Game of Thrones, and the Reinvention of Fantasy

I'm a fantasy nerd, at heart. I currently play D&D every other week, I read every crap fantasy novel I could get my hands on through middle and high school (I'm looking at you, Dragonlance), and I marathon the Lord of the Rings extended cut movies at least once a year. And while I can't name all the Valar at will (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tuWSA4qyIDk), Middle Earth and all the worlds it's inspired hold a special place in my heart. I didn't know much about A Song of Ice and Fire before Game of Thrones was announced, but I remember being cautiously excited about fantasy getting an HBO show. Three and a half amazing seasons, several dozen deaths and about a bajillion illegal downloads later, all my caution has disappeared. Game of Thrones is one of the best, most compelling shows on television right now, but for me at least, it's something much more profound: it's the smartest thing to happen to fantasy since Tolkien invented the genre in 1954, and is for low fantasy what Lord of the Rings was for high fantasy.



When most people think of fantasy as a genre, they are probably thinking of high fantasy. High fantasy began with Lord of the Rings, and through LOTR is connected with the medieval epic tradition of Beowulf and Der Ring des Nibelung. These works take characters who are near super human, who are personifications of might and virtue, and pit them against manifestations of pure evil, like dragons and balrogs. There can be all sorts of twists and intrigue and reversals of fortune, but at the end of the story, the good guy always wins: the knight always slays the dragon, the leading man always saves the damsel in distress, and the crownless shall always again be king. And more than that, the good guy wins through sheer force of his own goodness. Morality is always rewarded, and conversely immorality is always punished. Crazy old Denethor dies, and Aragorn the selfless becomes king; Gandalf sacrifices himself for the greater good and is rewarded with new life, while Saruman betrays his order, and winds up impaled on a watermill. High fantasy universes are built on this sort of moral order, where super human good guys will always get the better of their despicable foes. And while that's part of the charm of Lord of the Rings and stories like it, it can get a little bit old.

Not really Saruman's best day

If any of what I just described sounded like Game of Thrones, then you and I have been watching different shows. Game of Thrones, to my mind the epitome of low fantasy, takes place in the same kind of supernatural world of magic and monsters, but that world is occupied by real people: some of them are good and some of them are bad, but they are all profoundly human, and all profoundly flawed. The closest we get to a personification of valour is Ned Stark, the only honorable man in King's Landing. However, as the internet was quick to point, he's also the dumbest man in King's Landing. At every turn, he chooses to do the noble thing, and to trust those around him to do the same. Spoiler alert: it doesn't work out. Not only does his "honor" destroy his family, it starts a civil war that kills off tens of thousands of people and (I'm assuming, I haven't read the books) leaves Westeros woefully unprepared for the zombie and dragon invasions that are gonna happen sooner rather than later. By placing Ned Stark's storyline at the center of the first book of A Game of Thrones, George R.R. Martin makes a statement about the kind of fantasy world he intends to build: in Westeros, good guys don't win just because they're good. They also have to be smart.

He seemed so friendly...

Game of Thrones embodies other aspects of low fantasy too, all of which help remind us of the humanness of the show's characters. Whenever I'm forced to defend the show's "sexposition," i.e., its habit of just having random scenes set in the middle of a sexual encounter, this is the point I come back to: that unlike LOTR, the show is trying to remind us that all of its characters are human, and they fuck and shit and bleed just like everyone you've ever met. However, it's Ned Stark's transformation into a tragic idiot that made me fall in love with the show. It showed me that low fantasy can be more than blood spatters and the occasional sex scene (I'm looking at you, Dragon Age: Origins). It can bring a breath of fresh air, of realism and humanity to a genre that had primarily become copying Tolkien copying Beowulf, and as a fan of the genre, I am all for that.

Game of Thrones: making deviousness look cool since 2011

There's a lot more that can be said about Game of Thrones, both good (the amazing acting, the sense of place, and, my god, the second season!) and bad (some light pacing issues, the sexposition and season 3's foray into torture porn). However, I just wanted to talk about the show's core concept for a second, both because it's what I love about the show, and because it's still very relevant now, midway through the fourth season. As of episode 4, Daenerys is poised to begin a high-minded experiment in democracy, which cannot possibly work out the way she wants it to; the Lannisters are about to be held accountable for mortgaging their future to the Iron Bank; and the only person in the world who really seems to be happy is Littlefinger. I'd say that the question of intelligence versus good intentions is still a huge part of Game of Thrones, and the show's thoughtful discussion of that question helps make it one of the best things on television, and one of the slickest piece of fantasy fiction. Ever.

Really though, he's a great guy. Salt of the earth.