The Separation of Looks and Character: Lessons Learned in Modern Fairy Tale Retellings

So yeah, let's just call last week a posting failure and move on.

So I've done several RNTNs about fairy tale retellings and YA feminist fantasy. I've been trying for days to figure out how to stick my latest thoughts into that format, but it won't work; these books are all about on par in quality (I'd give any of them four to four and a half stars out of five, say). Still, they beg me to compare them, as all three deal with the same themes through different approaches. Live well in the body you have, say these books, and know that it has nothing at all to do with your character. Such is the lesson learned by the heroines in Princess Ben, by Catherine Gilbert Murdock, Fairest, by Gail Carson Levine, and Fire, by Kristin Cashore. (Fairest and Fire are prequels/companions to previous RNTN faves Ella Enchanted and Graceling, respectively.) Spoilers are present; I've tried to keep them fairly mild, but I do quote from the endings of the books, since that's when the heroines express their new thinking to the reader. 

Fictional Turnoffs

So here’s some news that’s going to be a shocker to everyone who has ever met me. You may want to be sitting down. Ready? Not everything I like to read and watch and listen to and play is strictly intellectual. Not all of it is strictly feminist. Not all of it is strictly clever, or strictly original, or strictly groundbreaking. Not all of it is even very good.

Most of the things I enjoy are at least one of those things. In fact, I would argue that there is some sort of minimum sum I require, that a lack of cleverness is made up for by the existence of a feminist message, and intellect can make up for a lack of originality. I think that’s more or less true for everybody, with their own criteria, of course. If after the first few minutes or pages or whatever, the sum is too low, I stop it and go entertain myself with something else. I was thinking about doing a whole post about that and saving this one for next week, but for whatever reason (read: I'm tired, and that seemed hard) this is the one that wants to be written today.

All that is well and good, but there are some things that multiply the whole equation by zero, that make it impossible for me to like something, or impossible for me to recommend it, or at the very least impossible for it to move into my high-tier favorites list where it might otherwise deserve a place. And because bitching is hella fun, I am going to write out a list.

Warning: This list contains strong language. I know, I know, you're shocked again.

1. Whininess. See my white guy entertainment post. Okay. Problems suck. I am there. I think my own problems are pretty goddamn sucky, and there are billions and billions and billions of people with whom I would not trade. But there are two problems with whining. One is that it demands center stage. It forces everything else to be put on hold: others’ problems, understanding the reasoning behind one’s own problems, and – and this is the kicker – finding solutions to one’s problems. So, really effective there, especially in a fictional context, when the plot has to either stop moving, or interrupt you rudely. (Not as clever as you think, authors.) Also, at a certain point, repetition gets boring. And whininess, after awhile, is repetition. I see this (and the next two or three on the list, actually) as the main reason(s) I don’t like contemporary literary fiction. (Let me quickly make it clear that I whine all the time in real life, and I try to support my friends when they need to whine in my direction. Fiction is different. I read fiction to escape real life. Whining I can do anytime.)

2. Look at Me; I’m So Fucking Deep. It goes hand in hand with the first one, but there is a certain tone in some kinds of books that drives me mad. I can best describe it as a desire to be congratulated for identifying sources of unhappiness in one’s life. The internet has made me feel so fucking disconnected, maaaaaaaan. Our modern world, duuuuuude. People just don’t get what’s real, know what I meeeeaaaan? It’s not about getting credit for solving a problem. It’s about getting credit for identifying a problem, and then claiming that the problem one has identified is part of the universal human condition and is therefore deep. Two things. 1) It’s not necessarily universal. My problems may or may not have anything to do with whatever the hell you’re talking about, and you really have no idea how the problem affects my life even if I do find it applicable. Especially if it relates to The Challenges of Living in the Modern World. And before you say anything, let me remind you that your idea that you understand my problems better than I do is condescending and inappropriate. 2) Something actually being a universal-human-condition problem does not necessarily make it deep or interesting to read about. Unless you’re approaching it originally, I don’t really care what you have to say, because I identified that problem a long fucking time ago. You get no credit with me for figuring this out; some stoned college freshman beat you to the punch ages ago. (To veer off on a tangent for a moment, the reason this is tied so closely to #1 in my mind is that it always seems to carry with it a lack of perspective. I'm going to save you some suspense. The problems that we face as a society now, including the kinds of hypocrisy we enjoy, are different in some ways, but no better or worse or more interesting or more important than those faced by any society at any time. New technology and change has always freaked people out and made their ways of interacting with the world undergo a change. Go read a history of the Industrial Revolution and get the fuck over yourself.)

