Warn the Saudis!

GoT - Where Are The Pitchforks?

The bind that a modern writer has when dealing with a fictional world like Westros set in some kind of endless medieval period ‘might be’ how to undermine that world.  In ‘A Song of Ice and Fire,” the role of the Westerosi peasants, laborers, townspeople, conscripts, prisoners and ultimately victims is almost non-existent. Barring short shit-throwing efforts against Joffrey and Cersei, they are merely objects to the lords and ladies of the 7 Kingdoms.  It is, after all, a ‘game of thrones’ centered on Westros– a title which clearly makes fun of the whole power and wealth-driven process.  Many people cheering for their favorite king or queen might have missed this.  GoT is much like the present, as is evident.  Yet the TV series and the books 'Game of Thrones' is based on leave the peasantry and townspeople uninvolved or bystanders – unlike actual history.  And so in GoT we are left with kingdoms.  The people have no independent ‘agency,’ as the academics like to say.

Where are the Pitchforks?

The only Westerosi forces that represent something democratic outside the kingdoms are the Wildlings, who recognize no royalty; and the Brotherhood Without Banners, backed by the God of Light.  And perhaps Jon Snow, who rejects his Targaryen claim to the throne. 

The narrative arc of the White Walkers and the Night King is clearly about climate change, not an 'othering' identity as some liberals have recently suggested.  This overwhelming existential danger ‘should’ have allowed the various factions – the 7 Kingdoms, the Wildlings, the Brotherhood Without Banners, the Dothraki, the Unsullied – to unite.  Like Trump and other climate deniers, Cersei and Euron Greyjoy had no truck with this.  The environmental danger was neatly disposed of with one unbelievable stab wound by Arya, so that wide social narrative fell apart and we were left with the little kingdoms again.  Without that tricky stab, the Night King would have won, as the climate change zombies had killed almost everyone.  Which they still might.

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DAENEryS:

Daenerys had been pictured as a megalomaniac for a long time, so her legions of ‘supporters’ should not be surprised.  That would mean they have ignored the narrative of someone who wants everyone to ‘bend the knee’ or else.  She is the ‘queen’ to rule them all - shades of LotR.  This might disappoint the Hillary Clinton or Elizabeth Warren fans, but then it says something revealing about them.  Ah, the limits of bourgeois feminism!

London after the Blitz or ...

Daenerys is like the U.S. military, which champions itself as a 'liberator' because it freed the slaves in 1865 and then dropped nuclear weapons on Hiroshima and Nagasaki - a firestorm worse than this.  JRR Martin likened the dragons to nuclear weapons in prior interviews and writers' opinions do actually matter.  In that war the U.S. also incinerated many German (Dresden) and Japanese cities full of civilians through conventional bombing.   Probably Hiroshima/Nagasaki is the best comparison to what happened to King's Landing. Later the U.S. heavily bombed 18 of 23 cities in northern Korea, then wiped out a bunch of villages in Vietnam to 'save them' while leveling Hanoi. More recently there have been several Iraq wars using massive bombing and artillery where the victims were again civilians.  These laid waste to cities like Baghdad, Fallujah and Tripoli.  Aleppo and Raqqa were recently destroyed by U.S. bombers to save them from Daesh, though civilians were allowed to leave – unlike Daenerys.   

To this day, gruesome military interventions are styled as ‘humanitarian’ efforts to free people from tyrants, nearly always in order to put another tyrant in their place.  If you didn’t like the ash-covered and body-charred city of King’s Landing then you shouldn’t be cheering for the military or royalty.  But in the U.S. this is second nature for part of the population.  Now we are waiting for more bombs to fall on Iran or Cuba or Venezuela or the Donbas or Chinese ships or ?  Unlike part of our population, JRR Martin does not like war or ‘good kings’ so this is partially reflected in this story.

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Betting Pool - Spoiler

So who won the game, as the betting pools predicted? 

We have Drogon to thank for melting that damn Iron Throne.  We have Jon Snow ‘doing the right thing’ and putting another mad Queen out of our misery, but he gets punished for this.  So Bran Stark, the mystic 3-Eyed Raven, ‘wins!’  He rejects war with Sansa, his sister, who gets independence for Winterfell and a crown.  6 kingdoms and counting! He won’t have a son, so no lord has to ‘bend the knee’ to a line of his creepy raven kids.  He’s a cipher who knows everything and does nothing.  They wheel him into meetings and wheel him out like someone in a nursing home.  The Iron Throne is now a wheelchair!   The new-old Hand Tyrion Lannister, the compassionate dwarf, conducts a comic meeting about rebuilding King’s Landing – yet no mention of cholera or burying the dead.  From tragedy to farce.  The technocrat reigns. 

