Thoughts on the latest Game of Thrones episode (Unbowed Unbent, Unbroken)

Regarding the posts I see from A Song of Ice and Fire fans regarding the controversial scene.... I think a lot of it is misguided.

. Violence towards women in Westerosi society(which tries to reflect our own history to a certain extent) is one of the themes of the book series and it's a much bigger  theme in the show. The rape is hardly the first one they've shown in the show.

 I think where the show fails is that it  has this sort of glorification of brutal power. All other forms of power are irrelevant in the show., The Sansa of the books shows a different kind of power, a power reliant on her feminine charms. She soothes the raging Hound a number of times. She takes on the role of Queen to comfort the scared women and children (even though she herself is pessimistic and terrified, she instinctively does it as a kindness to the others) by singing the Hymn to the Mother during the Battle of the Blackwater. She even is able to soothe and convince a quaking, palsied boy into taking a dangerous journey down a dangerous mountain path . And in the sample chapter which GRRM recently published on his blog, she seems to be using a more self-aware sexual element to achieve her desires and wishes. This is power. How you achieve your desires, wishes and goals is power. Which is actually also historically accurate. I mean, historically, women were not *just* victims. They also had their own forms of power, and I'm not talking about the handful of medieval queens who wielded incredible political power in more traditional ways.  More on this later.. . By cutting Sansa's storyline and throwing her into Ramsay's arms they have taken her power away. I'm not sure if it's a conscious decision to excise that view of power from the story but there is a pattern that has emerged over the five seasons that leads me to suspect that it might be partially that, which I'll get into below.

Now, Sansa is arguably the most feminine character in the series; not only is she pretty, not only does she have exquisite courtesy, but she also exemplifies a sort of medieval feminine ideal: she sews well and straight, she plays the harp, she sings, she dances. It's not that Sansa is  anti-feminist;, that is just who she is. She is a girly girl. That's her natural state. So by taking her storyline away, they are in a way saying, that 'the feminine', as a sort of Jungian archetype, can never have any sort of power; they are saying that only traditionally masculine traits can be powerful. And that's a gross misreading of the books, in my opinion, and not historically accurate. (I say historically accurate, because, even though it is a fantasy series, there are several connections with real medieval history, and several events and characters have been inspired by real historical events and characters. See the brilliant Race for the Iron Throne blog for a deconstruction of this aspect of the (books) series.)

Yet, oddly this treatment does seem to play into a form of feminism and a view of men as victimizers and women as victims that I occasionally see in American discourse. Ultimately, I think that this and other aspects of the show* reflect the show writers' view of modern American issues. They seem to be declaring themselves feminists but there is an unconscious edge of misogyny underneath. I actually this is an echo of the USA mixed vision of women in general. (I'm not picking on the USA, other places have other problems with this.)This is very different in the book. I think GRRM has a mysogynistic bone or two in his body, like many men, but I think his own unconcious view of feminism is a much more sixties-based one, and it's much less militant and much more positive. Mostly though, and this should be underscored twice,  I think GRRM's just trying to write a good story, as opposed to the show-runners who are trying to shock and yet be (barf) socially relevant .

And to some extent that is the goal of dramatic art. The Red Wedding (in book especially, but also in the show) worked because its so shocking that it causes catharsis--it's shocking because the way it's written makes it unexpected, but it's still just basically a tragic(in the classic sense) scene. But it worked because it was logical in the confines of the plot. It was not gratuitous. NOt shock for shock's sake.
 They seem to be going for more and more of these moments and they are getting less justified, less logical and therefore more gratuitous. 

But anyway, back to to their portrayal of women. It's not just Sansa's feminine power that they've taken from her.

 By taking dany's strategic decisions in her battles away from her and giving them to her generals they also take her power away. By reducing Catelyn and even Cersei to caricatures of the 'concerned mother trope'  they also take away catelyn's political smarts and her non-brutal power and strength; while the glossing over of Cersei's narcissism and paranoia and secret longing to have the sort of brutal masculine power that the show glorifies  reduces her character, too. (though it does make her more likeable)

But, personally, I'm not offended. All of these elements have been in the show since the first season and they've become more pronounced over time.  Ultimately it's just that the the show runners have a limited faith in complexity. There is a definite pattern over the series in(their portrayal of women and their presentation of brute, masculine strength being the only kind of power that exists.  In the end they just dont understand subtle characters like sansa. And that's a real shame.

