 Guitar, The No.1 Ladies Detective Agency, racism, etc
|
Jul. 6th, 2009 @ 02:01 am 
|
|---|
Feeling rather sadface at the moment, for various reasons - a list which includes "still feeling sick and exhausted despite sleeping all evening" - so shall talk about some awesome things, and should-be-awesome things. I want to put something about Barack Obama on that, but I suspect that I won't feel right posting about Barack Obama until I can devote the time and energy to explaining why I'm quite frustrated about him as well as still pleased by some things about him, too.
Earlier this evening I took on the guitar tab for Black Sabbath's Iron Man, mostly just the opening riffs - not only are they pretty awesome, but it's also good practice for learning to do hammer-ons and bends. I love my Vox Valvetronic AD50VT amplifier - it has a lot of settings that emulate a range of amp styles etc, so by adjusting a few knobs, I can get it to sound just right for different music styles. (For Black Sabbath: UK 80s amp style, crank the gain a bit, throw in some reverb, and go.)
The guitar practice is a good lesson in patience, actually. I'm enjoying it, and I know I'm getting better - I'm much, much better than I was when I started, and I'm gradually improving over time. But I want to be good at this already, I want to play awesomely, and I can't. I try to believe that I will be able to, but it's going to take a long time.
Usually it's hard for me to sustain interest in something like this - I think it helps that playing guitar is consistently fun, and errors don't persist. I don't practice guitar for a few minutes, then look at what I've done and sigh at how much it sucks. One day I'll probably work on recording music I play, and so I will then have something that persists after I put the guitar down, but right now, it's just the memory of enjoyment.
I find myself reluctant to watch the first few episodes of the No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, despite having heard good reviews of it. I'm wary of it, I think, because the same people who recommend the series are often people who recommend the books, and I have some trouble with the books. Alexander McCall Smith always seems to write a little condescendingly to me - even when he's dealing with very adult subjects, his African-native characters, up to and including the intelligent and resourceful Precious Ramotswe, seem to be written like children's book characters. Up to a point, they're written like children. It bugs me a lot, and I read the first book, but beyond that, I just couldn't bring myself to get into it.
It weirds me out that so many people give the series such outstanding reviews. I find myself doubting my perceptions of the book - I mean, so many people say it's so wonderful, so am I the one who's wrong when I find the writing so problematic? Am I judging too harshly because I know that the author of this series of books about a black woman in Botswana is a white man?
And yet, the reviewers are generally white non-Africans, and even the non-white reviewers who praise it whose responses I've read have been American, and y'know, not that I want to bag on Americans or anything, but Americans of all races have a tendency to be a tad reductionist in their assumptions about African people, especially African natives from rural areas. (As do people from Europe and Australia and quite a lot of Asia.)
I'm in kind of an awkward position, really, in terms of speaking on this one. On the one hand, I am, in some respects, African, and I care quite a lot about the peoples of southern Africa.
On the other hand, I'm white, and I'm also Australian. I don't have major Authenticity credentials for critiquing the depictions of Botswanan native women.
On the gripping hand, no, really, it read like a children's book, even when the subject matter was adult, and Precious Ramotswe is written like the characters of kids' adventure books. I wanted to love it, and I couldn't bring myself to do so.
|
![[User Picture Icon]](https://v2.dreamwidth.org/16080982/8491) |
| From: | ![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png) rainbow |
|---|
| Date: |
July 5th, 2009 06:58 pm (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
Re 1st Ladies', I don't understand what you mean by "reading like a kids' book" and the cahracters being written like children; are you up to expanding on that?
The only thing that stands out to me for the first is that they're books that would be fine for kids to read as well as adults -- but from your expressed frustration I don't think that's what you mean. (To me just about any cozy mystery is in that category; I started reading Agatha Christie when I was 9 or 10; she's not particularly cozy, but she seems sort of like she was pre-cozy cozy, if that make sense.)
(note: I'm not trying to challenge your perception of the writing being problematic, and I'm saying that specifically since you said you find yourself doubting your perceptions. I just want to understand them, if you feel up to explaining them more. And if you don't, I'll live.)
![[User Picture Icon]](https://v2.dreamwidth.org/3974986/75896) |
| From: | sami |
|---|
| Date: |
July 6th, 2009 01:32 pm (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
The language is very simplistic. Precious's perspective is very... limited. She's written as adventurous and determined, but her thought processes, her perspective, are less mature and complex than Harry Potter's.
McCall Smith is very much buying into the "delightful children" view of African natives. It's a very colonialistic kind of condescension - the books could have been written very similarly fifty or a hundred years ago.
Precious Ramotswe is supposed to be highly intelligent, but McCall Smith writes her like a precocious child, not an intelligent adult.
|
| From: | rainbow |
|---|
| Date: |
July 6th, 2009 08:03 pm (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
That confuses me more, actually. ::wry smile::
To me Precious doesn't seem childish, limited, or simplistic at all; to me she seems to have a balance, maturity, calmness, intelligence, and centeredness that I envy. I love that another culture is presented as very different than but not worse than the modern western one, and that it has its own disadvantages *and* advantages, instead of the usual western attitude of "our way is better, those poor people are to be pitied". I like that the problems aren't shied away from; aids isn't named, but the effects are referred to often; the huge number of orphans is evident; poverty and a very different standard of living is clear. A culture with different values is presented as not lesser than western culture but very different and better in ways.
(And now I'm doing the doubting my own perceptions thing, too...)
I loathe the HP books.
I find Harry very immature (he's a child, though, so it's understandable). He's annoying, self-centered, dishonest, and whiny. Dumbledore is deceptive, manipulative, and dishonest. He uses children for his own ends! Snape ::shudder:: is emotionally abusive and furthers his own damage on the children. There's little recognition of the trauma a child abused as he was would have gone through; instead he's abused more by the adults who should be caring for me. And then the writing centers on adventures boys and men have while girls and women are very much shoved to the side and disempowered -- or turned evil. Most adults are shown as people children shouldn't trust; children are shown with not much other options than lying and fighting. Violence between houses is subtly condoned. (note: I used to love the books; then I reread them a couple years ago when the last one was coming out and ..gah.)
There's little recognition of the trauma a child abused as he was would have gone through; instead he's abused more by the adults who should be caring for mecannot do it.
|
| From: | rainbow |
|---|
| Date: |
July 6th, 2009 11:27 pm (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
*nod*
and I'm blushing furiously that my subconscious was so busy when I typed that -- I wrote "the adults who should be caring for *me*" rather than "him".
I knew what you meant! It's okay!
|
| From: | rainbow |
|---|
| Date: |
July 7th, 2009 12:04 am (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
*g* thank you. So embarassing!
| From: | axelrod |
|---|
| Date: |
July 6th, 2009 04:51 am (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
seem to be written like children's book characters. Up to a point, they're written like children.
*That's* what bothered me about them (says the white USian) - the fact that the author is a white man just makes more off. So it's not just you.
|
| From: | sami |
|---|
| Date: |
July 6th, 2009 01:34 pm (UTC) |
|---|
|
|
|
|
(Link) |
|
Good to know.
I really thought we were beyond the point where people would take his kind of colonialist condescension at face value, you know?
|
|