Arya goes off 'west' to find Ireland or Iceland on a Stark ship, which made no sense at all.  From assassin to explorer.

For killing Daenerys, Snow is exiled to Castle Black by Grey Worm, which is really quite a light sentence for a queen-slayer.  Jon gives up any claim to royalty, leaving the craziness behind, including Castle Black.  Perhaps he will find another Ygritte beyond the Wall in Scotland with Giantsbane and the Wildlings - who by no accident are called 'the Free Folk.'  Jon's is an anti-royal path and he's about the only one. The Dothraki and the Unsullied go home, much to their relief I’m sure, as being cannon-fodder is an unpleasant duty.  Until climate change forces some of them to again cross the other ‘narrow sea’ and find refuge in Germany, France or England.  They are, after all, representative of Africa and the Middle East in this narrative, but have lost their blonde ‘savior.’

This agreement came about in some kind of “Runnymede” discussion among the remaining lords of Westros, tired of war and authoritarian rulers.  The writers (and Martin) were no doubt plumbing history to see how to ‘break the wheel.’  This happened historically when the English nobles got King John to sign the democratic Magna Carta at Runnymede (a ‘meeting meadow’ near London) in 1215.  No Magna Carta here surely, and no King John or Jon or Cersei or Daenerys.  Tarly, the Book Worm, nevertheless suggests democracy.  They all laugh at him.  Even Sansa has an indulgent smile.  Poor sweet boy.

So that is how royalty got its kind of comeuppance on GoT.  Partial independence, a blank mystic king, more power to the lords and peace for a time. We will have to wait for all of them to be totally disposed of by revolution.

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 WRITING

As to the complaints about the change in writing after the show-runners took over from JRR Martin’s text, there is an excellent article by Zeynep Tufekci in the Scientific American (here: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/observations/the-real-reason-fans-hate-the-last-season-of-game-of-thrones/?redirect=1 ) that partly explains the change from ‘social’ writing to individualist, psychological writing that occurred in ‘Game of Thrones.’  Tufekci points out that many beloved characters continued even when their deaths were inevitable.  The “Long Night” episode should have seen most of them dead.  But most of the 'fan favorites' were still alive after this bloodbath.  Brienne of Tarth even gets mercy sex!  Tufeckci also spotlights the weak logic of ‘fate’ or genetics, the same fate that Bran ‘knows.’

C.G. Gibbs made this same point in 2015 about present U.S. fiction at a literary talk at May Day Books for his novel ‘Factory Days.’   At present the memoir, the family story, dysfunction, psychology, the ‘character,’ the ‘hero’ are still the center of much U.S. television, film and fiction.  Some have called the hyper-individualist memoir the ‘literary expression of neo-liberalism.’ Essentially, the socially-conscious early 20^th century writing of people like Upton Sinclair, John Steinbeck, John Dos Passos, Richard Wright, Jack London, Mike Gold, Jack Conroy, Meridel LeSeur, B. Traven, Agnes Smedley, Theodore Dreiser, James T. Farrell, Tillie Olsen and Edward Dahlberg became a thing of the past, especially as it relates to the working classes and capitalism.  African American fiction is about the only strain to partly carry on this U.S. tradition past the 1940s. 

The real pyramid had a vastly larger 'bottom.'

And so GoT is done.  In reality, any story set in a medieval economy and society, with so many situations, history and characters could never be finished, as it reflects the real world – which never stops.  Any ending is arbitrary.  Individuals die but history continues because society is not built on individuals but on the social relations of millions.  It should end up with the revolutionary destruction of the serf economy that Westros and the Iron Bank are built on, the subsequent advent of capitalism, which is 'in the egg' in King's Landing, and its eventual replacement by world-wide socialism.  But JRR Martin will have to write that story until he is about 92 years old. He’s 71 now…

Even the GoT documentary about how they shot the last season reveals the hundreds of extras, artisans, artists, organizers and technical workers needed to do this film or any film.  The actors, director and show-runners are only the few at the top of a very big pyramid.

Other reviews on GoT, below.  Use blog search box, upper left, under ‘Game of Thrones’ or ‘GoT.’  Reviews on fiction books, type ‘fiction.’  A link to YouTube program 'Democratic Dimensions' where CG Gibbs discusses the present dearth of socially-aware fiction and the literary mafia: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lpC8nqtw0kU

A ‘tip of the hat’ to Barry Link for the Scientific American link.

The Kulture Kommissar

May 21, 2019