House of the Discourse

Some thoughts on Game of Thrones, House of the Dragon, and what we mean by "realism" in fantasy

After the rushed and widely panned final seasons of Game of Thrones and George R. R. Martin’s continued inability to finish the A Song of Ice and Fire books, one might have been tempted to think people were over talking about it. Whew, was that wrong. Only one episode of the prequel show, House of the Dragon, has aired and the discourse has already been turned up to 11.

Did you know that Game of Thrones caused Donald Trump’s election, its popularity shows humanity’s decline, and if you watch an episode you are a vile and irredeemable person who will burn in hell for your sins? That’s what you’ll learn if you do a Twitter search for Game of Thrones these days, which seems a bit much for a popular TV show about dragons. Perhaps the weirdest example of GOT rage discourse was this viral tweet:

Believe it or not, most “older literature” is not Pilgrim’s Progress and Goofus and Gallant comic strips. Most adult literature from ancient Greece to Shakespeare to today is filled with morally gray characters. Even funnier is the idea that “modern media” in the age of MCU/Star Wars/Disney dominance is lacking in simple morals and obvious heroes and villains. And are we really expecting fiction to provide “moral instruction” past the age of like 6?

Anyway.

Putting the more ridiculous complaints aside, a frequent critique I see boils down to this: “Game of Thrones depicts horrible things in the name of ‘realism,’ but it’s a fantasy. Nothing is real!” Why depict horrible things if your can depict whatever you want? I see this critique a lot, sometimes about the brutality of the war scenes and other times about the sexual violence on the show. ("If you can imagine a world with dragons, why can't you imagine a world without rape?" as one article put it before House of the Dragon aired. Sara Hess, one of the show’s writers and producers, later came out to say the show won’t depict any explicit sexual violence.)

This is in one sense true. Fiction is fiction. It’s made up. And a second world fantasy is especially, well, fictitious. Authors can change anything and everything from our real world. On the other hand, it’s a critique that seems only leveled at fantasy fiction. I’ve never heard someone say “Why couldn’t George Orwell make Big Brother a nice guy?” or “Why didn’t Margaret Atwood make a benevolent Christian theocracy?” We understand that science fiction and horror works are interrogating and processing our very real world. This is kind of the whole point. Even if we’re in a galaxy far far away, we’re talking about our reality and human nature.

So the question is what themes and ideas the work is exploring and how well the creators execute them. Here, Game of Thrones certainly has a mixed record. Hard to think of a better example of a poorly executed scene than the one in which the show’s creators apparently didn’t realize they were depicting rape. But much of Game of Thrones’s violence does have a clear point. For example, Game of Thrones, and even more so the ASOIAF books, have a critique of war and power that is very much enhanced by the brutality it depicts. The brutality is the point. War is hell in Westeros, as it is in real life, and the show wants you to recoil in horror. You can like this or not, of course. To me, this is far more effective than, say, superhero films where violence and power are depicted on screen as “friggin awesome” or fantasy films where war is a glorious and noble thing. Game of Thrones’ depiction of the horrors of war underlines its central themes Saying “it’s got dragons, it could make a world without war!” is just arguing it should be a completely different work with different themes.

I think there are plenty of good critiques of Game of Thrones. The show, more than the books, spends a bit too much time wallowing in sexualized violence. The show’s “sexposition” scenes—when characters would exposition dump while people fucked in the background—served no real thematic point.

But I think we should be wary of arguments that fantasy can’t be a metaphor for real world issues. It not only can. It should be.

In terms of the general violence of Game of Thrones, and what we’ve seen of House of the Dragon, I do think it can be a bit much at times even from a question of realism. Martin was inspired by history and it’s true that most of what’s depicted—outside of dragons and magic of course—can be found in our real history. The kind of chevauchée that the Mountain does in the Riverlands really happened. Beheadings and mass slaughter and torture and all of the rest happened in medieval warfare. Yet it didn’t tend to happen this much all at the same time in a medieval civil war. I half expected the White Walkers to show up and find out that everyone was already dead, given the rate of death on screen. Basically, the GOT world really is more brutal than real history. If you kill everyone, you don’t have a kingdom left to rule.

The first episode of House of the Dragon had a scene that made me roll my eyes along these lines. [SPOILERS here I suppose]. During a jousting tournament, we watch nobles look on, bored, as knights brutally murder each other. If this is how the knights act in a friendly tournament, how would there even be any knights left? The point being made here—that the realm has been peaceful for a long time and the knights are itching for battle—could be made more effectively and realistically with less gore. Indeed, I think the similar jousting match scene in Game of Thrones was far more effective with a lower body count (one horse).

Still, it’s always useful to put works in context. Both Martin’s books and the show were, in part, a reaction to the dominant Anglo epic fantasy template established by Lord of the Rings in which the forces of good band together against the forces of pure evil, the right bloodlines can save the world, and heroes can fight off 1,000 foes without suffering a scratch. Game of Thrones might be over-the-top with it’s violence at times, but one could easily make the argument that it is far more moral than fantasy that depicts war as heroic and royals as inherently good people.

To be clear, I like Lord of the Rings! But it’s mythic, heroic storytelling mode—like any mode—can get old quickly. I rewatched the final two LOTR films this month (I couldn’t make it through the first) and while there’s plenty I enjoyed, I was struck by how unreal it felt. Sanitized even. With the notable exception of Frodo, whose trauma is depicted on screen, there’s little sense that the main characters will be mentally or physically scarred by their supposedly harrowing journeys. Gimli and Legolas are going to go on cracking jokes while they implausibly fend off a kazillion orcs. At one point, Aragorn gets stepped on by a troll that would probably weigh several thousand pounds and he’s fine a second later. How can the end of the world feel so safe?

LOTR is a seminal work that has rightfully influenced generations. Martin himself was influenced by it, even if he wanted to subvert it in certain ways. I’m only saying that it’s quite understandable that so many people flocked to Martin’s more realistic mode. And it is more realistic, even if it sometimes goes over the top. Game of Thrones is a world where heroes can actually die, even randomly. The “rightful heir” might be a complete monster. War causes massive devastation, not just rousing speeches. Etc. It is reacting to the dominant epic fantasy mode and providing a different take.

Isn’t this how art always works? Old styles get tired and artists find new ones. Art is a dialogue and genres are conversations. And the pendulum swings back and forth.

Hell, there’s little better example of that than the epic fantasy landscape post-Game of Thrones. It’s popularity, and the reaction against it, has given us a TV landscape with a wide variety of fantasy works. From the dark fairy tale vibe of The Witcher to the emo gothness of The Sandman to the heroic and Tolkienesque Wheel of Time (and of course Amazon’s upcoming Rings of Power) and countless others—His Dark Materials, Shadow and Bone, etc. etc.—there’s more epic fantasy on TV than ever before. If you don’t like House of the Dragon, you’ve got plenty of other things to watch.

And this is how it should be. We shouldn’t want one style, one tone, or one conception of a genre to dominate. Every style has it’s own pleasures and own pitfalls. Each can reflect different aspects of our reality. The more the better in art, always.

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