Who Is IOZ?: Oxfridge

Monday, November 07, 2011

Oxfridge

So I got around to watching the first season of HBO's Game of Thrones. You know, I am getting a little tired of using fantastical, fictional worlds (e.g. Westeros, "the 60s") to stage ersatz commentaries on the subjugation of women that are, beneath their veneer of paternal concern, mere opportunities to show us more tits. Otherwise, fine acting, although my hopelessly literal mind kept wondering about the agricultural viability of the world's northern climes.

70 comments:

Jack Crow said...: Martin's not really writing self-conscious political commentary. He's not the show's runner, but he is one of the producers and HBO has stuck to his vision, for lack of a better word. The sex exists in the book, but it's not as visually certain as the medium of television, and more specifically, HBO's audience, requires.

You can get a better insight into this (heh) Giants and Jets fan, here:

Not A Blog; 1:18 PM
Karl Franz Ochstradt said...: Expertise on Everything (thanks to Google) is a Crow Trademark!; 1:30 PM
Jack Crow said...: Or, my oldest is reading my dog-eared copies of the books right now and we've been talking about them. It's the first long (non-Hermione Granger) series he's ever read.; 1:37 PM
Leonard said...: "Subjugation" of wymyn? What is this reading of Game of Thrones as some kind of feminist screed? Can't fictional women just be subjugated -- actually, fully and truly -- and yet continue to act at least vaguely human without it being some kind of statement? Daenerys is not supposed to represent All Women or somesuch bullshit.

Or put another way: the point of tits is we like looking at tits. T&A are good in and of themselves. They need no references. Tits have no manifesto.

I share your concern about the economic viability of Westeros, or at least northern Westeros. Particularly after the description of winter we get in the latest book. And knowing it is supposed to go indefinitely, maybe for years.; 1:40 PM
Anonymous said...: Karl's boy hunger will be cuter once he comes out; 1:45 PM
IOZ said...: I suppose that's my real complaint: the fantasy genre seems to believe that feudalism was more about fighting battles than organizing agriculture. Say what you will about that old reactionary Tolkein, at least the Hobbits had farms.; 1:46 PM
Professor Coldheart said...: Agriculture is the least of GRRM's concerns. "Winter lasts for ten years on Westeros!" So everyone dies, or ...?; 1:48 PM
Jack Crow said...: Most of the food is grown in the south of Westeros, IIRC. The northerners survive on hunting and fish.; 1:54 PM
TheStone said...: Lumber, fish, (maybe?) amber/ minerals (N. Westeros) <--> Grains, vegetables, etc. (S. Westeros).; 2:20 PM
adspar said...: In the books there's discussion of which Lords have put away enough of the harvest. I seem to remember that there were even laws about what percentage was to be preserved. In the TV series there's not much of this, aside from maybe a passing reference to Robert's visit to Winterfell depleting their stores just before winter.

The Night's Watch plans to pay to import food to survive winter.; 2:22 PM
Anonymous said...: For dudes on this here comment-y thread, sex, titties, and rape exist on a continuum. That's about as pomo as they get.; 2:26 PM
Leonard said...: Hey, I love Tolkien but GRRM spends far more time with the little people than Tolkien ever did. And ditto for the structure of production.

I don't know how to break this to you, but the fantasy genre isn't about realism. It is about what is interesting. Yes: battles are much more interesting than watching crops grow, even though the latter is prior and thus arguably more important. Similarly, tits are more interesting than no tits. And the lives of the most powerful aristocrats are more interesting than the lives of potato eaters.; 2:28 PM
Anonymous said...: I think that about solves the mystery as to why white dudes are pretty cool about anti-racism in theory but snarl like the dickens when one talks about women's liberation. The former doesn't cost them much to jazz about, but the latter might sacrifice some precious boobage action, might force them to acknowledge that this universal love of naked boobs is not universal, applies to less than half of humanity, and even as a full and flaming cold-blooded dyke, I per-so-nally don't like seeing boobs mixed with sexual assault on my tv box and would rather women actually get to act rather than flail around like Important Symbolic Fucktoys for a few minutes in between serious man business.; 2:34 PM
Leonard said...: adspar, yes GRRM nods at the problem -- perhaps he is lampshading it, but I doubt it. I think the problem is far bigger than he seems to realize. In Earth history, it was difficult enough to store even an Earth-winter of food. (Perhaps they have lembas in Westeros but nobody has mentioned it.)

