sistermagpie (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
sistermagpie) wrote2005-05-24 01:55 pm
sistermagpie) wrote2005-05-24 01:55 pm
My rambling contribution to the recent discussions about "responsible" fiction
There are a lot of discussions/comments on this topic recently, but it comes periodically in fandom. It's the one about writing "responsibly" or "with compassion" about real life issues like (as recently listed): rape, abortion, grief, alcoholism and miscarriage.
It's funny that I think a lot about writing, but this is one subject that I
To me these kinds of topics just aren't that different from any other topic. They occur in real life to real people, and can be used in fiction in as many ways as there are authors. Some authors are going to have a gift for making them seem real in their fiction whether or not they really know anything about them, just because for whatever reason they imagine them well. Some people are going to write them dreadfully with the best research and intentions. Some people are going to write these things with no interest in the above.
I guess the thing with me is, while I understand the importance of labeling these kinds of things because we know there are people who want to avoid them and I see no reason not to do that for them, I don't think I make that much of a distinction between them and any other human experience. For me, for instance, badfic is badfic. If a newbie author on ff.net reveals how little she knows about what it's like to have a job when she attempts to write about child characters she's aged up, it's just a newbie author who can't convincingly write about holding a job. It doesn't become more offensive to me when that same author decides to write about rape or eating disorders or grief or a miscarriage and shows the same level of cluelessness. In fact, one of the few times I sampled RPS I was thrown out of the story and back-clicked not because of any moral issues about it but because I just didn't believe this was what it was like on a movie set at all and it embarassed me!
Is it wrong to write about a subject just to play on the readers' emotions? I can't say I think so, since that's pretty much the goal of most fiction. Besides which, I understand how those fantasy stories work. As much as I can laugh at the concept of the healing!cock cliché I can understand where it comes from even if I don't like to read rape!fic. Frankly, I think part of the trouble is that a lot of writers simply aren't skilled enough to play on readers' emotions so always wind up reaching for hyperbole because they only know the character has to hurt *really really bad* and the only way they can put that across is through reaching for abuse and taboo. The fics that really work often don't have to reach that far--they use the small and humiliating to greater effect, and those are the kinds of things that everybody knows about and probably doesn't need to research. You can understand, almost, why some authors prefer grand tragedy, though. They can imagine a pain that demands respect in itself because that’s what they associate with the word "miscarriage" or "rape" (though the real things carry their own piles of mundane awfulness) that is less scary to try to describe that something like: "I don't find happiness anywhere" or "I'm lonely" or "I think if I disappeared tomorrow nobody would care or notice" or "I wish I were special but I'm not." I don’t think the advice to this person should necessarily be to learn more about the commonly seen emotional responses to rape or miscarriage. They would probably do better to focus on what it is they really want to write about.
It's funny, in a way, that you rarely hear anyone giving advice on how everyone should write mundane feelings more responsibly (better, please, but not responsibly). In HP-fic, for instance, you probably won't hear too many people demanding more realism and sensitivity in portraying the bully character or the bigot, although that's as much a part of the human experience as alcoholism. On the contrary, sometimes there almost seems to be the suggestion that this sort of thing must be done sparingly to avoid being offensive to the victims of these things. And victims they must be--even if the victim of the bully is by and large in a happier, stronger place than his/her tormentor they must be the one we sympathize with, according to many people, even if the other way around might be a more interesting story, and more in line with what the author wants to say. Are people offended by HP for its unrealistic portrayal of child abuse? Aren't the Dursleys a form of exactly the kind of hurt/comfort fic we see in fanfic, only in this case it's more the suffering/reward fantasy? Is it just that HP is obviously tongue in cheek? Even if it is, aren't kids invited to identify with suffering!Harry because it's fun and not just pity him?
Also, just as these topics, like any other, are going to be handled badly, so are they probably going to be reduced to plot points if the author needs it. It seems like a very recent thing to feel that some special subjects must always be handled sensitively--often according to a specific formula. It seems like in the past it wasn't considered strange to throw rape, child murder, miscarriage, madness and anything else under the sun in there because it was dramatic, without stopping to think about how this would effect the victim on a personal level.
I remember reading an article a while ago, in fact, that talked about this kind of trauma, and how there’s this instinct to overstate it. This article was talking about sexual abuse in childhood, specifically. It wasn't brushing the subject off as not being painful, obviously, just saying that the idea that a person could not ever recover from it, and that it must become the defining experience of his/her life, was not necessarily accurate. You just have to wonder about things like that, really, not because there aren't people who aren't seriously traumatized by this in the long-term (and that doesn't make them worse or weaker than people who aren't), but because what is the fear surrounding those people who aren't? What is the big thing that divides some painful experiences from other experiences, so that writing ignorantly about the life of a doctor is different than writing ignorantly about the life of a victim of abuse--is it just that the latter is more tasteless?
