‘Game of Thrones’ Fans’ Tweets Bring Down King Joffrey Statue

Bring down the King!

Video still from the SoHo advertisement showing the King Joffrey statue before it was torn down.

Ever wish you could personally take down Game of Thrones‘ reviled King Joffrey? A cable company in New Zealand allowed a mob of Westeros fans to do just that in anticipation of the fourth season airing there, reports Ads of the World.

SoHo, a premium cable channel on New Zealand’s SKY TV, created a 23-foot-tall statue of King Joffrey, replete with the antlered Baratheon crown and an inscribed pedestal reading “King Joffrey Baratheon, Lord of the Seven Kingdoms, Protector of the Realm.”

Then, they erected the giant sculpture in the center of the country’s largest public square, and let fans do the rest through an ingenious social media campaign.

Video still from the SoHo advertisement showing the King Joffrey statue as it is being torn down.

Video still from the SoHo advertisement showing the King Joffrey statue as it is being torn down.

Each tweet with the hashtag #BringDowntheKing helped turn a massive winch which pulled a rope tied to the statue’s waist. Over the course of five days and 875,000 tweets, the rope became tighter and tighter, taking the statue to a precarious angle.

Thousands of people gathered in the square the night of the season premiere and many more tuned into a live-stream broadcast, reportedly the largest in Australasian history. Around 6:00 p.m., the statue came crashing down, to the delight of Joffrey haters everywhere. (Of course, as New Zealand fans may or may not know, and artnet News previously reported—SPOILER ALERT—the boy-king is not long for this season, as he is murdered in the second episode during his wedding feast.)

The fallen King Joffrey statue from the SoHo advertisement. Photo: via Twitter.

The fallen King Joffrey statue from the SoHo advertisement.
Photo: via Twitter.

The stunt served both to harness the power of social media for good (or at least to physical effect) and as a clever visual play on the spinning gears seen in the show’s opening credit sequence. It also recalls real life demonstrations against artistic representations of unpopular political figures, such as the similarly staged destruction of a statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, or, more recently, the one of Vladimir Lenin in the Ukraine (see video at IJReview).

Watch the heartwarming ad below:

 

Video stills from the SoHo advertisement showing the King Joffrey statue before it was torn down.

Video stills from the SoHo advertisement showing the King Joffrey statue before it was torn down.


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