When “House of the Dragon” premiered on HBO, there was little doubt in the minds of “Game of Thrones” fans that the show would be just as bloody, ruthless, and violent.

“House of the Dragon” debuted with its metaphorical medieval guns akimbo, with a graphic C-section, jousting tournament, and a scene in which criminals are dismembered as punishment. The latest episode, “Second of His Name,” again includes images of soldiers being eaten alive by crabs, culminating in the defeat of the “Crab Feeder” (Daniel Scott Smith) at the hands of Daemon Targaryen (Matt Smith), who arrives on the battlefield dragging a severed torso, innards trailing behind it.

Content warning or not (the episode contained a warning for graphic violence, among others), “House of the Dragon” is clearly trying to outdo its predecessor and itself with graphic spectacle. George R.R. Martin’s “Fire & Blood” quickly lays out events from this chapter of Westerosi history, but adapting that for the screen means depicting scenes often described in a few words or sentences, like Daemon’s justice, or adding new elements, like the crabs. The show’s graphic content and glorified violence is a choice — and not always a historically accurate one. At this point, the violence in TV fantasy like “House of the Dragon” is more emblematic of “Thrones” itself than of the actual Medieval era.

HBO and the showrunners have faced recent backlash for comments about the show’s alleged realism — that it not only reflects but is obligated to represent the violence and misogyny of the Medieval era as described in George R.R. Martin’s texts. But Martin’s work itself is not some bastion of Medieval verisimilitude, not least because, you know, dragons. Claims of accuracy in a fantasy world are conscious choices about what is and isn’t believable enough for the audience and creators. Martin and HBO’s imaginings of the Middle Ages differ from reality and from each other.

“’Game of Thrones’ and ‘House of the Dragon’ are set in an imaginary world,” medievalist and early modernist Dr. Kavita Mudan Finn told IndieWire. “That world needs to have internal logic and that is part of where this misconception happens. The universe that these stories are set in is so dense and immersive and fascinating that it’s very easy to let that slippage happen, and to fall into the trap of thinking it reflects some kind of reality it doesn’t.”

According to Dr. Shiloh Carroll, author of “Medievalism in A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones,” the problem with any generalization about the Middle Ages is that the era covers an immense range of time and geography. The era includes around a thousand years of history and multiple continents, particularly Europe, parts of Northern Africa, and parts of the Middle East. Even the exact years can be disputed depending on region.

“When we say this is how it was in the Middle Ages, where and when are we talking about?” Carroll rhetorically asked. “Maybe what you’re saying is true about England in 1250, but that doesn’t mean that it’s true about the Holy Roman Empire.”

Something like the tournament in Episode 1 of “House of the Dragon” is a prime example, embellishing medieval jousting tournaments in which participants used blunted weapons that couldn’t actually cause bodily harm. Finn said that sequence has similarities with the early modern Henry VIII, who hosted multiple tournaments that coincided with his wives giving birth, but never quite went as planned.

“The study of the medieval period in Europe and a lot of our conceptions of the medieval period in Europe are not in any way accurate,” Finn said. “They actually come from the 19th century, and they have the hang ups of the 19th century. They coincide with the rise of colonial power — various European countries’ attempts to define their own heritage, partly because they want to put that heritage in opposition to the people they are attempting to conquer.”

That certainly pops up in “Thrones,” which was criticized from the start for barbaric depictions of its only characters of color and their eventual submission to a white leader, Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke). “House of the Dragon” is more racially diverse from the outset, but the damage — and its thin defense — remains. Medieval Europe was much more racially diverse than most interpretations seem to think, a hub of trade and travel from various countries. Even class and gender struggles, Finn says, were more nuanced than they are often portrayed in pop culture.

Yet violence pervades on-screen depictions of anything reminiscent of the Middle Ages. “Rings of Power” may be off to a wholesome start on Prime Video, but even Peter Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy included a scene where Uruk-Hai eat one of their own alive. Seeing and internalizing the same depictions over and over, says Carroll, creates a concerning feedback loop.

