(no subject)

[shadowkat]

Well, I finally was able to access and see the season finale of Doctor Who S6 otherwise entitled The Wedding of River Song. But I almost killed my internet access attempting it. Not sure why the universe was attempting to stop my viewing of this episode, seemed rather innocuous to me. And a tad bit anti-climatic, but they always do appear that way - when you have to go through a lot of effort to see them. Same deal with Phantom of the Opera - I swear I would have appreciated it more if I didn't have to work so hard to see it. May post a review of Doctor Who at a later point. Need time to digest it first. Also been spending too much time today as it is wrangling my computer. I won, but it was an epic battle.

There's not that many good genre series airing this season, is there? Apparently they've reached their saturation point. While the cop procedurals...appear to not have one in sight. Very odd. You'd think people would get bored of the serial killer/murder of the week? But no. The highest rated season premiers appear to be Unforgettable, Person of Interest, NCIS (both versions), CSI, Castle, Hawaii 5-0, Blue Bloods, and Pam Am. Everything else was a sitcom, a news show, football, or a reality tv show. If you like cult television at all - you are a bit regulated to either cable, the low-rated shows no one mentions on the networks, or the CW. Depressing, isn't it?

Hung out with a friend last night - saw the flick Contagion by Steven Soderburg. It's okay. Nothing to jump up and down over. Although there is a rather funny line by Doctor Sussman (Elliot Gould) to annoying/whiny/opportunistic blogger (Jude Law - who by the way has pimples, quite visible when his face is the size of a wall):

"Blogging is just graffiti with punctuation marks. "

We roared with laughter. This thing did have a lot of really good one-liners. The main theme of the movie was how disinformation causes chaos. The villain if there was one - is the blogger played by Jude Law. Being uninformed or misinformed by unreliable internet sources and careless can kill you.

Friend's response was basically the same as mine - this would have worked much better as a mini-series on tv. We both wanted more. The movie format was too abbreviated for the story to be told in a satisfying manner. That's been my problem with a lot of movies lately...they are almost too short. Neither of us found it the least bit scary, in fact we both burst out laughing when the woman next to us started coughing. Possibly because we both know far too much about the subject - being junkies of this particular trope. (We've read Andromeda Strain, watched it, read Hot Zone, and I also read Virus hunters and just about every book, movie or tv series that pops up on the topic. Plus discussed at length with medical professionals. I find the process of hunting down a virus, figuring out how it was caused, how it was transmitted, and how to stop it rather fascinating. ) Overall, we liked it. And it was free - my friend had free passes, so we didn't have to pay. Spent the money on sushi, saki, magritias, and other munchies at various places instead.

We also discussed Game of Thrones and The GRR Martin Series - I told my friend that the tv series was actually pretty good. But she's decided to read the books instead. A friend of hers, a guy, said something that I found decidedly odd about the series, although it has been mentioned before, elsewhere. He stated that GRR Martin clearly either did not like women very much or had problems with women, because his women characters are horrible and shallow, with no depth. I thought, huh? Was more puzzled and bewildered by the comment than anything else. I just finished reading chapters in Brienne, Sansa, Yasha, and Cersie's points of view. But..He's read all the books apparently and is not a feminist, fairly conservative in his tastes, but like's female characters. Which doesn't tell me all that much. Just seemed an odd statement. Granted some could be better developed, but that's true with some of the male characters too. I don't know, I don't think Martin's female characters are as well drawn as Whedon's, Tolkien's (better than Tolkien's - Tolkien barely has any), and anyone else out there. What do you think?

Admittedly there are a few writers out there that I wonder about in that regard - Ryan Murphy, I keep wondering if he has some unresolved female issues. But I wouldn't say it about Martin. Martin seems pretty normal, as far as I can tell. Granted I've only read three of the books and am a quarter of the way through the fourth, but still.

