How I Turned Into That Person

Good books often get challenged because they challenge us in turn. If you look at the list of most commonly challenged books in US libraries, you'll see classics of both adult and children's literature, Toni Morrison rubbing shoulders with Judy Blume, Vladimir Nabokov with S.E. Hinton, Margaret Atwood with Maurice Sendak. With a few exceptions ('Go Ask Alice' is a pretty disingenuous book), it's practically a roll-call of honour.

And we all have a mental image of the challengers, don't we? Twinset and pearls, or perhaps a varsity sweatshirt. Probably a woman, an interfering mother who expects the whole of society to shield her child from reality, parochial, intolerant and rather stupid. A very easy and satisfying figure to hate on, really.

Which is why I was a little surprised to find myself writing to the BBC, challenging a children's show for - of all things - its values.

*cue bouncy music*

Mike the Knight, he's a brave young hero!
(Be a knight, do it right!)
He's a trainee knight, but does he show fear? No!
(Be a knight, do it right!)
There'll be trouble, double trouble,
But you know it's going to be all right,
'Cause every day is an adventure For Mike the Knight...

Now, admittedly nostalgia is a powerful motivating force when it comes to children's entertainment. I was heartbroken when they changed the format of Zingzillas. I was wary when they introduced Abadas, purely because it was something new. (It turned out to be rather charming and I'm now fond of it.) The books and shows that entertain my son are important parts of his childhood, and my emotional attachment to them is consequently strong and a little conservative: the more he grows and changes, the cooler he gets, but changing his favourite shows triggers an instinctive resistance in me. But I know this isn't rational, and I try not to be silly about it.

So when, with literal and metaphorical fanfares, CBeebies (the preschool channel produced by the BBC, generally of a very high standard), trotted Mike the Knight out of his stable, I was cautious but determined to be fair.

Here's the basic format of each show. Mike, a trainee knight with a supportive mother, an apparently absent knightly father and a trainee witch sister called Evie whose spells never work, is always looking for a quest. Something comes up, he exclaims 'By the king's crown, that's it!', and races off to make a quest of it - making a mess of it because he's more preoccupied with his fantasies of knighthood than with paying attention to his circumstances. He stops everyone crossing a bridge all day to protect them from a monster, for instance, when a little investigation would reveal it's just Evie's pet frog trapped down an echoing hole; he races off to make a quest of collecting Evie's birthday cake and getting it redesigned with knightly decorations, ignoring her trying to tell him that her preferred birthday treat would be to help him with a quest (because being allowed to play with your brother is obviously the height of a girl's ambitions); he decides to prove his pathfinding abilities, removes all the road signs and makes everyone get lost; and so on. After a while, he realises his mistake, declares, 'It's time to be a knight and do it right!' and fixes the mess he's made. Everyone stands in the background and applauds - a mostly white crowd with one or two token Asian-looking people. The Asian-looking bard sings of Mike's heroism, and we have the credits.

Which is why my letter to the BBC was headed: 'If you're white and male, you're a star even if you're wrong; if you're brown or female, you're background even if you're right.'

My complaint letter was, in short, written from a progressive point of view.

Here it is in full:

We are the parents of a white little boy, and are concerned about Mike the Knight. Complaining like this, we may sound like a politically correct cranks, but we love most of CBeebies: it's educational, fun, and full of good values, and our son has a great time watching it.

Mike the Knight is a disappointing exception. Where most of CBeebies shows make an effort to show diversity in a respectful way, Mike the Knight focuses heavily on a single character - a white boy, the category that we already have a million stories about. And the way it focuses on him is, to our eyes, destructive.

Yes, it's about doing it right in the end, and it clearly means well. But where most CBeebies shows appreciate the value of community, respect for difference and working together, Mike is fraught with entitlement: the plot is all about him making trouble because his status as an aspiring knight - a male role, we note, and are there any non-white knights? - makes him feel entitled to be the star, even if it means pushing himself to the centre when there's no need and failing to listen to other people who know better than him. Yes, he puts it right in the end - but through his own revelations, while female and brown people stand in the background playing a subordinate role. If you're not white and male, your prospective roles in this world are admiring rival, admiring sidekick, or admiring observer.

This is not a role we want our son to be modelled. Female and non-white people are his brothers and sisters, his co-stars, not his background, and we want him to feel comfortable with that. The world is already full of messages pushing the idea that white men are the stars and everyone else is background, and apart from encouraging prejudice and unrealistic expectations, it puts an unfair burden on white boys, implying that they're weak if they have to accept someone telling them they're wrong. Even the theme song - 'does he show fear? No!' - pushes old and destructive ideas about how men are supposed to be strong and occupy the leading role.

This is a set of values that discriminates against the many and isolates the few. The idea of a knight doing things right could be great if it took in the notion of true respect for others - why shouldn't Mike have knight friends who are female or of colour, for example? or sometimes find himself called upon when he has other things in mind than seeking attention? - but at the moment, on a channel that's usually progressive, Mike the Knight is decades out of date.

Justin Fletcher, the male presenters, the Piplings, the Zingzillas, Mr Bloom, Bob the Builder: all these are excellent models for a white boy living in a world where he'll have to learn how to navigate the disparity between the privileges he gets and the privileges denied other people if he's going to become a good person. Mike the Knight is a sorry exception, and we hope very much you'll either improve it or replace it with something better.

I wasn't calling for Mike the Knight to be banned. I'd like it to be improved a great deal, or else to make way for a better program: a TV channel has limited slots and I think they should go to shows that don't marginalise the majority of people, but if they want to keep it around on their website or sell DVDs of it and make them available in libraries, that's their right. So there's that.

On the other hand, I have unquestionably joined the ranks of mothers who complain that fiction is modelling bad values for their children.

I don't expect TV to be my babysitter. If I don't want us to watch Mike the Knight, it's up to me to switch the box off. And yet here I am, complaining - with, I believe, good cause - about a TV show failing to meet with my moral standards.

Which raises the question: is there any difference between me and Mrs Twin-Set, and if so, what is it? We are both, after all, complaining that we don't want our children taught bad values. We are both accepting the posit that what a child encounters in fiction is going to have some effect on how he or she thinks. We are both considering that a public service has some responsibility to the public conscience.

