Game of Thrones - an alien virus in the minds of viewers

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

When fantasy replaced science fiction, the future was replaced by the past, according to the historian and social philosopher Andrei Fursov. In an interview with BUSINESS Online, he told how Game of Thrones blurs the notions of good and evil among its viewers, why Christianity was removed from the fantasy Middle Ages, who was hindered by the scientific and technological progress of the 1960s, and why dreams of other planets and starships were exchanged to the world of debauchery and medieval torture.

What is Game of Thrones?

- Andrei Ilyich, the last episode of the monumental American series "Game of Thrones" is being released on the world's screens. The film breaks millions of records for views and at the same time causes very mixed reviews from critics. From your point of view as a historian and scientist, what is Game of Thrones?

- First of all, by design, the world of Game of Thrones is a combination of three different eras. On the one hand, Antiquity is guessed there, on the other - the Dark Ages, "Dark Ages", that is, the chronological division between the end of Antiquity and the beginning of the Middle Ages. From the third - the High Middle Ages flickers there; in particular, one of the free cities, Braavos, is very reminiscent of Venice. Braavos has canals, houseboats and even a submerged part of the city. And there is a ravenous Iron Bank.

All this taken together can be characterized as a pre-capitalist and pre-industrial world, composed of Antiquity, the Middle Ages and some elements of the culture of the East (nomads, slave cities, reminiscent of the centers of the Eastern Mediterranean and northern Africa, are something like Carthage). However, it all looks pretty organic. Another thing is that people inhabiting a complex invented world do not at all seem to be inhabitants of the Dark Ages - their psychology is quite modern.

If we compare "Game of Thrones" with another large-scale fantasy epic - "The Lord of the Rings", then one significant difference is striking. Both in the book by John Tolkien and in the film by director Peter Jackson, the line between good and evil is very clearly drawn. Moreover, the forces of evil even outwardly look terrible and repulsive: they are goblins, orcs, or the greatest enemy of the free peoples of Middle-earth, Sauron. Elves, on the other hand, are beautiful and airy, and people are not bad either. In Game of Thrones, this clarity is lost, and probably deliberately. Outwardly, people from the world of "A Song of Ice and Fire" can look absolutely normal and attractive, but at the same time be ugly at heart. There is practically no absolute evil here, except perhaps for Ramsey Bolton and King Jeffrey. Even Littlefinger (Lord Petyr Baelish) - a negative character - does good deeds, of course, in his own selfish interests: evil, doing good. For example, he saves Sansa Stark, who is not indifferent to him, but, most importantly, with her help he is going to become the ruler of the North. Subsequently, Sansa solves Baelish's game, and her sister Arya kills Littlefinger as one of the culprits in her father's death. But still, at some point, Baelish does a good deed that changes the course of the game and the history of the world of Thrones.

Another eloquent feature of the epic - both cinematic and book: throughout its course, evil now and then triumphs over good. Relatively positive characters perish at the hands of negative ones (however, the latter also get it). Thus, both in the film "Game of Thrones" and in George Martin's book saga, the idea is constantly held that good and evil are mixed and it is very difficult to distinguish one from the other. Actually, this is how it is in life: the real world is not black and white, it includes various shades of gray. On one pole, white, there are saints, on the other, black, there are scoundrels and monsters like Ramsay Bolton, and the space between these two poles is gray. But the gray life goes on, but the principles should clearly distinguish white from black. In the film, such principles are poorly discernible for his characters.

The world of Game of Thrones is a world of murder, intrigue, meanness, debauchery, incest and cruel torture. If we remember the Middle Ages or especially the late Roman Empire, then we will find all this there. And in the Renaissance era, whose shadow side was wonderfully described by the Russian philosopher Alexei Losev, demonic passions seethed and vice triumphed, but in Martin's epic the darkness was condensed to the limit: the idea is imposed on readers and viewers that there is not very much good in the world, but there is plenty of evil. it wins and, in principle, is the norm.

Power struggle

- Actually, the real Middle Ages, with all its cruelty, was softened by Christianity, thanks to which it was not so dark. The philosopher Berdyaev even called the Middle Ages the greatest era in the history of mankind, since this is the first attempt to build the Kingdom of God on earth. And Christianity has been removed from Game of Thrones. As the name suggests, this is just a game of ambition and a struggle for power.

