what is this I don't even

So… Fantasy Novels Add Sex To Attract Women and Apparently That’s A “Perversion”?

by Susana Polo | 12:35 pm, April 18th, 2011

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.

– Ginia Bellafante‘s review of Game of Thrones for The New York Times.

Ginia Bellafante is not a fan, and she should not be excoriated for not liking the same things that we like. There are plenty of people out there for whom a book that comes with a map, three family trees, and a glossary in the back is not their cup of tea. And there’s nothing wrong with that. After all, some of those people are still fans of Doctor Who, or Pokémon, or Transmetropolitan and there’s no reason why you should be kicked out of the geek community for not being able to get through The Lord of the Rings.

And those other people, the ones who wouldn’t know Star Wars from Star Trek, they need someone to write a review for them too. So Bellafante gives a bit of lip service to fantasy fans (“If you are not averse to the Dungeons & Dragons aesthetic, the series might be worth the effort.”) and then heaps (okay, maybe she molehills) scorn on the idea of creating a fictional language (hey, Avatar grossed $2 billion, you know).

We would like to leave this all beside the point, despite the fact that the only thing more annoying than a person who feels they can be superior because they know more about the stuff they like than you is a person who feels they can be superior because they are not interested in knowing about the stuff you like. We would like to talk about Bellafante’s assumptions about the addition of sex to the genre of high fantasy, as seen above.

Now lets be clear: there are things to talk about when you look at the intersection between feminist ideas and the genre of high fantasy. The women of note in the eons of Middle Earth history, the seminal work of the genre, can be counted on one hand. The land of Narnia also has some questionable “war is ugly when women become involved” motifs, and even Wikipedia admits that when you look at the classics of high-fantasy, you’re looking at a long precedence of male heroes with women as side characters. I don’t say this to condemn high fantasy or suggest that it shouldn’t be read, loved, or written; but just to point out that there’s a lot of interesting discussion to be had there and it’s not hard to see why a casual dip into the genre would pull up only male oriented stories.

(Anybody else find it very difficult to explain why the Kushiel books are so good without making them sound like airport bookstore bodice rippers?)

So I’m not even going to touch on the assumption here that women don’t enjoy high fantasy when it’s actually one of the great bastions of women authors from Anne Bishop to Susan Cooper to Marion Zimmer Bradley. But the assumption that A) the addition of sex to fantasy was something done during the adaptation process and was not originally present in the novels, B) that the sexing up of a book during adaptation was done for the benefit of (straight) women, and C) that that is a disturbing thing is, not to put a fine point on it, really freakin’ weird.

Okay, we can forgive A if you are not familiar with the broad spectrum of fantasy novels, as one might expect when you’re namedropping The Hobbit, a children’s story, as proposed book club fare.

But B and C? If sex is being tossed in to attract the (assumed universal) straight woman then that is an incredibly rare occurrence in today’s media and should be celebrated as against the norm! When I picture a sexy adaptation of a non-sexed-up property, it’s usually something like this, or this. It’s done for the befit of those who are attracted to women (assumed the universally straight male).

Sex is usually something that’s tossed in to attract a young male audience, and it usually makes the work look cheap in comparison. If the industry of cinema is going to try to attract me to a concept or pitch by putting some classy, unusual, girl oriented sex in it, I say it can’t happen fast enough, because clearly asking anything that’s trying for a mainstream audience to publicize itself without sex is far too much.

It just might be difficult for me to watch because I don’t have HBO. Or… cable. Or a television service of any kind other than Netflix.

George R.R. Martin himself has responded to the review, if only to assert some reservations about responding to reviews at all, and simply to say:

(1) if I am writing “boy fiction,” who are all those boys with breasts who keep turning up by the hundreds at my signings and readings?
and
(2) thank you, geek girls! I love you all.

Thanks Mr. Martin. I’m seriously considering starting your series even though it’s not finished yet, which is usually my requirement for fantasy more than three books long.

The Stinger: the lesser perversion (as opposed to the “true perversion” above) to sex being used to attract female viewers is, according to Bellafante, brother-sister incest. #poorchoiceofwords

(The New York Times via about a billion different people.)

TAGS: A Song of Ice and Fire | Game of Thrones | George R.R. Martin | Ginia Bellafante

Anonymous

You know, I’m used to people not liking the weird stuff I like. The tone of utter contempt in this review reminded me of a friend I showed my unicorn collection to when I was in fourth grade and she referred to it as “babyish.” I mean, ouch.