The point they are making about women is clear but it's dumb.

Personally, as a fan of the boook series I"m much more disgusted with the horribly written, horribly staged, horribly acted Dorne subplot. They cut Jaime's journey of self-growth and self awareness, his slow transformation into a hero; cut Arrianne Martell's character completely and the complex plot to place Myrcella on the throne in place of Tommen coming into conflict with Doran Martell's grander plan to supplant the Lannisters entirely and replaced it with 'The Dornish are crazy. They like to fuck and fight!' It's lame. But, you know? It's like watching Star Trek at this point. It's got a campy 'so laughably bad it's kind of good' feeling to it to me.

Lance





*for examplethe reduction of the ser Loras character to a gay stereotype, and his subsequent struggle against the Taliban-like Faith Militant,  the equating of all religion to fanaticism, the glorification of the secular and the physical and the selfish...I could go on.

Goodbye Columbus by Phillip Roth

Goodbye, Columbus is a brutal, funny collection of short stories about second and third generation Jews assimilating in suburban America in the mid-twentieth century.

I really liked this complicated stories with their complex, well-drawn characters. Philip Roth does not shy away from showing the darker, pettier sides of suburban America, but he doesnt wallow in it, either. The characters are selfish, lustful, silly, yet never really less than real. I feel that I've known each of these characters. Never more so than in the opening novella from which the collection gets the title. It struck a really familiar chord in me, from its portrait of the suburban home, to it's detailing of the romantic fling the narrator has, and the concerns and worries and obsessions of the characters. In fact, it's eerie how much it pulled me in; I could feel the air conditioning, feel the heat of the summer, smell teh sweat on skin...

I'm not Jewish, but I almost felt Jewish reading this. Make no mistake, there is not a single story here that doesn't concern Jewishness. Judaism is wrapped around these stories and inseparable from them. But they transcend that.

Being set 60 or 70 years ago(published in 1959) hasn't really dated the stories too much, other than a few terms(colored boy, for example)and a few details. Overall, it really felt fresh to me. There's a bitter sadness to these stories, and an beautiful anger--and a wicked sense of humor. I chuckled to myself more than a few times. 

And man, can he write!

There are some powerful stories here which range they range from incredibly good to unbelievably good--more than a few disturbing moments too. They're probably the best short stories I've read since I read JD Salinger in the 90s. In fact, I'd say they resemble JD Salinger. They're sort of a mix of Salinger and Saul Bellow, but funnier.

I highly recommend this book to anybody who likes great 20th century AMerican literature.

My Tuesdays

Jana made the observation yesterday that me and my family 'write a lot.' That made me feel kind of proud, though I'm not sure she didn't actually mean that we were addicted to Facebook, haha. I guess she has fewer FAcebook friends than I do(though I've unfollowed most of mine) so she tends to see a lot more updates from my brothers and sister than her other Facebook friends.

It's true that I can sometimes really get into writing, whether it's a book review or whatever. I don't really consider myself a writer, though at one time I was and did.

 In truth I'm probably not disciplined enough and I have spent too much time and energy getting my business going and so on. I don't work as hard at work as I used to, partially because policies are policies and once you make them, things run more or less smoothly without you, and getting Jana and Zuzka(assistant) working for me has meant that my job on the management side has dwindled to financial management, hiring(and firing--thankfully it's only happened once) and making the schedule.   This is still an enormous amount of work, I reckon that the schedule is about 100 hours of work and hiring new teachers probably the same. But gone are the days of the 60 or 70 hour work seeks, leaving home at 5.00 and getting back at 9.pm. That was the heart attack year, incidentally!

 Fortunately, this year I don't have to hire any new teachers from abroad as they're all staying. Knock on wood. What this means is that for the winter I basically do nothing but look at the money and make sure we're not spending more htan we're taking in so that we survive the summer, when there is much less work but the same amount of fixed costs.

. The school year is winding down and I definitely have that 'home-stretch' feeling. I'm looking forward to teaching a little less and relaxing and reading a little more in the summer. One of the teachers is staying through the summer, which means I'll be able to take it a little easy and give him some of the hours I usually teach--I'm usually just as busy in the summer as not. I started out the year as one of the school's busiest teachers but I've ended up having a pretty easy schedule, though I do have some stressful classes. I've been saving money for the planned vacation in America next year, and I suppose some of that will be going for living costs this year.

