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

the subaltern does not speak

[sarasa_cat]

Yes, even though I'm not as knowledgeable about the series as you or anyone else who's read it all as it stands so far (hope the next book comes out quicker?!), that review in question felt far too selective and was rather disappointing because of that fact. (Although I'm just echoing points made above).


All that said, any time a Maker makes something, they've put out a cultural artifact for someone to critique. Obviously, people with different backgrounds and experiences can and will have very different buttons pushed or no buttons at all.

For me, as a woman, a minority (although now more of an barely-visible but not invisible minority since moving to NA Pac Coast given that many but not all people here bucket me into the "white folks...or white enough" category), and as a person with strong family ties to both the Ruling Colonizers and the Subaltern, I really do have to admit that the more energy I put into Making, the less and less I want to put energy into theory-based critique.

That said, do I want to critique GRRM's books from a feminist and (especially) subaltern point of view? Hell yes. :D

But... do I want to get dragged into endless arguments about my own story ideas making someone or some culture or some cultural element "look bad"? Sadly, there's far too much of a double edged sword forged out of community's expectation, hopes, dreams, desires for power that swing to cut down the Makers who they thought to be One of Their Own but dare to present a view that they perceive as less flattering. I find myself carefully balancing the pain out such that we have successful!Subaltern balancing fuckup!Subaltern so no one can point a finger at me or disinvite me from family holiday (unless, of course, they grind their axe in a lopsided review like the one that started this thread). But then I grumble at myself. I feel manipulated by a double standard. Meanwhile, who's making the blockbuster SF/F movies and novels? (I'm looking at you James Cameron, and also HBO+GRRM) And what are some of the highly problematic tropes they are selling? And selling So So $o $o So very, very well all around the world.

It's no wonder that I am still writing 2500-8000 story words per month but not posting a single one of them. -__-

Re: the subaltern does not speak

[owlmoose]

I agree with what you say above about needing to turn off the Critter and the Editor while we are creating. And I feel the tension, too, in my own work as a Maker, between my creative impulses (shaped as they are by canon and my own upbringing in western society) when I do things like write long stories that barely pass the Bechdel Test or engage problematic tropes and so forth. I do try to go back and apply the critique later, and I definitely do my best to own my choices if I get called on them. (Fortunately I am low profile enough that it hasn't really happened to me. Yet.)