We have a difference of opinion, at least. I'm not complaining because I want things excluded; I'm complaining because I don't want things - like women and people of colour - excluded. I'm not objecting to my son's innocence being violated; I'm objecting to his privilege being reinforced. I'm not arguing that no one should have access to Mike the Knight, just that it could be improved and that if it's not, another show would be a better occupant for finite TV time. But then, what if I were in a library and I saw a book I really had doubts about on the children's shelves? Would I complain? I certainly have plans to influence my son's fictional palate: there are books and shows and movies I plan to introduce him to because I think they'd be emotionally educational (though whether he actually likes them or not is, of course, up to him). There are books I hesitate over; for instance, I plan to read aloud Edith Nesbit and J.K. Rowling and Diana Wynne Jones, partly for their entertainment value and partly because I absolutely loathe C.S. Lewis and, should my son turn out to be a fan of magical tales, I'd like to give him the opportunity to bond with other, less bigoted authors first so that he can view Lewis with a bit more critical distance. (Of course, with this attitude it'd serve me right if he turned out to be Lewis's reincarnation.) So while probably wouldn't want a library to pull a book off its shelves, I certainly think in terms of exercising a degree of parental influence in the first few years of my son's life.

So at the end of the day, it may simply come down to an issue of politics. I don't think, for instance, that one should censor a book because it has shocking content (be it Lolita's paedophilic narrator or Blubber's villain using racial slurs); I believe that honest depictions of bad things are a good thing in books. I don't object to sexual content in fiction; to my mind, the sooner my son wants to have The Talk the better for him. While I'd hope that a writer for young children would be responsible in depicting the consequences of violence, I don't object to violent content per se. I'm all in favour of stuff that supports racial equality, LGBT rights and social justice. But on the other hand, Mrs Twin-Set is a fantasy figure, and without hearing the reasons for the challenges, I probably shouldn't assume I know real peoples' motivations. I'll stand up for my politics, but they may not explain everything.

So I'm wondering: is complaining complaining no matter what your motivations? Are there legitimate and illegitimate complaints? What's the difference? I'd really like to know what people think, because frankly, I'm far from sure.

--Kit Whitfield

---

 

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Comments

[Froborr]

is complaining complaining no matter what your motivations? Are there legitimate and illegitimate complaints? What's the difference?

"Yes," "Yes," and "Personal preference."

Both you and Mrs. Twin-Set are trying to do the same thing: turn this imperfect world into something closer to the world in which you want (your children) to live. It should not be surprising that you occasionally use the same tactics in pursuit of that end. The real difference is in the worlds you envision; personally, Kit Whitfield World seems like a better place than Twin-Set World, so I support your complaints and not hers.

[Mmy]

Oh, this is one that conflicts me greatly. I want to live in a world where people care for the good of society in general and for the child down the street as much as the child in their own home.

But I also get incredibly antsy about giving anyone the power to do anything about it.

[Coleslaw]

You didn't threaten to organize a boycott or picket their offices. All you did was share a point of view about a program and give your reasons for that POV. Sometimes media people pay good money for opinions; they got yours for free. It might give the producers or writers something to think about. At least they will know that for future programming choices, parents of privileged white kids may be just as interesting in diversity as parents of less privileged children are. That's important information for them to have.

[Mmy]

Yeah Coleslaw, I find myself agreeing completely with everything Kit feels about the shows -- I am just feeling tensed out about the current American political scene where things like SOPA and the NDAA are going on.

[MercuryBlue on uncooperative comp]

mmy: you're nervous? You don't have to live here!

Kit: if CBeebies improves the series or replaces the series, the episodes to which you object will still be available. (Assuming they're legally available now, anyway, or that a DVD release is planned.) If CBeebies censors the series, those episodes will be unavailable or less available. You're not arguing for reducing the media available to young UK children, you're arguing for expanding said media, which is the crucial difference, I think.

[Emily Cartier]

As far as sex ed... about the right time to start is when the kidlet is old enough to notice pregnancy. Usually kids will ask how it happens. Give them a real answer, simplifying as appropriate for their level of understanding. Keep expanding and adding details as the kid gets older.

I'm not sure exactly how much my nephew knows on the subject, but he's two. He knows what babies are, and for the most part he thinks babies are awesome. He knows his mom is pregnant, and there's a baby coming. And he's very proud of the baby having a bed. That is about right for a two year old. He will probably have more questions after the baby is born, and hopefully we can understand them and give good answers. When/if the next sibling comes along, he'll have a better understanding and new questions.

The hardest part IMO is listening to the kid so you answer the question they are really asking.

[Ursula L]

As far as sexual content in fiction goes, and children's exposure to it, I figure that the nature of that information is more important than trying to include or exclude sexual content in general.

The concern about the abuse of children has led to education programs that focus on "stranger danger" and "good touch/bad touch" which can mean that a child's first exposure to the idea of sex can wind up being something negative, as a bad thing that bad grownups do to kids. Not so nice.

Or it can wind up being focused exclusively on reproduction. Which is something kids need to know about, but which ignores the more common sexual experience of consenting adults who like each other having fun together, without interest in reproduction.

It's worth remembering that you'll never have "the talk." You'll have a lifetime of conversations with your child, which will include talking about sexuality in a variety of ways, with more information being added over time. "Babies come from mommies' tummies" may be the first talk, with later questions being how the babies get in and out, when your child can have a baby, why people have sex other than reproduction, how to respect others, daily play rules like "If they aren't having fun, you have to stop", etc.

[DanA]

I definitely see where you are coming from and I think you found a good balance in offering your feedback. Its important that at its core Mike the Knight is attempting to offer positive behaviours and values so when you are indicating where they are failing to do so and in fact offering counterproductive examples it is a case of constructive criticism rather than complaining. If they weren't a organisation that was interested in showing positive role modeling than a letter like this would be complaining and ineffective too.

[J. Enigma (the Transhumanist!)]

I think there is a difference, but each time I try to find the words to display it, I keep running into a wall. So if I seem kind of scattered, that's why.

The position Kit takes is one that increases the net good that society has. Challenging things that reinforce privilege, especially in media*, is important. The more society is made aware of the existence of privilege, IMO, the better psychologically equipped we become to deal with it.

On the other hand, the "Won't Someone Think Of the Children?!" Macro Lady that I often invoke on my blog is the exact opposite. She's trying to remove things that challenge the existing status quo, which usually includes direct assaults on said privilege. For instance, sex education - poor sex education is universally justified with "we don't want our kids/daughters to have sex." More honest ones will admit it, anyway. That dynamic is male privilege. Women don't get control of their bodies, man do. Men make the decisions. By teaching proper sex ed, you undermine that, and give women the opportunity to control their own bodies. The Macro Lady will get a bee in her bonnet over that, because she's likely defending that male privilege and keeping society from progressing.

That's the best way I can think to put it.

[Kirala]

I can think of at least one difference between the sort of person who fights Harry Potter ("It has witchcraft!") and the sort of person who fights the "Mike the Knight" described above.

The former sort of person is fighting to remove a point of view from existence in favor of a more dominant point of view.

The latter sort of person is fighting to add a point of view to existence despite a more dominant point of view.

