The curriculum included investigation of politics of the show and the relationship between ruler and ruled.
Seems like University of California, Berkeley, had the perfect tact for keeping students hooked. A summer 2015 class in the Film Studies program at UC Berkeley was devoted entirely to the HBO hit series, Game of Thrones. The program covered the themes of the show, theories and controversial aspects.
This course examined how and why Game of Thrones achieved such notoriety and popularity. The curriculum also included investigation of sometimes contradictory but always complex and interesting politics of the show, study of the discourse on power and the relationship between ruler and ruled.
Not just that but actual remains of dire wolves — the extinct North American canine that inspired George RR Martin's creatures,were also displayed for students who were interested in Westeros.
PHOTO: KEVIN HO NGUYENUC Berkeley's course wasn't the first of its kind in America. According to Chicago Tribune, Northern Illinois University had an honors course about the series in spring of this year.
According to Berkeley News, this class was taught by Justin Vaccaro, a Berkeley PhD candidate in film and media studies. He proposed the course after the first season of the show based on George RR Martin’s best-selling, seven-novel Song of Ice and Fire series. Vaccaro finally got the go-ahead during the show’s fifth season, just before Game of Thrones collected a whopping 24 Emmy nominations.
His class looked at why the show, ostensibly about the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, is so popular – beyond its stunning special effects, over-the-top sex and violence, killing off every major character, and setting its scenes in exotic locales in Iceland, Ireland, Croatia, Spain and Morocco.
PHOTO: HULDA NELSONOne reason, Vaccaro said, is that the immersive and intricate quality of fantasy can foster immediate emotional connections that are enhanced by powerful audio-visual techniques and tools in the series’ signature blend of fantasy, realism and irony.
“Its whole attitude about a world that is morally complicated, and where answers don’t come easily or at all, is strangely very compelling and strangely reassuring,” he added, noting that many viewers may relate to a world undergoing such radical changes that it can never be the same.
Associated Press put together a video giving people an inside look at what the course entails.
Sandra Doyle, a senior film studies major, said that the main reason she was drawn to the course was to explore why Game of Thrones appeals to contemporary audiences.
“One of the most important things to consider is: What is happening in the United States now, while the show is still in the making and the books being written, that influences their content?” she asks. “Although it is set in the fantastic past of quasi-historical medieval Europe, the issues Game of Thrones is addressing are truly for our present reality.”
Game of Thrones makes claims to realism and going against genre expectations, such as killing off main characters whom audiences are accustomed to seeing survive, says Doyle. “However,” she adds, “we have learned that the show masks its adherence to genre by striving to appear realistic, yet ironically still works within generic conventions of their own making. The series also incorporates aspects of broad genres such as horror, tragedy, romance and fantasy.”
PHOTO: HULDA NELSONVaccaro said the show also raises questions about who gets access to knowledge and the historic connections of higher education to the church and other institutions of privilege, rather than the general public. He cautioned that the hit series is “not so much a fluke, but a perfect storm of influences and circumstances on the one hand and a fully realised aesthetic and thematic vision on the other.”
In one session, Vaccaro’s students watched a segment of the second season’s 'Battle of Blackwater', featuring a fiery explosion that destroyed dozens of ships, and emitted a ghoulish, greenish glow as flaming arrows lit up the sky over a dark sea.
According to course instructor Vaccaro, summer session courses draw students with their seemingly light fare and their subjects’ hit status. For this particular course, he got 27 students, a record for any of the summer classes he has taught since 2011.
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