Until it was played onstage by four string instruments last Sunday at the season premiere in the Arts & Sciences Auditorium, I didn’t appreciate the subtle beauty in the theme song to “Game of Thrones.” And until I watched it in an auditorium filled with people who loved it just as much I did, I really didn’t appreciate the power “Game of Thrones” can have over people.
The reason for this appreciation wasn’t anything to do with the episode in particular, even though I thought it was a very good season opener, it had to do entirely with the people I was sitting beside. Before the opening titles were over, everyone was dead quiet. There were no bothersome hoots or howls, and only a handful of appropriate chuckles from time to time.
The simple explanation could be that we’re all University of Wyoming students and therefore the greatest people who have ever walked the face of Earth, but the less egotistical answer is that “Game of Thrones” is something that matters and demands a quiet respect. This show matters in a way that is foreign to the “this TV show is so hot right now” trend that does often grasp the public’s social consciousness. The themes and adversaries that the characters of Westeros face every episode speak to the people watching it.
It is very easy to dismiss “Game of Thrones” as nothing more than the general public’s weekly dose of televised nudity and violence, but there’s more to it than that. At its heart, “Game of Thrones” is a deeply cynical show, but it is also a hypocritical show. Despite how much the world attempts to destroy these characters with the supposed truth of how devastatingly awful their world is, they still march towards the doom that exists in their future and the dream of a spring that lies beyond. The nature of the cycle of the world as the importance of seasonal change is emphasized, speaks to the belief that winter may be coming, but spring will eventually follow.
We live in a very cynical society; zombies are popular for a reason. We’ve spiritually given up to the point that a world ravaged by the undead, or some other disaster, is something to be secretly desired within ourselves. We are reminded every day how we are destroying the planet we live on and how the doom we’re creating for ourselves continues to draw closer. I don’t think it’s a coincidence that a show about people constantly fighting for a brighter future against a backdrop of self-caused doom is so popular right now.
Like “Game of Thrones,” we are, as a society, deeply hypocritical. We get beaten down every day by tragedy and eventual apocalypse to the point of being swept up in the darkness and losing sight of the light at the end of the tunnel. Sometimes all it takes is a quiet theater transfixed on the chronicles of people searching for meaning in a world full of dread to be reminded that we are an optimistic species and hope is the natural state of who we are.
It could always be that the auditorium was so quiet because people were falling asleep, but, being a member of the human race, I don’t subscribe to that nonsense.
