As the final season of the hugely popular Game of Thrones series hits the screens, Alistair MacDonald considers the soft power impact of invented lands on the real world.
Fantasy worlds
The excitement at the return of Game of Thrones for its final season is as good an excuse as any to reflect on the enduring appeal of fantasy worlds like Westeros. People have long been drawn to the fantastical for entertainment; Macbeth’s witches and Beowulf’s battle with Grendel’s Mother are simply milestones on a road that stretches back to Homer, the Epic of Gilgamesh, and on to the dawn of civilisation itself. Throughout history, tales of heroics and magic have been used to amuse, to inspire, and to teach. Interestingly, while globalisation is in many ways making the world look more and more homogenous everywhere you go (same brands, same shops, same skyscrapers), we seem to be ever more interested in the exaggerated sense of place, culture, and the past that fantasy provides.
In painting a vista filled with the mythical and terrible, the artist draws on the familiar to make their tales human and relatable. They reflect the cultures from which they arise and tell us much about the human condition – and the foibles and preoccupations of both creator and audience. And while they may casually discard the fundamental laws of physics, there is almost always a sense of place.
These weird and wonderful fantasy realms have a tangible reality. They come from somewhere - and inform and shape our perceptions about that place of origin. They are also of their time: Tolkien insisted the One Ring was not an allegory for the atomic bomb, but his depictions of the Dead Marshes and Pelennor Fields certainly owed much to the author’s experiences of the trenches in World War I, something Dome Karukoski’s forthcoming movie of the author’s life will explore. Harry Potter’s world, on the other hand, updates the struggle against evil to a setting which, whilst in many ways influenced by Tolkien, is also shot through with the more contemporary concerns of a multicultural but still class-bound society.
Finally, George R R Martin’s Game of Thrones presents a Hobbesian multi-polar world, where good and evil battle within complex and morally ambiguous factions and individuals, against a backdrop of impending potential climatic disaster. Again, as such its creation and popularity speak to the modern age. And, whilst Westeros may be a less obviously attractive projection of a fantasy Britain, the self-questioning reflection of the society that has produced Game of Thrones, and the clear identification of so many around the world with its rich cast of complex characters, is itself arguably a positive influence in the minds of millions of fans around the world.
The relationship with the real world is why fantasy is important to the conversation about soft power. Culture is integral to perceptions of countries – and, as the over £200 million that has been brought to Northern Ireland by Game of Thrones demonstrates, it has a substantial real world impact too.
The relationship with the real world is why fantasy is important to the conversation about soft power. Culture is integral to perceptions of countries – and, as the over £200 million that has been brought to Northern Ireland by Game of Thrones demonstrates, it has a substantial real world impact too.
These magical worlds are a looking glass for exploring real world themes of love, war, faith, and power, for reflecting on lived human experience, and for the exploration of our hopes and fears, our morals and values. As such they are a window into the soul, and tell us much about the peoples of this earth, and about ourselves as individuals.
A looking glass for themes of love, war, faith, and power
Harry Potter is obviously British, whether it’s Platform 9¾ in King’s Cross or the majestic sweep of the Glenfinnan Viaduct, the railway line to Hogsmeade most definitely cuts through a version of England and on to the wilds of Scotland. J K Rowling’s creation has spawned a thriving tourist business with people from around the world flocking to visit Edinburgh, Alnwick Castle - and of course that railway platform in N1C. The Potter effect, augmented by the Outlander phenomenon, has seen tourist visits to the Glenfinnan Monument rise 57.8%, with very significant benefits to the local economy. A recent study of US social media trends found that Hogwarts is the best known UK academic institution, ahead of Oxford and Cambridge. Just as J K Rowling has done today, in the nineteenth century Sir Walter Scott did wonders for Scottish tourism - his misty, romantic visions drew visitors from around the world. There has always been something fey and enticing about the glens and moors of the Highlands - the Loch Ness Monster is just another twist on that uniquely Scottish tradition.
Where the Potterverse is set in an alternate Earth, Middle Earth is a more distant relative to the world we know. And yet it is quintessentially English, even if after a marathon six movies it is New Zealand that people picture (and increasingly visit) when they imagine the lush green meadows of Rohan - rather than the Malvern Hills that Tolkien himself told friends were his inspiration. The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings are the most prominent, but far from unique, examples of a distinctly English sensibility, one perhaps shared by those of a certain class and education, but with global appeal.
That sensibility is related to yet subtly different from that of Scots writers, a distinction born not only of background, but which can be traced back through the centuries all the way to the Dark Ages and the migrations and mingling of the differing cultural traditions of the Angles, Saxons, Romans, Gaels, Picts, Vikings, and the many others that have shaped the cultural history of the British Isles. Both Tolkien and Rowling share the rich folk traditions of the UK, which they have mined for their boggarts and seelies and other ‘fey’. Without Merlin there wouldn’t be Gandalf or Dumbledore. Tolkien also mined languages, from Anglo-Saxon to Old Norse and Finnish, to create the invented but complete tongues of his richly-imagined world.
