Dave Benioff and D. B. Weiss, freely acknowledged that it is in fact Bush's head (or more accurately, I hope, a wax replica of it). They stated in 2012 that, "The last head on the left is George Bush. George Bush's head appears in a couple of beheading scenes. It's not a choice, it's not a political statement. We just had to use whatever head we had lying around."
One might believe that HBO, in light of the hundreds of millions of dollars it has dropped in making a very lavish production filmed in various exotic spots of the world, could have afforded to prepare an fake head of a generic person rather then using "whatever head [they] had lying around." One could legitimately be curious about why there would be a head of Bush lying around in the first place. Could it be that this is rather (gasp) a sight gag in arguably poor taste promulgated by a couple of Hollywood liberals for the amusement of all of their fellow Hollywood liberals?
I myself am not offended, as I am a crass connoisseur of poor taste. I in fact found these antics amusing. However, I do suspect that if a Hollywood conservative producer (presuming that such an animal would ever exist) featured a severed head of President Obama in similar circumstances, the sanctimonious screams of horror from the media would be enough to make the welkin ring.
HBO has altered the image in all future releases of this episode to represent a generic non-specific medieval decapatee.
The head appears briefly at the 0:37 time stamp on this video link.
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