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samwpmarleau · 7 years

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You have probably already answered this, but I was just curious as to why you are against Ned/Ashara.

My foremost issue with it is that it simply does not make sense.

We know that Ned had a crush on Ashara, at least to some extent, but we are given no legitimate indication that it went beyond that, nor that Ashara ever reciprocated. We have a total of two interactions in the entire series between the two of them that are documented: their one dance at Harrenhal — which Brandon orchestrated — and after the Tower of Joy fight when Ned returned Dawn. That’s it.

If you want the long explanation, however, I’m happy to oblige.

Ned never thinks about Ashara, not once. If she were the great love of his life, the woman he’d fathered a bastard on, the woman he held a torch for, then why on earth does he not allude to so much as her name, even within his own thoughts? Catelyn thinks about Brandon several times, yet not a peep from Ned about Ashara.

He couldn’t even muster up the courage to ask her (or any other girl, so far as we know) for a single dance. Yet we’re supposed to believe that he then somehow got up the courage to sleep with her?

Ned appears to have had an honorable reputation even when he was young (Jaime’s “the noble Lord of Winterfell” as well as that he built a grave marker for Arthur and didn’t take Dawn for a trophy). Having a one-week stand and producing illegitimate children would be out of character.

He was only 18 at the time and very likely had never even kissed a girl before, let alone slept with one. Not that he couldn’t have lost his virginity there, I suppose, but it would seem a rather strange location and time to do so. Especially since having a fling with the most prominent lady-in-waiting to the future queen isn’t exactly the most honorable thing to do.

He shared a tent with Howland Reed for the duration of the tourney who, being the astute observer that we see he is, would have noted his bunkmate sneaking off to go have sex with Ashara.

Ned wasn’t the only person Ashara danced with. She also danced with Oberyn, one of the Kingsguard (likely her brother or Barristan), and Jon Connington. Where are all the rumors of her having a romance with any of them?

Apart from her beauty, Ashara is described as having “laughing” purple eyes, which implies a lighthearted, spirited personality, whereas Ned is, well, not. Particularly given the short time frame, I don’t think that personality clash would lend itself to a romance.

Brandon, meanwhile, has a reputation for sleeping with highborn women, had already fathered bastards elsewhere, was exceedingly handsome and charismatic, and had previously spoken with Ashara as well. To sleep with Ashara sounds exactly like the kind of thing Brandon would do.

Barristan is nothing but friendly to Ned when they’re in King’s Landing together and he defends him to Dany, yet in ADWD, he refers to the person who “dishonored” Ashara merely as “Stark.” He’s so pissed off about it 20 years later that he can’t even think the man’s name. That seems a rather odd tic if indeed Ned was the one who he’s referring to, especially since he was in love with Ashara.

None of the sources we hear their supposed romance from are reliable. We have Edric Dayne, who was not even alive at the time, who heard it from his aunt Allyria, who may also not have been alive at the time. Two more things about this:

The Daynes are already involved in what happened at the Tower of Joy, what with their wet nurse having been not only Edric’s but Jon’s and whose name Ned tells Robert is Jon’s mother, there’s the possibility that it was Ashara who told Ned where to find Lyanna, Starfall is quite close to the TOJ, and so on. This would be a benign coverup by comparison.

It’s completely understandable that Allyria (or whoever told her the story, if anyone did) would want to craft this poetic narrative of the honorable Ned Stark and her sister having a fairytale romance instead of it being a hookup with Brandon, who was a bit of a cad and betrothed to someone else.

Then we have Harwin, who was all of nine years old when he heard the story, was not at Harrenhal, and who himself says he doubts it was true.

This series thrives on things not being what they seem, on requiring us to read between the lines, to not take things at face value. Yet we’re supposed to take Ned/Ashara at face value?

Ned fathering a bastard completely obliterates his — and Jon’s — narrative. The entire point is that Ned did not have a black mark on his honor like everyone in-universe thinks; instead, he compromised his reputation in order to do the most honorable thing there is. He promised his dying sister to protect her son, never mind who the father was, never mind that Ned’s best friend hated Targaryens so much that “it was a madness in him,” never mind that the very sight of Jon hurt Catelyn day after day. To say Ned did indeed father a bastard is … peculiar.

Even if he had done so, why would he not provide for it? You’re telling me he slept with Ashara, got her with child, and then just ignored the both of them? Didn’t bother contacting her, didn’t bother asking after the child, never even thought about the stillborn baby girl he sired? Ned Stark never once thinks about his dead illegitimate child?

