Game of Thrones Episode 1.03—“Lord Snow”

Hello again all, and welcome to installment three of our Game of Thrones co-blogging adventure. As ever, my friend Nikki Stafford from Nik at Nite is providing the GRRM n00b perspective, and I will be providing the impressions of the GRRM nerd.

All set? Well then, here's Nikki ...


Episode 3, “Lord Snow,” is where we get a lot more backstory on the characters than before. This episode, while still boasting a lot of action, is more dialogue- and character-driven, with slow-paced scenes that you must watch as closely as any episode of The Wire, and even then you probably have to go back and watch it a second time just to get the nuances. Chris is going to cover many of the smaller details of those scenes below, so I’ll just say that this was the first week where, as a viewer, I found myself a bit lost (and desperate for a list of names of people!) Thankfully, Chris will provide that below, too (thank you, Chris!) That said, I still loved the episode very much.


Highlights:

• The beautiful construction of the throne room at King’s Landing, with that incredible throne of swords. I don’t know how it’s described in the book, but in the show it’s magnificent.
• Carcetti!! Chris and I have chatted endlessly to each other about The Wire for years, so I was excited about him getting to this episode and finally seeing him. I’d have to check this, but I believe he’s actually Irish, so the accent he’s putting on for this show is as convincing as the American one he did on The Wire. Brilliant. I love when HBO finds a talented actor and uses him/her again.
• Arya looks remarkably like Catelyn… I don’t know how they found these two actresses, but what a beautiful match.

Character Development:

• Oh Joffrey, you sniveling little whiner. How much did I love the depiction of him this week as a foot-stomping toddler, with his “Oh, do I have to marry that yucky cootie girl?” while he sucked on his thumb. The scene between him and Cersei is at once a perfect portrait of a mama’s boy, but there’s a sinister undertone throughout of just how dangerous he will be, especially with her fierce encouragement. “Everyone who isn’t us is an enemy.”
• Sansa. When I first watched this episode, I cringed at how ungrateful she is, thinking man, she and Joffrey are perfect for each other. But I think she’s a more complicated character than perhaps they’re making her seem in the show. Remember, last week’s show ended with the death of her direwolf, and if those dogs become intrinsically linked with their owners, there’s something missing in her now (I don’t know how deep the link runs, but I’m assuming there’s more in the books about them?) She’s been taken ahead with Ned rather than staying back with her mother, and it’s clear Ned is more at ease dealing with men than women. He gives her a doll because she’s a girl… and girls play with dolls, right? Not when they’re teenagers looking for a husband, they don’t. She reacts harshly, and he looks out of his element and unable to deal with the situation.
• Arya. She, too, shows that side of Ned in his dealings with her. Arya is the tomboy who’s interested in swords, and you can feel the relief that washes over Ned when he talks to her because this, this is the kind of girl he can deal with. Ned: “You know the first thing about swordfighting?” Arya: “Stick ’em with the pointy end.” He gives her exactly what she wants, signing her up for her “dancing” lessons (I adore these scenes) and watches her proudly from the wings. However, that final scene in the episode grows dark when we hear the clash of steel on steel in his mind as he watches his daughter pretend killed… what was he thinking there? Is he remembering the great battles? The death of his sister? The death of Targayren? The death of the woman who gave birth to Jon Snow? I’m intrigued, and perhaps the readers know these answers, but I like the subtlety of the scene.
• If winter itself could be a character, then we get a sense in this episode of just how long and awful the winters can be, both from the old lady telling her ghoulish tales to Tyrion talking about how many winters he’s seen in his lifetime. God, I think Canadian winters last an eternity, but three years? Talk about Seasonal Affective Disorder.
• Daenerys is pregnant, and she’s becoming more confident and powerful. The scene where she leaves her horse only to be followed by the horrible Viserys is brilliant. He’s as vile as Joffrey, and watching him being choked by the whip is nothing short of AWESOME. It’s trumped only by the guy who choked him (someone whom Viserys sees as a slave) saying, “You? Walk.”
• One final question for Chris (that I meant to ask last week): That guy who’s always talking to Daenerys (I can never pick up on his name), is he the same in the book? Does he give the Dothraki backstory throughout, or are they using him as a convenient Johnny the Explainer character in this show?

And now… here’s Chris to clear up many questions:


And here we are at King’s Landing—as the caravan enters its gates, I keep hearing the Star Wars line—“You’ll never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy”—running through my head. Ned has no time to rest before being thrown into the snake pit, having a confrontation with Jaime Lannister in the throne room in which we get some background—how Ned’s father and brother were killed by the previous king Aerys Targayren … and how Jaime was the one who killed him, despite being sworn to protect him.

This particular confrontation does not happen in the novel, but this episode departs more from the book than the previous two have. Departs in detail, but not in spirit: many of the set-pieces making up the episode—Jaime and Ned, Robert and Barristan the Bold exchanging war stories, Cersei tending Joffrey’s wolf bite—are invented, but for the purpose of clarifying themes and conflicts and character traits that the novel develops more gradually. On first viewing, it was a bit off-putting; on second viewing, I appreciated the artistry of it. The characters are deepening and the stakes are getting higher.

The title of the episode is a little misleading, considering that we don’t see a huge amount of Jon Snow. Also, we don’t see Daenerys until thirty-five minutes in. Most of the action unfolds in King’s Landing, with a fairly heavy emphasis placed in history and background—in particular, Jaime Lannister’s act of treason in killing the previous king is revealed as something more ambivalent than most of the characters would seem to want to think. Both Robert and Ned obviously hold Jaime in contempt for such a flagrantly dishonorable act, and both express their fundamental distrust of him because of it. However, we get hints of their hypocrisy: Robert has his throne in part because of Jaime’s supposed dishonor, and Ned rebukes him both for not acting to save his father and brother when the Mad King tortured and killed them, and subsequently killing Aerys Targaryen. You can’t have it both ways, Ned—but then, that is the contradiction of Eddard Stark’s painfully rigid sense of honor.

All in all, yet another excellent episode. Some more thoughts:

New Characters

This episode added a bunch of new faces to the ensemble. As a frequent complaint of those unfamiliar with the books has been the difficulty of keeping names straight, here’s the episode three primer:

• Varys the eunuch—The Spider, the master of whispers. Basically, the clearing-house for intelligence gathering at court. Varys knows everything that is going on, usually before it happens. Case in point, Catelyn’s “secret” arrival in King’s Landing.
• Renly Baratheon—The king’s youngest brother; handsome, louche, and a bit of a gadabout.
• Grand Maester Pycelle—Shrewd and canny, and ostensibly a font of wisdom.
• Petyr “Littlefinger” Baelish—Master of Coin, nicknamed Littlefinger because his family holdings are on the smallest of a cluster of peninsulas called The Fingers. He was once in love with Catelyn when they were youths, and dueled Brandon Stark, Ned’s older brother, when she was betrothed to him. Littlefinger lost, but Brandon Stark spared his life at Catelyn’s request. Baelish plays his own game, and is one of the slyest players in King’s Landing.
• Allister Thorne—Master at Arms at Castle Black. A thoroughly unpleasant character.
• Lord Commander Mormont—Father of Jorah Mormont, Lord Commander of the Night’s Watch.
• The boys at the Wall—We meet Grenn and Pyp, who ultimately become Jon Snow’s friends and allies.
• Barristan the Bold—Legendary knight, who even in his advanced age is renowned for his fighting skills.
• Lancel Lannister—Cousin of Cersei and Jaime, one of the many Lannisters inserted into service at King’s Landing.
• Yoren—A Night’s Watch recruiter.
• Maester Aemmon—The maester for Castle Black; ancient, wise, blind.
• Syrio Forel—Arya’s “dancing master,” a master swordsman from the Free City of Braavos.