However, in the end, it does come down to a question of whether the virtue you wish to promote is worth the cost of actively discouraging artistic expression/dissemination. That's a tough question to answer. FWIW, I'm down on censorship and tend to be privilege-blind but I see nothing wrong and much right with the actions taken here.

Also, what Coleslaw said.

[Kit Whitfield spamflagging]

For instance, sex education - poor sex education is universally justified with "we don't want our kids/daughters to have sex." More honest ones will admit it, anyway. That dynamic is male privilege. Women don't get control of their bodies, man do. Men make the decisions. By teaching proper sex ed, you undermine that, and give women the opportunity to control their own bodies.

Not just that; I think good sex ed also benefits men. I want my son to have good sex ed because I do want him to have sex. Not right away, of course, because he's only one year old and that would be very bad. But I want him to have sex when he reaches an appropriate age, and I want it to be consensual, mutually satisfying and safe sex. I think that'd be better for him than to catch a disease, or to find himself a father at fifteen, or to become a rapist, or just a bad lay or bad boyfriend who nobody wants a relationship with, or to be involuntarily celibate, or, should he turn out to be gay, to have sex with women when it's men he really wants because he's been taught homophobia. I want him to have good sex education because I want him to have good sex. (In private, with a comfortable degree of distance from me, because there are boundaries.)

And frankly, I think bad sex ed also makes kids more vulnerable to abuse. I'm sceptical about 'good touch-bad touch'; I think it's probably better to stick to 'If anyone touches you in a way you don't like, or asks you to touch them in a way you don't want, you tell them to stop and then tell me about it', because good-bad touch seems awfully easy to get confused about.

So again, I think it's a difference of values: both me and the notional anti-sex-ed parent believe that sex ed will influence our children's sexual choices, but we have different ideas about what those choices should be.

[Kit Whitfield spamflagging]

Spamflag: Abercrombie looks fake to me.

[Literata]

Folks have pointed out that there's an important distinction between "please change" and "censor this!" especially when the reasons for change and possible directions for change are laid out so coherently and politely. I also think there are major factors in play about the kinds of content being challenged. Push vs. pull content is one of them; things being broadcast are different from books available in libraries. Factual information vs. artistic expression is another, and the ability of the intended audience to critically evaluate the content is yet another. I think all of those break in your favor - that is, make your complaint more reasonable - as opposed to most versions of the fictional Ms. Twinset Pearl-Clutcher.

[Steve Morrison]

Not to mention, you actually watched the show you were criticizing! Too many of the people trying to, e.g., ban Harry Potter from school libraries refuse to even read the books because they just know them to be evil.

[J. Enigma (the Transhumanist!)]

Upon another reread, I think you hit on the difference right in the very beginning:

Twinset and pearls, or perhaps a varsity sweatshirt. Probably a woman, an interfering mother who expects the whole of society to shield her child from reality, parochial, intolerant and rather stupid.

You're not seeking to shield your child, or anyone else's, from reality. The reality of the world is that White Europeans are not the only people. There are others, and they shouldn't serve the purpose of "being background furniture." What you're trying to do is expose the children to the reality of the situation. If anything, this cartoon is achieving Macro Lady's purpose of shielding her child from reality. It's likely why she isn't complaining about it. If you look at most of the works that get banned or there are calls for being banned, they generally align themselves with your intentions of having children exposed to reality the way it is, not some twisted Majority delusion. This isn't an issue of values; this is a matter of you trying to open society up while she's trying to shut it down.

I have some thoughts on concerns about "historical accuracy" that would likely be leveled as counter-complaints. One, it's a cartoon, aimed at children. Historical accuracy takes a backseat to the moral that it's trying to teach children, so there's no necessary for it be "historically accurate." Second, "historical accuracy" is anything but; most "historical programs" will often overlook the presence of Moors, the fact that there was a free trade of both ideas and people as they moved from one place to another - Medieval Europe was not a White people's club by any measure, but "historically accurate programs" overlook this. So really, while you're not asking for it, by telling them you want more diversity in the program, you're taking this cartoon, who doesn't need to be "historically accurate" anyway, that much closer to real historical accuracy.

So again, I think it's a difference of values: both me and the notional anti-sex-ed parent believe that sex ed will influence our children's sexual choices, but we have different ideas about what those choices should be.

Here's the difference, though, judging by your comment: you're basing your beliefs on facts and figures. You have no delusion that sex is part of life for most people, and that it's irrational to try and repress that, because kids will have sex anyway. Give them the tools they need to enjoy that part of their life, too. The anti-sex-ed parent is just lying to themselves about it, and they're hurting their child and other people's children, too.

I don't think the difference is one of values. I see this along the same lines of the "creationism v. evolution" situation; there's science and there are facts backing up claims for a good sex education, and it's part of the human experience (again for most people). Until Macro Lady brings some actual facts to the table to back up her claims, she's unfounded on an epistemic level and for her to continue to insist that she's right is wrongheaded, being generous, or outright lying. The only value difference here is one of "do I work against the lie for the betterment of society or do I push the lie to keep things the way they are?"

[MaryKaye]

I'd come at this a different way. I don't think Pearl Clutching Lady should stop complaining; it's her right and even duty to complain about things that concern her. I don't think Kit should stop complaining either. I think the authorities should calmly hold up those complaints to their system of values, and decide which are founded and which are not--at which point all the arguments brought to bear in this thread are relevant, and in my opinion correct.

When things go terribly wrong is when the library's or broadcaster's or school's values are set aside out of fear--fear of losing advertising, fear of making waves. Institutional courage is a hard thing to come by, but it's necessary to be a morally sound institution. (Of course it also strengthens morally unsound ones. None of this is easy. But in Kit's example it looks like she is dealing with a basically morally sound institution.)

We are seeing an interesting example of this right now. There is a tenants' rights organization in Seattle whose methodology is to find a tenant with complaints and plaster telephone poles with leaflets attacking the subject of his/her complaints. It may be that they are not adequately fact-checking before they go on the attack. If so, the landlord who is the target of the complaints has a hard call to make: cave in to stop the negative publicity, or stand firm, even at the risk of looking like a total villain (as landlords tend to do anyway). If you cave, this increases the pressure on the next target, and strengthens the organization. And of course everything is complicated by the fact that it's a rare landlord/tenant dispute where one side is 100% blameless.

There has been some really interesting discussion of this in our local homeless newspaper (Real Change) as well as a volley of counter-leaflets in my neighborhood. I'm glad it's not me, but I'm interested to see what happens.

[thebewilderness]

There are so many ways that this cartoon rejects reality that as I started to read your post I wondered which ones you were going to write them about.

[Rodeobob]

So I'm wondering: is complaining complaining no matter what your motivations?