The possibly troubling fact is that being sensitive about trauma does not necessarily mean you're acting the best way you could be. For instance, there was this whole idea about how trauma should be handled after 9/11 that required making people tell their stories about what happened to them as a group within a set amount of hours after it happened. There were some companies near the towers who hired therapists to come in and do this with their staff. In fact, this is one of the worst things you can do, because it keeps people from forgetting all they might and, even worse, listening to other stories gives people false memories of more trauma. It seemed people had more of the right idea about handling trauma back in WWII where bombing raid victims were given tea and rolls and a place to sit comfortably. (Is it me, or do people seem to be portrayed as far more fragile than they once were?)
Anyway, in thinking about why this "tell the story within X hours to a therapist" was so popular the article writer suggested it was because it played to the vanity of the rest of us. There was something attractive in the idea that you could, by being the sensitive, understanding listener, take credit for healing another person in one big dramatically cathartic scene. We all know that scenario from h/c fics--how many times has Rosie Gamgee kept Frodo from needing to go over the sea with a well-timed cup of tea, a few hugs, and the gift to "feel" and understand everything Frodo went through as he tells it?
I guess all these angles just seem like such an unavoidable phase for many younger people especially, though plenty of adults still get a lot out of it too, that it doesn't seem as insensitive as all that. People are encouraged to learn to "feel it" but the thing is they do "feel it." Or at least, they feel something, only they're not very good at describing it. So in their fics maybe they're just wallowing in the feeling of being mistreated, and that comes out as gratuitous abuse!fic. Or, of course, otoh, they know exactly what they're doing and they're just writing to a kink. In that case telling them to be more realistic is really just not understanding the genre or the style. You might as well tell the person to be more realistic as you might tell a fantasy writer magic doesn't exist or tell a romance writer to write her male characters more like the guys in Tom Clancy. For better or worse, excessive abuse, trauma and suffering are a big part of the fanfic genre, and the genre has developed many of its own formulas, even if many of them can be cringeworthy. Maybe my problem is I just find all of it so weird and wonderful, just for existing.
It's funny that I think a lot about writing, but this is one subject that I
To me these kinds of topics just aren't that different from any other topic. They occur in real life to real people, and can be used in fiction in as many ways as there are authors. Some authors are going to have a gift for making them seem real in their fiction whether or not they really know anything about them, just because for whatever reason they imagine them well. Some people are going to write them dreadfully with the best research and intentions. Some people are going to write these things with no interest in the above.
I guess the thing with me is, while I understand the importance of labeling these kinds of things because we know there are people who want to avoid them and I see no reason not to do that for them, I don't think I make that much of a distinction between them and any other human experience. For me, for instance, badfic is badfic. If a newbie author on ff.net reveals how little she knows about what it's like to have a job when she attempts to write about child characters she's aged up, it's just a newbie author who can't convincingly write about holding a job. It doesn't become more offensive to me when that same author decides to write about rape or eating disorders or grief or a miscarriage and shows the same level of cluelessness. In fact, one of the few times I sampled RPS I was thrown out of the story and back-clicked not because of any moral issues about it but because I just didn't believe this was what it was like on a movie set at all and it embarassed me!
Is it wrong to write about a subject just to play on the readers' emotions? I can't say I think so, since that's pretty much the goal of most fiction. Besides which, I understand how those fantasy stories work. As much as I can laugh at the concept of the healing!cock cliché I can understand where it comes from even if I don't like to read rape!fic. Frankly, I think part of the trouble is that a lot of writers simply aren't skilled enough to play on readers' emotions so always wind up reaching for hyperbole because they only know the character has to hurt *really really bad* and the only way they can put that across is through reaching for abuse and taboo. The fics that really work often don't have to reach that far--they use the small and humiliating to greater effect, and those are the kinds of things that everybody knows about and probably doesn't need to research. You can understand, almost, why some authors prefer grand tragedy, though. They can imagine a pain that demands respect in itself because that’s what they associate with the word "miscarriage" or "rape" (though the real things carry their own piles of mundane awfulness) that is less scary to try to describe that something like: "I don't find happiness anywhere" or "I'm lonely" or "I think if I disappeared tomorrow nobody would care or notice" or "I wish I were special but I'm not." I don’t think the advice to this person should necessarily be to learn more about the commonly seen emotional responses to rape or miscarriage. They would probably do better to focus on what it is they really want to write about.