“Each person’s individual idea of what the Middle Ages were like, they can find something in fiction that reinforces that,” she said. “They see that specific fiction as historically accurate because it already represents what they believed about the Middle Ages.”

Caroll finds the violence in “House of the Dragon” — at least the premiere episode — to be far more plot-driven than on “Thrones,” leaning more than ever into the body horror. Finn agreed.

“We were very firmly in [Aemma’s] perspective for a good portion of the scene,” she said of Episode 1’s C-section sequence. “It was partly there for shock, but it also really brought home her situation and set a theme going forward about women’s autonomy and the kinds of battles that they were going to have to face.”

Though criticized as gratuitous, Aemma’s C-section is actually one of the more accurate if visceral scenes. Carroll also says the Crabfeeder’s end checks out with Medieval punishments like hanging and quartering, even if it was doled out on the battlefield by a Rogue Prince and not the law. For most viewers, the distinction between accuracy and exaggeration is not only blurry, but perhaps even irrelevant — but it also creates a false distance between this so-called backward Medieval fantasy and the world we ourselves occupy.

“Perhaps our fascination with barbaric medievalism lets us offload our own social problems onto a time period so far behind us that it’s practically alien,” Carroll wrote after “Thrones” ended. “We can feel superior to those dirty, backwards medieval people.”

“It comes from this desire to feel like we’re better than people in the Middle Ages,” Finn echoed. “We know better, we’re more progressive, we’re more advanced — when in fact it turns out we’re not, and we have a lot of the same problems that they did.”

“House of the Dragon” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. ET on HBO.

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What draws nearly half of all older Americans — and an even larger percentage of younger Americans to play so many video games on phones, computers or consoles hooked up to TVs? What makes digital gaming so appealing that it becomes both a daily and a lifelong pursuit, including for 50-somethings who’ve been playing since the 1970s?

The easy answer is that it’s a temporary escape from the pressures of the real world — an essential distraction, particularly over this past year. And yes, lots of online games qualify as wonderful diversions: Countless Americans pass some time each day playing sudoku, Candy Crush, Angry Birds and other puzzle games on their phones or tablets.

But that’s just one segment of the gaming market. Step beyond the fast-gratification phone games, and you emerge into a world where the player is more than ever an active participant in a game’s narrative. Your decisions and actions impact where the story goes, as opposed to watching a film or TV, during which you’re a passive couch potato.

A good game lets you not only depart your reality but also create a new one. You’re not restricted by your age, height, gender or physical disabilities. Maybe you can’t sink a free throw in real life, but in a game of NBA 2K21, you can go one-on-one with Michael Jordan — and beat him. Players gain competency as they dive in, taking pride in cracking a hard puzzle or ascending to a new challenge level. I will forever treasure the look of immense pride on the face of my 13-year-old daughter, Alyssa, as she whooped it up after getting her first victory in the action game Fortnite.

To understand gaming, forget the technology and focus on the humanity. It’s in our nature to join the fray, to learn the rules and master the system, to build things (and for some of us, to blow them up), to gain and lose, to chill out and chalk up -— and even brag about our scores — to spin entire worlds from only our imaginations. And like me and my daughter, we also like to win.

No surprise that the tensions of the pandemic brought more people into the gaming fold. A survey by Deloitte, a professional services company, found that 34 percent of those surveyed had tried a new video gaming activity in 2020. Those activities range from playing new video games to subscribing to a game service to watching someone else play in the growing phenomenon called e-sports. And industry analysts say a lot of those people are likely to remain engaged.

“I personally like competing and playing well,” says P.J. McNealy, CEO of Digital World Research. “Playing one, two or three quick death-match rounds online can be a nice little pocket of entertainment for me — and escapism from Twitter, COVID or, heck, pick a national crisis!”