Let's not use the word "complaining"; it has negative connotations, and beside, it's not really accurate to what you're doing. Complaints are based on how you feel, regardless of the audience you are complaining to. (You could complain to the TV producers, your local newspaper or radio, or to your friends; all would qualify as 'complaints', regardless of who you're addressing)

Let's use the word "objection" instead. An objection is significantly less personal, less "feelings" based. Objections can be made dispassionately, while complaints are inherently negative. Objections are also much more targeted; one makes an objection to an authority able to react and respond, not just to anyone within earshot!

Are there legitimate and illegitimate complaints objections? What's the difference?

See why I changed the word-use? It gives us a better framework to consider legitimacy.

1.) Is your objection based on evidence, fact, or reality? Or is it speculation or rhetoric? Not everything falls into the domain of evidence & reason, but a great many things do. We dismiss objections to "Harry Potter" and "Pokemon" as Satanic because those objections are clearly not based on the actual content of the subjects, and require some odd interpretation of scripture. Sex education in public schools* has 60 years of data showing that comprehensive sex-ed leads to fewer unplanned pregnancies and lower STI rates; we've got around 20 years of data showing abstinence-only education has no effect whatsoever on unplanned pregnancies and STIs.

2.) Is your objection directed towards a legitimate arbitor? It's one thing to ask a writer, or a publishing house, to discontinue offensive content. It's quite another to proclaim it Satanic to a congretation that can do nothing to influence it's production or distribution. Yes, a call for a boycott would be an attempt to object via legitimate abitor (in this case, the marketplace) but trying to change the minds of millions of people in reaction to something is the last, worst choice when compared to appealing to more direct authorities.**

3.) Does your objection allow for one or more possible resolutions?
Objections, unlike complaints, often imply or explicitly demand a type of resolution. I can complain that Fox News is a cesspool of distortions, but if I object to a bit of false information being broadcast, I'll also demand a retraction be made on the air!
Legitimacy is helped by allowing for more than one possible resolution. I personally despise public programs that allow "conscience" or "religious" opting-out***, but it's a better choice than an outright ban for everyone. If the choices are "no one gets to read 'Tom Sawyer' because it has a bad word" versus "anyone whose parents don't want them reading 'Tom Sawyer' can get them excused", I think the second choice, awful though it is, is better than the first. Outright bans of books are increasingly rare; it's much more common for a restriction or a compromise that allows the objector to 'opt-out'.

All of this sounds nice, but the real sticking point is #1, simply because most objections aren't factual, can't be proven or disproven with evidence, and don't belong to that realm. Sex-Ed is objected to because of "morality"; Satanic influcences can't be 'proven', except through interpreting the 'wickedness' of others. Or, to paraphrase a quote I'm too lazy to Google, you can't reason someone out of a position they didn't reason themselves into.

* I am referring to age appropriate sex education, a technical distinction often ignored in many objections. The sex-ed classes for elementary school students should focus on 'bad-touch' and boundaries as othe types of interactions aren't age-appropriate yet, just as sex-ed for pubescent teens should include elements of socializing, etiquette, and inter-personal respect along with the biological elements.

** I have a great deal of respect for the Occupy movement, but it's clear they are a measure of last resort, after attempts to lobby the banks, the President, and Congress all failed.

***Any public school option that involves certain students being singled out as "others" who are not participating is a poor system on it's face. Any public school option that allows students to become or remain isolated from the larger perspective of a multi-cultural society is a poor system. And I won't even get into the very serious, very real public health danger created by anti-vax folks...

[Kit Whitfield]

Here's the difference, though, judging by your comment: you're basing your beliefs on facts and figures.

Not primarily, actually. I'm basing my beliefs on personal experience and cultural values. My cultural values see sex as important and not sinful as long as it's done ethically, and don't consider marriage or sexual orientation to be ethical issues. My personal experience suggests that pre-marital sexual relationships are enriching rather than corrupting. (There are bad ones, of course, but they're bad for reasons that aren't to do with marriage and would remain equally bad if the couple did marry.)

Facts and figures are important when it comes to determining policy, but when it comes to unverifiable issues like 'sex is dirty' or 'sex is healthy', I think most people are more swayed by the experiences of their own lives and the people they know.

[Helen Louise]

Sorry, slightly off topic, but have you seen Jane and the Dragon? It's a cartoon series that they showed on MilkShake on Channel 5... the eponymous Jane was training to be a Lady in Waiting but decided to be a knight instead. wikipedia link here. Apparently they're based on books too?

Back on topic, I appreciate the honesty of your post... It is hard to sort out feelings and motivations sometimes, and I think it can be very tempting to let thoughts like "but I am right and they are wrong" go unexamined, so I like the fact that you are showing Twinset Lady's point of view and comparing it with your own and we can tease out what's good and what isn't :)

I thought Kirala's point was excellent - ie that you are adding a viewpoint despite a more dominant point of view. I really do think that the vast majority of bad things that are done are down to thoughtlessness in some way - unquestioning acceptance of the norm, lack of empathy, "we've always done it this way", "but it's traditional", "there's nothing wrong with that, you're just over-thinking....". Hurtful remarks, thoughtless actions and so on. I'm sure that people often are sometimes deliberately cruel or hurtful, or acting out of such self-interest that they simply won't see someone else's point of view; but other times I think it's just that people don't think to even imagine what it must be like for others... it's easier to stay in a little bubble of a world full of just people like you.

It sounds like Mike the Knight is a bit like this - I don't think it's made by agents of the Patriarchy, sitting down and wondering how they can oppress people who are non-white, non-manly, non-male, non-straight, or all of the above, but it does sound like it's probably not even occurred to the creators what the implications are - we're so used to seeing and reading stories where white males (boys or men) are in charge and women, girls, people of any other ethnicity, and anyone unusual in some way, is kept in the background, so it can become an unquestionable story-telling norm...

By contrast, I think books like the one Twinset Lady would object to often have been crafted thoughtfully, deliberately meant to give an idea which may be disturbing or unusual, but is not necessarily bad. I think that the kind of people who would jump on a book for having a naughty word or a difficult idea tend to not want their children to have to think, ask questions or be disturbed... Whereas it seems you do not want your son to unquestioningly accept the norm presented to him.

Of course, I can't entirely know the motivations of people who would like books banned or restricted, but I don't think that you are like mythical Twinset Lady at least - yours is not the stereotypical kneejerk reaction, it's a thoughtful and considered point of view that respects your son's ability to learn and grow.

[TRiG spamflagging]

Spam:

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[AnaMardoll]

I love this post so much. :D

I've been a reviewer on Amazon for several years. With anything aimed at children, I try to point out things that parents might want to know about, and I do try to include privilege-issues when I think of them. My point in these cases isn't that SOMETHING IS BAD for having issues, but that a parent might not want to purchase it, or they might want to be prepared in advance to talk about it. It's that "finite resources" you were getting at above.