Of course, this is only a "problem" to a sci-fi geek. People like me and IOZ who worry about such things are outing themselves here as aspergy sci-fi fans more than fantasy. Normal people don't care whether or not a fictional world is "consistent" -- it is fiction, after all. Look at the success of the wildly charming but quite stupid Harry Potter books.; 2:39 PM
Anonymous said...: "Can't fictional women just be subjugated -- actually, fully and truly -- and yet continue to act at least vaguely human without it being some kind of statement? Daenerys is not supposed to represent All Women or somesuch bullshit."

The screechy howl of the victimized male, oppressed by feminazis, no longer allowed to simply enjoy women as they're supposed to be before the manhaters showed up, insisting on women's fundamental humanity: shrews, harpies, bitches, whores, gold-diggers, humorless spinsters, and noble wounded rape victims.

I'm fairly certain, Leonard, the world has yet to take away your porn toys, so stop blubbing. Through your tears you can perhaps explain not why women can't continue to act out simpleminded male fantasies in simpleminded male fiction, but why they always must do so.; 2:51 PM
Sorry said...: In the books, they are constantly freaking out about the food issue - increasingly, as the series unfolds. And I have looked at storyboards for the show and there's at least one panel on every page that just says "TITS". Still, HBO did a way better job than I expected.; 2:58 PM
IOZ said...: Will no one laugh at the title?; 2:59 PM
Professor Coldheart said...: IOZ, only on a day after an army of anonymous commenters take you to task for being exceedingly pretentious could you lament no one getting your obscure "Oxbridge" pun. I love you. Don't ever change for anyone.; 3:16 PM
George jones said...: Sorry, I was too busy laughing at Leonard.; 3:17 PM
Leonard said...: Nony -- there are tears here, but my eyes are clear. There's plenty of fiction that has your strong wymyn in it. Most of it sucks. This is IMO for an obvious reason: it is attempting to write women as being something they are not; few enjoy reading such fiction. But I know, I know: you reject the very idea of human sex outside of a few anatomical squiggles of little or no import; it's all "socially constructed" "gender" to you. The fact that 99% of your sex continue to buy and read and love Harry Potter and not the Handmaid's Tale is just more evidence of your theory! They weren't socialized right! More education is needed! More struggle sessions!

As for why fictional women must always act out simpleminded male fantasies: it's because male and female authors are humans and this is evidently what interests them. (Yes, I know: come the revolution you will reeducate them, too, and first!) But I might also point out, wrt historical fiction, that in fact in all of history, except for the most recent capitalist bit in the West, women were subjugated. I blame the patriarchy! Thus, if you want to do anything that is fantasy along even vaguely realistic historical lines, you have to subjugate women.; 3:23 PM
Inkberrow said...: Showtime is working up a big-budget serialization of "The Mists Of Avalon". The women will have breasts only when they are putting a glamour on someone.; 3:53 PM
Weeble said...: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eKsIOkMNWrs; 4:23 PM
Cüneyt said...: Yeah, Inky. Because that whole drug-induced incestuous Pict ceremonial consummation is totally clear with the Women's Studies Department.

'Course, you're probably just pissed 'cause a chick wrote it.

Also, if anybody wants their fiction completely un-PC, they can read Robert Howard, who in some of his early writings especially was not only painfully bad at writing those people who have, like, vaginas and stuff, but also has Conan say shit about how he'll never let black apes get their hands on a white woman.

We can read books that have -isms in them and acknowledge their -ism while also being able to acknowledge them aesthetically. Jesus, some of you seem to have no agility in your souls.

