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Ginia Bellafante. She Knows the World
Apr. 20th, 2011 12:06 pmGinia Bellafante, fast off an online pasting at the hands of female fantasy fans has once again waded back into the argument, attempting to defuse the collection of fans calling for her head by hewing her argument back to GoT in specific (which, really, barely had anything to do with her review) and diving into the comfortable armor of 'this is criticism and you don't have to agree with it'.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/pull-up-a-throne-and-lets-talk/
The problem was that Bellafante wasn't being critical of GoT, except in a very roundabout way. Lots of people would happy admit that there's some intensely creepy undertones in Martin's series that could earn a deservedly grim shellacking at the hands of feminist critics. Martin himself doesn't help in his blog, writing detailed odes to the casting for his young female characters which keeps drifting over the line into parked red utility van territory.
Bellafonte, in her original article, made it clear that she doesn't know a single woman that knows fantasy. Thus, fantasy must be a male prevue. Getting outside of the whole 'personal experience doesn't not necessarily mean universal truth' response, it brings up a whole lot of questions about this woman's ability to understand genre and what fantasy is in the first place.
As I wrote in the review, I realize that there are women who love fantasy, but I don’t know any and that is the truth: I don’t know any. At the same time, I am sure that there are fantasy fans out there who may not know a single person who worships at the altar of quietly hewn domestic novels or celebrates the films of Nicole Holofcener or is engrossed by reruns of “House.”
I'm going to avoid vomiting about Holofcener, who directs television shows and makes safe, women-oriented 'quirky' movies that attract A-list talent and yet demand to be taken seriously as independent film to appeal to hipsters and their moms. She's not bad, but if she's looking to establish bonofides with that and House, really, I'm quickly losing any belief that her boundaries are wider than Oprah's Picks and prime time programming.
Still though, she doesn't know a single woman that hasn't lost her shit over Harry Potter? Or, say, Atwood's 'Ornyx and Crake' or 'Handmaidan's Tale'? She doesn't have a single friend who cherished 'The Last Unicorn' or 'Watership Down' as a child? Not one of them found some sort of 'truth' as an intelligent, vaguely rebellious teen in Clive Barker in the early 90s? Not a single one that had a 'Xena' or 'Buffy' night? Did she herself avoid her cherished Holofcener's work on 'Six Feet Under'?
Fantasy is so ubiquitous in modern culture that it is impossible to untwine it from both popular culture and intellectual culture. To say that you don't know a single woman who likes fantasy means one of two things; that you live in a tiny encalve that involves almost no female contact from the outside world; or you've created a specific ghetto-ized definition of fantasy at it's most shallow and ignorant definitions; starting with Conan and stopping at the Hobbit, with a brief nod to D&D which is played only by pimply male geeks who have never touched a woman because that's the opinion you formed in grade ten.
Bellafante isn't necessarily sexist or offensive in her article; she's simply too ignorant to have any crediability as a serious reviewer of anything touching on the fantasy genre, and the blame falls on the NYTimes for giving a grossly unqualified writer an assignment she was incapable of handling. It would be like asking her to provide detailed reporting on minute developments in neuro-science - it would be a pile of inaccurate assumptions dumbed down in order for her to make some kind of point to mask her ignorance of the topic.
http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/pull-up-a-throne-and-lets-talk/
The problem was that Bellafante wasn't being critical of GoT, except in a very roundabout way. Lots of people would happy admit that there's some intensely creepy undertones in Martin's series that could earn a deservedly grim shellacking at the hands of feminist critics. Martin himself doesn't help in his blog, writing detailed odes to the casting for his young female characters which keeps drifting over the line into parked red utility van territory.
Bellafonte, in her original article, made it clear that she doesn't know a single woman that knows fantasy. Thus, fantasy must be a male prevue. Getting outside of the whole 'personal experience doesn't not necessarily mean universal truth' response, it brings up a whole lot of questions about this woman's ability to understand genre and what fantasy is in the first place.
As I wrote in the review, I realize that there are women who love fantasy, but I don’t know any and that is the truth: I don’t know any. At the same time, I am sure that there are fantasy fans out there who may not know a single person who worships at the altar of quietly hewn domestic novels or celebrates the films of Nicole Holofcener or is engrossed by reruns of “House.”
I'm going to avoid vomiting about Holofcener, who directs television shows and makes safe, women-oriented 'quirky' movies that attract A-list talent and yet demand to be taken seriously as independent film to appeal to hipsters and their moms. She's not bad, but if she's looking to establish bonofides with that and House, really, I'm quickly losing any belief that her boundaries are wider than Oprah's Picks and prime time programming.
Still though, she doesn't know a single woman that hasn't lost her shit over Harry Potter? Or, say, Atwood's 'Ornyx and Crake' or 'Handmaidan's Tale'? She doesn't have a single friend who cherished 'The Last Unicorn' or 'Watership Down' as a child? Not one of them found some sort of 'truth' as an intelligent, vaguely rebellious teen in Clive Barker in the early 90s? Not a single one that had a 'Xena' or 'Buffy' night? Did she herself avoid her cherished Holofcener's work on 'Six Feet Under'?
Fantasy is so ubiquitous in modern culture that it is impossible to untwine it from both popular culture and intellectual culture. To say that you don't know a single woman who likes fantasy means one of two things; that you live in a tiny encalve that involves almost no female contact from the outside world; or you've created a specific ghetto-ized definition of fantasy at it's most shallow and ignorant definitions; starting with Conan and stopping at the Hobbit, with a brief nod to D&D which is played only by pimply male geeks who have never touched a woman because that's the opinion you formed in grade ten.
Bellafante isn't necessarily sexist or offensive in her article; she's simply too ignorant to have any crediability as a serious reviewer of anything touching on the fantasy genre, and the blame falls on the NYTimes for giving a grossly unqualified writer an assignment she was incapable of handling. It would be like asking her to provide detailed reporting on minute developments in neuro-science - it would be a pile of inaccurate assumptions dumbed down in order for her to make some kind of point to mask her ignorance of the topic.