Comments

[londonkds.livejournal.com]

There was a controversy a few weeks back when the Tiger Beatdown feminist blog did a massive post (http://tigerbeatdown.com/2011/08/26/enter-ye-myne-mystic-world-of-gayng-raype-what-the-r-stands-for-in-george-r-r-martin/) all about how all the female characters in ASOIAF are horrible and GRRM is writing pseudo-medieval fantasy just as an excuse to show loads of rape. I haven't read the books or seen the TV show but that's probably the best place to go to get a line on the complaints.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Odd, there isn't that much rape in this series. Actually surprisingly little considering the setting and time period.
Sure it's mentioned, but rarely shown.
I'm trying to think of a main character outside of maybe Dany that was raped?
Cersei?

Have these people read the books? Very weird. Farscape and Buffy have a lot more "rape" actually.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

And he managed to (okay really rather weirdly) make Dany's marriage to Drogo less... rapey (unrealistically so, actually which is why I was okay with the way that the series played it out). On the other hand, why I pretty much loathed Drogo was his and the Dothraki "rape!yay" mindset, but you're right that we didn't have to 'see' it much. (And was why I was on Murri Maz Durr's side [who knows if I spelled that even close to correctly) when she took revenge on Drogo and schooled Dany on 'you think you 'saved' me?').

Cersei definitely hasn't been raped (unless you consider her entire marriage to Robert to have been so... which I suppose you could make an argument for, but it was too much a part of the (Earth) time period to fall easily into any neat category.)

But, yeah, given what many of the women have gone through the fact that Sansa, Asha, Brienne, & Penny (I don't think you've read to the point of meeting her yet) haven't been raped under the circumstances is actually rather astonishing.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Thank you for replying to this. I was thinking of asking your opinion - because you've read further than I have.

Outside of the Dothraki "rape!yay" mindset - I really haven't seen anything.

I suppose you could use Lolly being "gang-raped" as an example? But, that is referred to mainly in passing, blink and you sort of miss it. We never see it happen, Lolly isn't a major pov character, and the women who mention it don't like her. If anything it appears to be there just to remind us of the time period and the periles of being female. But it's no different than me picking up the newspaper this morning and reading more or less the same story.

Cersei definitely hasn't been raped (unless you consider her entire marriage to Robert to have been so... which I suppose you could make an argument for, but it was too much a part of the (Earth) time period to fall easily into any neat category.)

Well, if he does, she doesn't appear to see it that way. If anything I felt she was annoyed that he was more interested in someone else than her.

I suppose...Brienne? But she's never raped. She has the threat of rape, but that's realistic. That would be the case now. And it's not glamorized. Nor does it even happen.

There's no exploitive rape in these books. Nor even much rape for that matter.
There's hardly any sex, actually. Lots of decapitations, lynchings, burnings, removal of body parts, and gruesome deaths...but not really that much in the sexual violence or sex department. Which is a bit odd due to the time period and the circumstances.

Which begs the question - did the people on Tiger Beat even read the books? And if so, what are they comparing them too? Bewildering.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Okay read the Tiger Beat post - weird, it's like we are reading completely different books? People are bewildering.

[shipperx.livejournal.com]

Well, there's the Boltons, I suppose. Roose straight-up admits to having raped his bastard's mother but that's past history. And the Bastard Bolton is, in any other world, a sadistic serial killer. He definitely tortured and raped. And I don't remember how much was shown vs. told around regarding the fake Arya married to him, but... yeah. On the other hand, he's a sadistic serial killer with men too. And what he's shown doing to a male character is every bit as horrific, so as horrible as the Bastard Bolton is, writing-wise it didn't come off as sexist. Horrifying? Definitely, but a horror to humanity not simple misogyny. We're supposed to think of the bastard Bolton to be a sadistic serial-killing monster who needs to be put down like a dog and yay to any character who can do it.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

Just sounds like more proof that there are male characters that are just if not more unsavory than female characters. (shrug)

The Boltons and the Freys were pretty nasty in Storm, but they are nasty to everyone, male/female alike. Didn't appear to be choosy.

And the rape still happens off-stage (unless something major happens between where I'm currently at in Feast and the end of Dragon), it's still not really shown.

[shadowkat67.livejournal.com]

I read the post or tried to, hard to read, it's so angry and bitter. Also appears to be more of an insane rant than a thought-out critique.