Author: amc10118

By Alejandro Cortinas

The 100th Meridian: the long, wide and grand plains of the American West, marked by an invisible horizontal line, almost 100 degrees longitude west of the prime meridian, is an often forgotten and ignored middle-ground of America. It is a very desolate and spacious land that transmits feelings of isolation, both in abstraction and upon viewing. However, this area was once historically marked by the malevolent grandeur of westward expansion and manifest destiny. Specifically in the 19th century, it was associated with the attractive qualities of Colonial America as perceived by European settlers; it was as a new place, almost mystic in conception, which had the potential to foster fresh beginnings. 

Today however, some century and a half later, life along and around this meridian almost feels alien to those not accustomed to it; it appears strikingly hollow, alarmingly deserted, and seemingly void of any significance to untrained eyes. But to those who know how to look at it, to those who call it home or have an appreciation for that which is overlooked: the 100th meridian is simply beautiful, and its endless and seemingly infinite nature contains all that could ever be needed. It’s “irreplaceable”, American novelist Kent Haruf said in the Preface he wrote for photographer Andrew Moore’s photo essay titled: Dirt Meridian, which somehow encompasses the essence of this seemingly infinite middle of America.

All the magnificent photographs presented throughout Dirt Meridian, which Moore began working on in 2005, and finally published in print with Damiani Editore in 2015, are a testament to these previously mentioned sentiments. The project is composed of both aerial and on-foot shots, and is made up of about 30 pictures online, and 72 in print. Astutely, the photos offer a glimpse into a reality that is often forgotten because of its spacious emptiness, and lack thereof in history post its initial craze. A reality which stretches for thousands of miles across time zones, imaginary state boundaries, native grasslands, expansive plains, rolling prairies, and the remnants of ambitious westward American expansion, be it successful or not. This glimpse is particularly encapsulated in a series of breathtaking aerial photographs that, through their composition, form a deep intimacy between their natural and artificial subjects, and the land they reside upon. They also ask the viewer to appreciate the pure simplicity and intersections of and within its frame, and seem to distract any patient observer away from the chaotic and convoluted essence of their lives, and subtly encourages them to divulge their attention into another life and land, seemingly far more simpler due to its bare and almost naked appearance, yet equally as complex, and equally as captivating and intricate when one becomes familiar with it. 

A particular photograph that stands out is one of a latino man named Pedro — dressed in a cowboy hat, a hoodie, and weaver leather— positioned in the center of the frame sitting atop of a white horse with his dog to his left, his farm around him, and the American plains behind him, stretching for seeming infinity into the horizon. To me, after viewing this photo for some time, it is compelling shots such as this one in Moore’s overarching project that convey an indescribable multifaceted perception of hope and failure, an independent perception on the interconnection of nature and humanity, an exposition of why something that is not appreciated because of its conceived immediate significance should still be valued for what it is, and a longing for home. Though I am not from these plains, I am taken away by their outstretched beauty, and am immensely comforted by them.

Despite his obvious talent, Moore still needed some help to capture the sheer expansiveness of the American west as he couldn’t do so through close-up shots of the land or the people within it alone. So he hired Doug Dean, an expert Cessna 180 pilot who is credited on the title page. According to a Lens Culture article written by Moore himself, Dean and Moore “devised a means for placing a high-resolution camera on the strut of the plane, which could be remotely operated from the cockpit.” To capture low flying aerial shots that “allowed [them] to make pictures at a perspective in which the intimate seemed conjoined with the infinite”(Moore 3). Dean’s abilities allowed them to “travel to just about any location, quickly and in most weather conditions, and shoot either on the ground or from above” (3). 

