On throwing books at the wall and standing on people's feet

[morgan_dhu]

Does it really need to be said that one valid response to reading something that you find profoundly angering in exactly the same way as the last fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand times you read it somewhere else, is throwing the book against the wall and writing about why that thing you read, in the book you threw against the wall, and in all the other books that you didn't throw against the wall because you hadn't reached your limit yet, made you so profoundly angry?

And even if someone comes to you and says, "that book you threw against the wall, it's written by someone who wanted to explore those issues that make you angry and try to expose them as what they are," it's perfectly reasonable to say "Just seeing it makes me angry and I don't want to see it, even in the context of trying to expose it for what it is, BECAUSE I ALREADY KNOW WHAT IT IS."

And I say this even though this particular book is one that I enjoyed, and that made me think about some of these things, because I am one of the people who doesn't know enough about those issues and hasn't been hurt by them and I wanted to see how they were dealt with and I had the privilege of knowing that anything that writer wrote about that issue could not hurt me. Plus, it had a lot of other stuff in it that was really interesting to me. So thanks to my privilege on this issue, I could read this book and not want to throw it against the wall.

But, you know, there was once this TV show that I loved. It said some wonderful things about female power, and it was lots of fun to watch. And then this TV show did something that made me profoundly angry in exactly the same way as the last fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand times I read/saw it in other places, and I didn't want to watch that show anymore. Because a lot of people seem to think that rape is such a wonderful dramatic vehicle, and getting raped by a god is even more dramatic, and they can give me all sorts of reasons why this rape was exactly the right thing to have in this TV show. But just because everyone and his metaphorical dog has used rape as a dramatic device, and sometimes they do it to show how nasty rape is and how surviving it can make a woman so strong, that doesn't mean that as a woman who has been raped, I'm not entitled to be profoundly angry and just say no to rape as a character development McGuffin.

And then there was this other TV show that I loved. It said some wonderful things about female power, and it was lots of fun to watch. And then this TV show also did something that made me profoundly angry in exactly the same way as the last fifty, or a hundred, or a thousand times I read/saw it in other places, and I didn't want to watch that show anymore either. Because there's only so many times a queer girl can read/watch things that written by people who think that it's the height of great drama to kill off the lesbians or turn them into insane and evil murderers, until she just doesn't want to see that anymore. Even if some people assure her that it's just because that writer never lets anyone be happy in a relationship, it's not like he's picking on the lesbians. Because lots of stories let straight people have happy endings, but they always kill the lesbians, or drive them mad.

So, yeah, I know something about lacking some kinds of privilege and getting so angry when privileged people use me and people like me in hurtful ways in books and movies and TV shows and cultural stuff in general. And I know that it's the right of anyone in that situation to throw the book against the wall, and write about why it hurt, and be as loud and angry as they want to be, because it is valid to get hurt and angry when someone is standing on your foot and not only won't get off, but tells you that they're standing on your foot so that people will see how bad it is to stand on someone's foot.

And it's the right of anyone in that situation to get even more profoundly angry when people tell you that you can't see that there's a good reason for that person to stand on your foot so people can see what it's like and learn from it because you're too emotional and not a good reader and haven't the critical tools to properly analyse what's happening in this brilliant piece of performance art in which someone is STANDING ON YOUR FOOT AND WON'T GET OFF. Or that you're being manipulative and abusive when you use strong and angry language to tell people that you're tired of people STANDING ON YOUR FOOT AND NOT GETTING OFF and you aren't going to smile, and take it, or maybe ask them politely if they wouldn't mind moving a little further away any more.

And I say this knowing that I may well be standing on someone's foot all unknowing myself, and can only ask that please, if I am, and am so stupid that I don't see it, then I would be grateful if you would tell me so I can try to do better at not standing on people's feet, because I know I don't like having my foot stood on, and I so don't want to stand on anyone else's foot either.


(If you need it, you can find context for this post here.)

Comments

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

In my mind, intent matters in some ways and at some levels, and it doesn't at others.

Intent doesn't matter when someone is being hurt, especially to the person being hurt. Which Bear acknowledges.

But because Bear's intent was to make (probably mostly white, even if that wasn't her conscious intent) people think in new and different ways about the issues of freedom and slavery/servitude, she did fail better, if you will, than lots of other people who have used the same kinds of imagery without having an intent to examine/question/subvert that imagery.

You can learn from books that fail in certain areas, I think, especially if the writer was trying to do something good.

Communication, even communication about what went wrong, is easier if the person's intent was to communicate with sensitivity.