I see myself as 'helpful', so I was surprised when one day Husband offhandedly mentioned that all my reviews are essentially me complaining about every little thing I didn't like about something. I was sort of shocked, because I think that description is both accurate and inaccurate.

I *do* list every little thing I don't like about stuff, even "5 star!" stuff because I'm trying to *inform*. People don't usually read reviews to say, "Oh, this lady I've never heard about liked it, so let me buy this for Maggie!" They read the reviews to get a picture of the product before they decide to spend money on it. And if there's something in the book you don't like, you might want to spend your limited time, money, and efforts on something else.

All of which is a long way of saying: When you "complain", you provide valuable feedback -- either to potential consumers or to the producers of the material -- on what aspects of the product are likely to turn you away. A *good* producer wants people to buy and consume and recommend their product, so a good producer will appreciate your feedback. They might not *address* the feedback -- they might feel like Mike the Knight can't be fiddled with while retaining the producers' vision or somesuch other reason, but they can use that feedback elsewhere to improve other shows, maybe.

If a parent "complains" that magic in books teaches children unwholesome values, there's a signal there to producers of childrens' content. "Harry Potter" could not, at that point, have been realistically tampered with to remove the magic -- that would have completely changed the series, alienated the fans, and wouldn't have appeased the complainers at that point. BUT a signal was sent that there are parents who would be willing to buy similar stories if only there wasn't magic in them. And, indeed, some enterprising author made a bundle off my parents when I was a child by producing an essentially CHRISTIAN! NANCY DREW series because the Nancy Drew series apparently wasn't stamped CHRISTIAN! quite hard enough.

So in both these cases, a simple "complaint" can be exceedingly helpful so that the producers can tailor things that YOU want to buy and recommend to others.

Of course, that's a very different kettle of fish than calling for something to be banned. But you didn't do that. :)

[AnaMardoll]

And apparently my link failed. I feel so internet unsavvy. :(

http://www.amazon.com/Mandie-Secret-Tunnel-Book/dp/0871233207/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1325085292&sr=8-1

[J. Enigma (the Transhumanist!)]

@ Kit - there's a lot of evidence backing up the "sex is healthy" claim. After all, it's something that humans are hardwired to do. And going without sex for an extended period - enforced celibacy, as it were - can do a lot of unhealthy things to a person's psychology (unless you happen to be asexual). So even if you aren't directly basing your claims on facts, you can still find a bunch of evidence to back up your claim, from the mental health aspect of it to the lower STD rates and teen pregnancy rates if it's taught to teens early on. Macro Lady can do nothing of the sort for her "sex is dirty" position. (... pun intended? Maybe?)

@ Ana Mardoll - they has a word for that - it's called the "Moral Substitute". And most of the time, they're every bit as crappy as it would suggest (my friend tried a while back to get me to play the Christianized "Dungeons and Dragons", but I kept telling him that our group has two atheists in it - me and another friend - and that'll be one big ball of fire and brimstone for us to blow up in if we get anywhere near a Bible or Bible quote).

[Allie]

Ana, I used to have a Mandie book! I think it was Hidden Treasure - the one with the gigantic ruby.

[Kit Whitfield]

it does sound like it's probably not even occurred to the creators what the implications are - we're so used to seeing and reading stories where white males (boys or men) are in charge and women, girls, people of any other ethnicity, and anyone unusual in some way, is kept in the background, so it can become an unquestionable story-telling norm...

I think they probably were aware of it to some extent, but couldn't deal with it any better than by tokenism.

--

So even if you aren't directly basing your claims on facts, you can still find a bunch of evidence to back up your claim

I'm sure. The point I was making was that the evidence I draw was based on personal observation rather than 'facts and figures', and that I suspect most people work that way at least to some extent.

[AnaMardoll]

@ Ana Mardoll - they has a word for that - it's called the "Moral Substitute".

Ah! I did not know that. Thank you.

I almost want something tailored for more general use, though, so that liberals can use it too. Like, "this book is Harry Potter, but with lesbian parenting and minority students galore!" (I would totally read that book. Does it exist?)

Ana, I used to have a Mandie book!

Mandy high-five!

I remember almost nothing about them, but we had the entire series. When I went to college, they got given to my niece, and they're probably long gone, now. I wouldn't mind re-reading them again in an attempt to see if there was much Fail. I'm guessing -- looking at the covers -- that they were rife with White Protagonists Only and Noble Savage Sidekicks.

[Kit Whitfield]

Like, "this book is Harry Potter, but with lesbian parenting and minority students galore!" (I would totally read that book. Does it exist?)

Agh, nah. Surely it's better to have someone go away and write something original? I very much doubt someone who did a straight rip-off of anything would have enough talent to do justice to the issues they were trying to acknowledge.

[MaryKaye]

Kit Whitfield writes:

Agh, nah. Surely it's better to have someone go away and write something original? I very much doubt someone who did a straight rip-off of anything would have enough talent to do justice to the issues they were trying to acknowledge.

I don't think it would have to be a rip-off. Brilliant work has been done retelling the story of King Arthur, for example (Jo Walton's _The King's Peace_ for a recent example) even though it is far from original.

I don't know what the author would say about it, but to me CJ Cherryh's _Cloud's Rider_ reads very much like a direct response to Anne McCaffery's Pern series, and I don't think it suffers from that. Carey's _Banewreaker_ and _Godslayer_ read like a retelling or re-imagining of _The Lord of the Rings_ and...I can't say I liked them, but they are not rip-offs, and there is evident talent there.

_Harry Potter_ itself, after all, has a very substantial relationship to the penny-dreadful school stories--George Orwell has a very cool essay about these.

I don't think originality and quality are related in any very straightforward way, except that very bad work is likely to be unoriginal. Very good work can either be original, or a brilliant reinterpretation of existing material, and to my tastes it works either way.

[AnaMardoll]

Agh, nah. Surely it's better to have someone go away and write something original? I very much doubt someone who did a straight rip-off of anything would have enough talent to do justice to the issues they were trying to acknowledge.

Well... I think we've disagreed on this before, but I don't really believe anything is original. :/

There was Harry Potter before there was Harry Potter. And I don't mean that in a plagiarism sense, I just mean that it's all been done before, in my view. And I mean that as a good thing, but I recognize it sounds bad to some people's ears.

Although there may be a different in what I mean and what you mean when we say the words "this book is Harry Potter with...". I just described "Bumped" as "Handmaid's Tale" and "Brave New World" blended together and sold as YA lit, but very possibly many people would disagree with me on that.