I found a book review by George Slade which further highlights the crucial role Dean had in Moore’s project. Specifically, Slade marvels at the prominent use of the aerial form in Moore’s work, and how influential it is, and subsequently Dean himself, because of how much land one needs to cover to fully encompass the 100th meridian in photograph. He describes how Dean’s “function, then, added aspects of scout, cartographer, historian, and meteorologist to piloting skills.” And “Not only did Dean’s plane enable Moore to preview and land near locations that would have scarcely been accessible by car, the plane opened up a critical angle on this territory” (3). Evidently enough, both according to Moore himself and reviews of his photo essay, Dean’s flying contributed immensely to Moore’s project, and perhaps without it, the extensively intimate and expansive nature of the photographs, and the “vast and sublime emptiness” of the land it covers, would not be or feel the same (Moore 5). 

A photo that stands out in my mind when thinking about Dean’s presence in Moore’s photo essay is one titled “Truck at Night” of an Oil Tanker approaching an intersection, kicking up a dust cloud while on a dirt road in Nebraska. The photo appears to have been taken during the evening, and was clearly taken in flight. However, the camera appears dangerously close to the ground, and ultimately it almost feels like the photo was taken from a water tower. The shot is also just high enough to show the road the trucker has already navigated through, and how it goes on for tens of miles without end behind him. Around that single dirt road, which serves as a visual boundary on the land it crosses, the expansive plains of the American west stretch for infinity and dissipate into the horizon both on the vertical and horizontal planes of the photograph. As you can see, just through the altitude of the camera itself, and the exact aerial angle at which Moore was able to take his photo because of Dean, an evident intimacy can be felt between the truck, the road, the natural land, and the infinite setting surrounding them. What such an intimacy implies, and what it can be put into relation to, is entirely up to the viewer’s discretion and perspective.    

I feel compelled to refer back to Kent Haruf’s Preface in Dirt Meridian to help summarize Moore’s work. “Andrew Moore has given us these magnificent photographs, showing the great expanses” to bring to light a particularly beautiful and intimate part of the world which is routinely ignored because of its seeming lack of life and development (Haruf 3). His photos are “clear and evocative, unsentimental,” and “seem to understand the sacredness of this country. They suggest its holiness” (3). His work also exposes the intersection of life, land, time, and encourages the viewer to leave their observations with a richer and more diverse perception of their lives and surroundings. In all, it simply asks the audience for the courtesy of a pause, and the patience to develop an appreciation for what things innately are, rather than what we wish them to be.

Pedro, Sheridan County, Nebraska, 2013. © Andrew Moore

Truck at Night, McKenzie County, North Dakota, 2013. © Andrew Moore

Works Cited

Moore, Andrew. “Dirt Meridian.” Andrewlmoore.com. Web. 12 November 2022. https://andrewlmoore.com/dirt-meridian.

Moore, Andrew. Dirt Meridian. Damiani, 2014 

Moore, Andrew. “Dirt Meridian – Photographs and Text by Andrew Moore.” LensCulture. Web. 29 November 2022. https://www.lensculture.com/articles/andrew-moore-dirt-meridian.

Leifert, Harvey. “Dividing Line: The Past, Present and Future of the 100th Meridian.” Earth Magazine, 9 Jan. 2018. Web. 8 December 2022. https://www.earthmagazine.org/article/dividing-line-past-present-and-future-100th-meridian/.  

Slade, George. “Book Review: Dirt Meridian.” Photoeye, 11 February 2016. Web. 22 November 2022. https://blog.photoeye.com/2016/02/book-review-dirt-meridian.html.

By Alexandra Cohen 

In 2017, when I was 14, I watched my mother watch a naked Lena Dunham on the series finale of HBO’s Girls. I hadn’t been allowed to watch many of the shows that my parents did, and sneaking a peak at Dunham’s boobs helped me understand why. 

Now, nobody tells me what I’m allowed to watch — I have all the freedom in the world and that freedom brought me to hbomax.com and a summer long binge of Girls. But I wasn’t the only one watching; everyone around me seemed to be watching a TV show that ended over half a  decade ago. With access to streaming and each other, we experienced a unique culture where the binge and the rewatch are just as culturally significant as the weekly premiers of new episodes. 

