There are only two camps: those that haven’t watched yet, and those who are obsessed. That includes Americanists—and why not? The near-decade of TV is the ultimate American retrospection fantasy: a guy from Bayonne, New Jersey creates a gritty facsimile of medieval Europe (eg: “I wanted my books to be strongly grounded in history and to show what medieval society was like,” says Martin), adding realistic elements to ground the mythic ones. (You know the mythic ones: dragons, magic swords; zombies; the realistic ones include practical power struggles, intra-family bickering, and, I guess a yearning for parliamentary democracy?). Westeros—I’m hoping but not guessing that I haven’t lost the few readers from the ‘never watched’ camp—is an entirely fictive rehearsal of the globe, but it has everything: the nomadic hordes of Asia; the exotic Middle East; a Brexit problem made worse by frustrated relations with the Scots—the works!
For centuries, American painters have been mythologizing America—now America is repainting the myth of the Old World.
Just one thing missing from the picture: the Americas.
Sure, I know that this is the world Martin has conjured, he can conjure it any way he wants, and he wants the Pre-Columbian Europe. But there’s a sort of continental psychology implied when one continent imagines a mythic world that does not include itself, right? Call it a portrait of an absent parent where a family photo is wanted. It ascribes attributes that go beyond what it would say about itself, good and evil. And at the same time there is an insistence on realism, even though we all agree we’re just engaged in speculation, fantasy.
Not even the Many-Faced God knows what George R. R. Martin is thinking, so why speculate? The show does say some fascinating things to us in the world of American art, and I think those lessons are worth enumerating.
The beginning of the final season of Game of Thrones was anchored at one end by a monologue about the motivations of the Night King. Why does he want to kill Bran, the Three-Eyed Raven? Sam explains that Bran is the memory of the Realm—he is a living encyclopedia of the deeds of heroes, the seer of secrets; that memory, Samwell says, is more precious than anything else the realm might hope to possess, or fear to lose. That’s the Night King’s goal, Sam explains: not just to kill everyone, but to kill the spirit of humanity by snuffing out its candle of memory—Brandon Stark.
Fine sentiments, but more telling is who is delivering it: Sam Tarly broke his vows on several occasions and left Castle Black for the Citadel in order to study to be a maester—the equivalent of doctor and research scientist combined. Sam has spent a few seasons in close contact with a different facet of the Memory of the Realm. Midway into his training, we are treated to one of the few moments of poetic beauty in the entire show: a triumphant shot of the Citadel’s library, radiant in shafts of golden light. The hall is adorned by the astrolabe from the opening credits, so you know this moment is sincere: this is another manifestation of the memory of the people—its library.
Why doesn’t Sam speak up for the library he so loves? That is, if why is Bran so important if books will do what Bran can do?
Apart from that one swooning moment, the life of a maester in the library is shown to be mostly chamber pots and gruel. And indeed, Sam’s books provide as much as Bran ever does to help save the day: the cure for grayscale that saves Sur Jorah, the true heritage of Jon Snow – these are found in the stacks, only to be confirmed by Bran later on. Sam doesn’t speak up in defense of the library, or even books in general, and why would he? Libraries are Palaces, yes – palaces of intellectual authority, and their priests are as corrupt and implacable as the High Sparrow.
So is there anything that Bran, “Memory of the People” Stark accomplishes with his “power” that isn’t done better by something hidebound?
Just one thing, apparently.
Unlike Tyrion’s impassioned plea at the series’ conclusion, Sam isn’t saying why he likes Bran – he’s explaining why the Night King wants to kill Bran. And whether or not Bran makes a good king, he certainly makes good bait.
He’s the foil to the Night King’s plan – but what is that anyway, and, apart from existential terror, why does anyone care?
Certainly the Army of the Dead is a terrifying force, able to kill and kill and kill – but so is Cersei, Daenerys, and the vast armies of the living. For the average Joe on the street, why is it better to die in the thousand ways that people die on the show than at the hands of the Night King? For that matter, why aren’t there any turncoats to the Whyte Cause, as there are traitors between houses like Jamie and Tyrian Lannister, Theon, and Varys again and again? The Night King silently provides what the Red Priestesses only promise: resurrection.