‘We Knew Interactivity Was Cool.’

Want to pilot a commercial aircraft, step into the boots of an action hero or just create an alternative you in an alternative world? If you still think of video games as kid stuff, the equivalent of an electronic toy, you are missing out on the most sophisticated form of entertainment available.

Yes, it used to be that video games were about clearing the screen of objects — take your pick: asteroids, dots, centipedes, alien invaders — while evading death en route to the high score. But today, many modern games create immersive experiences, with varying goals. Some play out like a movie, with you as the star. The choices you make determine how the story plays out. Still other games approach the existential, providing environments where players don’t compete so much as build, explore and share.

“The creative side of you, rather than the competitive, can come out,” McNealy says. Take the Civilization series of computer games. They were launched in 1991 by Sid Meier, 67, an industry rock star whose name still graces the box. To read this Wikipedia description of Civilization is to realize how far video games have advanced from the days of a yellow puck chomping dots: “The player is tasked with leading an entire human civilization over the course of several millennia by controlling various areas such as urban development, exploration, government, trade, research, and military.”

“We always knew we had something special, that we were doing something unique that allowed the players to create their own stories, to be their own star,” Meier told me. “Our graphics weren’t as good as movies. Our sound wasn’t as good as records. But we had a special thing. We knew that interactivity was cool.”

The Civilization franchise, which now has 13 games, is more popular than ever. The latest installment, Sid Meier’s Civilization VI, came out in late 2016 and is still cited each quarter by publisher Take-Two Interactive Software as one of its top money-makers. It’s one of several games, including Final Fantasy, The Elder Scrolls and Doom, that have been around long enough to engage and entertain generations of players.

Another is the SimCity series and its offshoot, The Sims. A game about city planning and the lives of artificial people might not sound like a rollicking good time, but both have captivated gamers for decades. In SimCity, released in 1989, players managed zoning, infrastructure and municipal budgets. It was strangely compelling and launched a wave of simulation games. I talked to designer Will Wright, 61, now a giant in the industry, about his inspiration. Turns out his revolution was based on chance.

“SimCity was an offshoot of an earlier game I did — Raid on Bungeling Bay — which was ‘fire on and blow everything up,’ “ he says, describing a typical game of the era. “I had to create a world to blow up, so I built myself a tool to build the world, and I found it was much more fulfilling to create the world.”

Beethoven, Video Game Composer?

Think of it this way: In 1995, people wondered if video games would ever match the visual fidelity of Pixar’s Toy Story. Today, the Unreal Engine software from Epic Games, which powers titles like Fortnite and Gears of War 5, is also used by film and television companies for shows like HBO’s Westworld and Disney+’s The Mandalorian, to create visual effects. The video game-Hollywood influence goes the other way, too; many games, especially the more cinematic ones, cast actors to provide voice work or even “act” in the games via motion-capture technology.

And the music has come a long way. The days of 8-bit ditties, like the familiar Mario Bros. theme, have given way to complex orchestral pieces. And that led to symphonies that featured music from video games touring the country. Those have been part of the live performance landscape for 20 years now and have been broadcast on PBS.

“I’ve always said if Beethoven were alive today, he’d be a video game composer,” says Tommy Tallarico, 53, a video game music composer who has worked on over 300 titles and now also heads up a revival of the Intellivision video game brand. “His whole goal was to control people’s emotions. What better outlet would that have been than video games today? Do you think Beethoven would have been a film composer? Do you think he would have wanted people talking over his music for two hours? Hell no!”

Scalia v. Schwarzenegger: Game On

Like comic books, rock music and films, video games have been blamed for societal problems. In particular, many have questioned the level of violence in some games and the impact that has on players. The concern is understandable, especially given how popular video games are with young players, but no substantive studies to date have shown that games are any more harmful than other forms of media. That’s what led the Supreme Court in 2011 to stand up for video games. The case — Brown v. Entertainment Merchants Association — revolved around a 2005 California law that made it illegal for retailers to sell violent video games to anyone under age 18. Then-Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger had argued that violent games are the same as sexual materials, when it comes to government regulation. The court soundly rejected that argument.

