I'm kind of Clarington and I'm talking today about of friends, and
I can't remember what went on the left to whether it was the title from last year.
This time, I don't think. But last year and indeed in previous years,
I go for the lecture series on Game of Thrones mediaevalism,
but partly because I need a new material for
some things I have coming up. I'm partly because I've been working on a new book about Game of Thrones.
I decided to change things up this time. And so this
lecture is about the TV show and it's not really about the books at all.
And I'll explain why that's the case as we go along. However, if you turns up in the hopes of hearing all
about Game of Thrones, some of by some far mediaevalism, you can find a version
of that lecture on YouTube if you search on me, plus the usual
kinds of pie and this published version of it as well. But it's in a rather
few two volumes coming out of the University of Crack-Up in Poland,
which was desperate to see a copy of it. Let me know and I can send you a PBS.
But what I want to do today and want to do is I'm doing in my new book,
which will be heavily advertised in the final slice, is to talk about the show.
Now we have an entire story arc for the TV show.
We have a beginning and we have a middle and we have an end of some kind.
We are in the position to be able to talk about what the show was aiming to do in some kinds
of distinctions. What the book may or may not be aiming to do. As
we understand it, George R.R. Martin says that his characters will end
up him more or less the same place as the characters do in the show.
But several of them may be very different, presumably much longer, a more winding.
So, first of all, I want to talk a bit about the first part of
my title. Why Game of Thrones masses? Originally,
this title was going to be Game of Thrones Mass. But then I realised that was a bit of a hostage to fortune.
So I changed it to why game of massive. Because as you can
know that see, if you talk to people who are not in the least bit interested in either the show or
the books. In some ways it's very easy to
dismiss great Game of Thrones as being a show that in
McShane said it's only [INAUDIBLE] and dragons. Now, in MacShane,
looking back very safely in his in his brief character parents,
his brother Ray was responding to the fact that the fan community came down on him
like a ton of bricks because he'd managed to give away a fairly significant spoiler,
a possible one. Sluggy, today is yes, there are a lot of takes, novels of dragons,
but there are many, many other things in Game of Thrones itself. But we still have to
address that particular formulation. One of
the terms which media critics use about game of friends
and indeed about other shows is the broadcast on HBO is that they will partake
in the HBO effect. What is the HBO effect?
Well, in essence, it's being able to show much more sexual content,
much more violence, much more disturbing material than you can show on
terrestrial TV in the U.S. Now, in comparison
to the kinds of things you can see off of the watershed on UK TV, it's not,
I think, so disturbing. But HBO is very much so themselves as
a cable company for which obviously you have to pay a subscription on
showing you things you couldn't see anywhere else. And this idea of spectacle turns out to be quite
important to the show. Another important term for which
comes up in critical discussion of Game of Thrones is sex position coined
by the journalist Miles. But not. I'm talking about that rather infamous scene in
Season one, Episode seven, where a piece of Baelish is tutoring roles
and her friends All Mekka puts you in a convincing lesbian sex
show full of because of his birdsell. And so it's Rowson. All my Kerl
fooling around in the foreground. Keeping the audience
or at least part of the audience interest. This balish is giving us a long piece
of exposition, explaining what his role is in all of this was his backstories
and so on. And the show's assumption is we're not going to listen to that unless we got something.
And we of course, is a highly masculinised audience, unless you something to watch in the
foreground. So, yes, it is mostly in some
ways about [INAUDIBLE] and dragons. But we also have to take into account what
the first part of this talk will be about the fact that it is a huge media franchise
and perhaps in some ways, maybe with the exception of Lord of the Rings,
the Lord of the Rings, Trump's media activities are very much limited by the Tolkien
estate. HBO doesn't have the same kind of limitations. And
so as well as the books going on on the right track and the show.
We also have video games. We also have merchandise. And here you can see
a range of games since whisky's, which I, I snapped when I was passing through Heathrow
last year. Interestingly, the tall guy in with his Spanish. So what that tells us
this is, I think even before the finals of the final season.
So I can't say football all. She went up in flames or anything like that. But their
game since whisky's there again, two T-shirts. Game of Thrones models,
you name it. You can buy it. Branded in Game of Thrones style. There's endless Game
of Thrones. We keep that all get a sense fansites.
One which I for a lot. Winter is coming is quite an interest. It was a great fight.