3.  Misogyny/Lack of Social Awareness. Yeah, that’s kind of self-explanatory. It’s why the novel of The Princess Bride will never compare with the film; ignorable borderline misogyny is a hell of a lot more tolerable than overt misogyny tinged with self-awareness. Grow up, folks. Ladies is people now, and we have been since the mid-seventies. (In other news, black folks is people, trans folks is people, queer folks is people, folks what don’t agree with you is people, and all of us people are sick of your whiny "depth.")

4. Poor Pacing. I don’t like acknowledging it, but I am very much of the millennial generation, and as such have an unfortunately short attention span. Your scenes should have a point. (Remington Steele, I wanted to like you so much! I will give you another chance someday.) Conversely, if your scenes have a point, and move in a particular direction, each step you take in that direction should make a noticeable difference. BONES. If you're just treading water, you lose your stakes, about which more later. But you can't simultaneously keep your characters in a holding pattern and falsely portray movement. It's irresponsible and shows a lack of respect for your audience.

5. Narrative Shortcuts That Backfire. Look, people. First person narrators should not drop hints, in some sort of smug I know something you don't know kind of way, unless your point is that your narrator is a fucking asshole. (Third person narrators may drop occasional hints. One every 100 pages or so.) Let’s think about why for a minute. One reason is that it’s obnoxious. I will fucking read the story because the story is good, not because you have lured me with your secret weapon of “it was a decision I would come to regret.” Secondly, people don’t talk like that. I’m a teacher at heart, and I overexplain everything (welcome to my whole family) but in real life, a person is far more likely to run off on a tangent so that you get the FULL CONTEXT OF THEIR POINT than to drop a hint about who and what they are and then go back to what they were doing. Even Holden Caulfield, who explicitly refuses to give the reader background, goes off on tangents rather than dropping hints. The only people who drop hints are storytellers, who don’t have faith in the interest their story generates on its own and feel the need to manufacture some. This is why it’s so egregious in a story told in the first person. James Patterson, are your ears burning?

6. Expecting Charm to Work/General Laziness. I consider #2 to be a particular subset of this. In the Turkey City Lexicon – which I adored growing up, back when I thought I wanted to be a writer – there’s an item about knowing the difference between a conceit and an idea. It’s called the Jar of Tang, go look it up. Anyway, the fact that you have a good idea, or a unique viewpoint (you probably don’t) or a new perspective (see above re: you don't) is not enough to make your work quality without mastery of other storytelling devices. Your possibly good idea does not elevate excrement into art. If you write shit dialogue, it lowers the tone of your idea, and makes you look like an idiot. In other news, give your audience some credit. It is annoying to guess a twist fifty or sixty pages in advance. It is even more annoying -- by a factor of hundreds -- to guess a "twist" seventy or eighty pages in advance and spend those seventy or eighty pages watching the author drop gleeful hints as they imagine that they have you completely fooled. Kate Mosse, I am talking specifically to you.

7. Awkward Writing. Yeah, occasionally you have to go listen to how people actually talk. I have this theory that this means you’re doing a kind of writing you’re either 1) not practiced in, or 2) not meant to be doing. It was a great relief when I realized I am better at writing essays than writing fiction and quit trying to write fiction. Patricia Cornwell, maybe you should try grocery lists for a while?