A friend of mine started watching Girls because people were talking about it on Twitter. Then, another friend hurried over to HBO Max, after he saw a TikTok of a scene in the show. Soon, everyone was watching it. Comedian Lane Moore, who was only in one episode of the show, received a check for $6.50 because of the resurgence of people now watching the show. 

A new group of twenty-somethings, much like the four titular Girls of the show, found themselves immersed in the world that Dunham and Apatow brought us. Yet, as much as we were drawn in by the mistakes that Hannah Horvath made, we couldn’t help but look at her with a more critical eye than the watchers of the initial run of the show. Even they critiqued the show’s overbearing whiteness and the specific group of people it highlighted. It’s satire, that was always true; but how are we supposed to look at a show created by a woman, who despite making such quality entertainment, continues to make headlines for the wrong reasons? 

Lena Dunham’s Wikipedia “Controversies” section is the biggest one on her page. She is not to be idolized; and yet it’s damn near impossible to separate the art from the artist when she wrote, directed, produced and starred in the series. Her sins cannot be forgiven: she created a show with an all-white cast, she’s defended countless incidents of sexual assault, and made tons of insensitive comments about issues that need to be handled with by the right person in the right demographic with the right care — more times than not, that person is not Lena Dunham. She’s in the wrong in so many ways, but wasn’t that what Girls was all about? 

Girls is a show about the worst people with the best circumstances who believe that they’re the best people with the worst circumstances. They believe that nobody is more progressive minded and tolerant than them, that being a struggling writer is the worst lot in life, and that getting cut off from your wealthy parents is a fate worse than death. The concept itself is satirical. She points at a community that she knew — her friends from liberal arts college and an upbringing in Brooklyn private schools. 

Evan Lazarus, one of the hosts of the HBO Girls Rewatch Podcast said, “It’s such a story of her existence, but also her existence is problematic in that sense.” And it’s true, she was promoting an existence of gentrification and a fake sense of wokeism — but that existence was true of her and her community. Lazarus co-hosts a podcast with fellow Brooklyn comedian Amelia Ritthaler, and while they praise the writing of the show and the entertainment value, they also have an entire segment of each episode about how the show holds up today — and a lot of the time it doesn’t. 

People who watched the show at the time weren’t itching to put their natural bodies in front of a screen and walk around Brooklyn covered in cum, yet today’s young people are more down with that. Ritthaler said, “I feel like people in her generation wouldn’t want to be seen as her, whereas like people now are like I’m actually OK being that way.” 

Our generation grew into a special kind of narcissism that Lena Dunham pioneered. She made autofiction into a genre that Judd Apatow might pick up and produce. We all believe our stories are important and need to be heard — even when they’re about a white girl living in Brooklyn who gets cut off from her parents. Still, perhaps her narrative wasn’t the one that needed to be shared then; instead, maybe we can learn from revisiting it now.

Dunham was maybe smarter than us all: she wrote a satire about herself and her world and marketed it as an HBO comedy series. A 2023 audience in a post-covid world has the knowledge to watch this show and look at it with a critical eye, more so than the commentators of its original run. We can appreciate what Dunham did by putting real bodies on TV before it was cool. We can condemn the whiteness of the show and the political incorrectness of Hannah’s pretend-politically correct world. We shouldn’t have expected Lena Dunham to write as good of a show about a world which she did not know— there are so many other voices who can and should do that. She wrote what she knew and she did so successfully. 

At the end of the day, I like Girls. I think that it’s smart and funny and Dunham is a hell of a good writer, especially considering that she was just 23 years old when she sold the show to HBO. I watched it in my first New York apartment and laughed and cried and saw myself — for better or for worse — in all of the Girls (except Jessa because nobody who’s watching Girls is a Jessa). The generation before us had Sex and the City. They could be a Carrie, or a Miranda, or a Samantha, or a Charlotte; sure each character had their flaws and quirks, but they were all putting on designer shoes and trotting around Manhattan looking fabulous. Nobody wants to be the characters from Girls. Each one is more narcissistic than the next and trotting around Brooklyn in sweaty TJ Maxx, but they are the heightened versions of us all. 

