Chaos Isn’t a Pit, Chaos is a Ladder”: A Metamodernist Reading of Game of Thrones
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Game of Thrones continues to be a global pop-cultural phenomenon even after its grand finale in 2019, and there has been a plethora of discussion regarding its chaotic and unpredictable narrative. However, its closure (or the lack thereof) is the most contested topic to date, which is why this article focuses on some of the most prominent story arcs that have been criticized for not ending according to the audience’s expectations. The current study is a textual-semiotic analysis that intends to give a more academic perspective to this discussion, where characters and storylines are discussed from a metamodernist perspective in order to provide an explanation based on philosophical underpinnings rather than merely pointing out the discrepancies when it comes to the closure of the show. The study aims to highlight the instances where the narrative of the chosen text operates through modern and postmodern tendencies without being tied down to either of the two opposing categories. Moreover, the idea of chaos from a metamodernist perspective is also employed to further investigate the inherent unpredictability of the text. The study concludes that the apparently chaotic and confounding closure of the chosen text is not necessarily a failure on the part of the writers, but rather a deliberate attempt to create a metamodern cultural artifact that exists in an a-topic metaxis, a space without boundaries that celebrates flux and chaos, which is, in itself, a reflection of our current socio-cultural ethos.
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