In the Shadow of the Status Quo--Fantasy literature and conservativism

[Jo498]

Of the bunch of FG books (+ Dragonlance) I have read, conservative tendencies (if present) would be among the lesser problems...

[SeanF]

17 hours ago, C.T. Phipps said:

I believe Cersei is pretty much the perfect example of an interesting context of using a conservative setting without writing it. Cersei is an archetype of conservative fiction being the woman who acts outside the boundaries of her socially assigned role and is the Evil QueenTM but due to the writing has become a kind of odd feminist icon.

Indeed, one far more popular than the just and good (by Westerosi standards) Catelyn.

The Tower of the Hand famously voted Catelyn Stark the 8th Most Hated Character in ASOIAF, (IIRC, Cersei ranked about 14th by comparison).  But, I think that's mostly down to her making a mean comment to Jon Snow at the start of AGOT.  I think Martin was rather taken aback by the amount of flack that Catelyn gets from some readers.  There have been some hilarious threads on this site, in which people tip vitriol over Catelyn.

I'm not sure how widely admired Cersei is.  Martin has commented that he does get letters and e-mails from women saying how much they identify with Cersei, and see her as a role model, but I think that's a minority view.  I do enjoy Cersei immensely as a character, but don't doubt that she's an appalling person.

 

[The Marquis de Leech]

Cersei in the first three books can be read as an admirable figure (it possibly requires some creative reading, but it is do-able). As of A Feast for Crows though, I feel Martin went out of his way to rub the reader's nose in her villainy.

[sologdin]

interesting. probably a bit much to pull cersei into feminism proper.  is she partaking however of the proto-feminist, the same impulses in the lysistrata, in the republic, in chaucer's wife of bath, in milton's eve, in julian of norwich, in aphra behn, in lady mary wroth?

just because an alleged woman is doing something, it does not follow necessarily ipso facto that the things done are consistent with feminist doctrine.  (and 'alleged woman' because i'm now not really believing in gender doctrine any longer.  maybe bracket it off like husserl, [woman]?)

[Jo498]

I'd say Catelyn is more "feminist" in the way that she stands for values like care, home, family (cf. the Eowyn quote in the linked book chapter). She only gets aggressive after her family is not only endangered but some members killed or abducted.

Cersei is feminist in the "Thatcher" sense, that is trying to be tougher and meaner than the phallocrats. 

Dany is somewhere in between but probably closer to Thatcher than to Gaffer Gamgee (and more successful (so far) than either Cersei or Cat).

It seems illuminating which character is liked best.

[Zorral]

13 hours ago, Darth Richard II said:

My hated for HDM comes from the way he turned Lyra into the typical girl who needs to be rescued by a MAN in book 2. I threw that book against the wall.

Yah, that was deeply disappointing over here as well.

 

[Zorral]

That anyone can view Cersei as either feminist or intelligent -- or in the least attractive in character or personality -- is hard to comprehend.  I mean, really, would YOU want to have a beer a goblet of wine with this psychopath?

It takes a lot more than resenting male privilege to make a feminist.  Or even make a character sympathetic.

Sheesh, she's not amusing, much less intelligent or well informed.  If I had to sit next to her at dinner I'd be wanting to scream in boredom.  A hetero male, of course, might divert his attention from the drearyness of her personality to her cleavage, but otherwise, she's unendurable, monarch of the claustrophobic incestuous bubble of her own making.

 Catelyn Stark was far more interesting; as dinner party partners we'd find a lot of topics of conversation.  She was a lot better at running things than Cersei ever was.

 

 

 

[Darth Richard II]

2 hours ago, Jo498 said:

I'd say Catelyn is more "feminist" in the way that she stands for values like care, home, family (cf. the Eowyn quote in the linked book chapter). She only gets aggressive after her family is not only endangered but some members killed or abducted.

Cersei is feminist in the "Thatcher" sense, that is trying to be tougher and meaner than the phallocrats. 

