Mythology: Game of Thrones
By Martin Felipe
April 4, 2012
BoxOfficeProphets.com
Well, one mistake I made when first delving into Game of Thrones and the Westeros-verse, is to assume it would be an easy transition. I’ve been enjoying picking mythologies apart for decades now, including the aforementioned Hobbit habitat, so I figured this would be awesome! I’d be able to add another universe to my list, another detail-rich, fake society I could get to know better than the real one I actually live in. Then, I saw the first episodes and was overwhelmed… but not in the good way.
There were so many characters with funny fantasy names, so many locations with funny fantasy names, so much twisting and turning complexity between the relationships and storylines, so much back-story, I didn’t know what was going on. Here I am, I guy who knows that Sméagol is a Stoor, a family of hobbit that migrates away from the Shire, and eventually becomes Gollum, but I couldn’t quite grasp what a maester is and why knights are called “ser” instead of “sir”.
What I forgot was that HBO as a network doesn’t produce dramas that hold viewers’ hands through their world building. There’s nothing wrong with that. In fact I respect that they don’t condescend to me. The thing is, gangsters (The Sopranos), cowboys (Deadwood), cops (The Wire), and so on, are real world mythologies with which the viewer is already familiar. Throwing them into these worlds without a life vest is okay because we go in with a solid foundation. Even with True Blood, we may not be familiar with this particular brand of vampire, but we pretty much know all of the major vampire rules.
Game of Thrones does gather inspiration from Rings and other such tales; however, unlike vampire stories which all have a pretty similar mythological basis, all fantasy universes have to be their own thing, with their own structure, details and nomenclature. So, going in, I was a little too arrogant. I figured I was an expert at these sorts of worlds, I’ll be able to pick things up.
I was wrong. I was hopelessly lost and I was mad about it. The one thing the show lacks is an audience surrogate character like Buffy or Jack on Lost. This is the character through which we discover the new world and all of its rules. Such a character isn’t a necessity per se, though even Lord of the Rings has Frodo. He’s an inhabitant of Middle Earth, but it’s through his eyes that we discover the world. Thrones lacks such a character, throwing us into Westeros, all of its myriad unfamiliar locales, and introducing character upon character on an uninitiated audience. In an English accent.
But then, as the season wore on, the pieces started coming together for me. I still didn’t know a septon from a maester, I still couldn’t tell Robb and Jon apart, I still wasn’t sure who this Daenerys chick was and why she ran around naked all the time, but the bigger picture was coming into focus for me. I was starting to get the gist of it. The characters were clarifying in my mind, to the point where I felt the tragedy of the events of the second to last episode (which I will not spoil here, though I do figure anyone reading this knows the tragedy to which I refer). By season’s end, I can’t say that I loved the show, but I appreciated it more. Enough to pick up the book.
Now books, no matter how detailed, have the benefit of allowing us to approach them at our own pace. Film expects us to keep up with it. Thrones, the show, makes no allowance for passive viewing. If you plan on washing the dishes while it’s on, perhaps it’s not the show for you. A heavily detailed fantasy world-building novel, on the other hand, can often be easier to tackle because you’re in charge of your approach to the material.
And, as I read it, the details started popping out. Now we were getting somewhere. I finally understood who these Starks, Baratheons and Lannisters were and how they connected to each other. I made it all the way through the first season of the show without understanding that the Targaryens were ousted from the throne and that Robert is the Usurper that they keep whining about. I really finally got how the whole thing with the boar is part of a Lannister plot to claim the throne. It also kicked in what these faces on the trees are all about. I had the foundation, now the books were filling in the mortar for me.
Then, in the month leading up to Sunday’s premiere, I rewatched the first season, armed with the book knowledge, and even more started coming clear. Now I get who this Gendry kid is and why his leaving King’s Landing is so meaningful. Now I see that Osha is a wildling from north of The Wall and is trying to escape all of that turmoil. And so on…
Now I know you mega fans are all reading this, chuckling at my naiveté. “Silly writer of this column I found online. Those details are SOOOOOOO obvious. You completely missed the point.” Yeah. Yeah, I did. But you missed some big stuff your first trip to the Seven Kingdoms too. Don’t pretend otherwise. Martin designed this world to reward frequent visits. He embeds layer upon layer of meaning, connections and detail in his storytelling, exactly the kind of world building that has made passionate fans of many a modern mythology.
And this is where I dropped the ball upon my first introduction. Martin and show runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss aren’t after passive fans. They want folks to be invested in this world. They create entertainment, but complex, literary entertainment that rewards attention and study. No, this isn’t a show for distracted attention. This is a show for those who care, who are willing to put the effort into it.
Not that I was lazy. Lord knows I micro-analyzed the mythology of The Slayer, the history of The Dharma Initiative, the conspiracy behind Mulder’s coveted Truth as much as the next nerd. With Games, however, I was unprepared going in, for the immediate immersion into the fictional culture and universe of Westeros. I needed a moment to catch my bearings and Weiss and Benioff weren’t giving it to me. For whatever reason, however, I didn’t give up. I persevered and, in time, that perseverance paid off.
And it seems as if HBO subscribers have kept up as well. Perhaps it was the buzz from the first season, or maybe it was the awards Peter Dinklage won got people’s attention, but the ratings for Sunday night’s season premiere were the highest in the show’s history. It seems that, as True Blood ages, Thrones has risen up to become one of HBO’s hot new things.
This is quite an impressive accomplishment. While complex storytelling can often put viewers off (take a look at Breaking Bad’s weak ratings, to name but one example), the opposite seems to be happening with Game of Thrones. It’s a geek show, where it’s becoming quite trendy to be a geeky fan. Non-nerd people in general are not afraid to offer up opinions as to whether Joffrey or Stannis have a greater claim to the Iron Throne, whether Benjen Stark still lives, if Bran really can control his direwolf in his dreams.
When you couple this with The Walking Dead’s ratings success, I consider it a triumph. We of the nerd mindset can often feel marginalized, but these days, it’s less and less uncommon for folks to be familiar with fantastical universes and creatures. I’m not suggesting that such fandom will ever be entirely mainstream, but it is nice to know that there are a few mythology shows which don’t survive by the skin of their teeth, that do enjoy long lives because of large passionate audiences, not tiny passionate fan bases.
Game of Thrones is a show that, at the onset, alienated even me, a person who is the ideal target viewer, yet, in time was able to convert me, as well as a huge number of less targeted viewers. It’s becoming a legitimate cultural phenomenon. Game well played.