Responsibility of Stories and their Readers/Viewers..

I don't know what to call this entry, nor am I even sure how to address this or what I think in regards to it. Except...it bothered me and it's clearly been bothering me since I started reading reviews and interacting with folks online as far back as 2002. So it's not by any means a new issue.

I read two reviews over at Smartbitches that were deliberately posted back to back in order to show how an incident or issue in a book can completely ruin a book for the reader. Now that in of itself doesn't niggle at me, there are things that just throw people out of books. OR bug them. But in this instance, both reviewers got up on their soap-boxes, did a bit of a rant, and gave the book a D or F, regardless of how well written or entertaining it was. They even went so far as to get upset at the writers for not commenting on or examining in more depth this horrible thing in their story, not being social activists with their storytelling or at the very least being aware enough not to do it, and just mentioning the thing in an off-the-cuff, blase fashion.

The reviews can be found:

1. Wedded Bliss by Celeste Bradley, Review done by Carrie

Wedded Bliss is an incredibly enjoyable story with one horrible problem that ruined the whole book for me. I’m going to start off by describing the plot and why I liked it, and then I’m going to get into the problem. There will be a history lesson and ranting. Prepare yourself.

Unfortunately this book has one terrible problem for me, and as I said, it ruined everything.

Katarina is repeatedly stated to be rich because her mother owns a sugar plantation in Barbados.

[The writer goes on to provide a history on the horrible slave conditions on sugar plantations on Barbados.]

2. Perils of Pleasure by Julie Anne Long

Confession: I spent a long time thinking about how to grade this book. Here are the three grades I swung back and forth on. Let’s call them Without Incident, With Incident, and But is the Incident Equivalent to an Entire Book. (I’ll address the Incident later.)

Without Incident: B minus

Lengthy depiction of the plot.

With Incident: F minus

This was the Incident:

“You know nothing of farming,” Colin said. It sounded like a warning. She wanted to say, How do you know? But he was right, so she simply waved a disdainful hand. “I learn quickly. I can certainly fire a musket, and I daresay I should hold my own against an Indian or a bear. And I thank you for your concern.”

…he smiled a little, no doubt picturing her in battle with an Indian or a bear.

The first time I read that, I definitely smelled a musk in the air. When I read it again, in disbelief, it felt a bit like falling on a knife.

I actually stopped reading the book after that for a few days. I thought about that line quite a bit. It followed me around like a big toxic miasma, probably more noxious than bad gunpowder. My main question was, “why?” Why drop that in there? What was it for, what does it achieve? Why couldn’t Madeleine just “hold her own”, full stop? Plus – the conversation was about farming. Why would Madeleine be needing to shoot Indians and bears in the course of farming? Was her farm on their reservation? Does she mention Indians in the same breath as bear because both are supposed to be equally savage animals?

Okay from my perspective these are relatively accurate historical items, those characters would say and think that way back then. The historical novels take place in the early 1800s. In the early 1800s, Native Americans were called Indians (blame Columbus and the Europeans Explorers for that misnomer) and people were afraid of them - it may not be nice, but it is history, they were the equivalent of today's view of Syrians. And yes, upper crust, classy ladies obtained money from nasty plantations they never visited. And lived off the profits of horrible things. That's still happening today. There are actually other things in both books that reviewers mention that would have bugged me more to be honest.

And I do understand having issues with something...politically incorrect? I'm not sure politically incorrect is the right word? That just turns you off, and throws you out of a book. Or makes you angry. I've had that happen to me. (notably with the contemporary best-selling novel Me About You).
Anyhow, despite how it may appear this post is not about issues people have with romance novels or historical accuracy...but well, in the second review...the reviewer goes on to state the following:

Perhaps it is historically accurate for someone like Madeleine to speak of shooting Indians as par for the course. But I somehow feel that writers of historicals are uniquely placed to help retell histories from the perspectives of those whose voices have been suppressed or stories misrepresented. Every time a person of colour appears in historical with his/her own agency, motivations and fully-fleshed individualism, it is a push-back against the dominant narratives that we’ve lived with for centuries. I shall not say more, as this topic has been covered at length by far more eloquent and insightful commenters, which I am grateful to encounter regularly in this community.