World of Warcraft’s Azeroth, with its orcs and elves, owes much to Tolkien’s vision, but even if its dwarves speak with a Scots accent the whole sensibility is absolutely American. It’s not just the obvious borrowing of the culture of the peoples of the Pacific Northwest in the aesthetics of the Tauren capital city either. Hints of everything from the Wild West to Las Vegas to the Indiana Jones movies can be found throughout Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. Even the ‘oriental’ Mists of Pandaria owed as much to Disney and Dreamworks as it did to the many diverse cultures of East Asia.
Cultures of course mix together; there is constant cross-pollination and appropriation. Mario is a Japanese icon that happens to be an Italian-American, or at least what his creators at Nintendo imagined a plumber from New York to be like. The princesses of the Mushroom Kingdom are a riff on Disney’s classic princesses, who in turn draw upon the stories of the Brothers Grimm, and look further back in time to the damsels of Arthurian romance.
Nintendo, Sony, Studio Ghibli and the whole weird, wonderful world of anime are all major contributors to the globally held view of Japan as a super cool, ultra-modern, and perhaps just slightly bonkers place. The fantasy and sci-fi worlds of film and graphic novels shape the perceptions of people who see Japan as a country at the cutting edge, as looking to the future and more - being a part of that future. That’s of course a generalisation - it’s not all Cyber City OEDO 808. Studio Ghibli, for example, have produced works that address historic tragedy - the Graveyard of the Fireflies is one of the most moving stories depicting the horrors of war to ever be committed to film. The Studio’s fantasies are populated by a phantasmagorical cast of dragons and spirits that draw heavily on both folk traditions and eighteenth and nineteenth century imagery. A very Japanese nostalgia and respect for the culture of the past is always there, even in futuristic fantasy like Akira, with its iconic hi-tech motorbikes and freakish psionic fiends. All this wealth of invention is a huge money-spinner for the Japanese economy and, more subtly but no less importantly, has helped to create a unique and positive perception of post-War Japan around the world.
If Japan has the pull of cool, that infamous British sense of humour and eccentric invention continues to draw people to look positively towards the UK
Like Japan, fantasy has long proved to be a massive soft power draw for the UK. However, the country does sometimes suffer in the perceptions of the other peoples of the world in being seen as too traditional and backward-looking. Certainly the most popular British fantasies are steeped in a nostalgia that is at once comforting and suggestive of a fear of the modern, contributing to such perceptions. But like Japan, the UK has its share of the strange and new – China Miéville has made it his mission to move fantasy away from the influence of Tolkien to find a new modern sensibility, ushering in what some commentators refer to as the ‘New Weird’. Though it is Terry Pratchett’s hilarious, Pythonesque Discworld series that is the true antidote to the po-faced seriousness of the reactionary Tolkien. Ironically, Rincewind is every bit the quintessential British hero as any member of the Fellowship of the Ring. If Japan has the pull of cool, that infamous British sense of humour and eccentric invention continues to draw people to look positively towards the UK.
For all their cultural proximity, it’s doubtful the British could ever produce a Star Trek or the Americans a Doctor Who. The eccentricity of Doctor Who is peculiarly British, while that optimistic vision of all the peoples of the Earth coming together and embracing the alien peoples of other planets to build the Federation is undeniably American. So what of Westeros? Pretty much everyone on Game of Thrones speaks with a British accent – as embodied by actors of the calibre of Lena Headey and Diana Rigg, it’s all but impossible to imagine Cersei Lannister or Olenna Tyrell as anything other than British icons. Of course they’re not - or at least they weren’t, originally.
Time magazine has called author George R R Martin the American Tolkien. The world of his A Song of Ice and Fire owes a debt to the world-building, intrigues and narrative sweep of The Silmarillion - and at a least a nod to the endless winter of C S Lewis’s The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe. The influence of the historic Wars of the Roses is also starkly evident: British history and culture have informed and enriched Martin’s oeuvre. And, like the Glenfinnan viaduct, the locations used for the filming of Game of Thrones, like Doune Castle in Stirlingshire and Dark Hedges in County Antrim, have become popular tourist destinations in the UK thanks to the series. Of course, Doune been seen on screens before in films like Ivanhoe and Monty Python and the Holy Grail.
Knowledge of similar places to Doune likely informed Martin’s original descriptions of Winterfell and the Road from King’s Landing. Yet while the British influences are there for all to see, Westeros nevertheless has its roots in the diverse American literary tradition that has given us Ursula le Guin, Ray Bradbury, and Edgar Allan Poe.
Culture is an essential contributor to perceptions of a country. It is a key driver of national attractiveness. Even when that culture is expressed through the Targaryen’s dragons or Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, it has a real world impact
Culture is an essential contributor to perceptions of a country. It is a key driver of national attractiveness. Even when that culture is expressed through the Targaryen’s dragons or Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Beans, it has a real world impact. Sometimes in multiple places, as with Middle Earth’s British and more recent Kiwi connections. Cultures cross-pollinate, they are mined for inspiration and interpreted in different ways by different writers and audiences. Fantasy is a medium for exploring familiar themes and preoccupations. In literary worlds populated by relentless White Walkers and libidinous barbarian kings, there is all of human experience, all the peculiarities of the diverse peoples of this Earth, presented through enjoyable narratives and metaphors. And, no matter how wild and exotic these alternate realities may appear, they all come from somewhere - whether it’s Japanese futurism or British nostalgia - and help define that somewhere in the eyes of others.