HBO has been hyping its epic series "Game of Thrones" for a long time now, and fans of the original George R. R. Martin books have been champing at the bit to see their favorite series come to life on screen. While some scathing early reviews had diehard Martin admirers seething, both major press outlets and the blogosphere exploded with outrage at Ginia Bellafante's misguided review in The New York Times.
Less a review than a condemnation of the entire fantasy genre, Bellafante's piece also asserts that most women would never dare to read such "boy fiction" or watch "Game of Thrones" for anything other than its sex scenes. Plenty of "geek girls" had something to say about that.
Girl Book Clubs Only Read Chick Lit?
Forget all of us girls who read Madeleine L'Engle when we were young, or saw "Star Wars" in theaters, or lived for the next "Dragonlance" novel. According to Bellafante, "I have never met a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed to 'The Hobbit' first."
The upside to this narrow-minded comment may be a surge in Web searches and interest in her preferred writer, because the majority of comments online included some version of the question "Who the heck is Lorrie Moore?"
Many female readers professed a fondness for "The Hobbit," however. A visitor to Doris Egan's brilliant rebuttalrecounted: "When I was a little girl, my mom read me and my sister a beautifully illustrated edition of 'The Hobbit' as a bedtime story, chapter by chapter, over the course of weeks. If only Ginia had been there to tell us what's what, we would not have been duped into reading boy fiction."
Egan herself points out the most offensive crime of Bellafante's stereotyping. "I'm thinking now of all the female authors who've been waiting to get out of the 'women's literature' ghetto and into the simple designation of 'literature.' Who are tired of being fenced off and told their work is for certain readers only. Fortunately we've got The New York Times here to draw those lines more sharply."
Wait — Guys Don't Like Sex?
"Game of Thrones" pushes buttons and pushes boundaries, and there's plenty that could be argued for or against the explicit nature of the sex scenes. Bellafante's only thoughts on the subject, however, are that it's a mere tactic to expand the target demo: "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, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise."
Considering that the first episode includes almost exclusively female nudity, a violent orgy scene, brother-sister incest, and rape, I'd say Bellafante has an interesting view of women's taste in erotica. That could be worth exploring, but the review doesn't go there.
Since the sex is only there to net women who wouldn't otherwise be interested in a compelling story, mesmerizing cinematography, fantastical worlds, politics, or power struggles, it somehow suggests that men couldn't care less about the more "feminine" side of "Game of Thrones."
Oddly, Kevin Fitzpatrick at UGO put the graphic lovemaking at number three in his long list of reasons to watch "Game of Thrones." Seeing Lena Headey naked also made the list. Obviously Fitzpatrick didn't get the memo that those are a chick's reasons for watching the series.
Annalee Newitz at io9 hilariously wonders why a dude would watch the "'Gossip Girl' with dire wolves instead of purse dogs" series at all: "Arya just wants to practice her swordfighting homework, but somehow winds up eavesdropping on gossipy discussions about who will be killed. I ask you, would men really have patience to watch a show that's so focused on who told who what?"
Why Would Girls Watch 'Game of Thrones'?
Without knowing diddly about any NYT article, the bloggers over at Geeky Girls Love Sci-Fi were pumped from seeing a screening of the show and composed a list to convince their fellow women to watch. Bellafante will be happy to know that like Fitzpatrick at UGO, the Geeky Girls listed the sex in their top three — though they grouped it with violence and severed heads, lauding all as proof of the show's faithfulness to the books as well as a refreshing fearlessness in storytelling. They also mentioned things like production values and universal themes like love and betrayal.
The reasons-to-watch list over at Geek with Curves includes the fully realized fantasy realm and the deadly power struggles. "The characters are rich and layered (and yes, numerous), and none of them are safe. There are also a lot of kick-ass women and girls."
Ilana Teitelbaum at Huffington Post confesses to being a fan of the books, and declares that love to be neither a feminine or masculine desire. "A good fantasy novel is always about human beings. By and large, the people who love the works of George R. R. Martin do so because the characters are intriguing and the plots engrossing."
As for me, I have always loved fantasy and sci-fi novels, series and films for their imaginative creations of whole new worlds and the ability to transport the reader to somewhere no one has ever been — the ultimate frontier.
I've also been a fan of these genres because they tend to embrace what other genres and mediums fear: strong women, "bizarre" or "icky" ideas, ridiculously long but beautiful sentences, and pretty names full of vowels. I grew up watching "Star Trek" with both my dad and my best friend. My best friend also recommended the Martin books to me, even though she's a girl. My favorite series is about a wizard detective.
It's OK to watch "Game of Thrones" for sexy shots of Sean Bean, and understandable to not be a fan of "Monty Python" style "It's just a flesh wound" blood spatter. It's not OK to tell someone they can't, wouldn't, or shouldn't watch something just because they're a girl.
Consider writer and comedian Tina Fey's memoir recollection of her days on "Saturday Night Live," when star Jimmy Fallon objected to Amy Poehler doing some vulgar and "unladylike" humor: "Amy dropped what she was doing, went black in the eyes for a second and wheeled around on him. 'I don't f---ing care if you like it.'"
That's what we can all say to Ginia Bellafante and The New York Times. We're watching "Game of Thrones" — and we don't f---ing care if you like it.
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