Game of Thrones’s Legacy

Last Monday, television juggernaut ‘Game of Thrones’ concluded its nine year run with its eighth and final season.  Since 2011, Game of Thrones has proven a worldwide cultural phenomenon –  it is the most watched, (and pirated) television show of all time.

Game of Thrones has won the most Primetime Emmy Awards of any television drama:

• Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series (Peter Dinklage) – Season 1, 2011
• Outstanding Drama Series – Season 5, 2015
• Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series (Peter Dinklage) – Season 5, 2015
• Outstanding Writing for a Drama Series (David Benioff and DB Weiss for ‘Mother’s Mercy) – Season 5, 2015
• Outstanding Drama Series – Season 6, 2016
• Outstanding Directing for a Drama Series (Miguel Sapochnik for ‘Battle of the Bastards’) – Season 6, 2016
• Outstanding Supporting Actor In a Drama Series (Peter Dinklage ) – Season 7, 2018
• Outstanding Drama Series – Season 7, 2018

It was nominated for a further 28.  Gauged by Emmy wins, Season 5, followed by 3,6 and 7.

IMDB, however, tells a different story. Here I calculated season ratings out of ten by determining the average score of each season’s episodes.

• Season 1 (2011) – 9.1
• Season 2 (2012) – 9.0
• Season 3 (2013) – 9.1
• Season 4 (2014) – 9.3
• Season 5 (2015) – 8.9
• Season 6 (2016) – 9.1
• Season 7 (2017) – 9.2
• Season 8 (2019) – 6.6

Season Four, by the way, was the one with the Purple Wedding, Oberyn Martell and the battle on the Wall.

Best Episodes

• The Rains of Castamere (Season 3) – 9.9
• Hardhome (Season 5) – 9.9
• Battle of the Bastards (Season 6) – 9.9
• The Winds of Winter (Season 6) – 9.9

Game of Thrones’s writing was stronger in the early seasons when it followed its source material. A higher budget and more-advanced CGI picked up some slack in Seasons 6-8, but the final season, which had six episodes instead of the usual seven, left viewers wanting. Too many plot threads were left hanging or deemed irrelevant. Toward the end Game of Thrones’s sprawling cast and labyrinthine plot, long its boon, became a hindrance as its writers struggled to tie loose ends with tact. An estimated 50% of fans were disappointed with the show’s ending.

Game of Thrones is based off American author George R.R Martin’s epic fantasy series, ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ (1996 -). David Benioff (who wrote the 2002 blockbuster ‘Troy’) and D.B Weiss met with Martin in 2006, and won the book’s rights after a five hour meeting where they accurately identified Jon Snow’s mother. They successfully pitched the show to HBO in 2007 with Martin as executive producer.

The original pilot was a failure however and after being granted a second chance, Benioff and Weiss recast and reshot 90% of the episode.  The first season aired in 2011, the same year George R.R Martin published ‘A Dance with Dragons’, the latest in A Song of Ice and Fire. Eight years, and the whole television series later, book fans still await the next installment.

Martin wrote four episodes of Game of Thrones, one for each of the first four seasons.

1. ‘The Pointy End’
2. ‘Blackwater’
3. ‘The Bear and the Maiden Fair’
4. ‘The Lion and the Rose’

Game of Thrones launched careers. Unknowns before it aired, Kit Harrington, Emilia Clark, Sophie Turner, Maisie Williams, Richard Madden and Rory McCann have since become household names. More than anything, Game Thrones has proven that in our era, television has surpassed film.  Quality acting, costumes, set design and dialogue with battle scenes and special effects worthy of Hollywood, a good series can do it all, only with a far greater cast and much more time.

See Also:

• Why Did King’s Landing Burn?

Why Did King’s Landing Burn?

Yes, I am weighing in on Game of Thrones. In a polarising final season, the penultimate episode has proven especially divisive. Critics have derided it. An online petition to remake Season 8 has 900,000 signatures and counting. Personally I liked it. Here’s why.

*Spoilers will follow*

Criticism for Season 8’s ‘The Bells’, the longest Game of Thrones episode to air, and the second-to-last of all time, is laid most heavily on Daenerys Targaryen burning King’s Landing, and the fate of Jaime Lannister. Conversely few can deny its cinematic weight.

Since last episode the Dragon Queen has flipped from slave-freeing heroine to mass murderer without rhyme or reason. Game of Thrones prides itself on its unpredictability. Viewers sit on the edge of their seat, not knowing whether their favorite character will live or die. Eddard Stark’s execution or the Red Wedding, however, were believable and consistent with character motivation. The burning of King’s Landing, meanwhile, seemed less because of an authentic and foreshadowed shift in Daenerys’s character but because the story demanded it.

This all-powerful plot, which defies character or sense, has plagued the show since Season 5. How did Danaerys reach Beyond the Wall in Season 7 all the way from Dragonstone in time to save Jon and friends from the White Walkers? Why did no one important die in the crypts in Season 8’s Battle for Winterfell? How did Jaime, the Hound, Brienne, Tormund, Greyworm and Ghost survive the army of the dead? How did Cersei and her minions identify Missandei? Not because it was credible, but because the plot demanded it.

