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.
(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...
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.
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.
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
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.
@Kish: I really don't see that TVTropes is responsible for making that person an idiot, they did it all by themselves. That some people misuse terms from the site is hardly an argument that the site causes harm, unless you can argue that it encourages such misuse.
Posted by: Froborr | Dec 30, 2011 at 11:31 AM
In this instance, your writing is much better than the writing you're defending.
Thank you. :D
In my case, I would say that TV Tropes is the encyclopedia and I'm the editorialist. My kickin' articles giving my opinion and analysis would simply not be possible (in many cases) without the encyclopedia reference at hand. :)
Izzy, I cannot tell you how DELIGHTED Barnes & Noble is that I've bought your book. It practically tripped over itself with new recommendations. YOU LIKE BACKLESS DRESSES? I CAN GIVE YOU BACKLESS DRESSES! I HAVE LOTS OF THOSE. AND BOSOMS!! Ahahahahaha. :D
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 30, 2011 at 11:40 AM
Ahahaha, it did that to me too, and I haven't bought it yet; it's just on my wish list. And I do not want any more backless dresses, unless Izzy wrote them or they are directly related to something else I like. I wonder what it's going to do about the lesbian steampunk anthology I've just ordered?
Posted by: Lonespark | Dec 30, 2011 at 12:13 PM
I think it does. Specifically, it proves that TVTropes (which I hope we can agree is at worst a harmless waste of time) has been helpful to at least one person at least once, and is therefore at least one notch above "harmless waste of time."
...
I really don't see that TVTropes is responsible for making that person an idiot, they did it all by themselves.
I hear the sound of someone trying to have it both ways. On what basis can you declare it gets all the credit for any good use made of it but none of the blame for bad use?
Besides that ... I think we're looking at different values of 'helpful'.
Whether it was useful to you in terms of improving your free time with amusement or not - that's one value of 'helpful'. But what I'm talking about is whether it's a good take on art, and whether it gives a good representation of art. Which is why I pointed out that your work might have been abominably bad. I'm not saying it is, of course, but that's a theoretical possibility that we must entertain, and if TVTropes merely encouraged someone to produce an abominably bad work of art, then artistically speaking we can't call it helpful.
And I'm very sceptical about that. I think it encourages people to substitute trope-spotting for thinking and analysing off their own bats, to view literature in a mechanistic and schematic way that does not encourage fresh thinking. (The fact, for instance, that Ruby used the image of a tool in the box is telling.) I think, by the fact that it presents itself as analysis without showing an actual analytical approach, it promotes exactly what I was arguing against when you did it earlier: a conflation between analysis and list-making. They are not the same things, and I don't think it's good for the general view of art.
Have you read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre? He repeatedly makes the point that many people will argue that, say, homeopathy or Gillian McKeith's wacky ideas about nutrition don't do any harm even if they're evidentially unsound. His argument is the harm they do is to promote a false understanding of science and devalue it in the public eye.
Now, Goldacre is educated in science and medicine (and often pointlessly rude about people educated in the humanities). I'm educated in the humanities, particularly in literary analysis. I happen to think it's an extremely valuable discipline that supports critical thinking, linguistic and social insight, cultural understanding and the ability to contextualise. It is, like science, a discipline that takes focus and practice to become familiar with, and one that people who haven't studied it can often devalue.
I feel about TVTropes the way Ben Goldacre feels about mock 'studies' in the glossies declaring that science has proved that J-Lo has the world's best bottom.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Dec 30, 2011 at 12:22 PM
I think maybe it helps to know about different kinds of analysis, so that reductive shorthand isn't all you have in your toolbox? Or at least an awareness that there are more complex and rigorous methods and if you want to dig deep maybe you'll know where to start...I personally don't have that, but at least I have friends who would point me there, which I guess comes of hanging around with writers and students of literature...
Thinking about it on the science side, I wouldn't argue that psuedoscience or media sensationalism that ignores the complexity of research are harmless. I'm firmly on the side of data (wheee!!!) and analysis and facts. But so, so often people defending scientific integrity come across as intensely dismissive of people who have significant reason to mistrust the scientific and/or medical establishment, of people who value things that may not be strictly quantifiable, and of people who, rarely through any fault of their own, have not had access to a decent thorough grounding in even the rudiments of scientific analysis. It makes me sad because I see activists on one side and researchers on another lamenting that they aren't able to work together, and quacks and irresponsible "journalists" working to fan the flames of conflict.
Posted by: Lonespark | Dec 30, 2011 at 12:41 PM
Usually, in my experience, when someone says "But that will force me to have a difficult conversation with my children!" what they mean is some form of "I have irrational biases, and I am afraid that if I have to state them directly to my children, I will not be able to properly pass those biases on to my children unquestioned, and will instead be exposed for the bigot I am."
I think this may be true even in the case of the one-armed presenter: some parents have a knee-jerk visceral negative reaction to the non-able-bodied, and they do not want to have a frank conversation with their children about it because it means confronting that bias, and they'd rather just subtly pass that bias on to their children with a million subtle gestures and actions and, most importantly, *not talking about it*.
(Obviously, this is much more patent in cases like "ZOMG GAY PEOPLE ON TV", where it's quite clearly the parent saying "If I try to teach my child that this beloved and wholly positive character on TV is in fact a subhuman monster purely because of who they like to kiss, I will sound like a jerk.")
Posted by: Ross | Dec 30, 2011 at 12:43 PM
Telling of what, exactly? Things that are useful can be called tools, and there is no one tool that is right for every job. I meant no more than that.
Posted by: Ruby, on the go | Dec 30, 2011 at 12:47 PM
Things that are useful can be called tools, and there is no one tool that is right for every job. I meant no more than that.
It just struck me as an example of a trend I've noticed on the Internet: people have a habit of referring to literature, both writing and analysing it, in terms of tools. It's a popular metaphor. And it's a metaphor that's very often used in conjunction with TVTropes-type analysis, or with attempts to write that are based on following a formula laid down in some how-to-write guide. There seems to be a general fashion for the idea that literature can be approached schematically.
And I have several problems with it. I think it encourages people with potential talent to look in the wrong places to develop it. (Some people have talent that will out anyway, but I strongly suspect there are other people who need to get in tune with their talent and won't learn to do it schematically.) It encourages people who want to write but can't and will get nothing but misery from trying (and such people exist, I can tell you from experience) to keep trying the same thing, because the idea pushed is that you ought to be able to learn it systematically, rather than experimenting in a more playful and unstructured way and having some actual creative fun. It encourages people to splain to writers about how it's done because they've read a book on the subject, and ignorant people to be know-it-alls because they've been reading up on a simplistic approach and hence to assume that people who try to be more nuanced just don't understand how it works. It's against negative capability, and often rather anti-intellectual.
Fundamentally, it strikes me as an orthodoxy. Writing is a matter of 'honing your techniques' and 'adding to your tools' and generally going at it like a carpenter. And while that may work for some people, for others it's a disaster. So the fact that it's just assumed to be The Way Things Are, to the point where its metaphors are used without reservations, is stifling for many people.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Dec 30, 2011 at 01:01 PM
Whereas I see TVTropes as more like kids playing with chemistry sets. Yeah, it's not real science, but they're entertaining themselves, and maybe it'll inspire a couple of them to seek out real science.
I'm calling false dichotomy on this one. Like I said, list-making, categorizing, and dissection can be useful for analysis. Not every work (or every thinker) is amenable to top-down gestalt approaches.
And you're assuming the alternative to TVTropes is active, professional-grade analysis. I don't; I think for most users of the site the alternative is passively absorbing texts without thinking about them at all. Listing tropes is definitely a step above that.
Posted by: Froborr | Dec 30, 2011 at 01:05 PM
And you're assuming the alternative to TVTropes is active, professional-grade analysis. I don't; I think for most users of the site the alternative is passively absorbing texts without thinking about them at all. Listing tropes is definitely a step above that.
I'm not sure I see where Kit is assuming that, precisely...but anyway, what you've said here is what I was trying to say. I kept writing and erasing sentences and paragraphs about engineering students and folks on fan boards and people who maybe have been exposed to literature but very little to literary analysis, and certainly not at a rigorous academic level with the attendant vocabulary. If tinkering with chemistry sets is fun, you may go on to do real science, or you may not. If comparing and contrasting and identifying tropes or styles or subtexts is fun, you may go on to do more criticism or analysis or writing, or you may not.
With both the chemistry sets and the literary analysis, yeah, we ought to be getting the decent stuff in school. YMMV, though. And amatuers on the internet do create a lot of crap and a lot of high noise-to-signal, but exposure to related noise can lead to seeking out the better stuff, too.
Posted by: Lonespark | Dec 30, 2011 at 01:23 PM
Kit -
Is there some aspect of writing that you would refer to as tools or techniques? Because when I think of those terms I think of...ok now I can't think of any alternative terms. Like, different sentence structures, and different...literary devices? like metaphor and foreshadowing and different kinds of parallel structure, forms of poetry... Things that are tools, that I have seen students come in lacking and leave using clumsily, but using to much better express themselves and share their thoughts and talents...
Do you also object talking about "tools" or "techniques" at that level? Or anyway, how do you prefer to express it?
Posted by: Lonespark | Dec 30, 2011 at 01:29 PM
And now I went and said they are tools, when I meant they were something else but we can think of them as tools...
I started the day putting salt in my coffee, so I should probably just reboot the whole damn thing.
Posted by: Lonespark | Dec 30, 2011 at 01:30 PM
@Lonespark: Curiously enough, if you put a little pepper in your coffee (or better, in the filter with the grounds), it counterbalances the bitterness nicely.
Posted by: Ross | Dec 30, 2011 at 01:59 PM
@Lonespark: Thank you for asking that question of Kit, I was struggling to find a way of asking it that didn't risk sounding like snark.
I've been watching my fiancee going through art school for the last couple of years, and yeah, inspiration and insight and vision and creativity and all that, but you can't actually teach that, so what they actually study is perspective, technique, tools. She has a class in anatomy, a class in using Photoshop and Illustrator and an electronic tablet, a class on color theory, a class on drawing technique... the "tool" metaphor is explicit and frequent and not always a metaphor, and she is making leaps and bounds as an artist throughout.
Most of my creative writing and literary analysis classes in college were less explicit. Creative writing in particular was almost all workshops. The only creative writing class I took that really explicitly looked at different techniques was Poetry, where of course we had to write different forms. I don't think it's a coincidence that I learned more about prose writing--about meter, and sentence structure, and word choice--in that class than any other.
Posted by: Froborr | Dec 30, 2011 at 02:17 PM
And you're assuming the alternative to TVTropes is active, professional-grade analysis. I don't; I think for most users of the site the alternative is passively absorbing texts without thinking about them at all. Listing tropes is definitely a step above that.
But you're assuming that TVTropes has no choice but to be so restrictive. I think the evidence of Fred's blog, and Ana's, and probably several others, suggests that many people who aren't trained in literary analysis will find it very interesting if it's presented to them in lively and accessible language.