But she can’t even wrap her head around the fantasy aspect of it. Global warming? Referring to Tyron in the same way you would refer to Gimli… It goes so far beyond simply “not getting it that it’s borderline silly.

*She=reviewer in second paragraph
http://twitter.com/IM_SH IMSH

Gene Roddenberry is in the top five at fault for paving the way for fictional languages! Klingon, Vulcan, Romulan, and the intricate Jaradan to name a few. Shame on you sir for implying that other wordly races would speak anything else but English. Sharing your imagination has only lead to raucous and reviled debauchery which has added to our moral decline. But, I like it. :)
http://www.twonerdsandababy.com Marie

You hit the nail on the head here, thank you. I completely agree that it’s no shame for someone to just not be in to sci-fi or fantasy, but her superior tone—”My book club couldn’t be bothered reading that trash! We’re reading serious fiction.”—was what rubbed me the wrong way. I’ve never read Martin’s books but am interested in the show; Oh, and coincidentally, I got my (all female) book club to read Ender’s Game, and there was nary a complaint in the group! S’there. It can be done.

The review is an interesting comment on the supposed worth of Fantasy as a genre; the concept that women are so easily distracted by bright, shiny objects (or, you know, sexah times) and cannot possibly be interested in plot and backstory is, unfortunately, as old as the hills.
http://insaneworld.wordpress.com Gamermomma

DH and I have been waiting for this series to come out for a while. The only reason we have HBO is for a few of their series. With that said when we watched the premier last night, DH said that even the sex was spot on for the books (he has read them, I have not). He was actually going through and explaining a lot to me (I won’t get into spoilers in case people haven’t seen it yet).

It seems that a lot of people take issue with the sex in the story. On a feminist website I have RSS’d they were talking about how they could do without the sex and basically trashing the show.

I think, however, that if it is in the book and the are trying to stay true to the book then they need to put it in. I hate gratuitous sex (Underworld 2 and the last 2 Matrix I just pretend don’t exist)…but I don’t have an issue if they are staying true to the story.

And for the record, I don’t watch shows because of the sex scenes. I just happen to watch shows that have sex in them. I think people just think waaay to much about it and just need to get over it.
http://www.facebook.com/1shewolf JoAnna Luffman

Honestly, what is “serious fiction”, anyway? Unless these people are reading non-fiction, then they are just reading for enjoyment, and that’s BAD. They are being lazy, and should be kicked out of America, for leeching, or something.

Less ranty part! I started reading Star Trek novels in 4th grade. Pern in Middle school. I read Hamilton (porn with vampires!) to whatever I can get my hands on. Good books are all I need. If the reviewer hates a genre, they should not be allowed to review it. NY Times should really know better.
Bigfatcoward

Having watched the first episode last night, I’m even more dumbfounded by Bellafante’s review. Maybe I just don’t understand women, but when I think of ‘adding sex to attract a female audience’ the kind of sex I saw last night doesn’t spring to mind. Yeah, there was some sex and a lot of nudity but it was mostly fairly degrading towards women. So that’s how I saw it, at least. I’m pretty damned far from being a feminist though so maybe I’m just not understanding what’s what.
Oserus99

He he, I treat the Kushiel series allot like I treat anime series. I don’t even bother trying to explain, I just hand them the first book and say read it. =)
Anonymous

Hey, what’s wrong with bodice rippers? (…asked only half jokingly.)

I enjoyed the first few books in GRRM’s series, but put catching up with new releases on hold until the series is done, since I can’t keep track of the nine thousand characters over a multi-year gap between reading. But I wasn’t ever reading it for the sex. Maybe I’m doing it wrong? I was reading it for Arya learning to use a sword.

Man, I *wish* there was a proliferation of high fantasy with female-gaze-friendly sex. (Folks interested in this discussion might also want to check out this thread at NK Jemison’s place: http://nkjemisin.com/2011/02/feminization-in-epic-fantasy/)
Invisabell

Don’t forget hamiltons other series (porn with faeries!!)
http://www.facebook.com/1shewolf JoAnna Luffman

I read them both. :) Porn is good. :)
McNugget

I forgot that since I’m female I’m supposed to hate sex.
Too bad this reviewer is missing out on what really attracted me to the series: characters like Dany, Arya, Catelyn and Brienne.
Ann

I’m confused… I’m a she-geek and all my he-geek friends are reading this. They can’t get enough. They love the story so much that I was tempted to pick it up, but then I heard a couple of things that stopped me… Mainly rape scenes and a lot of sexual degradation towards women. That put me off picking it up right away and I still haven’t tried.

