Game of Thrones
Hmmmmmm. Yet another unpopular fannish opinion from moi. None of the contained-herein opinions are meant as offense to anyone (of the many millions!) who loves this show. Carry on! Be well in your fannishness! I am happy for you. But just can't agree
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I love some of the casting (Cersei, Tyrion, Jamie, Littlefinger) but wading through this s...t is getting really hard. If you're interested Tiger Beatdown wrote a really good takedown of the (book)series and GRRM (and they noted, IMO rightly, that the extra R must stand for rape). It might be hard to read for a fan of the books, but I found it very interesting.
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I've spent years discussing the misogyny of the books as well so I doubt I'd find it a hard read, probably a cathartic one. ;) But the books are more complex for me--I can love aspects of them while hating others. With the series, I feel like HBO just went 'wheeeeee, chance to show lots of fucking and brutality' and galloped off with it. Which is taking the worst aspects of the books and revelling in them (and IMO encouraging George to do the same--something he REALLY didn't need!).
Also, Book 5 was almost unbearable to me. If I didn't love some characters very deeply, I wouldn't keep reading. It feels like shovelling shit a lot of the time. ;) And I know it might be hard to understand why I *do* read on despite that but it's a very long-standing relationship. ;) But omg, my rants against Martin have been getting stronger over the years...! However, it's a funny situation because I also am super-sensitive to these characters still and when I see them cheapened and distorted in the tv series it's hard to take.
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But, boy, is it nice to run into someone who acknowledges the sexism and misogynism in GoT! I mean, we all 'consume' media that is somehow problematic in one way or the other, and yeah, we need to 'divided-minded' to sort of withstand the thing that the things we like have less than perfect elements.
(I recently noted that GoT is misogynistic and sexist, and in the process I chewed out jon Snow and his utter amazement that the guy that raped and 'married' his daughters to produce more daughter-wives killed the sons -this, in a place that had only the rapist and the 'wives' present-. I also remarked how Jon only acted in horror after he realised that the sons were being killed -at the same time he barely blinked at all the rape-. In result, I got my first telling-to online. I apologised, and so did the other person, which was way cool, but still it stang: GoT wears its misogynism on its sleeve, and yet it's hard to confront the issue. Of course, it was madly bad form of me to criticize something someone loved, and with those turns of phrase, so yeah, I brougth it on myself...)
And now I've probably stepped over a line and being an asshole again by sharing this. To be fair the writer apologised after I did, and things are apparently cool -and I full well appreciate the apology, and again, I was out of line, but still I was kind of reeling, and as I saw that you had answered my comment about GoT, I kind of flinched. Apparently my rage over the problematic elements in GoTcan easily touch a nerve... but since it was you, I should have known better ;) Thanks for reminding me that liking something doesn't have to mean that we have to like or condone every element in the thing we like.
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Dany is compelling in the tv series! Dany was the site of some of the worst misogyny in the books so I was pleased with some adjustments there. In that way I can appreciate the television decision making. However, Cersei's the opposite ... see it's amazing you describe her as having 'some backbone'. In the books, she really IS queen of everything!! At least she carries herself as if she is. And frankly it's far more powerful. She is unlikeable but I'm a fan of writers allowing their characters to BE unlikeable sometimes. Her power was really tangible in the books and it's so diluted here, I hate it :(.
Oh Jon ... well you have a sympathetic audience in me here. Because I hate the actor so much. And yes, the tv version REALLY emphasised the son-killing as the worst bit. In the books it's more subtle. We get Jon's internal perspective when he first finds out about the women, and he's uncomfortable from the very start. Then when he's there he observes it all at close hand and it's more like it all boils up in him to to the point where even though he *knows* they're supposed to turn a blind eye to it all, he can't, and the baby is just the tipping point. But here the tv series first of all wrote a clunky script around it and then handed it to that TERRIBLE actor, who couldn't convey shit, let alone subtleties of reaction. So it definitely skewed it more misogynisitcly than the original.
But I know how it is. People are passionate about what they love and it can be very challenging to have someone with a critical view of that character. I've shied away myself from posting about GoT for the same reason--I think my feelings could hit other people's nerves, and I probably wouldn't comment in someone else's journal post about it for that reason. But I just got to the point where I had to at least put my own feelings on record. :( Because it does get a LOT of adulation! And my own feelings are at odds...
It's always kind of a shock when something like that happens online, because in an ideal world we'd all be able to tolerate some criticism without taking it personally. But I know myself I'm sensitive around my very favourite characters, we're all human. Sometimes we don't know all the reasons why something is particularly special or important to someone--I try to remember that. Even when sometimes I'm all 'you like THEM???? SRSLY????!!!' ;p
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