L.B.: In these shoes?

Left Behind, pg. 411

In a rare display of economy and pacing, we skip directly from Chloe's midflight conversion to this at the beginning of the next chapter:

Buck called New Hope Village Church to set up an early evening meeting with Bruce Barnes, then spent most of the afternoon at the Chicago bureau of Global Weekly.

This is a remarkably streamlined transition and a radical, but welcome, departure from the pattern of the book so far. Sure, the first two words of Chapter 23 are "Buck called," but we're not forced to sit through a transcript of that phone call even though it would have been a chance to name-check Loretta. We're also not forced to slog through all the logistics of the remainder of the flight from New York, the landing in Chicago, Buck's getting off the plane, his choice of rental car and drive into the city, etc.

This might be further confirmation of my theory that Jerry Jenkins took a breather just after typing Chapter 21 and, for the first and only time, skimmed through the preceding finished pages. Maybe he learned from that. Maybe he thought to himself, "Hmmm, I've expended a great deal of ink so far on the minutiae and logistics of travel, which does nothing to advance the story or the characterization." If he did realize as much, of course, he was still Jerry Jenkins -- so he wasn't going to go back and rewrite any of the earlier pages, but maybe he decided to try to do less of this from now on. Or perhaps he was just getting lazy, trying to spare himself a bit of work and -- as a happy side effect -- sparing us readers some extra tedium as well.

In any case, here we are at the Chicago office:

News of his becoming their boss has swept the place, and he was greeted with coolness by Lucinda Washington's former assistant, a young woman in sensible shoes.

Global Weekly apparently conducts its internal business in accordance with its journalistic motto: "We won't tell anyone." Why send out a memo announcing Steve Plank's departure and Buck's promotion? Some form of the news will eventually get around to everyone through the office gossip grapevine.

"Sensible shoes" is, of course, a cue that we're supposed to dislike this young woman. Only two kinds of women exist in Left Behind. They can be, like Lucinda Washington, a madonna. Or they can be, like this young woman, the other kind. "Sensible shoes," for LaHaye and Jenkins, means "unladylike shoes," and all women who are not ladies are whores.

The misogyny is palpable, but we've had plenty of opportunity to explore that before now, so let's set aside for the moment L&J's warped understanding of gender and consider instead their warped understanding of footwear. The authors seem to imagine all of their lady madonnas dressed like Donna Reed. Even their maternal stereotypes like Lucinda Washington are walking around in impractical high heels. Their whores meanwhile -- a category that includes not just supposed flirts like Hattie, but all female executives and single women -- are apparently all wearing "sensible shoes." They seem to think of comfortable flats as slutty. Does that mean they would consider a pair of four-inch stilleto-heeled stripper shoes to be matronly?

Jenkins continues his thumbnail sketch of this ladder-climbing young trollop:

She told him in no uncertain terms, "Plank did nothing about replacing Lucinda, so I assumed I would move into her slot."

Her attitude and presumption alone made Buck say, "That's unlikely, but you'll be the first to know. I wouldn't be moving offices just yet."

If there's one thing Cameron Williams can't abide it's presumptuous young people trying to buck authority. Except, of course, for himself. "Buck" is, after all, a masculine nickname.

Both Buck and she-Buck here are, yet again, acting like they work for Global Quarterly. Lucinda Washington disappeared 9 days ago. Since then, at least two final publication deadlines would have come and gone. Jenkins lacks any sense of the relentless urgency of a weekly production schedule. Whether or not Buck wants to accept it, this young woman already got a battlefield promotion the day that Lucinda disappeared. The battle doesn't stop just because the lieutenant got killed. The sergeant takes over without waiting for word from central command and the mission continues.

The same dynamic would have occurred in every institution that didn't have the luxury of shutting down for a week or two in the aftermath of The Event. There would be first-year interns in charge of emergency rooms, rookie deputies stepping in as acting sheriffs. Every mayor, marshal and manager who had disappeared, died or crawled into the fetal position would have been replaced, out of sheer necessity, within hours of The Event.

The characters in LB are all behaving eerily blaise blase about the disappearances, as though The Event were something they had all read about in history books instead of a world-altering trauma they had actually experienced less than two weeks ago, but that's not how any of this would really play out. Nine days after The Event, none of those assistants thrust into leadership roles would yet have had a full night's sleep. They'd all be wearing sensible shoes, the same clothes they had on yesterday and the day before, and the bedraggled, frantic look of those surviving on adrenaline and necessity instead of food and sleep. Suddenly over their heads with others relying on them, they would either have learned to swim or they'd have drowned, replaced immediately by someone with even less experience.