Consider, for instance, the Snopes website. They could, if they had wished, simply stop at assigning the categories of 'true', 'false', 'legend' and so on. But they don't; instead, when dealing with a legend that's circulated as a 'true story', they often provide an accessible but cogent analysis of why this particular legend may be popular and what social fears, aspirations or conflicts it may be based on. The analysis is soundly reasoned, clearly written and provides no barrier to anyone who doesn't have 'professional-grade' analytic skills. And the site is all the more interesting for it.
There would be nothing at all to stop TVTropes employing a similar approach and bringing in some cultural history or social reflections. The idea lends itself to that every bit as much as the Snopes legends to. And if they did, the site would actually be analysis, and a whole lot better.
Or consider, as an alternative, the Turkey City Lexicon.* That's an analysis of, if not exactly tropes, then issues that frequently recur in writing workshops. The entries are short and snappy - much shorter than the TVTropes ones - but they frequently employ brief reflections on what motivates writers to do the thing under discussion or the effect it'll have on readers. The entries serve a definite purpose, which is to call to writers' attention some common mistakes they should check their work for, which is much more useful than simply identifying tropes for the sake of identifying something.
I have absolutely no problem with people getting access to beginners'-level material for a given discipline. On the contrary, I think it's a great idea and I'd love to see more of it. I'd love to see more of it for literature, and the fact that the Internet includes popular reviewers who analyse things cogently suggests there's a definite interest in it. Heck, I'm in the middle of a series of one-sentence deconstructions myself, and I'd love to think they were interesting to people unfamiliar with analysis. Spreading the love for a subject is a good thing.
But TVTropes isn't spreading the love for the subject. Its real love isn't literature, it's categorisation, but it's masquerading as literary analysis. It could so easily be so much better, and that's what frustrates me. It's that it's populist; it's that it's simplistic. And the two things don't have to go together.
Though if someone wants to absorb something without thinking about it, I don't have a problem with that either. People don't have to study up on a subject, and if they're enjoying themselves I don't think they should be required to educate themselves.
*http://www.sfwa.org/2009/06/turkey-city-lexicon-a-primer-for-sf-workshops/
--
Do you also object talking about "tools" or "techniques" at that level? Or anyway, how do you prefer to express it?
'Device' or 'technique', I have no problem with. I think the reason is that these are words that exist in motion; one employs a device or a technique, but a tool is only used to create something else. It's a deadening word; it suggests that once you've got the tool, you're sorted. And that ain't it, kid.
From my own perspective, I find that 'honing one's technique' isn't a helpful term. Possibly it works for some writers, but I get annoyed when people declare that all writers have to hone their technique, because for me it's more about learning to hear something, to get myself in harmony with the writing, or ... well, something that the word 'technique' doesn't describe.
But for the words I'd use - 'device' is one I'd commonly say. A device works in the place it's located, that's the thing. A tool, on the other hand, exists outside the thing it's used to create, and that isn't how literary devices work. They work when they're used, and when they're not in use they don't exist.
Ugh, it's hard to describe. But it's mostly that writing is something that only exists in motion, and the idea that there's a box of things you can nail together out there somewhere is just all weird.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Dec 30, 2011 at 02:27 PM
I've been watching my fiancee going through art school for the last couple of years, and yeah, inspiration and insight and vision and creativity and all that, but you can't actually teach that, so what they actually study is perspective, technique, tools. She has a class in anatomy, a class in using Photoshop and Illustrator and an electronic tablet, a class on color theory, a class on drawing technique... the "tool" metaphor is explicit and frequent and not always a metaphor, and she is making leaps and bounds as an artist throughout.
Yes, but she's a visual artist. That's a completely different form; it's like saying that a painter has to improve their sense of pitch because musicians do.
Note, for instance, that there have been schools teaching art for centuries. There are concrete methods one can teach, and this is because painting, drawing, sculpture and so on require physical skills. Physical skills are improved by practice, and hence one can 'coach' a visual artist.
There are no physical skills required in writing beyond the ability to sit still at a desk long enough to write something down. As a result, teaching creative writing is a very recent innovation and has a far less provable success record.
One can teach the technical aspects of poetry in the same way: this is how a villanelle is structured, this is an example of assonance, an anapaest sounds like this. But one can teach it a whole lot more quickly than a student takes to pass through art school, and after that you're pretty much back to learning-by-doing.
To me, assuming that writing must be like art is more or less like assuming a school should be run like a business or that we should run politics by engineering principles. The fact that something works for one discourse does not mean it works for another.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Dec 30, 2011 at 02:33 PM
When I think 'device', I don't think 'simile and metaphor', I think 'calculator and iPod'. This confused me, because for a minute, Kit seemed to be saying we should replace an objectionable metaphor with a more-objectionable one. Electronic devices, as long as you know what you want it to do and you have the instructions for making it do the thing you want, you can make it do the thing you want. No amount of saying 'hit the nail with the hammer' will get the nail hit with the hammer if the user hasn't mastered not hitting the thumb.
Maybe we should run politics by engineering principles. Namely, if an idea doesn't work, throw it the hell out.
Posted by: MercuryBlue at work | Dec 30, 2011 at 03:12 PM
I'm not sure the distinction between physical and non-physical skills is that important. Skills are skills. They improve with practice. Some people learn skills best by doing, some learn best by seeing the skills done, some learn best by understanding the skills on a theoretical level first and then applying that. Most people are some combination, and exactly what combination varies according to the skill.
For me, I often need an intellectual understanding of a task before I can fully master performing it. For example, as a kid I struggled with long division until my third-grade teacher explained why this sequence of divide-multiply-subtract is able to produce the answer to a division problem (and as a bonus, I learned what algorithms are!)
Some aspects of writing have proved similar. My natural style tends toward lengthy sentences with lots of sub-clauses, little imagery, and somewhat slapdash word choice. I am not a very visual person; unless I make a conscious effort my imagination presents actions, sounds, smells, everything but images. I have to intentionally and deliberately construct a physical appearance for each character, and it really is rather like carpentry. "Does this piece fit? No, not really... hmm, what if I used *this,* and then changed that over there..." Same applies to setting; I tend toward a fairly weak sense of place and not notice things like decor and furniture in real life, so I have to make a conscious effort to include such things in my stories.
Of course, it is entirely possible that my writing is terrible anyway, so this is a moot point. Point is, I'm trying to get better the only way I can--taking things apart and putting them back together again, learning how they fit.
That's not how you approach writing. Okay. But I don't understand the need to insist that a "schematic" approach is necessarily bad and destructive and hurting people and wasting talent and so forth.
Posted by: Froborr | Dec 30, 2011 at 03:39 PM
And this is why I should reread my comments before I post them--I left that mention of my slapdash word choice out there and never followed up on it.
Word choice is another thing I have to consciously work at. I normally write the first word that occurs to me, and it's not always the best one; slowing down and picking my words more carefully, not trusting my intuition quite so much, is something I still struggle with. I also tend not to pepper my writing with a lot of metaphors and similes, and I am uncomfortable using them, but they're an important part of writing and I am forcing myself to try to use them more. (I'm a little more comfortable using them in the meta sense, that is, making larger-scale in the story serve as metaphors for a character's personal situation, but actually using a metaphor or simile in the text, not so much.)
Also, circling back to TVTropes, there is a little bit of real (albeit usually quite amateurish) analysis on the site, usually to be found on the Analysis, Headscratchers, Fridge, and WMG pages. Occasionally these can lead to some pretty robust debate--for example, last night I was reading an argument on a Headscratchers page about whether Metroid: Other M is realistically depicting PTSD in its main character, or intentionally undermining a strong female character to make her less intimidating and better fanboy fantasy fodder. I really don't know a lot of places where you can have that kind of conversation about a video game.
Posted by: Froborr | Dec 30, 2011 at 04:27 PM
Hey, TBAT, did I get spam-trapped this morning?
Or did I miss a captcha again? Probably.
Nothing worth worrying about several hours of conversation later, but it makes one wonder.
Posted by: Amaryllis | Dec 30, 2011 at 04:47 PM
@Amaryllis: I guess you got captcha'd -- I looked back for 12 hours and didn't find you.
Posted by: The Board Administration Team | Dec 30, 2011 at 04:58 PM
@Amaryllis: Perhaps I judge unfairly, but a lot of TVTropes strikes me as a refusal to be surprised
Great way of capturing what I think of as the "TVTropes" effect. And I am always up for a good Brust quote.
Posted by: Mmy | Dec 30, 2011 at 05:02 PM
Occasionally these can lead to some pretty robust debate--for example, last night I was reading an argument on a Headscratchers page about whether Metroid: Other M is realistically depicting PTSD in its main character, or intentionally undermining a strong female character to make her less intimidating and better fanboy fantasy fodder. I really don't know a lot of places where you can have that kind of conversation about a video game.
I agree. I really like those discussions a lot, especially mid trope-page. I find... a lot of value in them. I cannot, perhaps, describe why that is, but I do. The entire page on the Spiderman "One More Day" comic is... meaningful to me. It's nice to have something that I know is problematic carefully listed out why it is such... It helps me arrange my own thoughts.
I had a longer post, but I think I'm too personally invested in this conversation, so I will perhaps bow out lest this become ANA'S SOAPBOX FOR HOW HER BRAIN WORKS. I can say that... I know how *I* think, and I have been a Troper all my life. I literally cannot separate the act of "list-making" with the act of "analysis" in my head-space, that's just... how my brain works. The one flows from the other and then back into the first there is no demarcation to separate the two. But... possibly I'm an outlier of weirdness and the only one who is like that. :)
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 30, 2011 at 05:23 PM
I'm not sure the distinction between physical and non-physical skills is that important. Skills are skills. They improve with practice. Some people learn skills best by doing, some learn best by seeing the skills done, some learn best by understanding the skills on a theoretical level first and then applying that. Most people are some combination, and exactly what combination varies according to the skill.
But we're not talking about practice. We're talking about teaching. And teaching one skill is not like teaching another. How do you 'see writing done'? How are you going to teach the theory of something as complicated as linguistic nuance when most people instinctively use grammatical rules so obscure that only a professional linguist is consciously aware that they exist? The most a writing teacher can do - and I've been in a lot of writing classes - is provide a supportive environment and a degree of feedback while the writer teaches themselves. And even then, there's a limit to how much influence their feedback is going to have.
If you don't see the distinction, you don't see it. But that doesn't mean it isn't there.
--
I don't understand the need to insist that a "schematic" approach is necessarily bad and destructive and hurting people and wasting talent and so forth.
What I'm insisting on is that a schematic orthodoxy is bad. And, as I said before, there currently seems to be a fashion for considering it axiomatically true that the schematic approach is the way everyone works, to the point of splaining to writers that they're wrong if they say it's different for them. If someone's naturally schematic I have no quarrel with them, but I do have a quarrel with schema being considered the way it always works. And I don't understand in my turn the need to object to this.