While the show is still running now, they've really run out of stuff, obviously. So
they spent a lot of time giving us good news about the actors, all speculating
about other shows some of the actors might be in or just other stuff. They think that
that target audience might like their comic con
and we might all do this. George Martin spent less time showing up at comic combs
and more time writing the books. Then maybe he was a finished fine now, but it is
not as to question his decision. Of course, YouTube channels
and you can add your own examples of how the Game of Thrones effect
is to be found. Widely being commodified because
this is, after all, a capitalist production in late capitalism. How
Game of Thrones is being tooled up to make money. And so here's some
figures, which I think are quite interesting. We all know some three episodes, 566
characters. It ran for sixty nine hours and six minutes. So when people
say to me, wow, it sounds really interesting, I think I'll stop watching. I'd always say 70
hours. And anyone who's on the force, he goes, Yeah, no problem.
Anyone who says before he goes, I haven't got enough life left to do that. Total
share of budget. One point five billion dollars. Hang on to that figure.
And the cost per view overall average, thirty point ninety five point nine
dollars. And the total money made through subscriptions. And those who get that doesn't count
the advertising revenues. Three point one billion dollars. You could double your money just on
the subscriptions for what you paid on the budget. This is the world's most expensive
TV show ever. So just a quick round up here. Season
one, you could see there wasn't such a huge audience. By the time we get the latest seasons,
the audience is really built and built. But of course, the figures are a little depressing, season
seven and season eight because they're shorter. You can see in terms of overall earning,
season six was the big one. And that's why it stands out here as
the one which costs that weight.
It's the one in the yellow badge is the one that says that it's making the most money. But obviously, that defies
the cost. 10 episodes instead of six or eight.
And this is what you get for that money. I think this is an interesting contrast to six million
episodes, six million dollars per episode spend on season one
gets you a bunch of pretty miserable looking girls. Rossley wandering through the Northern Irish
countryside. Fifteen extras, an adult. Somewhere, I think season eight.
When you got 50 million pounds stolen. Fifty million dollars being spent per
episode. That's what you guys, of course, a lot of budget going on, CGI effects, but you can just
afford so much more in terms of effects here. I guess you'll note filming
in Belfast anymore at this point, you go going somewhere warmer and nicer. You can see the extras extra
sensitive, about half here. And these figures are astonishing to, I think, brutal costs and
207 countries. One hundred and ninety four of those on femal costs. That
is at the same time as it's going out in the U.S. The actual viewing figures are pretty
hard to come by. But we have thirty eight point fifty two point eight million
viewers in the US. So season seven physical's is the legal viewers. And that's
not counting all the rest of the world. And then you got one hundred and forty million per episode,
illegal downloads, the season seven.
Something here for a different sector of the audience. Next time I get this, it's
just how much money. This is why came with friends matters to the locations where
it's filmed. So I'm quite interested in the fact that the Northern Irish
governments subsidise the production of the
film as a subsidy to the production of fifteen point nine five
million pounds. And look what that brought them back. Two hundred and fifteen million pounds
in return. This is why telling people stories matters in terms of balance sheet.
It's estimated that three hundred fifty thousand people visit Northern Ireland every year to do Game of
Thrones related things. And that's only going to go up when the new Game
of Thrones theme park opens at the Lynnae Mill in Belfast later this
year. So this in fifty thousand people are generating 50 million pounds
of tourist spending. But you might not have got otherwise.
Game of Thrones is worth 30 million. They reckon, per year for the Northern Irish tourist sector.
And in Dubrovnik, it's harder to measure. People go to Dubrovnik for all kinds of reasons and
really very easy to section out. How much of that is Game of Thrones related?
But the mayor of Dubrovnik was reckoning when he was asked in 2015 that
tourism is going up year on year by 10 percent. And about half of that was Game of Thrones.
Related numbers in Iceland have gone up hugely as well. That
probably doesn't have all that much to do with Game of Thrones. And again, we can't get the figures of how much
we can actually ascribe to Game of Thrones, but they have got some liki location totals
going on there. And here you can see me being stopped by a wildling at one
of the locations from last year and the year before last. I think it was.
So why? Why does everybody love Game of Thrones? Why is it so popular
now? One of the major explanations is being put
forward by fantasy scholars in particular is the
capacity to go beyond the monolithic good versus evil
hobbits and humans vs. sour on those kinds of very black and white sorts
of dichotomy, those old cycles that Tolkien doesn't have some morally mixed characters. He obviously
does. But Game of Thrones has characters who operate in all
kinds of shades of grey. But also this is what people really fixated
on in the first seasons, I think was its willingness to dispose
of everybody's favourite characters. Now, I guess
I watched season one without having read the books. So when I got to
the death of Ned stock, I yelled. I fell out of my seat. I went, Oh, my God.
