Whazzat? A Game of Thrones?
Ah. Just another day on the Internet. Where I learn, once again, that my husband must be gay*, because the person that he married can’t possibly be a woman. (*Not, as they say on Seinfeld, that there’s anything wrong with that.)
For your consideration, I bring you this, proof of my defective girl status:
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. While I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s, I can honestly say that 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. “Game of Thrones” is boy fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.
This charming little bit of misogyny and sexism, sadly, was scribed by a woman. The target of her ire, the HBO adaptation of G.R.R. Martin’s absolutely fabulous, A Game of Thrones.
Look, Cupcake, I get it. You don’t like the show. Fine. As someone who merrily skewers books and movies on a regular basis, I respect that. At issue is your broad-based assumption that Teh Womens don’t read fantasy, because our little womanly minds can only comprehend Teh Sex, and therefore A Games of Thrones‘ highly sexualized storyline must be pandering to women.
Or something. Because real women don’t like fantasy. We’re hormone-drenched ninnies who won’t watch or read anything unless it includes sex.
Oh, noes. More fantasy. Time to turn in my uterus.
In one sentence, Ms. Bellafante manages to sneer at two genres, fantasy and romance. Her reasoning, if you can call it that, being that fantasy is the realm of adolescent boys, while romance belongs to girls. And girls, as we all know, are stupid.
In a sense the series, which will span 10 episodes, ought to come with a warning like, “If you can’t count cards, please return to reruns of Sex and the City.’ ”
Shorter Ms. Bellafante: Complex storyline = girls need not apply.
Given her apparently puritanical views on sex,
The imagined historical universe of “Game of Thrones” gives license for unhindered bed-jumping
(Mercy me, Teh Sex! *clutches pearls) it’s no wonder that she, who has apparently met every woman out there and is therefore an expert on the female mind, would hold such a narrow view of gender and genre.
Moreover, she seems to have a political axe to grind (climate change denier), given this statement:
Embedded in the narrative is a vague global-warming horror story.
Readers of the series would note that conflating the coming winter in the storyline with climate change is a stretch, to say the least.
Here’s a suggestion, Ginia, dahling. Read. The. Book.
Here be ‘nother bookshelf shot of my girly geekness.