Does that make sense? (This is an issue I struggle with, and it's particularly hard in this case because I really enjoyed the books, mostly for some of the other themes Bear was playing with (my field of specialisation in university was Arthurian literature and there's lots of that in the books), but I totally understand the criticisms being made and the hurt being felt.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

It does make sense: I'm a bit too tired to develop my ideas/agreement right now, but I did want to clarify the meaning of a term I use, one that's tossed around a lot, and means different things.

I teach the fallacy of authorial intention: by that, I don't mean that authors don't have intentions (many, conscious and un-), but that a statement of an author's intent (in a letter, diary, published or unpublished essay, at a reading) is not sufficient evidence to base a claim of a correct/privileged reading on in an academic essay. (Of course as I've said elsewhere tonight, AW was not writing an academic essay!)

So it's great to read published letters of authors who are dead (remembering that the publications are never complete) or talk to writers who are alive and read interviews--but saying "the author says X and that's the only correct thing to say about the book" (which I saw some of Bear's friends doing--and she herself did not do that--she understood she had failed a reader--no book is perfect nor is there a single book I know of or any other text that everybody responds to the same way) is just wrong. (So is saying that there are books that are better than their readers! I just could not believe that!).

Getting even more improper: it's perfectly valid academic work to do a resistant reading of a text these days: I have an essay on Éowyn in which I argue that Tolkien's intent was NOT feminist in any way, citing several pieces of textual evidence (his various revisions of her story--in one version, she was going to die for being a "strong Amazon,"--his letter expressing his dislike of American feminism--the scene in which all the men stand around her unconsciouis form and decide exactly what she felt and thought and what was wrong with her--unhappiness with her life not just the black breah--and his marrying her off to Faramir--because all women want to get married). So I think I can argue fairly well Tolkien did not intend this character as a feminist role model.

However that did not stop me, nor women I know, from taking her as just that (and in my case, as a object of queer adoration and crossdressing)!

The author's intent does not trump the reader's interpretation: Tolkien cannot take my reading of this character away. Um, sorry, this topic is one of my hobbyhorses!

And really, if all one has is the published text, there's no valid way to "judge" authorial intent (you can make some guesses based on the text, but still, it's dicey). As I keep telling my students: we have SOME chance at analyzing a text. We have NO chance whatsoever of analyzing the author!

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Right. I completely agree with you on the issue of the fallacy of authorial intent in the context of interpreting the text. To say nothing of resistant reading. (I once wrote an essay on Romeo and Juliet as a caution against the glorification of romantic love that made my high school English teacher very upset). After all, that's where slash comes from (I use the term as a generic to include femslash/saffic).

I was thinking of the importance of the intent of an author in discussions such as this, which has become not so much about a reading of this particular text, as it is about white writers who try to write about non-white characters (and other unprivileged characters) and how and why they do it and what the issues are surrounding that.

And yes on the Tolkien. Now I love Tolkien's work with a deep and abiding passion, but there is no indication in the text anywhere that I've ever found that supports a view of Eowyn (or Galadriel, for that matter) being intended as a feminist role model. Which doesn't stop me from deciding that that in my own little alternate Tolkien-based universe, Eowyn became commander-in-chief of the forces that she and Faramir maintained in support of the throne of Gondor and ended up training Aragorn and Arwen's daughter (alas, a Mary Sue character), who became the head of the new and revitalised Rangers....

Ahem.

[ithiliana.livejournal.com]

Ignoring all the Important Theory to say:

that that in my own little alternate Tolkien-based universe, Eowyn became commander-in-chief of the forces that she and Faramir maintained in support of the throne of Gondor and ended up training Aragorn and Arwen's daughter (alas, a Mary Sue character), who became the head of the new and revitalised Rangers....

OMG LINKS? Did you actually write it? I wants to read it!

(I have one in which Boromir and Éowyn's daughter Morwen is leading Rohirrim fight against Aragorn who has the ring......)

PLIZ!

[morgan-dhu.livejournal.com]

Alas, that, and many other pieces of fanfic, were written many years ago (before I even owned a computer) and have been lost in the confusions of life. As I remember, the main story line involved Arwen and Aragorn's daughter Silmarien going off with Legolas to look for lost colonies of elves in the East.

I had a long history of writing fanfic before I even knew anyone else was doing it. My first attempts go all the way back to 1967, and Star Trek, when I started writing K/S long before I knew anyone else was writing it.

Unfortunately, all that exists now is an unfinished fan novel set in the Xena: Warrior Princess universe and a Star Trek: Deep Space Nine parody play that I wrote to be performed a a con some years back.

I haven't the time to write fanfic anymore, between work and the time constraints of managing multiple disabilities.