It's all about the perverted sex -_-

[dragonimp]

The show has been elaborately made to the point that producers turned to a professional at something called the Language Creation Society to design a vocabulary for the savage Dothraki nomads who provide some of the more Playboy-TV-style plot points and who are forced to speak in subtitles. Like “The Tudors” and “The Borgias” on Showtime and the “Spartacus” series on Starz, “Game of Thrones,” is a costume-drama sexual hopscotch, even if it is more sophisticated than its predecessors. It says something about current American attitudes toward sex that with the exception of the lurid and awful “Californication,” nearly all eroticism on television is past tense. The imagined historical universe of “Game of Thrones” gives license for unhindered bed-jumping — here sibling intimacy is hardly confined to emotional exchange.

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.

From here.

:|
As a woman who's been reading fantasy since she discovered reading, I ... don't really know what to say to that. So many wrong assumptions I don't even know where to start.

Comments

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm still kinda stuck at "what - no." "Boy fiction"? Really? "Patronizing"? If anyone's being patronizing, it's her and her "I do not doubt that there are women in the world who read books like Mr. Martin’s". And I'm sorry but, when I think "gee, I want to read some sex," A Song of Ice and Fire is NOT what comes to mind, because the sex in those books was really not written to be sexy.

[shawk.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I find the sex in Martin's series kind of interesting, actually, but not in the "oooh, sex-ay" kind of way, because really, generally the sex is not written to be romance-y and in the next scene, someone's brain gets bashed out their ear or something and that would kill whatever mood might have been set. However, the way that Tyrion experiences sex and the language Martin uses is totally different than when Cersei is having sex or Dany is having sex, etc., which is definitely deliberate and reveals something about the character.

I just watched the first installment, since my free HBO runs through the end of the month, and there were like two sex scenes... one is necessary to Dany's plot and one is necessary to, well, the plot in general (poor Bran!). Not sure how that leads to the conclusion that the sex must have been put in just for the ladies who are oh so bored by fantasy otherwise, or whatever.

BTW, Sean Bean is really good as Eddard, but I can't help resenting that once again he's a doomed character. ;)

[dragonimp.livejournal.com]

I saw who Sean Bean was cast as and kinda went, "what, is 'dies well and nobly' part of his resume now?" XD

[shawk.livejournal.com]

I guess it's better than being the go-to baddie, which he was for a long time? Kinda?

The critic wrote a blog in "response" to the criticism of her "review." She still doesn't get it-- and still has yet to review the show, rather than the people she supposes like fantasy. Can I be a NYT TV critic? I'm pretty sure I could manage to actually, you know, review shows, even if I don't especially care for the genre.