Video embedded for aesthetic purposes only
For parts one and two, click here.
So I ended the last installment on this note:
I hope to communicate my disagreement diplomatically, with a due regard to what the G.O.T. story gets right. We’ll get to that next time.
What our show runners “get right” in terms of historical perceptiveness is precisely what many G.O.T. fans felt they got wrong story-wise.
Like I said, the winning of the Great War and the death of Melisandre suggest something of the actual historical movement, in Western society’s Medieval-to-Modern transition, toward secularization: What we might broadly call matters of ultimate concern are swept aside; the supernatural, while not immediately discountenanced, is pushed far away into the background of everyday life (think of the Deist “Watchmaker”) so that it might impinge as little as possible upon human affairs.
With the chains of religious dogma and irrational belief thrown aside (so the idea goes), man can finally assume his rightful place as master of the world. Using his newly released weapons of science and technology, he can now build an ideal society right here on earth.
But it seems to me that while the G.O.T. storyline may presuppose similar historical notions, it also suggests a healthy suspicion towards utopian political panaceas of a secular variety.
We turn now to Dany, who shocked everyone in the final season.
Utter destruction of King’s Landing, despite a peace offering.
Obliteration of millions of innocents along with the guilty.
The merciless slaughter of Lannister soldiers after they have surrendered.
All this precedes Dany’s epic victory speech, wherein she declares that her revolution has only just begun. She intends a total “liberation” of every nation and all people the world over. And we have every reason to believe she will decimate those nations first, as she did to King’s Landing.
If we stay with real-world analogies, we see something of the many dictators that fill the annals of Modern history. From Napoleon to Hitler to Stalin to Pol Pot, we have no shortage of demagogues making beautiful promises, only to produce very ugly results.
Most interestingly, there is a broad resemblance between Dany’s revolution and radical Marxist ideologies — viz., the idea that the whole world system is rotten, and that therefore the map must be wiped clean so as to allow for a fresh start.
Given the enormity of the task, it is not inconceivable that innocent lives will need to be sacrificed in the short-term. So goes the well-worn saying: If you want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. But on the other side (so goes the ideology) is an earthly paradise for all who survive, and for their progeny.
The fact that Dany’s change of character happens so suddenly as to invite disbelief on the part of many viewers evokes two very uncomfortable realities: 1) the general fickleness of human nature; and 2) how often such programs, and the demagogues leading them, begin benignly and with an appeal to the common good.
In the real world, such destructive utopian ideologies happened largely as a result of the decline of religion in society.
Yes, atrocities have been committed under the banner of religion as well. Humanity, even religious humanity, tends to be a bad lot.
But when the source of violence shifts from a general cause in human corruption to a more specific cause in an ideological core itself, that’s when humanity is at its worst. Remove religion, and you have removed any objective system of value in the light of which to evaluate human nature. (This, by the way, is something that a young man named Karol Wojtyla — the future Pope St. John Paul II — saw very clearly after experiencing both Nazi and Soviet tyranny: At the root of the worst totalitarian ideologies lies a false philosophy of the human person.)
In its imitation of real world history, G.O.T. gets the sequence right. The supernaturally-charged storyline is set aside, and then comes Dany’s rampage.
Actual history involved a far more gradual process, both in terms of the scope of destruction and the degree of attenuation of supernatural concerns. In G.O.T. the “jump” happened in just a couple episodes, and probably over a period of no more than a few months.
So while the Great War with the Night King was fantasy as liminal experience, the dragons give us fantasy as historical fast-forward (see part one: https://intothedance.wordpress.com/2019/09/16/game-of-thrones-fantasy-as-lens-for-history-part-one/); the progression of modern secular ideology did not have the benefit of giant, fire-breathing reptiles.
There it is. Might there, however, be a more robust connection between the preceding “Great War” and subsequent events? My belief is that there is, and I will get into that next time. Thanks for reading.
References
Daenerys image is a still of Alexandr Komarovskiy‘s video titled Game of Thrones: Facts | Part 1 Daenerys Targaryen and Arya Stark. Link: https://vimeo.com/163914068
By Deutsche Fotothek, CC BY-SA 3.0 de, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=7948432
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