Now I'm gonna go write me some self-satisfying porn. I'm-a be a scifi writer some day!; 4:25 PM
lucid said...: C - reminds me of the days in college when folks campaigned against Faulkner... I mean, really, Faulkner...; 4:38 PM
Anonymous said...: the real problem with game of thrones is it unbelievably boring. and hbo is fucking stupid. fuck tv.; 4:42 PM
Anonymous said...: O Leonard, you ignorant slut. Who the fuck here is arguing in favor of that condescending trope of the Mythical Strong Feisty Woman? Not raping or abusing every woman in your film or wankcomic / = / an ahistorical rendering. Again, tears in your eyes, saliva on your maw, one paw on your crotch, away we ye and try to comprehend that not every commenter on the interweb who finds your particular brand of misogyny tiresome is a little lady upon whom your sarcasm is lost without exclamation points and funny spelling.; 4:45 PM
Anonymous said...: I crapped out of the book series about half-way through the second book. It was so over-done...; 4:47 PM
Anonymous said...: Since Leonard is an expert on blaming the patriarchy, alluvvasudden, perhaps he can familiarize himself with what exactly the dim n hairy women's studies subset actually <a href="http://blog.iblamethepatriarchy.com/2011/11/07/and-another-thing-im-sick-of/>think</a>, or would that be asking too much?

Again, I fail to see the distinction between him and Inkboy these days.; 4:51 PM
Anonymous said...: Same again.; 4:51 PM
Rowan said...: What the fuck are you people even arguing about?; 4:58 PM
puppylander said...: rowan, i believe they're each trying to say "some of my best friends are women", without actually saying it, since it isn't true.; 5:09 PM
Montag said...: the word itself makes some men uncomfortable.; 5:13 PM
Saurs said...: Half a centipede, I thought it was the anti-feminist party line that women aren't victims, never have been, marriage is a blessing and children a gift from god, and that ladyoppression was all a hysterical delusion propagated by evil lesbian suffragettes who couldn't get laid, yer proverbial hyena in a petticoat. Now I come to understand from noted thwarter of feminists Leonard that women are victims, always have been, and it would be incredibly dishonest to depict them as anything else because otherwise we might be doing a Disservice to History and Realism. I can't keep up and mah mind's aflutter and my ladyparts are bleeding with the mental strain of trying to reconcile two fundamentally opposed but perfectly reasonable Views of the Monolith that is Woman; so which is it, boys, are we lying bitches today, or dimwitted children? Also, simply lovin' the notion that rape fantasies are normal and everybody who is honest with herself must realize this is so, because: bodice-rippers.; 5:25 PM
Leonard said...: Nony 4:45, nobody here has even mentioned the "Mythical Strong Feisty Woman" -- except you. Stop crying. If you don't like my comments then you are free not to read them. As an official patriarch, I permit it. Here's your money back.; 5:31 PM
Eerily Lackadaisical said...: Hey Zoz - I know it's small "Camford" coming this late, but my lips did twist at your Oxbridge pun ...; 5:33 PM
Anonymous said...: lenny & inky is amateurs

this be howya do wymyns hatin'

wymyns makes dudes faggy; 5:43 PM
Anonymous said...: grain reserves are an issue in the later books, but i'm more concerned with how the squirrels and bears and such can hibernate for a decade. that's a lot of acorns; 5:50 PM
Anonymous said...: Oh, Leonard of wee memory. "There's plenty of fiction that has your strong wymyn in it. Most of it sucks." Does that a ring a bell?

