ASOIAF: Everyone Wants to be a Dictator? (S08E04)
07 May 2019 [link youtube]
A political and philosophical response to Season 8, Episode 4 of "Game of Thrones". A.S.O.I.A.F. = "A Song of Ice and Fire", i.e., the books of George R.R. Martin (G.R.R.M.), also known under the title "Game of Thrones", used by the T.V. adaptation to refer to the series as a whole.
Youtube Automatic Transcription
[Music]
the kind of I was defending it the last two seasons I thought six was really good bad seven was terrible in hindsight I was really defending it the whole way through seven when people were complaining about this exact issue which is that it was getting away from the books the book fan the fans of the books were like oh this isn't what we write left for I was like just wait just wait until basically this episode yes last week I was like wait until this happens because I was the one who was like holding out on the White Walkers I thought the night king had a whole [ __ ] backstory I know everything that I thought was gonna happen didn't and it was a [ __ ] it was like really really dog [ __ ] it just goes to show you we don't give a [ __ ] about these battles you're wasting your money on these battles I just care about the game perhaps the most passionate mode of critique possible is the criticism presented by someone who sincerely believes that they could influence the outcome of future decisions made by the writers and producers on the show and in the past this delusion has not been completely baseless David Benioff and his team the so called showrunners producers directors they have repeatedly made last-minute decisions that very fundamentally altered the plot of episodes of the TV show after the script was written after the film was on the editor's floor they've gone back and very suddenly with very little thought changed things you know that's happened at every stage of the show in some cases you have actors kind of admitting like whoa what we finally saw in that episode was not what was in the script in other cases you have actors kind of admitting oh you know well we got version one of the scripts and then at the last minute we were handed this other script and everything had changed so it's not ridiculous for some critics even here on YouTube to have the delusion that they're gonna influence the creative process at Game of Thrones I lack this delusion so I'm instead presenting this video from the perspective of someone you know who might be able to influence the audience in terms of what you do in your own lives as creative writers as creative people maybe you write fiction maybe write nonfiction maybe you make youtube videos talking about politics like myself what can we learn from the bad writing in this latest episode of Game of Thrones well theatre I'd say in accordance with Aristotle's approach to writing but whatever theater is really about demonstrating things to the audience yes you could demonstrate through words deeds actions even how a you know how a shot is framed what you show what you don't show on camera what you highlight what you linger on um and the first half of this episode what it wanted to demonstrate was the simple but profound realization Daenerys has that Jon Snow is perceived by his people as a great leader put another way she realizes that people are eager to obey Jon Snow's Authority and they are not eager to obey her authority that although she may be able to command obedience from people grudgingly when they fear her or when she offers them some kind of reward or what her actions have a clear rationale or when people are terrified they're all going to be killed by an enemy army that kind of obedience is very fundamentally different from the obedience Jon Snow elicits from people and this either could be shown to us in terms of an examination of what makes Jon Snow extraordinary or an examination of his followership so I mean the point being you could talk about in terms of a study of leadership or a study of fellowship and she has this big realization and that changes her direction in the first half the episode and this episode completely failed to demonstrate that just very poorly written script very poorly directed very poor filmmaking poor at every stage of conception in execution so this is the one big point they'll just pause for a moment imagine the creative challenge of writing about the career of Mao Zedong the dictator of China you could have several different points in the career of Mao Zedong where people of a similar realization let's say it's around 1966 the start of the era of the Cultural Revolution a lot of people have already lost faith in Mao Zedong especially people who are old enough to remember what life was like before 1949 a lot of people just think Mao Zedong's been discredited in his political career is over in this period 1966 and then they stop and realize like daenerys targaryen here looking at Jon Snow they realized whoa this guy has a type of followership among the young people among teenagers among young people who can't remember 1949 who can't think might not really remember 1959 their knowledge of politics is really shallow and really based on propaganda and these young people they're willing to commit atrocities at the snap of a finger in response to what this guy says this guy has a kind of power of over this followership that could be used for good and evil and it's something we didn't recognize because we the older generation the bureaucratic class were consumed with other political struggles and objectives in the last ten years including recovering from the Great Leap Forward that would be a really interesting story tale how are you gonna show that on screen how are you gonna show that well you would not approach it the way these filmmakers approach this scene with daenerys targaryen they've made so many mistakes here they've really thrown away the type of world building that they built up in the first three or four seasons um this scene is a bunch of drunks looking like hobos sitting