Dunham and the show itself are problematic, that is absolutely true. Still, Girls showcases a world where what we deem problematic now was progressive less than ten years ago. As we rewatch Girls in community, we can use it as a lesson in how far we’ve come and celebrate the writing and entertainment value while also criticizing the show’s many wrongdoings. When equipped with the judgment and the knowledge we have today, we can look back at Girls and still enjoy it, but we must do so with a careful eye and a little bit of caution. 

By Annie Gold-Onwude

“The Hills” is not your average reality TV show. It is, of course, a show about wealthy Los Angeles young women, trying to live their lives and gain success. Even the most wealthy of women in a city like Los Angeles can mirror the patterns of the average women seeking to gain power through social mobility. Even though it’s probably largely fake and definitely edited, much like the rest of the reality shows we see on networks and streaming services, the very real premise of “The Hills” is women aiming to be professionals in LA:  a professional party animal, or perhaps a professional editor at large at a company, like Vogue. They are like every woman, excited to put their names out there and have their stories heard. Ultimately, they do not want to be successful solely because of the misogyny of men, and the choices these men make in who they want to date, or for added spice, who they want to cheat on. These female socialites are powerful in prowess: seemingly wanting to be independent and classy. Still, they are ultimately tantalized by the influx of information coming from the surrounding communities and hearsay that their communities thrive off of. 

Heidi Montag is at the center of this, a superstar in her own right; she wants to skip the schooling and go straight to being a socialite. MTV made this possible for her, broadcasting her love life and framing her as the most interesting teen in Los Angeles. I recently watched (or perhaps rewatched) this show, streaming on Netflix, and was drawn in (again) by the “socialite” lifestyle. The show gives non-socialites access into their real world. However, despite the fact that Heidi achieved her goal of becoming a successful LA socialite, Heidi had also subscribed to a popular trope; the woman who needs to change everything in order to fit in, namely with her popular and rich boyfriend (now I believe husband), Spencer Pratt. Heidi ends up leaving her friends, her rooming situation with her best friend Lauren Conrad, and makes her way into Spencer’s new home. The last episode of Season Two ends with the two of them (Heidi and Spencer) cuddling, in a lonely sort-of-way on the floor of an empty, huge apartment house that they would soon be likely to call “home.” 

Instead of Lauren being supportive of her friend, she can’t believe that the chauvinist, attention-seeking Spencer Pratt has effectively stolen Heidi away from her and her friends. She is lost in the works of how this chauvinist pig, or perhaps a kind of attention pursuer, namely, Spencer Pratt, can take and practically abduct Heidi into his world and take her away from her true friends. It is scary, frightening, to think that Heidi, a woman who was once so geared towards the rich and exciting life, could feel and react in a way that she could only achieve through the means of obtaining a man — a man who may be positive toward her, or perhaps not. 

It is hard to see how LA-life has become this sort of dystopia of lost dreams and few rain showers (even though it did snow there recently). The fact that the gals from “The Hills” have made a life for themselves there shows that there is something mysterious and hidden; something that can not quite be named. Maybe that is the mystique and torture of the “platinum blonde socialite” prototypical platitude, or maybe it is, quite in fact, just another show that shows how the careers and personal lives of women can be exploited by a few party-animal men. Is it fair to say that they are happy?

Perhaps not, but one thing is for sure: “The Hills” was a hit show, and it is certain to live in the minds of plenty of teens and adults who want to escape from the routines and platitudes of their own daily lives and live in their minds, as celebrities who, perhaps, get what they want.

