Now, as for the disconnect between page and screen...I have so many unorganized and unresearched thoughts on the matter that I have to apologize if this post comes off as a bit ranty. I suppose that's what the internet is for, right?
Honestly, I'm developing a strangely obsessive sociological interest in Game of Thrones audiences, of both book and screen.
(As a quick background I've read books 1, 2 & 3 and an caught up with the show).
It's not like GOT is the first story to be delivered in multiple medias to it's mass audience. I think of recent examples like webisode, videogame or graphic novel tie-ins, with popular properties like
The Office, The Walking Dead, HALO, Animatrix, etc. where the
story is delivered in as many as three or four medias at the same time. While I have no doubt that this approach is largely or entirely fiscally motivated, it offers its mass audience access on certain occasions to different parts of the story, more plotlines, characters, whathaveyou. The result is pretty simple: everyone's experience is mostly the same with small and largely inconsequential exceptions.
Then there are stories that are altered or revised over time, like
The Lord of the Rings. . The delivery of the story altered over time, as medias developed, allowing the story to revise itself in pace with the mass audience it was intended for. When Peter Jackson's films came out, there was 1.) A familiar audience
readers, & 2.) An unfamiliar audience. This led to an ongoing dialogue about the story itself in which the indispensable story elements are slowly revealed by comparing medias.
Now, for the most recent GOT episode I found myself in a room of ten people, three of whom have read books 1-3, three of whom have read 1-5, and four of whom are HBO-exclusives. Imagine the conversation following the Purple Wedding scene: some of us knew exactly what happened, some know some of what happened, and some of us knew nothing. (Needless to say some folks had to leave before revealing any spoilers)
Personally, as a books 1-3 kind of man, I was able to say with certainty what had transpired though I could not share it with the HBO-exclusives in fear of spoiling it. So I sat and listened to their theories, ideas, and fantasies, only interjecting every now and then with a 'That's interesting'.
Later that night I found myself thinking about the story. The real, culturally-owned
story of Game Of Thrones, the same way
Star Wars or
Alice in Wonderland have become culturally-owned. There's nothing strange about a group of people sitting in a bar discussing the philosophy of Return of the Jedi; it has been around long enough that its mass audience is society itself
(a stretch perhaps).
GOT, on the otherhand, is a story being delivered in two basic formats at the same time. This may not seem strange at all, but it is when you consider that both formats, each of which has an established relationship with a real-time audience, is still in the process of being written and revised, and therefore has created different subsets of the same mass audience, each of which might have different ideas of what the story means and what the story is and even where the story is going.
I suppose the best example is also from the most recent GOT episode. When the show cut to Joffrey's wedding scene, I immediately thought, 'Oh, this is the wedding scene. I know how this is going to play out.' But having already experienced the disconnect between page and screen I came to the realization that I
have no real idea how this is going to play out. It's a different media, a different incarnation of the same story and there's no reason it couldn't play out differently.
I don't know. If you've made it this far in the post (kudos) you're probably wondering where I'm going with all this. Nowhere, most likely...I haven't come up with a thesis yet and probably won't get there. I just think it's interesting, the idea of two storytellers on opposite sides of the village sharing different elements of the same story. Or is it still just one bonfire, different voices?
Anyways. Winterfell High School Football Rules.