If it takes the generals and the other higher-ups nine days before they even begin talking about sending replacements and reinforcements to carry out the necessary function of their now-missing lieutenants, then those useless REMFs deserve to be "greeted with coolness" by those who never abandoned their posts.

Buck's response above is essentially to inform this young woman that he expects her to continue carrying out all of Lucinda's duties and responsibilities indefinitely, at her previous pay grade, without any formal increase in her authority to carry out those tasks and without even a trace of support or gratitude from her new boss. This is yet another example of one of our supposed heroes behaving despicably as the authors give each other high-fives and celebrate the way Buck put this uppity, sensible-shoed bitch in her place.

These are truly awful people.

Comments

[Praline]

'Sensible shoes', I'd guess, means lesbian. Which involves feminism and ball-breaking. Ball-breakers don't put their sexuality under a father/husband's control, which makes her a whore. It's a complicated chain of associations, but she's definitely not pointing her sexuality in the right direction.

[Praline]

Hey, I got the first post in!

Don't you also hate 'her attitude and presumption'? You can use similar words if you know what you're doing; Shakespearian hendiadys produces phrases like 'sound and fury' or 'hatch and disclose'... But here? This is just tautology.

One word would have done. Either would have worked. But, confronted with an assertive woman, the authors get so angry that they start repeating themselves. One word isn't enough to cover their feelings on the subject. It really reminds me of how people get when they're really, really mad: they just pace around, repeating over and over - 'The nerve, the gall, the sheer ... nerve of that woman!'

Amazing, really, that they manage to rant within the space of four words.

[Fraser]

I'm not sure madonna/whore is the right dichotomy here--maybe feminine/masculine (in that this uppity young woman clearly isn't showing the submissiveness Buck, as a man, is entitled to expect?). Although I may be splitting hairs.

As for word of Buck's promotion "sweeping the newsroom," I'm not sure that implies anything about how the information was sent out, only that it's the topic du jour.

[aunursa]

Take a peak ahead to the beginning of the sequel Tribulation Force, where this woman, Verna Zee, gets into another argument with Buck after he gets snarky with her, and then she is humiliated by publisher Stanton Bailey.

[Steph]

I've done a bit of Left Behind "fan" art (well... Slactivist fanart, I guess) that I wanted to share... a gallery of the main cast, sans the boring conspirators-in-suits types I couldn't keep straight.

I don't even want to try making a link here, I'll just embarass myself (and after seeing what can happen with italics, probably make it fifty pages long even if I succeed) - copy and paste the below, or, much easier, just click on my name.

http://www.flyingsuitreiko.com/transius/leftbehind.jpg

[Fuzzy Gerdes]

Steph, that's great.

[Dorothy]

Hmmm, I wonder where my fuzzy pink slippers fit in the madonna-whore spectrum.

[JessicaR]

Ha! Irene putting doillies all over heaven, brilliant!
And oh my slapping hand itched so hard reading Buck's behavior in this section.

[JC]

"Wearing sensible shoes" is a fairly common ironic-ish euphemism for lesbian in the UK.

[JC]

Steph, you are brilliant. I'd love to see some LB/slacktivist comic strips.

[jamoche]

I agree with Praline. I remember Robin Williams' line in "Good Morning Vietnam" : "No, we can't call them lesbians, they're 'women in sensible shoes'" - because I thought it was a good thing I didn't live in the '60s, because if the choice was comfort or boys, well, that would've been a really tough decision.

[Joe Smith]

"Sensible shoes" doesn't mean "whore", it means "dyke."

[Joe Smith]

Steph: you are the wind beneath my wings.

[JessicaR]

And good lord the linked excerpt from Trib Force is even worse, in which she's a raging, petty, bitch on wheels cause that's what all women in positions of authority are you know.

[Buffybot]

Where the hell do my Doc Martens and hand-knit socks place me in the good-evil spectrum? I'm confused.

[BSD]

To the authors, the point of the mission is the orders. When confused, read the orders again. Read them carefully, and make sure that you're reading ONLY the text of the orders given directly by HQ. Acting expediently based on the "goal" of the mission is direct disobedience to the ORDERS, after all.

[Ian]

The stilettos/flats dilemma is a false dichotomy. I vote for combat boots. (Surely Meta-Hattie would wear them from time to time -- good traction when jumping from rooftop to rooftop) Why couldn't (relatively) comfortable, powerful looking clothes come into fashion?

