NY Times: Chicks Don’t Dig Chain Mail

In a very nasty critique of George RR Martin’s Game of Thrones adaptation for HBO, Ginia Bellafante seems to not only indicate that she doesn’t read much, but that she has her finger placed firmly on the pulse hidden up her bum.

Not so much with the pulse of literary culture, entertainment, or… err… people who think.

She writes:

The true perversion… 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.

The odd thing is, I have been following many of the online discussions about this series, which is much-beloved.  HBO’s series, too, has been all the buzz, and the buzz is neither “boy” buzz, nor particularly gender-specific.  My own writing group, which is predominantly women, planned several viewing parties this weekend.  The excitement had nothing to do with sex, illicitness, and had everything to do with an outstanding fantasy series.

I’d be more likely to take Ms. Bellafante seriously if not for this particular little snippet:

Like “The Tudors” and “The Borgias” on Showtime and the “Spartacus” series on Starz, “Game of Thrones,” is a costume-drama sexual hopscotch, even if it is more sophisticated than its predecessors. It says something about current American attitudes toward sex that with the exception of the lurid and awful “Californication,” nearly all eroticism on television is past tense.

Um. I know it’s confusing.  But… well… Fantasy is not history.  Sometimes it looks like history.  Sometimes it has unicorns and dragons.  (No word on the unicorns, which sort of have a long standing relationship with virgins… we’ll have to see where Bellafante stands there.) Just because a clever writer makes it look “historical” does not mean it takes place in the past.  See… it takes place in a made-up place.  FANTASY—get it?  One also wonders how something can be both “costume-drama sexual hopscotch” and “more sophisticated than its predecessors.”  There’s some WTFery afoot here, folks.

As for eroticism and chicks and chainmail… if Bellafante finds GOT “erotic” I want to follow her around on her next date.  Bloody, political, and yes—sensual and sexual in turns.  But erotic?

Wow.  Just wow.  

Read the original article HERE… or, you know… the bird cage looks like it could use a new carpet.