- I would not exaggerate the softening role of Christianity. Suffice it to recall the Albigensian wars, the fires of the Inquisition and much more. In Game of Thrones we see the Dark and Middle Ages, but Christianity as such is not there. By the way, he is not in "The Lord of the Rings" either. The world of "Songs of Ice and Fire" has its own religions, the largest of which is the Cult of the Seven. There are also those who believe in fire - supporters of the cult of R'glor, reminiscent of Zoroastrianism (but this is nothing more than an external resemblance). Partly with Christianity, you can find only the sparrow movement: there is asceticism, His Sparrow. And yet this movement is far from the followers of Christ, therefore we are forced to state: there is no Christianity in the world of "Song of Ice and Fire". If we consider that the modern West is also devoid of Christianity, and under the guise of the distant past of "Game of Thrones" we are shown one of the versions of the world of the future, then this is far from accidental. In the post-capitalist world, the niche of Christianity will be very narrow, if at all.

- That is, we are offered a scenario of the future under the conditional name "Forward to the Middle Ages!", But this is the Middle Ages, purged of Christianity and completely devoted to bestial passions.

- Not just "Forward to the Middle Ages!" Capitalism as a system is on its way, it is almost gone. A transitional era begins to something fundamentally different and not necessarily better, rather the opposite. And if a global catastrophe does not happen, then the future that awaits us will not be homogeneous and homogeneous until the new system is fully established. On the one hand, it will be the futuroarchaic of Africa, on the other, it will resemble the pre-capitalist Arab East. The third option is China, where the traditional Chinese way of life will adopt computer technology and establish a system of social ratings. It is already being tested in China (it provides for a special ranking system that will track the behavior of the population and give marks to residents based on their "social credit"; violators may be prohibited from flying by plane and traveling by train, profitable employment, education of children in elite schools and universities etc. - editor's note). The older brother, introduced by Orwell in the novel "1984", simply rests here - it will turn out to be such a system of total surveillance of everyone and everything, which the Orwellian hero Winston Smith never dreamed of (note for those who like to talk about light socialist China as an alternative and the evil world of capital ").

The future is the world of several futures, some of which are quite futuroarchaic. An external analogy here can be the "dark ages" in relation to the even not bright, but still not so dark Antiquity of the 4th century AD. And it seems that the main value of these worlds will be power as the ability to control the resources and behavior of the masses. Actually, "Game of Thrones" shows us this. The only unconditional value that most Martin's characters retain is power. Even if we take Arya Stark, for whom human feelings are important, we will see that many of her actions are driven by a thirst for revenge. And she takes revenge, feeling revenge as power and using the skills that she was taught by a group of assassins, very specific, reminiscent of medieval assassins. Among the characters, in whose souls good and evil are constantly fighting with each other, one can also remember Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen. And both of them to varying degrees (but especially Daenerys) strive for power.

"The main value of these worlds will be power as the ability to control the resources and behavior of the masses."

Fantasy world to replace science fiction

- If we take the Middle Ages as the original, then we will see that practically everything - from the Crusades and the search for the Holy Grail to the works of Chrétien de Trois and the Minnesingers - had a religious shell. It turns out that the non-Christian world of Game of Thrones is not even a parody of medium aevum, it is anti-medieval.

- I would not exaggerate the religious component of the same crusades. Yes, religion formalized the crusades, but at the same time they solved two problems: an excess demographic mass was thrown out of Europe, at the same time the desire to plunder and kill was satisfied. Let us not forget that Europe of the 11th – 13th centuries looked like a barbaric world in comparison with the refined Arab East. Actually, the Arabs, when they first encountered the crusaders, perceived them as such - as a wild horde that came to plunder an advanced civilization. And they were not far from the truth. So I wouldn't call Game of Thrones anti-medieval on the grounds that a lot has been thrown out of there. On the other hand, much of what was not in the medieval world was inserted into the world of "Song of Ice and Fire" - this is the ancient layer I have already mentioned.

- Why, in your opinion, the fantasy genre has become so popular in recent decades? After all, even at the end of the Soviet era, science fiction was appreciated, readers were more attracted by starships and unknown worlds, distant planets and some unclear but radiant general galactic future, and now, instead of all this, there are dark ages with murder and incest.