around in a bar and some of them fall in love with each other and go away and say with each other and some of them make jokes with each other you know this scene is more like an episode of Friends from the 1990s that the first half here set in this bar it utterly lacks sense of hierarchy and inequality in a feudal society that I feel was carefully elicited carefully presented and achieved back when we were looking at the court of King Joffrey you know in seasons 1 through 3 even when you had scenes the smaller number of people in the room the council sitting around with thee the hand of the king you know back when Ned Stark was alive or what had back when Tyrion was ruling in King's Landing the sense of their being complex competing interests who really want to decide who is going to be the new Lord of storms end who is going to be the new Lord of house umber who is going to own what land who is going to receive what honors and what dignity at the end of that battle who is going to arrange which marriage and you know the political complexity and dynamism it is partly just demonstrated through voices from the crowd voice from the crowd interrupting laughing guffawing showing their skepticism and if you go back and rewatch this scene don't but if you watch the first half this episode the directors have presented this all the background areas there were a lot there are a lot of people in the room and these people in the background they're standing in silence as if they're professional modern dancers at a dance rehearsal you know you'd be amazed if you haven't been in the theater when you have people who are professionals and dance they know how to stand in silence and they stand without fidgeting and that's what all the peasants are doing not just residents peasants nights warriors that's what they're all doing in this scene and that's why the whole scene has this weird you know unrealistic sense of being a bunch of actors on a soundstage staring into each other's eyes and I I do not think that the world that was constructed the world we felt and we appreciate it related to back with Joffrey Baratheon back with Joffrey Baratheon him in season one so look if you wanted to write a story of of people recognizing you know as Daenerys is here supposed to recognize Daenerys is you're supposed to recognize whoa Jon Snow has power for good and ill either because something extraordinary about him or about the way he's regarded or something about the culture how these people relate to him whoa and he could use that power for good or evil and she can't control and he could destroy her personally it could end her here it could end her political career wow that's a really interesting storyline to achieve it's something interesting to demonstrate they utterly utterly failed to do it what if you were trying to show this in China with Mao Zedong in 1966 would you show it by having a bunch of drunks hanging out in a bar and relating to each other so informally no fear and no hope for promotion or something no jockeying no lobbying for you know feudal privileges you know when you have Sandor Clegane sitting down with Sansa Stark and relating to her in such an informal way speaking to her you know so indecently so grotesquely this is much worse than an episode of a TV show like friends no no it's a really bad writing um I don't think you could achieve the sense of dread and the political significance by having Mao Zedong sitting around in a bar with a bunch of drunks and having having military veterans come up to Mao Zedong the way a bunch of warriors come up to Jon Snow and just pat him on the back you know we have this really badly written dialog where they just pat him on the back and they say Tim oh wow we saw you on that dragon we saw you fighting in the bath like this is this how you're gonna demonstrate it soon as a writer as a creative person I think that's a little bit worth reflecting on because that was the really interesting theme that you know as writers or actors you're supposed to look at tactics how are you gonna demonstrate that how are you gonna show this to the audience now the second half this episode is much better written than the first half I think it's better written than anything we've seen in 2019 from this TV show however that only makes it as well-written as mediocre television unlike terrible television and the second half of this episode I think remains impaired or hobble weakened by the lack of a sense of a structured complex feudal society this is no longer like the court of Joffrey Baratheon and you know in the books when Joffrey dies even though his mother is supposed to be in mourning everyone's approaching his mother and saying hey you know I hear there's an empty seat available on the council oh hey you know we what we have to arrange who is going to be the new head of the navy the master of ships who's going to be the new head of the economy the master of currency who's gonna take what seat oh you know well we heard this castle is now vacant you know ruling families been wiped out or they were on the wrong side of the war and he to your place Oh who's gonna arrange to move the border between these two counties to change which feudal Manor controls what land all that's going on all of that is brought to Cersei Lannister right after the the funeral or what-have-you I'm right after her new son her new or much younger son gets remarried and so on and becomes the new king you know this sense of hierarchy and protocol and of course poly tests and politeness and fear hope and hope hope for a better world hope for a better future you have to have that to enrich and provide context for the type of drama that then unfolds in the second half of this episode which is lacking so I mean all political ideas have to be expressed through contrast and you know very briefly my interest in the TV show my interest in the books is ultimately about political questions that the author george RR martin raises and the books do set out many important