Why I Love the Red Wedding

So in case you don't read A Song of Ice and Fire, don't watch the television adaptation called Game of Thrones, don't know anyone who reads or watches either, and you are cut off from all the media that have been poring over them periodically, there's an author named George R.R. Martin who is famous for killing his heroes. His story covers a vast political landscape and brings in a large population of highly detailed characters, allowing him to easily kill three quarters of his characters and still keep the periodic slaughter going on for several more books. His power to fill his readers with rage and sorrow is only matched by his power to instill in them a deep hunger for more of his writing. This is possible for two reasons: firstly that he is a very skilled writer (obviously), and secondly because he defies the literary and cinematic law which I will call the Redshirt Phenomenon.

We all know what a redshirt is. In Star Trek, any time a group of officers go down to an unknown planet or encounter any kind of danger at all, if one of them has a red shirt on and is not a main character, then we know that he is going to die. It's something that lets us know that the threat is serious and we should be worried about the major characters because they might die too. The problem is that they don't. Major characters don't just die in Star Trek, and if they do (as Spock once did in an older movie and as Kirk did in the most recent movie) then they're going to be brought back to life one way or another. It's not exactly a big surprise.

The thing is, the Redshirt Phenomenon exists in nearly every series on paper and television. In monster shows and crime dramas if we see see an unknown character at the beginning of an episode then we know that character will either (and there are signs to tell which one) be killed or witness the killing of another character. In Doctor Who, we know that incarnations of the Doctor and his companions are introduced and eliminated according to a cycle and we can often know whether or not a major character is going to die simply by following news about the actors. When it comes to superheroes, we all know that really central heroes and villains "die"frequently, but almost never stay dead. The fact of this era of easily produced and easily accessible fiction is that the deaths of its characters are highly predictable.

The problem is that buried in the Redshirt Phenomenon are our two conflict desires; one is our desire that the heroes we love do not die, and the other is our desire that they experience real danger or, to put it another way, that they might die. Every story that has ever been told can be fitted into one of a small handful of paradigms complete with character types, types of conflict, and plot outlines; the reason that we still care about so many different versions of the same paradigm is that the good stories have realism. Even stories that have none of what we typically mean by realism today (sex, swearing, gore, etc...) are often still highly realistic in that they have the full vividness of life; they have characters that are unique yet ordinary individuals, they have things that are loved, they have things that are hoped for, they have things that are feared, they have a world of people and things that have names and distinctions. The characters matter, the setting matters, the conflict matters. That's why the redshirt dies, because he was part of the Enterprise crew and that crew matters, and because that crew member is dead the thing that killed him matters. The redshirt's death tells us that the characters whose names and traits we know (the characters who are most realistic) are in danger, and that means the conflict matters.

Yet at the same time, the characters that die (and remain dead) are typically not realistic characters, but are instead props that are there for the realistic characters to express emotions about and direct their efforts and skills towards. In crime shows and monster shows the villain will often have a number of victims throughout the story, but only the last victim will actually be saved; the other ones simply supply clues and emotional stimuli for the realistic, round characters while our emotional investment goes to the final intended victim (usually a child or a damsel in distress). Even when an important character dies, they are still a peripheral character (a mentor, a family member, a lover, etc.) rather than a main character. The really rounded characters do things, we see them assuming different roles, they experience growth, and they play an active, dynamic role in the plot. But if we see the mentor take initiative or assume a different role, it's a rare experience that we take great note of because of that rarity. Even the doomed characters that have almost no attachment to the round characters are still frequently defined by their attachment to something else that the audience is likely to care about (an upcoming wedding, a newborn child, or something else like a child's graduation that is an extension or remolding of those two things (seriously, I don't think there's anything else)) rather than by the kinds of traits that make us attached to the major characters.

The thing that makes George R.R. Martin so powerful is that he kills realistic characters. He has his share of dying peripheral characters, but the books are about one giant war so it would be strange if those characters didn't die off frequently. He is quoted as saying that he wants his audience to "be afraid when my characters are in danger. I want them to be afraid to be afraid to turn the next page because the character may not survive it."And he's succeeded! Martin has succeeded in bringing his story to life because he has given it the realism that is missing from so much modern fiction. To read his books is to be afraid and grieved and in consequence it is also to be joyful. In other words, his books are full of the terrible and wonderful vibrancy of life.

Now, if you have been reading this and the entire time have asked why anyone should care (first off, shame on you, and secondly, why did you keep reading?) then I have one final answer for you and one final note for everyone else. This is not simply a matter of enjoying a story, as important and noble that uniquely human experience is, it is also about our ability to understand and appreciate the world around us. One reason J.K. Rowling killed so many beloved characters is because she was shocked at how casually we often handle death whether in books or video games or in the news. Death is so ever-present that we typically don't give it more than a minute of thought if it happens to anyone we don't know, and what Rowling wanted was to force us to really experience grief. She wanted us to care about her fictional war and not to feel like everything was fine because our heroes had made it through just fine. It would be absolutely debilitating to really feel every death we hear about, but it is a fact that if you are an American citizen you are part of the most powerful and far-reaching nation in history as of yet, and if you are to be an active member of that nation then you must be able to appreciate the consequences of our actions around the world. We must not be like the children of Brave New World who are brought to play among the dying and to learn apathy toward the deaths of others. On some level, when we hear about the massacres in far-off places we must understand that the people who are dying are people who have loves and quirks and dreams and the full vividness of life, people who could have been our neighbor or our friend or our lover if they had been born here instead of there. We must appreciate and understand this, or else we are doomed.

The Theorist and the Lord

The theorist sat in his study
And spewed his monomania over human history
He fell upon kings and conquerors
Striking each down with the stroke of a pen
His paradigm went forth with a roar
Swallowing nation after nation
He flattened all the mountains
He turned each morning grey
He rode his formula out into ages past
And before him all were subdued
Until he approached that dreadful Enigma
The Jew who had crushed Bacchus and Jupiter

The paradigm went to consume him
But the One whom death could not contain
Would not be held by so small a thing
He tried run Him down with the formula
But the Nazarene was too full of life

The theorist came at his Foe from every angle
He made revisions, accounted for variables, made adjustments
But this Wandering Preacher would not be simplified
Alexander had yielded

Charlemagne had yielded 

Washington had yielded
But this Man would not yield

It drove the theorist mad
He tossed and he turned
He did his research
He asked for advice
He did all he could think of
He questioned the historical records
And still the Enigma would not yield
At last it struck him
That perhaps the lofty, impersonal deity
Which he had once written on
Was not so impersonal after all
And he was afraid
And it occurred to him
That maybe he was not the one on the offensive

So he fled
And he built walls
And he prepared his traps
And in a month's time
The Lord had conquered the theorist