Achieving Authenticity: The Maester’s Path
February 27th, 2011
This week, an assortment of critics and bloggers received what is considered the first part of an ongoing “experience” called the Maester’s Path, a transmedia initiative to support the April 17th debut of HBO’s Game of Thrones. The fairly intricate wooden box features a collection of maps and other scrolls meant to be artifacts of Westeros, as well as a collection of scents that when merged together capture the olfactory essence of different locations.
I was lucky enough to receive one of these boxes from HBO, and I spent yesterday morning mixing scents, taking pictures and poring over the scrolls. This was, after all, what I was instructed to do by the scrolls within the box, and so I journeyed to King’s Landing (which smells of summer fruit and parchment) and the Dothraki Sea (which smells of campfire and “Khal’s herd,” which smells as you would imagine).
However, while this level of personal experience is encouraged by the hands-on nature of the activity, there is another step to this process. That step is telling all of you about my experience, sharing my pictures and detailing my impressions: it’s the step which is encouraged by the letter from HBO which sat on top of the box, rather than the scrolls from Westeros which were found inside, and it has manifested as a large collection of extensive “unboxings” which allow fans who did not receive a box themselves to still experience this “first link in the chain.”
The question now becomes at which point these fans will be able to walk the path themselves, rather than living vicariously through a chosen few.
Cultural Learnings 