"They seem to think of comfortable flats as slutty. Does that mean they would consider a pair of four-inch stilleto-heeled stripper shoes to be matronly?"
It's just not possible for a woman to be a full and equal person in their universe. Women in LB have only two options: try to be as manly as the manly, manly men and fail or settle into comfortable roles as ornaments.

[Myriad]

Steph, brilliant. I especially love Buck.

[Jon]

Hmm, looking at that "Tribulation Force" excerpt, I think I like Verna. I especially like this exchange:

"Cameron," she said flatly, still seated. "I didn't expect you till Monday."

"Just checking in," he said. "You can call me Buck."

"I'll call you Cameron, if you don't mind, and —"

"I do mind. Please call —"

"Then I'll call you Cameron even if you do mind. Did you let anyone know you were coming?"

However, this (with my emphasis added) needs to be pointed out as well:

He found a beautiful condo, at a place that advertised already-installed phones

Then there's this:

and neither did he want to appear too eager to see Chloe Steele again right away

Yeah, because stalking her and getting a seat on a flight right next to her is the very essense of playing it cool.

And finally:

Buck sighed. At least he was in Chicago with the only people he knew who really cared about him.

I assume that refers to Rayford and Chloe, so has Buck become convinced that his family doesn't care about him? Then again, they didn't care enough to force the religion of "the antichrist and all" onto him, so I guess they clearly didn't care enough.

[Quin]

And good lord the linked excerpt from Trib Force is even worse, in which she's a raging, petty, bitch on wheels cause that's what all women in positions of authority are you know.

Yes, and note that it's okay for Buck to think of everyone as "underlings" but heaven forbid (literally, I suppose, with LB's asshole god) Verna call people "subordinates" when she's their boss.

Also, apparently Verna's secretary is "spike-haired" and yet still gets to be treated decently by Buck Jenkins. If sensible shoes is enough to equal lesbian, then shouldn't spike-haired be a satan-worshipping punk-rock lesbian (or "evil" female archetype of LaJenkins' choice)?

[Joe Smith]

Hmm...in the passage linked to above, she's described as "militant." Do we need any more clues?

[Ian]

Steph, you are entirely made of awesome.

[Jon]

Great job, Steph!

[Jesurgislac]

Steph: Wonderful. ("Foe-art!")

(Er, said out loud, that sounds ruder than I intended.)

It's beautiful: I love the detail! Could this be posted on Right Behind? Would you let it be the blog's signature illustration?

[Jon]

Also, apparently Verna's secretary is "spike-haired" and yet still gets to be treated decently by Buck Jenkins.

Yes, he's even willing to allow her to call him Buck, which apparently is a huge thrill for her.

[Ken]

'Sensible shoes', I'd guess, means lesbian. -- Praline
"Wearing sensible shoes" is a fairly common ironic-ish euphemism for lesbian in the UK. -- JC

I concur. That was the first thing the popped into my mind: a neon sign over her head flashing "DYKE! DYKE! DYKE!" Though in the US, I think the idiom is slightly different: "Woman In Comfortable Shoes" (according to Good Morning Vietnam and a local public-access-channel sitcom called Blood, Sweat, and Beers).

The authors seem to imagine all of their lady madonnas dressed like Donna Reed. Even their maternal stereotypes like Lucinda Washington are walking around in impractical high heels. Their whores meanwhile -- a category that includes not just supposed flirts like Hattie, but all female executives and single women -- are apparently all wearing "sensible shoes." They seem to think of comfortable flats as slutty. Does that mean they would consider a pair of four-inch stilleto-heeled stripper shoes to be matronly?

You know, Slack, that really puts a kink into all that preaching about the Old Man/Flesh being spiritually blind to the things of God....

1) Maybe LH&J are tunnel-visioned on The Nifty Fifties as a Godly Golden Age (Donna Reed/June Cleaver), including its high-heeled women's fashions?
2) Maybe Jenkins is kinky about four-inch stilettos? (This can get really Freudian...)
3) Is this what RTCs do, deep in their dens? ("Woman, Submit!" Four-inch stilettos and all...)
4) Or is everybody -- LaHaye, Jenkins, their RTC fanboys -- just Totally Clueless? (Well, judging from the 400+ pages up to this point...)

For the record, I have drawn and written of a fictional female who DOES wear "four-inch stilleto-heeled stripper shoes". She is --
1) In Show Business -- an actress who does a lot of "blonde bombshell" roles in romance comedies.
2) She wears them only on the set (shooting the above) or when going formal; where she's from, showbiz types are expected to dress in an exaggerated manner.
3) She can't wear them for extended periods (like several hours) without sore feet.