I've seen the comment in bold mentioned in various venues and in regards to various television series etc and it brings up a series of questions that I've been pondering for a long time and don't really have any answers to.

1. What responsibility does a fictional writer truly have in regards to the reader? Outside of telling their story the best way they know how?

2. Are stories supposed to have an altruistic or socially just purpose? Are they meant to morality plays? Can they just entertain? Is there a responsibility in ensuring the story doesn't reinforce stereotypes or unjust tropes?

3. Are stories in essence merely reflections of our society, our culture? Do they hold up a mirror of sorts to us? Showing both the nasty with the good? And what responsibility does the reader or viewer have to the story they are watching, reading or listening too? Are we meant to passive onlookers? OR are we meant to interact and question what is being told?

4. What would happen if we avoided all the stories that made us uncomfortable? Or uneasy? Or censored them? What if we cut out or edited out the offensive bits? Would that make what the story is in essence commenting on go away?

On the other hand, does white-washing or telling the story in a way that reinforces certain stereotypes and views...do excessive damage? Does the writer have a responsibility to use the proverbial soap box they've been provided for better ends? To promote better understanding?
Does the reader have a responsibility to avoid books that...may not do that?

I don't know. I know in the US right now there's a bit of a push-back against the edict of telling more socially aware stories, and not reinforcing negative stereotypes. That's actually, at least in part, what the battle over the Hugos and now Dragon Awards was about. In genre, you see it more than in literary fiction. Because literary fiction tends to address and contemplate these issues more.

I also have seen this push-back in Britain in regards to the whole Doctor Who casting, along with other things.

And on the Buffy fandom, there was some push-back in the other direction, in regards to how the writers handled the death of a lesbian character, along with that relationship, which previously had been handled well. Not to mention considerable rage and push-back regarding a sexual assault, and how it been handled. In Buffy, I thought the push-back made sense, but at the same time...from the writer's perspective they were challenging their audience, and perhpas showing a reflection of the culture that we were in at the time. The writers didn't want the viewers to be comfortable.

Also, years ago, there was a massive kerfuffle on live journal in the sci-fi fandom in regards to how a female white science-fiction writer was writing POC and homosexual characters in her novels. Many critics felt that she was not handling the characters with care and reinforcing negative stereotypes.
Of course at that time, someone, can't remember who, posed the argument that maybe it was up to the reader to question this, not the writer. The reader to see something that didn't work, see a reflection of that also in their own life, and deal with it. Which...I'm sort of on the fence about.

I keep wondering as readers and viewers what are our responsibilities to the content that we interact with daily? How critically do we interact with? Are just passive viewers who...let it fly by. Or do we question it? And to what degree should we? Also, should we be critical of creators of content that are merely reflecting the world and our culture back to us? Should we not be critical of the world and culture it is reflective of? I mean, wouldn't it be more pro-active and for more useful, to try
to change a discriminatory ban against immigration than rail about a book that depicts immigrants in a negative light? On the other hand, does the book make things worse? And if it does...is the best response to write and publish a book or series that counter-acts its message? That actually appears to be what Amazon is doing in response to HBO's Confederacy, creating their own AU series that questions HBO's.

I don't know the answers. Just that it's not quite as clear cut as I'd like it to be. When it comes to human beings, few things are.

Links...worth commenting on...

1. Hmmm..this article sort of comments on what I was talking about in my previous post but in a different way...

Caitlin is not Groot: Finding Proper Communication Adaptations in Science Fiction and Fantasy

( Read more... )

So do writers have a responsibility to do this?

2. Reading Between the Lines Church -- wow, just, wow.

3. Five Mythic Eclipse Monsters Believed to Have Messed with the Sun and Moon -- hee. The US is in full eclipse mode.
My brother is journeying to Kansas to see it with an old high school friend.

I really don't care that much. But bought glasses at a cheap price in case I end up being in a situation where I'm looking at the sky.

[Above three links are courtesy of conuly.]

4. Sigh. The political stuff in the US ranges from the frighteningly comically absurd to the just plain old frightening. And it's completely divisive and triggering no matter how you look at it. The country is even more divided than it was last year at this time, the two sides HATE each other. The only way to remain sane is either to avoid completely, or to poke fun.