Or, to use something more mainstream, I've decided that Twilight IS La Belle et la Bete ("Beauty and the Beast", but I'm referring to the original de Villeneuve version, not the Beaumont abridgment that I was previously most familiar with). But I very much doubt Meyer did that intentionally.

[AnaMardoll]

And, amusingly, when I first read your post on "Mike the Knight", all I could think was DAVE THE BARBARIAN!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_the_Barbarian

(Please someone tell me I wasn't the only one. *Buh-buh-barbarian! Buh-buh-barBARian!*)

[Izzy]

Yeah, I also like variations on a theme--occasionally I like them better because I recognize the source material and can track the references.

On the original subject...what other people said. Plus? I don't necessarily think that Ms. TwinSet's methods are bad. Her goals are, and that makes the difference to me. There are a few tactics that I consider too not-okay to use ever, but complaining to authorities isn't one of them.

[J. Random Scribbler]

One important difference is the amount of thought you put into your decision about whether and how to respond. In our former (quite small) town of residence, we had family members on the local library board and working for the newspaper and involved in city government, so I heard a fair number of objections to various things.* In all of those cases the people seemed to be reacting out of dogmatic belief and the unquestioned assumption that their morality was the only legitimate option.

Of course, as you reminded us, Mrs. Twin-set is indeed a fantasy figure. There must be at least some moral conservatives who are very thoughtful about how they want their children raised, and would communicate their objections with the same care you showed. In those cases, the moral line would be harder to draw.

I suppose for me it comes down to this: does the person want to reinforce an already-dominant point of view, or do they want to promote an unfairly under-represented one? Pretty much what Kirala already said, actually.

*Usually books, and among those, usually Harry Potter. However, one of the local churches thought that even the Narnia books, of all things, were Of The Devil -- so you can imagine their reactions to other stuff.

[Kit Whitfield spamflagging]

I don't really believe anything is original.

Pal o' mine, you need to take a break from TV Tropes!

Almost nothing is completely original, sure. Stories have a fundamental structure, and almost all stories have the same bones. Some of them have organs in common, or habits, or features. But I think it's a reductio ad absurdum to conclude that because of this, originality is a meaningless concept.

Originality is a question of degree. An idea can be unoriginal, by which we mean that either there are many examples of its prior use or that it's extremely similar to a previous rendition. Or it can be original, by which we generally mean that it is, if not absolutely unlike everything that's ever gone before, a notable and interesting departure from conventional renditions of the basics.

And by that colloquial understanding of the word, of course a story can be more or less original. It's partly a question of concept and partly a question of execution.

The Harry Potter books were not particularly original in their fundamental components. They featured a single boy who's the chosen one, which is a staple of many mass-market fantasy stories; they featured magic, written about in a fairly traditional way; they featured a school setting, which is a popular choice for children's stories; they featured a direct and plain writing style with no particular elaborations or experiments. So in that sense they weren't 'original'. But they were, on the other hand, original in the sense that the specific characters, the details, the content of the plots, were originated by the author. And they had a kind of freshness in their rendition that I wouldn't expect to find in a story where someone had decided to do something that was 'just like Harry Potter only with the politics corrected', which is what you seemed to be talking about.

Obviously writers inspire and influence each other, and sometimes stimulate each other into opposite directions. I know I've sometimes started writing something because I disagreed with how another writer had handled an issue and thought, 'No, it ought to go like this instead, and like this, and like this...' But when we say 'there's no originality' because of this with no regard for degree, it's the literary equivalent of saying 'Everyone is selfish because people who do unselfish things feel good about themselves!' It's a rejection of something important that makes the world a better place by means of exaggerating the importance of a single side of the issue. It's anti-writer and anti-art, and kind of silly.

Writing isn't just a question of picking blocks out of the box and stacking them. It's a responsive process, but also an inturned one, and writers bring their own life experiences and personalities and imaginations as much as they bring their reading to the desk.

To say 'There's no originality', one has to redefine the word 'originality' past the point that most people understand it to signify. And that's cheating.

[Kit Whitfield]

Oops, wasn't actually trying to spamflag there.

Reading that post over, I sound cross. But the truth is, it does rather get my goat. The reason for this is that, being a writer myself, I find it very frustrating when people tell me there's no originality. To write, one has to originate to some extent, and being told that one doesn't is - sorry, but there's no other word for it - splainy. Maybe it's different for you, or for some other people, but to say to me 'There's no originality' is something I can't hear except as 'You may think you're making things up, but actually you aren't, and I know this because I know better than you how your mind works.'

People like to do that to writers a lot. More, I think, than they do it to musicians or painters or artists whose form depends on a skill that not everyone possesses, such as handling a paintbrush or a piano. But because everyone can use language to some extent (or at least everyone who's splaining can), people are very quick to assume that they understand how writing works and can therefore brush off whatever a writer says about it because hey, you're just the person making it; I consume it, so I really understand it.

I'm not saying this against you personally. You're being polite about it, and I know you write yourself. But the world is too darn full of people who talk to writers like they're the idiot maidservant who can't possibly understand what's on the tray they're carrying. It's annoying, and it's also capitalist: it privileges the consumer over the producer, and elevates the act of consumption above the act of production. And as both a reader and a writer, no, I really don't accept that.

So I get snappish when someone trips that association.

[Helen Louise]

Ana Mardoll wrote:
I *do* list every little thing I don't like about stuff, even "5 star!" stuff because I'm trying to *inform*. People don't usually read reviews to say, "Oh, this lady I've never heard about liked it, so let me buy this for Maggie!" They read the reviews to get a picture of the product before they decide to spend money on it. And if there's something in the book you don't like, you might want to spend your limited time, money, and efforts on something else.
I think this is an excellent point. I really like reviews that have something to say other than "Storyline/characters/acting/direction/photography/writing were excellent/good/OK/sub par/disappointing"... I particularly enjoy reading reviews where I can tell whether I would like said book/film/game etc regardless of whether the reviewer enjoyed it or not. It can be a difficult thing to pull off, but it can be quite fun to read a glowing review and think "well that sounds awful" or a negative review and think "actually, I think that sounds quite good", and I think it's a sign that the reviewer is doing their job well.

[Jarred]

And, amusingly, when I first read your post on "Mike the Knight", all I could think was DAVE THE BARBARIAN!

I didn't make the jump from Mike the Knight, but I loved Dave the Barbarian.

Of course, it has also ruined me. I can no longer hear the phrase "The Dark Lord," without immediately adding "Chuckles, the Silly Piggy" in my mind.

[Literata]

Thank you, Kit, for your response as a writer to the idea that there's no originality. You put into words something I've struggled with before. Of course, since I don't write fiction, it's not as big a deal for me, but it still occasionally crops up.

