SPOILERS UP TO END OF SEASON 6
Review: 6/10
I am no longer a big fan of the series (the only TV series I follow through the excellent cable alternative qBittorrent). It’s not even that I’m a stickler for book accuracy, or a “bookfag”; as I have pointed out, I believe that some things the show did do better. A few characters and organizations – Tywin, Bronn, the Faith Militant especially come to mind – were fleshed out better. The absence of Lady Stoneheart was a welcome departure from the book. Even Sansa’s “ordeals” with Ramsay Bolton were a bold, if questionable, plot decision.
Still, as the book/show timelines have continued to diverge, it has become increasingly clear that Benioff & Weiss (or “D&D” as they’re disparagingly called) are talentless hacks incapable of maintaining interest in the story without a constant stream of illogical “surprises” and shock deaths. The Dorne episode has been universally panned as a disaster from start to finish, and yet IMO it was still good in comparison with the ridiculous fate of Show!Stannis, who rage quit on the Baratheon family line thanks to Ramsay Bolton and his 20 good men. And Brienne just had to be there in the midst of a chaotic battle to personally put Stannis out of his misery.
Season 6 hasn’t much much of an improvement over the disaster that was the previous one.
Kingslaying is supposed to be this great taboo in Westeros, but we are to believe that the Dornish guards stood by by as their popular and benevolent ruler was cut down by his dead brother’s consort and her bastard daughters. It doesn’t even make any sense from Ellaria Sand’s viewpoint; are we really to believe that the dying wish of the man she loved would have been for her to avenge Elia Martell by… killing all of the rest of the family line? (Not even going to go into the mechanics of how the Sand Snakes managed to instantly kill that massive black dude, the captain of Doran’s guards, with a single dagger in the back). That entire scene made no sense from either common sense or the ethical framework of Westeros.
Anyhow, I found that particular scene so overly ridiculous that, on seeing it a year ago, I didn’t even bother watching the rest of the season in disgust until a week ago.
The Dorne debacle could have perhaps been excused as the price the show had to pay for putting an end to all that nonsense with the Sand Snakes. To the contrary, kinslaying and kingslaying have actually become entirely normalized affairs – in a society where Jaime Lannister faces widespread opprobrium for betraying and killing the “Mad King.” Euron openly bragged about killing his king and brother at the kingsmoot of the ironborn, apologizing only for not doing it sooner, and was duly elected king to voluble applause; at which point he immediately proceeded with a further attempt at kinslaying. Ramsay stabbed his father, Roose, and assumed lordship of House Bolton without any major problems or resistance… even though the Boltons kill and torture peasants pretty much at will, surely that should have been a step too far even for them. But apparently not.
That said, I can’t say it was too bad, especially relative to the low expectations I had developed for it. I would even say it was better than Season 5, though perhaps primarily because that was when we had to come to terms that GRRM’s story was finished, and that D&D didn’t have a tenth of his talent.
It also featured what is IMO the finest soundtrack of the entire show, by Ramin Djawadi:
What’s going to happen in Season 7? (no spoilers)
The newly crowned Cersei is in a completely untenable position. The Tyrrells, the single richest House in the Seven Kingdoms, with an army of 80,000, are now her sworn enemies; with all its direct heirs dead, the House’s matriarch Lady Olenna has nothing to lose, and has made common cause with Dorne, with its army of 50,000 spears untouched by the War of the Five Kings.
As if that isn’t enough, they have made an alliance with Daenerys, who has a host of 50,000 Dothraki horsemen, 8,000 Unsullied, a bunch of mercenaries, an armada, and three dragons. The North and the Vale are also hostile; the former has been wracked by years of war, but the latter are at their prime strength, having remained neutral in the war. At least there is the hope that the northern kingdoms are going to have their hands full now that winter has come and the White Walker invasion is imminent.
And if all that isn’t bad enough, the Lannisters’ gold mines have run dry, and the Crown owes untold amounts of septims to the Iron Bank of Bravoos (my pet theory: The Iron Bank also has the Faceless Men at their beck and call… there’s presumably a good reason why the Bank always get its due. And who’s the conveniently located Faceless Man in Westeros with a grudge against Lannisters?)