We haven't really made plans for this year: what I'd like to do is maybe have a little holiday in the High TAtras of Slovakia--it's not as good for little kids as Austria is but for bigger kids and adults it's just as good,

If there's one thing living in the Czech Republic has taught me it's how to look and plan ahead and save money. The amount of money that I have saved would have been absolutely impossible in the States. I remember one time realizing that, as I walked through Denver one hot summer day that I hardly went ten minutes without spending money somewhere. And when I visit America, I was surprised at how often Dad or Blake, when they were driving, would just casually stop the car somewhere, run in and get a Coke or something to drink. It blew me away. I've been trained to think about every little purchase I make. Which is not to say I never splurge but it's something I always ask myself about first. Because, SUMMER IS COMING. Summer with its smaller amount of work and vacaations to boot. After spending a penniless summer in 2004 eating almost nothing and spending my copious free time watching fish swim in the Bečva and sitting in mz bedroom in the evening practicing saying Czech words outloud, I've learned to control my spending much more tightly than back in the US of A.

I've got an easy day today because we're doing PET examinations at a local school--well, Jana and Petr are doing them. My morning class was consequently cancelled because the students in it are taking the test. I don't go 'til 2.00 today. I'll geet off at 8.30, so really just 6 a nd a half hours of work and it's all pretty easy on Thursdays.

Tuesdays are my demanding days. Let me tell you about my Tuesdays. I get up at 4.30 and do my morning ritual of coffee and reading. (sometimes I get on the net but usually I read on my Kindle.) At 5.45, I jump in the shower, get out, skip shaving, get dressed, hunt for my keys/phone/wallet/kindle/laptop and head out to work. At abuot 6.05,  I drive across town to pick up Catherine, who, like me, also works in Val Mez on Tuesdays. Then we drive to Val Mez, which is about 13 miles away. Sometimes we chat amiably, especially now that it's light out and that gives me energy. Sometimes we exchange a few pleasantries and sit the rest of the journey in the silence. It's all good. I usually get to the office in VM at about 6.40 at which time I turn on the kettle, set up my laptop and hastily plan my first lesson, which starts at 7.00. 

My student shows up at 7. He is always exactly on time. I think he literally walks into the school at the precise moment that all the second hands in the world are pointing straight up at the twelve. I give him his tea, and sit down and teach him for 60 minutes. Jiři is a pretty nice guy. He's short and looks a little rodent-like. He's the HR manager at a factory in Hranice na Moravě. His wife is a doctor, as is his daughter and his son is studying computer engineering in Brno. He's about a typical a middle-class Moravian as you can find. Works hard. Goes for walks at the weekend. Skiing holidays in the winter. Croatia in the summer.

 After he takes off, I horse around on the Internet for about 15 minutes or talk to Petr about some important business. Then I go into overdrive and I plan the rest of my work day in the next 35 minutes or so. I make some copies and I'm out the door at about 9.25, running late for my lesson at MTT, a factory which makes plastic mouldings that make pieces for cara(like the plastic inside of your car doors or the light frames and 'glass'(it's plastic) around your tail lights. They also make tools, but not tools like hammers and such. They make these huge industrial machines that...make molds and so on. I don't really know what they do. Anyway, I usually get there about three our four minutes late(it's four kilometres away and I always underestimate how bad the traffic will be.) It doesn't matter because my student, Petr is always even later. He always comes in at about a quarter til ten apologizing for his lateness. I always say, 'that's OK, I was actually a little late, too.' We have our lessons. Petr is also pretty typical for a Moravian in these parts, but he's sportier than average, I'd reckon(and Moravians are a sporty bunch) He lives in a village about 5 miles from Val Mez, and when it's not raining or snowy, he rides his bike to and from work. He's a technical designer for MTT, meaning he designs these industrial machines they make. He's 50 but he looks about 35. He has a very thick accent. His wife is a psychologist, his son a technical designer and his second son is kind of a deadbeat of whom petr despairs. He goes on exotic holidays every couple years(safari in Africa, hiking in Nepal) and he also goes on a fishing trip to Norway every spring. At weekends, he and his wife travel somewhere in the Czech Republic, often to South Moravia to wine cellars or for cycling in the Bohemian lowlands or whatever.

