The Good died Young in Game of Thrones.
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I’ve had a running theory for the longest that If not empirically, at least visually there are a great deal of implications that people have been conditioned to be turned off, suspicious, and disapproving of extremely principled people. Our now very collective reactions to their avatars in film and television have a lot to say about that. My own personal belief is that, that doesn’t have to be. That it's an outgrowth of a systemic imbalance inherent in any system or populous that values profit, status, results, and most importantly power more than its people. Maybe no other show or film points a mirror in that direction more accurately or plainly than HBO’s Game of Thrones. The big themed, fantasy as political theater series allows fans to draw critical lines in the sand about their favorite characters (in much the same way as a soap opera). If you fancy paying attention to all the different theories, and analysis around said characters, it tends to give profound insight into various psychological phenomenon regarding perspective, and where many of us draw boundaries around the value of sticking to ones principles, and morality. People bond to characters they see portions of themselves in, and when their surrogate self is threatened with extinction, then the relative “goodness”; principles, humility, and ethics of said person(s) ( once revered qualities of said characters) become stupidity, naivety, and bitch-assedness.
The way we respond to art or entertainment is a combination of our perception of the art, the artist and ourselves. Whatever limitations (or lack of) to our understanding of the art, or perception of that art is in certain aspects directly related to the limitations of our own perception, the art, or those set in place by the artist. It is no easy task discerning which of these three is most responsible for a failing, or misfire of some art, when the failing itself is relative, but repetition does help. If a number of people claim the David Benoiff and D.B. Weiss version of the author George R.R. Martin’s most revered patriarch Ned Stark was too honest, then it’s at least interesting to ask why? Is this a projection or something encoded into the show? In the case of Game of Thrones both the show and seemingly the books (I haven’t read them) it’s in no small part due to the implied ramifications and values that the writers created within the context of choices Ned made.
Ned’s honor is brought up a great deal of times before and after his death in this regard, and the message is never the cruelty and treachery of those around him, but his own decency as a weight around his own neck, and it exemplifies the crux of my theory. My own personal problem with this is two fold; One, the natural conclusion is then that Ned should want to live more than he should want to be principled. After all, if you take for instance his choice to reveal to Cersei his awareness of her betrayal, and incest, it is not merely to be honest for honesty’s sake. He informs her because he knew exactly what Robert would do if he found out she and Jaimie’s secret while Cersei and all her kinfolk were still in the castle (and obviously see last video for precedent of Robert’s willingness). Making the ethical decision to not want the blood of children on your hands in not naivety, and If your position is that he should’ve kept the secret to himself, your position is also like Roberts.. “F*** them kids”. Considering, who at least one Lannister child turned out to be, and that they would all die anyway, this may not feel like too bad a consequence, but Ned having no way of knowing of Cersei’s tragic prophecy concerning her children it makes it no less troubling and unscrupulous a secret to hold. Ned unlike others, in this show filled to the brim with unconscionable people - held his honor more valuable than his life, it was a righteous decision, not a folly, and one rooted in his own distinct moral code.
This in my mind is my biggest grievance with writers and show-runners David Benoiff , and D.B. Weiss. Benoiff and Weiss, while effective storytellers, made clear a political leaning that anchored itself in the unimaginative ruminations of a libertarian philosopher like Jordan Peterson. The details of the “fantasy” world these men helped bring to life, aided to light their own biases. Ones which cede the highest nobility, intelligence, and worthiness to white men. The kind that acknowledges in rations that the world is a terrible place for the oppressed while tipping its hat to the power elite on their cunning. The kind that left nobles laughing off the idea of democracy, and fairness, giving vitality to the notions of white and male superiority by way of an elaborate game of three card monte that fraudulently implied the possibility maybe someone else, (in this case mostly white women) might be the clear victors, but ultimately circling back to conventional tropes. Pivoting between narrative guided by character and narratives guided by plot, it became increasingly clear a revolution was not to be televised. Game of Thrones could’ve been a show that imagined what a grass roots revolution offset by the death of a good man might look like in a world molded in the still yet to be realized oasis of fantasy. Female warrior dragon riders, black equestrian armies, and various peoples of color in major seats of power like Dorne challenging white supremacy. Instead it was privileged redundancy that feigned at creating fantasy while living plainly in the real world. Tossing proverbial half gnawed bones of acknowledgment of the racism, sexism, and rape culture they themselves unnecessarily created in a fantasy world as meaty commentary. Teasing us with the power and skilled finesse of Dornish warriors, male and female - only to unceremoniously dispatch them in a dungeon of whiteness. We were all deceived by a show who well before the pitfalls of this final season, seemed to be green-lighting rape and trauma underneath the show runners very precarious ideals. Which amounted to slight of hand subversions that ultimately led us back to the world as we know. Boxed into this particular form of ostentatious banality disguised as gritty narrative the audience had very little choice but to, view this “fantasy” from within the narrow margins of their privileged and reductive cynicism. Ultimately the shows great flaw was disingenuously presenting a fantastical world where hope for truly revolutionary ideas like the blind justice of consequence, black people and people of color flourishing under the winds of their own truly unique development, or women garnishing and brandishing power in ways men had never before seen, was the only fantasy.
Re-visisted D&D have then not created a fantasy but in fact hyperrealism constructed as fantasy. A mirror of our world featuring fantastic elements wherein which the lesson is that no good deed goes unpunished, not that the those in power and their endless machinations ruin a good thing. Ethics, morals, and values should be put aside for the sake of living , politicking, and making sure ones own house survives. I am suddenly reminded of a quote I read from a philosopher I hadn't heard of until then named Callicles who reportedly said "To hell with morality, this has been propounded by the weak to debilitate the power of the strong." Between the villainy of Game of Thrones, and the just, this was an oft repeated theme, and it was rarely effectively challenged in any way. Ned loses a head there, Sansa is raped, so is Dany who listens to Tyrion’s just and fair council and had havoc visited upon her head here, and Jon barely survives everywhere..
