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Recently, I've been doing some in-depth exploration of the religious tradition I was raised in, listening to full college lecture courses, reading scholarly works, and of course revisiting the source text. It has been an extremely productive, and deeply personally satisfying exorcise in weighing, considering, and understanding historical context and various contemporary understandings, while giving that the counterbalance of looking at what the text itself actually says removed from denominational interpretation and even authorial intent; What Exactly Is In There vs. What Do People *Think* Is In There.
It is in the midst of this very serious work, that I am revisiting something very silly, i.e. Game of Thrones, in my sparse downtime. But because the above is what is percolating in my head, that is the mental space and context I am bringing to specifically rewatching the now notorious final season of GoT. Because I have long felt that there is a tension and a disconnect between the authorial intentions and fandom interpretations thereof, and what was actually written/depicting on screen during the last season.
I seek less to rehabilitate and more to reclaim this troubled chapter of GoT.
So, season eight, episode one:
Written by Dave Hill and directed by David Nutter, this episode covers the arrival of Daenerys Targaryen with her dragons and armies, along with Jon Snow, at Winterfell amidst the consolidation of the Northern forces in preparation for the coming White Walker apocalypse, followed by the Stark family reunion and Jon finally learning his true heritage as a Targaryen, as meanwhile Cersei Lannister shores up the defenses of King's Landing with the hired help of the Golden Company. The episode closes with the stragglers from the fallen Wall discovering that the armies of the dead have marched through the Umber lands, leaving none alive, and Jaime Lannister arrives alone at Winterfell to be immediately confronted with Bran, the boy he pushed from a window all those long seasons ago.
There is A Lot(TM) to unpack in this episode, so for the sake of brevity (haha) I am going to confine myself to certain key points.
A Stark Problem: "Anyone who isn't us..."
Quite a lot of literal fanfare goes into the moment of Dany's arrival and for several minutes it's just visuals and Ramin Djawadi's incredible score. But there is a lot of storytelling heavy-lifting going on here. We establish that Dany's arrival Not Popular in the North as she is aggressively stonewalled, not only by the onlooking crowds of grumpy, xenophobic north men, but also by Sansa, the Lady of Winterfell. Dany has done nothing to warrant this treatment, ya know, other than pledging her armies and dragons to fight on behalf of the North against the greatest magical existential threat in history, and we're told this is just how the North is. But there are layers here, because along with Dany comes an army of Unsullied soldiers made up entirely of black and brown men. The North, and all of Westeros on GoT, is Very White. The immediate hostility shown towards Grey Worm and Missandei, in particular, cannot be extricated from its racial overtones. This will be underlined further in coming episodes.
Instantly, the North is transformed before our eyes. The struggle for Northern independence takes on a distinct flavor of nepotistic xenophobia, and social regression to uphold a status quo, rather than a righteous quest for freedom against the oppressive South.
This foul flavor has been further complicated by the added context of House of the Dragon, wherein we see a more racial integrated Westeros. This becomes troubling, however, when one considers that HotD is a prequel, and GoT which takes place later presents not a racial segregated Westeros so much as a Westeros in which PoC do not exist at all until the arrival of Dany and the Unsullied. So, what happened between these two time periods, and where do all the PoC go? None of the implications make the North look any better here.
All this is personified in the Stark Sisters of Sansa and Arya, who instantly dislike Dany and her armies for unclear reasons. Sansa's back seems immediately up because she thinks Jon is in love with Dany, feeling that his judgment must therefore be compromised. And upon reuniting with Jon, Arya makes a thinly veiled threat against Jon that he better remember that he's a Stark (and not a Targaryen) or else (which is ironically hilarious to viewers who know damn well that Jon is not a Stark and is, in fact, a Targ). The only people who count are Starks. They may use Dany's armies and her dragons for their own ends and protection, but at the end of the day Dany and the Unsullied are disposable "necessary evils" to be endured because only the Starks matter. But wait, isn't this the modus operandi of one Cersei Lannister? Ya know, the Starks' sworn enemy, who, back in season one, says to her tyrant son Joffrey: "Anyone who isn't us is an enemy."
Similarly to the North as a whole, the Starks are transforming before our very eyes into something...rather concerning.
Who Is Jon Snow?
This episode begins what will be an ongoing motif throughout the season of characters asking Jon, very specifically, if he would make the same decisions as Dany if he were in her position. Samwell Tarly, upon learning the complex upsetting truth that his abusive father and enabling brother who executed by Dany after refusing to bend the knee, interrogates Jon about whether or not Jon would have done the same. Jon, rightly, points out that's he's executed men who refused to recognize his authority and obey his orders when he was Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, which is not functionally all that different (the difference being Sam didn't care about those men because they weren't his relations). Sam counters by pointing out that Jon spared the wildlings, which is a non sequitur because the issue there wasn't their refusal to kneel to Jon as a monarch or leader (despite Sam opining that it was. Like? No thanks, I've watched GoT and my memory isn't that bad).