Best Lines

• “War was easier than daughters.”
• “I hate your stories!” “I know a story about a boy who hated stories.”
• “Well, Lord Snow … It seems you’re the least useless person here.”
• “You’re a funny man! A very funny man!” … though obviously this one loses something on the page. Spoken however by Sean Bean as he chokes Littlefinger, he gives us a brief but striking insight into why Ned Stark is dangerous.
• “Ah, Starks … quick tempers, slow minds.”
• “They never tell you how they all shit themselves. They never put that part in the songs.”
• “I’m the First Ranger. The job is out there.” Am I the only person to hear an echo of Omar in The Wire here? “The game is out there.”
• “Here, a man gets what he earns. When he earns it.”
• “Boy, girl. You are a sword. That is all.”



What They Added / Changed

• “I haven’t played with dolls since I was eight.” Such a heartbreaking moment. Sansa still blames Ned and Arya for the death of Lady, and Ned’s clumsy attempt to make amends only worsens things. That he then shows his connection with Arya draws a line between him and his elder daughter. War, apparently, is only easier than daughters when the daughter in question isn’t interested in the arts of war.
• “You are my darling boy, and the world will be exactly as you want it to be.” Cersei here shows her doting love for her repulsive son, which stretches into irrationality, but then without missing a beat delivers a shrewd little lecture on governance and realpolitik. This is the best Cersei moment so far: demonstrating her cunning and cleverness, but also her blind spot where Joffrey is concerned.
• “Everyone who isn’t us is an enemy.” This should be the Lannister motto.
• “The boy won’t talk. And if he does, I’ll kill him. Him, Ned Stark, the King, the whole bloody lot of them, until you and I are the only people left alive in this world.” In the books, we only start to see the nature of the interaction between Jaime and Cersei in book three, when Jaime starts to get his own POV chapters. But they nail it here—Jaime’s ruthlessness emerges in this chilling declaration, articulating his single-minded devotion to his twin. Incidentally, the bit about the singers making a ballad about “The War for Cersei’s Cunt” is a GRRM line that comes in book three (I think … it might be book four).
• Robert and Barristan the Bold exchanging war stories. I did not at first care for this scene, and then on second viewing turned completely around on it. I love that the impression you get at first is that they’re talking about losing their virginity … because, in a way, they are. As mentioned above, we get a better sense of history and background, especially when Robert calls Jaime in to taunt him. It is also a lovely way to introduce Barristan Selmy, who develops into such a great character as the books progress. And Lancel! Who looks, if possible, even more prissy and whiny than Joffrey.
• The top of the Wall. In the books, the Wall is described as simply being a flat expanse “about as wide as the Kingsroad.” Here, they’ve turned it into a warren of trenches, much like the battlements on the top of castle walls.
• Yoren. Odd, this—in the books, Yoren is described as sallow, laconic, and dour. They’ve obviously decided to go a different route here in making him a hale and hearty kind of fellow.
• The exchange between Benjen and Tyrion. Between this conversation and Ned’s interactions with Littlefinger, we begin to see where Starks have a reputation for being prickly. At the same time, Benjen’s speech about what lies north of the wall is (forgive me) chilling. One of the things this episode does is set us up for what is to come: the emphasis on the dangers of the coming winter gets almost a little heavy-handed.
• Ser Jorah talking swords with the Dothraki. I loved this little exchange, a great summary of the difference in how Westeros and the Dothraki approach war and battle. Curved blade versus straight, speed versus power. And then at the end, that suspicious departure as Jorah learns that Daenerys is preggers … hmm ….


What They Got Exactly Right

• The Small Council. The dynamic of the council was pitch-perfect, and Robert’s profligacy with the royal treasury yet another revelation about his efficacy as king. Three million owed to the Lannisters? That’s not good.
• Ned and Arya. The scene between them was poignant, more so as it comes just after his epic fail with Sansa. Arya, we see, is Ned’s daughter to the bone, and he is much more at ease talking to her and being a comfort. That he not only lets her keep Needle, but then gives her lessons in swordsmanship shows just how simpatico they are.
• Littlefinger! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—I freakin’ LOVE Aidan Gillen. He was brilliant on Queer as Folk (the original British version), and even more so as the altruistic councilman turned politically savvy mayor Tommie Carcetti on The Wire. Littlefinger is a perfect role for him, and he plays it beautifully. We see, all at once, his need to impress and his shrewdness. A brothel is certainly a good place to hide Catelyn, but he so obviously wants to impress her with his success and/or make her jealous by being surrounded by beautiful half-naked women. Alas for Petyr, she is neither.
• Old Nan and her stories. Gods, that one gave ME chills. The woman they have playing Nan has her voice and tone down perfectly.
• Ned’s instinctive moment of violence with Littlefinger outside the brothel. As mentioned above, Sean Bean gets this perfectly. You understand why he has so frequently been cast as bad guys—he can be utterly terrifying, and there’s something about his intonation (combined with that accent) that makes you realize just how dangerous Ned Stark can be.
• Jon Snow practicing in the yard.
• Viserys freaking out on Daenerys. YES! The moment the whip curls around his neck and he lies gasping for air, I won’t lie, is deeply, deeply satisfying. And then when Jorah deliberately ignores his order to kill the Dothraki. Humiliations galore.
• Syrio Forel. In the book he is bald as an egg, but otherwise everything about him is spot-on—his accent, his words, his movement, his expressions. His grin when Arya describes the sword as a needle is worth the price of admission.

Answers for Nikki

• The Iron Throne: yep, they’ve done a very good job recreating the throne as it’s described in the books. The story behind it is that Aegon “The Conquerer” Targaryen, the first Targaryen king who united the Seven Kingdoms, had it made out of the swords of his defeated enemies.
• The direwolves do indeed have something of a connection to their humans—especially Bran, but that only really gets explicated in later books.
• The guy who’s always talking to Daenerys is Ser Jorah Mormont, an exiled knight. He went into exile because he broke the law in selling some poachers to a slaver, and it was Ned Stark he was fleeing from. And yes, he’s more or less the same in the book. He offers more in the way of exposition on the show than in the novels, but not too much. He is, incidentally, the son of the Night’s Watch commander.
• Littlefinger and Catelyn: in the books, Petyr Baelish was fostered with Catelyn’s family. The romantic attachment goes one way: Littlefinger was/is in love with Catelyn, but as she said in this episode, she has only ever thought of him as a little brother.

Game of Thrones 1.02 -- "The Kingsroad"

Well sports fans, here we are again for episode two. What did everyone think? I’m still quite struck at just how well GRRM’s world has been translated to the small screen. At some stage we need to have a discussion about how television has become more cinematic than film, and how when it is willing to take on complex narratives, its storytelling capabilities leave movies in the dust.

Don't forget, these posts are cross-posted on this blog and Nikki's, so go give hers a look.

But for now, I again give the stage to Nikki for the un-booked reaction to the most recent Game of Thrones.


“There’s a war coming, Ned. I don’t know when, and I don’t know who we’ll be fighting, but it’s coming.”

This is the episode where the seemingly perfect marriage between Catelyn and Ned shows its deep cracks. As Catelyn sits by Bran’s sickbed, she’s in mourning not only for the son who is gravely ill, but for a marriage that is in danger as well. Ned is leaving her, much the same way he did when he went away and came back with Jon. This is also the episode where Catelyn begins to piece things together and believes the Lannisters had something to do with Bran’s fall out of the window. Considering her mama bear personality (and her wicked fighting skills), I’m thinking this is about to get really interesting.

