Feminist Responses to ASoIaF

[owlmoose]

So I've been meaning to write my own big long post on this topic, but I'm holding off until I finish the first season of the HBO series (which, if my current schedule holds, should happen a week from today). Meanwhile, though, I've been busy mulling over Sady Doyle's recent takedown of the series in Tiger Beatdown. It's been frustrating to me, because I'm hard put to actually argue with much that she says there (except for some factual errors regarding who is claiming to be king of what), and yet the whole thing doesn't sit right with me, for reasons that I was unable to fully explain.

Fortunately, Alyssa Rosenberg of Think Progress does a really excellent job of explaining them for me. I don't agree totally with everything in the Think Progress critique, but there is a lot in here that helped me see why I found the Tiger Beatdown piece reductionist and disappointing. Definitely recommended.

As for my own thoughts... I'll come back with them next week. I hope.

Comments

[zen_monk]

Whoops. I didn't realize that I was making that judgment as well. I think what I was trying to go for was that I see it as a work of fiction that because it has these depictions of human suffering, the reader can look into it as both being able to see the mind processes of how these characters think in this world and understand it, and at the same time be able to step back and examine this world's culture and compare/contrast its values with modern ones and if it's analogous.

[owlmoose]

I wasn't sure if that was your intention, and I'm glad to hear that it was not. :) And I do agree with what you say here -- it's good to examine a story both within the characters' context as well as applying our own.