So...one group has decided that maybe sharing a meal with the other side will help...

Sharing Dinners with the Opposing Side for peaceful and uniting political discourse.

5. View on Nudity Grin and Bare it

The veteran German leftist politician Gregor Gysi wants his compatriots to take off more of their clothes. He is angry that the long German tradition of therapeutic nudity in the open air is being undermined. Only this summer the nudist portion of one of the beaches in Berlin was brutally shortened by the authorities, and the mostly elderly users are furious. They are right. Mr Gysi argues that public nudity can be much less erotic than a bikini and that the beaches he remembers his mother taking him to in his East German youth were places where women of all shapes and ages could enjoy their bodies for their own sake.

It was, he says, the “pornographic gaze” of westerners after reunification that destroyed the pleasure of nude bathing, which had always been more widespread in East Germany and – he claims – something promoted more by women than by men. Of course the east was then a tyranny in which there was little frivolity or choice on offer. For all but the most confidently young and gorgeous it is more fun to choose a bathing costume than to make do with what nature has provided, so in a consumer culture this is now what people do.

But there is a useful lesson in humility and in the appreciation of life as it is when you let it all hang out, even in some cases flop out. It is neither concealment nor display but simple acceptance of who and how we are; something valuable has been lost with the sexualisation of nudity, and you do not need to be German to see this.

I did notice this when my family briefly visited Berlin (east and west) in the 1980s, before the wall came down and during the Cold War years. The Germans seemed to have no issues with nudity, while the British and Americans, really do. Also noticed that the French had no issues with it -- women bathed topless on beaches in France, but in the US you receive a fine. (I personally blame the Puritans...)

Also neither German nor French films have issues with explicit sex, at least they didn't use to as far as I could tell, while US and British did. This may have changed, overseas, not certain.

But as a teen visiting France in the 1980s, I picked up science fiction mags covered with nude photos. And many of my French girlfriends went topless.

Thanks to oursin for the link.

6. I apparently can't metabolize sugar well. Had a bowl of ice cream, okay two bowls, and a cookie and my nerves feel frazzled, I've broken out in hives, and felt a bit sick. Seriously?

7. The Great British Bake-Off As We Know it is Over

And apparently PBS isn't picking it up. Damn. Just, damn. Also PBS has no plans to show more than one more season of the series. It's shown four of the seven seasons. The last four. It may pick up one of the first three.

Oh well, we do have the Great American Baking Show spun off of it...

Thanks to petz for the link.

8. Norwegian Site That Makes Readers Take a Quiz Before Commenting...here's an update on how it is working

When my former colleague Joseph Lichterman wrote about a Norwegian news organization that makes readers pass a quiz on the article before they can comment on it (one of the most-trafficked stories in Nieman Lab history, by the way) the site — NRKbeta, the tech vertical of Norway’s public broadcaster — was lauded for its creativity. But NRKbeta’s editors and journalists said it was too early to tell if the program was a success.


But now, five months in? NRKbeta’s team says readers may have treated the quizzes on 14 articles more like reading comprehension games than as a gateway to the comments section.

Hmmm...sort of wish we employed that on fanboards.

(Thanks to yourlibraian for the link)

9. Most Watched Television Series Around the World in 2017 according to Parrot Analytics

Actually wasn't that surprised by the results if I think about it -- since all of them have been mentioned by people on social media sites. Vikings is amazingly popular with people online as is Suits. I honestly don't know why. The other ones, I sort of get, for the most part.

[Thanks to yourlibrarian for the link)

More links found on reading list worth mentioning...

1. Uhm...whoa? A demonstration of what happens when a country's democracy implodes.

What’s it like to watch a country implode? To see a democracy destroyed and an economy crater?

Since 2014, American journalist Hannah Dreier has documented just that in Venezuela, once one of the world’s wealthiest nations and still home to what are believed to be the planet’s largest oil reserves. She wrote for the Associated Press about what it was like to live in a place with the world’s highest murder rate—and the world’s highest rate of inflation. About the breakdown of hospitals and schools, and how the obesity epidemic that plagued a rich country was quickly replaced with people so hungry they were rooting through the garbage on her doorstep.

