The Case for the Ending of Game of Thrones
What becomes of a society with no memory?
Game of Thrones will likely go down in history for being one of the most riveting television series of our lifetime. From conspiracy theories and fan-fueled ideations, viewers feverishly worked to unlock the mysteries of Westeros every week during peak seasons. Years later and the ending of the series is still considered highly controversial.
As a fan of the series, I too was let down by the final season for many reasons, but one particular storyline has always stuck with me: the role and purpose of the Night King. The ultimate goal of his character was to eliminate the 3-Eyed-Raven to ensure the permanent erasure of all past memories. For this show to have 8 seasons of war, death and drama, I remember thinking- that’s it? That’s all he wants? That’s why he’s killing all these people and wreaking havoc on cities? Is this what we’ve been preparing for the entire time? Perhaps because I was used to Marvel’s highly destructive, world-ending, life shattering villain plots that came equipped with evil manifestos and long-winded monologues ( the Night King never spoke), my perspective was a bit skewed at the time.
Today however, I’ve have had a change of heart.
America is the midst of an unprecedented era of unregulated Knowledge Disruption which began well before the 2016 election and has continued to expand at accelerated rates.
Since it was revealed that Russia was meddling in our election process, our online worlds have become filled with bots and misinformation that shape our daily interactions with each other. The proliferation of “Fake News” caused the necessary rise and growth of digital fact checking resources to help consumers determine what is real. The advent and popularity of AI has only complicated these matters as technologically advanced deepfakes continue to contribute to suspicion around what to believe.
If we were to categorize the first phase of this era as seeding distrust and confusion, it may rightfully be assumed that the second phase is erasure. The recent banning of TikTok has exposed conspiracy theories around the government’s desire to control free speech and it’s overall goal to prohibit the stories, narratives and perspectives of specific individuals on topics that don’t serve the needs of the those at the top. The education system as a whole is under attack as legislators work to determine what they believe should be taught, learned or hidden in America’s school systems. This includes higher education which is increasingly being targeted by groups who want academic spaces to be more exclusive and less accessible. Public school systems as well are being picked apart and provided less resources and learning opportunities during an unprecedented national teacher shortage while private schools booms for the rich. Today, there are daily mentions from school administrators about the failing literacy rates of children and young adults and schools’ role in contributing to grade inflation and passing them anyway to avoid feelings of failure. Finally, as much of our entertainment has moved into digital spaces, we must begin to contend with the fact that entire film archives can be removed from public access with the click of a button.
We seem to be experiencing, in real time, the collective dumbing down of America. This process seems determined to keep Americans unaware and complacent with the status quo, while divisions between rich and poor, educated and uneducated grow. To ensure that complacency in the future, any texts, learnings or histories that might push against expectations may find themselves in jeopardy of being methodically erased, controversialized or banned from public consumption. Our cultural memories are therefore at risk of being removed and/or replaced.
This revelation has forced me to consider the very real consequences and outcomes of living in a society where facts, history and memory can be twisted and manipulated to favor different political leanings. In Westeros, the Night King’s touch could eternally damn an entire continent for centuries. In America, systemic Knowledge Disruption may permanently impact how our society functions for years to come.
An American Tradition: Prioritizing Favorable Histories
Forgetting the past seems to be a key attribute of being an American, but there are caveats. The role that money plays in our society almost always means preserving memories deemed appealing to the rich or those who believe themselves to be in power. Histories that create the least amount of discomfort for these groups are prioritized. The result is one where the legacies and progress of marginalized groups of the past are picked apart, forgotten and/or systematically erased or rewritten.
The problem with history, however, is that the power of its stories resides in the hands of those who write them. For a while, marginalized groups in America found themselves the subjects (vs. narrators) of their own stories, often written from an external or observational lens. The narratives written about their mindsets, perspectives and general dispositions were assumed and recorded by the very people who outlawed marginalized groups from reading, writing or speaking their native tongue. Writing from an outside perspective often requires the writer to position his/her way of living as the expected standard. Because of this, anything written about the behaviors or customs of marginalized groups automatically positioned them as “other” or as “outside the norm”. Today, we often believe that we know much about the past, but due to the subjective nature of memory and historical writing, there is still much we will never truly know.
Despite efforts to suppress past histories, we know that for some groups, the efforts were in vain. As we teeter into the brink of our own crisis of intentional misdirection and rewritten legacies, we might consider the lessons we can learn from those who came before us. Undeterred by the suppression tactics of the past, African and Native American descendants managed to keep some of their histories alive during turbulent eras thanks to intricate, complex memory-keeping tactics that involved songs, hair, cultural artifacts, creative storytelling and more. If we did it before, surely we could do it again- no? Maybe.
