Facebook Rebbe against Mother of Dragons: Is 'Game of Thrones' porn?

Popular social media personality, Rabbi Moshe Ratt, slams the global TV hit "Game of Thrones" and calls it pornography.

The Iron Throne is seen on the set of the television series Game of Thrones in the Titanic Quarter of Belfast, Northern Ireland, Picture taken June 24, 2014 (photo credit: PHIL NOBLE/REUTERS)
The Iron Throne is seen on the set of the television series Game of Thrones in the Titanic Quarter of Belfast, Northern Ireland, Picture taken June 24, 2014
(photo credit: PHIL NOBLE/REUTERS)
Rabbi Moshe Ratt, who is a widely followed rabbi on social media, slammed the global hit television series "Game of Thrones" on Wednesday saying it’s "plain pornography that is forbidden to watch by Jewish law." 
“Porn is porn,” he wrote, “even if you add to it dragons, jousting and characters with complex personalities.”
Ratt is not the first rabbi to make the argument that the series is pornographic due to its extensive use of male and female nudity and depictions of sex. Those who enjoy the show, find it a daring exploration of human behavior, including incest and masochism. Those who find the show repulsive claim it further infuses porn-like norms into pop culture and warn against this trend.
The show is also extremely violent, with scenes depicting murder and eating of raw horse-hearts. The hearts used in shooting the scene were made from solidified jam, reports the Daily Mirror, but most viewers don’t bother with such details.  
In fact, the series seems to outdo porn, with PornHub reporting a four percent drop in users when the show is aired, The New York Post reported.
To Ratt, the issue could not be simpler, even if those who employ sex-workers are a rich production company and those who engage in such work are actors, it is still sex-work, he argues.
“Watching pornography is forbidden according to Jewish law, and is one of the hardest things to repent for," he said. 
The reason, he said, is that most people who do it don’t even regard it as a harsh sin and ergo are less likely to stop.
“Worse than those who watch porn for arousal, are those who watch it without thinking, with no excitement…and this is without talking about the rape culture and violence that are folded in it," he continued.

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Ratt said that the fact that many people (“including religious Jews”) talk about watching porn freely is an expression of moral decline, but does not make the act any less sinful. Rather, it "makes the sin comfortable."
Sibel Kekilli, Aeryn Walker, Maisie Dee and Sahara Knite are all adult film performers who appeared on the show, the New York Post reported.
Pornography, once restricted and frowned upon, is now easily accessible around the world to anyone with web access and a mobile phone.
The effects of this change on human sexuality in the West are still hotly debated, with some claiming it allows people to feel more comfortable with what they enjoy and others claiming it shatters the abilities of young people to achieve true intimacy.  
In the audible book The Butterfly Effect, Jewish-British writer Jon Ronson actually discovers that, due to the nature of online culture, adult film stars are making less and less money these days as their work is placed online and seen for free.  
The hit show is not without at least some Jewish elements thrown around the seven kingdoms. 
The writers of the show, David Benioff and D.B Weiss, are Jewish-Americans.
Israeli actors Ania Bukstein and Yousef Sweid played in the series as Linvara and Ash. 

Former Deputy Director of the CIA David Cohen, another Jewish-American, also made a cameo appearance on the show holding a bowl of soup, JTA reported.