As to your own writing: look. You've spent a lot of your two posts talking about it, but as I keep saying, that puts me in a very difficult position. You might be an unconsciously incompetent writer. In fact, statistically speaking, that is the likeliest scenario. But it's considered very bad manners for a writer to point out that most people are unconsciously incompetent writers. So what can I do with what you're saying? Either treat it as authoritative out of manners, or else demand you provide evidence that you have any idea how to produce good writing. And I don't want to do either. So all I can do is shrug.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Dec 30, 2011 at 05:24 PM
If you don't see the distinction, you don't see it. But that doesn't mean it isn't there.
to the point of splaining to writers that they're wrong if they say it's different for them.
Please forgive me, but I feel like these two pieces are... in direct opposition to one another. :(
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 30, 2011 at 05:27 PM
No, I'm the same way.
Which is why I said, "I'm trying to get better the only way I can--taking things apart and putting them back together again, learning how they fit."
It does not matter whether I am a good or a bad writer, a systematic, reductionist approach is the only way of getting better that can work for me, so I'd appreciate it if you'd stop 'splaining that it doesn't work, that a site I find occasionally helpful and frequently entertaining is evil and eats brains, and that only published authors may treat their personal experience of writing as valid.
Posted by: Froborr | Dec 30, 2011 at 05:41 PM
There would be nothing at all to stop TVTropes employing a similar approach and bringing in some cultural history or social reflections. The idea lends itself to that every bit as much as the Snopes legends to. And if they did, the site would actually be analysis, and a whole lot better.
It is my opinion that TV Tropes does this on the trope pages.
Consider Missing White Women:
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MissingWhiteWomanSyndrome
The tendency for media coverage to follow the murder, kidnapping, or disappearance of only young, pretty, thin, conventional, heterosexual, middle-class or higher white females, because they draw audiences where male, gay, fat, homely, minority, poor, disabled and/or older victims do not. When all other factors are equal, you are far more likely to find coverage of a young white woman's disappearance than an old black man's. Compare, for instance, coverage and name recognition for the cases of Natalee Holloway, Lori Hacking, Laci Peterson, Maddie McCann, Chandra Levy, Elizabeth Smart, and Audrey Seiler with the cases of Tamika Huston, LaToyia Figueroa, Lottie Wise, Phylicia Barnes and Kenji Ohmi.
It's a very, very nasty and insulting trope, because it implies that other missing persons are lesser victims; their fate matters less because random strangers are less likely to identify with them. It doesn't do white women any favors either, since it paints them all as hapless victims and feeds them Paranoia Fuel.
The origin of the term is unclear. Although Professor Sheri Parks of the University of Maryland claims to have coined it circa 2005, it apparently has been in use among journalists (and FARK.com) for years before that. It's also been referred to as "missing pretty girl syndrome" and "damsel in distress syndrome". Although it appears to be a primarily American phenomenon, a similar coverage bias is reported to exist in the United Kingdom, and some people believe Canada and Australia have a similar disinterest in the fate of their own missing minority persons—and (in Canada, at least) disenfranchised in general; this is how Robert Pickton was able to get away with killing over fifty Vancouver prostitutes.
Ironically, before The Eighties or so, it was almost impossible to get the police (let alone the media) interested in a missing person unless he was white, rich, male, and over 30. It was assumed that any woman under 40 who disappeared had either run away or had gone to have a dirty weekend somewhere. There are even documented cases of police officers throwing out missing persons reports the moment families left the station house.
Strangely, national media attention over missing pretty white women hasn't translated to an increased chance of finding missing pretty white women, but it has created the impression that most missing persons are pretty white women. This is, of course, not the case; the average missing person is over 40, male, and has a medical condition. However, this trope has resulted in increased ratings for sensationalist television news programs (along with the complete dependence on former rolling news network HLN on these stories), but you knew that already.
The most likely ignored missing person is the Disposable Sex Worker and/or the Disposable Vagrant. Presumably the inspiration for the Trope is the White Knighting mind-set. For more information, including a detailed breakdown of the coverage cycle and links to dozens of cases, see this article at Wikipedia. This column at CNN.com has some thoughts on it, and in the years since this trope entry was first written many more writers have weighed in on the topic.
Many minority groups has attempted to counter this by circulating info about missing people whom are other then pretty white females through avenues like social media. Such as tumblr, Facebook, Stumbleupon etc.
That's about as long as your average Snopes write-up. Is this not valuable analysis, or is the concern that it doesn't exist on the Works pages? Works are generally only lists, yes, because as a Wiki it would be tied up in flame-wars otherwise. Snopes is significantly smaller and -- iiuc -- centrally managed.
Dang, I keep saying to myself that I need to shut up and step out of this. Apologies for another double-post. :(
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 30, 2011 at 05:41 PM
a systematic, reductionist approach is the only way of getting better that can work for me
I... have to +1 this. I mean, I've been the same as Froborr saying, "look, I'm maybe a crap writer", and I'm sorry that put some people in an awkward position. I was trying to use... ah, humility and self-awareness to frame that I was coming from a "me place". I really like to use I-statements.
I would, ah, never tell anyone how they should learn. I'm generally against orthodoxy in... anything, really. I'm not an orthodoxy person. But... ah, I feel like to say the other way... that just because something has become wrongly orthodox it has no value for anyone... well, some of these tools being discussed have value for me.
I am reminded of the schooling controversy over visual, auditory, and manipulator learning. It's not right to force everyone into one box. But that one box is helpful for people who fit in that box. So we can't throw the box out entirely. Just have to stop making it, ah, *mandatory* for everyone. :/
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 30, 2011 at 05:45 PM
@Ana - for them to be in contradiction, I would have to concede that Froborr is a competent writer. And as I keep saying, I think it's unfair to expect me to make that assumption. Nobody is expected to assume somebody's an authoritative scientist or mathematician or veterinarian with no proof either way. Why is writing not subject to the same respect?
There are accomplished writers who have different methods from me. Some have a more craft-like or methodical or technical approach to their own work. I have nothing to say against that. But I don't see why I should have to accept a sweeping generalisation like 'skills are skills and there's no difference between teaching visual arts and literature' from somebody who acknowledges they're an expert in neither when I am an expert in one of them.
This is what I mean when I say splaining. Everybody thinks they have an equally well-informed opinion about how writing works. But if that were the case, everybody would write equally well. And I'm sorry, but they don't.
I am sick and tired of being expected to treat everyone in the world as an equal expert in an advanced and difficult art form. If we're talking about writing as a hobby, fine, whatever. But I'm talking about it as an art form, and all I was objecting to was the idea being pushed that it's an art form that's always schematic, and apparently this is cause to question why I have an emotional 'need' rather than an opinion, which is intrusive and personal.
On the one hand, when I talk about my experience, I'm apparently acting on some subconscious 'need'. But when Froborr talks about hir experience, suddenly I'm expected to treat it as absolutely authoritative and raise no questions about it?
I do not think the double standard is mine here.
--
It does not matter whether I am a good or a bad writer
Excuse me, did you just say that it doesn't matter whether you have any idea what you're talking about? Because if you're a bad writer, then you don't know what you're talking about. Just like I don't know what I'm talking about if I talk about mathematics because I'm a bad mathematician.
Skills are skills? Then understanding is understanding, and somebody who's no good at a subject is not an authority on it.
And people say I'm splaining.
And I'm losing my temper, so I'm going to bed.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Dec 30, 2011 at 05:56 PM
@Ana - for them to be in contradiction, I would have to concede that Froborr is a competent writer.
Forgive me, but no you would not. This conversation is -- or was -- about how writers write, not how competent writers write. Froborr is a writer describing how zie's writing works. I am a writer describing how my writing works. If our I-statements are to be dismissed because we have not met a minimum level of competence then I do not know how the conversation can continue because I do not know how we are to measure this minimum level.
I 100% support anyone who wants to say "well, that's not how writing works for me". I do not support anyone saying "well, that's not how writing works, period" whether it is said to you or to Froborr or to me.
I am literally shaking now, so... perhaps I should go as well. I... deeply apologize for anything offensive that I have said to you, Kit, or anyone else in this thread. Forgive me.
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 30, 2011 at 06:02 PM
Also, Kit, I've never read any of your fiction. Keep meaning to, but have not yet gotten around to it. I have read some blog posts and many comments by you, just as you have read by me (I know, since you've responded to them). Does that mean I should also assume that you are an "unconsciously incompetent writer" whose experience is utterly invalid, since I have no evidence to the contrary?
Seriously, explain to me at what point someone's experience as a writer becomes valid. Is it when they publish their first book? Does that mean none of their experiences writing that first book are valid? Or is it retroactive: the experiences of a published author were always valid, but the experiences of someone who is never published were never valid?
Or is it a quality criterion, as you seem to be saying? The experiences of good writers are valid, bad writers are not. Okay, but how good do you have to be before your experiences are valid? Who judges where the line is and decides how to rank all the world's would-be writers?
Or maybe, we should do what we do on every other topic besides writing, and say that a person's description of their personal experience is valid for that person, but not necessarily universal.
I mean, you keep saying that your problem is with an orthodoxy, but like Ana said:
Posted by: Froborr | Dec 30, 2011 at 06:07 PM
Thanks, TBAT/Mmy.
I was going to repeat a little of what I'd said about my experiences as a reader, but...the conversation has moved to an area where I'm not competent to participate...so, good night, all.
Posted by: Amaryllis | Dec 30, 2011 at 06:10 PM
On the one hand, when I talk about my experience, I'm apparently acting on some subconscious 'need'. But when Froborr talks about hir experience, suddenly I'm expected to treat it as absolutely authoritative and raise no questions about it?
And re-reading, I think this was addressed to me.
Forgive me, but I felt like your statement of what physical skills are required for writing was not framed as an I-statement but rather as a true-statement for everyone.
Froborr's response, "I'm not sure..." felt framed to me as an I-statement about how writing and skills work for them. Not you or me or everyone but them.
So, no, I do not expect you to treat Froborr's statement as authoritative except as it applies to hir, which is how I felt zie framed it. However, I felt your statement of how writing works was not an I-statement of your experience. I apologize if I misunderstood you. But having said that, I feel like this statement is unfair:
Everybody thinks they have an equally well-informed opinion about how writing works. But if that were the case, everybody would write equally well. And I'm sorry, but they don't.
Froborr and I both have said that (1) we are not great writers and (2) we are talking about learning methods and writing methods. For a writing method to work for us to improve, we do not have to be great writers. We only have to see we are getting better as a result of the tool. That is a statement of personal experience that should not be dismissed because we theoretically have not mastered the craft.
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 30, 2011 at 06:19 PM
I apologize for sloppy word choice in talking about "need"; that was inappropriately personal. However, I do not think I am applying a double standard: I am talking about my personal experience as a writer, while you are insisting that your experience is universal. My objection is not to you stating your experience, but to your insistence that we all bow to it as the One True Experience.