Also, you probably ought to be formally informed that, despite your impressive defense mounted for the Sanctity of History, little ol' fantasy books aren't history. For accurate historical representations of sexy oppressed ladies you must forget the underage heaving bosoms of the twenty-first century and focus your considerable, erm, interest on crones of the toothless and bald variety, hard laborers, and womenfolk dying of old age and disease in their early 30s. But that probably doesn't appeal. For now, then, get used to folk ripping on your toys, stop hiding behind this pathetic excuse that you're simply trying to save history from the heathens. It's disingenuous, at best.; 6:07 PM
Saurs said...: Indeed. It's apparently something of a surprise to the well-read social historians amongst IOZ commentariat that the historical "subjugation of women" -- evocative as that phrase may be of a certain genus of pangs in the nether regions -- didn't resemble in the mains or the particulars their most favorite pornography, a very special bondage film-cum-period piece.; 6:33 PM
Inkberrow said...: Cuneyt---

I doubt Camille Paglia anyway would object to Robert E. Howard. Howard understands and favors chthonic authenticity, and properly fears the vagina dentata, as do I every time I leave the house. Women's Studies departments are Apollonian castles in the air, still engaged in formulating some (derivative) male version of madonna-whore. Meet the new boss....; 6:44 PM
AngryFictionalWoman said...: Holy shit, did Leonard just do a flounce with his little take-my-ball-and-skedaddle routine, or what? Yeah, Lenny, we're aware we can avert our precious eyes from your comments. We choose otherwise cuz you're so pretty when you're angry.; 6:46 PM
lucid said...: Saurs - please don't confuse the majority of the ioz commentariat with Lenny & Inky - they're in a very special class of their own.; 7:08 PM
Leonard said...: AFW, I don't flounce and don't get angry, but I also don't respond to every single buddy here immediately. I'm glad you enjoy my comments, but in spite of your "we" you don't speak for everyone. Nony back there doesn't seem to, unless you are copping to being that nony.

The reason why I answer y'all lefty nonies (and the rare nym) so shortly is simply that you make no arguments. Your posts are rude name-calling and snide projection upon me of the worst possible motives and stupidest strawmen. As such, they are not intellectual at all, and not worth a response other than a raspberry, which I only occasionally deliver. Occasionally there is at least a nugget of a real assertion or question, as in nony 2:51's final sentence. Those I sometimes answer.

Nony 6:07, touché. In my defense, I don't recall well the sort of stupid snide projection that I routinely get on this blog -- and that was just me pushing back at you (or some other nony; as agents of the system, you all sound the same to me) at the same intellectual level. And you keep at it -- your wishful projection of my reading interests are far from the mark.; 8:03 PM
High Arka said...: How it pains to see Game of Thrones getting mass attention. If you absolutely have to have simple entertainment, can't you at least move a few notches up the cultural ladder to something like Transformers?; 8:12 PM
Anonymous said...: Clearly Leonard has never read the Icelandic sagas.

"But I might also point out, wrt historical fiction, that in fact in all of history, except for the most recent capitalist bit in the West, women were subjugated. I blame the patriarchy! Thus, if you want to do anything that is fantasy along even vaguely realistic historical lines, you have to subjugate women."

Tell that to Gudrun Osvifsdottir or to Freydis Eiriksdottir, who eight months pregnant used her breast to slap a sword against it and charged shrieking, sending a host of attacking Skraelings fleeing to their canoes in terror.

And yet, even though the women of Iceland weren't good little subservient sex toys and house slaves, I think the men were "manly" enough even to satisfy Leonard, who clearly likes his men mas macho. Egil Skallagrimsson, for instance, was known to pluck out an adversary's eyeball and vomit into the socket (and no mention was made of parting gifts.)

BTW, Back in those days, there was no executive power or authority over Iceland. There were just four regional assemblies, which combined legislative and judicial functions in a direct democratic process, that met twice a year, and one national annual general assembly called the Althing. I guess it was more or less #Occupy Iceland. We see their descendents retain a bit of that spirit to this day.; 11:53 PM
Eerily Lackadaisical said...: This comment has been removed by the author.; 12:04 AM
Eerily Lackadaisical said...: Could some of you regulars ask your dealers to cut your stuff with a little less speed?

