Do We Have a New Patron Saint?
it seems that some of the GRRMlins have taken issue with Ms. Bellafonte's review of HBO's new production.
Ginia Bellafonte, we here at FTBG salute you. Stick to your guns and speak your truth, that's what we support 'round these parts.
Now I should hopefully be watching the first episode tonight, and I will post my thoughts ASAP. So I can't speak ( Read more... )
Ginia Bellafonte, we here at FTBG salute you. Stick to your guns and speak your truth, that's what we support 'round these parts.
Now I should hopefully be watching the first episode tonight, and I will post my thoughts ASAP. So I can't speak ( Read more... )
On another topic, she pissed people off because instead of reviewing the series, her "review" could be summarized in:
"I don't like fantasy, my female friends don't like fantasy, and if you like fantasy you're a 15 year old kid. And don't watch it".
Cinematography? Acting? Casting choices? Plot? Arts and crafts? She didn't mention any of it all.
It's OK to dislike the series. It's OK to hate fantasy, or to hate the books, or the authors... But if you get paid by reviewing stuff, you ought to... you know, review the stuff. Mention something about the plot, or about the technical quality, or about the acting. You can say you hate fantasy. You can say your friends hate fantasy. You cannot say "only 15 year old kids like fantasy". Unless you want to look like an obnoxious idiot with delusions of intellectual greatness.
She wasn't criticised for attacking George, but for being a snob who can't do her job properly. If you write a review about Spiderman III, you should say someting about the movie, and not stick to "I don't like comic books and whoever does is childish and stupid and male". Which is what she did. Frankly, people don't hate her just because... she earned it.
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The audience for the Song of Fire and Ice is white men, because white men are the default. Certainly the books are better than the tv series, but even the books have problems with the way race and women are depicted. While I agree that GRRM is attempting to make three dimensional female characters, that doesn't mean he succeeds in treating women and men equally in the books.
A USC Study of the top 100 films of 2008 shows that 67% of the characters are male, while only 33% are female. In reality, men and women are almost 50/50 in the population. Song of Fire and Ice continues this Hollywood trend.
Check out and count the male vs female characters:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_characters_in_A_Song_of_Ice_and_Fire
In the first list, we get 38 men and 13 women. The second list has 22 men, 5 women. That makes 60 men to 18 women. That makes 23% of the characters women. How sad is it that Hollywood, where women are rarely treated equally to men, is doing better representing women this this book series?
It's completely sad that as women, we can read a book and be so happy about the few women that stand out, and declare this is putting us on equal foot, when the reality is so far from that. Add in the interpretation used for the tv show - lots of naked women fucking completely clothed men, and tell me how women aren't be objectified in the show?
I think many women who sees the show WITHOUT knowing the book would react the same way, and that makes her review 100% valid.
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Her review says that the illicitness (sex as in Dany's rape) was meant for females. Tell me how on Earth are fucking rapes and incest meant to be attractive for females. Her review made no mention whatsoever about the plot, the excellent acting, the story or the background. Global warming fantasy story? Seriously? The review was crap because instead of talking about the reviewed material, it was a list of absolutely personal reasons why the bigoted reviewer didn't like fantasy. And that makes a crappy review.
You dare answer saying "all reviews are like this"? What kind of defense is that? I don't know what you are used to in the USA, but if all other reviewers are just as bad, then all of them are bad and Bellafante still did a crappy job of NOT reviewing the series. Plus, don't ever try to defend anything with the "But everybody does it!" answer. It just proves you wrong in company.
About the books having less female characters, I am a woman and I will answer what Ray Bradbury did: get your own typewriter. Martin will write about the stuff he's more comfortable with, so logically, there will be more male characters. When I write, there are more female characters. Martin's work is to try to make a good story, not to fight for gender equality. That's the work people do in real life, not in art.
You commit the same mistake as Bellafante: "It is sad that us women... " Sorry? Us? When did your opinion become mine? I don't know about you, but I am politically active in my country, and when I want to change the world for the better, I work in the real world. I do NOT demand art, which is fiction, to be fair or non-sexist. This is fantasy for adults, we're old enough to see the difference between fantasy and reality. I like good plots and good characters, and Martin has dozens of those. I didn't ask for a 50-50 ratio between sexes, races and disabled people. I asked for a good story, period.