Actually... yes, we do exactly that. I take commenters here at their word if they say they have expertise in a specialized field, unless there's evidence that they're lying. I don't demand to see credentials.
Anyway, yeah, this is starting to get really heated, I'm going to bow out as well.
Posted by: Froborr | Dec 30, 2011 at 06:25 PM
I was going to write a lengthy comment, but Froborr said it first and better, so I'll just second everything in Froborr's latest comment.
Posted by: ZMiles | Dec 30, 2011 at 06:29 PM
I'm stepping out too, but I want to apologize again for, well, for derailing the thread in the first place I guess with the whole Harry Potter + lesbian moms thing. And I guess it was probably me that brought up TV Tropes, too. I feel really sick about spoiling Kit's thread and just... yeah.
Sorry everyone.
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 30, 2011 at 06:29 PM
And by latest, I now mean 'second latest', the post at 6:07 PM. Oops.
Posted by: ZMiles | Dec 30, 2011 at 06:29 PM
It's a deadening word; it suggests that once you've got the tool, you're sorted.
One of those huge YMMV usage things... I don't think of "tool" that way at all. Tool plus technique plus understanding of the subject is where you get craft, yet there's still talent and maybe inspiration required to produce something brilliant. What good is a tool without those other things? It might not be recognized as a tool at all, or it could be used to do quite a bit of damage...I feel like the tools that are available and the ones that are truly useful depend a lot on context...cultural, etc.
Posted by: Lonespark | Dec 30, 2011 at 06:37 PM
...wait, were we talking only about creative writing? I didn't quite realize that, and I'm not totally sure about how I'd define that anyway...
...good to know about the coffee and pepper, I suppose...
Now I should like to go ask some more writers about this subject, because it is fascinating.
Posted by: Lonespark | Dec 30, 2011 at 06:43 PM
...I should really read to the end, shouldn't I?
I hope everyone has a good night/afternoon/ whatever it is where you are.
Posted by: Lonespark | Dec 30, 2011 at 06:52 PM
I want to apologize as well. Some of Kit's comments hurt my feelings, and I turned to vitriol in response. Sorry, all, especially Kit. I'm going to go offline for a couple of days. (Was going to anyway, but this is an excellent additional reason to do it.)
Posted by: Froborr | Dec 30, 2011 at 06:57 PM
Kit: 'Device' or 'technique', I have no problem with. I think the reason is that these are words that exist in motion; one employs a device or a technique, but a tool is only used to create something else. It's a deadening word; it suggests that once you've got the tool, you're sorted. And that ain't it, kid.
Um, if the word "tool" is "deadening" to you, Kit, then I promise not to use it to refer to you. But the word is not negative to me, and is most certainly not "deadening." Maybe it's just coming from a long line of craftspersons, but a tool is worth little without the skill needed to wield that tool. I don't know any craftperson who thinks that once you have the tool in your hand, you're done. And that is certainly not what I meant when I used the word.
If you don't like TV Tropes, fine. Nobody's asking you to that I can see. I called it a tool because it does not hold itself out as being all things to all people. It can be used for certain things just like all tools, but it does not work for everything, and it does not automatically work without human input.
Posted by: Ruby | Dec 30, 2011 at 08:01 PM
Another point worth raising, Kit, if expertise is what matters, is: what exactly is your expertise with Tvtropes? I'm probably not the most trope-focused person here, but I've written a bunch of recaps, written a few works pages, posted a bit on the forums, added examples to You Know That Thing Where (the space for proposing and formulating new tropes), etc. So from that perspective, I've found Tvtropes to be an incredibly useful tool for dissecting works into their component parts and understanding them better. Sure, the work should be more than the sum of its parts (or to put it another way, two works with identical tropes won't necessarily be identical). But that doesn't mean that it isn't fascinating -- and useful -- to be able to look at those parts.
I also find it useful to see where tropes come from. The articles often list early invocations of the trope (look for examples marked 'Older Than' something, like 'Older than Steam'). I find it fascinating to know how these narrative ideas, so present in literature, came to be and changed over the years.
(Also, just because someone doesn't mean to put tropes into ones writing doesn't mean they aren't there and can't be identified. There's tropes in Benighted, for instance {to cite just one, Fantastic Racism}, even if you didn't think to yourself 'Now I want to invoke this or that trope.')
I have my quibbles with Tvtropes. For instance, I think that a lot more tropes -- probably the majority -- are YMMV, or subjective, tropes, than are currently listed as such, and I don't really see why they and Trivia tropes need to be put on separate pages than 'objective' tropes anyway. But overall, I think it's great.
Posted by: ZMiles | Dec 30, 2011 at 08:16 PM
(And agreeing with Ruby about tools. I use tools all the time as an engineer and a student; to me, 'tool' is a descriptive word with no judgement attached. And it is... actually rather irritating, to me, for someone to say that all one needs is the tools, and then one's set. I have plenty of tools, but no, I don't think that, if someone else had my computer, my programs, and the robots I'm working on, they could necessarily do the things I've done).
Posted by: ZMiles | Dec 30, 2011 at 08:19 PM
Agreed on "tool". I have, in this apartment, several sets of wrenches and some screwdrivers and probably a hammer and nails and one of those level...y...things. And yet I would not have the first idea how to fix a broken faucet, say, or put up curtains. (Okay, I can sort of assume that there's Step 1: Nail bar to wall. Step 2: Nail curtains to bar.) But still.
Over vacation, I started trying to make a dress for my occult initiation thing. Had the pattern, the pins, the fabric, the needle and thread. Pattern included instructions. I *still* spent a fair amount of time asking my mom whether "right sides together" meant the sides that are on the right, or whether I should cut the pattern out on top of cloth, or what the hell I do with "facing."
Posted by: Izzy | Dec 30, 2011 at 09:09 PM
I'd screw the bar to the wall (rawplugs are a wonderful invention), and then attach the curtains to the bar using some sort of hooks (which type depends on the curtains and the curtain rail).
Those level thingies are called "levels" in AmE, and "spirit levels" in BrE.
I'm a reasonably good DIY assistant, but wouldn't really dare to do much on my own. But with a mother like mine I could hardly help picking some stuff up. When we converted the attic, putting in three bedrooms and a bathroom, my dad did the electrics and my mum did pretty much everything else. We did get a plumber in, and a carpenter friend did a lot of work on the stairs, but my mother was definitely the foreman*.
TRiG.
* Is there a gender-neutral version of this word? I can't think of one.
Posted by: Timothy (TRiG) | Dec 30, 2011 at 09:14 PM
TRiG, perhaps 'supervisor' or 'project manager'?
Although it sounds like she put in far more work than the average supervisor or project manager.
Posted by: cjmr | Dec 30, 2011 at 09:38 PM
(TW potential for use of racially-charged word in a (hopefully) academic context)
I'm going to swing the discussion back toward the original post, I hope, by adding in my experience looking at things like Kit's letter from the other side of the coin - as a librarian trained in the principles of "intellectual freedom". That's my claim to expertise - it may not be the same considerations that the editors of the Beeb have in figuring out whether to keep a programme on the air, but I think that the analogue of "banned/challenged books" that Kit is alluding to in the original post is Close Enough for Government Work.
If I received Kit's letter as a Request for Reconsideration, I would take it much more seriously (in terms of contemplation and consultation with colleagues and seeking multiple opinions) than I would had it come in as "Mike the Knight should be taken off the air because Evie is a witch and witches are Satanic", which would be the more likely letter from Mrs. Twinset.
As noted in comments before, if Mike the Knight were a book on the shelves, it's much easier to say "the library caters to a wide variety of people and values, and did we mention that we have these wonderful books on our shelves that are much less full of FAIL for checkout, too?" (I have said this to users concerned about the presence of certain books in the library, although their request was much less reasonable and predicated more on "I know better than all of these cataloguers and publishers what audience this book should be placed with.") If Mike the Knight were one programme on the slew of channels that is U.S. pay television (cable), then the argument of "well, you can always change the channel" is workable (even if not optimal or ideal). But since it's the Beeb, this would be more like someone asking for a book to be removed or substituted in the schools. (I have not worked in school libraries or school setting. Here my expertise only applies indirectly.)
To use an analogous example, at the beginning of this year (2011), there was a version of Huckleberry Finn released that replaced the racially-charged word "nigger" with "slave". An idea behind the re-release was to put the book back into schools, because the n-word in that context had become a point that, frankly, White Americans would rather forget about as something in the past.
I didn't particularly like the idea, mostly because I thought that substituting the word removed a wide-open opportunity for students to discuss the context of the word, its pejorative aspects, and the ugly context of the time described in the novel. It would be an easy opportunity for learning, discussion, and critical thinking, which is nominally the point of schooling. The bowdlerization would be unhelpful for students. (My opinions about American schooling's inversion of these concepts is another rant entirely.)
I suspect that CBeebies programming is similarly-oriented: it's supposed to help with learning, both academically and socially, for young people by providing them with entertaining ways of demonstrating concepts. Mike the Knight might be getting its intended lessons across, but the unintended lessons that come with it are not good ones. And compared to other CBeebies programming, Mike the Knight comes off as weaker, because those other programmes are able to express their intended messages without the unfortunate implications attached.
Anyway, long post to say: Looking at it from the side of people who will be receiving Kit's letter of concern, I wouldn't think of Kit as Mrs. Twinset, because the concerns are grounded in the actual program (and it's clear that Kit has actually watched the programme in question), the intent is to make the CBeebies programming lineup stronger, and Kit's request is reasonable (improve or replace the programme) rather than unreasonable (change all the CBeebies Programming to the My Preferred Monotheist Religious Instruction Block).
The only unknown factor is whether the people at the Beeb who handle such requests are willing to listen to reasonable arguments like this, rather than having been cynically hardened by Mrs. Twinset-like requests to reject all such letters out of hand because "they're all cranks and nutjobs".
Posted by: Silver Adept | Dec 30, 2011 at 09:47 PM
@Silver Adept: I do know one person who sent an endless stream of increasingly incoherent and irate letters to the BBC, and their responses changed in tone and content as he got more irate, eventually culminating in "Please stop sending us letters about this."
(He was very upset about the channel bug on BBC2)
Posted by: Ross | Dec 31, 2011 at 12:16 AM
Channel bug?
Posted by: Timothy (TRiG) | Dec 31, 2011 at 12:28 AM
@TRiG: It's sometimes called a "DOG", the little translucent station identification logo that is overlaid in the corner of shows these days. Only, since the widescreen conversion, it's usually overlaid about 1/4 the way across the screen so that it doesn't get cut off if you are watching on a TV that does a conversion to 4:3 by cutting off the sides (No TV I have ever heard of does this). They've gotten larger and less transparent in recent years, and perisist through the whole program rather than appearing and disappearing around commercial breaks. It happened that the way the particular show was framed, in a key scene the lead actor's face was entirely obliterated by the TWO logo so I can see why he'd be annoyed, though I think the threats, insults and profanity were taking things too far.
