kellycandthedragons
Banned
Martin's response to the racial criticisms hurled at the finale/"white savior" scene. It's from his blog comments so I won't post a link, as multiple comments contain spoilers.
Martin:
Personally I thought the scene was bad, but my problem was more with how it was shot than the races involved per se. It just came off very cheesy.
As I understand it, the complaints are mostly that the scene was not being conscious of the fact that, yeah there may not be race implications in the world of the show, but the show/this story doesn't exist in a vacuum. It's being broadcast to a world that has had a history with such issues and is still pretty tense about them. That is how I've seen it explained. Plus it's a common trope that people are sick of seeing. The white protagonist comes to a strange land and saves the day. Or something like that.
My opinion? Regardless of the racial undertones, real or imagined, the scene was ridiculous. Why are you standing outside of a city you just defeated instead of going in there? Why did all the former slaves come out? What reason is there for them to call her mother? Was it necessary to have the cheesy "fly" moment? Why was she crowdsurfing? It seems they wanted it to be uplifting, but it just fell short for nearly everyone who saw it. And that's not even considering the race debate. eta: Why were they all posing on this random rock formation that's so conveniently placed?
I personally think that if the scene hadn't been so bad as a scene itself, people wouldn't be talking about the race element quite so much. When you're as good as game of thrones it will be that much more jarring when something makes you roll your eyes