The ability of Ned and Ashara to have carried out a romance is unlikely. This isn’t 2017 where Skype and texting is a thing. As soon as the tourney concluded, Ashara went back to Dragonstone and Ned back to the Vale, and then within a few months, Lyanna disappeared, the realm was thrown into civil war, and Ashara was dismissed from court back to Starfall. Yet somehow that all lends itself to maintaining a correspondence, let alone a love affair?

One of the stories about her says she threw herself from the tower because she was heartbroken over Ned, which is incredibly patronizing. Her child had been stillborn, her princess was raped and murdered, the children she’d seen born were slaughtered, her entire life had been upended, her brother was slain protecting Lyanna Stark and all Ashara got in return was his sword, 10,000 of her countrymen — which would have included men she knew — were extorted into fighting and a large amount of them died, Prince Lewyn was killed, she would have suffered survivor’s guilt, need I go on? That the cause of her suicide would be Ned marrying Catelyn out of duty is downright insulting.

To me, it seems like people also really want Ned to have had a prior relationship instead of just Catelyn having one (for as much as a betrothal can count as a relationship, at any rate), as well as the cliché of the shy guy getting the hot girl.

Meanwhile, the only “evidence” for Ned/Ashara is hearsay from people who weren’t there. Not exactly a compelling case. I’m not going to bash people who do ship them, but you also won’t find me ever shipping them myself.

#ned stark #ashara dayne #asoiaf #anonymous

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donheisenberg · 7 years

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Mad Men: 10 Years on, 10 Scenes; A Self-Made Man is Born

As to commemorate Mad Men’s ten year anniversary I will be doing 10 pieces, each breaking down a scene from the show. As always spoilers ahead.

“Who cares Mr Campbell” says Bert Cooper on hearing Pete’s revelation that Don is not the man he says he is. A man is whatever room he is in and Donald Draper is in this room, explains Bert to a embarrassed and bewildered Pete. And its not just Mr Campbell who paints a perplexed look, in fact its the whole audience. Its a moment of such subtle subversion, television conditions us to expect climax, to expect that when a character has a big secret, it will come out and when it comes out there will be fireworks but in real life that not how it works. The secret is always bigger to us than it is to anyone else and practicality dictates that sometimes we can’t have said climax. For many it is the moment that they realized what Mad Men would be and for good reason its a great scene and a great moment, but it is another scene that I want to focus this piece on.

After we see Pete and then Don march out of Bert’s office, we proceed to the flashbacks of Don in Korea and after twelve hours of storytelling get the full truth on the origins of Don’s identity.

The episodes title Nixon vs Kennedy taken at face value is in reference to the election happening throughout the episode, but also obviously hints at the struggle between Pete and Don, between the younger generation and the older, between the someone whose has inherited his name and success and the self-made man.

Don berates Pete before going into Bert’s office for his “deep lack of character” and for his hereditary sense of entitlement. Don sees himself as a person who has earned all that he has and Pete as the antithesis of that and in that moment there is a perceived heroism and nobility around Don, taking on the privileged, petulant and childish blackmailer head on, even if it means being sacked or worse.

Yet on Mad Men things and people are never that black and white. In that moment the man in the room may be Don Draper hero, but the story of how Don got there is one full of deceit and cowardice. Earlier in the season Bert also observed how Don is driven by his ultimate and over-whelming self-interest and true extent of this is only revealed here.

On a narrative level the mystery of Don’s past was only ever really a secondary or tertiary element of the show, Mad Men is not a puzzle box show a la Lost and we could probably have pieced most of it together anyway but on character level the following few minutes chart the birth of Donald Draper, the ad man, the womanizer, the cad, the man who commands every room that he is in.

Hamm plays Dick Whitman in such a way as you could never mistake him for Draper. He is far less confident, really just a shadow of the man he would become, the man he would carve out of the ground. Trying to pass Hamm off as an 17/18 year old Dick does look slightly ridiculous but as I say Hamm inhabits young Dick well enough that it does not ruin the scene. Dick and the real Don are under fire when one of there gas tanks gets hit, but they don’t notice and Dick proceeds to accidentally drop his lighter and cause the explosion that kills the real Donald Draper.

The camera then begins the cut from Dick, now Don, waking up in a hospital bed to be discharged and Dick emerging from the rubble to switch dog tags with Don. This isn’t, in advertising parlance, Dick’s strategy, this is his instinct. The show managed the incredible balancing act of creating and maintaining TV most enigmatic protagonist, while also giving us hints of his essence. At his core Don/Dick is a deserter, in an earlier scene while Don panics about the potential repercussions of Pete’s discovery, he asks Rachel to leave with him only for her to outline how he doesn’t want to runaway with her, he just wants to runaway. It is something of a motif on Mad Men that it is the women in Don’s life who are able to shine a light on who he truly is best.

