Alright, I’m ready.
King Tommen Baratheon
I still get chills hearing the Game Of Thrones theme song. Knowing that tells me I love it, and situates Ramin Djawadi’s work in my ultimate memory. For legions of fans of the TV show its already got there, celebrated with wanton misuse of old classics in mash-up memes; even the utterly ridiculous spreading like wildfire. For many, many others, it’s not going smoothly at all. The post-finale regurgitation feels good, for closure is oh-so-satisfying.
But – – comparisons create overlap, creating an enduring metric for all wannabe-great-TV.
Shall we begin?
Queen Daenerys Targaryen
I gave GoT a Pass when I caught the tell-tales of a white-centric story. Some minutes into episode 1 I knew I was intrigued despite, by halfway in, I thought I would go the distance. Predominantly white casts are a legacy of colonialism/white supremacy, not a narrative formula born of great writing. My interest-satisfaction nexus could suspend my disbeliefs. I was eager to see a complex of ideas known in our time wrought in feudal fantasy. It’s glorious to see epic power games staged in period-fashion all colourful and bright, and doubly fantastic for artistic work to transcend their original medium. I adored the mixing in of fire-born dragons, witches, uber-wolves, and wildling giants; the unreal becomes real for the characters and audience both, as we share in the revelations. I bend the knee to technical geniuses that deliver cinematic delight for my visual appetite. Weiss, Benioff and the crew have made an indelible mark for incredible showmanship. From modern-day rock bands cranking out fandom anthems, to more European accents than a South African ear can hear, our interest in Westeros is exquisitely fabricated. It delivered musically, magically… crept into our response-facilities in visceral parallels to racism, assassination and inter-generational violence.
Where Reign didn’t succeed, I became obsessed with Kings Landing politics. George R.R. Martin captures our interest whilst murdering frontrunners, creating social media urban legend: don’t let George know your favourites! It’s a mark of literary courage beautifully manifested in reams of memorable scenes, but profoundly so in The Red Wedding. A global wave of recognition followed the ruin of House Stark. We hated it, wanted more, and invested in the telling. Consider that season 1 episode: Cersei and Robert at supper. It’s just Lena Headey and Mark Addy talking of Lyanna Stark, but through sheer conviction, they create an emotional spectre that haunts their pretend-love-marriage. Or season 2, Michelle Fairley and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, discussing Bran’s fall in the stockade. When Catelyn utters Why?! you can feel the awkward truth between them. You couldn’t find the words for Jamie either. We fall in love and hate – and flip regularly – because performers do that masterful work. We feel it, tune in, and thereby suspend our disbeliefs, allowing dialogue to wheedle perception into acceptance. This-that-we-have-seen makes a big impression. If you’re a creative fanatic, such impressions swirl, as new shows make it into your personal bibliography – casts, directors, dialogues, themes, costume, ratings, sex, music… What we have seen and heard influences what we look to next.
Ours Is The Fury
Words of House Baratheon
Much has been said about GoT on this point, if you pop over to Vox, The Verge, Valyrian Cutz, or felt a desire to Screenrant. Slavoj Zizek’s weighed in: so has Stephen King. It’s not escaping those of us who’ve heard particular songs before, though we were fabulously distracted. I was shattered when King Renly was murdered, given there was no shadowy evil to work with. Gethin Anthony’s facial expressions just broke my queer heart. A GREAT climax, cherry-topped by Gwendoline Christie’s curdling scream as Kings Guard Lady Brienne. In the later, intimate fire-side scene with Pod, we are utterly convinced to keep his memory alive and most beloved. It’s not until season 6, as Ser Loras Tyrell (Finn Jones) goes up in flames to some truly awesome music, does it ring uncomfortably: we’re seeing off the queer characters one by one. Their time on-screen is much to do with sex scenes, snatches of profound thinking on bisexuality and discrimination, with Finn and Pedro Pascal (the intriguingly vengeful Oberyn Martell) getting a single fight a piece.
Similarly, Qarth was a spectacular near-distraction. Xaro Xhoan Daxos was a summery delight when he turned from pushy romantic to sinister politician. The complexity of character agendas convinces you the creatives are thinking as much as tinkering with lifelines. I relished that scripted death; a testament to Nonso Anozie entertaining us fully, till his last Khaleesiii– But the door keeps closing on storylines featuring black and brown characters. In one foul, strategically bogus swoop, the Dothraki Horde vanished before our eyes. For these kinds of reasons, season 8 has bottle-necked:
Z: unbelievable, 7 seasons, +2years and they gave us this trash?
