Running a Deconstruction, or Devoting Your Life To Complaining About Things You Don't Like

My story closely resembles many of those on The Slacktiverse. Some indeterminate time a few years back, I followed a link-to-a-link-to-a-link and landed who-knows-how on Fred Clark's exquisite Left Behind commentaries. I then immediately dropped to a zero productivity rate as I feverishly plowed through the entire series, from the first post to the last, in a frenzy of reading that left me gasping for more.

Although I don't remember the date or even the year this occurred, it still sharply divided my life into a sort of Pre-Clark and Post-Clark mentality. Here was something that was uniquely incredible to my experience: an eloquent, reasoned individual carefully and constructively picking apart a series that I had a visceral but difficult-to-explain reaction to. Reading Fred's words helped to untangle my own response to the work, and confirmed that I wasn't stupid, or deficient, or alone in my feelings. The experience was cathartic, and also delightfully entertaining. I was hooked.

The only problem with the concept of deconstruction was that by its very nature, it was an excruciatingly slow process. One reading segment a week for a twelve book series would span over the course of years just for that one series. And while the extensive length of time added to the enjoyment, it also meant that Fred Clark was not going to be able to run multiple deconstructions for every little thing out there that deserved a good picking through. Clearly, if we were to populate the world with more of these wonderful, affirming, cathartic deconstructions, it was up to everyone to pitch in.

In the last few years, an absolutely wonderful number of deconstructions have popped up. First there were the Left Behind spin-offs[1] -- the expanded universe was too large for any one person to realistically handle, so good-natured souls started flinging themselves on the prequels and sequels and YA targeted novels. Then the field began to expand from LaHaye's brand of Christian fiction to other targets, moving from an emphasis on The Worst Novels In The World to an emphasis on novels that contained equally problematic elements, but packaged in a less overtly evangelical form. Problematic cultural elements of racism, sexism, abelism, and homophobia could be identified and addressed in dozens of other popular series without necessarily demonizing author or audience. Deconstructions became a magnifying glass for discovering how our cultural biases seep into our fiction and play a role in reinforcing and retaining those biases over multiple generations.

A few weeks ago, Kit asked me in jest if I wouldn't like to write a "how-to" guide for deconstructions, considering how passionate I am about the concept and process. (I'm currently running three on-going ones, and have plans to add more as soon as time can reasonably permit.) The thought stuck with me, so here are my thoughts on the running of a blog deconstruction and ways to make the experience as pleasurable as possible for all involved. (At least, I hope so. I've really only been doing this for less than a year, so I may still crash and burn and make a fool of myself online. Tune in to the crash-and-burn!)

1. Decide on source material you can work with.

Doing a deconstruction is a huge time commitment. Fred can probably work through Left Behind for the rest of his life, if he so chooses. It's taken me almost a year to get through the first four chapters of the Twilight book series that is essentially six books long. Even with running a concurrent Narnia feature with Twilight every two weeks, I'll probably still finish the seven-book Narnia series first at that rate. So you're going to want to pick a project that you can live with -- or, failing that, that you can wrap up gracefully if the need arises.

I think, from Fred's writings on the subject, he picked Left Behind because he saw something that he felt needed to be seriously addressed in terms of the religion presented in the books. For myself, I picked up Twilight and Narnia because I wanted to address issues I had with both in terms of feminism. These were popular series that had bothered some portion of my brain for quite some time, and I was reasonably certain I had enough to say on the topic that I could work out a post a week on the topic for basically the next ten years or so.

In some ways, you really want to pick something you either love or hate. There's probably not a lot of incentive to continue to discuss a book about which you don't have strong feelings. For myself, I both love and hate aspects of Twilight and Narnia: I loved Narnia as a child and I've come to appreciate Twilight for attempting to feature an everyday female protagonist who gains the perfect happy ending she always wanted. At the same time I remain deeply frustrated with both series because of the serious issues of sexism, racism, and ableism that I personally feel lurk under the surface text.