In this case Rachel is able to highlight, for the audience, what connects Don with Dick. Time and time again the show would demonstrate how this is Don’s knee-jerk reaction to crisis, whether that means that when the agency is under attack he initiatives a new start, or when he stops feeling special he runs off to California to hitchhike his way around with some hippies or Dick running away from home to fight in a war. His identity was conceived in a moment of cowardice and its moments like that which echo through the time we spend with him on the show.

I say Don’s identity was conceived in that moment, but really it is the following scene on the train where Draper is really born. The camera pans in to see a nervous looking Don, the train stops as he and his fellow soldiers prepare to deliver the body of Dick Whitman. Don says he can’t and they proceed without him.

He can see his family and little Adam can see him but the rest can’t and won’t listen to Adam when he says that Dick is on the train. And then a women, a brunette no less, reaches out and offers to buy Don a drink. She may never be seen again, but she is one of the show’s most important characters. She is the first women to ever show Don any kindness and in the process she determines the nature of Don’s relationships with women after that point.

Don turns his back on Adam and on his past and begins to walk away on a train that moves only in one direction. The composition of each frame and the editing of the whole flashback scene makes it one of Mad Men’s most cinematic episodes and really adds to the power of the whole sequence. Its an episode I’ve seen several times and remember fondly. On re-watch I would come to love many of the episodes that precede it (lots of them which I really liked anyway) but this really marks the moment that Mad Men tightened its grip on me and never let go.

#Mad Men #nixon vs kennedy #Don Draper #jon hamm #pete campbell #vincent kartheiser

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raizadavaid-blog · 7 years

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How Words Can Build (or Obscure) Images

We can think of words or texts as being compliments to visual works, upon which those words impose contextual obligations onto the reader as to what an image’s interpretation should be. To this effect, words serve the purpose of either building images from scratch within the subjective minds of the audience, or of capturing images and morphing our understanding of the content and the purpose of that image. In simpler terms, words can be used to add on or take away something to the visual aspects of whatever we are viewing.

This idea most readily presents itself when we analyze things like advertisements and political cartoons. The following are examples of where words are actually a part of the artwork, which isn’t necessary for the existence of the above relationship between words and images, but does “frame” them together nicely.

When we see the hydra-like, multi-serpentine figure in the political cartoon, then our cultural and social instincts begin to tell us that there is a conflict between a just human and a horrific monster. When we see the advertisement, then our modern understanding of Santa Claus kicks in and steers us towards relating Coca Cola to the family functions, warmth, and festivity of Christmas. Those examples are fairly surface level, but one of the most intriguing things to note here is that Coca Cola as a brand, and political artists/commentators as a group, build these cognitive associations from their choice of images and words. They take existing images, and they use words and aesthetics to transform art from descriptive to definitional. It is because the words associated with a “Coca-Cola Red” Santa Claus in the picture are welcoming and wholesome, that we relate the figure with the idea of “home” and “Christmas joy”. It is because we associated the words detailing “devilish serpents” to images of snakes that Andrew Jackson can be portrayed in political cartoons as he is.

This is of amazing importance! The underlying claim behind all of this is that, like words, images too can be like “speech acts” (definitional instead of descriptive), where their sheer existence crafts together not only a cultural identity, but a newly found truth. (Note how the use of the word truth here is independent of fact and is entirely a human quality, as Toni Morrison defines it in The Site of Memory) This is not a foundational quality of images alone, however, as these visuals require the existence of words to either build off of or contrast. In order to have the effect of these images, artists must play off of the ideas that people have in words and combine them with the above pictures. Essentially, images and words can weave together collective memories through which the creators and/or the subjects of the works can define themselves (or define our political opinions / the colors and emotions that Santa Claus embodies).

Let’s take as our first major example the famous portraiture that relates the Mughal emperor Jahangir to the then-ruler of Iran, Nadir Shah in one of Jahangir’s dreams. For reference, Jahangir is the elegant and tall man that stands atop a lion that rests over vast lands. Nadir Shah is the simpler, maroon-dressed man bowing over a lamb that is being elbowed into an obsolete and distant ocean.

Unlike the preceding examples, there are no words directly on the print of this artwork (or the next piece for that matter), but the scripts and written records in the Mughal empire serve as an accompaniment to this piece. We should also note that, in contrast to the picture itself, Jahangir was shorter than Nadir Shah and the Mughal Empire didn’t extend into Iran, which lead us to believe that the stylistic tendencies of the painting are metaphoric and not literal.

In this context, we see words obscuring one’s true feelings and identity while images bring them to life. Vocally and in writings, Mughal emperors would consider their fellow rulers in the Islamic world as “equals”, and this might be a sentiment that historians reinforce through modern, nationalistic lenses when archeologists dig through and find such records. This image, most likely commissioned by the emperor himself to his karkhana (or workshop), tells a different story that reflects some other things that we know about the Mughal emperors and their ambitious natures.