This thread is way too fast-forward, like a tossed-away first-draft for some 1930's Hollywood screwball comedy like "Bringing Up Baby", or in this case, "Bringing Up Leonard".; 12:05 AM
Mil Disculpas said...: Iceland FTW.; 12:17 AM
mark r. said...: Do they have polar bears in Iceland?; 1:47 AM
mark r. said...: Polar bears visit Iceland by drifting ice. The oldest record of them being sighted on the island is from 890, 16 years after the first settlers arrived.The last visit was in 1993 when sailors saw a bear swimming off the coast of Strandir. Like the bear that reached Iceland in June 2008, it was also killed.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1024243/First-polar-bear-swim-Iceland-15-years-shot-dead-police-sightseers.html#ixzz1d5tSUysL; 1:52 AM
Anonymous said...: Eerily, please stop pouting 'cos you're not getting enough negative attention. Not every "female problem" (read: women talking too much, and about themselves, and not doling out cookies and blowjobs like they're supposed to) can be solved by casually referencing that one film where Cary Grant hit a lady. Too obscure, or not obscure enough by half.

Leonard, stick the flounce, or at least quell the trembling lip and start talking in specifics about how lying bitches are thoughtpolicing your re-edumacation PC Lacrosse child support uppity niggers et cetera et alii forever and ever amen. Your flustered routine, though more lucid than usual and not nearly so paranoid, is dull dull dull.; 3:00 AM
brandon said...: The lesson here is that if you ever watch Game of Thrones, for the love of Christ, don't tell the internet.; 3:27 AM
High Arka said...: No, by God, the lesson is to stop watering weeds so that flowers may grow. Not to nurture them and complain about them.; 5:37 AM
mark r. said...: the greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return

[reposted from an earlier thread]; 7:18 AM
fish said...: Leonard never quite got over the brain damage caused by reading Pinker.; 9:06 AM
withlit said...: I'm a PhD student studying English literature, so when I sat down to watch 'Game of Thrones' I had to make a conscious effort to let some of the women-related issues go. I'm so used to noticing and analyzing that kind of thing that I often have to do some compartmentalization if I want to enjoy a bit of popular TV/music/etc. Anyway, there were points in the show when I was pleased with female characters--keep watching--and there were points where I couldn't compartmentalize anymore and just got really irritated. I found the women of the main family (sorry, I didn't get super into the show and have not read the books) to have pretty realistic, complex personalities. Meanwhile, while Denaerys does become a better character as the series goes on, her subjugation is totally an excuse for tits and sex. A mixed bag.; 9:16 AM
withlit said...: p.s.- Nice title.

p.p.s.- I had no idea there was such controversy all up ins!; 9:21 AM
Leonard said...: Nony, I have not read the Icelandic sagas. And I doubt you have either, but perhaps you might surprise me. (I find nonies tend to be stupider and less educated than nyms.) Here's one now!:

Þorvaldr hét maðr, sonr Ásvalds Úlfssonar, Öxna-Þórissonar. Þorvaldr ok Eiríkr inn rauði, sonr hans, fóru af Jaðri til Íslands fyrir víga sakir. Þá var víða byggt Ísland. Þeir bjuggu fyrst at Dröngum á Hornströndum. Þar andaðist Þorvaldr.
Eiríkr fekk þá Þjóðhildar, dóttur Jörundar Úlfssonar ok Þorbjargar knarrarbringu, er þá átti Þorbjörn inn haukdælski. Réðst Eiríkr þá norðan ok bjó á Eiríksstöðum hjá Vatnshorni. Sonr Eiríks ok Þjóðhildar hét Leifr.
Enn eftir víg Eyjólfs saurs ok Hólmgöngu-Hrafns var Eiríkr gerr brott ór Haukadal. Fór hann vestr til Breiðafjarðar ok bjó í Öxney á Eiríksstöðum.

In any case, the idea that the sagas of medieval Iceland disproves the universality of patriarcy is quite funny. You might as well go with Athena as your strong woman as Gudrun Osvifsdottir. But you want proof, proof? Aw, shucks:

The women of the Sagas

... are far from being the blushing damsels waiting for a knight in shining armour who typify so many other medieval narratives. Rather, many of them seem more like Antigone and Medea from classical Greek tragedy in their dramatic strength, their staunchness and stoicism, and also in their human failings. Although we invariably find men dominating the foreground of the narrative, the Saga world is also strongly shaped by women: by mothers who instil their sons with ancient heroic values and incite them to noble deeds, by beautiful young women over whose favours poets fight, by women of steely character who rebel against male power and refuse to accept the limitations imposed on them by custom and law.