C: Game of Thrones (Season 8) A Song of Disappointment and Bad Character Development. What a waste of 9 years
K: Don’t get me wrong, I haven’t been too happy with this season but I’m fully behind this decision. I also think I can be okay with this decision thematically without being okay with it on a meta-level. I’m upset that a strong female character has been used to represent “hysteria” and that the show has now set up Jon as this messianic figure. That doesn’t mean I don’t think this works on a thematic level.
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In a post-Shakespeare world, predictable is not high on the satisfaction scale. This particular theme is a can of worms, placing itself within literature’s own legacy representing women characters, and the treatment of women authors. Starting strong, despite the limitations of sexist tradition in Westeros and Essos, by season 7 we saw the utter withdrawal of Melisandre, Missandei, Ellaria, and in season 8, Arya and Daenerys, from affecting central plotlines. They are reduced to pieces of action before marvellous death. It’s an opportunity squandered by the writers, seeing as A Song Of Fire And Ice is incomplete: their various histories, differing perspectives, sometimes haste to act, dries up as they comply with the Dragon Queen. A perfect alliance? Rather, one by one they vanish from the table, as the creative will behind their narratives disappear.
GoT showrunners choose the cast and plots with the best of intentions, and observably, meticulously thought through choices along the almost-decade-long, intercontinental production journey. They aimed to deliver, and roped us in deep with sublime landscapes and suspenseful writing: seasons 1 to 6 are so-damn good it’s not likely we’ll see a reboot in our lifetime. It’s not just lifted off Martin’s pages word for word. Which begs the question of all questions: when D&D foresaw running out of source material, why didn’t they look in HBO’s backyard?
I dunno know who you think you are, but before the night is through,
I wanna do bad things with you.
Trueblood theme song
When we meet Tara-May Thornton, the creative intentions of showrunners is clear. It’s a stellar list of Alan Ball, L Word’s Angela Robinson, Six Feet Under’s Nancy Oliver, and more. The theme song is OMIWOW thanks to Jace Everett (and veteran Nathan Barr), and perfectly suits the grimy homage to backwater America. Best of all, a come-as-you-are company of characters creating a jambalaya of contemporary-yummy that went some distance intellectually, cheesily, dramatically, contemporarily. HBO-contracted creatives had flipped the script on the original Tara from Charlaine Harris’s Southern Vampire Mysteries. Rutina Wesley still is a beloved legend because of that role. There was also this…
Lafayette: Now listen, I know the way this shit went down is real embarrassing. But if you keep it one hundred with yourself and honest, then you know this is not the man for you.
Jessica: Because he’s the man for you?
Lafayette: If he is, what’s so fucking unimaginable about that, Red, huh? Everybody else in this fucking town is falling in love, and getting engaged, and having babies. Has it ever fucking occurred to you that Lafayette, that queen that make all you white heterosexuals laugh and feel good about yourselves, has it fucking ever occurred to you that maybe I want a piece of happiness too?
Trueblood, s7 e5
Nelsan Ellis delivers a beautifully articulated truth that lands on those behind the camera. The gate-kept screen-destinies of Black, Latino, Latina, and Queer characters who came-and-went as industry pen-holders pleased, adding sex, drugs and socio-cultural flavours when scripts needed it, are under the spotlight. It was only ever that rope, the signs, and those side-entrances. Without needing to point fingers, a look back at history tells us the picture was always mixed up. Sharing the stage and spotlight equally across time and space is the new move, being brave at an executive level, being creatively and socially in-step, at a narrative level. It’s following the real tide that breaks ground. Most of the representational pay-off for real humans is being known as we are, acknowledging the fluid, human becoming of all of us, and how opportunistic and adaptive we are proving to be. The creative pay-off is obvious.
Canonically speaking, it’s time to unlock the discrimination against once-upon-a-time stock-characters and the folks who portray them. This is creatively healthy (THANK YOU Shonda Rhimes!), to write innovatively, to write for talent that exists, to take all stories to new places, mixing up the age-old recipes. Its courage beyond literary courage that’s desirable now, and already called upon (THANK YOU Tessa Thompson, Viola Davis, and so many more before and after them.)
Suppose for me, that’s where Game Of Thrones the TV show ultimately goes: on the shelf behind Heroes.