- Quite right, and the peak of science fiction (both Soviet and Western) fell on the 1960s-1970s. However, in the 1970s, this genre began to gradually fade away and come to naught; already in the 1980s, the fantasy genre began to gain strength in the West. Of course, this is no coincidence. It was the 1960s that became the peak of scientific and technological progress in the twentieth century. By the time the first half of the twentieth century ended, during these fifty years so much had been invented that everything seemed possible, it was believed that progress would grow exponentially. The 1960s is a world of unbridled social, cultural and technical optimism. The man flew into space, launched artificial satellites and thought about the development of other planets. But this impulse of mankind into the future created a certain threat to those in power both in the West and in the Soviet Union.

And already in the 1960s, the staff of the Tavistock Institute for Human Research in Great Britain (and, ironically, it is located in Devonshire, next to the Dartmoor swamps, where the dark drama "The Dogs of the Baskervilles" by Conan Doyle was played) was tasked with slowing down scientific and technological progress by introducing certain information-psychological and organizational models. In particular, work began on the creation of youth and women's subcultures and movements (it was at this time when The Beatles and The Rolling Stones appeared on request, environmentalism began to develop, and the feminist movement sharply intensified).

One of the main tasks assigned to Tavistock was: to stamp out the cultural optimism of the 1960s And science fiction, especially Soviet science, was certainly optimistic in its mood. Some less optimistic notes (I can't call them pessimistic, but they looked more complex than just optimism) were traced by a number of writers in the socialist camp, in particular in the books of Stanislav Lem (just read his Astronauts and Magellanic Cloud). However, the general mood of Soviet science fiction until the mid-1960s was predominantly optimistic - this can be seen both in the work of the Strugatsky brothers and in the novels of Ivan Efremov. But by the end of the 1960s, a turning point was taking place, and on a very simple basis: the nomenclature, for mercenary group reasons, abandoned the leap into the future and preferred to start integrating into the capsystem. Our most astute science fiction writers intuitively grasped this turn. Ivan Efremov writes the novel "Hour of the Bull" (published in 1968-1969, published as a separate book in 1970), which, on the initiative of Yuri Andropov, is being taken out of bookstores and libraries - the leadership of the planet Tormans is very much like the Soviet Politburo. To replace "Noon …" by the Strugatskys comes "Snail on the Slope". Even in the famous Soviet magazine Tekhnika Molodoi, this was clearly seen: the tone of publications changed from the second half of the 1960s to the 1970s.

In the West, the turning point is taking place for similar reasons: technological progress, which has developed rapidly since the second half of the 19th century, allowed the middle stratum and the top of the working class to enjoy its fruits - this posed a threat to those in power, so the ruling class began to react. We can say that the Soviet nomenklatura and the Western elite worked synchronously here. The result was a slowdown in scientific and technological progress in the second half of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century. What has been invented during this time? Mobile phone, computer, internet? But this cannot be compared with the cosmic achievements of the first half of the twentieth century.

One of the consequences of the negative evolutionary turn of the 1970s was the suppression or ouster of science fiction by the fantasy genre. In the fantasy genre, there is neither democracy nor progress - this is the future as the past. And this correlates very well with the famous 1975 report "The Crisis of Democracy," which Huntington, Crozier and Watanuki wrote at the request of the Trilateral Commission. This is a very interesting document, I have already spoken about it more than once. In short, the main idea of the report boils down to the fact that the West is more threatened not by the Soviet Union, but by excessive democracy in the West itself, which can be used by "irresponsible social groups". "The democratic political system is particularly vulnerable to tensions from industrial and regional groups," - declare the authors of the report. Therefore, as stated in the document, it is necessary to explain to the population that democracy is not only a value, but also a tool, that besides democracy there are other values: seniority, knowledge, authority. Literally, it was expressed like this: "In many cases, the need for expertise, seniority, experience and special ability may outweigh the claims of democracy as a way of constituting power." In conclusion, the report suggested introducing some political apathy among the masses, this was completely correlated with the fashionable world of fantasy. After all, in fantasy, I repeat, there is no democracy - there is only neo-priesthood, neo-kings and non-knights.

