crocordile:

But it doesn’t change the fact that the reader identifies as Dany when they both are confronted with a foreign culture. Dany is civilization. It doesn’t matter how many times, in-text, she is called a barbarian. She is the conscience of a Westerosi society that, in-narrative, doesn’t break any modern taboos such as our western modern culture has, while Essosi culture has slavery, blood magic, boys being castrated, blood sports, a whole city founded on prostitution, etc. These things might happen in Westeros, but they are always seen as abominations or, well, taboos. It isn’t a mater of technology or beauty, but of cultural values. Westeros shares many of our cultural values, Essos doesn’t. The reader is meant to feel as bewildered as Dany feels. She is the voice of western morality despairing in sucessive barbaric societies, as it feels compelled to help it, but fails to do so. From a meta point of view, its structure and themes aren’t very different from Heart of Darkness or any other classic White Savior production from 200 years ago. Of course, as I had pointed out in the tags of my original post, using terms such as “white” and “brown” and “black” is reductionist, I really should be using civilizatoryesque terms, but for the sake of being more relevant to a discussion that seems to be always heating and cooling from time to time, I decided not to. I regret not being more clear on this on my original post.

It is like, I don’t know, Lawrence of Arabia (that one with Peter O’Toole). It might really be a fantastic work of acting and writing and directing, it might be a work with high technical values and cohesive plot and writing (which I don’t think Dany’s chapters always are btw), but from a meta analysis, it still falls within civilizatory-esque tropes that are ultimately harmful. The in-narrative explanations for why everything is happening as it is are irrevelant when classifying it as a White Trope narrative.

Ok, I see more what you’re getting at. However, I think this is still over-extended: I don’t think it’s the case that “Westerosi society that, in-narrative, doesn’t break any modern taboos such as our western modern culture has.” Marital rape? Monarchy and aristocracy and formalized and comprehensive legal inequality between classes? A warrior society? Trial by combat? Punishment via mutilation or beheading? The Old Way of the Iron Islands? The religious fundamentalism of the High Sparrow? 

Likewise, Essos – as long as we’re including the Free Cities – has many of our cultural values. Like republicanism, freedom of speech, religious toleration, racial diversity (at least in the case of Braavos), cosmopolitanism, bourgeois social values, and social mobility. If anything, we’re a lot closer to the Free Cities than we are to Westeros. 

So I’m not at all sure that Dany is “the voice of western morality.” If nothing else, the prevalence of modern Westerners in the fandom who decry her militarism and messianic identity, her absolute conviction in her right of blood to rule, her belief in an eye-for-an-eye summary punishment, etc etc. is evidence that that’s not the case. 

So at the end of the day, I think this particular line of metananalysis falls down, especially since it runs so counter to the actual text – is the trope on the page or in our heads?