Having successfully gotten most of us to agree with this premise that the road to hell is not only paved with good intentions, but that good intentions are hell, we must and ask ourselves in essence "are we really about that life". Do we in fact like the values we commonly associate with good people, or do we like the idea of them in ice, without any actual functioning interaction with consequences,and away from our own internal and possibly competing agendas? Do we in fact, maybe a little despise these traits and the consistency of others who allow them to govern them? In real life even I wonder what is the effect on an oppressed population who have been repeatedly exposed to the deaths of ethically staunch and deeply coded folk like Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X? It's worth examining I think our collectively trauma over historical and current sociological crimes. Writers Benoiff and Weiss seem to have by happenstance fell upon creating a landmark television series that acts almost as a sociological litmus test for where our individual tolerance for goodwill and honor lie in a world that SEEMS to constantly berate, and harm us for it, because well …they berated and harmed the characters in theirs and Martin’s world for it. I want to put an emphasis on "seems" in my last sentence, because perspective and bias play large roles in our interpretation of the world and people around us. For example again the "ill fated" Stark decision. Instead of Game of Thrones posing a question, they chose creating a false equivalence between Ned's decision to be honorable, and his death. When in fact it's at least as possible Ned was always gonna die because leaders, and people with immense power wanted him dead. because his ethics, his decency was always a threat. Put another way from another medium of entertainment ..film - why get mad at Serpico for being an honest cop? Instead of the corrupt system that hated him for his honesty? We can look to history for some evidence of the inevitability of danger and harm in our own american history. When Malcolm X split from the nation of Islam over finding out his teacher and leader the “Honorable” Elijah Muhammed was at least morally a fraud, as was the kind of Islam he had fostered, he had actually kept secret the truth of paternal malfeasance that laid bare the truth to himself. yet that in no way guaranteed his survival, they still in fact wanted him dead.
The danger in setting up and implying that anyone is too honest is that it puts the onus on the victim, (a righteous one worser still) not the people committing the harm. We begin to root for the beauty of power elite, and despise the homeliness of morality. The more you murder, rape, maim, anyone with any sense of a moral compass, while implying that the reasons for their death is directly related to that compass, the more the audience picks up on cues and begins to root for good people to get some sense and throw away some of that pesky virtue and morality. The same is true in the real as in one rooted (half- heartedly even) in fantasy. We thusly begin rooting not for Sansa's strength as a Stark woman , owing to her strong and ever loving mother nor her noble father, but as a Littlefinger acolyte?? For nearly the entirety of the show the series had an interesting intriguing theme of the randomness and inevitability of consequence that wanted so badly to live and breathe. Where who lived and died wasn't determined by audience favorites, mythological determinism, and the usual storytelling devices and tropes, but by small events, competing agendas, chance, and effect. For all his horrible crimes Joffrey's death was as inevitable in this world as Ned's and the actual opening for it was the death of Tywin, but in essence the seal was his marriage to the granddaughter of one Olenna Tyrell aka "The Wrong one". The hound almost died over a misunderstanding and per chance encounter with Brienne. This is the most important offering from the show, and yet the writers and show-runners seemed hell bent on convincing us of the more tired and banal theme of no good deed going unpunished, and the world as "all about cocks" and other such nonsense. This season the writers have Brienne say that Jaime lost his hand trying to save her honor, here again we have cocks and good deeds. But a better interpretation is that Jaime lost his hand because he was being smug, and more importantly because he was hated. His "Lannisterness" his money, his privilege, and his smarmy condescension along with it, put the final nails in his hand's coffin, not standing up for Brienne.
This is important for obvious reasons, the most important being you dont end up with a moral of the story that goes "There's a price for doing good, in this case apprehending a rape" . “The world is what we make it” the saying goes, and one place we could start with is in the stories we tell. It's very hard to convince people of the value of morality, justice, virtue, and kindness, when at every turn in storytelling and narrative you try and convince others its directly related to suffering and pain. Worser still and more importantly that it has to be that way. Sometimes people pay for their crimes, sometimes they don't, sometimes taking an ethical stand is less than rewarding and mostly painful, sometimes, maybe most times in some way shape or form it's worth it. Jaime himself found this out, having the favor returned to him by Brienne in the early portion of the final season. Drawing and connecting these threads, whether by happenstance, or intent is where the writers, directors and Benoiff and Weiss were at their best, but at their worst they sold out on "Game of Thrones " as a cynical rote concept of power, and a cliff notes version of relational dynamics that created an audience who learned to root for oppression in the form of majesty, and bemoan the best of us and in us. Because what was created was a completely imagined world where good dies young, so too did the best possibilities for Game of Thrones. Making the promise Game of Thrones once showed of revolutionary television as empty as Daenerys’s own revolution. What Benoiff and Weiss practiced was narrative entrapment. Luring viewers into these two’s own limited conception of freedom, hope, and change to convict the audiences favorite characters, and in some ways indict their own values in the stead of the highest ideals in fantasy. They peddled a view so reductive, it began to limit the audience. A view best summed up as when you play the game of thrones you play to win, or you die. With that as its sort of mantra we were bound to be both disappointed, and beguiled. For me I’m left with one of my favorite quotes from Quentin Tarantino’s Jackie Brown…
“”What the fuck happened to you man, shit your ass used to be beautiful”…”