Beyond anything else, you want to deconstruct something that will bring you pleasure. When deconstruction starts to become a constant chore, then it stops being fun for you and it stops being fun for your readers. And don't ever feel like you can't respectfully say "this isn't working for me, I need to do something else". We're all in this together, so to speak.

2. Eschew personal attacks.

It's so easy to get so frustrated with a series when it contains problematic content. There's a huge temptation to lash out at the authors, or even the audience who enjoys the series, but usually this isn't productive in a deconstruction. It's one thing to, say, criticize an author who routinely threatens people with hellfire and damnation -- I think there's a lot of moral leeway there to push back against a genuinely toxic agenda.

But your average author is usually just trying to write a book, not push an ideology. If a deconstruction is focusing on the societal issues that leak into works, then the author's intent becomes largely immaterial on a couple of fronts: it's neither a magical shield to protect them nor is it a necessary front of attack when approaching the work.

This is also true for the audience. Pretty much every book on earth has been enjoyed by someone, and the members of that book's audience probably enjoyed it for different reasons. "This is a terrible book and you are terrible if you like it" isn't just going to drive away members of that audience, it's also going to come off as very judgmental and divisive.

This varies according to the material, of course, but it's worth noting that the Twilight fans and Narnia supporters have contributed wonderful and considerate viewpoints throughout their respective deconstructions. Without those wonderful viewpoints, the deconstructions would be essentially one flat note, stretched out through hundreds of blog posts. And nobody wants that, least of all myself.

The goal here isn't to burn a book, its author, or its audience in effigy. It's to tie a book's content into larger cultural issues and examine how those issues can work their way into our favorite books without many of us even noticing. Every book on earth has issues; the goal is to use those to open a meaningful dialogue and hopefully learn something valuable in the process.

3. Call out the little things.

There's the big, obvious stuff in deconstructing, of course. Turbo Jesus.[2] Engine-stealing Edward. The Problem of Susan. But those aren't the meat and bones of deconstruction. They're important posts, but they won't carry you over the months and years it takes to get through the reading.

It's funny what you pick up on when you sit down with keyboard in hand to type a weekly deconstruction post. It's when you're reading through the next few lines, looking for the next red flag to shoot up that you suddenly have Sensible Shoes Vera pop up..[3] Or you have Charlie sabotaging cars long before Edward ever thought to. Or you suddenly realize that the Twilight "Invitations" chapter pretty closely revolves around the concepts you'd already been thinking about that week in terms of elevator propositions and providing people avenues to flee should they choose to.

Or you notice that Santa's "here are some weapons, don't use them" gifts are never mentioned in text again, despite being potentially very useful, and the next thing you know you're questioning why they were put in at all in contrast to the Law of Conservation of Narrative Detail, and for that matter aren't there women war veterans in the ‘verse in which this whole novel is set, so it's Santa essentially being disrespectful of that fact and… huh. I guess I just got a blog post out of that.

The big things are problematic and should be called out as such, but they're not where the bulk of your audience is really going to resonate. Chances are they already know about the big things, because they've read one-off blogs and articles about the more problematic elements in a series. What's more, big things are usually pretty easy to identify and point out as problematic -- it's the little things that gnaw at the reader and leave them uneasy with the series but unable to identify why... until a detailed deconstruction puts a name to those little problems.

I think we've had more "ah-ha" moments on my blog regarding ableism in Twilight than we yet have over sexism. I'd like to say it's because I'm just so eloquent in my deconstruction of why a woman falling on her face isn't actually funny, but the reality is that the sexism was stuff everyone had already heard about long before I picked up a keyboard. The ableism stuff, on the other hand, hadn't been covered so much in the mainstream media.

4. Open up to the audience.

The best part of running a deconstruction will never be what you write. You won't turn the most eloquent phrase, you won't have the most obvious-in-hindsight insights, you won't have the epic moments of searing criticism or pitch-perfect reconstructive fanfic. Your readers are going to have those moments.

