women of thrones

[Fiona Shnapple]

War, fantasy, sex: averting one’s eyes from at least two of these
became a hot issue when Game of Thrones, the hit HBO television
adaptation of Martin’s books, began airing in April 2011. From the
start, the show’s graphic representations of violence (you lose count
pretty early on of the times blood pumps out of gaping throat wounds)
and of sexuality—of female nudity in particular—have led many critics
and viewers to dismiss the series as “boy fiction.” (Thus the New York
Times critic; the climactic section of a shrewder, more appreciative
review by the New Yorker critic began, “Then, of course, there are the
whores.”)1

And yet the show has been a tremendous hit. This is, in part, a
testament to the way in which fantasy entertainment—fiction,
television, movies, games—has moved ever closer to the center of mass
culture over the past couple of decades, as witness the immense
success of the Lord of the Rings adaptations, the Harry Potter
phenomenon, and the Hunger Games books and movies. What’s interesting
is that the HBO Game of Thrones has attracted so many viewers who
wouldn’t ordinarily think of themselves as people who enjoy the
fantasy genre. This has a great deal to do with the complex
satisfactions of Martin’s novels, whose plots, characterization, and
overall tone the series reproduces with remarkable fidelity—and whose
mission is, if anything, to question and reformulate certain clichés
of the fantasy/adventure genre about gender and power.




http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/nov/07/women-and-thrones/?pagination=false
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Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l