What was he thinking? And the list things that must be what was still freethinking rather than
the show runners. And then, of course, you get the red wedding. You get the purple wedding. Not that anybody,
I think is that sorry to see your freak go necessarily, but this is a very pathetic that
now that capacity, that kind of ruthlessness on the pulse of the show runners
to kill fan favourites. I think we can all kind of dropped off a bit
in the last season. I find I had to watch the Battle of Winterfell twice
to figure out what was going on. And at the end of it, I was pretty sure that a whole bunch of people that
died who turned out not to have died by the time they will regroup in the next episode
because it was so hard to see. But my guess is that in early episodes,
a few more of our favourite people were the goat pixel. I did not see Brian making it through
the back of the Winterfell, but hey, she did. And it said Unexpectedness
all Taric to death in some way, which said Game of Thrones, apart from quite a lot of other friends
to see. And you can see up here in the colon the kind of favourite
Internet post time was lining up your friends and relations to watch
bits of Game of Thrones when they didn't know what was going to happen. So we have here this
Piersall girl is saying, oh, my God. Yeah, I just watched. What
has she been watching? I think she have been watching the death in that stock.
But this was a particularly a meme around the Red Wedding that you got your mom watching Game of Thrones.
You didn't tell of what was going to happen. Then you made it watch the Red Wedding, and then you tweeted happily
about how your mom was going. I'm having an anxiety attack over these prevent and pretend
people. So there's something about the boldness of imagination
that doesn't really care about the characters or rather uses that kind of shock
value. In my first book on the show,
Winter is Coming. I argued that a lot of its attraction was done
to the depth and realism. But I'll say realism in a very
heavily quantified way of the mediaeval.
Its historical background and the institutions of the imagined
societies of Westerners in particular, of course, but also in S.O.S.
And I want to call your attention to saying
that I have no idea how you pronounce this night to effect cheese. Very interesting blog
post on Scientific American, where she argues that one of the things
that maybe went wrong with the show was what happened when they ran
as a book. And her argument is that up until,
let's say, the indices and sinks, you have characters story
arcs, which are very much shaped by the institutions of
their various societies, whether it's living in slavery or responding to slavery,
whether it's having to negotiate to run the the pretty hard credit terms of
the en banc of Bravo, whether it's suddenly the power of the sparrows within
King Sinding itself, whether it's the rules of the night swatch, all of these
things. Tramel and conditions the storylines and the choices
that the characters have to make. And these is pretty well realised. I think we can
see how the Bank of Bravo's depends very much on the ideas of late mediaeval
banking practises in the Mediterranean, because they have the sparrows look kind of
like the Spanish Inquisition, kind of like some mediaeval
fraternal orders because they have a night watch, like a kind
of bunch of crusaders, but not the kinds of crusaders who went to Jerusalem, but rather
those who patrolled the front line of Christian Europe in places like Lithuania,
Russia, Poland in the 14th century, bringing Christianity at the point of a sword
to the last vestiges of European paganism there. And
you can see to how the discourse about slavery in itself is
conditioned in part by historical thinking about slavery in the US and elsewhere.
But also very much and I'll come on to this a bit later, conditioned by contemporary Middle
Eastern politics as well. So to fact cheque up until season
six. You have this very deeply imagined story woes
as you have the characters manoeuvring their way through the kind of labyrinth of
the social structures. But what we might describe as the race to the finish,
that kind of goes out the window. The show runners run out of book and
we might want to speculate that they have various prises dangled in front of them. They
have maybe the Star Wars franchise being offered to them, though that seems to fallen through.
They maybe feel that they would like to just say goodbye to Game of Thrones, let some other
people work up the prequels. But whatever it is, they suddenly
decide they want to get to the end of story. And because they want the book
to factory argues, they fall back on the usual Hollywood
stereotype of storytelling. How do we tell stories in Hollywood? Normally it's
all about the character's journey. It all becomes psychological. So we
get inside the feelings of John. The feelings often there is the feelings of everybody pretty well. We
get redemptive orcs going on. Not that they were present already,
but what we lose is this sense of sickness about the built world. I think
well, it seems to me kind of emblematic of that is the way in which at the
end of season six, isn't it? So he blows up a whole chunk of
King's Landing. Does anybody care, Tullman?
Obviously. But does anybody else care? No. Now, earlier in the show, we've seen
the morphing King's Landing as a quite volatile urban mass. Who come
out on the streets for a cowpats at Joffrey, who are quite lively when it comes
to watching events around the sparrow's reign of terror. We might call
it their bear ran the great set. But suddenly the queen blows up
a whole chunk of the city. Nobody cares. And so we never really see the masses again until
season eight when they're obviously just kind of close to the Dragons. And the same is
true, I think the en bank of brothels, which I'm pretty interested in for all kinds of
reasons, it was how you fund everything when you get the resources for the various
campaigns in the war. The Five Kings. What's really important now
is it hasn't vanished. It's become simplified. So how the first he gets
paid for the Golden Company? Well, she uses the gold that she managed to get
from high garden and which they luckily managed to get into
King's Landing before the back of the goes roads where Denarius maybe unwisely boasted
all of the supplies and half of the land estás, which work was great for kind of show
of force. But that suit was actually kind of useful for people in the kingdom.