The Lannisters have, at most, perhaps 40,000 worn down troops, including the King’s Landing city guards. Furthermore, if the first episode of Season 7 is anything to go by, a significant propotion of their army now consists of green recruits.
The commonfolk, the septons, and the nobles whose friends and relatives were burned to a crisp by wildfire at the Sept of Baelor all hate Queen Cersei.
Their only allies are the Freys, who are of questionable worth in the first place, and whose continued existence is, in any case, open to doubt following Arya’s assassination of their patriarch Walder in the final episode of last season.
What do these ominous comparisons presage for the Lannisters? Their triumph, of course.
Yes, this is going to be my bet for this season. For Daenerys to put Cersei out of her misery and team up with Jon against the White Walkers would be too logical, boring, and predictable. The game of thrones will not stop even as the song of ice and fire reaches its apocalyptic crescendo – and for that to happen, Cersei will have to hang on for just a bit longer.
Here is how I think the season will go, to be proven or disproven in the next seven weeks.
Euron’s Iron Fleet will triumph over Daenerys’ armada. I don’t know how he will deal with the dragons. In the books, Euron has a horn that can “bind” dragons, but including it in the show would be too much of a deus ex machina (though nothing can be excluded with D&D). In any case, Daenerys’ armada will be destroyed and a large percentage of the Dothraki and Unsullied will have to pay their mite to the Drowned God. She herself will be confined to Dragonstone, like Stannis after his defeat at the Battle of the Blackwater.
This will demoralize the Lannisters’ enemies. The Dornishmen will start asking WTF they’re doing fighting for kingslaying usurper bastards, and the lesser Houses of the Reach will rebel against the ruling Tyrrells and their Redwyine allies (the Tarlys are prime candidates to head this betrayal). Highgarden finishes the season under the gold-red flag – as well as its vast grain, manpower, and monetary resources. The Iron Bank is satiated, and extends Cersei a new loan.
Seeing no realistic chance of furthering her claim to the Iron Throne in the near future, coupled with Jon’s insistence that the real struggle is the one against the White Walkers, Daenerys will decide to follow in Stannis’ footsteps, taking her dragons and what remains of her army and fleet to the North – as well as copious dragonglass supplies. Since this is the penultimate season, the final highlight will surely be hordes of White Walkers and the undead poring south over the Wall.
Cersei will eventually meet an exceedingly sticky end, her murderer’s hands wrapping about her pale white throat and choking the life from her – at least, going by the valonqar prophecy – but that is for the last season.
I didn’t think too much about the taboo on kingslaying and all that, but the Sand Snakes was absurd because it’s something that never happened in human history: a coup by a coalition of women. There are queens who have come to power through scheming with others, but there’s never been a female cabal like that in history. And they fight too! Despite being 110 pound girls. Now Jon Snow is drafting girls of all ages to fight the White Walkers. The feminist propaganda has killed much of the enjoyment for me.
Stop reviewing post-murican prolefeed.
The TV shows got worse & stupider at a slightly slower pace than the books – but only slightly.
Feminist propaganda, homosexualist propaganda, antiracist propaganda, exploitation and normalisation of pornography – the show seemed to me to have all the most harmful tropes of US media cultural pollution, which is why despite its undoubted but inadequate redeeming qualities I decided to stop watching it early on (somewhere in the second series iirc). I’m surprised they haven’t yet started showing strong White Walker characters as noble heroes making their way in Westeros society despite facing all the racist hostility to immigrants that bigots like the people who built the Wall could throw at them (perhaps they have).
Then again I always preferred the Wheel of Time books to the Song of Ice and Fire books anyway – what is the benefit of making fantasy stories with dragons and magic grittily “realistic” anyway? I used to think that would be a good idea, until I encountered the results of it being done by a writer as dogmatically leftist as Martin. Tolkien seemed not to need the props of explicit sex and gratuitous, gloatingly described violence in order to write an exciting story.
