The last must-watch pop show aimed at adults
Game of Thrones tackled big issues
On the 10th anniversary of its debut, Game of Thrones, feels like the last true mustwatch for grown-ups. The void left behind says a lot about the state of pop culture and its ability to stir up real debates about big questions.
Game of Thrones was never for kids, and not just because of the copious number of naked sex workers, nor because of the show’s penchant for grotesque violence.
Rather, Game of Thrones was about questions that real adults struggle with. What is the most just and effective form of government? Can children of dreadful parents transcend their upbringings? How much deference do survivors of trauma deserve, especially when they’re determined to traumatize others? What depictions of violence shock viewers into new revelations, and which turn suffering into mere pornography?
The series used a vast cast of characters to explore those questions and sent them on journeys that defied easy conclusions. To name only two examples, Daenerys Targaryen, played by Emilia Clarke, went from abused exiled princess, to liberator queen, to murderous tyrant. Sansa Stark, in a standout performance by Sophie Turner, began as a spoiled daughter of privilege and a collaborator with a regime that attacked her family, only to emerge as a wise, independent leader.
Game of Thrones didn’t always stick the landing, most notably in a finale that gave up on the qualities that made the series so wonderful to debate. After eight seasons of exploring the flaws of every possible style of leadership, Game of Thrones declared “People love stories,” and that the person who knew the most of them should be king.
That’s the argument you’d make if you were advocating for a novelist-king, not telling a sophisticated story about power and human nature. It was a twist that reduced Game of Thrones to the sort of fantasy and fairy tale it had so ruthlessly dissected.
But the flaccid finale became a warning of what was to come in pop culture and politics at large.
Since Game of Thrones began its run, other stories and franchises that share its dual ambitions to be both extremely popular and genuinely provocative have been few and far between. Jordan Peele’s horror movie about white liberalism, Get Out, is one such exception. Todd Phillips’s dark supervillain origin movie, Joker, might count as another, though it’s more an expression of nihilism than a coherent political argument. Meanwhile, Disney’s Marvel Cinematic Universe has conquered the world through careful cultivation of the maximally profitable PG-13 rating.
Black Panther, the closest the franchise came to political provocation, poses a scenario with no real-world
analogue: What if a wealthy and technologically sophisticated African nation had declined to help the Black diaspora? The answer is not exactly groundbreaking.
Game of Thrones put important questions in a new
and fantastical context and challenged the easy answers. Oh, and there were dragons. It’s a shame more storytellers, and more audiences, have forgotten how entertaining big ideas can be.