I am sitting on a leather chair in the middle of a very manly den – walls
decorated with giant swords, model soldiers in mid-battle in glass cabinets –
talking
to George R. R. Martin about why women love him. What is the secret
to his appeal? His fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, which has been
adapted into the hit television show Game
of Thrones, has an army of female fans clamouring for his next
instalment.
The writer George RR Martin at home in Santa Fe PHOTO: Nancy Newberry
‘It is one of the things that pleases me most,’ Martin told me when I went to
interview him at his home last month in Santa Fe, New Mexico. ‘The fact that
women love my characters.’ He is playing it down – more than half of his
fans are women.
Typically fantasy writers paint women either as angels or demons. But Martin’s
women are more three dimensional - part of his creative appeal.
They include
the beautiful and manipulative Cersei
Lannister (played by Lena Headey), who would defend her children and
family to the death; Lady Catelyn Stark (Michelle Fairley), a strong mother,
devoted wife and a shrewd political strategist not afraid of a 300 mile trek
on a horse to join her son in battle; Arya Stark (Maisie Williams), a
nine-year-old tomboy who wants her own sword and Daenerys Targaryen (Emilia
Clarke), who wants to cross the narrow sea to win back her father’s throne.
Oh and not forgetting the most awesome Brienne of Tarth, a female knight
played by the 6’ 3’’ actress Gwendoline Christie.
So how does he get inside the head of, say, his teenage characters? 'Yes,
you're right I've never been an eight year old girl,' he says, 'but I've
also never been an exiled princess, or a dwarf or bastard. What I have been
is human. I just write human characters.'
The sexy high priestess Melisandre, played by actress Carice van Houten
PHOTO: HBO
He gets plenty of feedback from his fans. ‘Some women hate the female
characters,' he says. 'But importantly they hate them as people, because of
things that they've done, not because the character is underdeveloped.'
The
pitfalls of lots of other fantasy texts, he says is when writers stray into
writing in stereotypes.
But because Martin has a sprawling world with
thousands of characters (and five books to do it in), he has the luxury of
developing each one fully. 'Male or female, I believe in painting in shades
of grey,' he says. 'All of the characters should be flawed; they should all
have good and bad, because that's what I see. Yes, it’s fantasy, but the
characters still need to be real.’
Martin should be used to female adoration by now. Although he has only hit
mainstream consciousness in the last few years (his books have sold more
than 20m worldwide), he has been a minor celebrity on the science fiction
circuit for years. His wife’s first words to him, when she met him at a
science fiction conference in 1975 were that his first novel, A Song for
Lya, ‘made her cry’.
Now he is mobbed wherever he goes - his trademark
fisherman's cap an instant giveaway that he is the man behind the globally
successful franchise.
Arya Stark, a nine-year-old tomboy played by Maisie Williams PHOTO: HBO
His books feature sex pretty heavily (to say the least) but it is something
that has been ramped up even further for the television show, which is back
on Sky Atlantic tonight. Often crucial conversations between characters
happen while one of them is having sex (not always mentioned in the book) -
something that has the American academic Myles McNutt to term them
‘sexposition’.
‘Is it simply because we couldn’t be trusted to pay attention otherwise?’
McNutt asked on his blog. ‘It’s as though they think having a prostitute
appear and only talking, without actually having sex, would be some sort of
cop-out. In my view, at least, it’s the other way around: it just feels
lazy.’
Daenerys Targaryen, the would-be queen, played by actress, Emilia Clarke
PHOTO: HBO
Gina Bellafonte in The New York Times went further. Last year
she wrote: ‘all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something
for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive
would watch otherwise.’ The truth was, she sniffed, ‘Game of Thrones is boy
fiction patronizingly turned out to reach the population’s other half.’
Female GOT fans lept to Martin's defence, including Emily Nussbaum from the
New Yorker who wrote that the strength of the series was ‘its insight into
what it means to be excluded from power: to be a woman, or a bastard, or a
‘half man’ [dwarf].’
But Bellafonte's comments still rankle with Martin a year later because he is,
at heart, a feminist, despite being cautious about admitting it.
‘There was a period in my life when I would have called myself a feminist,
back in the seventies, when the feminist movement was really getting going
and growing out of the counter culture of the sixties,’ he says.
‘But the
feminist movement has changed. Sometime in the 80s and 90s I read some
pieces by women saying that no man can ever be a feminist and you shouldn't
call yourself that because it's hypocritical, so I backed off. I thought if
the current crop of feminists believes that no man can be a feminist, then I
guess I’m not one.’
Cersei Lannister, mother of King Joffrey Baratheon, played by Lena Headey
PHOTO: HBO
I tell him men are allowed to be feminists again – that he can have Ryan
Gosling, the 21st century’s thinking woman’s crumpet, as his mentor. He
chuckles behind his candyfloss beard. ‘To me being a feminist is about
treating men and women the same,’ he said.
‘I regard men and women as all
human - yes there are differences, but many of those differences are created
by the culture that we live in, whether it's the medieval culture of
Westeros, or 21st century western culture.’
Labels: arya, bastard, brienne, cersei, character, daenerys, dwarf, fantasy, female, george, hbo, Jessica Salter, lannister, martin, melisandre, power, rr, stark, stereotypes, targaryen
