Helen Sloan/HBO Sophie Turner plays Sansa Stark in HBO’s “Game of Thrones.”



More on Arts Beat HBO Orders Second Season of ‘Thrones’ After the debut episode on Sunday, HBO announced Tuesday that it would pick up a second season of the fantasy series “Game of Thrones.” Read More »

Over the past few days I have received hundreds of e-mails and reviewed countless tweets taking issue with my review of the fantasy series “Game of Thrones”, which began Sunday night on HBO. When I say “taking issue,” I am speaking euphemistically. Most respondents were horrified or furious or both. (“I am enraged and quite frankly disappointed in your unfair review of ‘Game of Thrones’,” wrote one reader.)

The e-mailers have written long and impassioned defenses of the books by George R.R. Martin, on which the series is based, and of the fantasy genre in general. But they have also sent long and vitriolic attacks claiming that, in my negativity, I made it clear that I had no idea what I was talking about. I appreciate the economy of those readers who began and ended their comments: “You are a complete idiot.” Phrases like that constituted a whole subgenre of the online response.







@ActionChick I think @feliciaday or someone should roast Ginia Bellafante on a spit during the Game of Thrones panel. Erik Smith

ebrown2112

Amid the commentary I received a total of three supportive notes from people I am currently looking into legally adopting. Writing criticism is completely personal and often impressionistic. I write from a perspective that is my own, not one that seeks to represent a big tent of varying opinion. 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.”







Ginia Bellafante – I’m a woman, and I’d rather read so-called “boy fiction” over any romantic nonsense any day. It has substance AND plot. Trudi Margach

LadyValhalla



“Give me Connie Willis’s “Doomsday Book” any day over whatever chick-lit or pop-lit tripe is put out,” wrote one woman reading from New Zealand, by way of Cleveland. “I’ve been reading both Science Fiction and Fantasy since I was a nine year old. girl – that’s 30 years now. I went towards the genres because I found nothing in literature that characterized women I wanted to read about – whole people, not just caricatures.”

But to my mind, “Game of Thrones” was not engaging or transcendent enough to draw in the average non-fantasy viewer, for which I am a more than suitable stand-in.







For thoughtful rebuttals to my initial review, I direct you to Regina Thorne at heroesandheartbreakers.com who wrote that my review was “reflective of a deeply-rooted literary snobbery about genre fiction,” and she links to other riffs, including Matt Zoller Seitz’s at Salon.com. Ilana Teitelbaum, writing on The Huffington Post, summarizes what a number of the readers who e-mailed me had to say. “It’s clear that Bellafante was probably the wrong audience for this particular show,” Ms. Teitelbaum wrote, adding: “There is room for a discussion of Martin’s books, and the genre as a whole, from a feminist perspective. But that is very different from dismissing the genre outright as ‘boy fiction’.”

Given that so many people wrote in advance of seeing “Game of Thrones,” we would love to know what all of the Martin series lovers think of the adaptation so far.



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