If us women want books with more and better female characters, then we should write them ourselves. If I wrote a book, you can bet there would be better female than male characters. And I'd let no one tell me I should write things the other way around to please 50% of the population. Martin is a man and he probably feels more comfortable writing about men. I may like his work or not, but I'll be damned if I let another woman declare that I don't like stuff because she doesn't, and according to her, all women like the same thing she does. Great job stereotyping, genius, who is being sexist here? Martin is writing fiction. Bellafante was being sexist about real women in the real world. Martin would never say all girls are like Sansa Stark. Bellafante claimed all the rest of women share her tastes. It's fucking insulting for people who like adult fantasy, for women, and for reviewers who dislike fantasy but who bother in actually watching the goddamn review material before spitting out their prejudice.
About the fanservice... there was fanservice for the men (Dany into the bathtube, NOT her wedding night scene), but also for the women. Do you think it was chance that there was an added scene with three of the youngest and most attractive male characters getting shaved, who were, coincidentally, naked from the waist up? That was the same eye candy, thrown at girls. Please, Jon Snow had even his chest and arms shaved. To think Dany's wedding rape and the twins rather nasty sex scene were thrown in "for the girls" is just insulting. The rape scene is meant to be distressing and unpleasant. Unless Bellafante is a fan of "romantic" bodice-ripper stuff, I don't see how on Earth she couldn't see that the viewer is not to be titillated by Dany's situation, but scared for her.
But beyond all that, Bellafante did a bad review because she did not review the material. Period.
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The audience for the New York Times is men and women ages 25 - 54, highly skewed toward the older demographic with an Average age of 46. Readers are mostly American, employed full time, middle or upper class, and have some college education or a degree. Therefore, an educated, middle class, 45 year old woman is the correct person to review this for the New York Times audience. Her style of review with critical commentary is also approrpiate for this target audience - which makes her review valid. It would be innapropriate for say, a entertainment news magazine like Variety or Entertainment Weekly.
I haven't found an official target audience demographic for Game of Thones, but I found some guesses that the target audience is male, 18 - 35.
Now you stated: Tell me how on Earth are fucking rapes and incest meant to be attractive for females.
The author doesn't state it is. In fact, she states the exact opposite.
As we read the article, we find lots of sarcasm and humor (as well as comments about the plot and setting of the show and the background of how it came to be. In American reviews of TV/Film/Theatre, acting is rarely mentioned unless someone is outstanding or fails miserably).
The key to the line you are speaking of is in the paragraph before it. She describes the show as "Playboy-TV-style plot points," "costume-drama sexual hopscotch," and "unhindered bed-jumping". These descriptions would not be used to market sexual activity to a female target audience.
She also takes HBO and Showtime to task for creating shows set in historical contexts where women are insubordinate to men. This is key to understanding both the review and the next paragraph.
"The true perversion, though, is the sense you get that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies" is a sarcastic statement that means if the sex in the show was a way to target women, they failed miserably. She says it's a perversion if they meant it to attract women, because it doesn't. She's also calling the show perverted in general with this statement, describing the sexual activity described in the previous paragraph as "perversions".
She doesn't speak for all women either. She says there must be women who read these kind of books, she just doesn't know any who do.
The interpretation that these kind of books mean all fantasy is also incorrect. Again, the context in the previous paragraph shows she is referring to male-oriented historical fantasy where men are dominant over women, as something that may not attract a female audience. She states "books like Mr. Martins" and "The Hobbit" - both them fit into patriarchal societies where women are significantly unequal. That's her argument for the whole review - she's writing about books and tv shows where women are subservient to men, yet, they try to appeal to women while doing so. She continues in the next paragraph to criticize where HBO is going with her programing in general.
Note:
"Us" did not include you, but I + the many women I have read posting about the same subject, defending "girl geekdom" from the evil women who wants us to have TV shows that represent a positive image of women. "We" is the royal "we" - a more polite version of "I" which I abuse endlessly, along with the singular "they".
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