contrasts between slavery and serfdom economic freedom and feudalism and various types of democracy democracy as the theme comes up in the book and it is not presented in an idealized way it's presented along with the sense of its corruption and you know democracy existing in the same city along with slavery they're real social problems you know and the type of internecine instability that democracy brings to a city that's all set up for you in the books Daenerys Targaryen making an argument that she represents something fundamentally different from and said fundamentally better than Cersei Lannister here in the TV show it's laughable I mean I actually laughed out loud and I paused the video I was watching with my girlfriend didn't want to ruin it for her but I thought I was laughing I was like this is ridiculous in the words they're having coming out of Daenerys his mouth what does she think she represents she doesn't represent helping the poor she doesn't hear in Wessel she doesn't represent ending slavery she doesn't represent any ideal any ideal I should say clearly of making the world a better place the only ideal Daenerys represents in the TV show as it has been bungled and presented or misrepresented is the idea that somebody from her bloodline ought to rule simply because they are the descendants of the people who ruled in the past whereas anyone else with any other bloodline is a usurper is illegitimate now again if you went all the way with that idea I mean as crazy as it is in medieval times a lot of people believe that not all read historical primary source documents you can see it was quite common for people to not believe in that concept but you know the idea of the Divine Right of Kings passing through the firstborn you know it's it becomes real hard to believe especially when the firstborn son is obviously physically or mentally [ __ ] which happened in many royal families has obvious health problems or is mentally impaired and oh you know he might have a cousin you know we might have someone else in the royal family who's proven to be a brilliant military commander and wouldn't it be better to have him as the king or whatever this happened history of England Spain France Germany everywhere whatever you can look at any of these societies that had this ideal of primogeniture of the oldest born son and then there were practical circumstances to call into question you could have committed to presenting to someone who really sincerely believes that blood right alone that her bloodline that the principle of heredity is the reason why she should be the queen and not Cersei Lannister where she's in a sense of fanatical true believer in this and therefore for her even if for nobody else even if not for varies or anyone else in the plot that for her it's a crushing realization that Jon Snow has the better bloodline but that has not been set up that's not what we resent with well we were presented with back in seasons one through four was the idea that Daenerys was kind and loving and freed the slaves and cared about the poor and cared about making society a better place and therefore because of her soft-hearted character or at least her liking for the slaves in the lower classes therefore she was a better ruler and then that has been bungled and forgotten now for whatever five years or more we haven't seen anything like that from Daenerys um if anything you know with the voice of the poor in King's Landing has been represented as a group of religious fanatics and before that you had Joffrey's widowed I'm forgetting her name now who remarries Joffrey's younger brother and she kind of represented a little bit more of a pro-poor approach to aristocratic politics you could have questions here of feudalism as such royalty as such in contrast to either a democratic ideal or a populist ideal you know who is is best fit rule but what we've been presented with in this episode is a series of bungled introspections on political power we could have had something really meaningful at several junctures here ending with the meditation which is actually put in the the mouth of bron-bron the professional assassin Bronn the mercenary Bronn states the philosophical political thesis of this episode bran simply states that every political order is created by some kind of murderous madman in this case a madwoman someone so violent so so extreme that they create a new order create a new feudal household or create a new dynasty so that's politically that's the soul of this episode that's where it comes from that's where it concludes and we're only left to take sides and cheer for either Daenerys Targaryen or Cersei Lannister on the basis of who would be more brutal who would be more effective or who would be more efficient in creating a social order a type of hierarchy that we all know is vicious and evil and counterproductive and wrong what is the point of George RR Martin's literary masterpiece even if it's a flawed masterpiece of earlier videos talking about you know shortcomings in the books there are it's deeply flawed it's a flawed masterpiece um it is not conceivable that George RR Martin's point is that Daenerys Targaryen should be the leader of the Western world because of who her parents were it's not conceivable that his thesis is that Jon Snow should be the leader of the Western world because of who his parents are there were a lot of interesting questions in the books though vows and honor and obedience and social order and democracy and participation and the ability to complain and shape what happens in your society there are interesting questions about feminism and so on - and the role of women in society um but the conclusion this TV show has come - even if it is just through the creative exhaustion of the team producing it it's something that is in a subtle way utterly incompatible with both the spirit and the text of the books that preceded from let me ask you guys this in closing why why isn't Kevin Lannister in this TV show if you were to ask me