On this topic, what do Russians watch on TV (or the torrent downloads) ? I would imagine that the urban latte coffee drinkers in Moscow and other big cities might watch Game of Thrones because they want to be seen as sophisticated liberals. What do the Vatniks and Sovoks prefer to watch ?
Also, do the non Russian tv shows have subtitles or spoken translation, what about really big movies like Star Wars ? Final question, how do Hollywood movies get received considering that Hollywood is now openly supporting the “Russians are evil” narrative ?
No problem, Hollywood movies – 90% of all movies in the cinema. On television there are constant American series. The ideological component completely indifferent to the Russian audience
Foreign film is dubbed. Very annoying. But hardly unique to Russia. Can’t tell you what Russians watch on TV because none of my friends do so. But then they are mostly espresso drinkers.
I certainly wouldn’t recommend Wheel of Time as a redpill alternative to ASoIaF… quite the opposite, in fact.
Also it becomes increasingly evident as the series goes on that Robert Jordan is a BDSM freak. 🙂
GRRM is a dogmatic leftist in person but the series itself is remarkably based. 90% of the grrlpower shit is show-specific.
Tolkien is a great writer, but his epic was thematically simple – no different shades of gray (just black and white), no politics, no realistic interactionss between the sexes.
As melanf said, popular culture is almost completely Americanized.
Here’s a fun anecdote which we discussed in one of our recent ROGPR episodes – a huge percentage of Communists (sovoks) on their online forums use avatars from the Command and Conquer video series. Simply because the Team Red aesthetics that some Californian pot smokers created is superior to what an actual Communist state managed over 70 odd years.
I always thought that the series would benefit from more deranged rambling about capitalism in its cutscenes.
I’ve mentioned it before, but I highly recommend Chronicles of Amber. I wouldn’t call it “redpilled” insofar as it is simply the result of being written from an earlier age, but its generally enjoyable and avoids most modern disgustingness. The sheer murderous dysfunction of the main character’s family is genuinely third-world like, though, along with the hilariously convoluted reasons for the clan fights.
“Well, the king was married to a woman and she had some boys…but then he changed his mind and divorced her, ex nihilo, such that the marriage never happened! This means that they are delegitimized, I think. Anyway, my mother had my elder brother…but she was only the King’s mistress then. After she married him, she had me, so that makes me the legitimate heir. All the other boys disagree, though.”
Fair enough, but I don’t expect my escapist fantasy necessarily to have an element of political indoctrination. Though I don’t object to a bit of even leftist political indoctrination when it’s well written and reasonably open and honest about its purpose – for example the left anarchist stuff in Ursula LeGuin’s The Dispossessed, or even the ancap stuff in Ayn Rand’s books (if only she were a competent writer).
Really? More so than Martin!?
I suppose thinking back (it’s a while since I read them) there was a lot of talk about corporal punishment, discipline and power-mediated relationships, but I mostly assumed that was just his own cultural background together with the unavoidable results of having a system of magical compulsive control. There was never anything explicitly sexual about it, as far as I can recall.
Certainly not as much of an ever increasing whiff of that kind of tendency as the superb George MacDonald Fraser’s Flashman books, which were more sexually explicit about it.
I certainly got the impression of dogmatic pc-ness both from the books and the series without following either too far. Maybe I’m hypersensitised.
True. Like I said, though, it didn’t stop him writing superb and exciting stories, and nor imo did it stop his fiction being immensely truthy.
I think that’s probably generally true of genre fiction written by people who grew up prior to the real beginning of mass indoctrination on leftist dogmas in the 1970s, isn’t it?
A much higher proportion of those writers also had experienced military service or (in the case of the earlier writers) actual military action in WW2, which I think gave many of them a much more grounded view of the world.
Pretty sure I read and liked Nine Princes in the 1970s. Certainly I read most such stuff printed around that time or previously, as my father had a pretty big collection and that was certainly in it. Just checked, though, and it’s not available on Kindle, otherwise I’d pick it up and reread it now. Come to think of it my father’s collection is still boxed up and in storage so I might be able to hunt it down there. I don’t allow myself to buy genre fiction in hard copy these days – it just takes up too much space and my wife complains I never get around to chucking it out.