"In the fantasy genre, there is no democracy, no progress - this is the future as the past."

The inner space of The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, The Wheel of Time by Robert Jordan, Harry Potter and others is, firstly, the world of hierarchies, and not at all Ephraim's world of the Andromeda Nebula, where the future is called the Era Met Hands. Secondly, the fantasy world is a pre-industrial or, at best, a ruined-industrial futuro-archaic world. And this also corresponds to the course of slowing down scientific, technical and industrial progress in the interests of the top of capitalist society. The ideological rationale for braking was environmentalism, which turned into a quasi-ideology. The first report to the Club of Rome (created in 1968) was called "The Limits to Growth." It argued that humanity in its industrial development has reached its limits, is putting excessive pressure on the natural environment, it is necessary to slow down industrial and economic development by going to “zero growth”. That is, 50 percent of all funds should go to neutralize the negativity that industrial development brings. Despite the fact that the report was exposed as a scientific fake, advocates of ecology and deindustrialization waved it like a banner - just as another fake is used today, namely the scheme of "global warming as a result of human activity."

Thus, the turn from science fiction to fantasy with its pre-industrial-hierarchical, far from rationality (another feature of antimodernity), the world of magicians and sorcerers has a clear class basis. In Marxist terms, this is a reflection of the decay of capitalist society and the fact that the capitalist elite has taken a course to slow down scientific and technological progress. The Soviet nomenclature did the same in their own interests, when in the mid-1960s they blocked the OGAS program of Viktor Glushkov (the developer of the first personal computer in the USSR MIR-1), as well as the cold thermonuclear fusion development program of Ivan Filimonenko, and a number of other military achievements of KB Chelomey. The fact is that the implementation of the projects of Glushkov and Filimonenko somewhat pushed the nomenclature aside, people who were called technocrats came to the fore. By the way, I remember very well how in the late 1960s at Moscow State University our teacher of scientific communism criticized the scientist and science fiction writer Igor Zabelin for his point of view, according to which the scientific and technical intelligentsia is becoming a striking force of progress. Well, the technical intelligentsia was pushed aside along with scientific and technological progress. In this sense, we can say that the world of financialized capitalism turned into the past in the first 15–20 years of the 21st century is the result of parallel, and since the mid-1970s, joint actions of the Western elite and part of the Soviet nomenklatura. True, the Soviet nomenklatura did not plan this world, they simply realized their selfish interests, but the Western elite planned just such a world. And the world of "Game of Thrones" is one of the versions of the world that this elite offers us as a project for the future, accustoming us to the possibility of such a future.

How the series will affect the Russian audience

- Can the consciousness of the Russian viewer be formatted by the "Game of Thrones" TV series? It is known that in the West this epic has taken possession of the minds.

- I think nothing of the kind will happen in Russia. About 10 years ago in the United States, I had a conversation with one difficult person who argued that American "shooters" work on Americans, Western Europeans successfully in terms of reformatting consciousness, but on Slavic and especially Russian children - not at all like they would like to. He asked: "Why do you think this is so?" And I answered this question.

- Why?

- I told him that in Russia there is a fundamentally different culture of laughter than in the West. We can be very funny and very scary at the same time. In addition, the nature of evil in Russian culture is not absolute. Evil is absolutely only in Western culture: it could be Sauron, it could be Lucifer, it could be a sperm whale in Moby Dick. It is such a black, unalloyed evil. And in the Russian tradition, even Baba Yaga is partly a comic (laughing culture!) Character, she is not an absolute evil. When Ivan gets to her and she promises to fry and eat him, he replies: "No, you steam me in the bathhouse first, feed and drink." Where has it been seen in the West that absolute evil feeds and drinks you? Even with Koshchey Bessmertny in Russian fairy tales, you can negotiate. The Russian person does not perceive the blackest evil as absolute, and this gap is often filled with a comical one. Hence the reactions.

I am convinced that even on the present very strongly modified Russian, Russian people, the chernukha will not have the same effect as on Western people, because attempts are being made to intimidate, but we are not afraid. Sometimes our real life is worse than "shooters" and cinematographers with absolute evil. I'm sure American society would hardly have survived what we went through in the 1990s. This is not the best reason for low-key optimism, but nonetheless. As it was said in the film "Chapaev": "Psychic? Well, to hell with her, let's psychic. " The key word here is "fuck".