8. Stakes Shortcuts. Sometime, when you are trying to put your finger on something within a piece of entertainment, ask yourself what the stakes are. I learned about the idea of stakes from a director mentor of mine, and it’s drastically changed the way I look at entertainment. To break it down a little – there are high stakes and low stakes. You want entertainment to be about high stakes, because if it doesn’t matter what happens, nobody will read to the end. So the entertainers do their best to make the stakes high. Now, there are easy high stakes, and hard high stakes. Easy high stakes come cheap. The world is going to END and EVERYONE WILL DIE unless this particular plot thing happens! I call stakes like that cheap because they don’t require you to particularly care about any of the people on screen (or in text). Everything is going to go wrong if the plot goes wrong, therefore, if the audience doesn’t invest in the plot, they must hate humanity. Great. Sold. Hard high stakes mean that if this particular plot thing happens, a person’s identity or relationship or place in the world will be destroyed. That’s harder to pull off effectively, because the audience has to actually care about the character(s). If they don't, they get bored, and it’s a huge waste of space. Now, that’s not to say that one form of stakes is better, exactly. But if you want to engage the minds and the emotions of your reader/viewer, pure easy stakes aren’t going to be enough (unless you luck onto some symbol that means a lot to them emotionally, which – hey, look where I’m going with this). There’s a multitude of ways to take shortcuts and artificially raise your stakes, no matter where you start with them. Want people to care about the world ending? Blow up a well-known landmark with some emotional connection to your audience. Or show characters that they can identify with flee from destruction. (Sounding familiar?) Want to make people care about characters’ relationships? Give the characters quirky and endearingly eccentric traits, because everyone considers zhirself kind of quirky and endearing on some level, and thus can identify. But those are shortcuts. Good entertainment means you care about the characters for their sakes, not just yours. You care if their world ends, or if their relationships end, because they resonate as people, in addition to just reminding you of yourself. It requires both commitment and trust from the creators.

9. Solving One Problem Means Solving All Problems. Dear Rom-Coms of the World: Finding a mate does not instantly repair other relationships, work problems, financial hardship, or low self-esteem. Please take note. Love, Real People.

10. That Goddamn Plot Where Someone Who Realistically Would Die So Fucking Fast Without Their Resources Manages to Survive and Connect With Nature. I have hated this fucking thing for twenty years, and I reaffirm my commitment to hate it for twenty years more. Twelve-year-olds of nearly any era are not equipped to live off the land for any length of time. That is ridiculous. Also, reading about root-digging and animal-watching is boring. If I wanted to connect with nature vicariously I would go to the goddamn zoo.

Those are mine. What are yours?

Single Gender Entertainment: Why I Think It Sucks

I’m never going to read Kim. I’ve probably already read most of the Sherlock Holmes stuff I’m going to read in my lifetime, and I’ve read about one novel and maybe two short stories. I can’t really see myself ever getting turned on to Michael Chabon’s works. What do these have in common? They’re books where all or almost all the main characters are men. Often, the men are white, and cis, and straight, and clever, and occasionally they’re well-off. As such they just don’t interest me very much, as I’ve already discussed.

Before I go further, two things for the record. First, I’m never going to read The Language of Bees, either. Nor The Help. I don’t like books about only women, either. They are also boring. Second, I know this is a weakness of mine. Kim is probably an awesome book. (It is according to my mom, anyway, who has read basically everything ever and should know.) I’m defending my viewpoint here, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know that I’m missing out. I’m totally missing out. Someday, when the missing out becomes more important than the stuff I’m about to go into here, I may correct this weakness. Meantime, I’ll tell you what is keeping me here.

I talked before about how I don’t like entertainment with not enough wrinkles in it. Specifically I was talking about when the protagonist is given artificial conflict in the plot, because all the natural sources of conflict have been removed. I think that perhaps the most valuable source of conflict and potential growth is male-female interaction. Not because there isn’t any conflict in groups of one gender. (I’ll let everyone ever stop laughing at the idea that single-gender groups are good for avoiding conflict. It’s okay folks. Have some water.)

What’s actually the issue is that men and women have different ways of dealing with conflict within their own gender groups. For example: my father and I had a conversation not long ago where I brought up backhanded compliments, as in: “People who are good at it can make an insult sound like a compliment.” My dad expressed total befuddlement.

