Game of Thrones: Swords! Swords! Swords! in "Baelor"

Earlier in the quarter, I introduced my students to the anything-that's-longer-than-it-is-wide mode of psychoanalytic criticism. Not very sophisticated, I know, but it helps explain the historical context of certain rhetorical tropes.* Given that this class is based on Game of Thrones, the discussion inevitably landed on the subject of swords as phallic symbols, and I noted that while there's nothing necessary or natural about that connection, it is one of long-standing and therefore might have influenced how George R.R. Martin employed them in his narrative. Which the students took to mean "SWORDS EQUAL PENISES," a not altogether unfortunate development given how the Arya and Needle string undermines conventional gender assumptions. It did, however, make teaching the ninth episode, "Baelor," a little difficult. The episode opens with Lord Commander Mormont gifting a sword, Longclaw, meant for his son, Jorah Mormont, to Jon Snow. Snow proceeds down the stairs and is immediately accosted by his Wall-fellows:

Keeping in mind what my students think swords equal, consider the eyeline match in this shot. Not explicit enough? Fine:

That man seems a little too excited to see Jon's sword.

They all seem a little too excited to see Jon's sword.

And Jon seems a little too happy at how excited they all are to see his sword. But he obliges:

If you think I'm being juvenile and sword-blinkered, consider this scene in which a captured Jaime Lannister throws himself before the mercy of Lady Stark:

Nothing emasculating about that. The same can't be said for this:

Even skipping over the scene in which Daenerys demands that the previously de-sworded Jorah Mormount draw his sword for her, it's clear that this episode is very much about swords. Remember how it ends?

I mean after Arya considers drawing the symbol of male empowerment she's appropriated for herself before realizing the inevitable futility of doing so:

There you go. The point of all this is that anyone analyzing this episode needs to account for its economy of swords: they're distributed, re-distributed, lost, stolen, and finally wielded by a masked man at a sham of an execution. This execution, by the by, neatly parallels the scene in the first episode in a manner that highlights their differences: in both instances a man is being executed, only in "Baelor" the beheader has become the beheadee, the trial isn't just, and the Stark child witnessing it is commanded not to look.

So, as I was saying, swords! Swords! Swords! Swords!

*As an example of psychoanalytic criticism, I use an explication of The Castle circa 1950, in which the tall lanky K. and his short round assistants, Artur and Jeremias, are reduced to the walking-talking male genitalia  Kafka clearly intended them to be.

Comments

[NickS]

"That man seems a little too excited to see Jon's sword. "

I recently looked up the "nice gun" scene from Red River, and was struck by how well played and how funny it is. Montgomery Clift's gesture and look at :09-12 are really perfect.

[mxyzptlk]

So are you saying that sometimes a sword is just a sword? That Martin/Benioff & Weiss/Alan Taylor are at once inviting the psychoanalytic criticism as well as circumscribing and undercutting it? Is Martin the Mel Brooks of fantasy?

[SEK]

Inviting and undermining, I think, which is par for the course with Martin's treatment of the genre generally. That said, I don't think it's possible not to have swords and swordplay just be about swords and swordplay, because the association is so deeply rooted in the Western tradition at this point.