De King’s Landing a Winterfell: a luta pelo poder como estratégia de construção narrativa em Guerra dos Tronos

Abstract

This work carries out an analysis of the struggle for power as a strategic narrative element of Game of Thrones (1996), based on the first book of a series of books written by George R. R Martin called A Song of Ice and Fire (1996-), as well as the first season of the homonymous television adaptation produced by HBO. It aims to identify how this struggle for power that pervades these works is strategically used in the configuration of their narratives. The hypothesis that fosters this perspective is that the narrative universe of Game of Thrones, with transmedia fictional nature, is mainly built from the narrative of these power conflicts, used as a strategy of likelihood composition of the researched work. In this sense, this paper proposes a discussion about the nature of fantastic works, with a view to their adaptation and their consumption by large audiences, in the production context of Home Box Office channel and the concept of Quality TV. As a theoretical basis, discussions on television will be considered, focusing on HBO channel (EDGERTON e JONES, 2008; MITTEL, 2006; 2016), transmedia narratives (EVANS, 2011; JENKINS, 2009) and also narrative and mass culture (BOLTER e GRUSIN, 1995); in addition, in order to problematize the relevance of the conflicting theme of the plot to the composition of the fictional universe of both written and television works, an approach will be taken to the characterization and action of the characters of these works, based on studies on the constitution of the fictional character in the novel (TODOROV, 2006; SEGOLIN, 1978; BRAIT, 1985) and in television (CAMPOS, 2007). Throughout the research, it was observed that the discourses and actions of the characters analyzed are mostly driven by the optional mode of action, which characterizes the complexity of these characters, both in the source text and in television, referring to the format of Quality TV. Finally, it is argued that the struggle for power in Game of Thrones is the main narrative strategy for the composition of verisimilitude and, consequently, of the fictional universe of the work, through the games of actions exercised especially by the eight characters analyzed in this work.