It's funny, in a way, that you rarely hear anyone giving advice on how everyone should write mundane feelings more responsibly (better, please, but not responsibly). In HP-fic, for instance, you probably won't hear too many people demanding more realism and sensitivity in portraying the bully character or the bigot, although that's as much a part of the human experience as alcoholism. On the contrary, sometimes there almost seems to be the suggestion that this sort of thing must be done sparingly to avoid being offensive to the victims of these things. And victims they must be--even if the victim of the bully is by and large in a happier, stronger place than his/her tormentor they must be the one we sympathize with, according to many people, even if the other way around might be a more interesting story, and more in line with what the author wants to say. Are people offended by HP for its unrealistic portrayal of child abuse? Aren't the Dursleys a form of exactly the kind of hurt/comfort fic we see in fanfic, only in this case it's more the suffering/reward fantasy? Is it just that HP is obviously tongue in cheek? Even if it is, aren't kids invited to identify with suffering!Harry because it's fun and not just pity him?
Also, just as these topics, like any other, are going to be handled badly, so are they probably going to be reduced to plot points if the author needs it. It seems like a very recent thing to feel that some special subjects must always be handled sensitively--often according to a specific formula. It seems like in the past it wasn't considered strange to throw rape, child murder, miscarriage, madness and anything else under the sun in there because it was dramatic, without stopping to think about how this would effect the victim on a personal level.
I remember reading an article a while ago, in fact, that talked about this kind of trauma, and how there’s this instinct to overstate it. This article was talking about sexual abuse in childhood, specifically. It wasn't brushing the subject off as not being painful, obviously, just saying that the idea that a person could not ever recover from it, and that it must become the defining experience of his/her life, was not necessarily accurate. You just have to wonder about things like that, really, not because there aren't people who aren't seriously traumatized by this in the long-term (and that doesn't make them worse or weaker than people who aren't), but because what is the fear surrounding those people who aren't? What is the big thing that divides some painful experiences from other experiences, so that writing ignorantly about the life of a doctor is different than writing ignorantly about the life of a victim of abuse--is it just that the latter is more tasteless?
The possibly troubling fact is that being sensitive about trauma does not necessarily mean you're acting the best way you could be. For instance, there was this whole idea about how trauma should be handled after 9/11 that required making people tell their stories about what happened to them as a group within a set amount of hours after it happened. There were some companies near the towers who hired therapists to come in and do this with their staff. In fact, this is one of the worst things you can do, because it keeps people from forgetting all they might and, even worse, listening to other stories gives people false memories of more trauma. It seemed people had more of the right idea about handling trauma back in WWII where bombing raid victims were given tea and rolls and a place to sit comfortably. (Is it me, or do people seem to be portrayed as far more fragile than they once were?)
Anyway, in thinking about why this "tell the story within X hours to a therapist" was so popular the article writer suggested it was because it played to the vanity of the rest of us. There was something attractive in the idea that you could, by being the sensitive, understanding listener, take credit for healing another person in one big dramatically cathartic scene. We all know that scenario from h/c fics--how many times has Rosie Gamgee kept Frodo from needing to go over the sea with a well-timed cup of tea, a few hugs, and the gift to "feel" and understand everything Frodo went through as he tells it?
I guess all these angles just seem like such an unavoidable phase for many younger people especially, though plenty of adults still get a lot out of it too, that it doesn't seem as insensitive as all that. People are encouraged to learn to "feel it" but the thing is they do "feel it." Or at least, they feel something, only they're not very good at describing it. So in their fics maybe they're just wallowing in the feeling of being mistreated, and that comes out as gratuitous abuse!fic. Or, of course, otoh, they know exactly what they're doing and they're just writing to a kink. In that case telling them to be more realistic is really just not understanding the genre or the style. You might as well tell the person to be more realistic as you might tell a fantasy writer magic doesn't exist or tell a romance writer to write her male characters more like the guys in Tom Clancy. For better or worse, excessive abuse, trauma and suffering are a big part of the fanfic genre, and the genre has developed many of its own formulas, even if many of them can be cringeworthy. Maybe my problem is I just find all of it so weird and wonderful, just for existing.
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Ooh, that's very true. People on a whole have this need to protect each other from each other. The dichotomy of it is quite interesting to me; we live in an age where children are protected from the grimmer aspects of reality and where the motto isn't "be strong," but instead to "emote" and let it all out. Things which a hundred years ago would have been laughed off are now seen as major offenses - which is almost ironic considering the now lax view on violence and het sex.
I do agree with your main point. Writers, particularly amateur, young writers, tend to want an immediate, splashy problem that is solved through an immediate, splashy solution.
"Oh noes!!1 Raped/Abused/Laughed at in front of the entire school/tortured/broken up with again!!"
*five minutes and a healing conversation/quick romp in the bed later*
"No, wait, I'm better now."