Women play a prominent role in The Saga of the People of Laxardal, whose central character is a woman, Gudrun Osvifsdottir. The depictions of female experience – their rebellions and defeats – are so insightful and revealing in this Saga that some scholars see it as the work of a woman.

Some scholars even think a woman may have composed one of those sagas! Imagine!; 9:31 AM
Leonard said...: fish, your comment is quite telling about your mindset. To the left, ideas truly are dangerous: to read wrongthink is to court brain damage.; 9:37 AM
Professor Coldheart said...: Leonard, to saunter into a comment thread and complain about being ascribed "the worst possible motives and stupidest strawmen" after dropping that har-har reference to "womyn" to kick us off - a neologism that owes its survival solely to right-wingers who are unable to get their heads out of the 90s; a po-mo invention that wasn't even popular back when it was popular ... it ... I ... I love you, man. Don't ever change.

(I feel I'm saying that a lot lately); 9:43 AM
Eerily Lackadaisical said...: anon@3:00am - you're reading way too deep into the reference to the film ... the comment was merely regarding pacing/tempo ... style, not substance ...; 10:30 AM
Leonard said...: Coldheart, mocking you and ascribing bad motives to you are different things. The feminist left indubitably invented variations on "women", and that is mockable. So I mock. But I do not think they did it for bad or evil reasons, just wrong ones. Nor is any word a strawman.

As for "womyn" itself, your idea that only right-wingers use it any more is easily shown to be untrue. (Same for "wymyn".) Sorry about that: your allies are perhaps stranger than you think. (Here's an example of that I turned up.)

It requires evidence to change my mind, not the standard leftist attempts to mock me into conformity. The thing about the net is that social pressure here is between weak and nonexistent. The nonies show this when they say things here they would never say face to face.; 10:46 AM
Professor Coldheart said...: Leonard, elsewhere: "There's plenty of fiction that has your strong wymyn in it. Most of it sucks. This is IMO for an obvious reason: it is attempting to write women as being something they are not."

The cool, impartial mediator! The man who "requires evidence to change [his] mind"! I know that genre tropes require that you not see Harlequin and Colombine snickering in the wings, but you acknowledge them at curtain call, right?; 11:00 AM
Anonymous said...: Reality doesn't fit square hole, says rounders. Reality dosn't fit the round hole, says squares.

/Hilarity ensues

Capt'n Obvious; 11:10 AM
Anonymous said...: Eerily wotsit, we're all well aware that when women get uppity it's best to remind them of the not-so-distant past when Katharine Hepburn was employed by Hollywood to play the harpy in need of a good fucking to shut her trap and remind her of her place, all in good fun and with hilarious results of course. I mean, really, women and their desires, amirightfellas, fuckin' hernia over here with all the mirth at this alien concept.; 12:25 PM
Saurs said...: Leonard, clearly troubled by all the dumb broads trying to socialize him (none of them want to socialize with him, poor thing), decides to demonstrate the startling ignorance of the wily Feminist Hivemind by copynpastin' text from a work he's never heard of until now, written in a language he obviously doesn't comprehend. That'll learn 'em!; 1:23 PM
Leonard said...: Saurs, I guess you cannot recognize a joke. Ha ha, you know?; 1:57 PM
Saurs said...: Bitch, please.; 2:49 PM
Whelmed said...: Leonard the hero triumphantly demonstrates once more that humorless feminists are humorless. I mean, that old Iceland Saga gag went straight over their heads! Can you believe it?!; 3:09 PM
Anonymous said...: Well I did read the Sagas (whatever oldcountry commies approved for publication). Don't know why. Except one place where one dude decides to go down in a blaze of glory I remember nothing. Nothing.

Capt'n Obvious; 7:08 PM

Monday, November 07, 2011

Oxfridge

70 comments:

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