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In the latest Guide to Kulchur, Fróði Midjord is joined by Greg Johnson, John Morgan, and RAMZPAUL to discuss the very last episode of Game of Thrones, and offer their final impressions of the series as a whole — the positives and negatives, what worked and what didn’t, the possible reasons why the show was so popular, and what lessons we might draw from the experience.
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Could the initial forays of Game of Thrones as a grim medieval european fantasy even be filmed today, amid the hysterical baying for ‘colorblind casting’ and ‘positive portrayals’ of women and minorities? The unwatchable travesty of the later series, and the recent BBC adaptation of the Iliad replete with its Nigerian Achilles and Rastafarian Zeus, would suggest fidelity to the mise-en-scène and ethos of such source material is now impossible.
Just as productions of Richard Wagner’s music dramas have long been defiled and spat upon by spiteful, ugly and absurd costumes and staging, so we must henceforward assume that all popular culture in any medium will eschew, pollute or problematise the default white setting, be that historically accurate or not.
A culture which cannot bear its own history and works to poison the wellsprings of its own art and demos cannot stand. So it was with ancient world in its declining years as the fanatics and the barbarians swept aside idols, altars, art and writings alike. The descent of popular drama into politically doctored schmaltz, schlock and spectacle is only yet another sign of the desperate times that are coming.
The BBC Hollow Crown series butchered Shakespeare with diversity casting. Half the aristocratic retinue of Henry V was darkies.
That was in that Mary queen of Scott’s movie too. It had black Scottish nobles. If they’re going to do that, why not put white and Asian slaves in movies such as twelve years a slave and Zulu. We demand a share in their suffering!
That’s insane. Scotland is whitey Mcwhiteland.
The story never had an ending because it never had a point or moral or quest.
Only a chain of chronological anecdotes about the characters
in which they demonstrate their virtues or vices of the moment.
In place of an end to a saga it had the last episode of season 8,
just some place to shut it down.
The real problem in today’s time is that it is virtually impossible to tell a story in a way that it’s both in-line with actual medieval history (even in a fantasy setup) while still being acceptable for mainstream television in today’s Anti-White America.
Many of the natural reactions of medieval characters would also seem completely incomprehensible to modern audiences – which would often consider their actions to be cruel, abhorrent and morally apprehensible.
And I also felt like the writers somehow maneuvered themselves into some sort of a dead-end at the end of the 7th season by letting Daenerys lead two non-white armies into a homogeneous white homeland. This would naturally raise resentment and resistance from the native – but the writers had to be careful not to raise to strong of an analogy to the Migrant Invasion of Europe. They would be severely handicapped in how they could let actual native inhabitants of that era speak about the problem – and even more so inhibited about their potential solutions.
We shall also never forget that the writer’s top priority wasn’t that of telling a good and historically consistent story – and possibly not that of making the most amount of money either – but to make sure their story was sufficiently Anti-White while not being trivially identifiable as such.
Early on, I made the prediction that neither Daenerys nor Jon would ever take the Iron Throne – simply because I could not envision a way how this could possibly work while keeping up a sufficient level on Anti-Whiteism.
After watching the entire season, I actually spent some time trying to envision how this story could possibly have ended in a somewhat believable medieval setup, but it quickly turned into a quite a long essay that I’ll probably still need a couple of weeks to polish and finish.
And I also may have been too sentimental in that for I let Jon claim his birthright early on and Danny – after having burned down a quarter of the city, but without any effect on the actual fortifications of the Red Keep – to atone for her wrongdoings then fall heroically in defense of the peoples of Westeros.
Also, while I thought I was telling a story in an authentic medieval setup, after proof-reading my own essay a few times, I realized that I’ve fallen to the same fallacy as the writers of this show: I too was trying to tell a story from my perspective.
I too fell for the same kind of biases when I tried to tell the story from my perspective, trying to portray the characters in a way that I deemed most useful to awaken our peoples and teach them about Anti-Whiteism and the problems our peoples face in today’s times.
Even my ending fell victim to my vision of portraying Daenerys as the tragic, fallen hero who can still achieve redemption. And I had to realize that no, this was wishful thinking – the true Daenerys Targaryen would never sacrifice herself to save the peoples of Westeros.
I don’t know what the real moral of that story is – maybe that we all try to tell a story from our very own biased perspective. We all have our own emotional feelings and goals – and the way we tell fantasy stories probably reflect this.
Cercei did nothing wrong.
Very interesting discussion. Love the bad marriage analogy.
However, I’m not 100% the characters in game of thrones are so shades of gray morally speaking. The bad guys tend to be absolute psychopaths, eg cercei, Geoffrey, Lannister’s in general, or the guy who was torturing Theon, while the Starks and others tend to be more or less 20th century Christian morality and noble. Most are black and white. The only really nuanced characters, those who grow, would be Jamie and Tyrion, who start evil but then “get a heart,” and dynaeris, who starts good and then becomes evil, however clumsily the character is developed by the writers. Theon also, who really did one big evil act, sort of like Macbeth, the tragic flaw of ambition, but is otherwise good.
Tolkien too has characters who become evil, or waver between good and evil, eg boromir, Saruman, Gollum, rhadagast, denethor.