Listening to Queen Cersei and her brother saying it would be merciful for Bran to die rather than live a cripple is disgusting. I loved the look on Jaime’s face when Tyrion said, “I hope the boy does wake; I’d be quite interested in what he has to say.” I’m thinking at this point this could go one of several ways: Bran dies (that wouldn’t be much fun… and by the end of the ep we know that’s not the case); Bran awakes and tells them everything (also not much fun); Bran wakes and tells only a couple of key people who then know the secret and could use it against the Queen; Bran wakes and has some sort of amnesia.

Cersei gains a wee bit of sympathy from us for telling us about the child that she lost. There’s a sadness to her that seems to permeate her constantly… even when she was “involved” with her brother at the end of the previous episode, there was a melancholy to even that act. But with the whole “butcher’s boy” incident, she loses that sympathy again. She’s cold-hearted, probably knows her wuss of a son is telling a lie, but she figures killing a direwolf (and the butcher’s boy) will bring the Starks down a peg. But clearly the act of killing the animal has the opposite effect. It would seem that not only are the direwolves connected to their immediate owner, but to each other, and all of the owners. The death of Lady sparks the reawakening of Bran, and now the REAL fun begins.


Highlights:

• Tyrion slapping Joffrey over and over again. This is where we started to love him. The Hound says, “The prince will remember that,” and Tyrion replies, “I hope SO. If he forgets, be a good dog and remind him.”
• Arya receiving her sword from Jon. “It’s so skinny.” “So are you.”
• The direwolf taking on the intruder in a most grisly fashion, before setting itself up as Bran’s lookout.
• Watching Daenerys take over and find a connection with Khal.
• Joffrey becoming a simpering little wanker at the tip of Arya’s sword. Ugh, I hate him.

Did You Notice:

• The sets of the courtyard are incredible, from the blacksmith area to the stables.
• Arya’s direwolf is called Nymeria, after a warrior queen.
• Arya seems closer to Jon, Ned’s bastard son, than her full brothers and sisters. Jon seems to understand her better than the others. In fact, when we see the next scene when Jon goes to say goodbye to Bran (amidst the seething loathing from Catelyn), Jon seems to care deeply for both his young half-siblings.
• I wonder what the story is about Ned and Jon’s mother. There’s obviously a story there. Ned’s face changes completely when the king asks about her. The king acts like he won’t talk about her because he feels badly about what happened, but it seems more like he won’t talk about her because he still cares about her.
• The spread Ned and the king have in the field is awesome and hilarious. Imagine… there must have been an entire coach just devoted to carrying the food.
• Whoa, Catelyn’s got some fight in her!
• The wall… is… TERRIFYING.
• I was a little confused about the journey Ned and the king were on. I thought they were heading south (Ned appeared to be saying goodbye to Catelyn in a rather final way) and I couldn’t figure out how they were both suddenly back at Winterfell. But now I’m thinking they were just taking Jon to the point where he’d head off to the Wall.

Questions:

• Those direwolves grow FAST. I’m assuming more time has passed than it seems. I’m curious to know, from the readers, if the book jumps, too, or do we see the immediate reactions from Ned and Catelyn when they find Bran’s body?
• How old is Daenerys supposed to be?

And now, back to Chris.

In the comments for my last post, Nikki asked me if, as I watch Game of Thrones, I ever wish I hadn’t read the books—so that I might experience the series without knowing what was coming. When I replied, I said I was more intrigued to see how people who haven’t read the books would respond to the twists and turns of GRRM’s story. But while I was watching “The Kingsroad,” I found myself trying to imagine how I would enjoy the series if I was ignorant of the story.

It is a difficult task, doubly so because I am currently re-reading A Game of Thrones for the purpose of these posts, so everything is quite fresh in my mind when I sit down to watch new episodes. I have to imagine it denudes the viewing experience somewhat, as there is no suspense for me, and I get impatient to see my favourite parts, some of which are several episodes away. And it sometimes felt, with episode two, as if it unfolded as a series of set-pieces rather than an organically evolving story.

That being said, I don’t wish to give the impression that I didn’t love episode two, or thought it wasn’t good—I thought it was excellent. Yet again, we are given a fantastic sense of this other world, from the lush riverlands to the Dothraki Sea, to the stark (ha!) life on the Wall. And the characters are deepening beautifully. I’m particularly happy that we’re leaving Daenerys-as-victim behind already. In a genre notable for its lack of strong women, GRRM gives us an embarrassment of riches, and Dany arguably rises to the top of that group. Based on previews for next week, it looks as though she faces down Viserys, a character who rivals Joffrey as, to use Nikki’s phrase, the simperingest little wanker.
OK—so, my itemized thoughts:

What they left out

• Bran’s dream. For the un-booked, Bran’s waking is preceded by a complex dream in which he flies high above Westeros, seeing everything going on in the world unfolding beneath him—very reminiscent of Frodo’s god-view from Amon Hen—while a three-eyed crow enjoins him to fly. I kind of figured they would leave this out, but still hoped they’d use it, if for no other reason than to clarify the geography of Westeros.

What they added

• Cersei’s sad story of her dead child. As everyone will by now have surmised, her platinum blond brood of children are not Robert’s but Jaime’s. In her story, she describes the child as having had black hair, indicating that it was Robert’s trueborn. In the novel, she speaks of having been gotten pregnant by Robert, but that she terminated that pregnancy in disgust. Here it seems to suggest that, once upon a time, she was genuinely in love with the king. Not sure if I like this.
• Jaime’s taunting of Jon Snow. Just to remind us how hateful Jaime can be, and providing a great contrast for Tyrion’s honest pragmatism later in the episode. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau doesn’t overdo it—just a slight edge, enough to cut, but also subtle enough that at first you can believe he’s being earnest.
• Catelyn’s weird-ass dreamcatcher. What the hell is that thing she was making at Bran’s bedside?
• Catelyn searching the broken tower and finding Cersei’s blonde hair.
• Doreah tutoring Daenerys in the erotic arts. This is only hinted at in the novel, and comes somewhat later. In the novel, Dany’s reversal of power in the bedchamber results in pregnancy—it will be interesting to see if they go that route next episode, or wait. I must say, I was impressed with how they handled this scene, as there must have been a temptation to go more over-the-top with it (as they would certainly have done on Starz). But there was no point at which Dany was anything but the curious ingénue, and Doreah the worldly mentor. No indulgent faux-lesbian romp here.

What they got exactly right

• Jon Snow giving Arya Needle.
• Ned and Robert. Though in the novel this conversation happens on horseback, the tone and feel of it is totally faithful. We really get a strong sense of this long friendship, and the deep love these two men have for each other—but also of their fundamental difference in character.
• Bran’s would-be assassin. That scene was the highlight of the episode for me, and came just at the moment I was thinking “the pace of this episode is notably slower.” For the un-booked, it unfolded pretty much exactly as it did in the novel, right down to Catelyn grabbing the blade of the knife.
• Arya and Joffrey by the river. OMFG.
• Tyrion and Jon. I had forgotten the unlikely friendship these two forge in the novel. The conversation they have around the fire is pitch-perfect. “My brother has his sword. I have my mind. And a mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone.” A sentiment to please readers, and pretty much verbatim from the novel. I love that the writers are actually using GRRM’s dialogue when they can.
• Speaking of GRRM’s dialogue, Daenerys’ conversation with her handmaidens about dragons is pretty much exactly lifted from the novel.
• Ned and Arya facing down Robert and Cersei. Such a great scene, and such a fabulous insight into Robert’s character—we see here why he’s such a bad king. Loves a fight, hates a confrontation. And FINALLY we see Cersei show us some of her malicious steel. ‘Bout bloody time.

