Do We Have a New Patron Saint?

[grrrm]

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

Comments

[ashkestral]

Standards are set by a group. If a piece of work meets the standards of the group, it is not logical to argue the piece of work fails to meet the standards of the group.

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".