An ethical analysis of Game of thrones

Okay, First of all, I am not a fan of the show, though I have spent some mostly unpleasant hours on YouTube and various other sites  figuring out what all the fuss is about. Cultural liberals find in it the most vulgar sexism, hypermasculinity, and white supremacism. Slaughterhouse 90210 author Maris Kreizman called it “a show for Star Wars fans who thought Princess Leia should have been raped.”  But you don’t need to rely on my impressions. An overview of the new season describes how the show is held together by “a baseline brutality.”

Our standards, like those of everyone in Westeros, have been perverted. We expect a certain level of violence and moral compromise. The characters who retain a hold on our sympathy are those who can marginally control their bloodlust…. The new season gains momentum as it goes forward, horror begetting more horror. Characters who mean well make bad choices or are punished for crimes they didn’t commit. Characters too weak to fight for themselves are used, abused, kidnapped. Characters capable of decency give into revenge, rape, mercilessness. It’s the particular power of “Game of Thrones” that as these characters descend further into the muck and the grime, the besmirching totality of violence, we’re still pulling for so many of them.

Moreover, it was only recently that,  I have read that Christians have been told over and over that they should not watch “Game of Thrones.” The show  which is now entering its seventh season of unremitting murder, be-headings, rape, torture, and human sacrifice. (And you don’t even want to know what happens next . I wish I didn’t.) There are only a few characters  whom we can really like, and they tend not to last very long before they meet a horrible end. Most of the characters are unlikable, and much of the pleasure of the show comes from watching them trade verbal barbs before they get around to dispatching each other in gruesome ways.

In a nutshell if I have describe this show, It is too violent, involves too much sex and nudity, and presents faith in a bad light.“Game of Thrones” is torture porn dressed up as pseudo-historical drama.It reminds me of an anecdote I read a while back about a science-fiction story in which a pilot must face the dilemma of throwing a girl out of an airlock in order to save the lives of six other people( Probably, some Consequential moralist). As one writer complains: 

“They always point to that story as an example of how science fiction forces people to ask themselves the sort of hard questions that mainstream fiction glosses over,” he said. “That’s what that story is supposed to be about, who would you save, tough moral choices.” He paused, and sighed. “But at a certain point I realized that’s not really what that story is about. It’s really about concocting a scenario where you get a free pass to toss a girl out an airlock.”

Puritans on the right are outraged by the show’s nudity, moral ambiguity, and also by its sexual violence.Calvinist pastor John Piper even said Christians who watch this show are “re crucifying Christ.” Many of these criticisms ring true, but nonetheless, this show can teach Christians—and others in our postmodern world—one very valuable lesson: morality is indestructible. The continent of Westeros also lacks a Christian conception of God—or at least the Christian conception of God that Piper and Wilson would prefer.

HBO’s groundbreaking show has oft been criticised for presenting an amoral universe, where heroes die and villains reign triumphant.  As postmoderns love to preach, there is no good and evil. The world is run by people, not God. Those people have vastly different goals and values, all fighting in a merciless, ultimately meaningless, but nonetheless bloody, game of thrones.

But as C.S. Lewis cannily observed, even the strength of such an argument poses a problem. If the audience mourns when Ned Stark loses his head, and becomes enraged as the pompous King Joffrey tortures innocents, are we really to believe the universe of this show has no moral values? Is not our very anger at George R. R. Martin for killing our favourite characters itself evidence that we believe (as even he believes) in good and evil, right and wrong?

“Game of Thrones” is based on the bestselling novel series “A Song of Ice and Fire” by outspoken liberal George R. R. Martin. (Although perhaps “pessimist” fits him better than “liberal.”) As the author told The New Republic back in 2013, “The sort of fantasy where all the people get together to fight the dark lord doesn’t interest me.” Martin’s goal was to create a world like ours—where heroes and villains are mixed and characters constantly struggle within themselves.

“Virtue and vice may be twisted, complicated, and misunderstood, but they can never be erased.”

Martin enjoys presenting conflicted characters, rather than clean heroes or villains. “We don’t tend to have wars or political controversies where one side is really ugly and wears dark clothing, where the other side wears white and has glowing magical swords,” he explained. “It is never clear who is a bad guy and who is a good guy, who deserves to be supported.”

This mix of good and evil, virtue and vice, in most of Martin’s characters may make the overall story murkier, but it adds a human touch that, ironically enough, fits perfectly with the peoples understanding of mankind. Created by God and endowed with minds, souls, and moral agency, men and women are nonetheless infected with sin. Even the saved are horribly conflicted, as St. Paul writes, between willing to do good and actually doing evil.

The drama of character decisions which drives Martin’s fantasy is also the centerpiece of a human living—how do I honor the God who saved me from my sins and yet live in this fallen, sinful world? How do I impact the world and others for god  without compromising the moral code God holds me to?

Nevertheless, good and evil still make their mark, as they do in all good stories. Martin’s purposefully morally ambiguous tale still makes use of moral norms to present an interesting story.

