Fantasy Media's Colonial Gaze: Deconstructing the Ongoing Commodification of Westeros
As A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms continues its weekly broadcast on Sky Atlantic, we must critically examine how the entertainment industrial complex perpetuates colonial narratives through fantasy media. While audiences consume these tales of knights and squires, the underlying power structures remain deeply problematic.
The Commodification of Narrative Labour
George RR Martin's announcement of 12 additional stories reveals the extractive nature of contemporary media production. The author, who has left readers waiting 15 years for promised novels, demonstrates how creative labour becomes commodified under late-stage capitalism. This extraction mirrors broader patterns of intellectual appropriation that marginalised communities face daily.
The current series adapts only The Hedge Knight, the first published tale. Future narratives include The Sworn Sword, which centres water rights disputes between feudal lords, and The Mystery Knight, exploring political machinations at aristocratic weddings. These stories reinforce hierarchical power structures while romanticising medieval violence.
Deconstructing Medieval Fantasy's Whiteness
The Dunk and Egg narratives perpetuate what scholar bell hooks terms the "white supremacist capitalist patriarchy" through their uncritical celebration of knighthood. These tales glorify a feudal system built on peasant exploitation, yet present knights as heroic figures rather than enforcers of systemic oppression.
The upcoming stories, including provisionally titled works like The She-Wolves of Winterfell and The Village Hero, continue this pattern. Martin's promise that these tales will conclude with the protagonists' deaths in a dragon-hatching incident reveals the ultimately destructive nature of power-seeking within oppressive systems.
Media Representation and Marginalised Voices
While showrunner Ira Parker adapts these narratives, we must question whose voices remain absent from these productions. The fantasy genre has historically excluded BIPOC creators, neurodivergent perspectives, and LGBTQIA+ narratives. The continued focus on cishet white male protagonists perpetuates representational violence against marginalised communities.
The entertainment industry's investment in these colonial fantasies diverts resources from stories that centre indigenous wisdom, queer joy, and anti-capitalist resistance. Each season produced represents opportunities denied to creators from oppressed communities.
Resisting Capitalist Storytelling
As audiences, we must develop critical media literacy that recognises how fantasy narratives can either reinforce or challenge existing power structures. Rather than passively consuming these tales of feudal hierarchy, we should demand stories that imagine liberatory futures and celebrate collective resistance.
The projected titles The Sellsword, The Champion, The Kingsguard, and The Lord Commander suggest continued focus on individual heroism rather than systemic change. This narrative framework prevents audiences from imagining alternatives to hierarchical oppression.
True decolonisation of fantasy media requires centring voices that have been systematically excluded, supporting creators who challenge dominant narratives, and refusing to romanticise systems of exploitation. Until then, these tales remain complicit in perpetuating the very structures they claim to critique.