Those moments make running a deconstruction so incredibly rewarding. When someone posts something that makes me shout, "Why didn't I think to say that?", I feel a surge of happiness just to have inspired their genius in some small way. When the conversation derails for a good two hundred posts over FedEx arrows in George R.R. Martin's work and how it all relates to Twilight and Narnia and Left Behind and intent-being-or-not-being-magic, all I can do as the deconstructionist is look on in joy and awe at this wonderfulness that I am involved in hosting. And when someone posts that my words have helped them understand their own feelings about a work just a little bit better, I want to cry happy tears because that's pretty much precisely what I hope to get out of this, too.

Comments are the water and sunlight and fertilizer of a deconstruction. They are what will get you in front of your keyboard every week because by gum the deconstruction needs writing. So encourage those comments early and often. Allow anonymous posting so that everyone doesn't have to register a username and remember a password and enable the confirmation email and good grief I just wanted to leave a quick comment. Encourage off-topic posting. Speak to your audience, and thank them for their comments. You may think it's obvious that everything they write fills you with joy, but it's like any other relationship: they don't know they're appreciated unless you tell them. Treat them with respect, and remember how fearful you were the first time you posted a comment.

5. Never respond badly to correction.

Remember when I said that deconstruction wasn't negative? That everything on earth has Fail and that deconstruction isn't about criticism but rather about opening up a dialogue? If everything ever written has Fail in it, that means that eventually you are going to write something that has Fail in it.

Or not! It's possible, in a hypothetical universe! But maybe someone will read your Not-Containing-Fail post and ask for some clarification because it sure seems like it has some Fail in it to them.

This is a good thing. This is a dialogue. This is not a time to explain to them why they are wrong, because that is not a dialogue. A dialogue is between two people and it reads something like oh, I'm very sorry that my words came off that way. (Here you are apologizing for the impression created, and not in a non-apology I'm-sorry-you-were-offended way.) I was trying to say summary-of-what-you-meant-in-two-sentences-or-less. (Here you are providing the clarification that was requested.) But I can see how that could have come off the wrong way. (Here you are validating the experience of the other person and acknowledging that you are not perfect.) I appreciate you pointing this out to me and I'll try to express myself without that Fail in the future. (Here you are being polite, thanking the reader, and then you are actually going to go quietly think about this for next time and see if there's a lesson to be learned here.)

Remember that learning does not mean you were a bad, wrong, awful person. It means there is at least one perspective on earth with which you did not have experience. Quelle surprise.

Ultimately, the hardest part of running a deconstruction isn't the technical details of the site or the reading or the writing or the comments engine. The hardest part is retaining a necessary humility regarding what is largely a collection of personal subjective interpretations about which you are nevertheless going to feel very strongly. The hardest part is conveying that humility in one's posts so that you are always saying here is my interpretation but note that your mileage may vary. The hardest part is looking long and hard at books that many of your readers like, and being able to do so in a way that doesn't guarantee that on a long enough deconstruction timeline, everyone on earth will hate you. (This is, indeed, my biggest fear in the potential crash-and-burn department.)

The good news, at least for everyone reading here, is that in my online experience, the Slacktiverse community is the kindest, cleverest, most thoughtful online community I've ever participated in. So if any readers can weather my occasional dose of Fail and still be forgiving enough to come back for more, it's the Slacktivites. So I guess my final advice for running a deconstruction is to start here.

--Ana Mardoll

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[1] For example: Heathen Critique's deconstructions of Soon and Babylon Rising; Mouse's Musings' deconstruction of the prequel novels about the "Left Behind Kids"; and Apocalypse Review's deconstruction of The Edge of Apocalypse.↩

[2] The Slacktivist deconstruction of the novels has coined the term Turbo Jesus (Short for Turbo Robo Killer Jesus-2000 with his deathly deathrays of deathlyness) for this version of Jesus. [TvTropes: KungFuJesus] ↩

[3] “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. [Fred Clark, L.B.: In those shoes, February 15, 2008]

As a TvTrope contributor points out: One character, Verna Zee, is depicted in her initial appearance (in Book 1) as wearing "sensible shoes", which is UK slang for being a lesbian. She is later described off-hand (in Book 2) as militant. Guess which character comes out as a lesbian in Book 3? [TvTropes: LeftBehind] ↩

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The Slacktiverse is a community blog. Content reflects the individual opinions of the contributors. We welcome disagreement in the comment threads, and invite anyone who wishes to present an alternative interpretation of a situation to write and submit a post.