Slightly disappointing

• The Hound. Really? That’s the best you could do with his face? He’s not nearly as terrifying as he is in the novels.
• Ser Illyn Payne. Ditto.

What I’m loving

• Sean Bean. The Darcy Effect is taking hold: as I reread A Game of Thrones, I’m hearing his voice in my head as I read Ned’s dialogue.
• Peter Dinklage. He continues to nail this role.
• Direwolves. I freely admit, I teared up at the end when Ned killed Lady. And when Arya threw rocks at Nymeria to get her to run away. What breed are those dogs? I want one.
• Mark Addy. As I have previously mentioned, he was the actor I was most concerned about, and he is proving all those fears wrong. His take on Robert is nuanced and subtle, no small accomplishment with a character who is literally and figuratively larger than life.
• Iain Glen. Ser Jorah Mormont is described differently in the novel—bigger, bluffer, less attractive—but Glen brings to the role a sad grit. I am biased in this actor’s favour, I should admit, given that he played Hamlet in Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

Answers for Nikki

• Time passing: when Catelyn musters everyone in the Godswood, she alludes to Bran having been asleep a month. And in the novel, the preternatural speed with which the direwolves mature is frequently remarked upon.
• They’re not back at Winterfell, but are miles to the south. They take up residence in a local noble’s castle when Arya runs off. For those who have looked up the map online, they’re in the vicinity of the forks of the Trident.
• In the novel, Daenerys is thirteen when she marries Drogo. They’ve aged all the young characters somewhat for the series. I don’t think they ever specify Dany’s age, but I would estimate it to be somewhere around sixteen.

Game of Thrones 1.01 -- "Winter is Coming"

Hello all, and welcome to Poste the Firste of Chris and Nikki's co-blogging Game of Thrones project. For those clicking over here from Nikki's site, welcome! And for my few readers, if you haven't already, you should go and check out Nikki's blog ... if for no other reason than that she doesn't leave you waiting two months at a time for content, like some people. Oh, and she's awesome. That's another good reason.

But I shall cede the floor here to Nikki and let her introduce herself (she's the one holding the direwolf on the right) ...

Before I launch into my take on Game of Thrones, I should introduce myself! My name is Nikki Stafford, and I write about television over at my blog, Nik at Nite. I’ve known Chris for about 15 years now, ever since we took our MA together at U of T and alienated everyone else in our classes by talking about pop culture like it wasn’t something to be ashamed of. (Well... we weren’t entirely alone... one of our classmates went off and created a little website called Television Without Pity.) I’m the author of several analytical companion guides to TV shows, including Lost, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and others. I’m currently hosting a yearlong Buffy Rewatch on my site, and Chris is one of my guest commentators. I approached Chris a couple of weeks ago and asked if he would provide the informed commentary as the guy who’s read the books, while I just talked about the show itself. I was thrilled when he agreed. So here goes!


It opens with three men on horses, traveling through what appears to be a tunnel made of ice, bolstered by wooden beams. They come out of the other side of what we now realize is a gigantic wall made of ice and snow. They enter a wintry, barren forest that appears to have no life in it whatsoever. You hear nothing but the horse’s hooves and snorts. Except an occasional howl of... something. Giant flakes of snow fall gently, swirling around before they hit the ground. One of the men, who looks like he’s not playing with a full deck, sees a line of smoke, and drops the ground and crawls toward it. When he ventures up over the fallen log, what he finds is horrifying... heads on spikes, torsos, legs ripped off, pieces of human flesh, all laid on the ground forming a strange circle with a line through it. Horrified, he jumps up and turns, only to see a young dead girl nailed to a tree. He runs to the others, and we hear the first lines of dialogue. They argue about what the significance is. One of them is cocky, believing this is nothing to be afraid of, another wants to go back to the wall, and the one who saw it is frantic, siding with the guy who wants to leave. The cocky guy tells the goofy one that if he leaves, he’ll be caught and beheaded, and to get back on his damn horse and keep riding with him. They return to the place where the bodies were... and they are gone. There’s not even a trace of blood on the snow. The three men split up, two of them fearful, the third one striding into the camp as if there’s nothing to be scared of. When one finds entrails in the snow, some large spectre rises up from the trees and slices the cocky guy’s throat. The goofy guy, separated from the others, sees the very girl who’d been pinned to the tree standing in a clearing. She turns her head slowly, her giant dead eyes on him. With the sound of metal on metal, we see the tall, horrifying men racing through the trees, chasing the two fearful men. The goofy guy stops and turns in time to see his companion standing alone as one of the giant men comes up behind him, grabs him by the hair, and beheads him, tossing the head into the snow. The goofy guy falls to his knees, knowing he’s probably next. The screen goes black and the credits roll.

Welcome to the world of Game of Thrones.

Now, where the first five minutes of HBO’s new series might feel like a horror film, the rest of the episode (while still loving its blood spurts and gore) is an epic Tolkien-like piece, closest to Rome in the canon of previous HBO programs. This sprawling epic spans seven realms, all on an isle not unlike the United Kingdom, but feeling more like Middle Earth, with its treacherous areas and beautiful gentle ones. In the north we have Winterfell, watched over by Ned Stark and his wife, Catelyn (played beautifully by Michelle Fairley, who looks remarkably like Joan Allen... so much so that I was convinced it was her for the first two episodes). The landscape is green, but grey and cold. King Robert Baratheon, who rules over the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, is in the South, where the sun is always shining through the windows and it looks warm and lovely. The realms themselves seem impossible to follow... or at least they WOULD, if it weren’t for the brilliant opening sequence.


Now, as someone who is completely new to the world of Westeros, I devoured the opening credits, watching it again and again before continuing on to the rest of the show. The camera pans over a map of the seven realms as each kingdom rises up, moving like little stop-motion animation pieces and you can see the various landscapes and proximity to one another. The music is sweeping and gorgeous, with mournful violins and big, driving, Gladiator-type music. Once again, HBO has hit a home run with yet another perfect credit sequence.

Speaking of HBO, as I’ve said many times before, the problem with HBO series is often the first episode. The Sopranos left me flat. Six Feet Under opens with a bang (literally) and then was dull for the rest of it. The Wire was complicated and difficult to enter and it took a couple of episodes to really grab onto it. Treme was joyous and musically glorious, but I couldn’t latch on to a single character in the beginning. The cursing of Deadwood was so off-putting I simply couldn’t stick around. Carnivale, one of my fave shows, was bleak and dark and had so much backstory in that first episode that it took a few weeks before I bothered moving to the second. Big Love remains one of the only HBO series that lured me in right from the beginning and never let go. (Actually, Oz would be another.) But, as with Carnivale, the problem with HBO is that it tries to do far, far too much in that first episode. Then the second one slows down considerably and allows us to ease in, and the third one usually grabs us and keeps us there until the end of the series.

Not so with Game of Thrones. My husband and I commented that from the opening sequence, we were hooked. There is SO much that could have happened here by way of exposition, but didn’t. They jump from one person to the next so fast that your head is spinning, and you can’t seem to understand who is who. But they don’t explain it, and just lay it all out there, creating enough sympathetic situations and people that you want to know more. You can’t wait for that second episode because they’ve left so many things unexplained you need to get that exposition that’s been denied. And that’s what makes this opening episode so amazing. So for the n00bs to George RR Martin’s world, I suggest watching that opening sequence a few times like I did, looking at the way each area in Westeros comes to life (funny, despite watching the men go through that wall of ice, it was only in the opening credits I realized just how vast and foreboding that wall is.

