Recently,
who knows how recently depending on when you're reading this, HBO
aired the 9th episode of the third season of 'Game of
Thrones', an episode which depicts one of the most wrenching and
emotionally hell-fraught moments of George R.R. Martin's 'Song of Ice
and Fire'. It is the scene in which two principal characters,
probably the two most consistently moral and wholesome of the lot,
are fiendishly skewered and killed bloody dead by those who were
supposed to be their allies while attending a matrimony feast. 'The
Red Wedding' as its long been known to readers, is one of those
benchmark moments in fantasy reading even the most jaded of us never
forget; the fake-world equivalent of remembering where you were on
9/11 or when JFK was shot.
HBO
did a very good job of it.
In fact, in a few ways they did it one better than Mr. Martin
himself, even if they took a few liberties with the nuts and bolts of
the who-was-where and the how-she-died. It was shocking and ugly,
evil and terrifying, mean-spirited, heartless, powerful, nauseating,
heart-breaking and thoroughly difficult to watch. Everything such a
scene should be.
For
longtime readers, I think, it's a relief to get this one out of the
way. It's been three seasons now of waiting for viewers-only to
catch up with the rest of us re: The Goings-On in Westeros, from the
beheading of poor Ned Stark to the death of the dandy fop Renley.
But the Red Wedding was the throat-slashed elephant in the room and
I'm glad the rest of the world now knows why we grandfathered-in
dwellers of Martin's world have spent so long shooting sidelong
glances to one another whenever the conversation turns toward GoT and
the subject of happy endings, cute couples, the certain future of
certain characters, and the quaint notion of love triumphing over all
and letting bygones be bygones.
Those
who count themselves fans exclusively of the show, however, have had,
well...a mixed response. To the ones who loved it and the ones who
are sad, and the ones who would call themselves both, I'm with you.
Then there are the ones who just out and out hated
it.
I
followed it for the better part of a day: legions of people posting
and tweeting their vitriol: 'HBO betrayed us', 'I'll never watch
again', 'you've lost me forever'. 'I'm done', etc. To which I can
only say: you stinkin' little liars.
No,
I'm betting you each $42.38 that you are not
done with Martin's song for this simple reason: it is only because
you were so emotionally invested in the characters in the first place
that you now ache the way you do after seeing them suffer and die the
way they did; it is only because you loved them that you wanted to
see them come away clean, their virtues intact, their vices forgiven,
the Universe in a benevolent mood for the good guys and not the
villains for once. But where the HELL is the fun in that? I'll
probably never convince you, but I will rest assured you'll tune in
again next week, and next season, and every season thereafter, even
if you must do it with a fifth of vodka and a box of tissues by your
side. Why? Because a TV show made you feel, that's why. Books can
do that, too, and paintings and poems and songs. We never fling a
book across the room unfinished because it makes us cry, or stirs us
to frothing anger, or makes us feel energized like we just quaffed
liquid lightning, do we? No. Usually we fling a book across the
room because it's awful, or its boring us to tears. If you're
thinking of staying serious and making good on your threat,
reconsider: there is much about Westeros we readers still know that
the rest of you don't, and while I won't give anything away, I will
promise you this: there are reckonings on top of reckonings and then
some to come, my friends.
Finally,
to the people who blame the writers when a show doesn't go their way,
and accuse them of having 'god complexes' or 'screwing the viewers'.
This is a phenomena I've witnessed over and over on hit TV shows (I
suppose it happens in books, too, although the reaction is
understandably muted compared to that of a popular program): blaming
the writer for the outcome of the show, the result of him/her holding
all the cards, production-wise. To which I can only say, you have a
very interesting and
very incorrect view of employer-employee relations. On most TV shows
the writers are somewhere between the janitors and the production
assistants on the clout scale, and unless they are sharing credits
with the producers, executive producers and/or creators, they write
within stringent parameters and can be overruled on a whim by any
number of people much higher up the totem pole than they.
In
the case of 'GoT', the show creators are indeed also the head
writers, but remember this is a work that is being adapted from an
existing piece: Mr. Martin's stellar novels. Please to also remember
that the show creators are working very, very closely with Mr. Martin
to bring about the spirit and the details of his work in a meticulous
manner, with little deviation from the source and only then with Mr.
Martin's blessing. We know this to be the case because Mr. Martin
has already gone on record stating he has actually revealed
the story's end to the show
creators so they might begin properly building future seasons around
the expected finale of the series which is, of course, ongoing.
So
don't blame the writers. Blame Mr. Martin if you must blame a
writer, but what on Earth is the point of that?? He created the
world, he birthed the characters you so loved, and he gosh-darn well
killed 'em too, and has the right to continue killing them at a pace
and in a manner of his choosing. Which brings me to a point on which
I have lingered many times on other tangential subjects:
The
writer doesn't OWE you anything.
Remember
that. Tattoo it on the back of your damn eyelids.
A
lot of people like to use that as the ultimate excuse to exert
leverage over any writer who creates something that goes on to be
popular: 'we' made it popular, therefore the writer OWES us the
ending we want. This has long been the battle cry leveled against
George Lucas by anyone who didn't like the Star Wars prequels, which
is virtually everyone: we made him rich, he owes us the movies we
always fantasized about.
I
didn't like the last Star Wars films either, but honestly people,
fuck you and think. The writer owes you nothing, and that he has
chosen to tell his story they way he feels it should be told does not
mean he has a 'god complex'; it simply means he wasn't thinking of
YOU when he sat down that day to slaughter three or four of his
protagonists. It's his work, or elsewise a work adapted from his
work in good faith. That means if Martin chooses to end his Song of
Ice and Fire as a dream in Bob Newhart's head, it's his prerogative.
Would you take back all the joy and delight and heartache and
laughter you've experienced up till now just to prove a point, or to
hurt the one who's hurt you? Trick question: you can't.
So
embrace that sense of betrayal, love that lump of lead in the pit of
your stomach when you see your fake friends die. It means you got
something genuine out of your simulated experience, and that is a
thing to be celebrated, not regretted. And when you meet Mr. Martin
at ComicCon or at a book signing, scream in his face “You asshole!
I cried for a week and I couldn't stop shaking!”, and Mr. Martin
would likely as not take it as a huge compliment, and ten to one he
would take it in a very un-godly way. There is nothing more
extraordinary you can say to a writer than “you made me feel
it.”
In
that, the writer has already given you absolutely everything he can
ever hope to give.
Don't
expect more.
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