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canyonwalkerIt's been a few episodes of Game of Thrones since the last time I posted. Recently I watched up through S1E7, "You Win Or You Die". That episode had an "Inside the episode" companion piece, a 5-minute short, with an interesting remark from the director. "In most stories of this genre," he began— and I'm paraphrasing this from memory— "People who do evil suffer bad consequences, and people who do good are rewarded. In this story, evil gets the rewards. ...More like in the real world."
I won't go into a debate here on whether or how evil truly prospers in the real world, except to note that it doesn't have to be that way. People of good will can and should bond together to oppose bad actions. All too often, though, they get tied up in misunderstandings of their own good will, thinking it improper to oppose bad actions and rude to call out the people who perpetrate them.
Anyway, about the series... Seeing who's evil makes it easier to root for their demise. A few things that have occurred in the past few episodes:
— Viserys Targaryen is killed. Yay! He's the older brother of Daenerys who's too fond of undressing her and ogling and touching her naked body. Later in the series it's mentioned that their family has a tradition of incest. The problem here is not that it's incestuous but that it's actually non-consensual. Anyway, in addition to forcing himself on his younger sister, Viserys is basically a vainglorious fool. He maintains a dream of riding back to the West to reconquer it and retake his father's throne... except he has really no ideas, skills, or temperament for how to do that except that he's arranged a marriage of his younger sister to a barbarian warlord. He pushes things too hard with said warlord, who decides to kill him. Because he's useless and annoying. Daenerys watches it happen without intervening.
— Prince Joffrey takes the throne after King Robert Baratheon dies. Ned Stark is denounced as a traitor. Ned, a basically good guy it's easy to root for, is almost certainly going to be killed in the next episode. (This episode ended with his guards slain, men standing around him swords drawn, and the crown prince on the throne calling for his death.) Stark's killing is not a thing to root for, but it's the final piece of the puzzle that makes it easy to root for Daenerys and the barbarian tribe, or anyone really— including the supernatural Whitewalkers— to come in and conquer the corrupt, evil regime of Westeros.
I won't go into a debate here on whether or how evil truly prospers in the real world, except to note that it doesn't have to be that way. People of good will can and should bond together to oppose bad actions. All too often, though, they get tied up in misunderstandings of their own good will, thinking it improper to oppose bad actions and rude to call out the people who perpetrate them.
Anyway, about the series... Seeing who's evil makes it easier to root for their demise. A few things that have occurred in the past few episodes:
— Viserys Targaryen is killed. Yay! He's the older brother of Daenerys who's too fond of undressing her and ogling and touching her naked body. Later in the series it's mentioned that their family has a tradition of incest. The problem here is not that it's incestuous but that it's actually non-consensual. Anyway, in addition to forcing himself on his younger sister, Viserys is basically a vainglorious fool. He maintains a dream of riding back to the West to reconquer it and retake his father's throne... except he has really no ideas, skills, or temperament for how to do that except that he's arranged a marriage of his younger sister to a barbarian warlord. He pushes things too hard with said warlord, who decides to kill him. Because he's useless and annoying. Daenerys watches it happen without intervening.
— Prince Joffrey takes the throne after King Robert Baratheon dies. Ned Stark is denounced as a traitor. Ned, a basically good guy it's easy to root for, is almost certainly going to be killed in the next episode. (This episode ended with his guards slain, men standing around him swords drawn, and the crown prince on the throne calling for his death.) Stark's killing is not a thing to root for, but it's the final piece of the puzzle that makes it easy to root for Daenerys and the barbarian tribe, or anyone really— including the supernatural Whitewalkers— to come in and conquer the corrupt, evil regime of Westeros.