But at least it didn't make noise (I'm looking at you, SyFy)
Posted by: Ross | Dec 31, 2011 at 01:05 AM
Back when Usenet was more of a going concern, I was part of the community of rec.arts.sf.composition, a newsgroup for science fiction and fantasy writing.
This was one of the rare but valuable Usenet newsgroups with a pretty clear sense of community, and the community enforced one rule of behavior with extreme vigor--violating it was the one sure way to start a firestorm. The rule was usually expressed with a Kipling quote:
There are nine and sixty ways
Of constructing tribal lays
And every single one of them is right.
This was taken to mean that while you were perfectly free to say "This and that in your story does not work for me" you were not to say "You can't write that kind of story" or "You can't use that writing technique" or "Your approach to writing is objectively wrong."
The group was adamant on this. While it really craved participation from published writers (Patricia Wrede was a long-term member and highly valued) it drove away at least one and possibly two published and well-regarded writers because they wouldn't respect nine-and-sixty.
The reason we were so adamant is that every time we let it slide, the group's usefulness as a writing community evaporated. People would take sides and go on the offense or defense and...nothing good would come of it. Just endless flame wars and outright damage to some folks' ability to write at all. It was toxic.
I would like to suggest that if Slacktiverse is going to discuss the craft of writing, of which quite a few of us seem to be practicioners, we might do well to adopt this rule ourselves.
Posted by: Mary Kaye | Dec 31, 2011 at 01:24 AM
Just to satisfy my curiosity, can someone translate "twinset" into American? To me it means dressing your twins in cute identical outfits, but apparently not here--?
Posted by: Mary Kaye | Dec 31, 2011 at 01:26 AM
Skirt and matching jacket, I thought.
Posted by: MercuryBlue | Dec 31, 2011 at 01:55 AM
Mary Kaye: did you just say you'd be willing to drive me away so everyone can discuss the craft without objections from people who see it as an art?
I am not saying ... oh for goodness sake.
Here's my problem: people are using the word 'writer' differently from how I do. When I say a writer, I mean someone who is good at it. I refused to call myself a writer until my first book was published, because to me it was a job description and a term of status.
If we're talking about hobby writing, that's does not have the same standards as art-form writing. I really don't mind or care what someone does for their hobby. But I do mind when people start assuming that hobby writing and art-form writing can be approached by the same criteria.
This is not a writing group. It's a discussion group. If I'm in a writing group, sure, I will adapt whatever I'm saying to whatever is helpful and encouraging. But I was under the impression this was a board where one could discuss issues and state one's actual opinion.
--
A twinset is a matching jumper and cardigan worn together, traditionally wool and cashmere. This kind of thing: http://www.photodetective.co.uk/jpegs/Twinset.jpg. It's a stereotypically conservative outfit.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Dec 31, 2011 at 02:30 AM
I'd like to point something else out.
People are accusing me of making generalisations. I do not think this is fair.
My post at 1.01pm says: "And while that may work for some people, for others it's a disaster."
2.33: "To me, assuming that writing must be like art is more or less like assuming a school should be run like a business or that we should run politics by engineering principles.'
5.24: ". If someone's naturally schematic I have no quarrel with them, but I do have a quarrel with schema being considered the way it always works."
5.56: "There are accomplished writers who have different methods from me. Some have a more craft-like or methodical or technical approach to their own work. I have nothing to say against that."
I have said repeatedly that I don't think my way of writing is the only way to do it. All I have been objecting to is the idea that hobbyist writing must automatically be considered the same as art-form writing. That, I am prepared to stand by.
But my most general statements have been in response to generalisations from others. Froborr has been using words like 'definitely' and 'skills are skills' and 'I don't understand the need' and 'It does not matter'. These are not 'well, I'll respect your opinion' phrases.
It's Froborr's posts that I have been angry about. When I have generalised, it has been because Froborr has made definitive statements about writing while simultaneously asserting that it doesn't matter whether or not zie can actually write. And they have been in response to posts of mine that have explicitly said that I don't have any objection to schematic writing as long as it's not promoted as the only way.
In other words, I stated a personal dislike of TVTropes because I felt it promoted a single way of looking at things, and Froborr responded with dismissive language that was very far from sticking to I-statements. If someone proposes a rule, like 'skills are skills and they're all the same' or 'A person doesn't have to be any good at writing to able to pronounce upon it', I have two choices: I can either argue with the rule - which gets me accused of rule-making in my turn - or I can get personal.
Despite my repeatedly pointing out that it put me in a difficult position, Froborr insisted on bringing up hir own writing as evidence. If I responded to that with generalisations, it was because, as I kept pointing out to no avail, the alternative was to get personal.
In other words, I stated my opinion about a public subject and Froborr made the issue personal. And now people are calling me toxic because I tried to explain my opinions while avoiding getting personal as far as possible, no matter how difficult Froborr made it.
I am not happy about this.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Dec 31, 2011 at 03:00 AM
@Kit:
I've made a point to stay out of the TVTropes discussion this time, because I wrote a lot of material for TVTropes back around 2006-2007, so it's difficult for me not to take things like
personally, as an accusation that I'm "deadening" art. So I've held back because I didn't want to react out of defensiveness.
But this:
No matter how qualified with "I feel" and "In my opinion" this is, this is hard ot read as anything other than a very personal dismissal. I don't know what your intent is, but phrases like "There are accomplished writers who have different methods from me. Some have a more craft-like or methodical or technical approach to their own work. I have nothing to say against that." or " When I say a writer, I mean someone who is good at it." or "You might be an unconsciously incompetent writer. In fact, statistically speaking, that is the likeliest scenario," convey to me a tone of "I'm a Real True Writer and you're not, so you have not earned the right to have your position respected."
And maybe that is what you mean, and maybe that's even right. If you were a medical doctor and we were discussing medicine, you'd be fully in the right to "pull rank" and get insulted that us laypeople dared to challenge your position.
Or maybe not. I don't know. What I do know is that you told someone they were probably incompetent. If it had been me, I'd have been hurt.
Posted by: Ross | Dec 31, 2011 at 03:39 AM
I'm no good at chess. But, because of research I did for my novel, I know a bunch of strategies that grandmasters use to prepare for matches (playing against computers, setting up novelties and variations, analyzing games of their opponents). And, even though I'm no grandmaster, I can conclude -- because grandmasters use them -- that these are useful strategies. You don't need to be an expert at something to know what good tools in that something are.
Also:
"When I say a writer, I mean someone who is good at it. I refused to call myself a writer until my first book was published..."
So you'd say that Tim LaHaye, Ayn Rand, and John Norman (Gor) are all good writers, as they've published multiple books? And, as they've sold more copies and published more books than you, if someone finds that one of them disagrees with you on something to do with writing, we should agree with them instead of you, as they have more expertise?
Or to go one step further: when a writer is called on something offensive in one of their works, a common response is along the lines of 'you aren't reading the text right; clearly, the failure isn't the author's, but rather that you lack the required literary expertise to understand this.' (This one was really common during Racefail 09). Are you saying that these arguments are valid, if made to people who have not themselves published a novel?
Posted by: ZMiles | Dec 31, 2011 at 03:50 AM
(One more comment, then bed)
In fact, let's go full circle. Have you ever worked on a TV show? If not, how can you have the expertise to critique Mike the Knight? You identify a couple of tropes in it, sure -- Monochrome Casting (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MonochromeCasting), Mighty Whitey (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MightyWhitey), Easily Forgiven (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EasilyForgiven), and so forth -- but you said that's just categorization, not real analysis. So -- if expertise is required -- who are you to protest the show?
(Whereas I would argue that expertise isn't required for this level of analysis; that even someone who hasn't done anything artistic at all can recognize the issues and want them corrected).
Posted by: ZMiles | Dec 31, 2011 at 03:56 AM
What I do know is that you told someone they were probably incompetent. If it had been me, I'd have been hurt.
Which, for goodness sake, is why I kept telling Froborr that it put me in a difficult position to bring it up. I kept saying that, and zie kept at it. Which is why I got increasingly impatient. I kept pointing out the difficulty, and zie made no acknowledgement, and that is exhausting. I started to feel that if zie didn't care about the difficulty zie was placing me in, then clearly this was a conversation where caring about each others' feelings was not a priority.
As to having written for TVTropes: well, sorry, but one thing that happens when you put work out in public is that people will have opinions about it. I get good reviews and bad reviews and I just have to deal with it. You enter the debate, that's what happens.
--
ZMiles: you are simply putting words in my mouth and being rude and I cannot be bothered to reply.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Dec 31, 2011 at 04:19 AM
This is a strange discussion for me (for more than one reason.)
First, I keep being surprised at the way that people are responding to Kit's comments. Often where I read her as making statement that limit other people's generalizations other people are seeing her as making generalizations herself.
I have had the same thing happen to me (not about writing -- rather about one of the things about which I have as much training as does Kit on writing) -- that when I make statements that are what I (and which other people who know the field as well as do I) see as useful and necessary corrections to overgeneralizations other see me as being the one "laying down the law."
For example: So you'd say that Tim LaHaye, Ayn Rand, and John Norman (Gor) are all good writers, as they've published multiple books? And, as they've sold more copies and published more books than you, if someone finds that one of them disagrees with you on something to do with writing, we should agree with them instead of you, as they have more expertise?
No, Kit didn't say that being published is a sufficient qualification to making definitive statements on writing -- she say that for her it was a necessary qualification.
Nor did she say that it was the only criteria that had to be fulfilled to be a writer: I refused to call myself a writer until my first book was published, because to me it was a job description and a term of status.
To be a writer is something which Kit does professionally and there is something very different between someone who does something professionally and someone who does something occasionally (or even quite frequently) because they enjoy it.
Like MaryKaye I have been around the world of computers/internet long enough to be a reader of rec.arts.sf.composition, a newsgroup for science fiction and fantasy writing -- but I think her description of that group is coloured by her experience of it. My personal memory of it was that was far more exclusionary and resistant to ideas/attitudes outside that particular groups worldview than she describes:
For example: This was one of the rare but valuable Usenet newsgroups with a pretty clear sense of community, and the community enforced one rule of behavior with extreme vigor--violating it was the one sure way to start a firestorm.
This is actually a good example of overgeneralization from lack of experience AND seeing a group / subject only from the inside.
At one time my research required that I read hundred of usenet groups and I found that there were quite a few that had a clear sense of community (one which was reinforced by group firestorms.)
And, as I read that group, there were many things which did not fall within the Kipling quote's protective cloak (in fact there was a couple of times I got flamed for pointing out that the group was violating that "rule" and each time I was soundly (resoundingly) told that "this was different."
The group was adamant on this. While it really craved participation from published writers (Patricia Wrede was a long-term member and highly valued) it drove away at least one and possibly two published and well-regarded writers because they wouldn't respect nine-and-sixty.