Dany is somewhere in between but probably closer to Thatcher than to Gaffer Gamgee (and more successful (so far) than either Cersei or Cat).

It seems illuminating which character is liked best.

...? I don't think you know what feminism is.

[Darth Richard II]

38 minutes ago, Zorral said:

That anyone can view Cersei as either feminist or intelligent -- or in the least attractive in character or personality -- is hard to comprehend.  I mean, really, would YOU want to have a beer a goblet of wine with this psychopath?

It takes a lot more than resenting male privilege to make a feminist.  Or even make a character sympathetic.

Sheesh, she's not amusing, much less intelligent or well informed.  If I had to sit next to her at dinner I'd be wanting to scream in boredom.  A hetero male, of course, might divert his attention from the drearyness of her personality to her cleavage, but otherwise, she's unendurable, monarch of the claustrophobic incestuous bubble of her own making.

 Catelyn Stark was far more interesting; as dinner party partners we'd find a lot of topics of conversation.  She was a lot better at running things than Cersei ever was.

 

 

 

A lot of the like for Cersei comes from people who only watch the show.

[C.T. Phipps]

Cersei is feminist in the context that she is a victim of male hegemony and wants equal rights to the men in society both sexually as well as politically. She's anti-feminist in the fact she has no sympathy for anyone ELSE among womenkind. Still, her central problem is that her entire existence is warped by the fact she's a woman and her own desires or skills do not matter. Gender has determined her role and she has no way to change that.

Asha Greyjoy and Arya Stark are other women who are round pegs for square holes (no innuendo intended).

Many women sympathize with these gender restrictions, more so than Sansa and Catelyn who try to fit into them and get punished for it.

As for Cersei's personality? No, she's an awful person but since when does a character have to be MORAL to be enjoyed?

[lokisnow]

I liked HDM until the very end,given that there have been thousands of gates leaking dust for 30,000 years, the idea that will and Lyra can't keep a gate for themselves for sixty or seventy years after closing all the thousands of gates is pretty much a cheat for a cheap and unearned sad ending. It doesn't make any sense within the context of the facts we know. Also I hate the idea that puberty made them forget any skills or knowledge they had pre puberty because magic.

 

i think we're getting away from the essay idea that fantasy relies on the restoration of culture and particularly ruling culture of some nebulous prelapsarian perfect ruling culture even though those striving to restore it don't necessarily benefit from it. This is where show cersei and show dany are extremely interesting, as both have effectively murdered all the male rulers of their respective power bases (dothraki male leadership all executed, kings landing male leadership all executed) and seem to be in the position of establishing a new status quo of non male leadership (as detailed in the world book of the never visited Far East lands of essos with primarily female leadership traditions). Given that Jon has just explicitly violated and betrayed every single term of his oath, given that Jon has just badly lost the battle of winter fell after being out generaled on basic principles of warfare and battle leadership and given that the men of the north have rewarded Jons total battle failures and general ineptitude by stealing sansas lands, rights and titles and giving them to Jon, I imagine we are about to see show Sansa do the same thing in the north that dany and cersei and the dorne girls have all done already, kill all the male leadership and replace it with female leadership.

this violent refusal of the status quo in multiple environs of the world in the show version of the story is really remarkable and directly contradicts the essays assertion that high fantasy restores a pre lapsarian status quo culture that doesn't actually benefit many of those struggling for this restoration. It will be really interesting if Martin also tacks in the direction of restoring the status quo, or not, I'm inclined to think that this is a theme the show and books will share the direction of but not the story beat details of.

[Werthead]

Quote

I honestly blame the publishing houses to a large extent and their desire to market fantasy to adolescents than adults. Ed Greenwood and the Forgotten Realms gets a lot of flack from readers for the fact it was the definition of Happy Meal Fantasy in the 80s and 90s. However, if you talk to Ed Greenwood in person or on his various message boards, you'll hear about his extensive frustration in trying to write in the coloring book lines which TSR/WOTC and later Hasbro forced him to do so.