After dropping the bombshell of Jon's parentage, Sam says that Dany shouldn't be queen. Again, Jon rightly points out that that is treason. In this instance, Sam switches the question, stating that Jon gave up his crown to save his people, and asks if Dany would do the same. Once more, we are directly juxtaposing Jon and Dany's choices by staging a bunch of hypotheticals.
What's interesting in this scene, especially with foreknowledge of how the rest of the season is going to go, when the interrogative is about Jon's choices, Jon himself states that his actions haven't been all that different from Dany's (the difference is primarily scale, but I'll get to the with later episodes. Hopefully, maybe; spoons willing etc.). Despite characters with varying dubious intentions around Jon and Dany trying to show that there's this gulf of a difference between the two, Jon himself doesn't seem to hold with that. And the discerning viewer can also track that from Jon's behavior in previous seasons (more on that hopefully later as well). Beginning with Samwell, characters will try to build cases for Jon's supremacy to Dany being happenstantial due to the content of his character rather than about gender, But It Is Totally About Gender as Varys will boldfaced admit out loud farther down the road.
Jon doesn't want the throne, effectively abdicates over and over. So, it frankly doesn't matter if, according the sexist laws of Westeros, he's ahead of Dany in the line of succession. He's already abdicated the Northern throne to her, and repeatedly does the same with his claim to the Iron Throne. However, the surrounding characters keep insisting that he has no choice but to take the throne, that he must supplant Dany as some sort of existential obligation because he's supposedly just such a better person than her (despite the fact that she's a fairly effective ruler and all of Jon's previous attempts at ruling have ended with his own murder, a messy battle he had to be rescued from by the machinations of his sister, and some pretty shoddy diplomacy before he finally gives up the crown he didn't even want to the honestly more competent woman). But really this is all a pretty thin smoke screen. Jon is not more qualified to rule, but he is, however, a dude.
Also of note (and again, because HotD now exists this is more apparent): pretty interesting how, the literal SECOND there are two Targ heirs and one is male and the other female, the characters around them IMMEDIATELY recreate the Dance of the Dragons, showing that Dany's legitimacy as queen would only ever have been begrudgingly granted in the absence of a dude. The second anyone gets a whiff that there's a surviving male heir, it becomes a rush to the bottom to be the next Hightowers. Aegon II also insisted that he didn't want to be king, that he wasn't suited, that he didn't want it at all, but that didn't matter. The people around him contrived to have him crowned anyway, usurping Rhaenyra's throne. And the moment the crown touched his head he became the living embodiment of a statement made by his grandsire: "The gods have yet to make a man who lacks the patience for absolute power."
So, anyway, GoT S8 is going to ask us, the viewers, and Jon Snow the character several more times "Who is Jon Snow?" And specifically: "Would he be a better king than Dany is a queen?" Jon's answers and often lack of answers will become increasingly of interest as we go.
Well, my hands hurt. I still have things to say about GoT, apparently.
It is in the midst of this very serious work, that I am revisiting something very silly, i.e. Game of Thrones, in my sparse downtime. But because the above is what is percolating in my head, that is the mental space and context I am bringing to specifically rewatching the now notorious final season of GoT. Because I have long felt that there is a tension and a disconnect between the authorial intentions and fandom interpretations thereof, and what was actually written/depicting on screen during the last season.
I seek less to rehabilitate and more to reclaim this troubled chapter of GoT.
So, season eight, episode one:
Written by Dave Hill and directed by David Nutter, this episode covers the arrival of Daenerys Targaryen with her dragons and armies, along with Jon Snow, at Winterfell amidst the consolidation of the Northern forces in preparation for the coming White Walker apocalypse, followed by the Stark family reunion and Jon finally learning his true heritage as a Targaryen, as meanwhile Cersei Lannister shores up the defenses of King's Landing with the hired help of the Golden Company. The episode closes with the stragglers from the fallen Wall discovering that the armies of the dead have marched through the Umber lands, leaving none alive, and Jaime Lannister arrives alone at Winterfell to be immediately confronted with Bran, the boy he pushed from a window all those long seasons ago.
There is A Lot(TM) to unpack in this episode, so for the sake of brevity (haha) I am going to confine myself to certain key points.
A Stark Problem: "Anyone who isn't us..."
Quite a lot of literal fanfare goes into the moment of Dany's arrival and for several minutes it's just visuals and Ramin Djawadi's incredible score. But there is a lot of storytelling heavy-lifting going on here. We establish that Dany's arrival Not Popular in the North as she is aggressively stonewalled, not only by the onlooking crowds of grumpy, xenophobic north men, but also by Sansa, the Lady of Winterfell. Dany has done nothing to warrant this treatment, ya know, other than pledging her armies and dragons to fight on behalf of the North against the greatest magical existential threat in history, and we're told this is just how the North is. But there are layers here, because along with Dany comes an army of Unsullied soldiers made up entirely of black and brown men. The North, and all of Westeros on GoT, is Very White. The immediate hostility shown towards Grey Worm and Missandei, in particular, cannot be extricated from its racial overtones. This will be underlined further in coming episodes.
Instantly, the North is transformed before our eyes. The struggle for Northern independence takes on a distinct flavor of nepotistic xenophobia, and social regression to uphold a status quo, rather than a righteous quest for freedom against the oppressive South.