Comments

[Bay]

I've mentioned this over at Ana's blog before, but I could use some feedback on my deconstruction over at http://yamikuronue.wordpress.com/. I'm in that awkward stage where I don't have a community yet so I really have no idea what works or doesn't in my posts, so I'm finding it hard to keep going because I've started doubting everything I write (I do that, it's kind of my thing). I know I don't post here often, but I've been following Slacktivist and Slacktiverse and several blogs belonging to members or a while now - I'm just kind of timid about posting things in public.

[Lonespark]

This is a great post.

I am, however, afraid to visit Ana's blog lest it eat my brain/soul/time. I went there once, and there was too.much.great.content. aaaaaaugh!

[chris the cynic]

I am, however, afraid to visit Ana's blog lest it eat my brain/soul/time.

Join us. Join us on the sparkly side. Join us while we discuss the difference between bacteria and Bacteria. Join us while we discuss Giant Squid being used as intelligent artillery. Join us in the land of Ana. Join us in the place where we are forced to resort to the explanation, "A Jasper Did It," to make sense of things.

Join us, you know you want to.

[Brin]

Joiinnn ussss...

I've been reading your blog, Bay. I just haven't thought of anything to say.

[AnaMardoll]

Lonespark, nooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! :( :( :(

Clearly we need to pitch in to get you a smart phone and an RSS reader. If you're not reading in the restrooms and/or while walking, you're wasting valuable time. ;)

[Bay]

@Brin Yay :) I totally understand not having much to say, as you've probably noticed I rarely leave comments on blogs myself

[Ruby]

Decide on source material you can work with...

This be solid advice. Deconstructing Babylon Rising took exactly one year, with a couple of movie reviews thrown in. And I was underemployed for much of that year, so it's not like I didn't have time on my hands. And when you want to do extra-fun stuff with pictures and video, it takes even longer.

Fortunately, LaHaye and Jenkins are endlessly amusing to me. :D

[Lonespark]

Well, if I came over and fell in the Slough of Fascinating Discussion, could someone help me write cover letters? That would almost make it worth it.

[chris the cynic]

I would help (unless it were at a time I was really busy) but I fear that me doing work on a cover letter would make it less likely to go over well.

[Lonespark]

Well, I doubt it, in the sense that you are a prolific writer and I am someone who sits staring at the screen trying to think of the perfect way to write things...sometimes for weeks...

[ZMiles]

I'd actually been thinking of doing a dissection/deconstruction, particularly on Atlas Shrugged, once some of the things I'm currently doing (Candidacy Exam, NaNoWriMo, a certain class) die down. Thanks for the tips.

[Brin]

ZMiles: I'd actually been thinking of doing a dissection/deconstruction, particularly on Atlas Shrugged

CaryB was doing Atlas Shrugged. That doesn't necessarily mean you can't, especially since he hasn't been updating much, but I thought you might want to know.

[ZMiles]

I've read those posts... they actually gave me a couple good ideas. I was probably going to go in sort of a different direction than that one, as well.

[J. Enigma (the Transhumanist!)]

Oh snap.

This reminds me. There for a while, I was doing deconstruction/mockings of Chick Tracts. I haven't done one of those in a few months. Perhaps one over the holiday breaks is in order.

Re Deconstruction:
It was the first literary theory that I learned. I sat down, read the original paper by Derrida, understood some parts of it, and had to wait a while before the rest finally hit me. While it can be used for almost anything (mathematics is where it finds a welcome home, to my understanding), I find it far more beneficial when applied to language and the way we use words. Literature is a significant part of the larger language continuum... I've used deconstruction before to dismantle the core of Right Wing language and thinking, and I'm thinking that another post like that is in order, because those types of posts are fun.

