In the beginning, it could have been mistaken for a conventional fairy tale about a virtuous man battling the corruption in his kingdom — until Ned Stark (Sean Bean) lost his head.
.. Characters shifted from victims to protagonists to antiheroes in a way that gave some viewers whiplash, a dynamic that came to a head when Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia Clarke) and her dragon burned a city in the show’s penultimate episode. “Game of Thrones” was a show about trauma and the consequences of treating women as sexual objects — yet the series had a bad tendency to ogle bits and pieces of minor female characters rather than treat them as people.
..Whether you think “Game of Thrones” was a success or a failure largely depends on what you thought the show was trying to do.
.. “Game of Thrones” debuted in 2011, at an inflection point for American television and American politics. Later-stage Golden Age antihero dramas such as “Mad Men” and “Breaking Bad” were heading toward their conclusions and the idea of a Republican “war on women” was taking hold on the left. During the series’ run, Hillary Clinton suffered a shocking loss to Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election; white nationalism surged back into public life; the #MeToo movement exposed the prevalence and impact of sexual violence; climate change took on a new and apocalyptic urgency; and a spike in television production splintered the water-cooler conversation possibly beyond repair.As a result, “Game of Thrones” took on a prismatic quality. Turn it one way and the series was an argument that trauma gave its female characters moral authority; shift it just slightly, and the show suggested that they couldn’t transcend the damage that had been inflicted on them
.. The White Walkers, the show’s uber-supernatural villains, stood in for the perils of climate change — until they were vanquished with a single blow. The slaves Daenerys liberated in the early seasons of the show were props in a white-savior narrative until they were invoked as proof that she would never break bad. The show’s cultural footprint suggested that rolling out a television show week by week was still the best way to create community around art. Or its viewership numbers, modest by historical standards, could be evidence for an argument that our culture has fragmented beyond repair.
.. And our struggles to figure out whether men such as Jaime Lannister (Nikolaj Coster-Waldau) deserve forgiveness for their past bad acts are a lower-stakes version of the questions raised by the early stages of our national reckoning with sexual assault.
.. Another version of “Game of Thrones” might have offered more decisive arguments about the subjects it raised, or avoided ogling and other artistic pitfalls. That show might have become a cult favorite, but without its intellectual ambiguities and spots of bad taste, it never would have become a phenomenon. “Game of Thrones” caught viewers by surprise when it eliminated its supernatural Big Bad so early in its final season and left the characters to work out their messy, entirely human differences. When the credits roll on Sunday, “Game of Thrones” will leave viewers with the same challenge: tackling some of the hardest problems before us without a unifying magical distraction.
The Year of Trump?
As a leader, Trump may or may not be smart, but his temperament ranks low on the scales of emotional and contextual intelligence that made Franklin D. Roosevelt or George H.W. Bush successful presidents. Tony Schwartz, who co-wrote Trump’s book The Art of the Deal, notes that “Trump’s sense of self-worth is forever at risk. When he feels aggrieved, he reacts impulsively and defensively, constructing a self-justifying story that doesn’t depend on facts and always directs the blame to others.” Schwartz attributes this to Trump’s defense against domination by a father who was “relentlessly demanding, difficult, and driven…You either dominated or you submitted. You either created and exploited fear, or you succumbed to it – as he thought his elder brother had.” As a result, he “simply didn’t traffic in emotions or interest in others,” and “facts are whatever Trump deems them to be on any given day.”
Whether Schwartz is correct or not about the causes, Trump’s ego and emotional needs often seem to color his relations with other leaders and his interpretation of world events. The image of toughness is more important than truth. Journalist Bob Woodward reports that Trump told a friend who acknowledged bad behavior toward women that “real power is fear…You’ve got to deny, deny, deny and push back on these women. If you admit to anything and any culpability, then you’re dead.”Trump’s temperament limits his contextual intelligence. He lacked experience, and has done little to fill the gaps in his knowledge. He is described by close observers as reading little, insisting that briefing memos be very short, and relying heavily on television news. He is reported to have paid scant attention to staff preparations before summits with experienced autocrats like Russian President Vladimir Putin or North Korea’s Kim Jong-un. If Trump’s iconoclastic style was merely a breach of traditional presidential etiquette, one might argue that his critics were being too fastidious, or were trapped in old-fashioned views of diplomacy.But crudeness can have consequences. While pressing for change, he has disrupted institutions and alliances, only grudgingly admitting their importance. Trump’s rhetoric has downplayed democracy and human rights, as his weak reaction to the murder of Saudi dissident journalist Jamal Khashoggi demonstrated. Although Trump has echoed President Ronald Reagan’s rhetoric about the US being a city on the hill whose beacon shines to others, his domestic behavior toward the press, the judiciary, and minorities has weakened the clarity of America’s democratic appeal. International polls show a decline in America’s soft power since he took office.While critics and defenders debate the attractiveness of the values embodied by Trump’s “America First” approach, an impartial analyst cannot excuse the ways in which his personal emotional needs have skewed the implementation of his goals – for example in his summit meetings with Putin and Kim. As for prudence, Trump’s non-interventionism protected him from some sins of commission, but one can question whether his mental maps and contextual intelligence are adequate to understand the risks posed to the US by the diffusion of power in this century. As tensions grow, reckoning with Trump may well become unavoidable in 2019.
Trump Trackdown ‘The End of the World’
1958 TV Show Had Conman ‘Trump’ Selling Mystical ‘Wall’ To Hysterical Townspeople
‘Individual 1’: Trump emerges as a central subject of Mueller probe
“There would have been nothing wrong if I did do it,” Trump said. “When I’m running for president, that doesn’t mean I’m not allowed to do business.”
Trump often grows aggrieved seeing Cohen on TV, aides say. Among White House advisers, Cohen is seen as an existential threat — as much or more so than the Mueller investigation itself because of his longtime role as Trump’s fixer. Trump’s legal team did not learn until Thursday that Cohen had sat for dozens of hours of interviews with Mueller’s office, according to a senior administration official.
.. Trump was infuriated earlier this year when Cohen released tapes of him, and asked his lawyers and advisers if anything could be done to stop him from releasing any more.
.. According to a person familiar with the investigation, Cohen and the Trump Organization could not produce some of the key records upon which Mueller relies. Other witnesses provided copies of those communications.
.. Many in the White House try to avoid talking with the president about the Mueller probe, for fear they will be subpoenaed. And both of the aides said it was unclear why Trump was complaining more about the investigation recently. During the midterm campaign, the president occasionally told advisers that people had forgotten about the Mueller probe and remarked positively that it was no longer dominating TV headlines.