When I review books on my blog, I work hard to convey what's in them and why I think it's well or poorly done, so that the separation between my opinion and the content is relatively clear. I also try to explain when I think the author did what zie intended well, but hir intent was poorly conceived. Neither of those things are easy, and I'm always open to feedback about how well I achieve those goals of my own in my reviews. One of the ways I've found that works relatively well (I think?) is to say who I can see enjoying or using this book, and who might not, regardless of which camp(s) I fall into.

And although that wasn't what you set out to do, Kit, if I look at your letter that way, you might have said something like: This show comforts the comfortable and afflicts the afflicted, perhaps excessively so. That might make it popular, but it's not necessarily a good thing.

[J. Enigma (the Transhumanist!)]

Re Sex ed: I see now, I think. We're coming at this from two totally different perspectives. Despite that, her "values" are toxic and proven harmful, and thus, are ones that should be laughed out of public discourse if they're for the typical reasons and should be gently corrected if they're not. And that's the difference; your values and personal observations, subjective as they are, do have facts that back them up, and put you on more solid ground than hers do.

Re originality: I'm also a writer, and I tend to feel the same way Kit does. My thoughts on the matter can be summed up in on sentence: Originality is in the synthesis.

[AnaMardoll]

Pal o' mine, you need to take a break from TV Tropes!

Ahahaha, possibly. But before I was a Troper, I was a Jungian. (A Jungist? I'm not up on the lingo anymore.) So it's something in my makeup that I can't shake. Similarities, I see them everywhere. :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jungian_archetypes

And they had a kind of freshness in their rendition that I wouldn't expect to find in a story where someone had decided to do something that was 'just like Harry Potter only with the politics corrected', which is what you seemed to be talking about.

I think freshness is ultimately subjective, though. :/ I haven't read all the HP books, but... I'm kind of embarrassed to admit this... the ones I *have* read I thought were... kind of dull. I would *absolutely* read a more 'liberal' version with tighter editing. PLEAZE MAY I HAVE THE TIGHTER EDITING? :D

And even in my own life as a writer, it's fascinating to me that two people can read something I wrote and one will say "Totally spot on, exceedingly creative, needed to be said, perfectly executed," and someone else will say "Completely off, totally derivative, couldn't be wronger, wipe and start from scratch".

I can't assume that one reader is flattering me and the other has no taste. I have to assume that they're both right from their point of view and move onwards. Well... that's how I deal with it anyway. Not sure that's the best way, but. :)

However, I should say that when I say nothing is original, I don't mean that as a slander to authors. I wholly believe that authors ORIGINALLY come up with their own ideas. I just think that those ideas have been done -- possibly in bits and pieces across multiple works -- elsewhere. I'm not suggesting "plagiarism", I'm suggesting Jung's "ancient or archaic images that derive from the collective unconscious". If that makes sense. It's not meant as slander. *sheepish*

[AnaMardoll]

Reading that post over, I sound cross. But the truth is, it does rather get my goat. The reason for this is that, being a writer myself, I find it very frustrating when people tell me there's no originality. To write, one has to originate to some extent, and being told that one doesn't is - sorry, but there's no other word for it - splainy. Maybe it's different for you, or for some other people, but to say to me 'There's no originality' is something I can't hear except as 'You may think you're making things up, but actually you aren't, and I know this because I know better than you how your mind works.'

And I responded before I saw this and did it all over again with my Jungian stuff. I'm sorry. :(

I don't know any way around this problem. I swear I'm not trying to claim I know how your mind works. I'm trying to explain how *my* mind works, i.e., I read something -- anything -- and my mind says "hey, I've seen this before. A new combination of old ideas! Great!" And I do like the idea of a collective unconscious because it ties into my beliefs about language and connotations and how they evolve.

However. I cannot make a general statement about MY BELIEFS ABOUT ALL PEOPLE without making a specific statement about YOU IN PARTICULAR, including your works, and I apologize for that.

I do not think I can change how I feel, but perhaps what I feel is not appropriate to be said. I'm not sure why I brought it up -- possibly because of Harry Potter? -- but I apologize. :(

[Kit Whitfield]

@Ana - thanks for the gracious reply. :-)

The thing is, while I'm highly suspicious of the psychoanalytic tradition - I think it lends itself to dogma which can be abused against vulnerable people, and its claims are often questionable - I don't disagree that there are certain elements that could be attributed to a collective unconscious, or else to a cultural tradition.

It's just that there's much more to it than that. And when someone makes a sweeping statement like 'Nothing is original', it mutilates the complexity and fluidity on which art depends.

So, for instance, this subject came up in the context of moral substitutes - ie works that specifically set out to imitate a single other, successful work, not by dipping into the subconscious well but by nicking someone else's bucket and slapping a new label on it. You do that and it's a fair bet the water inside will be stale. A work like that is unoriginal to a much greater degree than a work that happens to use some common archetypes.

I personally don't care very much about works being original as such. I care about them feeling fresh and vital rather than hackneyed and cliched - but that's a matter of execution. I'm no fan of John Fowles, but there's a point he makes (or his character does, but it's a character we're heavily required to admire) in The Collector: that art is a window into the heart, but if the heart is full of nothing but the work of other artists, there's really no point making the window. And that's something I agree with. I don't mind if the window-frame has a familiar shape as long as there's something more than other books in there. It's at that point that I start to call a book unoriginal - because that's a book that originates from the wrong sources.

If you draw your archetypes from the collective unconscious, there's probably always something fresh. But if you (generic 'you') draw your archetypes from your reading, you're operating at a very shallow level, and the odds are that there won't be much there.

This is my opinion. And as to whether or not I think I'm right to be so definitive...

I can't assume that one reader is flattering me and the other has no taste. I have to assume that they're both right from their point of view and move onwards.

Well, there we depart; in that position, I tend to assume one is wrong and one is right. Or possibly even that both are wrong!

In my experience, it often depends on focus. I've written books that some people call original and some people don't, for instance; the ones who consider them less original tend to be trope-hunters, people more interested in the idea than in the execution. And I'm likely to shrug those people off, because the execution matters to me more than the idea; I tend to think, 'Well, that person clearly isn't my natural audience,' if they're polite, and 'Well, that person's just a prat' if they're rude. But I have no problem thinking some people are wrong and some are right.

In a way, I find it essential to working. Not just because it allows me to brush off upsetting comments, convenient though that might be, but because to write - for me, at least - requires me to be absolutely decisive. I have to be clear that this word is, not just preferable, but right - or at least, as close to right as I'm going to get. This sentence sounds wrong, it needs me to balance it out with an adjective here, and shall I use this adjective? No; this one? No; this one? Yes, that's the right choice. And so on. I have to be able to employ a constant stream of dismissal and acceptance.