By James Freyland

Pervasive throughout the teaching of American history in the US is the notion that an objective account of said history is being taught. At its core, this claim can appear to be accurate — after all, history is supported by irrefutable proof to support the existence and effects of the people discussed. However, subjectivity is introduced in the valuation of a person’s historical significance, and the decision of who to include in school curriculums. This valuation is inherently biased against women; our country, with a near-even gender split, is malapportioned to school history standards, including “approximately 1 woman for every 3 men.” The breakdown of the women included provides an even starker misrepresentation of this country’s demographics: “48 percent [of Gen Z]… are from communities of color,” and yet are expected to feel represented by standards that are “still 62 percent white.” The effects of this misrepresentative history on women are ontologically profound, affecting what it means to be a woman — creating a scholastically imposed narrative where “fact and proof and history [become] … lies [that] are true,” and women are excluded. Recent years have seen a further curtailing of whose stories are taught in the classroom, further limiting the development of an inclusive historical narrative. In light of these setbacks, one can find solace in literature’s ability to illuminate, even if not taught in the classroom. Lucille Clifton’s Generations: A Memoir is one example, as she challenges the notion of a single historical narrative being able to define a people. 

In Clifton’s memoir, we see a repudiation of the profound ontological change inflicted on enslaved people. By clinging to stories of being strong and “the best soldiers in the world,” the women of the Dahomey people could avoid losing their history and having a manufactured one imposed upon them. In rejecting the ontological views of enslavers, they exchange a societally-imposed ontology for a familially imposed one. It is not a surprise then, that stories of these powerful women permeate Lucille’s narrative, as distinctions between the past and present become blurred in the novel and the stories of other Dahomey women become central in defining who Lucille is. While the knowledge of a familial history is integral to Lucille’s formation as an individual, this history does not exist outside the confines of her family, and has been written out of the collective historical record.

In seeking help from a white woman who “compiled and privately printed a history of the Sale/Sayle family of Bedford County Virginia,” Lucille acquiesces to a conventional perspective of history to legitimize her family’s stories. Instead of finding legitimacy, Lucille is devastated to learn that “[o]nly the children of slaves” remember the history of enslaved people; her own family is excluded from the annals of written history. In this manner, Lucille is the sole witness to a history forgotten by society at large, and her family is reduced to “unmarked…graves” in the single American historical narrative, despite having rich and impactful lives. However, knowing her family’s history comes at a cost; Lucille succumbs to the same fallacy as white people — she views history as a guarantee of specific destiny and mistakes knowing facts with the more profound knowledge of understanding. 

When confronted by her father, Samuel, for losing her scholarship and dropping out of school, Lucille justifies her actions by claiming she “was a Dahomey woman.” Historically a group of women who “[g]et what…[they] want,” Lucille knew about her family’s lineage and was able to appropriate the Dahomey women’s power for herself. Lucille’s knowledge of what it means to be a Dahomey woman would be challenged as Samuel accuses her of not knowing “where that [Dahomey] is …[or] even what it means.” At the core of this issue is the battle between knowing and understanding: capable of reciting her grandmother, Ca’line, and other Dahomey women’s stories by heart makes it easy for Lucille to mistake the static recitation of discrete facts for a deeper understanding of what it means to be a Dahomey woman. It is only when her father passes away that she finally understands the essence of being a Dahomey woman, a shared history composed of people “connect[ed] in thin ways that last and last and lives become generations made out of pictures and words just kept.” 

Realizing that her history is not a single narrative, but the collective experiences and stories of all Dahomey people, grants Lucille the ability to acknowledge that subjectivity is inherent in any attempt to define what it means to be Dahomey. Lucille can never reach an objective overarching historical narrative as the Dahomey people’s history is based on the rejection of an imposed ontology and the promulgation of the diverse stories constituting a shared history. This enables the formation of individual ontologies instead of a singular, static ontology to define a society. With her newfound wisdom, Lucille remedies Ca’line’s error in summarizing the Dahomey people as composed of “strong women and weak men” instead of trying to break the pattern. In bearing “sons [that] are as strong as… [her] daughters,” Lucille rights Ca’line’s wrong and reaffirms she truly understands what it means to share a history, that “our lives are more than the days in them, our lives are our line and we go on.” As she pictures Ca’line approving of her realization, Lucille can rest easy knowing that she is part of a larger story, both uniquely hers and profoundly distinct from her. 