“California relies primarily on the research of Dr. Craig Anderson and a few other research psychologists whose studies purport to show a connection between exposure to violent video games and harmful effects on children,” wrote Justice Antonin Scalia in the majority opinion. “These studies have been rejected by every court to consider them, and with good reason: They do not prove that violent video games cause minors to act aggressively.”

M-rated titles (the “mature” rating that violent games often receive) might seem to get the biggest share of the spotlight, but they actually do not make up the majority of video games on the market. In 2019, they represented just 13 percent of console game titles.

More recently, some concern has shifted to in-game purchases, as mobile gaming has grown and the nature of the gaming industry has changed from selling as many game units as possible to keeping customers engaged for longer periods. So with digital downloads of games, the initial cost might be quite low or even free. But then players regularly get offers to purchase gaming upgrades. For example, a free phone game in which you play billiards against random opponents will repeatedly try to get you to spend a few dollars to upgrade to a pool cue with better spin and ball control (and a killer design). Or sometimes a game will be free for a limited amount of play each day. If you’re engrossed in the game and really can’t put it down until tomorrow, well, get your credit card out.

3,000 Friends

What about the stereotype that has emerged of the ill-kempt, lonely, isolated player sitting in his basement? Video games bring people together, even when they are apart. Many games can now be played over the internet, connecting friends and family. Wearing a headset, you’re able to talk with the person on the other side of the screen — and the conversations often branch far beyond the game as friendships develop or strengthen. Sometimes you play with a stranger. Other times you can choose to play with a friend or family member across town or in another city. Check the security settings if your grandkids are playing, though, and monitor their activity. Interacting with strangers online poses risks for kids.

Could gaming be one of the few good things that have come out of the pandemic? People who can’t connect in real life meet in the game world and play or build together. People in the same house share a fun diversion that lets them forget for an hour or two the dangers that loom beyond their door. And grandparents and grandchildren have new worlds to explore together, where the youngsters often get to do the teaching. Together, they engage in healthy competition or work together on common goals.

“I have friends that I’ve known literally for five to six years that I play RuneScape with,” says Tony Winchester, 67, a Missouri retiree. “I was talking to someone from Malaysia this morning, from Australia this morning, from Los Angeles this morning, from Canada this morning, somebody from South Africa this morning. It’s really crazy.”

Gamers also connect on streaming platforms, like YouTube and Twitch, fostering a community in which they can show off their skills and others can comment and converse. On Twitch, Winchester is better known as gray-bearded Sir Tony Ray, with a red crown atop his head, and as a master of fantasy game RuneScape, in which he engages in adventures among knights and dragons. “I usually get 2,000 to 3,000 people that log in to that channel every day,” he says. “Some people say, ‘Hey, man, I haven’t seen you in a while and just wanted to make sure you’re OK,’ and then they go. Others come in and stay for four to five hours. I try to talk to everybody I can. I have a pretty good memory, and I really think of them as friends, not viewers.”

Other older gamers find each other through player groups — online environments in which members post messages about their gaming activities. The Old Timers Guild is one such group. Deb Hickerson, 67, a longtime gamer who lives in Provo, Utah, reviews prospective members, adhering to the group’s credo, “No drama … all about the fun.” Translation: Don’t start posting about politics and religion on these message boards; post only about a shared interest in gaming.

Although the group is open to anyone 25 and older — a nod to gaming’s age stereotypes of what constitutes an “old-timer” — Hickerson especially appreciates its appeal to older people who find solace in gaming. One member is in a wheelchair, the result of a convenience store shooting, but in the gaming world “he could run all around.” Another member has lupus, others endure chronic pain, and Dickerson herself has a rare windpipe condition that restricts her breathing. But when she plays an online fantasy game, she is free from all that. “I can fly in EverQuest 2. I totally love flying!”