It's the same when I'm deciding what to write about in the first place. It's my theory that one of the things that separates a successful writer (by which I mean someone who writes pieces that succeed artistically, whatever their commercial standing) from an unsuccessful one is, not so much the ability to have good ideas, but the ability to spot and discard bad ones quickly. I have many, many half-ideas that never see the light of day, because it only takes me a few seconds to decide that an idea won't work. On the other hand, I've seen people struggle and struggle to make a story out of an idea that's fundamentally flawed, and never succeed because it was never going to work, but lose a lot of time and heart because they didn't know when to quit.

So to me, being opinionated is not incompatible with being responsive. It's more a question of having an instinct for which ideas are workable, which questions are useful, which criticisms are helpful, and which aren't.

I still hate TV Tropes, though.

[MaryKaye]

I would never defend "There's nothing original" when applied to the process of an individual writer.

But:

Kit wrote: Surely it's better to have someone go away and write something original? I very much doubt someone who did a straight rip-off of anything would have enough talent to do justice to the issues they were trying to acknowledge.

This seems to me to go way too far in the opposite direction by assuming that a work which is consciously and explicitly derivative must therefore be bad. I gave concrete examples why I think this is not the case. I don't think that everyone down through the ages who has written a King Arthur story was by definition a talentless hack. And I don't think that an attempt to write a story which is "Harry Potter, except--" is by definition going to lead to bad work. That strikes me as tarring with WAY too broad a brush, and in the teeth of evidence that is, at least to me, pretty compelling.

[Kit Whitfield]

Again, I feel the need to point out that we were talking about moral substitues, Ie explicit rip-offs written for political rather than artistic reasons. Not the same as reworking a myth.

[Mmy]

@MaryKaye: Like Kit I find that few (if any) works that are explicitly written as "answers" to a source work -- for political/moral reasons are more than fill-in-the-blank hack jobs.

They are, indeed, rather interesting a site of study because what they feel a need to replace tells us what they feel most stressed about. For example, in many of the those who protest against Harry Potter on the grounds of its wizardry one finds signs that what really, really concerns them is the idea of agency and power being given to women and children.

[Ross]

In my experience "There's nothing original" is less offen applied as an attack on a writer's process and more often as a defense of a writer's process against another popular dismissal: "Your work isn't original enough, therefore it is invalid."

Which is kinda what "Surely it's better to have someone go away and write something original? I very much doubt someone who did a straight rip-off of anything would have enough talent to do justice to the issues they were trying to acknowledge." sounded like to me without further elaboration.

(I don't recall if I mentined before. I know someone who used to get VERY angry when other people talked about story ideas they had, because now those ideas were "claimed", and sometimes he'd "had to" throw out works that he'd put a lot of effort into, because the idea was claimed now. If they produced a complete work, it still annoyed him that he "had to" throw out his own partially-completed effort, but he accepted that because they'd "earned" the rights to the idea by putting in the effort, but if they just *said* the idea, then the idea was theirs,m even if he was just days from completion of his own work, and it had to be scrapped because now it wasn't an original idea any more.)

[MaryKaye]

Kit Whitfield wrote: Again, I feel the need to point out that we were talking about moral substitues, Ie explicit rip-offs written for political rather than artistic reasons. Not the same as reworking a myth.

I'm not sure there is any clear line between those.

I have not heard Cherryh speak about why she wrote _Cloud's Rider_. But I had the very strong impression when I read it that it served, in part, as a rebuttal to the wish-fulfillment fantasies in McCaffery's Pern books--a way of saying "Have you thought about what this would *really* be like?" to the whole dream of gaining personal power by bonding to a monster.

Similarly, a one-line description of _The King's Peace_ might be "It's a feminist take on King Arthur." Walton supposes, as many other authors have, that the events of this myth play out over and over in different worlds--and asks what happens when a key player is a woman rather than a man. It's certainly susceptible to a very ideological reading. I had some conversations with her while she was writing it but I can't say what her "main intention" was or even if she had one--in my experience a novel is a very big thing and doesn't flow from just one intention.

I don't think you can separate political from artistic reasons that clearly. I think that a novel can grow like a pearl from something that gets under the author's skin and irritates her, and what that initial irritant was can be personal, political, whatever. If "Harry Potter has political deficiencies" is the irritant--I don't personally think that's a complete predictor of the outcome. It all comes down to the writer's skill and insight in the end.

Over on Ana Mardoll's blog someone is posting snippets of a _Twilight_ pastiche with genders reversed and some serious re-imagining of the personal dynamics, and I have to say, I personally would buy that in book form--I have really enjoyed the snippets. They are obviously not original, but they are good. (Poster who wrote them, I apologize for forgetting your name.)

I do agree that pastiche written for political reasons can go horrendously wrong; even, that this is the most likely outcome. I hated _Tehanu_ very, very much. I just don't agree that it is the only outcome.

[Amaryllis]

"Surely it's better to have someone go away and write something original? I very much doubt someone who did a straight rip-off of anything would have enough talent to do justice to the issues they were trying to acknowledge."

Is it talent, then, that makes the difference between rip-off and reinterpretation? Is it a rip-off if Jean Rhys gets her source from Charlotte Bronte, or Geraldine Brooks fills in the blanks for Louisa May Alcott, or Jo Walton bases the social conventions of Trollope's England on dragon biology?

As a mere reader, I'd be perfectly willing to accept "yes" and "no," respectively to those questions. But "I know what I like" isn't much of an artistic argument.

Does it matter if the clunkiness of a derivative work is due to lack of talent or to agenda trumping art? Either way, I don't want to read it. If the work is in fact well-executed, does it matter if the author is working from a particular political viewpoint?

TVTropes gives me headaches.

[Brin]

MaryKaye: Over on Ana Mardoll's blog someone is posting snippets of a _Twilight_ pastiche with genders reversed and some serious re-imagining of the personal dynamics, and I have to say, I personally would buy that in book form--I have really enjoyed the snippets. They are obviously not original, but they are good. (Poster who wrote them, I apologize for forgetting your name.)

It's chris the cynic.

[Amaryllis]

It is indeed chris the cynic, and they're much more fun than the original.

As for TVTropes, I meant to quote Steven Brust in my last post, and got distracted:

A good meal, you see, is all about unexpected delight: it's one thing for food to simply "taste good," but a real master can make it taste good in a way that surprises you. And for that to work, you have to start from a place where you can permit yourself to be surprised. And, interestingly enough, the person eating has to cooperate for that to really be successful.

Perhaps I judge unfairly, but a lot of TVTropes strikes me as a refusal to be surprised. There's nothing wrong with identifying the "ingredients," so to speak, of a work of art, but it's the combination and the execution that matter. A recipe is not a meal.