It’s driving me nuts. Since at least the start of season two of House of the Dragon I’ve noticed something no one else has. Weirder still, it’s something the journos and online opinion-makers never shy from. In fact it’s the first thing they typically leap on whenever a show or any cultural object emerges.
Namely, that the Greens and the Black, the two warring factions in HotD, are coded culturally right and culturally left. By which I mean show runner Ryan Condell has infused George RR martin’s story with current western politics and the angry, widening chasm that defines it.
I haven’t seen a think piece, indeed, I haven’t seen a single tweet, though admittedly I speak only from my day-to-day experience (Feel from to send me a link if I’m wrong). The absence of discussion astounds me. I swear I’m in an episode of The Twilight Zone.
I mean, it’s luminous in the case of the Greens. The Greens are absurdly traditional, vehemently religious, homophobic and ignorant to their hypocrisies. That’s conservatism or, if I being even-handed, an archetype/stereotype of conservatism. I could reach further (and, yes, I may well be reaching here) and say that Otto Hightower is old-school, corporate-loving Republicanism, his daughter Alicent is housewife-politician Republican and her two sons Aegon and Aemond are of the young groyper/Alt-Right mode.
The Blacks are a little harder to track at first, at least for me, being I’m loosely leftie progressive (I never try to define myself too rigidly. It’s a bad path for a novelist; you run the risk of mental calcification). But the Black’s disregard for tradition, disregard for the moral codes of God and man and their strange attitudes toward sex and relationships is pretty much the image of the cultural left as seen through the lens of the right. To the conservative mind, we’re riding on woke dragons of cultural and media power, intent on burning up everything they hold dear.
And that, I think, is why people are missing this facet of HotD: we can’t easily perceive ourselves in a warped mirror. When I bring up this culture dragon-war notion with my friends who have seen it they’ll agree about the Greens but not the Blacks. No surprise there: my friends are all liberals. I’ve no doubt it would be the other way around if me and my pals were conservatives.
Which begs the question–if I’m remotely correct about this–has House of the Dragon tried and failed to make a comment on the culture war? I mean, if that was the maker’s intent then no one has noticed.
To that I say Ryan Condell might be a bona fide genius. By infusing the show with modern politics he’s somehow managed to get under everyone’s radar yet, perhaps, has used the energy of the times to infect our subconscious wants. All my leftie pals, if pushed to take a side, reluctantly choose the Blacks, as do I. I’d wager if you asked many viewers the same question Green and Black loyalty would correlate to political outlook. It’s there. It drives our favouritism. And we don’t even know it.
Honestly, greater minds than mind need to grapple with this facet of the show. This shoddy, barely-researched blog post ain’t nearly enough.