But the whole goes and company and you can argue with me afterwards if you want to disagree.
The whole Gold Company story line was a bit of a bust. In a way, it was built up. Harry Strickland was
going to turn up. Would that be Ellison? Wouldn't that be Ellison? The ones in the Ellison budget for
elephants and the Golden Company turn up this very faithful's along the
way. Oh, okay. Was it worth it? I don't know. But this is
one of the kinds of criticisms levelled at the show. And I think there's something in it
now. I've talked about the mediæval background, so much of the show. But I also have to
mention that the show is also mediæval. It's in its framing.
That is, that it not only draws upon the mediaeval literature, mediaeval history,
mediaeval. Cultural institutions, myths, legends. Which it does to a very great
extent, but it also draws on those kinds of ideas
as already mediated in some modern culture. And
I think the unborn or a particularly good example of this, the unborn
behaves very much like Vikings. They look like Vikings. They have a lot of them, apart
from the great joy family, for whatever reason. They have pretty Viking names.
They get around the long ship and. I have written an
school which has just come out. In fact, in a book from.
Kalamazoo called something about reimagining the Vikings. And I go to a chapter
in that on the Vikings and the on board, which I am fortunate to right before the show ended.
So some of my guesses about what would happen with the arm bone weren't exactly fun. However, I didn't think
you ever would get killed. And I was right. So what we have then with
the on bone is not just a reimagining of genuine eight,
nine, 10 century Vikings, but we also have, what, Hollywood's most popular culture.
Think of it as Vikings as well. And in particular, I think because it's exactly George
Moleskins vintage, we have the Kirk Douglas or the late Kirk Douglas,
as we should not say film from 1958. The Vikings. And when I
was first writing on this, I was very struck by the fact
that in the books that we never see this in the show for obvious reasons. But in the books, we're told
the battle on great joy is with such a great warrior in his youth. He could run
along the old ways of a long ship in full sale. And I thought, oh,
that is pretty impressive. Also, I know that in the saga of King O Love, a
truthful film, it was said that he could do that. Wow, that is impressive. Research
of Martin's part. But then I realised is in fact where Morsan got it from was not
reading the saga of lavatories at all, but by watching the Vikings where you
can see the lake Kirk Douglas running, doing his own stuff. He was very
he was very keen on doing this, running along the oles of the ship, which doesn't
look like it's moving very fast. But is it sailing down the Norwegian field? And
the birth of the director was he was doing something that nobody had seen for a thousand years.
So we have to take into account then the mediaevalism qualities
of the show, as well as the mediaeval qualities, too. And if you're interested in Game
of Thrones or rather some of ice and fire primarily and mediaevalism,
I recommend Shiloh Carroll's book from Boys Lambrew, which came out in twenty
seventeen, I think. OK. Now let's say a little bit
about fantasy epic more generally. I want to get away, if you like, from
the economic and the larger media context. I
talk about Game of Thrones as storytelling in a bit more detail.
So again, friends is in essence fantasy epic as a genre,
as epic as you, I'm sure. Oh, no. Takes various books. These
all the generic conventions that we expect. It's about the fate of men
and nations. There were large questions at stake. There is
very possibly a visit to the underworld to get all came. Knowledge, that
is, the intervention of the supernatural could intervene.
There is a large imperial destiny waiting for the hero and
fantasy epic is in some ways no different, except that we move out of a historical
or a contemporary. Setting into a world
where distractions suddenly become possible. And this is what Martin has written about
in a quite important interview in Rolling Stone magazine from 2014.
At one point he thought maybe he would just write some historical novels. But the friend of his said,
What about the Dragons? And he said, Go to have the dragon. So
he went full fantasy epic where he could have his dragons instead of the historical novel.
And although you can see the vestiges of the historical novel in a song of ice and Fire,
you can also see how important the Dragons all. So
within that larger story line that one of the great things about AIPAC is
that it plays host to a whole lot of other genres as well in classical
epic. We very often get moments of what we might describe as romance.
Let's say if we're thinking about the need, we have the events and call. We have in
these taking time out from his imperial destiny for a romance
with Dido, one which kills and tragically for her, not for him, because he clears off
to carry on with his imperial destiny. So there are places in classical
epic where the private, the smaller scale come into play. There are
places, too, where you cross the border between the living and the dead, where you pass into the underworld.
And we see these speeches, of course, in Game of Thrones as well. But it also brings in different,
more modern, shewn rules. And so in particular, of course, we have the horror film.