I finish that one at 11, and drive straight back to Vsetin, where I walk in the office at about 11.30. I eat lunch which I've either prepared the night before or which I've had Zuzka order for me from one of the restaurants in town. I don't like ordering from the restaurants in town because they nearly always include something I shouldn't eat, like potatoes or they are late and I don't have time to eat. Anwyay, i finish eating at 1115, at which time I take a toilet break for 15 minutes. Then I correct homework for the next half hour and if I play my cards right, I can take it easy from 12-12.30 and check the bank account and pay whatever invoices have piled up on my desk.

At twelve thirty I pile everything into the other car(the one for teachers that no one uses this year because none of the teachers can drive, so I drive it a couple of times a week so it doesn't fall apart.) 

This car used to belong to Petr. He sold it to the school for 30 000 kc earlier this year. It's a bit of a hunk o' junk but it's the fastest ship in the galaxy. Petr smoked in it constantly so it smells very strongly of cigarette smoke. If you're not a smoker, this is absolutely the worst smell in the galaxy. But fuck it.

Anyway, I drive about 6 kms to Austin(google maps says it's 7 kms but mapy.cz says it's about 6.) a factory where they make explosives used in mining and for blasting holes in hills for highways to go through. It's an American-owned company, based in Ohio. It's called Austin for its founder who founded the company like 180 years ago or something. I teach there from about 1.00 to 4.00, to lessons back to back. I don't mind it at all. I really like the students and if ever a class is lacklustre or boring, it's nearly always my fault.

My first lesson is comprised of too IT technicians, a chemist and...Petr. I'm not sure what Petr does, to be honest, but I know he works 6 days a week. He's a big bellied, recently divorced guy who makes a lot of self-deprecating, ironic jokes, which are actually pretty funny despite the fact that he's probably the weakest student in the class in terms of language skills. Then there's Miroslav, the IT technician whose passion is building and flying model remote control planes, Bron'e, an IT technician who has a girlfriend at university in Olomouc who he visits every weekend, and Jarda, a chemist and electrician  who uses over formal words all the time as if he's learned most of his English from istruction manuals. Which he has. His daughter, who I taught at when she was 14 is some sort of English-Czech translator and teacher in Brno.

After that there's the advanced class: Jana, who is a technical designer working on her Master's Degree, Magda...I think she works in the purchasing department. She's about 32 but her sons are in their teens. Tomas, another IT guy, but higher position than the ones in the first class. And Tonda. Tonda's about 45 but he had a mild stroke a few years ago and changed his position. I'm not sure what he did before, but now he's in charge of safety procedures. Austin's pretty strict about safety because, after all, they make explosives.

When I'm teaching there, classes are intermittently interrupted by explosions echoing through the tree-clad hills as somewhere in the huge complex the chemists are testing products. The windows rattle, I mutter 'excuse me' (which no one EVER gets) and we carry on. 

Anyway, at 4 o'clock, I get into the school car and drive as fast as I possibly can BACK to Val Mez. This takes about 40 minutes on average, becaue the traffic is quite heavy between the two towns at that time. Then I get in, teach my lessons from 445-8.00 deliver the homework I've checked to the three ladies who I give extra homework to, and finally I'm finished at 8.00. I drive back home, and get in usually about 840. at which time, exhausted, I change clothes, climb into bed and read a bit before sinking....And that's my day.

The Stand by Stephen King; Honor Amoung Thieves by Jeffrey Archer

The Stand by Stephen King
In the Stand, Stephen King's expanded, vast, ambitious post-apocalyptic epic urban fantasy, a military experiment gone wrong unleashes biological warfare on the American public(and the world) to disastrous consequences. The survivors across the US slowly group together into two opposing groups united under two very different leaders: the first, 'The Walking Man" a strange revolutionary housing an immortal demon, the second, Abagail, a simple 108 woman with a lot of faith in God. Eventually, she sends 7 people on a hopeless quest over the Rocky Mountains to confront and destroy the Dark Lord...in Las Vegas, where the shadows lie....

The most obvious inspiration for this sprawling(but never tedious) novel is the Lord of the Rings. It's roughly the same length and has several themes, actions, motifs in common. That's not to say it's a rip-off; it is most definitely not. I see it more as a homage to Tolkien's work. 

