Uppsatsen analyserar tre skönlitterära böcker vilka är populära hos ungdomar; Ondskan av Jan Guillou, Kampen om Järntronen av George R.R. Martin och John Greens Förr eller senare exploderar jag. Syftet med studien är att uppmärksamma hur manlighet och maskuliniteter framställs och porträtteras för att kunna uppmärksamma hur verkens idealmän konstrueras. Uppsatsens teoretiska ramverk består främst av Raewyn Connells begrepp hegemonisk maskulinitet med särskilt fokus på makt och våldskapital, med vissa komplement av Yvonne Hirdmans terminologier genuskontrakt och könsmaktsordningar. Resultatet visar att de tre romanerna kan placeras på en skala gällande hegemonisk maskulinitet. Makt och våldskapital fyller olika funktion och framstår som viktigast i Ondskan, följt av Kampen om Järntronen och till sist Förr eller senare exploderar jag. Ser vi till en relationell skala är ordningen omvänd.

Creators of popular culture, especially in the Fantasy- and Science Fiction-genres, has oftenused religious inspiration in the form of symbolism of the divine to form their own religioussystems and beliefs. The gods in these works ranges from actual physical beings to lofty ideasof transcendent powers in the sky. Readers have consumed these aspects of divinity, that doesn’tstray that far from their own world’s deities, and many of them have probably done so withouta thought on if this affects their own view of the divine. The first step towards this realizationrequires some form of analysis over how popular culture has depicted gods and religion. Thefollowing study treats how one of the world’s most well-known Fantasy series, George R.R. Martins A Song of Ice and Fire, portrays divine agency in three of its religions. The religionsin question are The Seven-Pointed Star, the Drowned God, and The Lord of Light. Thetheoretical approach has been built upon Pierre Machereys thesis on how to reveal a textsideological project to accomplish this goal. The study has shown that the religions with a clearinspiration from western religions, such as Christianity, are portrayed with a weaker divineagency than those religions based on religions without an apparent western inspiration. Thestudy concludes that this implies that the ideological project of A Song of Ice and Fire can beseen as a critique on how religious people use the divine and construct it for their own gains.

The purpose of this paper is to study the adaptation process of the TV-show Game of Thrones. This paper focuses mainly on how David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and HBO adapted the TV-show from George R.R. Martins book series A Song of Ice and Fire and what, in the adaptation and in the reception of the TV-show, made it such a global cultural phenomenon. The analysis has been done by analysing interviews and studying behind-the-scenes material that has been available through articles and bonus material provided by the web and on the DVD and Blu-Ray features of the show. Mary H. Snyders Analyzing Literature-to-Film Adaptations provides a ground tool of analysing adaptations where particularly her “A Marriage of Media” theory has significantly helped the study. The paper analyses fantasy as a genre, the book series that the TV-show is based on, and the adaptation process itself and the different components that make up for the TV-show called Game of Thrones. After the adaptation analysis there is a study on how the internet has helped distributing both the show’s popularity and the show itself through the use of illegal downloading. The result is that the adaption is a successful “Marriage between media”, to use Snyders words, where the internet can be seen as product of that metaphorical marriage. The confidence and trust that both the author of the books and the show runners of the TV-series has placed in each other is the binding fundament that made the adaption as successful as it is. HBO as a cable network company also play a significant part where the financial support to the show’s production and the non-existent censorship regarding the adult content otherwise wouldn’t have been provided for, had the show been produced and/or aired by any other network company for example. The previous successes of other fantasy adaptations such as The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter-series could also be seen as necessary initiators regarding the industry’s newfound openness towards large scale fantasy projects.