Okay, this is a critique about Someone Who Got it Mostly Right, a rare breed, and even more surprising to find it coming in the form of a white man (that doesn't make it better, only more surprising.) George R R Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire.
Wow, I love these books. I used to like Robert Jordan (THERE'S a subject for critique, if I ever feel like pushing myself into depression) when I was in middle school, but as I have gone from annoying and immature to more confident in myself and a better thinker, so has my taste gone from immature to actual quality. This is epic fantasy as it should be done.
And the women! Oh, a fantasy wife that is neither unrealistically allowed to run the house nor without value in the house! Women, portrayed as real people! Oppression and misogyny that is not glossed over! Oh glory! A tomboy who is a real person! A girly girl who is a real person! With character arcs and everything!
Sudden thought: Why do I have to be grateful for that which should be ubiquitous? Shit, there goes my emotional high. My points of contention:
Cersei is a feminist. In fact, she is the only feminist character. She reminds me of Beatrice from Much Ado About Nothing--"O, that I were a man!" She is also the least likable of the POV characters. Her portrayal is a little condescending--does she have to be quite so clueless about what's going on around her? I mean, can we cut this woman some slack? The book appears to frown on her sleeping with others, but I don't see what was so great for her about sex with Jaime. I mean, I do, but at the same time both times we saw them having sex it was Jaime sexually assaulting Cersei. No means no, Kingslayer. But my point is that portraying the only feminist as unlikable, cheating, clueless, vain, cruel, and so on--well, it's not very nice. And it's not very representative.
Two lesbian interactions. Dany and her handmaid...for Dany it was portrayed as happening because she needed a man but didn't have one. Lesbianism as temporary, not serious, to be replaced by heterosexual interactions. Cersei and Taena was all about Cersei wishing she were a man. Lesbianism again as poor substitute for someone who just really wants a penis, whether to possess it or to be penetrated by it. Not cool, my man.
Okay, I get that rape is a fact of life, and I get that refusing to name rape or talk about rape minimizes the problem. But at some point it just starts to get upsetting. You need a big fat trigger warning on your books or something, because dude, I was triggered. More than once. As in, need to put the book down, stare at nothing for half an hour, freak out, trying to escape from my memories, finding it necessary to tell myself over and over again that it didn't really happen in order to calm down. Please consider that many people may have such reactions to rape in your books.
Maybe you should think about whether so much rape is really necessary for your vision. It didn't at first, but now that it just keeps happening again and again and just won't stop it sort of reminds me of Terry Goodkind. Or even Robert Jordan and his penchant for getting his characters into BDSM situations. I'm leaning toward gratuitous. It's definitely really, really scary.
I'm worried about Brienne and how you're going to deal with her. Her thoughts seem to turn to Jaime a lot more often than his thoughts turn to her. Please don't let Jaime become her whole motivation. Let there be give and take in this budding relationship. Jaime has a much stronger sense of self and is far less romantic than Sansa; he should be able to see past Brienne's looks.
Melisandre. She wears red. She's beautiful. She's an evil witch and (given what Maester Aemon said) stupid too. She has too much power over her man. She's a very irresponsible character for you to have made. Very stereotypical, no sympathy at all. Really. "Hopefully this honest, simple, pulled-himself-up-by-the-bootstraps dude will be able to slay the beast!" Davos's character, though I like him, reeks of unexamined privilege. The beautiful women as evil temptresses is something I would expect from, say, Genesis, not you.
Lord Tywin's dead wife. She is portrayed as a nice, dutiful woman who literally lived and died only to give life to her children and lend Tywin some pathos. She reminds me all too forcefully of the Disney trope that the best mother is a dead mother. (Cinderella, anyone?) Knock it the hell off.
Thank you for your time.
Showing posts with label BMIADM Syndrome. Show all posts
Showing posts with label BMIADM Syndrome. Show all posts
Sunday, July 6, 2008
Hunchback of Notre Dame
Ever seen The Hunchback of Notre Dame? Probably the darkest movie Disney has ever done. ("And now all Paris is burning because of you!") Also one of my favorites (Bells of Notre Dame? EPIC)
It's also a movie that has the potential to be very socially conscious. Sexism, racism, religion, deformity, class awareness--this movie touches on it all. Sadly, it fails to follow through on these issues.
Esmerelda. She's pretty cool. A little cliched, the highly sexualized spunky girl with a heart of gold. Still, she's a fun, talented, brave woman.
But did you notice that she was basically the only woman in the movie? Racking my brains for other women, I come up with 1) Quasimodo's mother, 2) that little girl in the purple dress, and 3) Laverne the gargoyle. Either way, note that she is the only adult human woman alive during the actual story.
Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the three other main characters are all attracted to her. Quasimodo is helplessly in love with her, Phoebus finds her exciting, and Frollo has unholy desires for her. Did anyone else notice this? It's kind of freaky.
Because, okay, here's the thing. Only having one female character is bad. Women make up half of the population and that's about what it takes to satisfy me. A scarcity of women results in situations like we have with Esmerelda the Only Woman Available, and also the beginning of the movie.