We have zombies. All be
quite interesting, animated, quote, high that we have very early on
in season one, where those two nights watchmen
are brought in to Cofer Black and then turn that. It's about anyone who thinks there's something
suspicious about them and they turn out to be undead. And then we end up with
huge CGI masses of zombies who are
not that keen on myself. But what is very interesting, I think, in the battle of Heart Home
is the way that we focussing on coffee, the spare
life, and the way in which she responds to these
zombie children up there that that moment of hesitation to kill these children,
even though that undead killer's home base is what it's fatal for her. And she, too,
turns into one herself. And then we have, of course, the night
king with his interesting but unresolved origin
story, which seems to have some affinity with Frankenstein monster. It's
been argued, and I think there's quite a lot of truth in that. And one of my frustrations with
Season eight, of which there was more than a few, was I had kind of hoped that
at the point where the night King was going to get taken down by whoever was going to do
it, that we might just have one of those kind of classic scenes that you get in
in kind of superhero movies where the villain just stops everything for 10 minutes and explains
why he's a villain. And then the hero had a chance to come in and take him out. And
I just kind did want to know what the Knight King story was. How did he get from that terrified
guy being stopped with the the dragon glass knife into this guy?
What happened there? We shall never know unless he's hands up in in one of the three quotes.
We also have the detective story at work here. And so that Bozsum picture is
John Aronne looking for the date, because that's the way we have to see him. Poor
guy was very much in sports. The first
book, which is what makes the first book so good, I think. And the first season is
exactly that question. Who killed John Aaron and why? And we think we have an answer
by the end of season one that it's all about protecting first in Jamie's secret. But it is
not until season four when we're up in the aeri. So we actually find out who was responsible
for the whole business and what the backstory was. And in fact, it turned out not to have
anything much to do with the politics of Wetzel's and everything to do with the
passion and madness of Lisa Aaron herself. We also have
the Buzzi movie in various forms and this Barratt's A.N.
They're chatting amiably on the ramparts of King's Landing. One of the interesting
tropes I think that the show taps into is the idea that the Buddy movie doesn't
have to be about a couple of blokes going on the road. And indeed, in some ways it works
least well when in season six they think it's a good idea to send
Brian and Jamie off on their revenge storm. But what is more interesting,
I think of those questions by the things the hounds and
Aria in particular, whether we characterise that as far being factually maybe a bit questionable.
But Sprey and her various companions, Brian and Jamie Breea and impulsive Rick,
those types, those cliches of the Buddy movie and rework them in interesting
ways. And finally and I think kind of a problematic case, certainly
because it's a show innovation. We didn't have it in the books is the rom com.
Well, except with a bit less com by the end between to Lisa and Rob Stark
there. And that has all of the hallmarks, of course, all of the modern rom com that they
they meet cute. They have this argument about their different ideals
and positions. She asks him searching questions about kingship. He
sees that she's a good person, that she wants to heal very slowly because they fall in
love, they get married, that she's pregnant, and that that's the end of that.
And in some ways, that kind of romance that she's between them
is something that is quite exceptional in the world of Game of Thrones. If you try and think
of anybody else who has a happy, classic romantic story, you might be.
Thinking for a long time, or we can argue about any cases you can bring up towards
the end here. OK. But as well as these other troublesome
jurors that we find in. Game of Thrones, the key one, of course, is the bill who was
sold on the story of the young person growing into that identity.
In some ways, that has a very strong affinity with mediaeval romance, too. And indeed, that's what it grows
ourselves. The hero sets out on the quest willingly or unwillingly and finds
out various things about him or herself, grows into that adult identity
and achieve some kind of resolution to that storyline. And indeed, here we can
see a whole bunch of stocks or pulp starts
and we can see what happens to Denarius. And we can see a subsidy on in
here because he has a very nice kind of redemptive storyline as well. But
interestingly, I think the buildings Bowmont elements of Game of Thrones
is very much a generational thing. Of course, it tends to be
because it's about young people. But we also have figures like Tyrian who doesn't really
belong in the same generation as these people. But he also.
Changes, grows, then travels from the world to Marine
and back again. This is the longest journey of all in some ways, and yet, oddly,
in some ways he ends up almost back where he started.