Even as early as the 80s and late 70s, he envisioned the Forgotten Realms as a place of sexual freedom with gay, straight, and bisexual main characters plus a darker morally ambiguous world in terms of its politics as well as interrelations. TSR, however, wanted a world as close to a Tolkien pastiche as humanly possible and didn't even allow him to use the word "brothel" in his writing.

There was some cretinous outcry recently because a trans character showed up in the Forgotten Realms computer game Siege of Dragonspear. Greenwood stepped up and said that there were plenty of such characters in the Realms. He also had a lesbian couple ruling one of the city-states in the game, but had to tiptoe around it in the novels.

Quote

Greenwood's Spellfire trilogy

The first novel does feature the traditional "group of young heroes gather in an inn" opening, then they all go exploring the local magical ruins and die hideous screaming deaths. Although Greenwood is a shit writer, that was quite amusing.

Quote

But, I think that's mostly down to her making a mean comment to Jon Snow at the start of AGOT.  I think Martin was rather taken aback by the amount of flack that Catelyn gets from some readers.  There have been some hilarious threads on this site, in which people tip vitriol over Catelyn.

The vitriol directed against Catelyn (and Egwene in WoT, for that matter) can be spectacular and when people try to justify it, the lengths they go to to avoid saying "I'm just a raging misogynsit asshat" can be spectacularly - or despair-inducingly - entertaining.

[Darth Richard II]

Greenwood has an amazing sens of humor actually. He just, uh, can't write.

 

[Werthead]

He can't write fiction. Some of his non-fiction articles and gaming materials are quite decent, as these things go. But prose and dialogue, urgh, no.

[Zorral]

But honestly, ASOIAF isn't High Quest Fantasy.  It's deliberately not that, in many ways.  So the essay never made a real argument about anything, or so it seemed to me.

LOTR is the model for modern High Quest Fantasy as entertainment and genre fiction, but ASOIAF, like the Grim Darkers etc. was supposed to not be that.

 

[C.T. Phipps]

6 minutes ago, Zorral said:

But honestly, ASOIAF isn't High Quest Fantasy.  It's deliberately not that, in many ways.  So the essay never made a real argument about anything, or so it seemed to me.

LOTR is the model for modern High Quest Fantasy as entertainment and genre fiction, but ASOIAF, like the Grim Darkers etc. was supposed to not be that.

Sword and Sorcery, Grimdark, and Grognard have always been there. High Fantasy has never been entirely "one true king and the right way" either. I mean, are we forgetting Stephen Donaldson?

*pause*

Hell, TOLKIEN parodied it or do people forget The Hobbit takes the piss out of Thorin the One True KingTM at every opportunity?

[Darth Richard II]

Too tired for long DR rant, so

 

Fuck genre labels. FUCK EM!

[C.T. Phipps]

It's why I don't care for the Hobbit movies.

The entire point of the book is making fun of the tropes which The Lord of the Rings played straight.

Why it rarely gets brought up in discussions of Tolkien's work which try to state he's a reactionary conservative.

[The Marquis de Leech]

The other tropes Tolkien inverts:

• The heroes of The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings aren't Thorin and Aragorn (the King figures). They're Bilbo and Frodo - middle-class everymen, or Sam - working-class everyman, without whom there would be no victory. Epic literature by definition focuses on the larger-than-life; Tolkien's hobbit stories focus on the (literal) little people.
• Traditional Quest literature is about searching for something (e.g. the Holy Grail) that can grant power. Tolkien's Quest is about getting rid of something (the One Ring), and rejecting power.
• Related to the above - Frodo fails. The Quest only succeeds because of the mercy he (and Bilbo, and Sam) had previously shown Gollum.

[Ser Scot A Ellison]

Sologdin,

Is the socialist problem with LOTR its reliance upon a heroic bourgeoisie?