Jason Momoa’s birthday surprise for The Rock’s daughter
ONCE upon a time, Game of Thrones was the most hotly debated piece of fiction globally. In the two years since its puzzling finale, the series has suffered a precipitous fall from public memory. Yet nothing has quite replaced it as terrific fodder for arguments.
On the 10th anniversary of its debut, Game of Thrones, which took inspiration from the War of the Roses and aims at fantasy tropes such as dragons and noble knights, feels like the last true must-watch for grownups. The void the series left behind says a lot about the state of pop culture and its ability or desire to stir up real debates about big questions.
Game of Thrones was never for children, and not just because of the copious number of naked sex workers who paraded across the screen, nor because of the show’s penchant for grotesque violence.
Rather, Game of Thrones was about questions that real adults struggle with, too. What is the most just and effective form of government? Can children of dreadful parents transcend their upbringings? How much deference do the survivors of trauma deserve, especially when they are determined to traumatise others in turn? 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 the series 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 seemed to give 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 ended up being 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 super-villain 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. In pursuit of profit, Marvel has largely surrendered the ability to explore grown-up questions about sex and romance and prioritised a certain political neutrality. Characters barely date; their family lives, when they exist, are meant to signal personality traits, not drive exploration. All political conflicts are personalised; who are superheroes to be limited by deeper systems, after all?
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.
Otherwise, it’s all compromises: government regulation is good except when it interferes with a good man’s conscience. Surveillance technology is bad when bad people have it and awesome when the right people are in charge.
There is politically ambitious mass art for grown-ups out there, of course, but it would be impossible to call much of it popular, or even well-known. Damon Lindelof’s 2019 continuation of the grown-up superhero comics Watchmen was a tremendous exploration of the legacy of racial trauma in America – and it never pulled in a million live viewers per episode. Director Emerald Fennell’s acid revenge drama–, a timely exploration of sexual violence and feminist vengeance, is nominated for an Academy Award for best picture - and a poll suggested that just 34% “active entertainment consumers” had even heard of it.
Maybe this is a logical response to a consumer base that’s divided between wanting politics out of culture and making sure culture conforms to neat political positions.
But Game of Thrones became a hit in part because it took a third path. The show 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, seem to have forgotten just how entertaining big ideas can be. | The Washington Post
JASON Momoa surprised Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson’s daughter Tiana for her birthday.
The Rock enlisted the help of the Aquaman star to surprise Tiana with a personalised message to mark her third birthday recently.
Johnson – who shares Tiana and Jasmine, 5, with wife Lauren Hashian, filmed his daughter’s “priceless” reaction to the clip and uploaded it to Instagram.
Momoa says in the video: “I’m sorry I couldn’t be there but I love you and tell your papa that I love him too.
“I’ll see you soon, happy 3rd birthday. Bye Jazzy, bye Tia, love you.”
The Rock captioned the clip: “I had to make the call ... it’s what daddys do.
“I can’t thank my brother @prideofgypsies enough for making this adoring 3yr old’s birthday the best EVER. Her reaction is priceless and what it’s all about (sic).”
Dwayne added: “You epitomise one of my favourite quotes, ‘It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice.’
“Thanks for having my back – I’ll always have yours (sic).”
The Rock also revealed that Tiana is “obsessed” with Aquaman and finds him cooler than her father’s Black Adam character in a separate clip.
He wrote: “She didn’t even wait til I finished the question, before answering definitively, ‘Aquaman’. The irony just makes my soul laugh and heart smile.”