And we can also, I think, register the ways in which this generation
take notice of what's happened in their parents generation and think about how
they do not want to be their parents. And you can remember how John all
argued very passionately with Tyrian in that scene in the cell in the last episode,
that being a tall Gharyan doesn't mean you have to be completely
barking mad. And we have found that the arguments about heredity
suggests that Tulk Aryan's all 50 50 barking mad pyromaniacs
or quite nice people that we haven't met too many quite nice Calgarian. It has to be said,
except that there is some good days. We should also note,
I think, that one of the things that has policy shows
popularity has been its commitment to making fantasy epic, modern
and inclusive. And it's one of the interesting. Quayside
facts about the show, at least this is the case in 2013, whether it's still
true. I'm not sure. But I would take it. It probably is. It's unlike most fantasy
TV fantasy, at least in 2013, at least in the US. The
audience was almost 50 percent female. And I think that
had a lot to do with the show runners formulation of
the show world thereafter. Once they realised they got that female audience,
they didn't want to lose them because they're pretty hard to get in fantasy. And so
although there was an instance at Comic Con just in November
where either David Ozanne said he never looked to fansites, he didn't care about
feedback he had he just did his thing and he didn't register what fans still to
talk? I thought this was completely unbelievable. This is not how Molton
Show making works. And so. There are obviously some
reasons why the tapes, the gratuitous nudity, the brothel
scenes, the sex scenes which
contribute something, but there's a whole lot to the story. Why all of that gets boiled down. Now,
obviously, when BALISH is brothel, empire is closed. Then you then have those things.
But at the same time, I think those feelings of the female audience about
all that nudity condition, what they show around this bit. And I also think
probably after the outcry over the sex scene between Damian Searcy
and the great sex that then affected the way that, say, on his wedding
night, this film that we can talk about that if we got time. And although threats
of rape are legion all the way through the show, off the office, that
particular kind of problem, moments in the show's depiction of violence against women,
a kind of face gets dialled back a bit. So how do you how do you get that
audience? Well, you have multiple heroes. You have a whole lot of storylines
which sometimes intersect. But you keep switching locations. So even if you do not have a tone
about what's going on in dawn, many of us didn't. You only have to hang on
for a few minutes. I was back at the wall and maybe we can see some all Star Wars again,
which is kind of what drives my interest largely. So you got
as well as these parallel story structures in the interlaces, very mediaeval way of storytelling
between them as they overlap with each other. You also
have a real attention to queering. Now, the
books and the show treat Laura some friendly in quite different ways to some
extent. And I think there's a degree of oversimplification there. But nevertheless,
you have two gay heroes who are treated sympathetically. Now
ya as lesbianism, which has revealed kind of slightly late in the day, I think
when she's in the brothel imbalances kind of a surprise. But when
you look at the other on board, I think you can see why she might have that particular orientation.
And certainly the fan community, the real Free-Fall as the moment when she met Denarius
and they just shook hands on me. No more reading raising.
No more breathing raising. Something or raping
pledge that you gave in there. And there was there seemed to be something that
the community went crazy and this meme with the kind of dragon love came out of
that. And then you have figures who all asexual
like Pharis and indeed like Paul Salem once he's been
emasculated and Tyrion as well, kind of switches out of a kind of
very traditional folkloric view of dwarves as
sexually obsessed into somebody who actually seems to have grown through that particular state.
So we have also. Characters who are disabled.
We have Jamie losing his hands. We have friends who kind of looks like he might
be going to be the hero in the very first episode. And then you saw tonight of the child that
you've been pushed back to the top. And suddenly whatever storyline he's going to have
is not going to be the action hero anymore and the ways in which
friend storyline is treated. I think we can also criticise that.
But you do have a character in the wheelchair. You do have someone with dwarfism. And you do have Jamie
trying to work around his disability. And it's not magic to way. He
doesn't ever become the fighter that he was. And also, importantly, given some of the
tools that there's been around the the race politics of the show, Grey
and my son, they get a really substantial storyline of their own, which is
not quite what is not at all what we have in the books. And although many people
were upset when The Sun met her and Doug was one of them, I have to say,
but I also see how that works in the largest story structure.
I think it's quite admirable. At least these two got
into some serious screen time. And whatever you think of the Doom storyline, that also
gave some space to actors of colour to
play out there. Maybe not very well thought through Rose, though. If you're interested in what
happened in Dawn, there is quite there's an interesting interview with Alexander
Sediq, who played Dora Motel, in which he talks about his feelings
when he saw his contract for the final season. And he was saying, OK,
so what was it all about then? Largely, and this is
a kind of join together the different themes that that we've been touching on.
It was about power and absence. Any on
from now existing thanks to drogue on life, including a picture of me sitting on the on throne
in the pub in Northern Ireland, because I think in some ways I could have made a decent job of ruling
the Seven Kingdoms better than any of the rest of them. It would be true to say
so. One of the things all the show has been power and how
you use it, power and rule and who makes a good ruler and who doesn't
and won't be idealism behind good rule might be no
other power. Of course, is political power. We also have influence
the ways in which somebody like me, Alesandro, can suddenly turn up mysteriously in Dragonstone
and change everything for that particular part of the Seven Kingdoms and play
an enormous role, some of which has to do with the transcendent, the powers
of the laws of life. But a lot has to do with, frankly, the fact the Meller sound
is a pretty attractive looking lady. And I think styluses turn to the red. Gold
was not just because he was persuaded of the field of, gee, let's say
we also had the way the power intersects with knowledge. And I wanted these things I do like about
the show is the way that Sam is that little intellectual that beavering
away, going to the library, getting the books out, doing the work, doing the research,
and coming up with all kinds of pretty important bits of information for the plot.