‘King of Kong’: The Last Word

And so we come to this: Video games today are everywhere, and multiple generations are playing them. For perspective, I talked to Walter Day, a 71-year-old whose interest in gaming legitimacy led to his founding Twin Galaxies, an organization that certifies and maintains a log of record scores. (Watch the acclaimed 2007 documentary King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters to see Day on film.)

“We are the pioneers. And we, as a generation, are still alive, still tooling with this and pushing this forward,” he told me. “The phenomenon of senior gamers is about to sprout and blossom and become a very, very big deal, because these tens and tens of millions of people aren’t going to retire from video games.”

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The 1999 sci-fi action movie The Matrix hooked a lot of people. Perhaps you were one of them. What fascinated and intrigued so many was the movie’s labyrinthine, esoteric plot and captivating dialogue.

While we by no means endorse the movie’s violence and objectionable language, its immense popularity and its fundamental premise do raise some interesting questions.

What Is the Matrix?

The Matrix centers on the concept that the known world is an illusion. It follows the story of a character called Neo.

All his life Neo has realized that there is something not quite right with the world he sees around him. The explanations given don’t quite fit the facts. As the story unfolds, it becomes apparent that the year is not somewhere in the late 1990s, as everyone believes, but the late 2190s. The world as we know it has been destroyed in a war between human beings and machines with artificial intelligence. Humans built the machines in the early 21^st century. And now, in a nuclear-winter-like setting in which these machines are deprived of sunlight as an energy source, they have enslaved the human race and are farming people as a source of bioelectrical energy.

The humans are kept in an unconscious state in podlike containers in a vast holding field, plugged in to a central computer. In this nightmarish scenario, everything in the world—cars, buildings, cities and countries—are part of a complex computer-generated virtual reality called the Matrix, within which the humans interact. Everything they see, smell and hear is part of this virtual construct and doesn’t really exist. A computer program merely stimulates their brains and deceives them into believing that they are all living normal 20^th-century lives—eating, sleeping, working and interacting together. They are all blinded to the truth about how and why they exist.

But a handful of people have escaped from the Matrix and know the truth.

One of these, a man called Morpheus, hacks into the Matrix and contacts Neo, telling him: “The world you see is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth. . . . Like everyone else, you were born into bondage, born into a prison that you cannot smell or taste or touch. A prison for your mind. Unfortunately, no one can be told what the Matrix is. You have to see it for yourself.”

Morpheus then presents Neo with two pills and asks him to make a choice. “You take the blue pill, the story ends, you wake up in your bed and believe whatever you want to believe. Take the red pill and you stay in Wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

Questions but No Answers

The Matrix is the brainchild of Andy and Larry Wachowski, who wrote the script and directed the movie. These former employees of Marvel Comics have a passion for exploring how mythology and classical legend inform culture. They wanted to make a superhero movie—one that would make people think about some of the bigger questions in life. They wanted to break new ground in action movies, create a new genre, and take moviemaking to new heights. By all accounts they succeeded.

The Wachowskis’ vivid imagination has stuffed the movie with multiple layers of both Eastern and Western philosophy, numerous allusions to Judeo-Christian themes, Japanimation, and kung fu action sequences. There are references to TV, cyberpunk, classical mythology and contemporary history. Even Ronald Reagan is cleverly and subtly worked in. The complex subtexts and secrets of the movie keep viewers enthralled as they try to fathom what it is all about. In an interview posted on the movie’s official website, visual effects supervisor John Gaeta commented that the movie is layered “to the point that . . . the audience will be completely baffled about what is real and unreal—which is, after all, the whole point.”