I’ve no doubt that if presented with some examples, my dad would catch on quickly, and remember some incidents where he’d seen this, or recognize it in future, or whatever. But the very fact that it was on some level news to him – even if he’d just never heard it expressed in those terms – shows something to me. Now a lot of guys (especially of my generation) wouldn’t have needed an explanation. But I think it’s fair to say that only a tiny percentage of girls and women wouldn’t understand that.

Flipping the idea – I understand intellectually being so angry at someone that you deal with it by taking a swing at them. Whatever, I playfully whack my friends with pillows when they say mean things about fictional characters (as ONE OF THEM CAN ATTEST, ahem). But that’s different. I will stop a conversation, I will lose trust or faith in an individual, I will imagine saying cutting things when I’m angry, but physical violence with the intent to do harm scares me.

Those are two very broad, very stereotypical, very cis examples of men and women handling problems differently. I was going for quick and dirty to help me illustrate a point. Now, thinking in terms of fiction. When all your heroes and your villains are of one gender, they all have in many ways the same approach towards conflict. At least, they have some of the same groundwork and assumptions. They usually have the same definition of “winning.” They assert dominance in similar ways.

Even when that sort of thing isn’t explicitly stated, or acknowledged by the author, I often feel it in the back of these kinds books. Having both male and female (and in rarer cases, trans and queer and asexual and hermaphroditic) characters means that you tend to have people operating under different assumptions, ‘way off in the back. You tend to be able to tackle more. It tends to be closer to how I deal with life.

So there’s the logical side, which I just pretty much pulled out of my ass. You know what really gets on my nerves? In Guy Books, Our Heroes look at each other and just Get It, How Hard It Is to Be a Man. (Only men can really understand that, you know.) If it’s an older book (and often with newer ones too) it doesn’t seem to occur to the characters or the author that women have understandable wants and needs.

In Lady Books, Our Heroines spend a crapton of time bitching about being girls, or else nodding about how Only Women Understand some particular thing. This time, men are there to move the women around, and the women are there to react to it.

Fuck all that shit. People is people, we affect each other, and dismissing a gender as sort of unwitting cosmic marble players is bullshit, and a cop-out. Adults who live in the world and fight crime or are international spies or interact with other human beings ever should really have gotten over that element by now.

And when we can start getting more genderqueer folks in, that’s when things will really pick up.

I will now happily debate any and all examples put forth in the comments; I have managed to refrain from bringing up several billion examples only because I’m not entirely convinced by my own logic.

White Guy Entertainment

Mmmph. Remind me never to take a break again. I put off trying to formulate this post by exercising. Things are dire.

Anyway. 

So, way back around Thanksgiving, I went to see the Harry Potter movie.  And as is (I am told) typical, there were several trailers on top of it. And the trailers set me thinking about some stuff that's been brewing in my mind for awhile, namely, the gorgeously annoying simplicity of white-guy entertainment.

About half the trailers I saw had the same basic premise. Young (but not too young), handsome, athletic, straight, cisgendered, White Guy Protagonist is a slacker. His father is rich, but perhaps disgusted with said son, on account of son spending all his time partying and screwing sorority girls. Something Happens, maybe to father, maybe to son himself, but son – our YHSWG -- is forced to shape up. (Son is usually forced to shape up on account of something really terrible happening, like getting superpowers.) Son learns responsibility, saves pretty girls, earns father’s (and occasionally Supportive Girlfriend’s) love, finally fulfilling his potential. Green Lantern is, I think, the Platonic form of this. Tron: Legacy and Green Hornet have some of the same elements.

There’s nothing wrong with this basic story. Many, many people can sympathize with struggling to live up to one’s full potential, when it is easier not to. (I think I had a boyfriend in college who carried this particular cross. But facetiousness aside, I do get it, and it is compelling, learning to grow up.)

But look. It’s a very – straightforward problem. Not particularly complicated. Some would argue there’s beauty in its simplicity, but it’s been told rather often at this point.  YHSWG has no conflicting potentials to decide between. His potential and his destiny align nicely. The road may be difficult, but he earns everyone’s approval, including his own, through his journey. It's difficult to grow up for whatever reason, but the rewards are immediate and compelling. He has the ability to grow up, he only needed the impetus. People are tripping all over themselves to upgrade his status. 