This foul flavor has been further complicated by the added context of House of the Dragon, wherein we see a more racial integrated Westeros. This becomes troubling, however, when one considers that HotD is a prequel, and GoT which takes place later presents not a racial segregated Westeros so much as a Westeros in which PoC do not exist at all until the arrival of Dany and the Unsullied. So, what happened between these two time periods, and where do all the PoC go? None of the implications make the North look any better here.
All this is personified in the Stark Sisters of Sansa and Arya, who instantly dislike Dany and her armies for unclear reasons. Sansa's back seems immediately up because she thinks Jon is in love with Dany, feeling that his judgment must therefore be compromised. And upon reuniting with Jon, Arya makes a thinly veiled threat against Jon that he better remember that he's a Stark (and not a Targaryen) or else (which is ironically hilarious to viewers who know damn well that Jon is not a Stark and is, in fact, a Targ). The only people who count are Starks. They may use Dany's armies and her dragons for their own ends and protection, but at the end of the day Dany and the Unsullied are disposable "necessary evils" to be endured because only the Starks matter. But wait, isn't this the modus operandi of one Cersei Lannister? Ya know, the Starks' sworn enemy, who, back in season one, says to her tyrant son Joffrey: "Anyone who isn't us is an enemy."
Similarly to the North as a whole, the Starks are transforming before our very eyes into something...rather concerning.
Who Is Jon Snow?
This episode begins what will be an ongoing motif throughout the season of characters asking Jon, very specifically, if he would make the same decisions as Dany if he were in her position. Samwell Tarly, upon learning the complex upsetting truth that his abusive father and enabling brother who executed by Dany after refusing to bend the knee, interrogates Jon about whether or not Jon would have done the same. Jon, rightly, points out that's he's executed men who refused to recognize his authority and obey his orders when he was Lord Commander of the Night's Watch, which is not functionally all that different (the difference being Sam didn't care about those men because they weren't his relations). Sam counters by pointing out that Jon spared the wildlings, which is a non sequitur because the issue there wasn't their refusal to kneel to Jon as a monarch or leader (despite Sam opining that it was. Like? No thanks, I've watched GoT and my memory isn't that bad).
After dropping the bombshell of Jon's parentage, Sam says that Dany shouldn't be queen. Again, Jon rightly points out that that is treason. In this instance, Sam switches the question, stating that Jon gave up his crown to save his people, and asks if Dany would do the same. Once more, we are directly juxtaposing Jon and Dany's choices by staging a bunch of hypotheticals.
What's interesting in this scene, especially with foreknowledge of how the rest of the season is going to go, when the interrogative is about Jon's choices, Jon himself states that his actions haven't been all that different from Dany's (the difference is primarily scale, but I'll get to the with later episodes. Hopefully, maybe; spoons willing etc.). Despite characters with varying dubious intentions around Jon and Dany trying to show that there's this gulf of a difference between the two, Jon himself doesn't seem to hold with that. And the discerning viewer can also track that from Jon's behavior in previous seasons (more on that hopefully later as well). Beginning with Samwell, characters will try to build cases for Jon's supremacy to Dany being happenstantial due to the content of his character rather than about gender, But It Is Totally About Gender as Varys will boldfaced admit out loud farther down the road.
Jon doesn't want the throne, effectively abdicates over and over. So, it frankly doesn't matter if, according the sexist laws of Westeros, he's ahead of Dany in the line of succession. He's already abdicated the Northern throne to her, and repeatedly does the same with his claim to the Iron Throne. However, the surrounding characters keep insisting that he has no choice but to take the throne, that he must supplant Dany as some sort of existential obligation because he's supposedly just such a better person than her (despite the fact that she's a fairly effective ruler and all of Jon's previous attempts at ruling have ended with his own murder, a messy battle he had to be rescued from by the machinations of his sister, and some pretty shoddy diplomacy before he finally gives up the crown he didn't even want to the honestly more competent woman). But really this is all a pretty thin smoke screen. Jon is not more qualified to rule, but he is, however, a dude.
Also of note (and again, because HotD now exists this is more apparent): pretty interesting how, the literal SECOND there are two Targ heirs and one is male and the other female, the characters around them IMMEDIATELY recreate the Dance of the Dragons, showing that Dany's legitimacy as queen would only ever have been begrudgingly granted in the absence of a dude. The second anyone gets a whiff that there's a surviving male heir, it becomes a rush to the bottom to be the next Hightowers. Aegon II also insisted that he didn't want to be king, that he wasn't suited, that he didn't want it at all, but that didn't matter. The people around him contrived to have him crowned anyway, usurping Rhaenyra's throne. And the moment the crown touched his head he became the living embodiment of a statement made by his grandsire: "The gods have yet to make a man who lacks the patience for absolute power."
So, anyway, GoT S8 is going to ask us, the viewers, and Jon Snow the character several more times "Who is Jon Snow?" And specifically: "Would he be a better king than Dany is a queen?" Jon's answers and often lack of answers will become increasingly of interest as we go.
Well, my hands hurt. I still have things to say about GoT, apparently.