And so, the many characters: Arya is one of my favourites, the little Stark girl who sits in embroidery classes while watching her brother take archery lessons, wishing she could do the same. Not that she needs the lessons... she nails the bullseye when her younger brother Bran (who would probably rather be reading a book) fails. Brilliant character, and she only gets better in the episodes to come. Bran is the thoughtful, sensitive boy who would rather climb walls as if looking for something different in this world of mayhem and murder.

Ned Stark is played by Boromir Sean Bean, who is PERFECT in this role. Good-looking but with a weathered face that looks like it’s seen a lot, he exudes bravery, vulnerability, and care. He’s a ruler who sometimes has to be stern, but he has a great love for his family, people, and king.

He has a bunch of other kids, one of whom is a bastard son by another woman. Another boy is a ward whom Ned has raised as a son, even though his father was someone who’d tried to rise up against the king. Sansa Stark is the rather annoying older sister, who is inexplicably in love with Prince Joffrey, and the king hopes to join the Stark and Lannister families by marrying the two.

And then there are the Lannisters. The queen, Cersei, doesn’t do much in this first episode other than just walk around looking morose, but she’ll have her moment in a few weeks. Her twin brother, Jaime, looks and talks EXACTLY like Prince Charming from the Shrek movies (seriously, he stepped off a horse and tossed his hair at one point and I longed for them to show it in slow-mo). ;) And by the way... he’s sleeping with his twin on a regular basis. All together now: EW.

Prince Joffrey is the queen and king’s son, but not only is his hair golden like his mom’s and... her brother’s, he just seems sleazy and a little off. I’m not convinced this kid isn’t the product of inbreeding. (But please, no spoilers from anyone who knows one way or the other.)

And then... there’s the imp. Tyrion Lannister, the twins’ older brother, who is a dwarf and as such, has developed a nasty streak. Played by the always brilliant Peter Dinklage, he’s a sex-crazed, drunken and brilliant character who you simultaneously hate and adore throughout the series. A few episodes in, he’s my husband’s and my favourite character.

The king is a lifelong friend of Ned’s, and was once engaged to Ned’s sister, who died in some way I’m not quite sure of yet and who he’s been pining after ever since. His wife probably gets her kicks from her brother because the king’s never really given her a second glance.

The real conflict of the show happens when Ned’s mentor, John Arryn, dies and he receives word that he was actually murdered by the Lannisters, who are conspiring to kill the king. Ned is asked to come south to the king’s land, but Catelyn begs him not to go, knowing that the last time he disappeared for a long period of time to follow a king, he came back with a son by another woman.

And then there are the exiles, the platinum haired brother and sister (a duo who are almost as creepy as the queen and her brother), Viserys and Daenerys. Viserys, the simpering whiner, believes he is the rightful king, which he proclaims as he feels up his buxom sister. He forces her into a terrifying marriage against her will to Khal Drogo, the warrior leader of a tribe of horsemen called the Dothraki, whose wedding ceremonies usually consist of slaughter and rape. Awesometimes. But in case you’re watching this thinking it’s taken on misogynist undertones, just keep watching. Daenerys isn’t as limp and quiet as you might think. She is given a gift of petrified dragon eggs at her wedding, and these will be something she looks to for solace in episodes to come.

Throughout the series, you’ll see many people wearing a symbol (I’m sure the readers of the books can speak better to this than I can) of a sword through a circle, and it looks a lot like the image of the bodies splayed on the ground in the episode’s opening. I haven’t figured out the connection, but I’m sure it’s there.

The shocking and powerful cliffhanger of this episode occurs when Bran, climbing the castle walls, interruptuses the coitus between the queen and her brother, who stops and questions the boy, before thoughtlessly shoving him out of the high castle window. Gah!! Will Bran die? Or will he live and tell the queen’s dirty secret? Tune in next week. And now, back to Chris ...

OK, I'm back. I just want to begin by saying that it is an honour to be co-blogging with Nikki—especially on a topic near and dear to my heart. Two topics, really, two epic imaginative spaces that have preoccupied me for years now: George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, and the dramatic programming on HBO. To have a forum in which to discuss the union of the two was too big an opportunity to pass up. Plus, I’m in awe of Nikki’s prolific, and prolifically intelligent blogging, so I’ll cheerfully hitch my wagon to her star.

As the half of this blogging duo who has read the books, I will be offering my thoughts on how successful the series has been in adapting Martin’s narrative, but I also hope to discuss some of the broader issues of fantasy as a genre, especially in terms of Martin’s vision, and how Game of Thrones does or doesn’t realize that vision (based on episode one, it totally does—but it’s early days yet). And I won’t be obsessing over every elision or change—even with ten hours of screen time to work with, there’s simply too much there in the novel. And besides which, there are inevitably nuances in prose fiction that films simply cannot replicate (and vice versa). Adaptation is always an exercise in translation.

This post, I should say now as a caveat, grew in the telling. I felt compelled to provide some context from which my commentary on the series will proceed; but if all you’re interested in is an avid GRRM fan’s take on the series, you might as well skip it. No worries.


By way of an introduction …

I have been an avid fantasy reader since reading The Lord of the Rings at the age of eleven. Unfortunately, perhaps as well as anyone, as an English professor I see the genre get a bad rap. So it goes with most genre fiction, though I’m pleased to say that amongst the enclaves of younger faculty there is more of a tolerance for it.

Though if we’re being honest with ourselves, we have to admit that the knock against fantasy as escapist, regressive, and nostalgic—and at times egregiously misogynist—isn’t always unfair. The lurid covers staring down at us from bookstore shelves speak to this ambivalence, and it can be difficult to take a novel seriously when its cover art depicts a cartoonishly busty warrior-woman in a leather bustier and boots standing in the middle of a snowy landscape. But authors like George R. R. Martin are living proof that to tar the entire genre thus is to miss the fact that fantasy is increasingly becoming a vehicle for decidedly humanist allegories of power and politics. Knee-jerk condescension or the thoughtless depiction of fantasy audiences as the stereotypical pimply basement-dwelling D&D player ignore the thoughtful, intelligence reinvention of the genre by Martin, Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman, Guy Gavriel Kay, Terry Pratchett, Robin Hobb, Richard K. Morgan, Joe Abercrombie, and many others.

Perhaps it goes without saying that, on this point, A Song of Ice & Fire is Exhibit A. GRRM’s world is notably free of both Aslans and Saurons; it is a world sketched in shades of grey, with deeply nuanced characters possessing familiar ambitions, fears, and desires; where power is not something tangibly manifested in a ring or a sword or a suit of armour, but which is a shifting and fluid thing that all the key players blunder after with varying degrees of gamesmanship. In other words, if the word is not too contradictory in this context, it is a deeply realistic world.

And that is what makes it perfect for HBO. Having only watched the first episode, I hesitate to make confident predictions; but if the series keeps on with the faithfulness to GRRM’s vision it displayed last Sunday, then its byzantine narrative web will be intimately familiar to any devoted viewer of The Wire or Deadwood; its plots and conspiracies, to say nothing of its epic scale, will evoke echoes of Rome; and the centrality of family as both site and source of personal identity and strife will resonate with fans of The Sopranos and Six Feet Under. One question I have heard voiced is why HBO should seek to depart from the tried and true naturalistic power of the shows just mentioned (a question that elides the ongoing presence of True Blood, but never mind) in favour of embracing epic fantasy? The simplest answer to that it hasn’t—Westeros may be another world, but the closer you look, the more familiar it becomes.

At any rate ... on to the first episode.

