Wednesday 20 April 2011

To Quote Grand Admiral Thrawn...

...Roughly, at any rate: "A error only becomes a mistake when you refuse to correct it."

Ms Bellafante, like all the worst people in the world, cannot be happy with just disliking something; she has to come up with reasons, spun from whole cloth, as to what exactly is wrong with the people who do like it.  In this case, she decides that fantasy is of no interest to girls (because she doesn't know any women who like it), so the only ones who will watch it are those who hunger for lashings of casual sex.  And no, I don't know anyone engrossed by re-runs of House either, but since it would be obviously ludicrous for me to leap from that to "British viewers don't like American shows being on TV more than once", I don't see how it helps her case.  It's straight up proof-by-solipsism: I don't hang out with anyone who would like this, therefore no-one will.

So, that's her error.  Her mistake is to look at the staggering amount of objections to her review, some smart, some dumb, some well-written, some doubtless entirely written in capitals, and to choose to take issue with the very worst.  Yes, Ginia, idiots have broadband too.  We're looking into an a-hole V-chip, but we're not even at the beta testing stage.  Plus, I think you'd be surprised as to how you'll fare once it's up and running.

In the mean time, either engage with the smart responses (I notice you've linked to a few without any sort of comment), or shut the hell up.  The original article was bad enough, this is just an extended whine about how lots of people were nasty to you.

P.S. The one part of the whole sorry issue that needed saying: "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".  That's all you needed.  Hell, you could have put it on Twitter, and saved everyone some time.

4 comments:

Gooder said...

Seems she's firmly put in her place by the comments section! Reviews like that really are annoying.

I remember there was a BSG review in the Guardian once by a critic who clearly had already dismissed because it was sci-fi and thus silly.

Now as you now I'm not the biggest fan of fantasy myself and wasn't that grabbed by the first episode but I'm going to keep watching and see how it develops and if I get drawn into it

SpaceSquid said...

I saw your tweet on it, and I took your point. The characters in the books are fantastically complicated and fascinating, and that really didn't come across at all (Daenerys especially, though that was deliberate). They did have a lot to get through, though, so I'm hopeful it will suck you in.

Gooder said...

Aye, I get the sense it'll take time to build up the characters so I'll stick with for a least another couple.

After all Wire addiction didn't kick in straight away either!

I like how the Guardian episode blog as a Sean Bean Gruff-o-meter in it though!

(And Lena Hedley still leads me to expect killer robots....)

SpaceSquid said...

Yeah, seeing Sarah Connor taking it doggy-style hurt my brain more than a little.