By Penn Namely

Note: Contains spoilers for Game of Thrones (Which despite its flaws, is still worth the watch!)

Throughout the seasons of Game of Thrones, there have been fierce fans and critics of one of the show’s most important characters: Daenerys Targarys. She has the critics wrapped around her finger, focusing on her complex characterization; she flips between a benevolent hero or a ruthless villain. The Mhysa of Essos, or the Dragon Queen of Westeros. If she was a hero all along, was this descent into villainy earned? If she was a villain all along, why was the conclusion of her arc so controversially received? This is a dichotomy ironically consistent with Daenerys’ worldview of black-and-white morality. The truth of her character lies in the in-between.

If we grade Daenerys’ actions from our modern-day, real-world understanding of morality, she is guilty of various crimes, involving the brutal executions of criminals. The razing of King’s Landing is exempt from discussion due to its unquestionable immorality. This ending for her character only makes sense if Daenerys’ development and characterization throughout the series was in line with the villainousness associated with this massacre. The goal of this essay is to point out that this idea of Daenerys being villainous before the final season is dependent on the imposing of double standards on her worst actions, while characters who are deemed heroic are also guilty of such actions and therefore not subject to condemnation like Daenerys is. A secondary goal would be to determine what kind of character was depicted on the show before the radical culmination of the series and whether there was a rational, plausible build-up to this turn. The dramatic turn for her character caused the writers to claim that all of her actions in the past were intended to be perceived as villainous, and thus her ending was adequately foreshadowed and built up to.

It is my belief that her character was intended by the author George R. R. Martin to show the full power and threat of a heroic, messianic figure. Daenerys achieved more good and became more powerful than any character had in the many centuries of the world. In the title, “A Song of Ice of Fire,” Daenerys was the Fire of change and warmth; contrasting the Ice of the White Walkers and human cruelty. With her innate power, Daenerys was capable of reforming the unjust status quo of her society. In order to effect change, she used extreme methods that pushed the boundaries of morality. What her story is perhaps meant to show is that because her rise to power forces her to use extreme methods against her enemies, and since they’re justified because her enemies happen to be guilty of some of the worst crimes imaginable (rape and slavery), she starts to believe that her methods should be used on all of her enemies. She would be further enticed to believe that she is justified because she receives love from thousands of people; this love becomes a sign that she has helped them as a result of her harsh methods. Furthermore, there is an issue with Daenerys’ belief that she should rule based on birthright, given that it is an arbitrary and unfair means of choosing a leader.

This intended characterization of Daenerys is not what is executed in the show. The show instead depicts a female character successfully championing revolution in a bleak and brutal society out of her compassion for others. In the final two seasons, this character behaves fairly reasonably (apart from a shift in motivation and convenient insanity sprouting overnight) while the supporting characters shift their motives and personalities in order to serve the plot where she turns evil. Daenerys’ motivation changes in the final two seasons. She says, “All my life, I’ve known one goal: The Iron Throne. Taking it back from the people who destroyed my family…” This is what the writers want us to believe about the character, when in reality she has shown much more ambition beyond the idea of her birthright. 

Earlier in the series, Daenerys refuses to sail for Westeros after liberating Meereen, because the slave masters were still opposing her abolition movement. She is reminded that freeing slaves would not help her get the Iron Throne, but she does so anyway because of her compassion for them. She later says that she can’t expect people to follow her if she cannot establish a peaceful rule in Slaver’s Bay. Daenerys disregards the notion that she could rule in Westeros simply because of her birthright, or the birth of her dragons, and instead spends three years in Essos to ensure the abolition of slavery. This is also contradicted in the final two seasons of the show. It’s also never mentioned whether Daenerys would be a good queen or not.