I enjoyed the book from it's horrifying beginning, it's calm, peaceful interlude at the center of the novel, to the explosive climax and long, struggling, denouement. The beginning, the accelerating spread of Captain Trips(the variant of Superflu which wipes out most of the population) and the slow coalescing of the characters into one group was very well done and believable which is no mean feat when you have a cast of hundreds and a continent-wide setting. I loved the trek through the mountains in the winter , a journey one could drive in a day and a half, but which takes the characters, bereft of modern transportation, weeks. That part, more than any other really drove home the collapse of civilizaton that this world had gone through and the spirit of the characters to achieve their objectives in spite of it all.

There is a load and a half of characters in this book, but fortunately King embues them all with enough personality that the reader can tell them apart; and the reader likes and roots for all of them. Well, most of them. Obviously, with the exception of the main protagonist, who is a supernatural being of evil, the rest of the characters, even the minor ones, are not simple: the good guys are far from perfect and the bad guys are mostly just doing their jobs out of fear rather than any real malice.

For some reason one minor character(the Kid) who appears in the first half of the novel really stood out to me; the physical description was just awesome: funny, clear drawn, detailed, very much a cartoon figure, yet...somehow very real to me in the character's stupid Neal Cassidy meets psychotic Gene Vincent schtick. The Kid is a real caracature but he's almost an American archetype in the power he had to capture and even kind of scare me. Like, I've almost known kids like that. Almost. 

The quibbles I have are few One which I have it with all of Stephen King's work that I've read(which is not much--I'll be readiing more in the future) is that sometimes the foreshadowing is a little heavy handed. I mean, he tells the story like he tells the story and that's that--who am I to argue with one of the best and most successful speculative fiction authors of all time? But sometimes I think he lays the foreshadowing on a bit too thick. I mean, not only the foreshadowing but the red herrings that are made to trick to reader into thinking it's foreshadowing..It's all so obvious. It reminds me a lot of TV movies or series (this is one of the reasons why I'm not a huge fan of TV shows). And obviously TV has been a huge influence on Stephen King and the way he tells stories. But, you know, I think King(and TV) just underestimates the reader's intelligence, that's all. 

The religious aspects of the story are also a little hokey to me--this is a book written for people who more or less identify themselves as American Christian protestants, I guess. Nothing wrong with that, really, but it is something that, again, reminds me of some aspects of TV(especially old TV shows) that I suppose is ultimately very American in it's wholehearted embrace of cheese. But it's so central to the story that I can't imagine excising it.
The climactic point in Las Vegas is unsatisfying. Literal deux ex machina. Not a fan, but whatever, teh rest of the book was enteretaining enough. 

One more thing: STEPHEN KING LOVES PRODUCTS. The constant name-dropping of all the products(not crackers, but NABISCO crackers, not a lamp but a COLEMAN lamp, not just a can of PIE filling but...well, you get the idea.) sort of rubbed me wrong at first. I know that it probably embues the story to American readers with a certain immediate realism, but I couldn't help noticing it constantly. It's a real document of American realia that way, i guess, but it took me out of the story. But, as the King is self-consciously telling a post-apocalyptic epic fantasy on the American continent, and the characters are very self-consciously American and patriotic to boot, all these trappings of Americana are fitting and even, ultimately, satisfying. _
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Honor amoung Thieves by Jeffrey Archer

I read this in a day and a half during a time when I was hospitalized for thrombosis and....

My God. Absolutely the most, the worst, the terriblest, comically bad book I've ever had the pleasure of reading all the way to the end of. 

In order get back at the USA for the Gulf War, Saddam Hussein steals the original copy of the Declaration of Independence: THE ORIGINAL DOCUMENT, fellow Americans? The one with Thomas Jefferson's decaying DNA on it!! Outraged, aren't you? horrified at the very thought, I'm sure. The infamy!!!


His evil plan? To tear it up on LIVE TV. Despair, O US of A! Gnash thy teeth and tear out thine hairs from the very roots for thou hast been bested!!

In the wake of the decade long WAr of Iraq, I guess there is a sweet sentimetality in viewing the cartoon villain of Saddam Husein during the Clinton era. Life was so much simpler then, wasn't it? Remember when we were the good guys, the winners of the Cold War, the benevolent empire...?(sigh)

Archer's understanding of the nature of American nationalism is about as nuanced and accurate as Roland Emmerich's. 

At least I"ll never make the mistake of reading Jeffrey Archer again