…and the TV series… I’m all for sex, sex is cool, but it was a bit much for my tastes. The three times I walked in on the show while they were watching, I saw boobs flopping around, sex, then more sex. Maybe it was coincidence, but the three times I tried to watch there wasn’t a part without sex. I was uncomfortable watching that kind of stuff with my male friends so I left. To me it looked like a well made softcore porn fantasy. That’s totally fine, I’m not morally objecting here, but the context that the sex was in didn’t appeal to me as a woman… certainly not something I’d watch with other people around… >.>
Jack

“If the reviewer hates a genre, they should not be allowed to review it.”

Having worked as a journalist for longer than I care to admit, by and large I agree with that comment. (And I’ve covered everything from presidential elections to homicide investigations, to both movie and book reviews during my time.)

Side note: There’s a girl who writes for Newsweek, young 20-something girl who writes for Newsweek (and I have no problem with young 20-something writers *nods to Susana*), who constantly makes a similar assumption in all of the pieces she writes, much like this NYT’s reviewer. That nothing important was created or happened before her birth. Every time she does any kind of “best of” list, I cringe. Recently, a “Best films of all time” list of hers only had one movie made before 1986. Out of 40. Ouch! But I digress.

Back to the genre quote. We had a similar problem at a newspaper I used to work for, where one of our sports writers occasionally had to cover a non-sports event, and his writing dripped with sarcasm. If it wasn’t sports, this guy thought it was worthless, and he couldn’t hide it. When a staff writer called in sick (with what I’m pretty sure was a case of “my girlfriend dumped me last night”), I had to send the same sports writer to review Spider-Man 2 that evening. Not knowing, at the time, that the guy hated super hero movies and comics as a whole. His review was so vitriolic that I didn’t even run the thing.

I’m fine with a writer expressing their opinion (all reviews are opinion), but any self respecting reader expects, at the very least, an informed opinion from a book reviewer who is familiar with the medium, subject, or in this case, genre at hand.
Anonymous

*raises hand*
Doctor Who AAAAND Pokemon fan? And now I’ve got a new thing to look up, Transmetropolitan. Thanks!
http://www.twonerdsandababy.com Marie

Jack, you bring up a good point. I look at it like this: I don’t read mystery or true crime novels. They’re just not my thing. So I’m ill-qualified to review them or recommend them or even parse them accurately because I’m not into them and therefore very poorly informed. I don’t have the context of the genre, or a deep knowledge of the allusions, the great examples, the formative authors—the mythology of the genre, if you will. My review would be purely a reaction, rather than a conversation.

It can be temptingly easy to just sort of take an unfamiliar genre and disregard the whole possibility that there’s more to it than just the stereotypes: “I don’t understand it, therefore it’s all total crap.” I think it takes more thoughtful, creative reviewing to approach something you don’t like, work to inform yourself about it, and create a review which balances out personal feelings with as objective and informed an approach as possible. I think the original reviewer did try, but unfortunately it didn’t come out very well.
Jin

This explains a lot…

Sadly, in my experience, most sex scenes (in novels) I’ve come across lack in erotic appeal and do feel tagged on. I have no idea who might find those sexy, but if you’re doing smut, do it right.
So it does have a certain ironic charm that these sex scenes are thrown in so that girls read them, yet the author didn’t bother making them worth reading…
http://twitter.com/MuldMunin Muld Munin

Well, I actually yelled at the screen when it came to Dany’s first time with Drogo. It seemed rapey (in soft lighting even) and the book said that Drogo didn’t touch her until she gave him permission. The whole point is that he is the first man that respects her and she loves him for that; later on she does everything she can to save his life. There was no need to change that.
This whole “all men are rapists and don’t care about whether or not the women want them” thing is becoming really common again and it’s degrading towards men.
http://insaneworld.wordpress.com Gamermomma

@Muld –
Yea, DH said that too about that scene. I haven’t read the books so I couldn’t really comment on it from that perspective. But, yea. That sh*t sucks when they do that…I think they maybe were going for the shock value…maybe thinking it was “better” since they were barbarians?