Daenerys’ character is commonly criticized due to her lengthy list of criminal executions. Some of her controversial actions in the series include: the burning of Mirri Maz Duur, imprisoning two people in a vault to starve to death, the crucifixion of 163 slave masters of Meereen, the execution of a nobleman, and the incineration of two lords of the Reach. In each of these instances, there is a crime for which the victim is guilty of. Mirri killed Daenerys’ husband and unborn son. The slave masters owned slaves and crucified 163 slave children. The nobleman was a former slave owner and suspected of conspiring with a pro-slavery terrorist group. The two lords of the Reach betrayed their liege lady by invading said liege lady’s castle and executing her. 

To further complicate matters on the morality scale, each of these crimes and their punishments come with extenuating circumstances. While Daenerys’ unborn child was innocent, Mirri killed Daenerys’ husband because he was the leader of a band of rapists and murderers who had raped Mirri, destroyed her village, and had plans to continue such actions. The two people sentenced to starve to death in a vault had betrayed Daenerys in a manner that would have left her imprisoned in a magical trap for eternity. The slave masters were collectively guilty of slavery, but some opposed the crucifixion of the children. The nobleman was a slave owner before Daenerys abolished slavery, but he was only suspected of being complicit with the active terrorist cell. Daenerys herself expressed that she did not know if he was innocent or guilty, but executed him nonetheless in order to intimidate the terrorists hiding among the nobility. Finally, while the two lords of the Reach were guilty of betraying their liege lady, they did so in service of the current monarch of the Seven Kingdoms. Their liege lady was supporting Daenerys’ claim to the throne, an act of rebellion against the current monarch.

Moreover, the nuances of Daenerys’ grey morality is lost on the audience due to similar moral dilemmas occurring with other “heroic” characters, but without any indication that their actions are wrong. For example, there are episodes where Jon Snow decapitates one of his fellow Night’s Watch brothers because he refuses to follow Jon’s order. The brother pleads for mercy, but Jon decapitates him nonetheless. The brother is guilty of insubordination, but as Lord Commander, Jon could have simply chosen mercy. Arya slaughters the men of House Frey, even baking some into a pie for the patriarch to eat before slicing his throat and cutting his face off. The Freys betrayed the Starks and slaughtered their bannermen, but similar to the 163 crucified slave masters, surely not all of them were complicit?

Lastly, Daenerys’ advisors Tyrion and Varys had their personalities rewritten in order to criticize her. Tyrion used to be an extremely intelligent man, but when he met Daenerys, he had only bad counsel to give. More often than not, his advice hindered Daenery; his plan of convincing Queen Cersei to an armistice resulted in significant loss for Daenerys. His strategy of dividing their forces led to Daenerys’ fleet being attacked and facing even more significant losses. Daenerys is commonly criticized for not wanting to listen to her advisors, yet she does in fact listen to them more often than not. Her reticence to do so is very reasonable considering her advisors keep causing her great defeats.  

Upon their arrival at Westeros, at the beginning of Daenerys’ campaign for the Iron Throne, Varys declares to Daenerys that his goals have always been in service of the common people. This is a contradiction to the first season when he intended for Viserys to invade Westeros with an army of Dothraki given that the only strategy Viserys would have to take the throne is to ravage the common people’s villages. In the final season, Varys outright says that Jon Snow would be a better king because he is a man. He questions Daenerys’ state of mind due to her visible grief at the post-battle feast. It’s a contrived series of events because everyone in that feast had experienced losses, yet Daenerys is the only one to be bothered by it. She is also isolated from her friends Missandei and Grey Worm for no particular reason. Any other friends she may have made from the hundreds of people who’ve followed her this far are also not present. No one among the hundreds of people present have any desire to ingratiate themselves with the future queen of the Seven Kingdoms. 