Then we have questions of identity. And one of the things which I think is pretty interesting here
is the way that the show and to some extent maybe the books subvert
some of the most important tropes of fantasy. And one, of course, as you all know, I'm sure
there's a favourite tropes is that special child, the hidden child, the lost a
guy who has a destiny, but it can't be revealed because
his enemies are massing around him. And of course, archetypal is the story
of King Orfa, taken away, protected by Merlin, drawing the sword as though
a bit of kind of political negotiation. But then he's king of all England. And then we have John
Snow, who gets this revelation goes, Oh, my God, does
anybody know I don't want power? I don't want no, no, no. It's completely screwed up. My
relationship with the Lovington there is that to be my arms. I can't deal with it.
I do want to be a star guardian and I'm out of here. And so that whole motif
of the loft that is completely subverted and so, too, is the kinds
of saviour figure as well. Mother become very heavily problematise with Denarius
already, I think when she's a Marine and by the time her project is not just to to
save these slaves, all slaves to say. But it's. All right, everybody.
From the war to cost, you can see the hurt save a complex who's got Elizabeth asked
to control that. And it's also a show that's really interested
in family. But one of the things that is very striking about it, I think, is also the idea
of family is valorised the great deal in terms of
your primary loyalty is supposedly to your family. Taiwan is very keen
on this. We are lambesis. This is our primary identity. That is something that Attarian
visit. And the source groups draw a great deal of strength
from that idea as well. But the idea, I think in some ways quintessentially
American idea that family is all important, that if you can get
back to the family, if you can reconstituted, there'll be lots of hugging and lots of happiness
somehow. There's a lot of sand expectation that Randle's the STULTZ eventually getting back to Winterfell,
that there would be lots of hugging. And it was all, in fact, a low key. Is still an
Hijau news you got there with you. Interesting brand is just sitting there
in his wheelchair hugging anyone. And however rubbish
that line was about, Orien incenses suspecting each other that Baelish engineered
that to interfere with that kind of packie ending.
Right. Almost winding up here. So epic is always
about the time in which it's set. But it's also always about the now in which it's written.
And one of the things which I have thought is really striking about Game of Thrones from the first time I started
watching is the way it absolutely hates political. Particularly
in the Anglosphere. So back in the day and the day here, I think
it's about twenty, fifteen, sixteen.
If you haven't seen interest trumping. I solely recommended it seem really funny at the time. It doesn't
seem quite that funny now. Theresa May, I'm
guessing I have never seen the show but that mean came out within about 30 minutes of
her declaring the disastrous twenty seventeen election that
she is not raising the debt of the Tory policy and that just a Murray the hides
quote. Just from the end of last month on the day of Brexit, I think
sums up very nicely the way the political commentators absolutely love Game
of Thrones. So Brexit. What was that all about? It had the energy of Midsummer Night's Dream.
It went home for three and a half years. That was the golden age of television drama going on. But people just spent
all the time watching BBC Parliament initially capable of making one comparisons
with Game of Thrones, but eventually lacking the energy to do anything we should dragonfly
apocalypse on everyone involved. Now, Marina Hyde is super keen on Game of Thrones.
Has to be said that even in the last couple of years, you could get a round
Tory policy leadership elections, of which we have had many little guys
mapping the various contenders onto various Game of Thrones characters and
that the fulsom here, a picture of scenario and her
remains of her callosal turning up in the gardens of bones outside cos in season
two, because that struck me as a very interesting moment
indeed. I am one of those things which I think has been particularly resonant
about the contemporary politics with the show is the ideas of wolves. Now obviously
the presence of the US picked up the wall and ran with it in a big way. We're told that
Martin was inspired by Hadrian's Wall when he saw it on the trip to Scotland
and of course, when he started writing a song of ice. And for the most salient wall at the time
was the Berlin Wall, which had only just come down at the point that he began writing.
But the idea of the war, who can come through it, who is often
who is, then who has to be kept. That was, I think, very much dramatised
at that moment outside. When Denarius and Callosal
turned up outside the walls, of course, and the 13 with all those horrible, sinister
warlocks, that their personal lipstick come out and say, no, you can set that and die
because the whole place is littered with people who died. We will not let you in now. Then, of course,
there's some negotiation around how having some dragons can be a bit of a game changer
in that situation. But at that point, when that episode was broadcast in the middle of the migrant
crisis in Europe and that scene outside cost to me was very resonant
of how Europe was looking at refugees from Syria and beyond and saying,
oh, no, maybe we won't let you in. Maybe you can stay out there in the garden
of. So where do we get to at the end?