Hm... so many ideas, so little time

Apologizes for the scattered nature of the post - it's an early Saturday morning and I'm having difficult maintaining cohesion of thoughts.

[Kish]

I've read those posts... they actually gave me a couple good ideas. I was probably going to go in sort of a different direction than that one, as well.

I hope you do, I'd be interested in reading it.

[Literata]

I second another deconstruction of Rand.

[AnaMardoll]

I should point out that I'm collecting Deconstruction links, so send me a link to your site if you want to go on my blog roll! (I think I've got all the Slacktiverse rolls, but my eyes, they miss things.) :D

A Rand decon would be awesome. I also think a Peretti one has a lot of merit. In that case you might need to do the "what's happened so far" two-sentence synopsis that Kit got me hooked on way back in the day. I think that helps people who pop in going "what, what's this all about now?"

Especially Peretti because he's like... Left Behind on REALLY good hallucinogenics. Imagine Left Behind, but with chapters every so often about Guardian Angels and Demons having epic battles in the parking lot over whether or not the main character gets... you know what, never mind. I'd have to put up a trigger warning.

The point being, there are epic battles in parking lots. I swear to dog this is true.

[AnaMardoll]

Ooh! Also, for those book lovers in the audience, every book store on earth is PACKED with demons trying to lure you into the occult section. They will also make the nice Christian books fall behind shelves so you can't get them. That scene stuck with me as a child, because I loved bookstores and Peretti made me frightened to go in one.

[hapax]

Honestly, I enjoyed reading Peretti in exactly the way that I enjoyed reading Philip K Dick's VALIS, for certain values of "enjoy" that include "hmm, my eyeballs are bleeding again".

[Akedhi]

As a young RTC with patchily limited reading material and a very vivid imagination, I devoured This Present Darkness as an acceptable fantasy novel that bore a striking resemblance to some of the sermons and actions of the adults around me. Recollecting it now, I'm wondering if it was actually as WTF as my memory paints it. I think I need to reread it.

[Mmy]

@Akedhi: There is room (and I for one would really appreciate) the voices of those who were initially impressed by/caught up with these books. If nothing else those voices remind us not to mock the readers but to interrogate why the books had the impact that they did.

[Akedhi]

@Mmy

If I can get over the 'omgpeoplesaidwordstome' reaction long enough to come up with something more than vague recollections of the book, I will do so. In the meantime, I think I'm going to go back to squeaking like a mouse and waving my arms around.

(omgpeoplesaidwordstome!)

[Asha]

@AnaMardoll:

My aunt gave me Peretti's work because she honestly believed that was how spiritual warfare worked, and I had been thirteen and bought the AD&D starter kit. She promptly accused me of dabbling in the occult and bought the book for me... and didn't get me any other presents for Christmas. Whining? Yes, I am. She got awesome stuff for everyone else, and I was punished with a doorstopper with scary imagery.

If I had any faith in my ability to deconstruct, I'd volunteer to do "This Present Darkness" just because of the bile fascination.

[RodeoBob]

My own $0.02 on deconstructions:

Fred's weekly deconstruction of Left Behind is a critique of the books, first and foremost. But there's also something else going on. Truthfully, it's a sermon hiding in the background.

If you're looking at a bad book, a bad movie, a bad TV series, a bad RPG... if they really are that bad, in the span of a dozen pages, you'll find two or three things you could pick on. The posts are less about finding each and every flaw, and more about picking one problem, and talking about why it's a problem. If you do it right, you're preaching without sounding "preachy".

I guess this is a converse to Pthalo's point about deconstructions not being a synopsis. Deconstructions aren't a synopsis, but they also aren't a catalog of errors and mistakes and bad ideas. Some of the driest, least entertaining bits of my deconstruction where when I was basically cataloging problems, rather than preaching about good or bad ideas.

