A Live Woman Who'd Gladly Watch A Game of Thrones (Even Without the Sex Scenes)

Of course, I haven't seen HBO's Game of Thrones. And I won't, for a very long time, because I live in France and I'm too Lawful Good to download the series in a non-legal way, even if the waiting really pisses me off. I'll have to content myself with the preview.

But I read the books. All of them. And you know what? I'm a woman. But if I believe Ms. Ginia Bellafante from The New York Times I may not be a "living woman."

As we now live in the Web 2.0. era, and geeks are especially keen on using it, many great people already answered The New York Times on blogs, tweets and e-mails since Amy Ratcliffe from Geek with Curves called all geek girls to submit a letter to the editor of The New York Times about the review. And probably on Facebook, too.

But there are times when you have to repeat, again and again, and retell what other people have already told. That's how the word spreads. That's how we'll be counted as a real audience and not alien exceptions.

Our problem isn't that Ms. Ginia Bellafante didn't like the show. Not even that she wrote a very strange review with no mention of a single actor, character or plotpoint. Our problem is with her assumptions concerning Martin's story, women in general and geek women in particular.

Here is the (most) incriminating paragraph :

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.

We obviously do not agree.

1. How can she assume that a female audience is watching a show because of its erotic scenes? That really amazes me, and worries me a little. For a long time, everyone supposed that sexy material was used to attract male audience and teenage boys with, let's say, hormonal needs. Are women perpetual hormonal-needing-teenagers? The assumption is even more disturbing when linked to Ms. Bellafante opening paragraph :

Keeping track of the principals alone feels as though it requires the focused memory of someone who can play bridge at a Warren Buffett level of adeptness. In a sense the series, which will span 10 episodes, ought to come with a warning like, “If you can’t count cards, please return to reruns of Sex and the City."

So a female audience, who obviously couldn't have such "focused memory," should be contented with sex scenes ?

I don't play bridge. But I was okay keeping track of all Martin's characters and storylines during my reading. And I read all the books, not only watched the first episode of the first season of the show. I'm quite confident I can speak for all geek girls here: not only have we brains, which I'm sure Ms. Bellafante is aware of since she's a woman herself, but we are able to focus on fictional issues, like remembering characters' names and stories, and not only on practical issues, like keeping track of the laundry's schedule. How amazing we are!

2. Had she read Martin's books, she would have learnt that sex wasn't added by HBO producers as a way to attract audience. Sex is present in the books, in a very meaningful and interesting way, because it's part of the games of power, of characterization, of relationships, of everything that makes A Song of Ice and Fire such a wonderful and mature creation. Sex is present because Queen Cersei's using it as an instrument of power, because some married couples still make love and others don't, which is always significant, because the younger characters have to discover it, or to wait for it, as teenagers always do, because some characters feel strong desires and some fight againt their desires. Sex is present for the same reasons we're running a Sexuality and the Geek Weekhere at GeekMom.

3. Martin's readership is female as well as male. Not only because geek girls exist, not only because geek girls read Conan, too. But because his books are interesting for women as well as for men. They're not cheap heroic fantasy. They're dark and smart, with intricate plots, deep feelings, complex characters.

Of course we all list the strong female characters we love in his books. Catelyn Stark won the second rank of my own list of great mother characters in fantasy literature, and Daenerys Targaryen is probably my favorite character in the series. Her character development is wonderful and very subtly rendered. How she begins to gain her independance as a girl, as a woman, as a thinker, as a ruler. How she becomes strong. How she's stronger because she was once frail, because she passed through fire and death and survived. Daenerys faces all the challenges of a woman's life, and more. Yes, including the first sexual relationship. As many fans, I feel she becomes the more suited to the Throne.

But male characters are wonderful, too, far from stereotypes, and very interesting for readers of both genders. And that's not because they're shirtless! Everyone's favorite (and mine, too, side by side with Daenerys) is Tyrion Lannister. Tyrion is not sexy. He's not a proud warrior in chainmail. He's a dwarf. Not a Lord of the Rings' sort of Dwarf, mind, he's just short and malformed. He has strong psychological issues, with his father, with women, with himself. He's smart. More delicate that you'd think. He perhaps epitomize the Geek Character. Can you really say he's not interesting for femal audience? For any audience?

4. And we're past the feminist debate here. I'm tired of hearing and reading that fantasy literature is cheap. And believe me, that's far worse in France than in America. For I feel that sort of contempt for fantasy genre in Ms. Bellafante's review. She begins with :

With the amount of money apparently spent on “Game of Thrones,” the fantasy epic set in a quasi-medieval somewhereland beginning Sunday on HBO, a show like Mad Men might have the financing to continue into the second term of a Malia Obama presidency.

And later wonders :

The bigger question, though, is: What is “Game of Thrones” doing on HBO?

So a "fantasy epic" is not worthy the money? Not worthy to be on HBO? Not worthy to be compared to Mad Men?

I like Mad Men, really. And I love A Song of Ice and Fire. I usually don't boast about it, but I'm a literature teacher. And Martin's books are really good literature. Great story, awesome characters, deep psychology, audacious narrative with multiple points of view, amazing coups de theatre.

I believe we are allowed to be in the same time women, smart, and fans of A Game of Thrones.