Characters throughout the series shift from villains to heroes (or vice versa) and Martin trusts that consumers will notice the transformations. In the city of Braavos, Arya watches a play where the ethical roles of Joffrey’s murder are reversed—Joffrey is depicted as a young, ambitious king, Tyrion a jealous, conniving uncle, and Ned a backwards, buck-toothed northerner. No doubt the commoners of Braavos watching think this representation is more fact than fantasy. This isn’t some pseudo-profound, postmodern cliché about how all perspectives are valid and conflict really only develops from misunderstandings. It’s an expansion of one’s moral imagination—what good art is supposed to do.

Characters like Ned Stark are clearly heroic because they value honor and purity over power and influence, but they also die—precisely for that reason. As the king’s second in command, Ned seeks to rule justly. When the king dies, Ned reveals a shocking truth and supports the rightful heir. The other faction has more power, however, and Ned loses his head as a result. This hero was certainly “innocent as a dove” but he was never “cunning as a serpent.”Here in Martin's world only a hand full of people’s ethical commitment is as high as Brienne’s or Ned Stark’s. 

Liberators like Danaerys Targaryen fight to end slavery, but find themselves compromised by demands on both sides. Heir to the throne of her homeland and morally opposed to slavery, Danaerys takes power in a foreign land, and uses the opportunity to liberate slaves and kill their former masters. As she tries to rule this foreign people, she becomes mired in disputes from former masters and slaves alike. In this way, a heroic character finds herself stuck in a sticky situation.

Heroism emerges at several points in the show: when self-described coward Samwell Tarly kills one of the fiercest creatures in the world to save a woman and her infant son; when a blacksmith leads four brothers to their deaths by standing his ground against a Giant; and when Tyrion Lannister leads a nearly hopeless charge against a much larger army.

Even Jaime Lannister, whom the audience first sees as a monster—he cripples children and killed the king he was sworn to protect—is in fact a hero. Jamie later explains that the king he killed was about to burn down an entire city. By sacrificing his honor, and being forever branded “Kingslayer,” he saved the lives of thousands—not noble lords and ladies, but peasants, and “small folk.” While this act does not erase the evil Jaime commits at the beginning of the story, it showcases his heroism and wins the hearts of the audience.

Some other characters nearly embody evil. One family—the Boltons—gain power by massacring heroes and an entire army while at a feast. Head of the family Roose Bolton, and his torturer son Ramsay, win a high position but may indeed get their comeuppance—they are hated by their subjects, who seem ready to revolt at any second.

Even the sex in the show arguably presents a moral lesson, as The Federalist’s Virginia Phillips and Elliot Gaiser explain. The fan-favorite Stark family practices Victorian sexual morality—Ned loves and listens to his wife Catelyn and does not glorify a possible past affair, and Robb refuses to dishonor his wife even to fulfill an oath. But the antagonists frequently use sex to manipulate others.

 Westeros, though clearly a land where moral codes function often to shield the actions of ambitious power-players and where ethics are rarely and cryptically rewarded, still may be offering us incentives to be more ethical in our own society.  On a visceral narrative level, we hate the bad (paradoxically “moral”) characters and, with as little love as some of the others may invoke, we are invited to explore how their motives might be put into better practice. As anyone would agree that civilization must have a set of moral rules, in Westeros enforced by the Sparrows: “Sinners confess.”  Yet moral codes often reside in the custody of sadists, hypocrites, and people who believe they are personally above the rules.  Hence the need for codes of honor, promises, and ethics remains.

“Game of Thrones” is certainly not for everyone, and many people rightly refuse to watch it. Nevertheless, this record-breaking show proves moral in the most surprising way, by demonstrating how good and evil are inescapably woven into human nature. Virtue and vice may be twisted, complicated, and misunderstood, but they can never be erased, not even by the creative genius of George R. R. Martin.

To expand one’s moral imagination as the story does isn’t to acquiesce to moral relativism. Nor is including the nasty things of this world an embrace of them either. Griping that Game of Thrones isn’t Lord of the Rings, Herland, or American Psycho is to make a categorical error. These are stories where redemption is inevitable, impossible, or undesirable. In Martin’s fictional universe, redemption is simply something struggled toward.

Some, however, might argue that while individual characters have a moral anchorage, the story itself doesn’t. This is true. Game of Thrones is more an exploration than an argument. Watching the show or reading the books, you won’t discover what the author’s political opinions are like you would from reading, say, Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia—with its heavy-handed but flimsy strikes against secular education, egalitarianism, and interfaith ecumenicalism. There are, of course, prescriptive maxims within Martin’s story: that authority should be a burden (“The man who passes the sentence should swing the sword”); that we shouldn’t consider ourselves so easily damned or redeemed (“A good act does not wash out the bad, nor a bad act the good”); or that power is the effect not the cause of submission (“Power resides where men believe it resides”). Still, if Game of Thrones has a message, it’s to trust your moral intuitions and also to trust that they may sometimes lead you astray.