The name Jahangir literally translates into “World Conqueror”. We also know that a plurality of artwork and architecture (such as the construction of large minarets and extravagant buildings) was often a display of power in contest of other Muslim rulers, claiming dominance over each other. This artistic tradition is not codified in the aforementioned writings of the time, for Mughal emperors and other Muslim rulers had to uphold a certain Islamic identity where intra-religious conflicts were minimized, but what this painting reveals is not written fact, but rather a human truth (alluding again to Toni Morrison’s definition of truth). Jahangir (and associates of the Mughal emperor) probably did consider their ruler to be the greater of any two rulers. Something subjective like this wouldn’t be written in public records in order to maintain good political/trade relationships, but art was a vessel through which such opinions could be easily and earnestly expressed.

This case describes one of the core relationships between words and images because the words carry with them the weights of obscurity. They cast ambiguity upon the honest feelings of the Mughals, indicating that words and images can sometimes have a conflicting relationship that ends up working for whoever the subject of the artwork is. Jahangir, like other rulers, was able to uphold a political decorum with words while expressing his innate feelings through paintings. Both of these factors, in turn, contribute to the varying perception of Jahangir’s character to different audiences and build up his cultural identity, and the cultural memories of the Mughals, for what they felt their role was in a global context.

This effect that words can place on images is not always one that obscures, but sometimes can be one that explicates and creates. Take the artistic masterpiece that is The Death of Socrates, which showcases how a collective, cultural memory and reality can be forged in imagery that was fueled by philosophy.

In the previous example, we saw words contrasting with a picture to build complex, politicized, dichotomic images. This case is a bit more nuanced, though, as the image is a reflection of philosophical writings and anecdotal accounts, which in turn build a cultural identity. In fact, the true meaning of The Death of Socrates comes from the fact that the man sitting on the left foot of the bed (the old person in gray clothing), is Plato, who wasn’t actually present at the scene, but was added into the scene by the artist to send a message.

The artist is trying to say that everyone has access to Socrates’ views on mortality, not just the disciples present at his death, because those views were written down or passed on through oral traditions. While there is a lot more to discuss and analyze about this specific piece of art, that is the crux of the artist’s message. This relates to the overarching idea of mine concerning the relationship between texts and images because words are being used to breathe context into a picture, and that meaning fundamentally points out to the fact that writings allow for people to build images out of collective memories. Geometrically, it looks as if the scene of the death of Socrates is literally pouring out of the back of Plato’s head, as he imagines it after consulting the records of the event and his base knowledge about Socrates’ work.

Both scenes, first of the Asian rulers and then of the Western philosophers, show how words and images can work either in parallel or perpendicular to each other to build cultural identities and memories. Words can be used by the powerful to obscure their true feelings and opinions as Jahangir would call Nadir Shah an equal, while thinking him not and bolstering himself within his personal and cultural spheres. Images can bring to life a collective culture of students by tying together memories and thoughts that were only once spoken or written down, as Socrates’ students carried forward his views on death and his traditions, many of which are taught in philosophy classes today. There is a certain truth that forms out of nothingness (or out of one’s humanity). Because of these images, if we were to say that Jahangir was “taller” than Nadir Shah or that Plato was “present” at the death of Socrates, we wouldn’t exactly be wrong because those were the mental images that the subject of the artwork adopted. But these truths are what Toni Morrison describes as fact-less, human-full truths. They don’t pinpoint every detail in a description of an event, but rather, they empower the audience of the images and the texts to gain a greater understanding. These relationships between words and pictures can build or reveal larger networks of peoples and thoughts that one medium alone could not do as efficiently.

Credits For Pictures:

Andrew Jackson Political Cartoon: https://www.google.com/url?sa=i&rct=j&q=&esrc=s&source=images&cd=&cad=rja&uact=8&ved=0ahUKEwiRyp7Y2tTSAhUhxVQKHXW4AfAQjRwIBw&url=http%3A%2F%2Fmrkash.com%2Factivities%2Fjacksoncartoons.html&psig=AFQjCNGYz6MKZfdSnVZB26J6N0hO3J4EWQ&ust=1489536678793466

Santa Clause/ Coca Cola: https://www.pinterest.com/stt03/coca-cola/

Jahangir and Nadir Shah (Abbas Shah): painting Jahangir's Dream (around 1620) by Abul Hassan showing Abbas I (Shah of Persia, left) and Jahangir (Moghul Emperor of India, right)

Socrates: The Death of Socrates, by Jacques-Louis David (1787)

Credits to Idea References:

Toni Morrison, The Site of Memory

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