Critiques of Daenerys’s murder spree follows similar reasoning. The Targaryen Queen spends half of ‘A Dance with Dragons’ mourning an unnamed child scorched by her dragon. Why could she destroy an entire city, just because a few of her friends had died? Why did Jaime, after all he had been through, still go back to Cersei and die in her arms?

Though I concede Season 8’s character arcs are rushed and haphazard, the burning of King’s Landing is not unexpected.

A million people live in King’s Landing, according to Tyrion Lannister. That would equate Danaerys’s slaughter with the Rwandan Genocide if she killed half. By sheer body count, it is leagues worse than anything Joffrey, Cersei, Ramsay Bolton or even the Night King ever did. Despite vowing to never be like him, Daenerys ends up fulfilling her father’s last wish: Burn them all.

It is a fallacy to think great leaders hold themselves to a high moral standard. Alexander the Great crucified 10,000 outside Tyre and burned Pasargadae to the ground. Julius Caesar perpetrated genocide in Gaul and Genghis Khan killed 5% of the world’s population. Burning King’s Landing resembles the nuking of Hiroshima and Nagasaki or the firebombing of Dresden, two acts committed by the ‘good guys’ of WW2. It is not always madness or bloodlust which demand the death of innocents, sometimes and it is cold and calculated strategy.

Daenerys knows the people of Westeros will never love her. She therefore opts to instill the fear of God in anyone who would cross her by turning King’s Landing, its surrendered defenders, and innocent inhabitants to ash. It signals that anyone else who defies her will meet a similar fate. Now her advisors who cautioned forbearance have either betrayed her or are dead. In Daenerys’s mind only unquestioned obedience will guarantee peace and her right to rule. The ends justify the means.

Season 8 has alluded to this.  Though it was handled somewhat clumsily, I appreciated the paradigm shift. As our heroine burned the innocents to death and Jon’s soldiers murdered and raped, it became clear good and bad are relative concepts, a cornerstone of Game of Thrones’s moral lens. What’s more, pitting Jon and Daenaerys against each other makes for a higher stakes game than if Cersei Lannister remained ‘the big bad’. I pray the finale will satisfy.

Update 19/05/9: finale did not satisfy.
Update 27/05/19: petition has over 1,500,000 signatures.

Were We Better off as Hunter-Gatherers?

Humanity has come a long way. Since agriculture revolutionised life 10,000 years ago we have traded our tents and caves for high rise apartments and megacities. We have subjected the elements to our will and multiplied to the billions. Yet despite all mankind’s accomplishments, our neurology remains very much hunter-gatherer and ill-suited to the modern world. Is civilization worth it? Were we better off in our natural state?

Our ancestors worked less. Today’s hunter-gatherers in the Arctic Circle and Kalahari Desert ‘work’ an average of forty hours a week. They only live in such hostile climates, however, because more numerous farmers forced them from choicer lands thousands of years ago.  Ancient hunter-gatherers living in bountiful forests or river valleys laboured far less.  The work our foraging ancestors did perform, whether a day’s hunt, exploring new lands or sharpening spearheads around the campfire, was more exciting and fulfilling than sitting all day at an office or factory.

Hunter-gatherers enjoyed nutritious diets. Instead of dairy and grain, products of the Agricultural Revolution, they lived off wild fruit, fish, and meat, free from excess calories, sugar or saturated fat.  They were fit too; in contrast to our sedentary lifestyles where we get by with minimal physical exertion and pass on our ‘unremarkable genes’, hunter-gatherers were constantly on the move and used all parts of their body. The average Stone Age human was as fit as an Olympic athlete. As foragers were not reliant on a single food source like wheat, rice or potatoes, famine was almost unheard of.

Our hunter-gatherer ancestors were disease-free. Epidemics proliferate when dense numbers of humans concentrate in one place.  Sure, isolated forager bands lack immunity to modern diseases but before the Agricultural Revolution, said diseases did not exist. Hunter-gatherers do not require sewerage because there are so few of them while a lack of inter-connectivity impedes the spread of epidemics. 

Life expectancy of today’s hunter-gatherers is 30-40 years, 60 if discounting infant mortality. Though far healthier than a medieval peasant, our ancestors still lacked modern medicine. Serious injury could be a death sentence.

Like modern hunter-gatherers, our ancestors lived in tight-knit groups of 40-50 people (bands). Some bands were monogamous, others practised free love and collective parenting. All shared intense bonds within their community, however. Contact with other groups was minimal, and bands could go years without meeting outsiders. In contrast, we meet thousands of people in a lifetime. Ancient foragers valued strong social bonds more than possessions or ‘success’. As hunter-gatherers owned only what they could carry, there was noticeably less hierarchy or inequality.

