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

[sarasa_cat]

Yes, to tighten the thesis in my point from waaaay above, contemporary feminist analyses can always be applied to any work of fiction but, like any other method of critique, it is best applied in a manner that also examines both the context and the intent of the work and looks to uncover how the context + intent shape the work, and what messages (of power relations, etc.) the work conveys.

The review that we're questioning whomps on the books with a rather clumsy cudgel rather than a finely sharpened chisel.

...

All of that said, I've stood on both sides of the fence as both a Maker (initially a script writer for video games, but other kinds of technology Making now) and as an Academic Critical Theorist (some Marxist theory, much Feminist theory, volumes of Subaltern/Postcolonial theory). In retrospect when looking back at multiple projects, I've found that being a Maker and being a Theorist creates very difficult tensions when being both at the same time. I do not think these tensions are a bad thing, but they can indeed place narrowing forces on the act of Making. I acknowledge that these forces exist (and I suspect GRRM wasn't really thinking about them heavily based on what I've read in the first 80 pages of Game of Thrones), and I accept that there are times that Theory can and should guide Making, and times when it is better to put theory aside. Of course, that doesn't mean toss out theory or don't educate others who are engaged in Making but, instead, to respectfully acknowledge theoretical stances and then move forward, perhaps making time to critique one's work deeply for the deeper layers of message it embraces. It's very much about turning the Editor and Critter off while Making. There's always time for them later, during editing, revision, etc.

(I'd say more under a private post... but the above gives the main thrust of it all ^^)