A corollary to the "indexing problems" idea is that if you're intent on deconstructing the text, you'll eventually find more subjects than you can fit into the post. Ideally, those omitted, 'overflow' bad ideas will re-appear later in the text and you can talk about them then, but whatever you do, don't go off topic in your posts. Again, I write this having not followed the advice; when you're talking about one concept, one idea, that's a good post. (and a proper sermon) But if you shift gears midway through, you run the risk of losing people, and you definitely wind up watering down the message readers take away. (F.A.T.A.L.'s combat system has redundancies on redundancies; I wanted to point it out, but I wound up jettisoning that post because there were better topics, and really "redundancy is bad" isn't a strong enough topic)

As for a deconstruction of "Atlas Shrugged", the political blogger Susan of Texas has got a pretty solid start. Only six parts up so far, but it's brutal (meaning awesome, snarky, insightful, and full of elegant take-downs)

[Jend]

What, there was a Claymore deconstruction? Where?

[chris the cynic]

What, there was a Claymore deconstruction? Where?

Here.

[Jend]

Huzzah! *reads*

[Kit Whitfield]

If anyone's interested in Rand, I've just deconstructed the first sentence of 'The Fountainhead' on my blog...

[Jarred]

Especially Peretti because he's like... Left Behind on REALLY good hallucinogenics. Imagine Left Behind, but with chapters every so often about Guardian Angels and Demons having epic battles in the parking lot over whether or not the main character gets... you know what, never mind. I'd have to put up a trigger warning.

As a former member of the "spiritual warfare" movement turned current adherent of many of the the beliefs, philosophies, and practices Peretti trashed in "This Present Darkness," I've been thinking this would be a good book to tackle. In much the same way that Left Behind serves as a "proof of theology" and model for the PMD crowd, "Present" and its sequel, "Piercing" has long served as a "proof of theology" and model for the "spirtual warfare" crowd. In fact, I've recently a referred to the books while participating in discussions on Confessions of a Former Conservative.

[Timothy (TRiG)]

I've been following Ana's posts on Narnia (which I have read) and Twilight (which I haven't) for a while now, and loving them. They are thieves of time, of course. (Which reminds me that I haven't given up on trying to convince Ana to read Pratchett, particularly Nation.)

TRiG.

[Jarred]

Oh, now that I saw Bay's comment about already deconstructing "Present," I'm reading it. I highly recommend it.

[Jarred]

@Bay: I left a couple comments on your blog. Did they get marked as spam?

[AnaMardoll]

As a former member of the "spiritual warfare" movement turned current adherent of many of the the beliefs, philosophies, and practices Peretti trashed in "This Present Darkness," I've been thinking this would be a good book to tackle.

I hear you on the "hey, I'm a villain now" reading shock. I grew up reading Peretti -- literally, I remember reading This Persent Darkness while Mom drove me to school and I remember her saying she was proud of me for reading it, although I think she'd have felt differently if she knew what it was about, she just knew it was a "Christian" author -- and a few years back I had occasion to think about the book courtesy of "Rapture Ready!" and it was a strange sensation. I never imagined I'd grow up to be a villain, but I actually did!! o.O

I'm thinking about running a decon on his Cooper Kids series, because in some ways I think they're MORE dangerous, plus he's got NEW ONES now. I haven't decided if anyone would like that, though -- they're a bit obscure.

[Jarred]

I'm thinking about running a decon on his Cooper Kids series, because in some ways I think they're MORE dangerous, plus he's got NEW ONES now. I haven't decided if anyone would like that, though -- they're a bit obscure.

Not sure if I'd run a deconstruction of them, but I certainly want to check them out! Thanks for bringing them to my attention.

[Akedhi]

@AnaMardoll

I'd actually love it if you ran a deconstruction on the Cooper Kids series. I read all of the ones that were out when I was a sheltered little RTC. (I seem to recall Tombs of Anak giving me a couple sleepless nights that were only surpassed when I first saw Blink.)

If I thought I could manage it, I might be tempted to steal the idea and do it myself.