There will inevitably be many points of departure between the books and the television series, but this first episode seems to promise that they will mostly be superficial. So during the opening sequence as Ser Waymar Royce, Will, and Gared ride through the tunnel at the base of the Wall, my instinctive inner protest that “Hey! That tunnel shouldn’t be straight through the ice, but crooked, with many inner gates along the way!” quickly gave way to me geeking out over the image of the Wall itself as the three rangers emerged. The entire prologue unfolds differently than in the novel: the dead wildlings aren’t ritually mutilated, Waymar Royce actually faces down the White Walker—vainly, of course, but it’s a brief moment of respect for an otherwise petulant lordling—and it is Gared, not Will, who escapes only to be executed.

But these are trivial points. The television prologue maintains the same spirit as the novel’s, with the same conflict of personalities at work. The visual realization of the Haunted Forest is … well, haunting, and the emergence of the White Walkers and the wights/ice-zombies their victims turn into is suitably terrifying. If I was going to quibble, it would be on two points: first, the “White Walker” we see is notably un-white—and far from the lithe, pale terrors GRRM describes, it seems more like a hulking and monstrous barbarian. And secondly, in the novels the name the White Walkers go by is the “Others.” But I suppose that might prove a little confusing in the post-Lost television landscape.

The point here being, I suppose, is that this is more or less what we can expect: certain liberties taken, but the spirit of the novels carefully hewed to.

For those who haven’t read the books, take the time to watch the credits carefully—if you’re anything like me, having a mental map of a fantasy world helps orient you, and in this lovely credits sequence they lay out the basic geography of Westeros and the proximal relationships of the different narrative threads. (If you want a more specific or exhaustive map, there are many online, such as here). But they are also a small masterpiece, as are many of HBO series’ credit sequences—something of a lost art on network television, where these days they are often elided entirely to make room for more ad time. Here we move across continents to the key places—Winterfell, King’s Landing, Castle Black, Pentos—zooming in from our gods’-eye view to see them rise, toy-like, as a series of gears and cogs that bespeak the conspiratorial gears that grind away throughout Martin’s intricate narrative.

And it is not long before we encounter plots and secrets. The fugitive Will is captured and executed by Ned Stark (Sean Bean) himself, vainly attempting to warn his captors of the white walkers. Back at the Stark stronghold of Winterfell comes dire news of the death of Jon Arryn, Hand of the King, and former mentor to Ned. And worse yet: the king is riding north with all his retinue to be the Starks’ royal house guest, certainly determined to make Ned his new Hand. But before this, we have a glimpse of where one major narrative thread will unfold: King’s Landing, the capital city of the Seven Kingdoms. Cersei Lannister, Queen of the Realm, and her twin brother Jaime let it be known that Jon Arryn knew something that could have put their heads on pikes.

One of the things that deeply impressed me about this first episode is the deft touch it had in telling the story. There was a refreshing lack of lengthy exposition (never something HBO series tend to go in for), and character traits that GRRM develops over chapters the director economically introduces in brief conversations, or a series of looks and gestures. A case in point, and probably the best example of what I mean: Arya escaping her embroidery to put an arrow in the bullseye of the target her brother Bran aims at. That moment clarifies the fraught place both have in their family in terms of who they are, what is expected of them, and what they desire for themselves. Bran here is brooding and thoughtful, at pains to please his father; Arya, escaping the shadow of her beautiful, feminine sister to show her talents for the masculine arts.

It is exactly this deft, economical touch that makes me wonder if Troy Patterson at Slate actually watched the advance DVDs he received before he wrote:

There are unscalable slabs of expositionistic dialogue clogging the forward movement of the story. Sonorous and/or schmaltzy talk substitutes for the revelation of character through action. There is the sense of intricacy having been confused with intrigue and of a story transferred all too faithfully from its source and thus not transformed to meet the demands of the screen.

Um, what? I suppose it’s possible that in future episodes the series shifts gears in favour of length, sententious history lectures about the Seven Kingdoms, but somehow I doubt it (those don’t even really occur in the novels, where they would not exactly be out of place). Similar to the atrocious NYT review by Ginia Bellafante, Patterson seems to be approaching this series with a pre-formed sense of what all fantasy must be like, assuming that if GRRM writes fantasy then it must ape Tolkien’s often absurdly elevated diction. The only “sonorous” speech I can recall from the episode are actually moments of ceremony—Ned Stark pronouncing Will’s sentence of death, and King Robert formally asking Ned to be Hand of the King. Other than that, the language is pretty straightforward and often profane. Really, there’s more sonorous and elevated diction in Deadwood (a lot, really).

But I digress. I would be remiss if I did not acknowledge what are, to my mind, the two single greatest contributing factors to this show’s success: first, the scenery; and second, the casting.

The sheer look of the show is breathtaking, as is the scale. The renderings of the Wall, Winterfell, and King’s Landing—both in terms of their look from a distance and their textures and details up close—have been superbly done. While, as I mentioned above, GRRM’s world notably lacks the epic characters of classic fantasy (or, indeed, classic epics), it is nevertheless epic in scope, and the visuals the series produces are more than up to the task.

In terms of casting, watching the roles get filled over the last year and a half has been the biggest point of excitement for myself as well as, I imagine, many other diehard fans of the books. There have been no missteps. The one actor who gave me trepidation, I will admit, was Mark Addy—he seemed too happy and often gormless in previous roles to play King Robert, but he carries it off beautifully. Sean Bean is of course perfect in the role of Ned (though I should admit to being biased on this front as a long-time Sharpe fan), and Michelle Fairley—not an actress with whom I was previously familiar—does an excellent job in capturing Catelyn’s complex character: her heartfelt yet guarded love for Ned, her abiding sense of being out of place in the north, her protectiveness of her children, and her antipathy to Ned’s bastard son Jon Snow. The look she shares with Jon, looking down into the courtyard, is another great example of how the series manages to communicate character without unnecessary exposition.

The performance that most blew me away was Peter Dinklage as Tyrion—which makes me happy, as Tyrion is one of my favourite characters, one that really demonstrates GRRM’s talent for subtlety and nuance. But that being said, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau matches him well as his brother Jaime. The scene when Jaime blithely walks in on Tyrion and the prostitute, and their banter, is quite true to the spirit of their relationship in the books. Jaime himself is very well-played, with Coster-Waldau displaying the easy arrogance and amused indifference of Jaime Lannister. The final scene when Bran accidentally sees him and Cersei in coitus was pitch-perfect: Jaime’s reaction is amusement, not fear, and when he looks back at his twin, his grin says “Can you believe this kid?” And then—“The things I do for love,” shoving Bran out, without a measurable change in his face. Not cruel, but also not caring that he probably just killed a child.

If there’s someone on whom the jury is still out, it is Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister. She looks the part, but plays Cersei with a sadness that I find somewhat out of step with the Cersei of the novels. I get no malice underneath her words and actions—she seems to be playing her as if she mourns the loveless state of her marriage, rather than someone with her own plots and ambitions. When Robert spurns her, and later openly flirts with a servant girl, it hurts rather than irks her. Perhaps that malice and ambition will emerge later … I hope so, otherwise she won’t be a particularly interesting character.

Across the narrow sea … our exiled Targaryens Viserys and Daenerys, Magister Illyrio, Ser Jorah Mormont, and of course Khal Drogo. Presumably they’re going to give Emilia Clarke as Daenerys more to do than stand and look forlornly at things. I wasn’t able to get a good read on her in this episode, mainly because she did not do or say much. She makes a lovely Dany, and the terror in her eyes the closer she comes to consummating her marriage to Drogo is heartbreaking … but I look forward to the Dany who evolves as she gains confidence. By contrast Harry Lloyd’s Viserys get that character’s arrogance, cruelty, and childish petulance exactly right. My favourite moment is when Khal Drogo, having been initially presented with his presumptive bride, rides off without saying a thing. “What’s wrong? Didn’t he like her?” Viserys protests, his voice going up into a whiny register.

