An end rant

To be fair, I liked to hate it more than I actually liked it. 

But I have tried to like it – or at least get it.

I remember seeing the teasers when I was still living in our Newton apartment.  I was excited for a drama about castles and swords, with long dresses and armor.  I mean, I have long been enamored of castles and swords and long dresses and armor.  Even before I worked in an armor museum.  Plus, Sean Bean.  But in 2011 I couldn’t maintain my interest in one episode.  It required too much attention that I didn’t have for television at that time in my life.  Except for Dr. Who.

A couple years passed.  I cut the cable cord, so I thought I would give it another try with Netflix DVDs.  (Remember when that was what Netflix was about – or that it wasn’t THAT long ago?).  But even then, I couldn’t get into it.  Especially the violence.

I tried to read the book.  I don’t think I got into more than the sample chapter on Amazon and decided just to invest in the soundtrack… which as it turned out was good for other stories I was starting to formulate in my mind.

Those stories took me to Ireland four years ago.  I spent a week driving through Northern Ireland, where if you read the credits or have any conversation with me about Game of Thrones, you know that is where they film some of the exteriors and many interiors (in the old shipbuilding factories – which fascinated me on a socioeconomic and historic twist – I mean what kind of energy lives in the building that constructed the Titanic?).  Anyway, much of the tourist industry there is all about HBO’s show.  I was kind of annoyed that the ancient magic I was looking for was diluted by those fans.  But in a twist of fate, my fandom of Northern Irish landscapes drove me to watch every available episode when I came home.

I was pulled into the story… enough to watch on a daily basis more or less to catch up to five seasons.  I enjoyed seeing the green hills and cliffs on the beaches and crashing northern sea that I crave to feel splash on my feet.  I have downloaded and listen to every soundtrack (you better believe the newly released season 8 is playing right now), but mostly I still liked to hate it.

This year I hated it less.  I surprised myself by how little the violence disturbed me at the start of the six episodes.  Maybe there was a little less of it.  I contemplated how angry and stressed I’ve been about a few things and wondered if the fantasy was less upsetting to me as a consequence.  I even found myself caring about the characters a little more.  But… that didn’t last very long.

I know my opinion is a minor one.  I also know that my opinion is entirely formed by my taste and history and emotions.  It isn’t necessarily what has been intended by the authors or what other fans get from it.  Indeed, maybe it is the writer fascination in me that kept me going back – both the voyeuristic people watching of the fans and the greedy business person wanting to know what made fans build Sunday nights around this show for eight years.

So now that I’ve said all that, I am going to rant about my issues with this show.  It’s mostly to dump it out of my brain so I can go back to writing my stories that some may love and some may hate… but here goes.

The violence really is problematic for me.  It was excessive to a fault.  The fault that after a point it seemed cartoonish.  That episode where (character names elude me and it doesn’t mean enough to look it up) there was the challenge in lieu of executing Tyrion for killing Joffrey and the guy was killed by having his eyes squished out of his head.  That was… that was just too much.  You can tell me I’m just overly sensitive.  Yeah.  I suppose I am.  I’ve spent a good portion of my life thinking about violence.  I am the daughter of a vet.  I worked for 8 years in an organization that tried to discover ways to prevent violence (both with fighting and bullying).  I also write about it.  The sticking point for me with this show  is that so much of it is filmed in Northern Ireland, where I saw the history of violence and the consequence of it through a whole different lens.

I remember having a conversation with a cab driver, as he took me from Ballymena back to my B&B in Ballycastle after a very stressful day – which oddly enough happened in the next town over from where they were filming season six.  He had never seen the show, but had driven visitors from all over wanting to check out the sites.  He didn’t say much else about it, but he talked about how he lived in the US for several years but came back to Northern Ireland when all the trouble was over.  The way he spoke about those years away from his home – the way I eventually found others paused and grew silent – made me understand the echoes of violence in those green hills.  What does this have to do with Game of Thrones?  Mostly nothing.  I mean… it’s great there is a new story to be told.  It is violent, but fake violence.  And it is fake violence because you move on to the next episode and no lesson is learned, no evidence of trauma ever made its way through the characters. 

Maybe we disagree with that.  A lot of people have argued how well constructed and complex the first seasons were.  I didn’t find that.  I found the complexity to be mostly one note.  Anger and vengeance and more violence.

If it wasn’t violence of war, it was ALWAYS violence against women.  It was so commonplace, it was woven into the scenery of every season – almost every episode some years.  I got into a conversation once with someone about this and he shrugged and said, that’s how it was in the medieval times.  I could have thrown a whole bunch of Higgins Armory facts at him, but remember saying they didn’t have dragons so there was a choice to depart from history in that respect.  Why not grant the fantasy of some humanity?

I know that isn’t the story that was written.  And this story was written mostly by men.  I have a lot of female friends who value the strength of the women characters for overcoming their violent encounters and have argued the feminism of this show.  Okay.  If that works for them.  It never worked for me.  The whole story of angry women is probably my biggest problem of the whole show.

And here I will get a little personal and maybe this draws back the curtain on my prejudice.  I understand trauma.  I live with it and have since I was a little girl.  People have told me I’m strong.  But they also think of me as a cold bitch.  I stand my ground on my opinions.  My strong opinions.  But I am not a violent person.  If anything, going through the fallout of something like that has given me a stronger desire to help other people.  To reach out a hand to someone in need – to understand why people do things.  To look to forgive even when the rage rattles your bones.  I know I’m not the only woman in the world who has gone through that.   Especially the part where your strength gets turned into angry, selfish bitch.  I mean… all you have to do is bring up Elizabeth Warren as a candidate and someone will say they don’t like how angry she is.  I am so tired of the narrative that strength in women is anger.  Yes, I was satisfied when Sansa released the hounds.  But… why does that callousness have to be her endgame?

And why… well, why did there have to be a mad queen?  I like the complexity of the idea that one man’s freedom fighter is another man’s terrorist.  My fascination with Northern Ireland’s history has illustrated the gray of that.  I could have accepted the fifth episode’s detour if there was some of that nuance shown.  Instead, she just snapped.  Because that’s what women do.  They go through shit, they are strong.  They snap and we must fear them.  And destroy them.  There was no tenderness left, just blind adoration.  No redeeming detail lingering in the last episode.  The writers made us want her out of the way and dead.  There was no opportunity for her to look in the mirror and see what she did, to regret or see the horror and vow to make up for it.

Okay.  That was a character choice… and statement about tyranny?  Then what is the realism of the peaceful ending where they just select an intellectual king?  That was too easy.  Quick we better sew this up so we have a happy ending.  Nobody learned anything.  But somehow after 8 seasons of violence, let’s all just get along?  THAT isn’t how history and leadership works.  People who don’t want to rule feeds into another public narrative that we should have leaders who don’t know what they are doing.  I’m all for the history nerd… but they should be advisors, not making strategic decisions about how to lift a country from devastation.

Meh.  I guess I’ve ranted enough.  And I know this is a rant. It’s not academic.  It’s probably not in agreement with anyone else who watched the show.  But I’ve cleaned my palate.  I have a new soundtrack and will take Toni Morrison’s advice that if the book (heroes) I want to read… hasn't been written yet, I must be the one to write it.