Yes, there were some writers who would swing by and play "dogmatic" but there were other authors who tried to explain that "that isn't the way it worked for me" or "that seldom works out in real life" and got shouted down. I didn't see that as them not respecting nine-and-sixty but as an unwillingness for people to recognize that just as Tiger Woods might have some particular insight on playing golf that an amateur did not -- a professional writer might have a valid comment to make on one of the nine-and-sixty ways.
Finally, I am going to say something about the Tim LaHayes, Ayn Rands, and John Normans of the world. They know far more about being writers than do most of the people who write about them. I know how to criticize a book. I know how to pull about a book. I can analyze a book to death. But that is very, very, very different than knowing about what it takes to write a book. And that is what I think often frustrates writers when talking to others. Writing and reading are actually quite separate skills. I can analyze a film to death but the difference between making a film and analyzing a film-- well ask Roger Ebert about that.
Posted by: Mmy | Dec 31, 2011 at 08:25 AM
I will leave this discussion now. There is nothing of use I can contribute to it, and it comes at a personally painful time.
I think it will be best for me not to participate in any such discussions here in future.
Posted by: Mary Kaye | Dec 31, 2011 at 09:35 AM
Kit: In other words, I stated a personal dislike of TVTropes because I felt it promoted a single way of looking at things, and Froborr responded with dismissive language that was very far from sticking to I-statements.
I went back to the beginning of the thread last night, because I was trying to see where I derailed this whole thing into a TV Tropes discussion. And... it turns out I didn't. Kit was the first person to mention TV Tropes. The actual conversation was thus:
Ana: 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?)
Kit: 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.
Ana: Well... I think we've disagreed on this before, but I don't really believe anything is original. :/
Kit: Pal o' mine, you need to take a break from TV Tropes!
Ana: 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 ...
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 made what I framed as an I-statement. I didn't say nothing is original. I didn't say anything at all about TV Tropes. I expressed an I-statement about my beliefs, beliefs that I have held since childhood, long before TV Tropes existed. And when Kit made a joke that seemed to suggest that I feel the way I do *because* of TV Tropes (rather than that I gravitate to TV Tropes because it agrees with a way I've always felt), I didn't object because I felt she intended well and I feel we have enough history together to give a benefit of the doubt.
I accepted what I felt was Kit's belief that my statements about how I think -- I-statements about how I think!! -- were damaging to her. And I apologized.
What I did not say was that my I-statements couldn't be damaging because they were I-statements. What I didn't not say was that because of my history and competence with reviewing hundreds and hundreds of books I was qualified to make a statement about originality and writing as an art form from the experience of the reader. I did not say these things because I felt they did not matter anywhere near as much as Kit and the fact that something I had said had been damaging for her. I accepted that my intent was not magical, and I apologized.
Now I've tried more than once in this thread to state my belief that Kit's statements about how to approach writings -- statements that may or may nor have been I-statements, and I didn't feel at the time they were but I will accept her saying that they were and I misunderstood -- were damaging to me. And while I don't expect Kit to drop everything and apologize, I would have appreciated that certain aspects of this conversation -- such as the implication that certain people are not competent writers -- to be reexamined.
I cannot accept the contradiction in this thread that my saying "I don't really believe anything is original" about my beliefs hurts others and should not be stated because, as Kit said, And when someone makes a sweeping statement like 'Nothing is original', it mutilates the complexity and fluidity on which art depends, but that Kit's later statements about writing and how it is and isn't done must be harmless because she intended them as I-statements and if other people didn't read them that way then it's their fault. "Intent is not magic" cuts both ways.
Which brings me to:
Mary Kaye: did you just say you'd be willing to drive me away so everyone can discuss the craft without objections from people who see it as an art?
No. She said that was a member of a community that drove away some people in order to maintain a rule that individual experience was treated with respect and not dismissed, because any time the rule was broken, the board fractured into flame wars and hurt feelings and the alternative was that *everyone* was driven away. And I agree with her. I thought that already was a rule here, and I thought we were already seeing the effects right now.
Because, and I want to make this a very personal I-statement: My feelings have been hurt in this thread by many of the things you have said, Kit. That doesn't mean I want to drive you away. NO! Let's put that in big block letters: I DO NOT WANT TO DRIVE YOU AWAY KIT. I was be *devastated* if that happened. What I *am* saying is that I would appreciate it if you could listen to me saying "my feelings were hurt and here is how to avoid it in the future if you'd like". Because that is what I have been trying to say last night.
If we can't accept that the individual experience is to be respected and not dismissed then... it'll drive me away. As much as I'd hate that, this thread has not been a safe one for me. I've been shaking and crying since last night and I could barely sleep for anxiety. I've found it triggering in a way that the last 120 rape discussions haven't been, because I feel like someone I like and respect has dismissed my individual experience because I lack some vague qualification for my experience to be valid.
Now maybe that's entirely my problem and no one else's. I AM 100% READY TO ACCEPT THAT. But. There it is.
Reasonable people are disagreeing over whether or not Kit has dismissed people's individual experiences in this thread. It's not something that can be measured on the Dismissing The Individual Experience O'Meter; it's subjective. But I, personally, subjectively, have had my feelings hurt by this thread. And I, personally, subjectively, am not at all comfortable with the continuing distinction that when we say "writer" we mean "professional writer" and not "hobbyist writer".
I am a professional writer. People pay me money to write. (In both Real Life and online capacities.)
I am a competent writer. Not the best, but not the worst. Better than some published authors out there.
But neither of those things should at all be gatekeepers in talking about what writing tools, techniques, devices, skills, and orange-scented pencils work for ME personally. And neither of those things should be gatekeepers preventing me from saying that for me there are more physical skills involved in writing than just the sitting. And I should be able to express my need for my personal tools, techniques, devices, skills, and orange-scented pencils despite the fact that someone somewhere has used my need for orange-scented pencils to further an orthodoxy to hurt people. And whether anyone intended to or not, I feel that I've been told that I lack the prerequisites to be able to say that here in this thread and that that's Not How Writing Works.
And I feel that I've also been told that analysis and list-making are not the same things, and the fact that they are for me isn't... valid, I guess. And I feel that general statement of belief about all people includes a specific statement of belief about how my mind works, and that someone else knows my mind better than I do. And that bothers me a lot.
I am literally crying at my computer and my hands are shaking, so I probably should just post-and-go. I cannot express in words how much the opinion of this community means to me. I'm terrified and worried that what I *feel* is not going to be conveyed the way I want via what I have *written*. I can only reiterate again that I apologize for anything offensive I've said both in this post and all others before it.
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 31, 2011 at 09:37 AM
Oh, I did have one more thing to say.
Finally, I am going to say something about the Tim LaHayes, Ayn Rands, and John Normans of the world. They know far more about being writers than do most of the people who write about them. I know how to criticize a book. I know how to pull about a book. I can analyze a book to death. But that is very, very, very different than knowing about what it takes to write a book. And that is what I think often frustrates writers when talking to others. Writing and reading are actually quite separate skills. I can analyze a film to death but the difference between making a film and analyzing a film-- well ask Roger Ebert about that.
They know far more about how writing works for them. They know nothing about how writing works for me. I would expect Tim LaHaye, Ayn Rand, and John Norman to all be respectful if they said Writing Works Thusly, and I said, well, no it doesn't for me.
And I would expect them also the maintain that same respect if they said Writing Works Thusly, and Kit said, well, no it doesn't for me.
I expect everyone to respect the individual experience, whether we're talking about experience with racism or experience with writing or experience with rape or experience with a disability or experience in marriage or anything else.
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 31, 2011 at 09:45 AM
@AnaMardoll: Just want to point out/explain/clarify that my "LaHaye et al" quote was in response to ZMiles (who wrote that originally) and was not in response to anything you may have written.
Although I most specifically don't think that LaHaye or Rand (can't speak for Norman) would respect that anything either you or Kit wrote about writing. (After all, they would think, neither of you are RTCs or Objectivists so what do you do know?)
I have a suspicion that a bunch of people of this thread are talking right past other people on the thread. People are responding angrily to things which either I can't find in the initial posts or which in other times or on other subjects people would hardly notice.
Posted by: Mmy | Dec 31, 2011 at 10:01 AM
Um.
Vegan pumpkin pie with gluten-free crust?
Posted by: MercuryBlue | Dec 31, 2011 at 10:08 AM
*shaky grin* Yeah, when I wrote that I would expect them to respect us, I knew that was more of an because-I-expect-it-as-an-ideal-from-everyone and not because-experience-has-led-me-to-expect-it-from-you. :)
I don't expect dudebros on the internet to take seriously my experience as a rape victim or as a disabled person, but I do Expect them to. If that... makes sense. :)
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 31, 2011 at 10:08 AM
Frankly, I was most annoyed by the assumption that the word "tool" was automatically deadening. I found it insulting because that is not how tools work. Tools are not magical items: it takes skill to wield them and create something new or fix something broken. It is an image that I frequently use, and I wasn't even using it in the context of writing. I was saying that TV Tropes is a tool that people in general can use. No tool is all things to all people, and certainly TV Tropes doesn't hold itself out as all things to everyone. If people want to read something extra into my use of the word "tools," then fine, but that is something extra, and not the common meaning of the word or the way in which I meant it.
Posted by: Ruby | Dec 31, 2011 at 10:12 AM
@MercuryBlue: Vegan pumpkin pie with gluten-free crust? WANT!!!!!!!!!!!!
@AnaMardoll: Sigh, isn't "expect" one of those really confusing words which can mean widely different things and we never realize how much we are confusing people because we don't even realize how differently they can be read?
I remember going through the roof in a Georgette Heyer book when a character says of another character "I made sure that he didn't have a gun" when I realized later that colloquially it meant "I was assumed that he didn't because, well, he isn't the type and I know him well."
Which, of course, is not what I understood. When the woman said of her partner "I made sure he had no gun" it meant (to me) "I made the effort to empirically investigate the question as to whether he had a gun by searching his person or possessions."
I am sure that Heyer didn't mean the reader to be so confused by that statement but I was really annoyed when it turned out later that he had, indeed, had a gun.
Posted by: Mmy | Dec 31, 2011 at 10:17 AM
The truth is, Ana, I have a lot of respect for you as a critic and a person. (I can't comment on your fiction writing because I haven't seen it, but I do know you can put a sentence together.) And if list-making and analysis go together in your head, I'm actually interested in that, far be it me to contradict you, and I can't argue with the results because your analyses are extremely good. So if I've upset you by seeming to disrespect your experience, I am sincerely sorry. I do respect your experience, and I respect your writings as well.
I have no desire to quarrel with you, or even to do more than discuss the things you say. I've been getting angry because I felt Froborr adopted a tone towards me that was patronising and needlessly confrontational, and now I'm even angrier with ZMiles. I wish this discussion were calmer so we could talk things out as friends.
