Got To Go..

Absolutely Nobody:

Person watching Game of Thrones: Do you watch game of thrones?

Okay so I heard a record-breaking 19.3 million people watched the Game of Thrones finale, marking a series high. All the while surpassing viewership for any HBO finale including Sex and the City.

Despite these ground-breaking figures I haven't quite gotten myself to actually see the 'holiest of the unholy' show. As a non-watcher (or 'Never Throners' as they call us) my angle on the show might seem outrageous to the 'die-hard fans' out there. All through its running, I wasn’t sure what was going on but now am certainly glad of all theconstant dragon slaying chitchat coming to an end and feel other non-watchers would preach the same.

For people like me the prime-fantasy series came off as a cultural tsunami where the past eight years have been nothing less than a trial. The most astounding part about this whole business has been my not moving my stance on whether to watch the show. And the most ardent reason behind this said stance has been the over-emphasis of the phrase ‘you MUST watch GoT’. This constant association of the show as an obnoxious cultural obsession has made me somehow abhor it even more to the extent of getting annoyed at its very intimation. Making the entire thing quite, quite generic where its pervasiveness adds on to the general irritability.

One of the most persistent liberal myths is that art has no moral content, that reading or watching or listening to something can never be in itself evil. This is something that can only be true if, conversely, art does not have the power to affect or change us for the good. It is only possible to believe this if you think all art is essentially meaningless and people are insensate vehicles for random information consumption. You can only watch so many decapitations and eye-gouges and rapes and brother-on-sister grope fests before you either give up on the wretched proceedings in disgust or decide to pretend that "Lol, nothing matters" and it's not worth having feelings anyway. Not exactly, in the latter, case a resounding victory for the human spirit.

Game of Thrones reminds us that boredom and despair are, theologically speaking, synonyms.

Now that its finally over, everyone who watches it can stop telling me to watch Game of Thrones and quit making me feel uneasy for not getting the references. Hallelujah!