The characters in LB are all behaving eerily blaise about the disappearances, as though The Event were something they had all read about in history books instead of a world-altering trauma they had actually experienced less than two weeks ago, but that's not how any of this would really play out.

These threads have commented at length about LH&J's Really Bad case of Cozy Catastrophe Syndrome.

Sixty Million Copies sold...
RTC fanboys who think they're Fact, not Fiction...
RTC fanboys who think they're the 67th to 88th Books of The Bible, Divinely Inspired...
Somebody pass the trephination drill and bucket of brain-bleach.

[Jack Grey]

Steph...

Wow. Just wow. Well done.

[Praline]

Tee hee, Steph.

But take a minute, my fellow hetero women. Ask yourselves honestly: if you lived in the world of Left Behind, and the only alternatives were either men like Ray and Buck, or women like Chloe and Hattie, who would you sleep with?

Am I the only one who'd set aside my preference for trouser over skirt? Ray and Buck are enough to make anyone look at the sapphic possibilities with an reconsidering eye.

That, I suspect, is the real reason why they're suspicious of sensible shoes. The only way Ray and Buck are going to get women to sleep with them is by putting them in shoes so uncomfortable that they'll lie down with anyone just to take the weight off their feet. Anybody not distracted by the blinding pain in her toes will be able to assess the menfolk accurately and make the appropriate decision: pass me the rainbow flag, sisters, anything's better than those guys.

[damnedyankee]

Steph wins the thread, no doubt. I love how each of our protagonists (I use the term advisedly) has a phone in hand.

[Steph]

Jesurgislac: Could this be posted on Right Behind? Would you let it be the blog's signature illustration?

Sure, I'd be really flattered!

[JessicaR]

I totally understand. Though I think I would settle for Nick BlueRidge. I'd ask him not to drop the reciting lists around me, and because he's The Antichrist he actually respects me and would listen to my wish. He looks like a young Robert Redford (I watched The Sting again recently so Woof!), would set me up with in the finest penthouse suite, and could order in the native language at whatever ethnic restaurant we went too.

[JessicaR]

I would ask to him to drop the reciting lists I should say...

[Praline]

You would have to put up with him tackling your erogenous zones in alphabetical order, though. Do you really want foreplay to start on your arm and finish on your zygomatic ridge?

[Abelardus]

Steph, your foe-art really brings out the absurdity of the characters -- especially the protagonists -- and simultaneously makes them sympathetic. Especially poor, pre-conversion Chloe ... she will be missed. And your "GIRAT" is to die for.

[Jonathan Edelstein]

Take a peak ahead to the beginning of the sequel Tribulation Force, where this woman, Verna Zee, gets into another argument with Buck after he gets snarky with her, and then she is humiliated by publisher Stanton Bailey.

I see the sensible shoes are mentioned there as well.

[Ursula L]

You would have to put up with him tackling your erogenous zones in alphabetical order, though. Do you really want foreplay to start on your arm and finish on your zygomatic ridge?

Dig through all the languages of the world to find words for erogenous zones that line up in the preferred order alphabetically?

[Tim Lehnerer]

Steph, the plants growing their own phone-leaves had me laughing out loud. That's awesome.

[patter]

either men like Ray and Buck, or women like Chloe and Hattie

None of the above! They're all WAY too scary. How could you safely close your eyes around them?

[Ken]

http://www.flyingsuitreiko.com/transius/leftbehind.jpg -- Steph

I don't know whether to laugh or groan. Steph got ALL the character shticks dead-on.

Here's the descriptions I'm sending to my email buds:

Top Row, L-R:
1) Nicky the Antichrist *, Romania’s Robert Redford
2) Miracle-Gro Rosenschweig, Scientist(!) with Impossibly Ethnic Name
3) Rayford’s Raptured Wife (whose name nobody remembers) **
4) Rayford’s Raptured Son Raymie

Bottom Row, L-R:
1) Rayford Steele, Dashing Airline Pilot/LaHaye Self-Insert ***
2) Hattie the Hottie, Future Whore of Babylon ***
3) Buck Cameron, GIRAT/Jenkins Self-Insert ***
4) Chloe, Rayford’s Unraptured Daughter and Buck’s Mail Order Bride ***

* Nicky is pictured reading the telephone book because his main appearance consists of him putting the entire UN and world media into orgasm by reciting the list of its member countries. It is speculated he has heavy-duty Aspergers.
** Rayford’s Raptured Wife is putting lace doilies on Heavenly clouds because in what little appearances she makes in flashbacks, she’s straight out of Donna Reed/Ozzie & Harriet.
*** All the telephone handsets in hand are because 30-50% of the story is told as transcribed phone conversations. As-You-Know Idiot Conversations, no less.

