This weekend “House of the Dragon,” the long-waited prequel to “Game of Thrones,” begins its first season on HBO Max. There’s a whole lot of interest across the show and in addition considerable pressure for it to succeed as latest owner Warner Bros. Discovery has began cutbacks, including this week firing 70 HBO and HBO Max employees.
From the surface a series focused on the internecine conflicts among the many Targaryens and their supporters looks as if an enormous swing. People loved Daenerys Targaryen and her three dragons, but many also felt burned (no pun intended) by the way in which her story ended. After seven years of working so hard to free slaves and get to Westeros after which falling in love and agreeing to stop her invasion to assist Jon Snow save all humanity, she suddenly goes crazy and kills everyone in King’s Landing? What?
Little question the showrunners of “Dragon” have taken lessons from the blowback that got here with all that. Provided that the series is about 200 years before “Thrones,” there may be an amazing opportunity to create a fresh tackle the general world of Westeros as well.
People loved Daenerys Targaryen and her three dragons, but many also felt burned (no pun intended) by the way in which her story ended.
Pope Francis has not weighed in on the brand new show. (As he doesn’t watch television, this shouldn’t be unexpected.) But on his behalf, we have now a few notes we’d prefer to share from a Catholic perspective.
Treat your female characters with respect
By far the largest criticisms “Game of Thrones” faced in its eight-year run related to its treatment of girls. Almost every female character on “Thrones” was raped, or nearly so, sooner or later or ended up brutally murdered or was asked to do nude scenes or the entire above.
At the top of the series, two of the show’s strongest female characters were also given storylines that didn’t appear to respect their journeys or their talents. As mentioned above, Dany went nuts, then she seemed headed into full fascism before being murdered by the person she loved; Cersei Lannister, one of the crucial clever and dangerous characters on “Thrones,” spent her final episode just watching her city burn from a distance, until her brother Jaime suddenly arrived to rush into her arms before the Red Keep castle fell in on the 2 of them, like characters in a Westerosi romance novel.
Producers on “House of the Dragon” have assured viewers they understand the concerns about their predecessors’ treatment of girls. “We don’t depict sexual violence within the show,” author and executive producer Sara Hesstold Vanity Fair. But showrunner Miguel Sapochnik also notedin a previous interview with the Hollywood Reporter that, as their reporter put it, “violence against women continues to be very much a part of the world.”
Pope Francis has not weighed in on the brand new show. (As he doesn’t watch television, this shouldn’t be unexpected.) But on his behalf, we have now a few notes we’d prefer to share from a Catholic perspective.
It’s unclear what exactly meaning or why that needs to be the case. The show is about 200 years before “Thrones.” Why couldn’t things be higher for ladies 200 years prior to “Thrones,” slightly than simply the identical or worse?
The Catholic Church has its own checkered history in the case of empowering and respecting women. Learn from our mistakes, “House of the Dragon.” Offer strong, female characters who’re allowed to be subjects slightly than objects of the male gaze or victims of violence.
Make room for people of color
There’s a scene at first of the ultimate season of “Game of Thrones” wherein Missandei, Daenerys Targaryen’s quietly graceful Black advisor, rides on horseback into Winterfell past watching Northerners. Catching the attention of one in all those watching, she smiles. They simply stare at her. After Dany’s forces help save Winterfell, this happens again, and Missandei confides to her partner Grey Worm, who can also be an individual of color, that they have to get out of there.
As much as “Game of Thrones” presented itself as a show happening across two entire continents, there didn’t appear to be many individuals on the continent where many of the story took place who weren’t white. Apart from the hardly visited southern nation of Dorne, people of color were all to be found on a continent of their very own, and most of them there have been either slaves or pillaging barbarians.
In some ways, the deepest conflict within the last season (aside from the countless army of the dead who desired to wipe out humanity and produce on an countless night) was about race; people kept saying nobody wanted Dany to be queen because she had a military of “foreigners.” But nobody said the identical of Cersei’s hired army of mercenaries, who got here from the identical continent as Dany’s army but—surprise, surprise—were white. One could also argue that having Dany and her army suddenly start killing everyone was itself an expression of American anxiety toward foreigners and other people of color.
“House of the Dragon” includes amongst its solid a latest house, Velaryon, whose family is Black. Its leader, Lord Corlys Velaryon, is the truth is the wealthiest man in Westeros. That sounds promising. But when the show has anything of the breadth of its predecessor, it is going to must offer rather more.
The Catholic Church is just richer for the range of cultures, races and points of view which have allowed it into their lives.
And it should want that, too. Again, take a lesson from the Catholic Church. As much as we have now often failed in the case of race and culture (akin to in our treatment of Indigenous people), really the Catholic Church is just richer for the range of cultures, races and points of view which have allowed it into their lives. Every latest culture and religion has allowed the church to see other elements of who God is and what it means to be church. And in calling out our failings, people of other races and cultures have helped the church to confront its own sins and alter.
Just as “Thrones” dug into different religions, and located so many interesting ideas there—the Ironborn were the worst, and yet I desired to learn so rather more about their Drowned God—may “Dragon” discover the wealth of story and character to be present in other races and cultures.
Watch out for the seduction of dragons
One in every of the largest draws of “Game of Thrones” was at all times the dragons. Once they were little, they were lovely. (Remember how they sang?) Once they got greater, they were terrifying.
Some complained that the series used its dragons far too sparingly. Two of them ended up getting killed without ever really having develop into characters of their very own. Some could be hard pressed to even remember their names. (To me they were Greenie and Creamie.) Dragons are like Chekhov’s proverbial gun; if you happen to’re going to indicate them in Season One, you higher find yourself using them later.
However the downside of that’s that “using them” tends to mean “showing people burnt alive.” The violence done just by Drogon was truly horrific. The thought of watching two other dragons add to the body count of those burned alive in front of us is tough to assume.
However it won’t be for very long. House Targaryen in the brand new series has 17 dragons, nine of which might be depicted in Season One.
As much because it often repels us in real life, violence on-screen is seductive. And mass violence is strangely almost more so, whether since it is more appalling and subsequently transgressive or, in some cases, since it happens on such a scale that the victims usually are not apparent. Superman and Zod destroyed much of downtown Metropolis in Zack Snyder’s “Man of Steel,” but they never showed us the tens of hundreds of people that should have died in the method.
Even whether it is just fictitious, sooner or later this sort of violence shouldn’t be just good for the soul. Whilst we will’t persuade ourselves to show away from it, within the pit of our stomach we understand it’s not. Not that seeing children pushed out of windows or poisoned is a visit to the M&M Store either. It could be great to see the writers of “Dragon” challenge themselves more generally to seek out ways of being gripping without brutally murdering people in front of us.
[Related: Reading the news is torture enough. Watching TV shouldn’t be.]
In the long run this isn’t a matter of tut-tut prudishness for us Catholics, either. We consider that every part is imbued with the grandeur of God, that every part has its own dignity and is worthy of respect and wonder. Just as we hope that “House of the Dragon” will higher reflect the majesty and number of its female characters and individuals of color, we hope it could actually see its dragons as greater than just plot devices writ large, weapons of mass destruction with attitude. They’re characters in their very own right, a indisputable fact that “Thrones” did next to nothing to think about. (I can inform you more about Nymeria, a dire wolf who appeared in three episodes, than I can about Rhaegal (a.k.a. Greenie), a dragon who appeared in 23.)
All in all, some facets of “Game of Thrones” might leave us getting into “House of the Dragon” with apprehension. But as Tyrion Lannister might need said (but way more cleverly, and while drinking), Past failings are present opportunities. With regards to Westeros, there’s a lot still to explore.