Let me back away for a second, and generalize. In terms of pure storytelling, what you've done is: set up a protagonist. Give the protagonist a problem. (So far so good.) Then you've simplified the problem in several different ways, thus lowering your own stakes. First of all, solving the problem will generate approval for the protagonist. Secondly, the protagonist has the ability to solve this problem, and everyone around him knows it. This problem is in fact the way to unlock the protagonist's True Potential.  And it doesn't hit him too early, either: the protagonist hits this problem and gets ready to solve it when he's already over eighteen (and sometimes, he's older than thirty) -- which makes these stories about needing to grow up even more frustrating.

 Because the writer has thus taken all the real stakes away, he or she (but usually he) needs to add some artificial conflict. Superpowers! Computer-generated somethingorother! Secret identity hijinks! A dad who may not approve immediately and will instead turn out to be evil, thus freeing the hero from needing to take into account his opinion!

In real life – and real, interesting entertainment -- , when you’re not (necessarily) a YHSWG (who is also able-bodied, intelligent, emotionally stable, rich, and lucky) – when any one of these elements is missing – suddenly solving your problems not so much a matter of living up to your potential and earning approval. Suddenly it’s about fighting yourself, in the form of your own body, or your own mind. Or fighting others’ perceptions thereof. You have limitless potential in a particular field, but when you pursue it, instead of earning approval, you earn curiosity, disgust, contempt, confusion – because someone of your gender, or your sexual orientation, or your race just shouldn’t be interested in that sort of thing! Or you have a physical disability, or a mental illness – and you have to work three times as hard as everyone else to break even, and instead of approval, people wonder why you’re not doing more.

That’s not to say that YHSWGs do not have real problems. I mean, I've heard it can be very stressful when you're secretly a superhero but your love interest thinks you're a shmoe. 

Facetiousness aside, I’m not trying to belittle anyone’s problems. Problems are part of the universal human condition. Every problem can be generalized into a certain number of basic conflicts. Telling the same stories over and over again is what we do, to try to understand our problems, to try to help each other solve them.

But isn’t the must-grow-up problem, the must-reach-my-potential problem more interesting if you add a couple of wrinkles to it? What if you have young gay white guy? What if you have young straight poor white guy? What if you have older, gay, rich, black woman? What if you have a twelve-year-old Asian transgendered person with depression? They can all face the same problem, the problem of having to reach their potential through growing up and taking responsibility. Hell, as far as I’m concerned, let them all do it through the same mechanism: the acquisition of unexpected superpowers. They could join up and fight crime!

Because the way that problems really stay interesting (at least to my mind) is when you see permutations of them. When you see someone trying a solution that should work, but doesn't. When the resolution is actually in doubt. When the protagonist doesn't have everything stacked in their favor, and then proceed to whine about it (Peter Parker, I'm looking at you!). 

Ideologically, I see all the unacknowledged privilege in movies like this, and it drives me mad. I have ideological reasons for hating Judd Apatow movies, for example. 

But my overwhelming point here is the idea of stakes. There are all kinds of ways to make something "high-stakes" -- to make someone want to watch or listen, because it's IMPORTANT. And one way is to make it be about HAVING TO SAVE THE GODDAMN WORLD. And another way is really finding out about yourself, or someone else, or having some really deep emotional growth happen. And that kind is quieter, and less flashy, but no less interesting, although it has a bad (read: feminine) rep. 

But now we have these movies that are trying to combine the two kinds of high stakes, and they tend to combine them by doing one kind well and one kind really, really badly. And my EPIC POINT (which I have spent this whole thing circling around) is that a YHSetc.WG accepting his responsibilities? Is doing the second part WRONG.

Thankfully, we have Buffy, which (for awhile at least) did both sides really actually very well!

Linking Again

I've taken another dive deep into Miles Vorkosigan land, which means that instead of getting anything done I'm sitting with a library book giggling and talking aloud to fictional characters. (...Shut up.) 

Thinking about Miles and how he stacks up against other escapist heroes brought me back here. Ahh, who doesn't love a good excuse for self-pity? So sexy. (On the page I mean. I believe many a real-life relationship has suffered from an excess of self-pity.)