What Game of Thrones Teaches

The series was first released in the United States in 2011, immediately receiving high praise from Western critics and quickly gaining popularity among viewers. Since then, 5 seasons have been filmed and a sequel is planned. The picture describes the struggle of several influential families for the throne of the kingdom in a fantasy world reminiscent of medieval Europe.

Support for the series is at the highest level. In particular, the Queen of Great Britain visited the set of the film, and the President of the United States watched one of the seasons before its premiere. Today "Game of Thrones" is actively promoted in the Russian media. Even Mikhail Zadornov left a positive review about the film, saying that this film "brings light and teaches good." Well, let's not take the word of Obama and Zadornov and evaluate the picture from the standpoint of traditional family values:

The first thing the viewer pays attention to when he gets acquainted with the series is the amount of violence and erotic scenes. And if some of them are justified by the plot - the execution of the character, the wedding night - and have at least some semantic load, then the overwhelming majority of such episodes were added to the film by the creators clearly for other purposes. We are talking about numerous scenes of perversion, pederasty, lesbianism, incest, allusions to pedophilia, depicting everyday life in brothels, rape of women and men, teenagers, depriving children of body parts, senseless bloodshed, and the like.

Explicit scenes of rape, perversion and sadism are present in almost every episode.

And what about the episode in which, right in the church, a brother rapes his sister near the coffin with her son, or the scene of the killing of animals and children? The last scandal was associated with the appearance in the series of an episode of the rape of a teenage girl, who, according to the plot, is only 14 years old.

This senseless, wild and unjustified cruelty and vulgarity, which has recently been broadcast in Russia on the REN TV channel, is explained by the authors of the series with phrases about “this is the Middle Ages, everything was like that, there is no need to be ashamed of it”. No one doubts that there has been a lot of vile and cruel in the history of mankind, but this does not mean at all that it is necessary to choose the most negative examples from history and demonstrate them to a multimillion audience, presenting them as a norm and forming appropriate models of behavior in the audience.

Separately, it is worth mentioning that unrestrained drunkenness is presented in the film as an allegedly harmless feature of some characters, and numerous episodes of alcohol consumption are present in each episode.

Just do not think that in the excerpts used in the video review, only antiheroes are shown who, according to the plot, will receive a well-deserved punishment. The nobility is shown here by rapists and murderers, and those who recently seemed to be models of honor and dignity are capable of low and vile deeds. For example, in this scene, a seemingly noble warrior kills a child to hide his secret.

The concepts of good and evil are completely blurred in the film

In another episode, one of the relatively positive heroines persuades her homosexual husband to conceive a child and, knowing his preferences, suggests doing it together with her brother. Another favorite of the viewers and authors of the series, who has at least some idea of honor, is shown as a drunkard and a pervert.

If you follow the biographies of those who survived to the last episodes, then on their way there were a huge number of dark episodes. Almost each of the main characters turned out to be a murderer, pervert and traitor, pursuing only their own goals of conquering the throne and satisfying base desires. Those who tried to fight for truth and justice were either brutally killed, including even pregnant women, or are outside any political and secular events at the level of a monk, like Jon Snow, or are homosexuals, like Loras.

After 5 seasons in "Game of Thrones", among the main characters there are almost only villains, rapists, libertines, cheaters and traitors. An educational conclusion suggests itself - good guys don't live long and they certainly shouldn't get involved in politics. In fact, the film promotes the same false thesis "politics is a dirty business", the introduction of which into the minds of the masses prevents honest and decent people from entering the sphere of government.

Summarize. Game of Thrones aims to:

• Propaganda of sodomy and other perversions
• Promotion of pedophilia
• Propaganda of violence and brutality
• Alcohol promotion
• Blurring the concepts of good and evil
• Scaring the population away from participation in governance

All this is presented in an expensive and beautiful wrapper like a modern fairy tale, which is full of plot lines, unexpected turns and vivid characters. But of paramount importance is what the film teaches, that is, what ideas and values it carries in itself, and the play of the actors, the talent of the screenwriter, the cinematography, and so on only affect how effectively the meanings embedded in the film will be conveyed to the viewer.