I disagree about Tolkien, particulary about shades of gray. In the Lord of the Rings, the relation between Frodo, Gollum, and Sam is quite complex. Frodo comes to understand Gollum as a tragic figure, something like a normal Hobbit destroyed by his curiosity for seeking out the roots of things and by the weight of being a Ring bearer. Sam, an otherwise completely virtuous character, is absolutely merciless to Gollum and accuses him of treachery just at the moment when he is on the edge of repentance. In the end, Frodo simply fails. He takes the Ring and is saved only by Gollum biting offing his finger and falling into the fire.
Concerning relations between the sexes, there is much more of this in the Silmarillion. But I found (many years ago) the character Eowyn (lady of Rohan) and her relations with Aragorn, Faramir, and Theodyn interesting and believable (relative to the suspension of disbelief necessary for appreciating the story). The truth is that women don’t play a very large role in the Lord of the Rings.
About politics, maybe this is fair about the Lord of the Rings. There is some, but it is in the background. There is more in the Silmarillion. But if you read Tolkien’s letters, he seems to have had not much interest in politics, and a very low opinion of politicians. In particular, he refers to Churchill quite mockingly even in the midst of the Blitz.
You make a good response to Anatoly’s point, with Gollum. In general, I suppose, although Tolkien’s was a universe of absolute good versus absolute evil, people’s motivations were often complex and even understandable when they turned to the dark side or generally behaved badly. And though there was always repentance and forgiveness available, the latter always depended upon the former – there was never any pretence that the behaviour itself was other than evil even if it was understandable, and it always had consequences.
I agree with this. Eowyn was a good attempt by a male conservative to understand and explain the motivations and psychological issues of feminism in the context of a medieval human society, imo.
Book/movie/game heroes of modern Russia. 3/4 of them are of American origin
https://imgur.com/a/2srbx
Really great book, much better than “the Lord of the rings” or “Song of Ice and Fire” . This is the most cheerful book I know of
Fanart from St. Petersburg
https://imgur.com/a/ZXTqK#ygsFwMV
Speaking of feminism in the context of medieval society, I find Chaucer very interesting. There is of course the hilarious Wife of Bath’s Tale, but the Franklin’s Tale is quite serious and makes an interesting point about how equality between the sexes was only possible in the privacy of the home, but not in public, especially when the man is of lower social status than the woman. Basically, he can’t afford to treat her equally in public without losing face, and she appreciates this. What’s interesting about this is that Chaucer cared enough to feel that equality was desirable while at the same time understanding that there were real obstacles to it.
Judged against the full spectrum of fantasy writers I wouldn’t call Martin “dogmatic” at all. Le Guin (and many others) — absolutely. Le Guin makes a point of making many of her characters black, and derided some diverse TV adaptation as being “too whitebread.” Wasn’t she the child of two social anthropologists?
Martin, by contrast, watches the NFL and is fairly Eurocentric. A lot of his story is based on European history. Once, some black guy on WJL Live asked him why so many fantasy books focus on white guys . Martin’s response was politely dismissive: the writers are white guys.
Le Guin’s a poser. If you are going to write fantasy, black is at least as boring as white. Why not give the characters variegated skin?
Does this include “patriotic” US series like the dreadful Navy CIS? That occasionally has Russian villains, is something like this shown in Russia?
People who are into Cosplay aren’t really representative of the general population though.
Also not clear to me the majority of the costumes shown on those pics is really US-inspired, I could discern only some Star wars and Marvel superhero costumes…Japanese video games/anime might be more of an influence. But then I don’t know much about these things and probably don’t get the references.
I don’t know about the show “Navy CIS”, but for example the movie “Rambo in Vietnam” (Rambo: First Blood Part II ) was a great success in Russia. And in last New Year, state TV showed “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull”.
The reason is probably that Hollywood shows Russians so grotesquely implausible that in Russia it has cause only laughter
Russians must be somewhat masochistic if they can enjoy something like Rambo II which has Rambo kill dozens of Russians (the 3rd one is even worse from today’s point of view, with its depiction of mujahideen as heroes)…though you’re right of course that it’s so grotesquely over the top it’s hard to take seriously.