what character do I most relate to or what what's the emblem of why I appreciate the books and what I do I would say Kevin Lannister in the books Kevan Lannister is someone who had to live his whole life as a background character in silence he's someone who had to live as a combination of warrior scholar and bureaucrat in the feudal system and after so many years he finally has the chance to make the world a better place partly through influencing Cersei and then after Circe's walk of shame in the books he basically replaces Cersei bracelet briefly he's in command so this guy's lived his life in the background living on that edge of you know honor duty and death I mean at one point the negotiations with Cersei he says to her simply look I know you're gonna try to kill me and he said you know I have won Castle I think he says you have I have 200 knights and they're loyal to me I feed them well you know if you if you come to kill me you know you'll win eventually but in Mike I'll hold it a long time against your army will really fight to the bitter end to me that's a very moving scene Kevan Lannister is not a fantasy character I think many people would say he is a dull bureaucrat in in as much as the aristocratic feudal world had dull bureaucrats his life has been devoted to breeding horses and you know putting grain into silos on behalf of the peasants and engaging in the economic political and military life of this society and he has almost never had a chance to speak up or do anything decisive to make the world a better place but then he gets his chance he steps forward in bizarre political circumstances he's thrust into a position of power when Cersei Lannister falls from power and he takes that chance to make the world a better place and he is killed he is assassinated immediately not despite the fact that he wants to make the a better place but because of that fact to me the storyline of Kevan Lannister is a great example of the meaningfulness of these books of why they are great art great literature and contain political reflections who are worth reflecting on that are worth teaching in university classrooms and the total omission of Kevan Lannister from the TV show and the the failure to conjure up that sense of a complex feudal society with contrasting priorities pressure pressure from some people who just want land pressure from some people who just want a better marriage for their son or their daughter but also pressure from people like Kevan Lannister who really do want to make the world a better place pressure from people who have gone to study in Essos and have been to these cities where they have elections you know what I will move into cities that abolished slavery like Braavos and who have been to the cities that are still built on slavery and you know the difference that makes the meditations on what kind of society they ought to have and who ultimately is willing to pay the price in blood people like Kevan Lannister who lose lose their lives trying to step forward that to me is a story worth telling and it's a goddamn shame that in the adaptation from book to show all of that has been lost including and emblem enticed by storyline of Kevan Lannister [Music]
the kind of I was defending it the last two seasons I thought six was really good bad seven was terrible in hindsight I was really defending it the whole way through seven when people were complaining about this exact issue which is that it was getting away from the books the book fan the fans of the books were like oh this isn't what we write left for I was like just wait just wait until basically this episode yes last week I was like wait until this happens because I was the one who was like holding out on the White Walkers I thought the night king had a whole [ __ ] backstory I know everything that I thought was gonna happen didn't and it was a [ __ ] it was like really really dog [ __ ] it just goes to show you we don't give a [ __ ] about these battles you're wasting your money on these battles I just care about the game perhaps the most passionate mode of critique possible is the criticism presented by someone who sincerely believes that they could influence the outcome of future decisions made by the writers and producers on the show and in the past this delusion has not been completely baseless David Benioff and his team the so called showrunners producers directors they have repeatedly made last-minute decisions that very fundamentally altered the plot of episodes of the TV show after the script was written after the film was on the editor's floor they've gone back and very suddenly with very little thought changed things you know that's happened at every stage of the show in some cases you have actors kind of admitting like whoa what we finally saw in that episode was not what was in the script in other cases you have actors kind of admitting oh you know well we got version one of the scripts and then at the last minute we were handed this other script and everything had changed so it's not ridiculous for some critics even here on YouTube to have the delusion that they're gonna influence the creative process at Game of Thrones I lack this delusion so I'm instead presenting this video from the perspective of someone you know who might be able to influence the audience in terms of what you do in your own lives as creative writers as creative people maybe you write fiction maybe write nonfiction maybe you make youtube videos talking about politics like myself what can we learn from the bad writing in this latest episode of Game of Thrones well theatre I'd say in accordance with Aristotle's approach to writing but whatever theater is really about demonstrating things to the audience yes you could demonstrate through words deeds actions even how a you know how a shot is framed what you show what you don't show on camera what you highlight what you linger on um and the first half of this episode what it wanted to demonstrate was the simple but profound realization Daenerys