I'd like to talk about this more and make amends with you, but I fear I have to run right now because I promised to take my son to the park and we're losing light as I type. But I wanted to say I'm sorry for upsetting you as soon as possible.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Dec 31, 2011 at 10:22 AM
Kit, thank you. I cannot tell you how invaluable your opinion is to me, so... thank you. I feel a wave of relief. Thank you.
I really appreciate you accepting that I felt dismissed, even though you didn't mean to. And I am sorry that you felt patronized, because no one should be made to feel that way. :(
I would like to apologize for that, because while you were kind enough not to say so, I can easily imagine that some of *my* posts may have sounded patronizing and confrontational. I didn't mean them that way, but I've been told in the past that I can sound that way, so it wouldn't surprise me if I did this time to. So I apologize if I seemed to be patronizing, confronting, or dismissing you. :(
I would very happily discuss the list-making/analysis thing with you in the future. I think brains and how they work are very fascinating things. :)
Thank you.
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 31, 2011 at 10:38 AM
@AnaMardoll: I can easily imagine that some of *my* posts may have sounded patronizing and confrontational. I didn't mean them that way, but I've been told in the past that I can sound that way, so it wouldn't surprise me if I did this time to. So I apologize if I seemed to be patronizing, confronting, or dismissing you. :(
Did I ever tell you about the time in grad school that I was asked to speak less in one of my classes because the guys in the group felt intimated when I brought facts into the argument? (Yes, I was criticized for being vehemently empirical).
Posted by: Mmy | Dec 31, 2011 at 10:45 AM
Did I ever tell you about the time in grad school that I was asked to speak less in one of my classes because the guys in the group felt intimated when I brought facts into the argument? (Yes, I was criticized for being vehemently empirical).
I had heard that, but I thought that was Kit. In fact, it would not surprise me if happened to both of you. :)
Communication is a hard thing. I've already told this story to some of you, but yesterday I hurt Husband's feelings because I told him he was a "want", not a "need". I was in the mindset of today's Twilight where "needs" were things I didn't want but had to have for reasons of disability. Hurt feelings ensued. (Which were all better a few minutes later, because we weren't talking on THE INTERNET. :))
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 31, 2011 at 10:58 AM
Back again, and relieved to see you've accepted my apology, Ana. I would like to discuss with you some time because I think it'd be interesting, but I feel that now's now the moment and some time would be a good idea. Friends?
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Dec 31, 2011 at 11:22 AM
Wow. This has been ... interesting.
To go back to the original post, I was struck by Silver Adept's discussion of how zie would feel, *as a librarian*, to receive the letter above.
And I have to confess that when Kit originally submitted this post (yes, TBAT have to go through the same process as everyone else!) I had to recuse myself from editing it because it made me so ANGRY.
And it took me a while to figure out why. It wasn't the post, which is of course well-written and thoughtful. It was because it tripped all sorts of wires in me as a professional.
It's no secret that I'm a professional librarian. Much of my personal identity is bound up in my responsibilities to select, arrange, promote, and reject materials for the collection, based on my professional skills and judgment. I believe that I'm darn good at it, but even if I were wrong in that judgment, that's who I am.
And in that capacity, I've received a LOT of complaints against material included -- and NOT included -- in the collection. All of them are taken seriously, although few of them are as well-written, reasoned, and courteous as Kit's letter; while most are eventually decided against, some changes are made, and they are all treated by the same process -- a set procedure, written in exhaustive detail in our policy manual (and the policies of every library I've ever worked in).
And an objective process is necessary, because boyhowdy, does every one of those letters make me FURIOUS. No matter how polite, reasonable, and appropriate, the hidden message that I read in every one of them is: You are not who you say you are. What makes you uniquely you doesn't require skill, education, and hard work.
And my automatic reaction is "Who the heck do you think YOU are? You think that I just pick out books that I like? You think I throw darts at publisher catalogs and buy where they stick? You think that all the materials here are donations? [Actually, I know that a lot of people DO think that, because they tell me so]. Do you know how HARD this is for me to do? Do you think I purchased multiple copies of [LEFT BEHIND, AMERICAN PSYCHO, pick your title] because on a WHIM?"
I don't feel bad for reacting that way. As I said, it's a rare objection that does not, in fact, trivialize the complex problems of balancing budgets and the needs and interests and ocncerns of a varied population. But when my brain goes there, it makes it very difficult for me to listen to and understand what their actual concerns are.
I suspect that the television programmers at the BBC probably feel the same way. I hope that they are able to get past that (and have procedures to help them get past that!) so they can hear what you say, Kit, and make changes accordingly.
Because hapaxdaughter wanted nothing more in the world than to be a Knight -- and it sounds like Mike the Knight would have turned her off that dream completely.
If so, I hope that they are able to get over that automatic
Posted by: hapax | Dec 31, 2011 at 12:04 PM
Comment cut off midsentence.
Posted by: MercuryBlue | Dec 31, 2011 at 12:25 PM
Hmm. In fact, that was a stray extra sentence fragment that should have been deleted.
Sorry, we're having connection problems here. :-(
Posted by: hapax | Dec 31, 2011 at 12:28 PM
@hapax:
Wow, does that resonate with me. However in my case the comments that I find it almost impossible to respond to without raging emotion are about picking textbooks. That happened not too long ago in one of the threads---I felt that complaints about how textbooks were picked for college courses fundamentally called into question my own identity (that I was was trained, skilled and educated in what I did.)
BTW, the person who made me feel that way apologized and clarified their comment, thank you......but like hapax I felt, for a moment at least, that the very thing that defined me was being negated.
Interestingly enough (I hope others find it interesting) that same "why are you forcing us to watch/read materials we find worthless/offensive also occurs when one is teaching at the college level. I had a colleague who was attempting to teach the history of European art -- and who had students complain that it offended them that they were being exposed to pictures of naked men and women.
My own experience was that I sometimes ended up adding things to the curriculum but very seldom removing things from the course. Which led to further complaints (you make us READDDDDDDDDDDDDDD to much!!!!!!) and heaven help us that you should ever remove any dead, white, upper class, Anglo-Saxon/English American man from the canon.
Posted by: Mmy | Dec 31, 2011 at 12:37 PM
Back again, and relieved to see you've accepted my apology, Ana. I would like to discuss with you some time because I think it'd be interesting, but I feel that now's now the moment and some time would be a good idea. Friends?
Absolutely. :)
And I agree that there is a WEALTH of fun topics here but also agree that this maybe wasn't the best time for me to get into them. I'm going to have to reflect on why that is -- probably some combination of body-space factors. :/
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 31, 2011 at 01:50 PM
@AnaMardoll: Not to derail a thread that has already been derailed a number of times....but does anyone else feel stressed out at this time of year because one feels ones physical/psychic space being constantly intruded upon? And even the smallest of issues can became large? For example, my shoulder isn't too bad if I am at home and can limit my movements/move slowly/go the long way around to do things --- but when I am out people are bumping into me and my space is limited and I am never sure when my hip is going to lock or my bad knee go out.....and I just stress the hell out.
Posted by: Mmy | Dec 31, 2011 at 01:56 PM
I was reading "Mrs. Twinset" as something like "SNL's Church Lady": Someone who has a very definite idea about what is proper for *everyone else*, and somehow those ideas always reinforce the kyriarchy, not question or subvert it.
This thread has been very interesting for a lot of reasons. If I had participated, I would be feeling like Ana did before she apologized to Kit, and Kit forgave her, and 'cried Pax!'. But my position is actually more like Froborr, MaryKaye, Ross, and ZMiles (and Ruby(?)). So there wouldn't have been any apology for me/my hurt feelings. In fact, if I'd participated, I think I would probably be feeling alienated and driven away from Slacktiverse. Which is why I didn't participate.
I can think of lots of other things I would like to explore/think through, but I don't feel that this thread will be a safe place for me to do that.
Posted by: Laiima | Dec 31, 2011 at 02:10 PM
@AnaMardoll: Not to derail a thread that has already been derailed a number of times....but does anyone else feel stressed out at this time of year because one feels ones physical/psychic space being constantly intruded upon?
Yeah, although for me it's less the people bumping into me and more the cold weather making my joints more stiff than usual. I haven't been pain-free long enough to get solid, restful sleep for over a week now, and that makes me a little more emotional than usual.
I think there's also a problem that I identify with victims a lot, if that makes sense. Like, someone mentioned Huck Finn earlier and I don't know a lot about the specific situation where the 'improved' books are being used, but my first thought was that if a bunch of teachers + students + parents said "Hey we want to study this book for mandatory education purposes, but it's triggering our kids and emotionally interfering with their ability to learn", well, I was all "hey, creative solution to a problem!" I'm not sure why my brain works like that, but it does. :/
If I got Kit's letter, I know there are times in my life when I wouldn't have agreed with it, but I don't think I'd be upset or angry. I usually fall on the "oh, what a shame that my art has hurt you. I mean, I'm not changing it, but I'm sorry to hear this." I guess I'd feel the same way about the Mrs. Twinset's letter -- I'd feel bad that she was unhappy but I don't think I'd think she was wrong. Just... I dunno, different. I'm not explaining this well.
I know that one reason that Husband and Mom cannot get into body-space arguments with me is because I use logic in body-space and they use emotion. We tend to resolve our differences in writing because in body-space I'm a logician and in writing-space I'm more emotional and I tend to come from a pov that all viewpoints are valid to the person expressing the viewpoint.
I know where the body-space logician came from -- that's Dad -- but I'm not sure where the writing-space emotionalist came from. But I know that tension can be seen in a lot of my analysis writing where I'm all "OK, this is harmful! For X, Y, Z reasons! But... maybe it helped someone somewhere. So there's that." And then all the sudden I'm thinking that "Breaking Dawn" is a feminist pro-choice movie, as long as you watch it in reverse and listen for the secret messages.
So... in conclusion, I am very weird. o.O
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 31, 2011 at 02:28 PM
TW: librarian-bashing
hapax's comment reminded me of this thing I read recently:
Which, aside from the very odd image of a sheep riding a hog, made me want to throw things on behalf of every librarian I've ever met. WTF? You think just because your local branch isn't stocked with everything you like and nothing that you don't like, your librarian isn't doing a skilled job with the best of the resources available to her...you obviously have no clue about what kind of hard work...WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE...grrr....
Who knew people were so ignorant...
Well, anyway.
There are indeed some topics I'd like to see further explored at some point. And since we're talking about education and training, I'd be interested in what the writers among us consider to be the necessary or helpful education for a fiction writer.
I mean, I couldn't write imaginative fiction if you threatened me with being locked in a library with my glasses broken. But for those who do have the Making Stuff Up talent, how do you learn to use it?
---
someone mentioned Huck Finn earlier and I don't know a lot about the specific situation where the 'improved' books are being used, but my first thought was that if a bunch of teachers + students + parents said "Hey we want to study this book for mandatory education purposes, but it's triggering our kids and emotionally interfering with their ability to learn", well, I was all "hey, creative solution to a problem!"
