Politically iffy books and growing up just fine

[deborah]

Fillyjonk is spot-on in her analysis of Twilight and a new study about women who watch romantic comedies, and I'm not just saying that because she's name-dropping diceytillerman. Her essay reminds me of nothing so much as Herbert Kohl's "Should We Burn Babar?" in his book of the same name. Kohl angsts for some time about protecting his young daughters from the sexism of Barbie and the colonialist racism of Babar, and finally comes to the conclusion that he shouldn't, although he should talk about his concerns with his children and provide them with lots of alternative media. And lo and behold, the kids grow up okay. Not undamaged, but okay. The mass market romances I consumed like oxygen as a preteen absolutely contributed to some of the dysfunctions of my adolescent sexuality. But on the other hand, how many teenage girls don't have dysfunctions when it comes to romance and sex? Any?

Fact: Every accusation of misogyny levelled at the Twilight series is accurate. Seriously. The gender politics of those books are appalling.
Fact: I still enjoyed them (well, the first few), and would have adored them at 12.
Fact: That's okay.

No book is every book. Let me repeat that, because I cannot say it often enough: No book is every book. How about another one: The best remedy for bad speech is more speech. If you want readers to get strong female role models, you're going to need to give them a lot of books: books with strong femme girls and books with strong butch girls, books with strong girls and books with strong boys, books with strong assimilated girls of color and books with strong unassimilated girls of color. You need to let them read crappy books and mediocre books and great books. If you don't let them read books with negative gender roles, you aren't just cutting out Twilight, you are cutting out Speaker for the Dead, all of the later Murry-O'Keeffe books, Zelazny's Amber universe. If you cut out media which occasionally have reactionary sex and gender roles, you have to rule out Buffy The Vampire Slayer.

And let's not even get started talking about applying these same rules to sexuality, class, or race.

We live in an imperfect world, and a lot of fantastic media are products of our imperfect world. All we can do is the best that we can do.

(Although a corollary to this is we shouldn't be ashamed of admitting when some of our favorite books, television shows, or movies are sexist or racist. Imperfect world, remember? The only way to win this fight is not to ban the sexist and racist media, but to shine a light on the problems. It doesn't make me love Casablanca any less to acknowledge that "You'll have to do the thinking for both of us" is not particularly a feminist sentiment. But to deny the inherent sexism of the movie, or to brush it off by saying "it makes sense for those characters!" or "why can't you just enjoy it!" or "it's historically accurate!" makes the infection that much more insidious. The way you love these texts and still grown-up okay is by recognizing what's wrong with them and love them anyway. But the recognition is vital.)

Comments

[diceytillerman.livejournal.com]

Word. So well said.

(And not just because I got namedropped at SP. :D)

The things you say here? Are not just why I'm a critic, they're why I love being a critic.

[deborah]

Exactly. It's fun *and* useful.

[meloukhia.livejournal.com]

Very well said. Better to read problematic literature and talk about why it is problematic than to never address it (and thereby pretend that the problems highlighted in the literature do not exist).

[deborah]

Thanks. It's always good to talk what's causing problems.

[cqs.livejournal.com]

But are there limits? Is there a point at which the not-OKness of one aspect outweighs the enjoyment, especially if you're talking about children's literature?

An obvious analogy might be movies that are rated R, or even PG-13: there's nothing wrong with them, but there's a recognition that some of the things that arise in the movie might not be appropriate for people at a certain age to process—violence, sex, or even issues. Having read, been scarred by, and subsequently recovered from Heinlein, it's my feeling that there's plenty in his writing to enjoy...but that I wouldn't hand it to my son and say "read this" until I was certain he had the mental faculties to critically assess Heinlein's gender roles.

And again, from a different tack: you say that one shouldn't throw out Casablanca just because of some anti-feminist moments. But would you throw out a movie for a single moment of non-consensual nudity? I'm cheating here, because I happen to know from an earlier conversation that that's exactly how you feel about MASH, if I recall it correctly. Why throw out one but not the other?