has that Jon Snow is perceived by his people as a great leader put another way she realizes that people are eager to obey Jon Snow's Authority and they are not eager to obey her authority that although she may be able to command obedience from people grudgingly when they fear her or when she offers them some kind of reward or what her actions have a clear rationale or when people are terrified they're all going to be killed by an enemy army that kind of obedience is very fundamentally different from the obedience Jon Snow elicits from people and this either could be shown to us in terms of an examination of what makes Jon Snow extraordinary or an examination of his followership so I mean the point being you could talk about in terms of a study of leadership or a study of fellowship and she has this big realization and that changes her direction in the first half the episode and this episode completely failed to demonstrate that just very poorly written script very poorly directed very poor filmmaking poor at every stage of conception in execution so this is the one big point they'll just pause for a moment imagine the creative challenge of writing about the career of Mao Zedong the dictator of China you could have several different points in the career of Mao Zedong where people of a similar realization let's say it's around 1966 the start of the era of the Cultural Revolution a lot of people have already lost faith in Mao Zedong especially people who are old enough to remember what life was like before 1949 a lot of people just think Mao Zedong's been discredited in his political career is over in this period 1966 and then they stop and realize like daenerys targaryen here looking at Jon Snow they realized whoa this guy has a type of followership among the young people among teenagers among young people who can't remember 1949 who can't think might not really remember 1959 their knowledge of politics is really shallow and really based on propaganda and these young people they're willing to commit atrocities at the snap of a finger in response to what this guy says this guy has a kind of power of over this followership that could be used for good and evil and it's something we didn't recognize because we the older generation the bureaucratic class were consumed with other political struggles and objectives in the last ten years including recovering from the Great Leap Forward that would be a really interesting story tale how are you gonna show that on screen how are you gonna show that well you would not approach it the way these filmmakers approach this scene with daenerys targaryen they've made so many mistakes here they've really thrown away the type of world building that they built up in the first three or four seasons um this scene is a bunch of drunks looking like hobos sitting around in a bar and some of them fall in love with each other and go away and say with each other and some of them make jokes with each other you know this scene is more like an episode of Friends from the 1990s that the first half here set in this bar it utterly lacks sense of hierarchy and inequality in a feudal society that I feel was carefully elicited carefully presented and achieved back when we were looking at the court of King Joffrey you know in seasons 1 through 3 even when you had scenes the smaller number of people in the room the council sitting around with thee the hand of the king you know back when Ned Stark was alive or what had back when Tyrion was ruling in King's Landing the sense of their being complex competing interests who really want to decide who is going to be the new Lord of storms end who is going to be the new Lord of house umber who is going to own what land who is going to receive what honors and what dignity at the end of that battle who is going to arrange which marriage and you know the political complexity and dynamism it is partly just demonstrated through voices from the crowd voice from the crowd interrupting laughing guffawing showing their skepticism and if you go back and rewatch this scene don't but if you watch the first half this episode the directors have presented this all the background areas there were a lot there are a lot of people in the room and these people in the background they're standing in silence as if they're professional modern dancers at a dance rehearsal you know you'd be amazed if you haven't been in the theater when you have people who are professionals and dance they know how to stand in silence and they stand without fidgeting and that's what all the peasants are doing not just residents peasants nights warriors that's what they're all doing in this scene and that's why the whole scene has this weird you know unrealistic sense of being a bunch of actors on a soundstage staring into each other's eyes and I I do not think that the world that was constructed the world we felt and we appreciate it related to back with Joffrey Baratheon back with Joffrey Baratheon him in season one so look if you wanted to write a story of of people recognizing you know as Daenerys is here supposed to recognize Daenerys is you're supposed to recognize whoa Jon Snow has power for good and ill either because something extraordinary about him or about the way he's regarded or something about the culture how these people relate to him whoa and he could use that power for good or evil and she can't control and he could destroy her personally it could end her here it could end her political career wow that's a really interesting storyline to achieve it's something interesting to demonstrate they utterly utterly failed to do it what if you were trying to show this in China with Mao Zedong in 1966 would you show it by having a bunch of drunks hanging out in a bar and relating to each other so informally no fear and no hope for promotion or something no jockeying no lobbying for you know feudal privileges you know when you have Sandor Clegane sitting down with Sansa Stark and relating to her in such an informal way speaking to her