I have previously discussed on this blog that hunter-gatherers are generally more violent than settled, industrial societies. Ancient foragers could easily flee from violent neighbours to new and uninhabited lands, however, a luxury not afforded to their modern counterparts. Intra-band violence depends on social customs and the temperament of its members. Without states to govern them, foragers lacked codified laws to restrict human behaviour and protect the needy. The tradeoff? They were free.

According to Genesis, Adam and Eve lived in ignorant bliss. According to Thomas Hobbes, life in the state of nature was ‘nasty, brutish and short.’ Our ancestors lived in a more violent and dangerous world than modern affluent societies, if not previous centuries, and few of their babies survived. Those that did, however, grew to be fitter, healthier and better-connected adults.

Conversely, we have far more possessions, knowledge and opportunities at our disposal. Life may be safer, easier and more comfortable than it has ever been but advertising and mass media constantly remind us how it could be better. What is happiness other than subjective well-being measured against expectations? Some scholars suggest nothing could surpass ‘the wild excitement and sheer joy experienced by a forager band on a successful mammoth hunt’. Ignorance is bliss. Given our psychological makeup has yet to catch up with the rapid change in life over the past 10,000 years, they could be right. ‘Happier’ and ‘better off’, however, are difficult concepts to define – it all depends on what you value.

Sources: Yuval Noah Harari – Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Phys.org

See Also:

• How Violent are Hunter-Gatherers?
• Ainu
• Apache
• Fuegians
• Haida
• Inuit
• Plains Nations
• Ruc
• Sentinelese

Deeyah Khan

Deeyah Khan (1977-) is a Norwegian- born Emmy-award winning filmmaker, musician and human rights activist based in the UK. Her documentaries seek to understand people on the political extremes and explore the issues of feminism, toxic masculinity, racism, islamaphobia and Islamist extremism.

As of May 2019 she has five films:

• Banaz A Love Story (2012): about a British Kurdish woman, who was a victim of an ‘honour killing’ ordained by her own family.
• Jihad: A Story of Others (2015): about Jihadi radicalisation in the UK
• Islam’s Non-Believers (2016): about ex-Muslim atheists
• White Right: Meeting the Enemy (2017): about white supremacists in the USA

Deeyah Khan was born in Oslo to an Afghan mother and Pakistani father. She grew up in a secular household where talks of art, politics and philosophy were common.  As a girl, her father lectured her that sport and the arts were the only fields someone like her could transcend prejudice. He consequently enrolled Deeyah in keyboard and singing lessons with a world class Pakistani musician. By seven she was performing on Norwegian TV.

As a teen pop star and ‘mascot for multicultural Norway’, Deeyah Khan was targeted by both racist Norwegians and conservative Muslims who deemed music ‘an immoral and dishonorable profession’ for women.  At 17 she fled to London after being attacked on stage. Khan released her last album in 2007 and began teaching herself filmography.

In Jihad, Khan speaks to former and current Islamist extremists in Britain. According to Abu Muntasir, the ‘godfather’ of British Jihad and a veteran of Afghanistan, Kashmir and Burma, recruiters specifically target vulnerable young men to radicalise. For young western Muslims caught between two worlds and struggling with self-confidence, loneliness and identity, the brotherhood and purpose offered by Jihad, not to mention the promise of eternity in paradise, is an alluring prospect.  ‘My gun’ a former Jihadi states, ‘is more or less just a penis extension’.

When Deeyah Khan asks Abu Muntasir if he has forgiven himself for his violent past he breaks down into tears and eventually responds, ‘how do you answer that?’

White Right covers white nationalists in the modern USA. In 2017 Deeyah Khan shadowed Jeff Schoeb, leader of the National Socialist Movement (NSM), America’s largest neo-Nazi group, and accompanied him on a nine-hour car journey from Detroit to Charlottesvile. The men Deeyah meets, a startling proportion of whom are veterans, exhibit a combination of ‘big egos and low self-esteem’ like those in Jihad.

Deeyah does not berate the hateful men she feared all her life but catches them off guard with questions about their upbringing, hopes and dreams and finds common ground on topics beyond politics. Alt-right leaders Jared Taylor and Richard Spencer, however, who are wealthier, better spoken and more remorseless than their working class counterparts, seem immune to Deeyah’s empathetic approach.

Many of the subjects admit they had never met a Muslim before Deeyah and come to consider her a friend. She still corresponds with both Jeff Schoep and Abu Muntasir.

“All the work I do is about recognising ourselves in each other… to locate the humanity in someone else … As a woman of colour, as the long laundry list of things I consider myself to be, I know it feels like to be stereotyped, I know what it’s like to be dehumanised and because of that I refuse to do that to someone else, even if that means a Nazi.”

In January 2019, Schoep passed the NSM’s leadership to James Hart Stern, a black activist who is dismantling the group.

Sources: Associated Press, the Guardian, the Gentlewomen, Making Sense with Sam Harris Episode 144, Under the Skin with Russell Brand Episode 52.

See Also:

• One Month On: Assessing Charlottesville
• The Guardian – How do we combat radicalisation? Offer young men hope and security