That’s an interesting point, though I’d suggest that at root it’s probably an eternal human truth and not specific to medieval society. Those societies that refuse to admit it, such as those of the modern feminist west, pay a heavy social price.
Here’s another example: a local festival in my town, 16 June 2017. By order of the city fathers, the American robot (from the animated series “Transformers”) entertains children.
http://imgur.com/a/TWXTK
You will be funny, but the festival was dedicated to the totem of the town – a giant mutant ant
http://imgur.com/a/d4vh8
I’m not familiar with much of LeGuin’s work – I read the original Earthsea books and The Dispossessed and one or two other early sf works, but nothing of hers written after the mid-1970s, as far as I recall. Enough to recognise a very competent writer even if I didn’t like her politics particularly.
The political stuff in Dispossessed though, I found much less obnoxious than the kind of routine political correctness of Martin’s stuff (though I think Game of Thrones is probably far worse and might well have coloured my recollections of the book for the worse). But I certainly didn’t manage to continue with reading that series (long before the TV series). It was recommended to me by a very good friend who couldn’t stomach the Wheel of Time books I was reading at the time because he assumed it was just hollow Tolkien imitation (which I can understand, but isn’t correct imo). Anyway, he never read the WoT and I never read the SoIaF series.
Absolutely no masochism, these scenes in Russia were perceived as parodic farce, and caused a healthy laughter
Personally I find it hilarious watching US films from the 1980s which were propagandising for islamist terrorists as heroes because they were using them to do their dirty work in Afghanistan. The film eulogies came to an abrupt stop in 2001, I think, although not the use of islamist terrorists as geopolitical battering rams, obviously.
Another great example of the mujahideen-worship genre was The Beast of War, made in 1988 and about a Russian T-55 crew who get lost in Afghanistan. Features as the vicious baddie a Russian tank commander, iirc, who grew up as a child in Stalingrad known as “tank boy”, and who comes out with the classic Hollywood line: “how come we’re the Nazis this time?”, or some such. Interesting to note that the military adviser for the film had the necessary contacts to pick up a couple of captured T-55s from the Israelis.
I find this somewhat sad tbh…”Transformers” is trash even by the standards of US pop culture. I don’t get why Russia needs to import such crap instead of building on its own traditions of children’s literature, television programmes etc.
The reading ant is quite original though.
Hey Randal,
Yeah – The Beast of War is a classic 80’s anti-Commie film. I think it was even shot in the Negev desert. Those Israelis are down for some prime propaganda when needs be.
Peace.
Do Germans watch Hollywood WW2 movies? I guess so. Even the Pearl Harbor movie was marketed in Japan. Either these are weird, too, or Russians watching the Rambo movies are just normal.
It’s certainly in my DVD collection, along with Kelly’s Heroes, the greatest Vietnam film set in WW2 ever made.
The best there’s ever been. That’s one part of the reason the world’s so f’ed up today.
Actually, they like it for the high klyukva quotient. The same series have hilarious “Soviet” march sung in broken Russian with lines like “Stolitsa, vodka, Sovetsky medved.” John Batchelor sometimes uses it as a theme for his weekly talks with Professor Stephen Cohen. He apparently thinks it’s an actual Soviet song.
Because everyone else would have failed, a point that is repeatedly made in the book. The Ring simply has so strong supernatural powers that no mortals (and probably not many immortals either) could withstand it. It’s hardly a “fault” of Frodo to be unable to resist it in the end.
Sam’s mercilessness towards Gollum is probably really a fault (or could it be the result of some subtle manipulation by the supernatural powers of the Ring?), but it’s not something that is difficult to understand.
To me the characters seemed to be a little like cardboard figures. It was still good to read it.
Germany lost in 1945, it’s a defeated nation. Besides Nazi Germany really was evil in a way the Soviet Union wasn’t (probably even during the Stalin era, but most certainly after 1953).