you know so indecently so grotesquely this is much worse than an episode of a TV show like friends no no it's a really bad writing um I don't think you could achieve the sense of dread and the political significance by having Mao Zedong sitting around in a bar with a bunch of drunks and having having military veterans come up to Mao Zedong the way a bunch of warriors come up to Jon Snow and just pat him on the back you know we have this really badly written dialog where they just pat him on the back and they say Tim oh wow we saw you on that dragon we saw you fighting in the bath like this is this how you're gonna demonstrate it soon as a writer as a creative person I think that's a little bit worth reflecting on because that was the really interesting theme that you know as writers or actors you're supposed to look at tactics how are you gonna demonstrate that how are you gonna show this to the audience now the second half this episode is much better written than the first half I think it's better written than anything we've seen in 2019 from this TV show however that only makes it as well-written as mediocre television unlike terrible television and the second half of this episode I think remains impaired or hobble weakened by the lack of a sense of a structured complex feudal society this is no longer like the court of Joffrey Baratheon and you know in the books when Joffrey dies even though his mother is supposed to be in mourning everyone's approaching his mother and saying hey you know I hear there's an empty seat available on the council oh hey you know we what we have to arrange who is going to be the new head of the navy the master of ships who's going to be the new head of the economy the master of currency who's gonna take what seat oh you know well we heard this castle is now vacant you know ruling families been wiped out or they were on the wrong side of the war and he to your place Oh who's gonna arrange to move the border between these two counties to change which feudal Manor controls what land all that's going on all of that is brought to Cersei Lannister right after the the funeral or what-have-you I'm right after her new son her new or much younger son gets remarried and so on and becomes the new king you know this sense of hierarchy and protocol and of course poly tests and politeness and fear hope and hope hope for a better world hope for a better future you have to have that to enrich and provide context for the type of drama that then unfolds in the second half of this episode which is lacking so I mean all political ideas have to be expressed through contrast and you know very briefly my interest in the TV show my interest in the books is ultimately about political questions that the author george RR martin raises and the books do set out many important contrasts between slavery and serfdom economic freedom and feudalism and various types of democracy democracy as the theme comes up in the book and it is not presented in an idealized way it's presented along with the sense of its corruption and you know democracy existing in the same city along with slavery they're real social problems you know and the type of internecine instability that democracy brings to a city that's all set up for you in the books Daenerys Targaryen making an argument that she represents something fundamentally different from and said fundamentally better than Cersei Lannister here in the TV show it's laughable I mean I actually laughed out loud and I paused the video I was watching with my girlfriend didn't want to ruin it for her but I thought I was laughing I was like this is ridiculous in the words they're having coming out of Daenerys his mouth what does she think she represents she doesn't represent helping the poor she doesn't hear in Wessel she doesn't represent ending slavery she doesn't represent any ideal any ideal I should say clearly of making the world a better place the only ideal Daenerys represents in the TV show as it has been bungled and presented or misrepresented is the idea that somebody from her bloodline ought to rule simply because they are the descendants of the people who ruled in the past whereas anyone else with any other bloodline is a usurper is illegitimate now again if you went all the way with that idea I mean as crazy as it is in medieval times a lot of people believe that not all read historical primary source documents you can see it was quite common for people to not believe in that concept but you know the idea of the Divine Right of Kings passing through the firstborn you know it's it becomes real hard to believe especially when the firstborn son is obviously physically or mentally [ __ ] which happened in many royal families has obvious health problems or is mentally impaired and oh you know he might have a cousin you know we might have someone else in the royal family who's proven to be a brilliant military commander and wouldn't it be better to have him as the king or whatever this happened history of England Spain France Germany everywhere whatever you can look at any of these societies that had this ideal of primogeniture of the oldest born son and then there were practical circumstances to call into question you could have committed to presenting to someone who really sincerely believes that blood right alone that her bloodline that the principle of heredity is the reason why she should be the queen and not Cersei Lannister where she's in a sense of fanatical true believer in this and therefore for her even if for nobody else even if not for varies or anyone else in the plot that for her it's a crushing realization that Jon Snow has the better bloodline but that has not been set up that's not what we resent with well we were presented with back in seasons one through four was the idea that Daenerys was kind and loving and freed the slaves and cared about the poor and cared about making society a better place and therefore because of her soft-hearted character or at least her liking for the slaves in the