Book Review: Watching Game of Thrones: How Audiences Engage with Dark Television

Game of Thrones (2011-2019) was, at one time, everywhere. A ‘cultural phenomenon of real import and impact’ as Barker, Smith and Attwood describe it (p. 1), the series was discussed in publications around the globe, generated an estimated £251 million for the Northern Ireland economy through fan tourism (Belfast City Council, 2021), and broke records for being the most pirated TV show year on year (Sangle, 2020). Yet, for a show which produced such discussion and such a dedicated fanbase, it is surprising that detailed analyses of its audience are lacking. This is where Watching Game of Thrones comes in. Although the book opens by detailing the myriad ways in which the series has been theorized and conceptualized, it swiftly moves on to outline how the authors study the audiences of shows like Game of Thrones, drawing attention to the work of Anthony Gierzynski (2018) whose approach is the opposite of the authors in ‘every respect that [they] can think of … including in its theory, concepts, methods and ambitions’ (p. 12). This stated, chapter two provides a detailed account of how the project was carried out.

Watching Game of Thrones is the third in a line of projects, headed by Martin Barker, which examine international audiences of contemporary fantasy, beginning with The Lord of The Rings films in 2003 and followed by the Hobbit film trilogy in 2014. The book analyses the findings of over 10,000 completed questionnaire responses to Game of Thrones received between 2016 and 2017. Chapter two thus offers a detailed account of the methodological underpinnings of the three projects since they ‘shared a strong international reach and a common, experimental methodology’ (p. 14). This chapter was particularly interesting for me as an academic involved in audience research, and the discussion of the steps the project went through, some of the complications involved in international research and the principles underlying the questionnaire’s design were especially thought-provoking. Although a detailed discussion of the methodology used could easily take up another book, the authors provide sufficient information on their ‘qualiquant’ method and the various stages the research went through, including the stages of analysis and a link to a website on which research materials and further details about their methodological approach can be accessed. Intriguingly, and possibly at odds with the way some might suggest research is carried out, the authors argue for the role of hunches and intuition – ‘provided only that these can then be tested against the contents of the database’ (p. 30).

The questionnaire circulated by the researchers resulted in responses with a word count of over three million words and provided a ‘richly structured combination of data and discourses’ (p. 17) which the authors explore throughout the book. Underpinning this analysis is the system of ‘ideal-types’ the authors identify in chapter three. Attempting to locate distinct ways of relating to the series amongst their participants, they focus on the response to three ‘sorting’ questions which results in the location of seven distinct kinds of Game of Thrones audience: just the show; debaters; classic fans; contented consumers; fan watchers (later renamed world watchers); players; and book followers. These types are returned to throughout the remaining chapters, in discussions of favourite characters, the metaphorical meanings in Game of Thrones, responses to conflicts and controversies, and the show’s unpredictability. The authors examine the complex ways in which audiences engage with the show and their reasons for doing so, taking into account social, political and cultural contexts. Their analysis of Jon Snow as a favourite character in chapter five, for example, draws attention to two conflicting audience readings: men who chose Jon as their favourite character were more right-wing and higher class, while women who chose Jon were more likely to see him as a ‘Jane Austen-esque brooding gentleman’ (p. 81). Those who chose Arya as their favourite character, on the other hand, seem divided between older viewers who adopt a parental stance and younger viewers who take pleasure in the idea of a young woman defiantly living in a cruel world.

Chapters six and eight deal with both the metaphorical and unpredictable nature of the show, focusing on the meaning of ‘winter is coming’ in the former and the pleasures of not knowing in the latter. Both chapters draw links between world-building, fantasy worlds and the “real” world, harking back to one of the book’s founding questions: how do people relate the series to their own lives and sense of the world? This is not an easy question to answer, particularly given the huge amount of data the authors are working with, but both chapters offer explanations drawing from the words of participants themselves. Chapter seven deals with two of the biggest controversies in Game of Thrones: the Red Wedding and Sansa Stark’s rape by Ramsay Bolton. Again, the authors draw on extensive data gathered from the questionnaire respondents to ‘unpack and analyse the nature of the “sides”’ (p. 117). Of course, as the research took place before the heavily criticized season eight, the biggest controversy is dealt with in a post-script. The authors, acknowledging the importance of the finale to Game of Thrones audiences, analyse comments posted on a change.org petition calling for a rewrite of the final season. Having recognized the many controversies inherent in Game of Thrones itself and, drawing on previous literature that highlights how endings can be problematic, they argue that disappointment should be understood as more than unhappiness with an ending; rather ‘[i]t reveals some very concrete things about the ways that particular kinds of viewers are engaged with the TV show’s whole narrative’ (p. 169). Watching Game of Thrones is, fundamentally, concerned with the complexities of audiences and the dynamic relationship between viewer and text. There is, of course, much more than could be said given the number of responses collected – and the number of words written by respondents – and the authors necessarily had to leave some things out. However, Watching Game of Thrones offers a valuable contribution to large-scale audience research projects and to Game of Thrones scholarship. And I am sure that the access the authors have provided to research materials will enable more worthwhile scholarship on audiences of dark television.