The Matrix seems to have reached people in a way that most movies do not. Editor Zach Staenberg remarks that people want to talk to him about it. “People want to tell me about how much it changed their lives, or how much they saw the world differently.” Keanu Reeves, who plays Neo, recalls, “When the film was coming out, we’d hear stories about people going more than once: twice, three times, nine times, ten times, eleven times!”

The movie seems to hold almost magical powers to stimulate astonishing revelations about the deeper meaning of life. How can this be? What is it about this foremost example of Hollywood-inspired digital enchantment that holds sway over people’s lives? Does it have any lasting significance for us, or is it just another example of moviemakers pushing the digital envelope of all-action sequences and pioneering special effects?

The Quest for Truth

The movie’s core theme examines the idea that people can be blinded to the truth about their existence, unable to know any better. They search but are unable to see the truth through the illusion that the world before them portrays.

As Morpheus tells Neo, “You’re here because you know something. What you know you can’t explain. But you feel it. You’ve felt it your entire life—that there is something wrong with the world. You don’t know what it is, but it’s there like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.”

When we attempt to think about the nature of our existence, about why we are here, the myriad complexities of life often stop us before we start. Life is just too complicated. How do we know what is real and what is simply illusion brought on by our subjective view of the world? How can we be objective about the universe we live in when we can understand it only through the five physical senses?

Is it possible that we could be blinded about why we exist?

Are we, like the people held captive in the Matrix, oblivious to why we are here? Have we been deceived into believing that the physical reality around us is all there really is to life? Or is there something more? Is it possible that humankind really is being held captive? What is the truth?

We believe that the Bible is the inspired Word of God and that it holds the answers to these perplexing questions. In its pages, God reveals that He created an invisible spirit realm before placing human beings on the earth. The angel Heylel (also referred to as Lucifer) was one of these beings. He allowed himself to become so filled with vanity and self-importance that he thought he could take over God’s throne and displace his Creator as ruler of the universe. When his plan failed, he was cast out of heaven and became Satan the devil, the enemy of God (Isaiah 14:12–15; Ezekiel 28:12–17).

When God created the first human beings in His image (Genesis 1:26–27) and gave them the potential to become His children, Satan set out to thwart God’s plan. He has blinded humankind to the true purpose of why we are here—to be born into God’s family and to govern with Him in His future kingdom, which Satan can never hope to do. Since the time of Satan’s intervention in human life, human minds have been held captive by this evil being who does not want us to know the truth. It’s a scenario reminiscent of the one Morpheus describes in the movie: “The world you see is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

In today’s world, Satan has deceived humanity into thinking that good is evil and evil is good. One of the deceptions foisted off on many is the belief that there is no spiritual realm—no God, no Satan, no right and no wrong. Through the Bible, God has explained this deception, but for the most part, we humans have chosen to reject God’s revelation, leaving Satan’s deception as the only option (Isaiah 5:20; Ephesians 2:1–2).

For the time being, God has allowed the human race to be taken in by this adversary (Revelation 12:9). Yet, once we recognize what has happened, we are free to choose between obeying God and being set free from Satan’s matrix (by the truth, the red pill) or remaining oblivious and continuing to be dominated by Satan’s way (the blue pill).

But because Satan has held humanity captive, in the end God will remove him from the scene and give all who have ever lived an opportunity to reevaluate the choices they have made in life.

In The Matrix, people had no way of knowing that the computer-generated reality wasn’t real. Similarly, we have no scientific way of detecting or refuting the spirit world. But like Neo, we experience things, “like a splinter in the mind,” that do not make sense without an understanding of the existence of the biblically revealed spiritual dimension.

Thankfully, we can be told what the truth is, though again like Neo, we have to be willing to see it for ourselves.

And like Neo, we are offered two options. First, the story ends, we wake up in our beds and believe whatever we want to believe. Or we stay and are shown how deep the rabbit hole goes.

As Morpheus says, all that’s being offered is the truth. Nothing more.

The choice is ours.

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