Thoughts on Fantasy

Found this gem here 

The biggest difference between Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones is the notion of evil presented in both stories. In Lord of the Rings, the evil in the story is clear and unambiguous, leaving little to interpretation. However, Game of Thrones presents more well-rounded characters who can be interpreted as good or evil, depending on the viewer’s point of view. For lovers of the fantasy genre, Lord of the Rings is our childhood, but Game of Thrones is our future.

This passage, particularly that last line, pretty much reflects my shifting feelings towards the fantasy genre. These feelings have been reinforced by the common complaints I hear against “A Song of Ice and Fire”/ “Game of Thrones” which usually revolve around how the characters are so difficult to root for, so morally ambiguous, how there’s no lion-hearted hero to admire, etc. To an extent, I understand that. Fantasy has often been a genre where morals are neat and clean, heroes are admirable and larger-than-life, and readers can hope emulate those heroic qualities in themselves. For people who prefer their fantasy to be an expression of courageous, moral behavior, “A Song of Ice and Fire” can seem disturbing in the way stereotypically noble characters die like flies, after making mistakes due to their own moral code, leaving far more ambiguous characters to survive and struggle for power. And, I get it. We like to root for good and cringe at evil… it makes things neat and emotionally tidy. More importantly, I think that it’s attractive to think that we know what is good and what is evil. But, it occurred to me while watching last night’s episode with the battle of Blackwater Bay that the story’s strength lies in the fact that no faction is necessarily evil. More importantly, no faction thinks of themselves as evil. There’s a sense of interiority through all sides of the conflict that I find sorely lacking from many other fantasy epics.

Naturally, that episode reminded me of the Battle of Helm’s Deep; on the surface, the similarities are obvious. Both are epic, climactic depictions of medieval warfare, even fought over a city under siege. However, the key difference that made me much more emotionally drawn to the former over the latter, is that while Aragorn and Co. are chopping down Orcs (and who really sees Orcs as anything but sentient killing machines), every individual fighting in the Battle of Blackwater Bay is human, with human flaws, desires and impulses. Obviously, some have better motivations than others. But both sides contain a sense of interiority that isn’t there in Tolkien, and I admit that it’s difficult for me to read/watch Lord of the Ring without feeling like I’m being corralled into cheering on the “good guys” without even the real option of finding something of worth in the opposing faction. And that too… I’ve heard some people say that Tolkien departs from strict morality by making it “hard to be good” but I actually utterly disagree with that. It’s hard to choose “good” in Tolkien because of temptation, but I think that temptation has always been a fairly common underlying theme in mythologies and fantasies. That does not mean that it is ever particularly hard to “know” what good is. Characters get faced with a choice where one is clearly the right choice and one is clearly the wrong choice. Characters who make the wrong choice get their just desserts in one way or another. Nowhere do the characters find it hard to be good in the sense that they have to choose one value over another, as Jamie Lannister so accurately describes:

"So many vows…they make you swear and swear. Defend the king. Obey the king. Keep his secrets. Do his bidding. Your life for his. But obey your father. Love your sister. Protect the innocent. Defend the weak. Respect the gods. Obey the laws. It’s too much. No matter what you do, you’re forsaking one vow or the other.”

I realize I’m beginning to sound rather anti-Tolkein, and this could not be further from the truth. Tolkien was telling a very different type of story, mythological rather than political, when he created his worlds.  To try to assert that his books should have been more like GRR Martin’s or vice versa would be like trying to insist that pie should be cake. I think that my rather emphatic reaction stems more from the criticisms I’ve heard directed at GRR Martin’s works regarding the pervading moral ambiguity in his novels, especially from moralists who assert that fantasy should reflect proper morals and traditions. Even worse, that art should reflect what is beautiful, and moral ambiguity is not beautiful. I utterly disagree, and the sanctimonious tone of some of these criticisms probably strikes a nerve with me.  I actually think that a valuable aspect of ASOIAF is that people’s moral and personal compasses point in so many different directions and it mucks everything up. So yes, admittedly it’s been rather difficult for me to appreciate Tolkien to the same extent that I used to (which was a heck of a lot), and I consider that to be unfortunate. But I guess it’s getting more and more difficult for me to see the world in stark terms of good and evil, and I tend to be the type who latches on to literature and art because it strikes some sort of empathic chord.  So perhaps my changing views in fantasy are a product of growing up, as the original quote suggests, or a product of losing my idealism.