My Facebook newsfeed is abuzz with comments and updates heralding the launch of the fourth season of HBO’s ‘Game of Thrones’. As an ex-fan, my disposition these days is of a crestfallen man watching his former lover revelling in continued success and attention.
But my obsession ended with the 'Red Wedding'.
I was barely okay with the show mainstreaming incest, infanticide, filicide, and torture based TV, as long as it all came in metered doses. But when forced to wrap my head around possibly the most depressing scene in TV history, perched atop an already bleak storyline, I publicly broke up with GoT. I went from a fan writing blogs in extolment of the series, to a person cringing at any reference to it.
Bear in mind, I’m not a happy-endings fan complaining of the show not being ‘Disney’ enough for my liking. I’ve enjoyed Breaking Bad, Dexter, and a range of slasher films with dark climaxes. But for any viewer to be entertained by the ‘Red Wedding’ -- not just endure it -- may be a red flag for sadistic tendencies.
[Warning: some spoilers ahead]
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Catelyn Stark |
The ‘Red Wedding’ is a scene where one of the major characters, a young revolutionary is betrayed at a wedding he attends. His pregnant wife, one of the few ‘good’ characters in the book, is stabbed in the belly and killed. All his men drinking and dining outside the palace are butchered. His pet wolf is shot with a crossbow. He himself is murdered in front of his mother as she begs for his life, and then gets her own throat sliced by the traitor. This feels exponentially more dismal knowing the traitor is working for the same family that defamed and executed the rebel’s father, and has taken his sister hostage.
Credits roll.
According to the Affective Disposition Theory, people enjoy entertainment when characters identified as "good" prevail over the bad ones. There is, however, something else in play too: 'excitation transfer theory', which states that if the negative emotion building up over time from watching a downer TV-series, can suddenly be switched to positive emotion if the series ends on a positive note.
However, the third season of GoT tops the build up of negative emotion with one super-depressing scene after another, and then rolls credits. Bye. See you next year. Hope you enjoyed us spontaneously killing all your favorite characters.
It is eudaimonia that perhaps explains the series' loyal fans who haven't washed their hands of the show in disgust yet. Eudaimonia is finding satisfaction in tormenting, negative experiences because they remind us of our own humanity, and bring us in touch with them.
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Jon Snow |
This is the reason I had been a great fan of the TV-series all the way from the end of the first season to the third-last episode of season 3. But beyond this, the series appears to have twisted into something worse, and the cravings for these depressing bloodbaths seem to me a sign of something deeply pathological.
It doesn’t help when fans who have read the books in advance condescendingly tell you how much you’re missing out on by not burying your face into those literary wonders, and only watching the show on TV.
“You have no idea how much uglier its going to get,” they say smugly.
Yes, what pray tell is coming up?
Do the dragons get diagnosed with breast cancer, mocked for their bald, scaleless heads and then get euthanized at age 22?
Does Lady Cersei manage to slaughter the four remaining infants in King's Landing?
Each episode is a round of musical chair for characters you’ve invested much attention and affection into, and whoever’s standing at the end gets brutally murdered without a warning.
You can berate me all you like for my opinion, but I'm not alone here. I am but a particle of the large chunk that broke off the GoT fan-base after season 3. And with a new season premiering, I stay true to the promise I made to myself about a year ago in the hostel TV-room in Istanbul: “Never again”.
I know nothing good can come out of this.