But despite that I actually refuse to watch movies like Saving Private Ryan or that relatively recent movie with Brad Pitt about a Sherman tank (Fury iirc). It’s one thing to admit that Germans deserved to lose WW2, it’s another to watch American heroes mow down dozens of Germans as entertainment…I actually do think there’s something psychologically wrong with Germans who do the latter.
iirc Sam is actually pretty much the character most resistant to the ring’s effects…doesn’t he use it when Frodo is held captive in that Orc tower?
And personally I don’t think Sam was unnecessarily cruel towards Gollum, that was just prudent (and in the end Gollum does prove to be irredeemable…making all the hints about his possible redemption rather pointless imo).
iirc Tolkien once stated that he modelled Sam on WW1 British soldiers…and of course the Shire is basically an idealised version of England (one of the reasons why LotR is hated by many “progressives”).
Btw, wasn’t there some Russian who wrote a novel in which Sauron and the Orcs actually are the good guys, standing for scientific advancement, whereas the Elves etc. are nasty feudalist reactionaries? Has anybody here read that?
Americans watched “Little Big Man”, and that wasn’t even entertaining.
I am a Kraut and recently watched “Fury”…
Too much of a history nerd. “Where the fuck did a full SS unit come from in 1944/1945 at the western front? And why do they fight like Morons? Red army killed all moron SS units by then.”
Film never explained that.
When I was in the German army, there was a Rambo based drinking game.
Drink whenever an actual Speznaz would have just killed Rambo.
This often lead to interesting exchanges like this:
Gefreiter A: Hej, Gefreiter B, why didnt you drink? Clearly, this stupid stunt would have resulted in immidiate death by Speznaz!
Gefreiter B: But this was so moronic, what if the Speznaz thinks this is some sort of hidden camera thing?
Gefreiter A: Do they have hidden Camera shows in Russia?
Feldwebel C: They do, and they are watching us right now, its probably titled “4 dumb Fritzes watch Rambo while drinking just before the VDV says privet”, and they are
undoubtetly dubbing over us with a very poor quality. Oh the horrible dubs! They are truely the vilest invention of the Russian war machine, a most direct assault on our culture and our logistics!
Me: Logistics?
Feldwebel C: Yes of course, an army marches on its steady supply of readily available cheap Porn. If the Porn has even the female parts dubbed over by the same overweight guy from Novofuckoffograd, it no longer fullfills any porn related function! Dubbing porn is like poisoning the water supply! Now stop talking and restart drinking you morons.
Me: But couldnt you watch them with the sound off?
Feldwebel C: Porn with sound off? HERESY! Where is the Politcommisar? Ah crap, we are no longer NVA (East German army), you got lucky!.
Soviet dubbing is was actually renowned for its quality, technical and artistic alike.
it was in the late 80’s that guys with speech defects began to dub movies on consumer equipment.
Have you read the Silmarillion and Tolkien’s other tales of the First Age?
Silmarillion has been compared to the Old Testament…maybe somewhat unfair, but it’s almost theological in parts. Characters also seemed quite flat to me, much less developed as individuals than the characters in LotR (maybe not surprising, Tolkien never produced a final version of it iirc, it was all drafts and many different versions of the same stories). It’s interesting as mythology, but it’s even more removed from a “realistic” version of a fantasy world than LotR.
Tolkien wasn’t interested in “realism.” He was interested in Myth. Realism is a strange criteria for a fantasy work anyway.
The Last Ringbearer by Kirill Eskov.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer
http://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/last_ringbearer_explanation/
I haven’t read it myself, but I agree with him that something doesn’t add up in the official histories. Sauron did nothing wrong!
https://twitter.com/akarlin88/status/679269582524121088
Game of Thrones is supposedly “realistic” though with all its violence, political intrigues and shades of grey. That’s what distinguishes it from Tolkien’s works (you’re of course right that Tolkien was interested in myth, iirc he would have liked to create the mythology England lacked in his opinion).
Yes, I read The Silmarillion. It was very boring and getting through it was a struggle.
Might have had something to do with me reading it immediately after LoTR when I was around 12 so I might find it more interesting now but no time to check now. All the lore is now available on wikis anyway.
Have not read a single word,nor seen a single scene.
The question is,…should I consume any of this content?
A) Yes indeed this is a most wonderful show and the book is superb. Go for it!