[LMM]

JessicaR, you beat me to it -- of all the people on the planet, Nickie seems to be only one who is even remotely likeable at this point (and I'm sure that, too, will change).

So, who do I email to get access to RightBehind? I have a Bruce Barnes vingette to post.

[Tonio]

The shoe symbolism has nothing to do with the madonna/whore division. If LB had been written in the 1950s, Lucinda would be wearing dresses and Hattie and the single women would be wearing slacks. L&J apparently see sensible shoes as not just unladylike but masculine. The sin committed by their "whores" is not necessarily licentiousness but uppitness. In failing to be submissive to men, according in the L&J worldview, these women are trying to become men themselves.

[patter]

That epitome of feminity, Irene, must've been wearing something like these shoes before she disapparated.

[Edward Liu]

Did the lesbian/slut/bitch assistant get a name in the book, or was it just dropped from the summary page here? If they didn't even bother to give her a name before having Buck smack her down and put her in her place, that probably communicates all the misogyny you need to know about the authors without discussing her footwear at all.

[JessicaR]

"You would have to put up with him tackling your erogenous zones in alphabetical order, though. Do you really want foreplay to start on your arm and finish on your zygomatic ridge?"

See I see that as a win win, because by the time he's tickling between my shoulder blades I've long since fallen asleep. And because he is The Antichrist, he just rolls over and goes to sleep too, and I've dodged being impregnated with the devil's spawn.

[JessicaR]

Edward, Oh no read the excerpted link were she's smacked around for pages for have the nerve, the *nerve*, to not love and worship Buck. And yeah "stomping down the hall in her sensible shoes" is completey coughDYKEcough.

[Mnemosyne]

I've gotta go with the crowd -- "sensible shoes" is code for "big ol' dyke," which is why she's not properly submissive to Buck and his immense masculinity (cough).

It's pretty sad when you set up a universe where the most attractive man is the Antichrist who will bring about the apocalypse. But, then, it's been that way since "Paradise Lost," hasn't it?

[Tonio]

I remember Robin Williams' line in "Good Morning Vietnam" : "No, we can't call them lesbians, they're 'women in sensible shoes'"

I thought of that as well. At first I thought L&J were using the shoes as a clue to the women's sexual preference. But then I remembered the twisted gender worldview of LB. Perhaps L&J believe these women might as well be lesbians.

[damnedyankee]

Perhaps L&J believe these women might as well be lesbians.

And/or stand-ins for every woman who's shot down L&J in their lifetimes? That's the usual brain-dead macho comeback, IIRC.

[vanya]

Speaking of the blase reaction to all the disappearances, the social chaos would be at levels many multiples higher than described in these books. For one thing, there would be no proof that many people had vanished, they just wouldn't be around. Think of the potential fraud opportunities. Think of what would happen to a person who, say, murdered his wife the day before the disappearances - a get out of jail free card! Who would suspect murder when his wife failed to show up to work the next day or the neighbors don't see her around? And even if someone did, the police simply wouldn't have time to deal with it. And since, by practically by definition, the percentage of the population that exhibits criminal behavior is now drastically higher - wouldn't we see a huge increase in crime in the days immediately after the disappearances? Not just looting - probably wanton rape and murder as well. And then you would have people "disappearing" who didn't actually get raptured - maybe to escape, maybe to start a new life somewhere. And then people attempting to take the identities of the raptured for whatever reason - since, again, there would no physical proof that most individuals had been raptured. Maybe you'd have some sort of "Martin Guerre" types. There are some real story possibilities there, all ignored by our authors of course. How soon would the disappeared by declared legally dead? What happens to their assets, their jobs in the meantime? 5 seconds thought is enough to realize the world of Buck and Chloe is completely untenable.

[jamoche]

Also one thing Fred might not be aware of - dressy flats do not fall into the category of "sensible shoes", even though they have no heel to speak of, because any woman's shoe that counts as "dressy" or "non-sensible" will pinch eventually. Feet just don't taper around the toes that way. Sensible shoes are foot-shaped - think athletic shoes or, yes, combat boots.

So the LB guide to shoes:
Dressy shoes with heels ranging from flat to an inch or so: good girl
Heels higher than that; slut, or ball-busting bitch
Shoes shaped like a real foot: ball-busting dyke