Quasimodo's mother, as she must be defined, for her character gets its importance only from her relation to a man, dies in the first four minutes of the movie. She dies a heroic death in the service of a male, and that's what makes her likable. This may be the only situation like this that has been pointed out to you, so you may think I'm coming out of nowhere on this one, but I'm starting to get pretty tired of women who we approve of because they make sacrifices for men.* (Harry Potter also made a pretty big deal out of this.) I'd like to see someone we approve of because they make a sacrifice for a woman.
You may say "But this is bullshit! Quasimodo's mother (whose name we do not know) would have done the same thing for a daughter!" Well, that's the thing. She didn't have a daughter. Quasimodo was a male. (So was Harry Potter.) This is what happens when you have almost every character be a man: women don't get a chance to interact with each other.
And interacting with other men, Esmerelda is always in a subordinate role (Clopin's assistant, the archdeacon's, um, advice-taker, the soldiers' victim) or in a sexual one. There's probably some really nasty stuff to unpack here given that she is not just a woman but a woman of color, and that the men who love/fetishize her are all white, including Quasimodo who should be a man of color but is distinctly not--but I'm not as familiar with the patterns of racial oppression. Suffice it to say that I think it adds to the creepy.
One more thing that annoyed me was the climax. Esmerelda is a fierce, competent woman and would have been at least as valuable an asset as Phoebus in fighting Frollo and his soldiers, but instead she is incapacitated. First she is tied to that whole burning stake, putting the woman in danger so that the man can find his character development. Then, she is unconscious, making it look like the woman is dead so that the man gets extra emotion for the fight. She is completely put out of commission, and robbing such a strong character of the chance to be in the final battle, except as an object of motivation for the man, is lame. This is, like, the gypsy princess here. Can she get some action?
Le sigh. Some things they did right:
1. Phoebus does not beat Esmerelda in their fight in the cathedral.
2 Laverne is just as likable as the other two gargoyles, and not defined by her sex.
3. Esmerelda ends up with Phoebus, not Quasimodo.
4. Clopin is the shit.
*Arwen is pretty much the gold standard for this phenomenon.
It's also a movie that has the potential to be very socially conscious. Sexism, racism, religion, deformity, class awareness--this movie touches on it all. Sadly, it fails to follow through on these issues.
Esmerelda. She's pretty cool. A little cliched, the highly sexualized spunky girl with a heart of gold. Still, she's a fun, talented, brave woman.
But did you notice that she was basically the only woman in the movie? Racking my brains for other women, I come up with 1) Quasimodo's mother, 2) that little girl in the purple dress, and 3) Laverne the gargoyle. Either way, note that she is the only adult human woman alive during the actual story.
Perhaps it is not surprising, then, that the three other main characters are all attracted to her. Quasimodo is helplessly in love with her, Phoebus finds her exciting, and Frollo has unholy desires for her. Did anyone else notice this? It's kind of freaky.
Because, okay, here's the thing. Only having one female character is bad. Women make up half of the population and that's about what it takes to satisfy me. A scarcity of women results in situations like we have with Esmerelda the Only Woman Available, and also the beginning of the movie.
Quasimodo's mother, as she must be defined, for her character gets its importance only from her relation to a man, dies in the first four minutes of the movie. She dies a heroic death in the service of a male, and that's what makes her likable. This may be the only situation like this that has been pointed out to you, so you may think I'm coming out of nowhere on this one, but I'm starting to get pretty tired of women who we approve of because they make sacrifices for men.* (Harry Potter also made a pretty big deal out of this.) I'd like to see someone we approve of because they make a sacrifice for a woman.
You may say "But this is bullshit! Quasimodo's mother (whose name we do not know) would have done the same thing for a daughter!" Well, that's the thing. She didn't have a daughter. Quasimodo was a male. (So was Harry Potter.) This is what happens when you have almost every character be a man: women don't get a chance to interact with each other.
And interacting with other men, Esmerelda is always in a subordinate role (Clopin's assistant, the archdeacon's, um, advice-taker, the soldiers' victim) or in a sexual one. There's probably some really nasty stuff to unpack here given that she is not just a woman but a woman of color, and that the men who love/fetishize her are all white, including Quasimodo who should be a man of color but is distinctly not--but I'm not as familiar with the patterns of racial oppression. Suffice it to say that I think it adds to the creepy.
One more thing that annoyed me was the climax. Esmerelda is a fierce, competent woman and would have been at least as valuable an asset as Phoebus in fighting Frollo and his soldiers, but instead she is incapacitated. First she is tied to that whole burning stake, putting the woman in danger so that the man can find his character development. Then, she is unconscious, making it look like the woman is dead so that the man gets extra emotion for the fight. She is completely put out of commission, and robbing such a strong character of the chance to be in the final battle, except as an object of motivation for the man, is lame. This is, like, the gypsy princess here. Can she get some action?
Le sigh. Some things they did right:
1. Phoebus does not beat Esmerelda in their fight in the cathedral.
2 Laverne is just as likable as the other two gargoyles, and not defined by her sex.
3. Esmerelda ends up with Phoebus, not Quasimodo.
4. Clopin is the shit.
*Arwen is pretty much the gold standard for this phenomenon.
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