The song of Jon Snow
Go to hell if you can’t enjoy it
So we’re coming down the home straight of the most significant entertainment of our time and, one supposes, it is inevitable that a cottage industry is running out of control trying to prognosticate on every twist and turn that the show can get onto the screen.
Humans being humans there’s not a lot of attention to be carved out of simple admiration.
Instead we’re treated to a global cavalcade of nit-picks on a scale unknown in human history.
Now I enjoy nitpicking at least as much as the next person and almost certainly a great deal more.
And I’m a long time hardcore fan of the Song of Ice and Fire that is most popularly known as Game of Thrones.
I’d read the books for years before the show appeared. Heck I’d played the pretty forgettable board game before the show first graced our screens.
Without wanting to get into the whole “real fan” thing I’ll confess to some scepticism as to how devoted most of the show’s recent critics were before it became the water cooler phenomenon of all the world.
I suspect a lot of the negativity comes from snide mediocrities hoping they can get a moment of relevance showing off how much more they understand the underlying essence of Game of Thrones than the showrunners.
The internet is similarly awash with experts-in-their-own-minds extolling at length the manifold failings of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies. I’ll concede the awful hash of the Hobbit movies fuelled that fire, but do these people honestly think they would have done a better job if they’d had that responsibility?
The Lord of the Rings was a very tough text to bring to the screen and decisions had to be made that were not going to please everyone.
If you want to see a movie made by fans, for fans, purely as fan service, go and watch Iron Sky.
You end up with an unwatchable hash of obscure payoffs and storyboards that seemed cool once, barely laced together.
Coming back to GoT.
People in Game of Thrones often do stupid things.
It reminds me of a great line of Terry Pratchett’s:
“Why is it all Mr Dibbler’s films are set against the background of a world gone mad?” said the dwarf.
Soll’s eyes narrowed. “Because Mr Dibbler,” he growled, “is a very observant man.”
– Moving Pictures
People in the real world often do stupid things too.
Let’s take a very specific example from the show.
Off go the Dothraki, their arakhs aflame. Making a frontal assault on nothing in particular.
I will confess that as I watched the show I said to my friends “that is a spectacularly poor use of cavalry”.
“Why do you say that John?” they asked, possibly in the hope they’d get it out of my system quick.
“Well a better, and more conventional, use of cavalry is to keep them in the wings until the infantry in the centre can pin the enemy, allowing the cavalry to then outflank or encircle your opponents.”
My criticism here is that the characters have not used their cavalry particularly well. It is not that the show is in some way wrong.
Cavalry was being used poorly when it was chariots in the shade of the newly built pyramids and will still be being used poorly when C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhäuser Gate.
Sometimes even the best commanders have to make sub-optimal tactical decisions to serve a greater strategic purpose.
Sometimes when you have a horde of irregular cavalry, far from their homes, that you have no idea how you’re going to feed through winter, the best thing you can do is let them charge into darkness and doom.
Sometimes you can’t stop them even if you want to.
Now let’s turn our thoughts back to Jon Snow.
I keep hearing, and I’ve been known to say myself, “he’s not exactly all that and a bag of chips when it comes to commanding troops”.
To which I say “that might, in fact, be the point”.
And yes, Daenerys has some right to be huffy that everyone loves Jon and they look terrified whenever she tries to talk to them.
She did bring the dragons after all.
But let’s get our heads into the character’s spaces.
By mid season 8 of Game of Thrones Jon Snow has a life of legend that far exceeds his reality.
The show has periodically gifted us the peasant’s views on Jon Snow overheard in passing.
Things like
- “The bastard son of Ned Stark has gone to join the Nights Watch”.
- “That Jon Snow has risen to be the Lord Commander of the Nights Watch”.
- “Jon Snow defeated the wildling army at Castle Black”.
- “Jon Snow came down from Castle Black and took the North back from the Boltons in the Battle of the Bastards”
- “Jon Snow rode a dragon in a battle against an undead army and saved the world.”
The list goes on, but by this point he’s a folk hero. And having risen from being a lowly bastard, a very relate-able one to the average Westerosi.
(Let’s not forget that a mighty Lord Paramount siring a bastard would have attracted considerable mirth amongst the low-born, and some admiration that the lord raised the child.)
Dany on the other hand is the Mad King’s daughter with a track record of murder and mayhem across the length of Essos who’s first actions in Westeros included burning alive a famous family who wouldn’t swear fealty to a Queen they did not know.
When you’ve got Cersei Lannister in the opposing corner willing to tell any lie necessary to hold onto power it’s easy to see how bad PR can get out of control.
Now those of us who’ve been watching Jon Snow bumble his way through life, constantly falling upwards, and getting saved by others, can be critical of his life choices, or his tactical decisions.
But at least give the show runners credit that this is actually an interesting character, for these very reasons.
Those who laughably think they would be smarter than Jon if they were in his shoes are missing the point.
Napoleon is said to have said (but probably didn’t):
“I know he’s a good general, but is he lucky?”
If you were the average Westerosi you wouldn’t be saying “I would have managed that battle better”.
You’d be saying “He’s made his own way in the world, he’s lucky, and I like him”.
Anyway GoT doesn’t need me to defend it, it’s plenty lucky and plenty likeable.
Human beings in real life make terrible decisions, just like on Game of Thrones.
At least we can just watch it all unfold on the screen.
Go to hell if you can’t enjoy it.
(If you liked this I have a podcast at http://givemetheremote.libsyn.com/ )