lower classes therefore she was a better ruler and then that has been bungled and forgotten now for whatever five years or more we haven't seen anything like that from Daenerys um if anything you know with the voice of the poor in King's Landing has been represented as a group of religious fanatics and before that you had Joffrey's widowed I'm forgetting her name now who remarries Joffrey's younger brother and she kind of represented a little bit more of a pro-poor approach to aristocratic politics you could have questions here of feudalism as such royalty as such in contrast to either a democratic ideal or a populist ideal you know who is is best fit rule but what we've been presented with in this episode is a series of bungled introspections on political power we could have had something really meaningful at several junctures here ending with the meditation which is actually put in the the mouth of bron-bron the professional assassin Bronn the mercenary Bronn states the philosophical political thesis of this episode bran simply states that every political order is created by some kind of murderous madman in this case a madwoman someone so violent so so extreme that they create a new order create a new feudal household or create a new dynasty so that's politically that's the soul of this episode that's where it comes from that's where it concludes and we're only left to take sides and cheer for either Daenerys Targaryen or Cersei Lannister on the basis of who would be more brutal who would be more effective or who would be more efficient in creating a social order a type of hierarchy that we all know is vicious and evil and counterproductive and wrong what is the point of George RR Martin's literary masterpiece even if it's a flawed masterpiece of earlier videos talking about you know shortcomings in the books there are it's deeply flawed it's a flawed masterpiece um it is not conceivable that George RR Martin's point is that Daenerys Targaryen should be the leader of the Western world because of who her parents were it's not conceivable that his thesis is that Jon Snow should be the leader of the Western world because of who his parents are there were a lot of interesting questions in the books though vows and honor and obedience and social order and democracy and participation and the ability to complain and shape what happens in your society there are interesting questions about feminism and so on - and the role of women in society um but the conclusion this TV show has come - even if it is just through the creative exhaustion of the team producing it it's something that is in a subtle way utterly incompatible with both the spirit and the text of the books that preceded from let me ask you guys this in closing why why isn't Kevin Lannister in this TV show if you were to ask me what character do I most relate to or what what's the emblem of why I appreciate the books and what I do I would say Kevin Lannister in the books Kevan Lannister is someone who had to live his whole life as a background character in silence he's someone who had to live as a combination of warrior scholar and bureaucrat in the feudal system and after so many years he finally has the chance to make the world a better place partly through influencing Cersei and then after Circe's walk of shame in the books he basically replaces Cersei bracelet briefly he's in command so this guy's lived his life in the background living on that edge of you know honor duty and death I mean at one point the negotiations with Cersei he says to her simply look I know you're gonna try to kill me and he said you know I have won Castle I think he says you have I have 200 knights and they're loyal to me I feed them well you know if you if you come to kill me you know you'll win eventually but in Mike I'll hold it a long time against your army will really fight to the bitter end to me that's a very moving scene Kevan Lannister is not a fantasy character I think many people would say he is a dull bureaucrat in in as much as the aristocratic feudal world had dull bureaucrats his life has been devoted to breeding horses and you know putting grain into silos on behalf of the peasants and engaging in the economic political and military life of this society and he has almost never had a chance to speak up or do anything decisive to make the world a better place but then he gets his chance he steps forward in bizarre political circumstances he's thrust into a position of power when Cersei Lannister falls from power and he takes that chance to make the world a better place and he is killed he is assassinated immediately not despite the fact that he wants to make the a better place but because of that fact to me the storyline of Kevan Lannister is a great example of the meaningfulness of these books of why they are great art great literature and contain political reflections who are worth reflecting on that are worth teaching in university classrooms and the total omission of Kevan Lannister from the TV show and the the failure to conjure up that sense of a complex feudal society with contrasting priorities pressure pressure from some people who just want land pressure from some people who just want a better marriage for their son or their daughter but also pressure from people like Kevan Lannister who really do want to make the world a better place pressure from people who have gone to study in Essos and have been to these cities where they have elections you know what I will move into cities that abolished slavery like Braavos and who have been to the cities that are still built on slavery and you know the difference that makes the meditations on what kind of society they ought to have and who ultimately is willing to pay the price in blood people like Kevan Lannister who lose lose their lives trying to step forward that to me is a story worth telling and it's a goddamn shame that in the adaptation from book to show all of that has been lost including and emblem enticed by storyline of Kevan Lannister [Music]