I never quite imagined Khal Drogo being quite that beefcake, but aside from that, actor Jason Momoa (soon to be seen as Conan the Barbarian) certainly looks the part.

All in all, a very promising start to the series. I’m sort of chomping at the bit for Ned to get to King’s Landing, as the piece of casting I most anticipate is Aidan Gillen. Tommy Carcetti as Littlefinger? Too perfect.

Winter is here ... and the geeks couldn't be happier

OK, to start with, I realize that my last blog post announced I would finally post the last few vampire cage matches in three days time. Did I say three days? I, um, meant three months.

Fine, fine ... my bad. In my defense, I have had one of the busiest and otherwise crappiest terms of my academic career, for reasons mostly not to do with school (though a full course load this term didn't help). To any students reading this post: it wasn't you. I had great classes. Just ... you know, a lot of them.

ANYWAY. I throw myself back into blogging now just as the dust settles and I get ready to shift into research/writing mode ... and the event kick-starting my newfound blogging resolve? Well, what do you think?

That's right, sports fans! On Sunday last, the event we've all been waiting for happened -- HBO premiered its first episode of Game of Thrones, the series based on George R. R. Martin's epic fantasy series. And it was AMAZING. So much so, and so enthusiastic was the response, that they've already announced Season Two.

And I'd love to tell you in detail what I thought about it, but that will have to wait until tomorrow. Why, you ask? Because my most excellent friend and far superior blogger Nikki Stafford, TV commentator and critic extraordinaire was blown away by the first few episodes (in her role as TV commentator and critic extraordinaire, she was given the first few episodes on DVD ahead of time to review ... yeah, yeah, I know, but we forgive her), but has not herself read the novels. So she has suggested that we co-blog the first season together -- her from the perspective of a GRRM newbie, me from the perspective of a guy who bought the first novel in hardcover. In 1996. (These books have been a long time in the writing).

So tomorrow, our respective responses to episode one will go live on both her blog and my own humble piece of the webz here. And since I can't very well leave Nikki out to dry here, there will be no promising of posts and then buggering off for two and a half months. Promise.

Our simul-posts will go up every Wednesday. Stay tuned!

The Great Buffy Rewatch and the imminent return of the vampire cage matches

My friend Nikki has been doing "The Great Buffy Rewatch" over at her excellent blog dedicated to all things teevee, NIk at Night, and invited friends and colleagues of hers who write about television in some capacity to take part. And this week it was yours truly's turn ... so click on over to Nikki's blog to see my thoughts on episodes 2.04, 2.05, and 2.06 ("Inca Mummy Girl," "Reptile Boy," and "Halloween" respectively). Nikki posts twice, first with spoilers, and second with spoilers whited out for the newbies.

Anyway, as I mentioned before, I've been meaning to get back to the vampire cage matches that I have let languish for an unconscionably long time. Hopefully the somewhat more substantial readership Nikki boasts will help kickstart them. For thus I say unto you, lo, the cage matches shall recommence! In three days time! Come out, read my summary of the fight, and vote for which vamp you think should reign supreme! We are now at the semifinals, with two spectacular matches coming up: Blade vs. Eric Northman of True Blood, and the one the Whedon fans have been waiting for: Angel vs. Spike.

Three days:

Watching Dr. Strangelove (yet) again

"I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration,
Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion,
and the international Communist conspiracy
to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids."
—Colonel Jack D. Ripper, Dr. Strangelove

I do so love this film—not only is it easily my favourite Kubrick film (a director whose genius I freely acknowledge while not necessarily loving much of his oeuvre), but it is a fixture in my top five favourite films, period. I've been rewatching it this afternoon and pulling screen captures in preparation for teaching it in my intro to film class this week, and just generally losing myself in it.

Whenever I watch it, my laughter at its hilarity is always slightly checked by an awareness of just how dark and bleak the humour is—or was. The first time I ever watched the film was for a class in my undergrad, in the early 90s. Hence, my familiarity with Dr. Strangelove began after the Cold War had ended, during a time when it appeared to many that the United States was permanently ascendant and American-style liberal democracy had proven itself the acme of societal evolution (see, Fukuyama, Francis: History, and the Ending Thereof). But even now, with those delusionally halcyon days of the new world order rather emphatically behind us, and amidst the hysterical rhetoric of the War on Terror, it is difficult to understand the nuclear paranoia of the Cold War in the 50s and 60s. It is hard to imagine the ever-present anxiety of the spectre of nuclear annihilation; my parents talk about air raid drills as a regular punctuation of their young lives, of being sent home from school early during the Cuban Missile Crisis praying with their families around the radio that they weren't about to be wiped out by thermonuclear bombs. I have at least a little inkling: I remember my father's sombre concern about Reagan's election in 1980 (I was eight at the time), expressed as "I'm afraid he won't be afraid of starting a war with the Russians." I came of age during the Cold War Redux, as we might call it, as Kissinger's détente gave way to Reagan's overheated rhetoric about "the evil empire," and films such as The Day After gave us starkly vivid images of the aftermath of a nuclear war. (I was not allowed by my parents to watch that movie—they did not want me or my brother to have to deal with the anxiety that inevitably came from such a brutal depiction of nuclear warfare—which was, not insignificantly, optimistic in its estimation of human survival).

Once (again, I think I was around eight years old), I quoted to my parents an interesting fact I'd read about the survival talents of spiders: that they would likely be one of the few species to survive nuclear war. To which my mother replied, "No, we'll survive!" I'm not sure what disturbed me more: the vehemence with which my cool factoid was quashed, or the tremor in my mother's voice as she did so. I think I can start charting my own nuclear anxieties from that moment. I remember too the sense of dread I experienced every time they moved the hands forward on the Doomsday Clock—seeing it as I did with the literal-mindedness of a child, believing that when it hit midnight, that was the end.

Even growing up with such anxieties, the nuclear paranoia that was the context for Dr. Strangelove remains hard to fully imagine today. And so it is similarly hard to wrap my head around the audacity of the film's humour. The novel on which it is based, Red Alert by Peter George, is a straightforward political thriller; and Stanley Kubrick's initial script drafts were not humourous or satirical, but essayed a serious and dramatic narrative. But he found that the tone of the story kept running up against the often absurd contradictions of nuclear logic, especially in the premises of mutually assured destruction. "I found that in trying to put meat on the bones and to imagine the scenes fully," Kubrick said, "one had to keep leaving out of it things which were either absurd or paradoxical, in order to keep it from being funny; and these things seemed to be close to the heart of the scenes in question." Hence his decision to make it a black comedy, which was one of those choices that should be enshrined in film history as a turning point into genius. For Dr. Strangelove could not have been the trenchant critique it was had it played it straight: the absurdly amoral discussions in the War Room, in particular General Buck Turgidson's suggestion that they go all in on Colonel Ripper's sneak attack, exactly echo the actual contingency plans of the Cold War.

My favourite line in this scene is Turgidson's caveat "I'm not saying we wouldn't get our hair mussed!", which sums up so perfectly the desperately euphemistic logic of nuclear war: millions of lives instantly snuffed out, millions more suffering the inexorable agonizing death of radiation poisoning, and billions ultimately dying of privation and exposure, neatly divorced from brutal reality with such terms as "acceptable losses." Possibly one of the best discussions of this subject I've read is Martin Amis' essay "Thinkability," which prefaces his 1985 collection of short stories Einstein's Monsters. The euphemisms and clichés of the Pentagon's rhetoric about nuclear war all attempt to hide the basic, inescapable reality of nuclear war, which Amis characterizes as "everything becoming nothing, all at once."