And mine was, "but that's not the book Twain wrote, therefore not an accurate portrait of the situation he was writing about and doesn't produce the effect he intended, so you're not really fulfilling that educational purpose. Better to not read the book at all, if it's that problematic, than read a dishonest version of it."
Again, not saying that your reaction is wrong, but it wouldn't be mine. But then, I'm not the one whose skin is pierced by that word. Shocked and repelled by it, but not personally pained.
(Does it make a difference if it's a publisher, rather than parents/teachers/students, requesting the change?)
---
but does anyone else feel stressed out at this time of year because one feels ones physical/psychic space being constantly intruded upon?
I think felt a faint flicker of "Christmas spirit" a few nights ago, but it passed.
Posted by: Amaryllis | Dec 31, 2011 at 03:04 PM
This thread has been very interesting for a lot of reasons. If I had participated, I would be feeling like Ana did before she apologized to Kit, and Kit forgave her, and 'cried Pax!'. But my position is actually more like Froborr, MaryKaye, Ross, and ZMiles (and Ruby(?)). So there wouldn't have been any apology for me/my hurt feelings. In fact, if I'd participated, I think I would probably be feeling alienated and driven away from Slacktiverse. Which is why I didn't participate.
Excuse me, Laiima, but what is the point of saying that? What are you trying to achieve? We're in the process of making peace here. Why post a comment that's basically an accusation for something that didn't actually happen?
If you had participated, there is no way of knowing how I would have responded. It would have depended on what you said and how you said it. Your comments would have altered the discussion. I would have responded to them based on what they were, and it could have gone any number of different ways.
I'm sorry, but you basically come across as saying that I've hurt your feelings and refused to apologise based on a scenario that's only happened in your own speculations. This is not fair of you. It doesn't make this a safe place for me either; if I'm going to be accused of things that have only happened in somebody's theoretical imaginings, that's pretty hostile.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Dec 31, 2011 at 03:08 PM
Does it make a difference if it's a publisher, rather than parents/teachers/students, requesting the change?
I think it does. The publisher is going off what the publisher thinks will worry potential buyers. The parents and teachers are going off actual worries of actual buyers, namely themselves.
I'm reminded of the debacle wherein a pair of YA coauthors were told, whether by the editor or the publisher I forget, to make the one PoV character not gay or remove him altogether.
Posted by: MercuryBlue | Dec 31, 2011 at 03:12 PM
(Does it make a difference if it's a publisher, rather than parents/teachers/students, requesting the change?)
To me, yeah, there's a difference. In my brain, the "original version" would still be freely available (the book is even in the public domain in America, I do believe), students would be informed of what had been changed and why and could have copies of the original to read at home if that's what they wanted, and the students who had to get through the mandatory class would be protected.
The *mandatory* part of schooling is where I get nervous. If I had to read through a triggery book in order to graduate high school, I might not have managed. Depends on how triggery, depends on how long we studied it.
(I think there's a point somewhere in there that the most privileged in our society frequently have the fewest triggers. I'm not sure how to get at that point, though.)
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 31, 2011 at 03:12 PM
Serious question, ROT13 for extreme ableist / sexist language:
Can anyone think of a mandatory-reading book in high school that has 200 instances of C-word (phag) or R-word (ergneq) instead of the N-word?
I can't, but I haven't been in high school for awhile.
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 31, 2011 at 03:16 PM
What I was trying to get at, Kit, without being 'too personal', is that for you, 'making peace' seems to mean getting the other person to apologize to you. It doesn't mean, you apologizing to the other person. Because I notice that you didn't offer to apologize to Froborr, MaryKaye, ZMiles, Ross, anyone else who said they felt hurt by what you said. Most of those people seem to have left this thread, in fact, and I wonder if some of them may have left for good.
Posted by: Laiima | Dec 31, 2011 at 03:18 PM
But for those who do have the Making Stuff Up talent, how do you learn to use it?
Given what's recently happened when I tried to explain things from my point of view, I must recuse myself from answering that question. Sorry.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Dec 31, 2011 at 03:20 PM
Laiima, excuse me, but I don't think it's your place to decide when and how I should apologise to third parties. If they want to deal with me, they can deal with me direct.
As to whether or not they've left for good - again, you're blaming me for something that's only happened in your own speculations. Stop it.
As to 'without being "too personal"' - I'm sorry, but that doesn't wash. You just told me what 'making peace seems to mean' to me. There is no way you can say that that isn't personal. Either acknowledge that your criticisms of me are personal or, if you don't want to be regarded as a person making personal remarks, stop doing it.
Posted by: Kit Whitfield | Dec 31, 2011 at 03:24 PM
@AnaMardoll: Can anyone think of a mandatory-reading book in high school that has 200 instances of C-word (phag) or R-word (ergneq) instead of the N-word?
I can but then I taught at the college level so my experience says not a lot about high school.
I do know that when I was teaching about images of minorities/others in media it was really important for me to expose students to the overwhelming nature of the problem. It is easy to say "well I would't be really bothered by THAT" when you are looking at one instance. But when it is two, three, four, five, six......students start to get the point.
I did talk to students before hand. A number of my African-American students were dreadfully triggered by images/scenes and I discussed with them whether they wanted to take a miss on the class that day. Only one every did. One asked me to pause a D. W. Griffith short and turned to the student in the class who always complained that the Civil War was "really about Southern culture and the Southern way of life," pointed to the old African-American being ridden like a pony by his masters children and said "that could be my great great grandfather. That is what you "way of life" was to us. Do you realize that? And the other student said that "no, no one had really shown him what slavery was like for the people who were slaves."
And we had a discussion in class about it.
I am not saying you could got that far with a group of students at high school -- but my nephew read Huck Finn in grade school, unexpurgated, and it was the reality of the language and situations that made it a real teaching experience. (And yes, we talked about it at the family table.)
Posted by: Mmy | Dec 31, 2011 at 03:55 PM
Mmy, I wish you'd been my college teacher. :)
The most comparable experience is that I once had to drop a sociology class where I had chosen to write a term paper on WWII "comfort women". I picked the subject myself, read a dozen books on the subject, wrote a paper, and then made a poster board. The poster board was the tipping point; I went to talk to the teacher, and she was kind enough to understand and I dropped.
Still, ime it's rare to find a teacher who understands triggers -- or rather considers them something to be treated sensitively instead of just WELL IT SHOULD SHOCK THEM!! *hulk smash*
Posted by: AnaMardoll | Dec 31, 2011 at 04:19 PM
But for those who do have the Making Stuff Up talent, how do you learn to use it?
Practice. That's all I can suggest. I don't have a lot of experience writing - only little over half my life (which sounds impressive until you realize I'm not even 27), and I'm not published (but not for a lack of trying; I haven't quite given up and turned to self-publishing yet). I do both novels and short stories, but I hate writing short stories, so that's likely what'll get me published first. My suggestion as both an HS English teacher, a professional English tutor at a private college, and as an amateur writer, is to practice, and above all else, know what you can do and what you can't do. You know your strengths and weaknesses better than anyone else.
Can anyone think of a mandatory-reading book in high school that has 200 instances of C-word (phag) or R-word (ergneq) instead of the N-word?
I cannot, and I teach that grade level. I'm pretty sure the former, however, would have parents, grandparents, and dead great grandparents all doing propeller spins and would be banned faster than you can blink an eye.
[...]student in the class who always complained that the Civil War was "really about Southern culture and the Southern way of life," pointed to the old African-American being ridden like a pony by his masters children and said "that could be my great great grandfather. That is what you "way of life" was to us. Do you realize that? And the other student said that "no, no one had really shown him what slavery was like for the people who were slaves."
I can't stand Confederate Apologists, and you can always tell who they are - they've got the Confederate flag painted across the back window of their beat up brown trucks like it something to be proud of (and it says something about the mentality of this country - I fly the Communist Russian flag on my antenna and my car gets keyed. I paint an enduring symbol of racism, treason and slavery on my back window and nobody says a thing). There are too many of them here in Michigan and something like that would never make them change their minds - instead, you'd get some empty blow back about how "poorly those poor Whites are treated now compared to lucky and fortunate Blacks due to 'reverse discrimination.'"
Posted by: J Enigma (the Transhumanist! Who has a new desktop computer and is happy about it) | Dec 31, 2011 at 05:21 PM
I am in a difficult position here: Kit is saying that Laiima is wrong to speculate about my leaving. I don't want to be involved in this discussion in any way. I don't want to try to make peace as I do not think it is possible, and I do not have the resources to spare. So, for Laiima's sake, I will say publicly: I am leaving, this is not safe space for me anymore, I will not be posting here again unless I hear that things are significantly different.
I know that TBAT has my email address. I DO NOT WANT to be contacted to discuss this. I have done more crying over it already than I can possibly afford. Someone else can fight that fight.
Posted by: MaryKaye | Dec 31, 2011 at 05:29 PM
Ahh... come to think of it, upon the fifth re-read of it, the third part of my comment should probaly have a TW: Racism. My apologies for forgetting it.
Posted by: J Enigma (the Transhumanist! Who has a new desktop computer and is happy about it) | Dec 31, 2011 at 05:29 PM
@MaryKaye: I know that TBAT has my email address. I DO NOT WANT to be contacted to discuss this.
I found that totally uncalled for.
TBAT is not in the habit of using people's email addresses to track them down and implore them to keep posting.
Confidentiality and respect for privacy is a very important to me and I dislike the implication that I have to be preemptively "warned off."
Posted by: Mmy | Dec 31, 2011 at 05:35 PM
And Mmy, do you think your comment was called for? Knowing what MaryKaye has been through lately? Knowing that she has JUST SAID that she's walking away from this blog, so you're aiming your barb at her back, basically? Do you think she should be psychic, to KNOW that she's safe from you using the information you have in a way she wouldn't like? Because right now, I wouldn't feel safe from you or Kit in any way.
I've been lurking here a long time. I won't be any more.
Posted by: interleaper | Dec 31, 2011 at 05:56 PM
@interleaper: And Mmy, do you think your comment was called for?
Yes I do. She said she was walking away. Fine. That is completely up to her. I would have said nothing had she not felt it necessary to "warn us off." Which implies that she has reason to believe that we would be showering her with emails. Which we would not.
Do you think she should be psychic, to KNOW that she's safe from you using the information you have in a way she wouldn't like? Because right now, I wouldn't feel safe from you or Kit in any way.
So, what now you think it is okay to go around accusing me of misusing your information? Cause that is what you are saying.
Every bloody thing that gets sent into TBAT is confidential. That is an agreement that was made long ago. And for anyone ever to suggest that I would misuse it is incredibly insulting to every one of us.
Posted by: Mmy | Dec 31, 2011 at 06:07 PM
I ...
... I really don't know what happened in this conversation.
Posted by: Timothy (TRiG) | Dec 31, 2011 at 06:49 PM
Me neither.
...
Pie?
Posted by: MercuryBlue | Dec 31, 2011 at 06:57 PM