Looping Wor(l)d

Lately there’s a kind of flamewar in this sub-sphere of Fantasy genre blogs & forums. I don’t usually take part in these because they seem to me a merry-go-round with no real valid or interesting argument, just done to have something to discuss and pass the time. It’s a kind of arguing that I can’t suffer even in real life, feels like everyone is saying the same thing but continues going on without even to seek some sort of conclusion or common ground or whatever. It’s just rhetoric and posturing and I despise that kind of stuff.

I’ll only link to the last bout. It is obvious to me that this reads as no defense of anything, even less a will to clarify one own opinion and ideas. The intent is very clearly of fueling the fire. That blog post is deliberately inflammatory. You can’t possibly go participating to a debate by calling the other side: subliterate maggot, manchild or troglodyte.

Now, especially because I care nothing for posturing and rhetoric, this also means that I’m not turning down the merit of a discussion merely because of its inflammatory tones. It seems also obvious that the tone used is deliberate. It’s an obvious bait, trolling attempt. To do what? I guess to bring the worst out of people and make them victims of their own display. But this strategy, imho, is pathetic and falls short simply because it’s another proposition of the straw man argument. She’s merely polarizing the discussion so much that every opinion is made extreme and, so, stupid. The result? As I said above, nothing relevant or meaningful is being said, but ESPECIALLY by those people who kept the fire well stoked.

So I’ll bring some actual arguments. The first is about negative reviews. On this blog I deliberately avoid writing bad reviews. Usually because I’m not a masochist, nor anyone “assigns” me reviews to write. I pick my own books, and if I don’t like something it’s very unlikely I go far into it, even more unlikely that I have any interest writing down my opinion. I’d rather write down some comments on a forum so that I can at least discuss some things with other people, as opposed to preaching from the high tower that a blog represents.

But, overall, I believe that writing reviews that are downright negative is pointless. Even when others do it. You’re just declaring that the work you’re reviewing didn’t reach you in any way. That there’s a solid wall between you and this thing (and you’re pretending to describe what’s past the wall, that you can’t see). To me, that means you can’t say ANYTHING worthwhile about it. That’s why MOST of these kind of reviews turn into sarcastic provocations. They become a kind of posturing where the reviewer underlines his moral and intellectual superiority to the work that was submitted to him. It is a fact that from this position of superiority nothing relevant can be said, ever. You can write some sarcastic snark that make some people smirk and feel clever, but it’s really a pathetic achievement.

Before you can judge, you need to know. To know you need to be infinitely humble. Sarcasm is territory that needs to be trod over very carefully. Just yesterday I read a quote in Midnight Tides that applies to everything in its universality: “We [Letherii] are cursed enough with righteousness, without inviting yet more.”

It applies well to these type of discussions. I don’t have any problem when sarcastic reviews are written about, say, Harry Potter or Twilight, because those have already reached their public. They can take hits, even vicious, unfair ones because these blows have no consequences. But I’d really start to question the merit of these blows when they can have a consequence. That’s why I say you should pick your battles.

The other issue I have with that blog I linked is that I’m all for civil rights and fair societies in THE REAL WORLD, but going picking fights against imagined worlds is kind of silly. When you review every single book strictly from the perspective of its racist/misogynistic/homophobic display it becomes a sign of obsession. In particular it is telling that she does not recommend stuff she thinks is good. If such work “rejects heteornormativity” or “promotes the female perspective” then it must be Great. She recommends stuff that has an agenda she approves, regardless of the relative quality of said work. She has one yardstick that she uses to measure everything. She fights canons imposed by society by imposing Her Corrected Own. It’s like those religious sites that review the most disparate stuff from the sole perspective of how much it adheres and respects their belief. It’s like you care NOTHING of what a book specifically wants to say because all you care about is whether or not, or how much, it conforms to certain standards. As if automatically a book is racist if it has not an equal number of characters representing every race and ordered so no one is predominant at the expense of others. As if racism or misogyny are automatically a fact if a book avoids to make them a prominent theme.

This also reeks of revisionism when past writers are reconsidered in the context of modern society and culture, accusing them of being racist because they do not conform to today’s rules (as when accusing Lovecraft of being racist). So pick your fights. Fight for civil rights in the real world, because it’s where they matter. Leave writers pick their themes without the need to be politically correct, without adhering to a norm that you think is right.

Isn’t this desire to impose on the Fantasy genre a deliberate display of anti-racism, anti-misogyny, anti-homophobia also a naive wishful thinking?

If those themes are touched in a book, good, they should then be analyzed and discussed. But why a writer’s intent has to be TWISTED and forced onto themes that “the reader” pretends to be unavoidable and evokes everywhere like ghosts? If a Fantasy book has also a political theme, good, but why a Fantasy book should be FORCED to have one? Or be blamed if it didn’t explicitly pick a side? By doing this you’re only imposing chains on what could and should be done, when instead the goal should be of expanding the limits of expression. Of bringing in diversity instead of savagely fighting sameness. Choose your agenda.

Reading a book that brings up racism, misogyny, homophobia and everything related is good and laudable. But imposing that now every book HAS to put them on display is an act of extremism, of the desire to root out diversity instead of promoting it. Even if this model is an infinitely better one to have, its imposition is still a negative thing. You’re fighting the good fight but in the worst way possible and end up as bad as what you fought till that point. As if those who are victim of prejudices are ready to discriminate in turn. Instead of fighting abuse, we take turns at it. So the problem is not WHAT to discriminate, but condemn discrimination in all possible forms.

Going to the core of the problem, this is part of a larger issue called “education”. These days women complain all the time because popular culture is filled with the display of sexual objectification. It’s an important battle for a better society as is the one about gay civil rights. What they DO NOT understand is that you don’t fight this battle by starting to CENSOR culture everywhere and FORBID the display of the sexual objectification of women. You fight this battle by “educating” women to RESIST CULTURAL MODELS. Build up antibodies. To think with their fucking mind. To not be constantly under the effect of manipulation and peer pressure. Then diversify culture and reach a different public.

Last thing I wanted to say is on the neverending debate between “mainstream” and genre fiction. I’ve written my opinion in a forum post and it’s really all I have to say. I don’t see any debate to be possible because matters are really straightforward. The rest appears to me just like a pointless treadmill whose purpose is clearly not about its actual argument:

—
Do you think a guy who barely has a grasp of grammar could tell a good book from a bad one? One’d say probably not.

Do you think that someone who read 5 books all his life could tell a good book from a bad one better than a guy who read 500 books? Probably not.

This is the “axis” of specialization. It is objective. Surely in order to READ you NEED to be educated at a certain level or it’s just gibberish. If you follow this axis you go all the way up to a literary major and the guys who hand out the Nobel Prize, and who obviously know what they are doing, the same way an engineer knows what he’s doing after a whole life spent learning very complicate (specialized) stuff.

Now.

The problem isn’t so much that popular works pretend to be “literature”. BUT that literature pretends to be meaningful and relevant (in the same way an engineer building a bridge is). Because that’s the point. The specialization of literature is kind of objective in the way it works, and it exists and is not subjective. One can’t argue the Nobel Prize for literature.

But you CAN argue whether it’s just specialized masturbation or actually meaningful. And more often than not serious literature is absolutely irrelevant, narcissistic and solipsistic. Intellectual wankery for those who have that kind of kink.

P.S.
I consider myself one of them.