B) Worthwhile,certainly. Not the best use of time,but not the worst.
C)Don’ believe da hype. Avoid!
D) Who cares what you do schmuck?
You’re being rather hard on the Nazis,aren’t you?
The robot is familiar to children from the cartoon, not from the movies. Cartoons about transformers – it is a normal cartoon for kids
It’s not so bad. Modern Russian cinema is a cesspool. But the cartoons for kids are the exception – these cartoons are produced in Russia in large quantities and sell in different countries of the world. But the American cartoons and movies for children of course also popular.
Similarly, in the literature – the original Russian literature for youth is alive and well, but competes with Anglo-American literature (which is also popular).
In the Soviet Union was a similar situation – the beloved children’s character was Karlsson-on-the-Roof from Stockholm
“Song of Ice and Fire ” is quite realistic in the initial three volumes in regard to “European” Westeros. Where Martin begins to describe the wicked slaveholders, starts pure trash.
Starting from 4 volum trash covers all narrative – the endless repetition of the protracted plot, Martin disguises by pornography, and savoring of cannibalism
B) Worthwhile,certainly. Not the best use of time,but not the worst.
There’s just no denying that the first two or three books, and the first two or three seasons of the TV show, were thoroughly captivating. And I say this as somebody who doesn’t read much fantasy literature, let alone TV.
I recommend watching the first couple of seasons of the TV show, if you can do it for free, just so you’ll know what people are going on about. At that point, you should have no trouble deciding whether you want to see any more, or check out the books.
“In the Lord of the Rings, the relation between Frodo, Gollum, and Sam is quite complex. Frodo comes to understand Gollum as a tragic figure, something like a normal Hobbit destroyed by his curiosity for seeking out the roots of things and by the weight of being a Ring bearer. Sam, an otherwise completely virtuous character, is absolutely merciless to Gollum and accuses him of treachery just at the moment when he is on the edge of repentance. In the end, Frodo simply fails. He takes the Ring and is saved only by Gollum biting offing his finger and falling into the fire.”
This is exactly right. I mean, really – exactly right.
In all of Western literature, Frodo is an absolutely unique hero. His struggle is, ultimately, not against any external enemy, but against himself. And his struggle ends in failure.
I also struggled through the Silmarillion when I was about 12. But I read it a few more times as a teenager and at least once in my mid-twenties. If you like myth, and you appreciate Tolkien’s aesthetic, then it is worth the read. It’s not even very long. The story of Numenor I find particularly interesting, and even relevant, as a meditation on the blessing and the curse of civilization. The Numenoreans begin as a highly intelligent, fertile, vigorous civilization, only to descend into an obsession with death and a desire to dominate weaker peoples. Not unlike our own civilization.
Faramir to Frodo in the Twin Towers:
“Kings made tombs more splendid than houses of the living, and counted old names in the rolls of their descent dearer than the names of sons. Childless lords sat in aged halls musing on heraldry; in secret chambers withered men compounded strong elixirs, or in high cold towers asked questions of the stars. And the last king of the line of Anárion had no heir.”
In fact, funny enough, someone has even done a demographic study of the Numenoreans.
http://www.zarkanya.net/Tolkien/Decline%20of%20the%20Numenoreans.htm#_ednref13
Evil is whatever society decides it to be. Had the Third Reich won then it would not have been called evil. All of us have come about because some ancestor exterminated some other rival people to procreate. As Hitler correctly said, the iron law of nature is absolute regardless how much you don’t like it.
Very, very off-topic, but with policies like this – Chancellor Angela Merkel rejects refugee limit for Germany in TV interview – how is Merkel able to remain party leader?
Christian Democrats care only about staying in power, they don’t really have any programme apart from that…was illustrated a few weeks ago when the Bundestag legislated in favour of gay marriage (which means giving homosexual couples the right to adopt children, they already had everything else). There was hardly any protest from the Christian Democrats about this, in fact many Christian Democrats voted in favour of it…great for Merkel who removed an obstacle for a coalition with the Greens.