I do know that I totally lurv Tru Blood and they kinda go back and forth with that one being true to the books. I am curious if they are really going to stay true to these ones or if later they will drift away from it like they did TB.

Off topic, but I always thought men should be more offended by how they are portrayed in general media. Not all men are rapists or even remotely could be called so…and yet they (general terms) allow this stereotype of them to perpetuate.
http://twitter.com/ryeisenberg Rebecca Eisenberg

Great article! It’s interesting how many authors/publishers assume that throwing in a female character to sex up their novels will attract a female audience or that female characters are meant for female viewers — especially considering that most of the readers (and writers) of slash fanfiction are straight women. I could go on forever about the many reasons why I think this is the case, but I’m very curious to get The Mary Sue’s thoughts on it.
http://twitter.com/Anita_Tweets Anita N

She’s an idiot. The kind of woman who reads this kind of stuff (me) would never belong to a “book club”.
http://www.facebook.com/WriterMatthewMRush Matthew MacNish

As a person who is familiar with both the HBO production and the novels, I can tell you that HBO … IS sexing it up a little. Whether that’s a good or bad thing, and WHY they would choose to do that, is debatable.

That doesn’t mean I agree with Ms. Bellafante’s review. I have plenty of female friends who read and love fantasy, with or without sex.
Anonymous

Man, it’s so hard to keep up with the stereotypes these days. Are women such delicate flowers that we can’t possibly watch/read anything so naughty as a sex scene? Do we sigh endlessly over romantic drivel? Or are we sex-crazed to the point where we will get our fictional fix by any means possible, even if it forces us to read — horrors! — FANTASY?
Anonymous

I re-watched that scene, and he doesn’t have sex with her… yet. The writers may be leading you on. Personally, I’m going to wait until episode 2. Cross your fingers, they might not have ruined the “Drogo waiting until she is ready” from the books.
http://anothernotebook.tumblr.com kalsangikid

There is actually some enjoyable non-fiction out there, btw.
http://twitter.com/WidderShinnz Widder Shinns

What’s fascinating is that by treating women as real people who are mistreated in a patriarchal society, GRR seems to have triggered Ginia’s wrath.

She seems to argue that “If only he had made all the women boring and pure, left out the rape, the pressures to marry and the rest of the very real trappings of a patriarchal agrarian-feudal society, then women’s lives would have been safely hidden.”
http://www.extremelydissatisfied.wordpress.com Adam R. Charpentier

Ebert pulls that same shit quite a bit.

Dude is missing a jaw, though.
http://twitter.com/butlerfetish Jade

Oh the wonder and joy of Transmetropolitan. That and Preacher are my two favorite comics of all time. Hunter S. Thompson-inspired journalist character in a semi-dystopian future sprawl city with highly detailed background artwork (oh the Easter eggs!) and some brilliant story lines. One of the most lovable misanthropes ever.
http://twitter.com/MuldMunin Muld Munin

Yeah, I’m hoping for that too.
Portable.tv

We agree completely!
http://portable.tv/film/post/screen-capture-obsessing-over-babes-in-fur/
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7G4SWUX2MCWWXLMYNN347JMIZY Frodo Baggins

Now who’s taking a superior tone?
http://pulse.yahoo.com/_7G4SWUX2MCWWXLMYNN347JMIZY Frodo Baggins

I look down on Pokemon fans over age 12. I’m sorry, I can’t help it. The show is such a mercenary piece of insipid crap.
http://juliench1.livejournal.com/ T-kat

You should at least read the first book for yourself. If you think about it in the context of midieval times, then yeah, women are going to be treated like property and chattel nine times out of ten. The thing that i am looking forward to in this series and in this book is the evolution of these women. If this show grows to encompass the happenings of the entire book thus far, she will eat her words because the women in this series are no joke. They are powerful, complex and so much more than just objects.
http://juliench1.livejournal.com/ T-kat

You should at least read the first book for yourself. If you think about it in the context of midieval times, then yeah, women are going to be treated like property and chattel nine times out of ten. The thing that i am looking forward to in this series and in this book is the evolution of these women. If this show grows to encompass the happenings of the entire book thus far, she will eat her words because the women in this series are no joke. They are powerful, complex and so much more than just objects.
Slothboy

That’s actually not the point… The point is that Gina Bellafante is talking out of her ass and the sex scenes were there from the beginning and definitely not just thrown in.