The most egregious example is that Varys and Tyrion assert vehemently on numerous occasions, going as far to stake their lives on it, that if Daenerys attacks King’s Landing tens of thousands of innocent people will die. First, this is evidently untrue given that when she finally does invade the city, she easily forces the city to surrender in less than a single day without any apparent civilian casualties. Secondly, Varys and Tyrion seem to have adopted an uncharacteristic view of pacifism despite both facilitating war plans in the past that have endangered civilians. Thirdly, the idea of invading King’s Landing is treated as though it’s an inherently evil act despite such warfare being commonplace in their medieval society. It is so common that in a previous season, Jon Snow himself called upon soldiers to fight for him because of the Starks’ birthright to their loyalty. Jon used an army to overthrow the current tyrant ruler of his birthplace at the cost of thousands of lives and it was portrayed as a heroic moment both in and out of universe. When Daenerys sought to do the same thing, she was painted as crazy and inferior to a man of Targaryen lineage. 

By employing double standards on Daenerys’ grey actions and those of the other “heroic” characters, credence is lost to the idea that she’s worse than the other characters. It’s common in the media for fans to acknowledge that realistically heroic characters would be problematic if they existed in real life, but they choose to forgive their faults because it’s more entertaining that way. An example of this is how in Captain America: Civil War (spoiler warning), Tony attempts to murder Bucky because Bucky was brainwashed into killing his parents; however, Bucky is not morally or legally responsible for crimes committed when he had no free will. Even if he was, Tony would be committing extrajudicial murder. As a result, Tony is guilty of attempted murder and demonstrates why he needs oversight because of his incompetence with his own technology. However, his attempted murder is not brought up again or held against him for the rest of the franchise. Another example is how audiences forgive Batman and generally recognize him as a hero despite his lack of oversight and how his non-lethally intended methods would realistically kill someone on accident. 

In the world of Game of Thrones, both heroic and villainous characters kill their enemies as part of a problematically barbaric and common social practice. Heroes are permitted to kill their enemies and stay moral in the eyes of the audience because their enemies are evil people guilty of many crimes, and their execution is coincidentally one of the only means of effecting justice. The punishment for crimes in the world of Game of Thrones is limited. Despite the existence of dungeons, they are not used for long-term punishment for crimes. Dungeons are used to temporarily contain criminals until their sentence (usually execution) is carried out. There is only exile, pardoning, and death. Death is the most common one. Their world does not have a department of corrections and rehabilitative programs. So when Daenerys executes criminals, it’s understandable that fans overlook it because the show chooses to overlook executions when they’re committed by other heroic characters like Jon, Arya, and Sansa. Perhaps Daenerys’ good intentions and immense success in helping others are seen as worth focusing on over her medieval methods, especially since they all live in a medieval society with relative standards of morality. The lack of moral consequences for other characters’ executions lessens the weight of Daenerys’ moral ambiguity. 

On the other hand, critics of Daenerys’ character might focus on the crimes she has committed over the positives that she has achieved. This is what the ending of the show wants fans to do. After years of endearing the audience to the character with heroic moments and examples of her compassion, the ending demands fans to suddenly impose double standards and criticize Daenerys’ actions when they are not so different from those of other heroic characters.

It is possible for a version of the show to exist where Daenerys’ crimes and foreshadowing of her fate to lead up to her destroying King’s Landing. Daenerys is a character that has committed acts that preclude her from being considered pure in her morals. In order to execute the intended version of her character, the show would need to be fair in its passing judgment on the characters and question Jon, Arya, and others for their executions as well. Plot contrivances such as Tyrion’s decrease in intelligence and the lapse in logic for Varys to think Daenerys is losing her sanity would need to be resolved. Sexist undertones such as Daenerys’ grief being considered as signs of latent madness would also need to be removed.

Daenerys may have originally been intended to be a flawed representation of a hero, but double standards, retcon of character motivations, and plot contrivances cause her moral ambiguity to be seen as in absolutes.