[deborah]

It's tough. The M*A*S*H example is the easiest one to cope with, because I wouldn't throw it out, in the sense of "prevent my kid or anyone else's from watching it". I just hate it because of that moment. I also hate Sleepless in Seattle because of what it says about love, but I wouldn't throw that one out, either. When I was 13 and wanted to read Mein Kampf, my mother said "I wish you'd put it of until you're older, and I trusted her and didn't read it (ever, as it turned out).

Heinlein is actually a better example, as are romance novels, because while I know no post-college men who think what happened to Hot Lips would be acceptable in real life, I know plenty of adult men who haven't recovered from Heinlein, as you have, and plenty of adult women who haven't recovered from romance novels, as I have.

But what can you do? Your kids will read unacceptable texts, watch unacceptable films. You can't stop them. You can say to them "don't read this book all your friends love, because it demeans women". But I think you'll find it more successful to say "read this fabulous book about a girl named Alanna. Read Uglies. Read Flora Segunda."

That's not to say I wouldn't sit down and have a conversation with my hypothetical son if I saw him reading Heinlein at 10 -- or worse, Ayn Rand.

Now, if I saw my hypothetical son reading the Stormfront website... well, mercifully there aren't any children's fictions I find that repugnant.

[mrmorse.livejournal.com]

I think this gets back to fillyjonk's post. It's disheartening to realize that Twilight is popular because readers find its model of romance appealing. But the reason why it's appealing is that there's so much cultural reinforcement for that model in general. It's not like readers are only exposed to healthy models of relationships and then read Twilight (or Heinlein) and proceed to embrace that model.

Trying to restrict access to Twilight in the absence of recognizing that our culture is soaking in problematic relationship models is basically a form of scapegoating.

[deborah]

This is a better answer than mine. It's not that Heinlein doesn't have a deleterious effect on the male geek psyche, but the fact is that Heinlein's politics and gender politics came from somewhere -- and both his politics and gender politics have affected so much other parts of our culture and our world. Preventing a kid from reading Heinlein is not going to prevent him from learning that smart girls are awesome, as long as they are also beautiful and hung up on men.

... although now I am starting to ponder Joss's childhood reading.

[writinghood.livejournal.com]

Wonderful reponse -- I went and read the fillyjonk post you linked to before I came back here and read yours, and bingo, here are the reactions and thoughts *I* had while reading, but written out all intelligent-like!

And honestly, I thought the commenter who said that all the criticism of Twilight by people who hadn't read it reminded her of the conservative religious reaction to Harry Potter had a point, even though she got jumped on for saying it. I'm just highly suspicious of what looks like groupthink in any forum... I don't mean fillyjonk's post, which was not really about bashing Twilight; she was just using Twilight as a particularly salient example to support her point, and she didn't need to have read it to do so effectively. And she was explicitly *not* one of the people moaning about what the hell is wrong with people, omg even *grown women,* who actually like this crap; or how it wouldn't matter except the fact that it's marketed towards impressionable teen girls (won't SOMEONE think of the children??). Hello, missing the point of the post.

Gotta love a good old-fashioned moral panic.

[deborah]

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<cite.And honestly, I thought the commenter who said that all the criticism of Twilight by people who hadn't read it reminded her of the conservative religious reaction to Harry Potter had a point, even though she got jumped on for saying it. I'm just highly suspicious of what looks like groupthink in any forum</cite>

Yes, exactly. Twilight's problematic, but I was at dinner last night with some friends who were all talking about how they hadn't read it, but they'd heard it was virulently anti-feminist, and I just wanted to scream. The books are problematic as hell, but honestly, do we have these groupthink reactions to Heinlein? Tolkien? Pullman? I could go on naming authors whose books have massive gender problems, but (a) aren't Mormon, (b) aren't women, and (c) aren't popular among women and girls.

[writinghood.livejournal.com]

Oh, well said.