Resurrection is everywhere in the Realm: Jon Snow of course; Berric Dondarion is quietly revived a round dozen times. Then each house has a promise of eternity, a way of transcending death: “What is dead may never die,” say the Ironborn, after simulated drowning; “A Lannister always pays his debts,” proof that accounting lives on; and then there’s the whole House of the Undying. What do we say when the Lord of Death comes for us? Death is but a stage in the ongoing story of life.
Jon Snow says there’s no afterlife – just blackness – for mortal death. Why aren’t there at least a few people who would be willing to join the Night King in icy eternity?
The show talks about the white walkers as if they are a personification of Death itself – but what marks you as a hero in this world is a shrugging indifference to death itself. I’m not asking ‘why are zombies scary?’ I’m asking: why are zombies scary to these people?
Jon Snow doesn’t articulate it very well when he makes the case to Cersei, but then, Jon Snow doesn’t articulate anything very well.
The real problem with the White Walkers is not that they’re dead, and not that they are obedient automatons, but that they are memory-less objects. They have no relationship to the past, and the sprawling eternity before them is undistinguished by goals to achieve or debts to pay. It’s that they have achieved immortality that is frightening. Death is a force that gives life meaning in the realm; the White Walkers are the ultimate antagonist in the Realm because they kill even Death.
And so, the Night King wants to end Bran first. I guess the idea is that, just as killing the Night King will dis-enchant the reanimated corpses at his command, ending Bran will dis-enchant the living of their own living history.
In the Realm, objects have memory: here, a blade of Valerian steel, the one that was intended to assassinate Bran Stark in Season 1, was then used in a string of frame-ups by Little Finger, finally finds its way into the hands of Arya Stark. Sure, it’s magical, but it’s an object with memory. Only it can kill the Night King; only here, and only by these hands. The artifact places Arya here, in this moment.
The Army of the Dead—the forgetting fact—is destroyed by the object that remembers, the artifact that teaches.
So even tho the library is full of books, they are chained up by the master maesters (or whatever they’re called). They preserve memory, but they don’t engage it. Books don’t kill night kings: only Arya can; only with the right kind of artifact; only here. Not because she is a princess; not because the blade is magical: because she is activating history.
This is what happens when you stand in front of Frederick Church’s Heart of the Andes, or Jacob Lawrence’s Great Migration or Judy Chicago’s Dinner Party. Do you learn facts about the world? Not really. These aren’t maps, or Wikipedia entries, or cook-books. It’s not evidence, although you can sometimes use a picture to substantiate a claim. Facts are dead things – excel tables that can be consulted and abandoned; write things down in order to forget them. Not so a painting: it must be felt to have any meaning at all. It calls to mind a summer evening; it finds catharsis in a bitter reminiscence; it returns to you the departed. When they are engaged, they place you in your in your time and in place and in your self.
This lens is an important one, especially for Americans thinking about American art. There is newly vocal popular concern about monuments and public works of art, along with new interest in re-introducing forgotten voices to the conversation. How to present and shape the narrative of our own history has never been more hotly debated, with artists and curators grappling the ugly chapters in American history and anxiety about the American future. Debate surrounds the display of public murals of Thomas Hart Benton, the work of contemporary artists like Dana Schutz, and the inclusion of artifacts from non-Western cultures in challenging contexts. Karl Kusserow, curator of American art at Princeton University Art Museum, is promoting the idea of “econ-criticism” – investigating American art via its relationship to ecological concerns. Museum curators across the country are scrambling to expand their representation of African-American artists and works by women. That these initiatives are ensnared in thorny matters of identity and ownership demonstrates the ability of these artifacts to engage our memory.
None of these discussions overturn the value of American art—from my perspective, they strengthen the case for close-looking. The business of art history, curation and criticism is not about handing out medals: it’s about understanding and contextualizing so that you can have that one-on-one dialogue with an artwork. That can be unsettling at times, but ultimately it helps you locate yourself within your time and place.
This is what art historians, curators, and collectors do: activate the story of ourselves through artifacts. Our history and heritage and culture, demons and angels included, can be preserved, just as the Night King or the Citadel can preserve lives or books, in icy disuse. The idea that your past and your future can be reduced to metrics represented by a Google Doc or tallied in Facebook likes is the Night King’s pitch to join his army. We can’t live in a meaningful way without engaging the memory of objects, and the objects have no meaning without being animated by our engagement with them.