Moments of Permanence - A curious parallel

From: tevriel.livejournal.com Date: March 21st, 2009 02:12 am (UTC) (Link)

Oh, that's fine, at this point in a discussion this wide-ranging it's pretty much a given that total strangers will turn up here and there, it was just a kind of "... I'm on rydra_wong's, aren't I?" moment.

:more iconlove:

Not to get too academic about this, but if people are trying to play the "it's literary criticism, not a discussion about race" card, then I will smack them in the face with an existentialist salmon: the author has been dead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_author) for over forty years now. Writers and editors get no bonus Credibility Points. None.

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From: lady-ganesh.livejournal.com Date: March 21st, 2009 02:19 am (UTC) (Link)

This one is FIERCE.

I remember the criticism course I took in college; not once, for some reason, did we discuss sucking the virtual cock of the people we were criticizing. They must have been Doing It Wrong.

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From: tevriel.livejournal.com Date: March 21st, 2009 02:33 am (UTC) (Link)

I... am out of distinct Saiyuki icons. I need to fix that, soon. Have a Tendou Souji, he's smokin' hot too.

Literary criticism should more or less ignore the author as an entity. Taking the author into account is just not relevant; personal abuse is also not relevant, which is why at the beginning of all this, appropriately, no-one was saying that the authors in question were Bad People, just that there was some unquestioned assumptions in their work that were problematic.

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From: lady-ganesh.livejournal.com Date: March 21st, 2009 02:36 am (UTC) (Link)

He sure is. Have I done Goku's abs yet? No, no, I haven't. I like Saiyuki entirely too much, but it's helpful in RaceFail posts, where I try to use mostly PoC.

Yes, exactly. I was saying back in my own journal-- and, IIRC, have said elsewhere, it's like these people have never been criticized before, which just makes no sense at all, except perhaps critics are gentler in genre fiction? I used to read The New York Times Book Review every weekend, and Avalon's Willow was the gentlest brush of reprimand compared to that.

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From: tevriel.livejournal.com Date: March 21st, 2009 05:11 am (UTC) (Link)

... that icon is awesome.

I've tended to use icons which were either appropriate-by-keyword (a lot of mine don't feature people/characters at all, and my favourite for discussions that are about ethics and art is probably this one), but when going to default, I've tended towards Goku or Tendou, because they're a) relatively neutral b) awesome. Whereas my default icon, which is a pair of sock-clad toddler feet, which is as race-neutral as you can get, I think, except the text is "socks to be you" which isn't quiiiite the message I'm trying to convey here.

(I'm pretty confident that my adoration of certain manga and Japanese kids' shows qualifies as cultural appreciation, not appropriation, so I'm relaxed about this. It's not that I think Mizushima Hiro, the actor who plays Tendou in Kamen Rider Kabuto, is hot like a thousand fiery suns because he's Japanese, it's because, no really, hot like a thousand fiery suns. Mei-chan no Shitsuji, with all its cracktasticness here and there, justifies its existence merely by the blatant fanservice that is Mizushima Hiro on his knees, in the rain, in formalwear, declaring his devotion. Swoon.)

(Also, watching shows where every single character and actor is Japanese is a wonderful way to have a respite from having to be bothered about race implications in casting.)

Ahem, yes. You're very right - there's something very odd with these reactions. It's true reviews tend to be less vicious in genre fiction, in my experience, because it's an insular and geek-fallacy-ridden (http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html) environment, but seriously, if you can't take genuine - and, at least at first, constructive - criticism, you shouldn't be writing in public. Suck it up.

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From: lady-ganesh.livejournal.com Date: March 21st, 2009 04:42 pm (UTC) (Link)

Thank you!

Yeah, most of my icons are people and/or expressions. And Tendou is very pretty indeed.

(I really do have to watch Kamen Rider, don't I. Hong Kong action movies are, in my experience, the absolute most fun in terms of diverse casting.)

I've heard people say 'but being accused of racism is terrible!' and yeah, it is, but dude, I've read and heard so much worse! There may be a correlation between writers of fanfiction and people who've acted sanely in this...hmmmmm.

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