Well, as happens in EPIC, we get the re-establishment
of order. It's a new ish order, but it is a bit. Meet
the new boss. Same as the old boss. Very often in EPIC. And we might want to talk
also about how radical is that new small council we see
in that in the throne room. We
also have and this is an important part of ethics, too, I think there is a morning of what's lost.
We have a memory of all those characters who didn't make it through to the end.
We might have if we were more interested in the social fabric, we might have a bit more mourning
of what happened to King's Landing as well. But certainly we have a
sense that we've been on a really, really long journey and we have seen things
that we didn't expect to see. And we have lost friends along the way that there's been a lot of sacrifice
involved to get to where we are now. What struck me
when writing the last part of my book as really interesting is that
traditionally when people were asking me after I published my first book, has it all going
to end? I would say pretty thoughtfully. Well, I think traditionally ends
with a whipping or a homecoming. And even if we didn't have the Aeneid
and it's finished full, nevertheless, it's pretty clear that this is going to marry Lavinia and fund the
Roman faith. But no weddings. Nobody gets married.
And that, I think problematise is further what I was saying about the family when starting your own
nuclear family. The ending of romance par excellence
doesn't happen. None of the kids, none of the heroes, the ones who are still alive, want to get married
and somehow perpetuate whatever it is that their families have done to them.
The only exception is because you, anyone think of an exception,
any happy couple at the end.
That's pretty bleak, isn't it? Well, it's Sam and Gilli, maybe,
but I'm I'm still disturbed by the fact the sun turns up in that last mile constancy
as apparently the grand Maisto of the order, which is supposed to be celibate,
maybe some has overturned the whole institution of the older. Maybe
they've had a kind of reformation like the Catholic Church. Maybe he and
Gilly and little Sam and baby John are living happily in some nice house in
kings trendy. Maybe he's fumbled her off to Home Hill to live with his mother and
his sister doesn't go to. That's the way. I don't know. But I think we could have heard a bit more
about that since that was the only happy heterosexual relationship
in the show. I mean, that focuses impulse or rather child
is a product of incest. So we go to family reunion as well. We got the stuff back together.
But straightaway they go off in different directions again. The family as the pace you come
home to home, the place that Denarius was longing for. Partly
because of those stories, the serious beating to her that returned home for her
is disastrous for everybody else. Going home just
makes them think they need to go somewhere else again. Except for, of course, sunset.
And so where we end up does seem to be and again, going back to American storytelling
cliches, a kind of American frontier style individualism. Now, there's a lot of
talk here that Orio was heading off westward. And next thing we know, she'll discover America
and have 12 hours adventures amongst the Native Americans, which
would be fun and interesting. Whether she was going to be like a kind of
Viking life, Erickson discover of America whether she was going to be Columbus with
a diable. Such. I didn't know. But they the show runners do seem to do that. Aria
discovers America, which I think maybe just as well. And there was Joan heading off
with Ghost with his best buddy Tollman off to establish
a new kind of life with a very different, more democratic social setup
up there north of the wall, which presumably is going to be a nicer place to live now. There aren't any walkers
around. And of course, we do end up with some women in
charge, some to Brienne, a powerful presence
on the small council. But there's something I think a little bit disheartening about the way the show ended
with Teria and wisecracking away about the goes in the honey in the brothel
and the the way in which not in the end
that much has changed. Having elected kingship. I think it's not going to be a great
game changer. Is it going to make everybody happy when the election comes on? I do not think so.
But in the end, what this show has done, I think, is
to completely redevelop the tropes of modern
fantasy. It has captured imaginations and audiences the fantasy
in a way that nothing else has some before on which all TV companies
are desperate to replicate. Now, if you've seen is X the new Game of Thrones stories
or across the media, you'll probably be of the view that mostly. No, it isn't.
Will we see its like again? I don't know. Do we care about the prequel that many know about
that either? I thought the first one, the one they cancelled, sounded pretty interesting. It's gone now.
But all in all, it has been an extraordinary achievement which is worth taking
seriously for all kinds of reasons. So finally. Yes. Who?
All the real monsters? Maybe that's the question that the show leaves us with. It's
something that mountain keeps saying. Who's the really scary person? Is it
the night king? Was he really scared me? Actually, I have to say. But in the end, then there
is killed way more people than the night King did. And that.
Suggestion that the supernatural. Projects. Mirrors.
Allows us to talk about all always terrors. But actually those words terrors are
embodied by the human. Is an important take away moral
maybe from the show. So the book was just written. All Men Must Die is coming
out from Bloomsbury. This autumn. And thank you all very much for your attention.