Most of the time, few paid attention, at least in part because Dreier was the last U.S. journalist even to get a work visa to live in Venezuela; when she moved there to cover the story, she says, “I felt like I had walked across a bridge as it was burning behind me.”

2. Ugh.

Rise of the Valkyries

( sure to rise the hackles of any nice kind good person on the planet )

Ugh, and here I thought it was going to be a cool article about Norse Mythology. Not so much. Instead it's an article about demonic female nazis.

3. And just in case the above article wasn't bad enough...here's more fodder.

( Read more... )

This is the Science Fiction and Fantasy community's response.

Yes, these examples are fictional. And yes, it’s far more important that we fight white supremacy in the real world, by donating to organizations like the NAACP, having tough conversations with our family members and friends, showing up to protests, calling our representatives – or just refusing to shut up when we see bigotry. However, fiction can make us feel less helpless, and it can remind us what we stand for. With science fiction, fantasy, and comics in particular, these imagined worlds and heroes can remind us what kind of person we want to be, and what kind of future we want to create. We need those reminders, and those inspirations, on days when it’s easy to despair at humanity.

As Jemisin tweeted before she signed off to do some work, “Ideas can change the world.”

Hmmm...this is another answer to a previous post that I wrote pondering the artist and writer's responsibility to inspire change and to write about this things in a constructive manner. (As opposed to a destructive one.)


4. 2019 - two women superhero films in a 30 day span

Hmmm...they are making a movie with Silver Sable and Black Cat, two lesser known female superheroes in the Spiderman books.

The movie is set to hit theaters on February 8, 2019 – four months after Sony’s Venom, and exactly one month before Captain Marvel arrives on March 8, 2019.

This release date means Silver and Black comes out only 28 days before Captain Marvel (thanks, February!), so we get two women-led superhero movies in less than 30 days. Yessss.

Aside from that, though, I’m not sure what to make of this choice. On the one hand, February is traditionally a cinematic “dump month,” when studios release their films with lower box office expectations. I don’t love the idea of Sony dropping this film – with its two female leads, helmed by the first black woman to direct a big-budget superhero movie – in a cinematic graveyard. After D.C.’s lackluster marketing for Wonder Woman, I’m out of tolerance for studios constant underestimating and underselling of women-led and women-created films. Prince-Blythewood, who’s doing a rewrite of Thor: The Dark World scribe Christopher Yost’s script for Silver and Black, wrote and directed an honest-to-goodness modern classic with Love & Basketball. Maybe have a little faith in her?

5. New NASA Space Training Video Featuring Gina Torres Makes me wish I was a whole lot younger and could train to be an astronaut. Well almost. I'm claustropic and 6 feet tall, not conducive to astronaut training.

6. Hollywood Summer Blockbuster Films Flopped at the Box Office via the Guardian. (Hmm, should tell Hollywood, they don't think they flopped.)

The defining lesson of this year’s flop crop: there’s no such thing as a sure thing. We’ve watched studios incrementally move away from original, creator-driven projects seen as “risky” (meanwhile, the first-time director Jordan Peele’s Get Out is the most profitable film of the year, with a $175m payday on a measly $4.5m budget) towards franchises and other projects ostensibly boasting built-in audiences through brand recognition. But this summer, audiences drew a line under what they’ll buy into on simple merit of nostalgia or the sunk-time fallacy, and now the chickens of failure have come home to roost.

2017 was the year that moviegoers finally rejected presumption. This year saw a crop of films boldly positing themselves as franchise-starters crash and burn on arrival, learning the hard way that audiences don’t want to spend 90 minutes on what feels like setup for something they’ll get in two years. The Dark Tower condensed seven novels of knotty Stephen King prose into one incomprehensible package that then positioned itself as Act I in a grander, dumber vision with its final minutes.

................

While public discourse continues to rage over the position and utility of identity politics – the championing of marginalized groups along lines of gender, race and sexuality – executives have found that the topic isn’t so embattled in cineplexes. Girls Trip, Wonder Woman and Get Out all earned public goodwill by offering someone other than a white man their moment in the spotlight, and proved that audiences aren’t afraid of diversity. Quite the opposite, in fact; white men have been calling their bankability into question left and right. Once upon a time, the mention of Will Ferrell, Tom Cruise or Johnny Depp would have been enough to sell The House, a Mummy revival or another lackluster Pirates of the Caribbean flick. But with no wattage to hide behind, The House face-planted and the latter pair failed to meet earnings expectations, despite objectively large sums.