What is less difficult to comprehend and understand today is the culture of conspiracy and paranoia that informs Colonel Ripper's decision to launch his pre-emptive attack. Though framed in the language of absurdity, the figuration fluoridation of drinking water as a Communist plot was not an uncommon meme in conspiracist circles. Some things never change: watching Glenn Beck today (or rather, watching the thirty seconds or so of him I can stand at a time), Colonel Ripper's delusions seem mild. I take comfort in the fact that Beck does not command a wing of B-52 bombers, but it is a sad statement of today's climate when the satirical language of Colonel Jack D. Ripper is mild in comparison to that of the highest-rated news channel in the U.S.

But I digress … I told my students the other day that when we study film, in addition to its aesthetic dimension, we're concerned both with what they can tell us about their historical moment and with what they still have to tell us about ours … and that, ultimately, it's the latter category that tends to most define those films that we return to over and over. Dr. Strangelove never gets tired for me. Hopefully my class feels similarly.

Bad blogger me. Also, film class! And other stuff.

Hello everyone ... I have been a very bad blogger these past several weeks, and now I am back to repeat the cycle of Energetic Blogging Productionà Tapering Offà Long Silenceà Series Of Lackadaisical Apologies For Long Silenceà Renewed Burst Of Blogging Energy. Hopefully this is the sole Lackadaisical apology, to be followed by a new burst of energy.

No promises, considering this term is rather crazy. I have three courses, all of which are full, and one of which I'm essentially building from the ground up. But I am happy to say they are all extremely enjoyable to teach, and my cohort of students this term is rather amazing—they're all seemingly interested and engaged, and what's more, they laugh at my jokes. Which is good, because I'm so busy with course prep that I don't really have to chance to work up new material.

I'm particularly enjoying my intro to film class, "What is Film?" I was set to teach one of our mandatory surveys, "Major British Authors since 1800," but the department head circulated an email asking if someone would be willing to teach the film class.

I don't think I've ever answered an email so quickly. I don't think thirty seconds elapsed between hearing the new message beep and me firing off my reply. YES, I will teach introduction to film, especially if it means I can trade an English survey course for it. Not that I don't enjoy teaching the great swathe of literature since Blake, but come on ... a film course? In which I basically get to choose whatever films I want? Too ... much ... awesomeness ...

Of course, I ran into trouble in narrowing my list down to a maximum of twelve films ... so after finally paring it down to forty-three of my favourite movies, I looked at what I had and broke them up into twelve loose categories. I then posted that as a note in Facebook, tagged a bunch of film enthusiast friends, and asked people to vote for one from each category. Whatever won in each would be on the course.

Sometimes net democracy is your friend—not only for the fact that it took the onus of that final, agonizing decision off of me, but also for the amazing discussion and argument that unfolded in the comments.

Anyway, the final screening list is sort of like a who's-who of my favourite films. We're doing, in the order we're covering them in class, Rear Window, Alien, Dr. Strangelove, Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon, The Big Lebowski, Citizen Kane, Double Indemnity, Blade Runner, The Good the Bad and the Ugly, Moulin Rouge, 28 Days Later and Pontypool. Again: So. Much. Awesomeness. I am concerned that my lectures will devolve into little more than me geeking out a lot. So far we've done Rear Window and Alien ... and, yes, there have been some moments of total geeking out. But to be fair, that's happened among some of my students too (did I mention I have awesome students this term? And I'm not only saying so on the off-chance they read my blog).

I'm particularly concerned about what my lecture for Crouching Tiger will be like, considering that the sheer beauty of that film reduces me to a quivering pulp whenever I watch it. I expect I will show clips and stills and the content of my lecture will be along the lines of "I mean ... come on ... seriously ... isn't that just ... my God ... it's so ... fuck!" But serious. Please look me in the eye and tell me that film isn't gorgeously made and composed ...

OK. See? This is what I'm talking about! I even veer off into digressive geeking out during a blog post. Must. Keep. It. Together.

In other news, I had my second column in FlowTV.org go live this past weekend. Regular readers of my blog will recognize some of the theme and substance, as it's about zombie films and The Walking Dead—but please go peruse it and leave your comments. And I will soon be a guest blogger on my friend Jen/Nikki's site as she continues The Great Buffy Rewatch, revisiting all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Apropos of which, I plan to finally conclude the Vampire Cage Matches—seeing as how her blog gets about a million times the readers as mine, hopefully I can pull in the masses to vote for who, in the end, is the most kickass vamp.

And in the meantime, I'll try not to be such a slagabed when it comes to blogging. Scout's honour.*

*I was never a scout.

Beyond words

Though I've apparently been on a bit of a vacation from this blog, I did idly consider writing various posts on pleasant topics over the Christmas holidays. Unfortunately, the impulse to not write was compounded by the general impulse to sit, eat, and drink by the fire. And since getting back to St. John's, class prep has kept me pretty insanely busy.

So it's unfortunate that I feel prompted to return to ye olde blog on a dark and disturbing subject. Since Representative Gabrielle Giffords and numerous others were shot this past Saturday by a deeply disturbed and mentally unbalanced young man in Arizona, the rhetoric and argument has saturated the blogosphere. Aside from the predictable back-and-forthing between rightwing and leftwing pundits, it has been heartening to see a significant amount of thoughtful, sober discussion.

That being said, I have attempted for the past three days or so to compose my own thoughts on the subject, and really failed entirely. And then, listening to President Obama's speech in Tucson, I just gave up—he said everything I would have wanted to say, and said it better. By several orders of magnitude. In the face of such a tragedy, he said, "We recognize our own mortality, and are reminded that in the fleeting time we have on this earth, what matters is not wealth, or status, or power, or fame - but rather, how well we have loved, and what small part we have played in bettering the lives of others."

Amen.

Hitch v. Beck

Christopher Hitchens in Vanity Fair on the mendacity of Glenn Beck and his Tea Party acolytes:

Having an honest and open discussion ... is not just a high priority. It's more like a matter of social and political survival. But the Beck-Skousen faction want to make such a debate impossible. They need and want to sublimate the anxiety into hysteria and paranoia. The president is a Kenyan. The president is a secret Muslim. The president (why not?—after all, every little bit helps) is the unacknowledged love child of Malcolm X. And this is their response to the election of an extremely moderate half-African American candidate, who speaks better English than most and who has a model family. Revolted by this development, huge numbers of white people choose to demonstrate their independence and superiority by putting themselves eagerly at the disposal of a tear-stained semi-literate shock jock, and by repeating his list of lies and defamations. But, of course, there's nothing racial in their attitude …

This? This is what happens when the exceptionally intelligent critique the exceptionally stupid.

As anyone who reads this blog knows, it's six to five and pick 'em whether I will, on reading a Christopher Hitchens piece, (a) agree vigorously, (b) find myself rethinking a position I'd had previously, or (c) be enraged to the point of apoplexy. This happens to be an example of category (a), but you've probably figured that out. But even when he pisses me off (as he pretty much did 24/7 in the lead up to the Iraq War), I keep reading him, because such a sharp mind (that expresses itself in such enviable prose) deserves to be read.

I'm an atheist, but not so militantly as Hitchens that I don't find myself offering up a prayer each time I read about his ongoing fight with oesophageal cancer. If the disease claims him—as he candidly grants it probably will, statistically—we will have lost a voice that always elevated the level of political and social debate, unapologetically so, in a time when public discourse sometimes seems locked in a determined race to the lowest and most hysterical denominator.