Today’s social, cultural and political climate has introduced a complex set of factors to consider when constructing & recording societal memory. In the past, for example, alignment on cultural values within your own ethnic group was expected. Thanks to assimilation and a co-created American mainstream, cultural values and perspectives within ethnic groups have become less homogenous in nature. This may mean that agreement on which histories to save, record or prioritize may not be not be reached as easily as it was in the past, which leads us to difficult questions:
When it comes to housing and nurturing the memories of our pasts, which groups will be responsible for curating them and keeping them safe? Whose perspectives will be captured and who will be the writers of those narratives? How much will the memories be true to what happened or diluted in favor of reframing history? If that history is reframed, who will emerge as the victors and who will be framed as the victims or antagonists?
In Game of Thrones, Sam knew that the absence of the Maesters and their archives to hold the histories of the realm would lead to the destruction of mankind. Without them he believed that humans would be likened to “dogs who don’t remember any meal but the last, [and] can’t see forward to any but the next...” . This might be the very cycle we are entering today- one where forgetting parts of past feels more comfortable and preferred than facing it, learning from it and ensuring that we do better.
The Future of Memory
Hollywood often imagines a dystopian society as one that exists within the ruins of what it once was. The fall of civil society is typically illustrated with flattened cities, ghost towns and hollowed buildings that serve as relics of the past. But it is also true that such as state could exist with less tangible markers of destruction. If we were to live in a reality in which memory was enemy number one, what might that look like?
Mistakes of the past repeated — Memory-void Technology that Rules Us
As Humans continue to be the source of technological programming (for now at least) the selective preservation of history may mean that the technologies we design fail to see our pasts in full. When lessons are erased from our consciousness, what’s to prevent those devices from committing the same errors as our ancestors, but at greater scale? Memory serves as a society’s collective consciousness- as a guide towards what not to do based on the our missteps of the past. Without this consciousness to keep us tethered to our moral compass, do we face a reality where we experience the same harmful cycles over and over again?
Sanitized Museums & Archival Documentation
Museums currently serve as the visual documentation of mankind and its progress overtime. Along with the banning of books, we may find ourselves either unable to attend museums in the future, or attending sanitized versions of them- versions that uplift and uphold the preferred histories of those in power.
Nostalgia as an Act of Resistance
Today, nostalgia is all the rave. It is seen as a way to decompress or to enjoy a time when the world was not as confusing as it is today. It is a harmless source of joy and, for GenZ, self-expression. However, given the current state of Knowledge Disruption today, when might the act of tapping into nostalgia cease being a fun thing to do versus an active form of resistance? How far or how close are we to a reality in which recounting the days of our youth can endanger our daily existences?
Memory as a Source of Currency or Escape
As Millennials learned to favor intangible moments over material items, one should not be surprised if, in the future, memory could be traded as a form of currency. Perhaps the further the memory went, and the more accurate it was, the higher in value it would be. In the very distant future, memory could potentially emerge as a new kind of drug that provides a high that allows users to escape into less oppressive, less fearful times.
Managing Memory Today
The scenarios in which memory can be weaponized may seem bleak and unconscionable, but with the unpredictive nature of society and culture today, some of the above situations may be closer than we think.
Despite this, there are active initiatives innovating within the space of memory to ensure all histories are equitably told, collected and preserved. Suppressed Histories for example “aims to educate the public about global women’s history and cultural studies” by “restoring women to cultural memory”. The Arc of Oblivion captures a real-time perspective of the importance of societal memories through the lens of holding on to the things that make us human. In it, we learn about Jamal Williams a neuroscientist who explores the role that music has in memory making.
Perhaps unironically, the emergence of Sonic Branding has become a new marketing category for brands to consider when seeking to connect with consumers and unconsciously aid in brand recall. In a recent event hosted by the Curve Foundation, Lesbian Archivists spoke about their role in preserving queer histories to ensure their experiences are captured and not forgotten in the fabric of societal memory.
“The act of archiving has ‘never been neutral’ because traditional collections were created to ‘justify colonial histories,’ but queer archives can ‘negotiate power’ by preserving alternate ways of existing within the world”- Olivia, Special Collections Coordinator of Lesbian Herstory Archives.
Since the death of George Floyd, Museums have collectively been working to decolonize their exhibits to ensure inclusive narratives and story telling. And finally, Yōko Ogawa’s fictional tale “The Memory Police” examines the memories humans tie to objects in a society that actively works erase them.
A society that has been stripped of its histories and collective memory was something that the Night King and the makers of Game of Thrones carefully considered and knew the impact of years before today. While in Westeros, the act would result in “an endless night”, in America the truth may be one where we exist less autonomously and with less agency to make our own decisions.
