“Violence, in this episode, was strange and complicated — but brutal, even when it was defused, or pushed aside, or displayed only obliquely.”
“Yes! This episode was all about things happening somewhere else, about violence suggested and then… not happening, or happening off-screen. “Oh, the Blackfish? Yeah, he’s totally dead. So.””
“It’s true: are there any scenes in this episode that are focalized through a character who knows what’s happening?”
“Can I point out, nerdishly, that this all feels like a great extension of the moment Cersei calls out the knotted language of her Igor-dude: “Seven Sparrows have been permitted into the Red Keep.” Cersei’s like: cool it with the passive voice, asshole, we all know what’s happening here; The King permitted them to enter.”
“That passive voice, and her frustration with it, is really interesting! It’s a different grammar of violence. Sarah Blackwood texted me in the middle of the episode to point out that things were getting really Discipline and Punish up in there.”
“Aaron: Wow, say more about that! How do we get from passive voice to Foucault?
Sarah: Well, look, I’m not prepared to offer a fully developed theory of Westerosi biopolitics — but I think the point is that there are a few colliding theories of power happening in the show right now. There’s trial by combat, for instance, which is “punishment” — the revealed spectacle of bodies enacting power, which Tommen declares barbaric compared to the more rational, just, and civilized process of a jury trial. Now, Aaron, you and I would probably agree that trial by combat is barbaric, but in the moment of television, it’s completely clear that the rational mode of social regulation is also strategic, power-bound, and also dramatically aimed at deploying power through the regulation of bodies — and, particularly, Cersei and Loras’s wayward sexual desires.”
“The passive voice de-emphasizes subjectivity, separates verbs from agents. Similar stuff happens throughout the episode to diffuse agency, through language — like when Tommen says “the crown has decided” to give up trial by combat, or when the Blackfish and the guard argue about whether Edmure’s word’s are really his words, a “valid order,” or the machinations of Jaime. So: I wouldn’t say that that Westeros right now is a fully-developed disciplinary system of productive power, but it is the case that this was an episode about power happening, without anyone particular making it happen.”
“Aaron: That’s totally right! In fact, the entire question of what it means to be “shit at dying,” as the Hound puts it, is pretty Foucaultian. And the wonderful absurdity of arguing about who gets to kill the condemned men, and how.”
“Of course, the King and Sparrow are also re-locating The Spectacle of Power away from combat and onto their own non-combative bodies: their soft and gentle and soothing and pacific bodies, which serve as a lens for a different kind of government than Robert Baratheon’s. And given how crazy, violent, or unpredictable the last few kings have been, who can blame the commoners if they’re psyched to have a king who cedes some of his power to the church?”
“Aaron: The episode might also have a Foucaultian slant on history, too; the show’s general narrative focus on the aristocratic elite — the people who, by definition, have power and agency — can sometimes make it seem like History really is being written by aristocrats in elegant rooms, that having conversations is the sum of what makes the world go round. It’s all conspiracies and plotting and plans! But in this episode, we get example after example of elegant rooms being surprised, mid-conversation, by something outside their ken. I wonder, for example, if Tyrion’s entire theory of power has come apart in this episode, along with his tenure as hand-of-the-Queen; after all, he’s fucked it up pretty royally, right? As it turns out, while we were watching people in elegant rooms having conversations, History was actually happening elsewhere.”
“Aaron, the last thing I want is for Grey Worm being all “Boy, I tried to loosen up and have some dialogue and a personality, but immediately things went shitbonkers so best go back to the grimacing and worrying!” I guess this is just another illustration that biopolitics is harshest on racialized bodies? Maybe that’s taking it too far, but the narrative really seemed to be out to get them for exhibiting any interest in bodily pleasure, outside propriety or regulation.”
“Aaron: No, I agree. Whenever anyone suggested that Tyrion was wasting his life in the taverns and brothels, we were always meant to side with Tyrion: the audience is supposed to be 100% pro-jouissance with him. His whole thing is drinking and knowing things; the more pleasure he has, the more effective he is, or something.”
“But while Grey Worm and Missandei were charming and delightful in those scenes, there is a definite sense that they’ve let him seduce them into his decadent ways; no rest or pleasure for slaves, or former slaves. The masters are always just around the corner…”
“Actually, that reminds me of something I’ve been thinking of since you mentioned the Foucault: can we also note how many different moments this episode had in which primary characters contemplate an escape from the life they’re currently living? The fantasy not of breaking the wheel, but, you know, getting off of it for a spin or two.”
“It’s worth comparing, maybe, this week’s episode with “Blood of My Blood,” two weeks ago. That episode was also really talky, but nothing seemed to be getting done. When Cersei sends Jaime off to fight at Riverrun, not only did it make no sense, but neither she nor Jaime were displaying Cersei or Jaime-ness in any kind of new or convincing or interesting way. They exchanged lines with each other that they might have said in season one, when each of them was a substantially less interesting person. In this episode, when Jaime talks about Cersei to Edmure, he was more convincingly a complex, changed person.”
“Aaron: He also comes off as capable and devious, and clear about what he wants and how he’ll get it; he legitimately wins the battle in a clever and smart way, and gets what he wants, which is to win and gtfo. But the fact that he does it in such a self-revealing way was very good; he truths Edmure into submission. And aligning Cersei and Catelyn as mothers — which Edmure doesn’t want to hear — also resonates with the way the Very Good Actress plays Cersei on stage but plays Catelyn with Arya. His monologue at Edmure is Jaime at his best: brutal without being cruel, and perhaps a kind of remorselessness that comes without seeming to have much ego? Post-amputation Jaime is very focused on What Matters, and this scene brought a lot of other things in the show into a clarity that they had lacked.”
““In the darkest region of the political field, the condemned man represents the symmetrical, inverted figure of the king,””