No. 4: Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire

The Lord of the Rings with assholes and tits.

Crude? Yes. But there’s a certain poetry to it, don’t you agree? It’s undeniably evocative. It certainly differentiates both George R. R. Martin‘s series of books and Game of Thrones, the HBO television adaptation of the first novel, from the rest of their genre.

Of course, J. R. R. Tolkien didn’t invent epic fantasy, but his works are certainly the most visible and without a doubt the most influential. My apologies, of course, to every great fantasy author whose works haven’t spawned a multibillion dollar sub-industry, but that’s just the truth. A lot of people’s first introductions to fantasy are through his works.

Mine definitely were. I remember being ten years old and a friend was talking about this book he was reading, The Hobbit. It sounded neat and I must have mentioned it to my dad, because pretty soon thereafter he sat me down and gave me an armload of books - Tolkien and otherwise - that he’d read when he was younger. I started reading…

…And fell in love. Over my youth, I dug deeper into fantasy novels. David Eddings‘ books became some of my favourites, but I also enjoyed Terry Brooks‘ Shannara novels and a smattering of other choices. Recently, a good friend handed me Patrick Rothfuss‘ The Name of the Wind and guys, that book is bananas it is so good.

But eventually, I stopped picking up new fantasy novels or checking out new series. It wasn’t anything to do with them, really; it was just that I had a large portion of a bookshelf full of a few dozen existing ones already - that I like rereading, no less - and when you factored in the other books I was reading for school and leisure, not to mention all the other things I like reading, watching & doing, a new series just seemed like a commitment that would force me to sacrifice something else. So I passed up George R. R. Martin, Terry Goodkind and Robert Jordan. It was a bid for sanity, if nothing else. Then HBO went and fucked all that up.

It was easy to ignore A Song of Ice and Fire when it was just a series of books in a section of the bookstore I don’t frequent that often anymore and most of my friends hadn’t talked about it in years because a new book hadn’t come out. And here was a shiny new TV series getting waves of press and all of a sudden people I didn’t even know were fans were talking about how great the series was and how I needed to check it out. And after 10 weeks of my Twitter feed being full of talk about the series and friends agreeing that yes, I should watch it, the long-awaited fifth book in the series, A Dance With Dragons, was released and then everybody was talking about that. There was only one option left: I had to watch the series.

Thank you, internet! I totally owe you one. As it turns out, I’m very much the kind of person for whom the series - TV and book - are designed. I grew up with fantasy. I love fantasy. The thing is, there’s a very common structure to all of the books I mentioned being a fan of before:

The quest narrative.

And don’t get me wrong, that’s a fine narrative indeed. It’s lasted throughout our history because of its elegant simplicity and the way it lends itself to the archetypes that we naturally gravitate to. Villains with cloaks and hearts of black. Plucky underdog peasants coming into heretofore unknown powers, frequently by right of their hidden lineage. A band of unlikely heroes saving the world. It’s come up time and time again in the stories we tell, from fairy tales to spaghetti westerns and war movies to Star Wars and the Japanese cinema that inspired George Lucas. When done right, these stories are fantastic. Who doesn’t like to see the good guys win and find love in the arms of their best guy or gal? These stories speak to something deep inside us. But not everything. Sometimes, we want something else. Sometimes, we want assholes and yes, maybe some tits. Or dongs! There’s nothing wrong with either, ladies and gentlemen.

That’s where Game of Thrones came in for me. Its characters aren’t all heroes. There are certainly some nicer and more honourable characters, but, well, let’s see how things work out for them, why don’t we? There’s no big villain controlling the world who we can root against. Sure, there are jackasses. There’s lots of cruelty. But several of the nominal “villains” either have some pretty understandable grudges or just care for and protect their families as best they can. Some of the good guys do some pretty despicable things and not always the way the duty of their world demands. Sometimes they’re just mean fuckers.

But the world of Westeros is a mean one. We tend to romanticize a lot of the Middle Ages or other historical periods in our fictional stories even as we know better than to think the actual eras were great. Well, here’s the truth: things fuckin’ sucked for most people - especially women and the poor - even worse than they do now. Game of Thrones‘ trick is the same one Mad Men employs: present things unsentimentally. Show the violence, xenophobia, sexism and squalor in all its… um… glory? Let the audience make sense of it. It’s certainly a theme in the works themselves, as Jon Snow realizes the stories of the Night’s Watch gloss over its true nature as a glorified penal legion, or as Sansa Stark learns the truth of her betrothed, the monstrous boy who first seemed so gallant. Daenerys Targaryen learns how the world sees her brother. Misconceptions are callously torn down, both for the characters and the audience.

Of course, like Mad Men, this sometimes results in accusations of misogyny in the material itself and on the part of the creators, largely because there’s a lack of varnish and rose-coloured glasses over things. But make no mistake, Game of Thrones and A Song of Ice and Fire have a deep sympathy for the downtrodden - the “cripples, bastards, and broken things,” even if people are just meant to be broken by the awful world they’re in. Still, there’s hope. I find it in Arya Stark, who fights against the limits placed on her by her gender, or by Daenerys, who finds strength she never knew she had and becomes a great and powerful woman. This is the spirit fighting through the awful, black world, reaching for air amidst the beheadings and rapes and nudity and deceit. It’s a hard world, but there’s room to make your way in it, even if you’re told you can’t. Things might still go sideways, though. That’s just how the world is. Destiny’s for chumps.

Throughout the process of discovering the series, I eventually made a decision: I would read the books. Luckily, I found a fantastic deal for Canadians in the Kindle store: the first four books of A Song of Ice and Fire for only $10. I couldn’t pass that up. The TV series, which at first seemed like an “easy” way to set aside some time for something new without overwhelming my reading pile, sucked me in. Oh well. I’ll forgive it. After all, I need all the time I can spare for reading.