There really isn’t anything conservative about the CDU anymore, they don’t have any principles apart from the belief that they are the natural party of government. Merkel’s still liked by many Germans (yes, they are that dumb), media is still quite favorable to her, and it’s pretty much certain that the CDU/CSU will be the strongest bloc again after the elections because there aren’t really any viable alternatives. Merkel will stay chancellor, and as long as she delivers electoral victories she won’t be removed by her party…as long as they stay in power, Christian Democrats are happy.
There is also zero democracy within the CDU itself, Merkel basically runs the party like her own property, and her obedient yes-men just accept that. The CDU’s electoral programme was apparently written pretty much alone by one of Merkel’s henchmen, Peter Altmaier, a disgusting fat eunuch without wife or children whose sole reason for existing seems to be serving Merkel (and helping radical pro-asylum and open borders groups who enjoy a good relationship with him). No intra-party discussion about it. But then that programme doesn’t matter anyway…the CDU has this weird personality cult around Merkel (supposedly extremely capable, a firm rock in a scary and unpredictable world), and that’s enough for them.
Do you think the American primary system – the political equivalent of all-against-all gladiatorial combat performed in full view of the public – would be an improvement? Not that the powers-that-be in Germany would go for such a thing, given the risk to their sinecures.
That is historically untrue. Empire-builders have traditionally conquered other peoples and either slaughtered or added their leaders to the ruling classes (depending on how troublesome they were in fomenting armed revolt) while adding those that did not take up arms against them, to their people. Rome was more or less similar to other empires except it was bigger. Hitler was unusual because he chose to exterminate Slavs, Jews and gypsies. He was simultaneously uniquely wicked and uniquely stupid.
Maybe; Merkel would probably get destroyed in such a system (the woman is hardly capable of stringing more than a few rehearsed sentences together in a coherent manner and deliberately avoids all discussion and debate; she would have no chance against a competent, eloquent opponent).
Now the US and German political systems are quite different in some ways, but another useful element of the US system imo is the two term-limit for presidents. Something like Merkel’s career with a chancellorship of probably at least 16 years is simply a nightmare…no one should hold power for such a long time in a democracy.
But there’s not much point to such thoughts of course, since there clearly won’t be any attempt at reforming the system in the next few years, so things will go on as they are now, until some sort of collapse happens.
After 1917 the bolsheviks murdered the top 10% of Russian society in concentration camps including gassing them in trucks. Part of the focus on the holocaust after WW2 is a smokescreen for what the Bolsheviks did.
i stopped watching early on after some particularly nasty torture but binge-listened later (had it on in the background while browsing) just so i’d know what people were talking about.
it’s cultural poison – very good drama but cultural poison all the same. don’t watch it but listen if you feel the need to understand references.
50 years of the media’s cultural carpet bombing over racism – anyone who stands up to oppose her will be destroyed by the media
on-topic
whatever Martin’s politics he’s of an age where most of the women in the book who are power hungry seek power in the traditional and logical way women seek power
(and exceptions were either physically huge or rare and specially trained)
as soon as the show ran past the books it turned into the usual pozfest of girl ninjas
i disagree about the ending though. the ending was always clear if you know your ancient history – the mass slaughter of white people by Maghrebi liby-pheonician spearmen in a re-run of the Rome-Carthage war with the genocidal fantasy aspect disguised by making the two leaders of the massacre white.
the Romans (Lannisters) will be slaughtered first and the Germans (white walkers) will be slaughtered second – probably sacrificed in dragon fire like burnt offerings to Moloch.
(the same ending the oligarchs have planned for western Europe)
Gollum is all very Jungian. He is Frodo’s psychological ‘shadow’ or weak side which is always causing problems but in the end is necessary to get the job done.
Given that Tolkein was highly religious in a Christian sense, it doesn’t surprise me that biblical symbolism has also slipped in somewhat oddly. Frodo and Sam are the ‘two witnesses’ of Revelation but in reverse. In the book, these two appear at the end of the magical age and perform the deeds that cause it to fade away, leaving only the mundane physical world of men. In the Book of Revelation, the two witnesses supposedly end the mundane physical world of men and create the supernatural world of the Kingdom.