Which leaves the confounding case of Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets. On paper, it should have been huge: an unfamiliar story in a time when audiences grumble over Hollywood’s lack of creativity, a ravishing sci-fi spectacle with enough CGI to make Avatar look like a student film, a cast featuring a supermodel and a pop star bringing their huge followings to the table. Perhaps in practice, it was all too outré to sell to the American people, an incoherent mishmash when compressed into ad form.

Maybe critics wield more power than conventionally assumed, as the majority of reviews warned that the complete bafflement of the ad campaign carried over to the film itself. Either way, the most expensive independent production of all time had to rely on overseas markets to make its money back, settling for a $37m haul in the US. (Things are just peachy in China, Hollywood’s twin to the east; its entertainment economy keeps growing as US films develop a foothold, with Wolf Warrior II’s nearly $600m take setting the national record for highest-grossing film of all time.)

Hmm...rather interesting. I admittedly have only seen one film in theaters this summer, and that was Wonder Woman. Nothing else really appealed to me. And movies cost $20 bucks, without treats. Cheaper to rent on demand or subscribe to HBO monthly.


7. The Hugos Awards are Announced

Best Novel: The Obelisk Gate by N. K. Jemisin (Orbit Books)
Best Novella: Every Heart a Doorway by Seanan McGuire (Tor.com Publishing)
Best Novelette: “The Tomato Thief” by Ursula Vernon (Apex Magazine, January 2016)
Best Short Story: “Seasons of Glass and Iron” by Amal El-Mohtar (The Starlit Wood: New Fairy Tales, Saga Press)
Best Related Work: Words Are My Matter: Writings About Life and Books, 2000-2016 by Ursula K. Le Guin (Small Beer)
Best Graphic Story: Monstress, Volume 1: Awakening, written by Marjorie Liu, illustrated by Sana Takeda (Image)
Best Dramatic Presentation – Long Form: Arrival, screenplay by Eric Heisserer based on a short story by Ted Chiang, directed by Denis Villeneuve (21 Laps Entertainment/FilmNation Entertainment/Lava Bear Films)
Best Dramatic Presentation – Short Form: The Expanse: “Leviathan Wakes,” written by Mark Fergus and Hawk Ostby, directed by Terry McDonough (SyFy)
Best Editor – Short Form: Ellen Datlow
Best Editor – Long Form: Liz Gorinsky
Best Professional Artist: Julie Dillon
Best Semiprozine: Uncanny Magazine, edited by Lynne M. Thomas & Michael Damian Thomas, Michi Trota, Julia Rios, and podcast produced by Erika Ensign & Steven Schapansky
Best Fanzine: “Lady Business,” edited by Clare, Ira, Jodie, KJ, Renay, and Susan
Best Fancast: Tea and Jeopardy, presented by Emma Newman with Peter Newman
Best Fan Writer: Abigail Nussbaum
John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer: Ada Palmer (1st year of eligibility)
Best Series: The Vorkosigan Saga by Lois McMaster Bujold (Baen)


Hmmm...for once, I'm actually intrigued by the winners. (I don't really care that much about awards, highly subjective things, but this years slate of winners is rather intriguing.) Best fan writer surprised, it's the blogger I'd been following for a while on LJ, but stopped once I hopped over to DW, because I couldn't figure out how to add her blog to my reading list on DW. Abigail Nussbaum of "Asking the Wrong Questions", she does a lot of insightful reviews of sci-fi and fantasy, and meta on the above. She also edits a OnZine with sci-fi stuff, and is an Isralie programmer/coder.

I also tend to agree with the winners for dramatic presentation, best series, and they left off the one who won non-fiction memoir category -- it was Ursula Le Quinn, whose book I'm considering purchasing.

So for once, I'm intrigued. And most of the winners were women. Take that you white supremacist male asswipes. (For those not in the know? The Hugos have been plagued the last few years by a lot whingy white male supremacist types who think they can aspire to their heroes of yesteryear, but alas do not and are rather unreadable.)