Interesting that you should mention miscarriage though; I've only seen that issue be handled once in an online story, and it wasn't the main point of it. In that case, it was handled delicately, done as a complete surprise, and healing sex neither featured nor would have at all helped - and the story made that clear. All in all, it was a well done description of an attack that traumatized, but did not break, the woman in question. Weirdly, unlike rape and abuse, miscarriage tends to be avoided. Abuse and rape are easy to grasp, grotesque enough to horrify, but it happens enough so that they can understand the concept of it. Miscarriage and murder, on the other hand, seem to be more reserved. Murder tends only to happen to characters who are loathed (in which case, the author's hatred can be expressed in the other characters contempt and indifference) or who rise again as vampires.
I think to an extent this scenario is wishful thinking. Some writers do use such themes for therapeutic reasons, but (I would hope!) most who writer about these matters haven't actually experienced them. It's almost as though they're putting out problems to be resolved that are far bigger and worse than anything they've known, and then following up with a reassuring result. Nothing in their own lives could be as terrible as this, and if these characters' problems are that easily solved, why wouldn't it be even easier for the writers themselves? Because the authors are naive, they don't think the recoveries through; someone raped is healed through a positive sexual experience, someone abused is immediately helped by removal or reform of the abuser, someone depressed is automatically made happy by talking things out with a friend/potential romantic interest.
It's possible just to write it for the drama, and I'll admit to having used the "talking it out" scenario before. Not quite to the extent you mention here, in my case it was wanting to explore certain view points and not even really resolve anything, but I can understand why people would write such things. It's very satisfying to write, if less so to read, and it's very easy to write. None of those pesky long-term issues, just immediate entertainment.
I'll admit too to enjoying well done aspects of what you've mentioned. Placing in abuse or trauma or suffering makes a story darker and grittier, provided that whatever the problem is isn't immediately resolved and shoved under the rug. Fluff is fun, but who really wants to read about the adventures of Mr. and Mrs. Smith as they brush their teeth, walk the dog, eat breakfast, and head to work? It's much more exciting and enjoyable a read to see them in acting out scenes of adventure and excitement, where danger comes to a head and where lives are at stake.
It all comes together. Writers, particularly new ones who haven't considered all of these details, want an interesting, dynamic story that isn't that difficult to actually write. They write of these big, huge problems that must be overcome, and then return things to normalcy through Magic Sex and/or Conversations. Characters become less individual, and far more ever-changing aspects that can express whatever emotion the writer feels the need to have explored.
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However, it's not only badfic that deals with for instance rape in an "irresponsible" way. Otherwise good fics can portray a rapist as being "justified" in raping, and have the rape victim fall in love with the rapist etc, and I personally find that much more disturbing then when a badfic does the same thing. I guess I do because badfic in general sort of strikes me as uncencored, printed fantasies, rather than something the writer has consciously thought through, but when I come across a well-written story with a essage I have a hard time to swallow (which, of course happens in published literature, movies, TV shows all the time, for instance I remember a Spanish movie where the protagonist raped his love interest in the middle of the film, and she forgave him and married him at the end of the movie), I find that disturbing, because I have to wonder "what is the author trying to say here?"
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There are times in which "irresponsible" writing bothers me, though. I have a masochistic need to watch "7th Heaven" (my brother and I, since we have no family values, used to bond by MST3K-ing it), and their "very special episodes" drive me crazy. I think it's in part though because it [i]pretends[/i] to be a socially responsible vehicle of commentary--the creators pride themselves on it being a "family show" and tackling "tough issues"--their handling of which I almost always find offensive. Of course, I'm also a nit-picky person--the girl who grumbles when movies and tv set off the inplausibility meter. I certainly didn't have [i]high[/i] expectations for [i]Mona Lisa Smile[/i], but as soon as the story took the tact that professors at Wellsley would think Picasso was so OMG!kerrazy and non-art in 1950-whatever, I was done.
I do think there is a vanity angle, too. I hate to be all "blame the media! Rawr rawr rawr!" but I think we have a lot of weird issues about pain and suffering in American culture--a very odd mixture of Puritan/pioneer stoicism and also being totally confessional. My mom used to watch Dr. Phil and gave it up when she felt all he was doing was setting up really exploitive situations. What kind of "therapist" encourages people to bring their [i]children[/i] on national television to discuss their most intimate family problems? Why did anyone think this was a sensible thing to do, ever? And he always winds up by thanking the families for being willing to "share" their stories with the nation, which has always seemed like a weird concept to me.
Then again, I think a lot of "therapy culture" privileges processing emotions in a certain way. I don't mean to knock therapists, but I think there's a sense via psychology-in-the-media that everyone should roughly follow such an such pattern. And some people get angry when the "victims" don't seem victimized enough, or refuse to articulate it. A friend of mine in college once wrote in her blog something that referenced her having been sexually molested as a child, and amazingly people wrote back and called her a liar--based solely on the fact that in other parts of the blog she'd referred to her boyfriend, and "if she had [i]really[/i] been molested, she wouldn't trust men and would never want to have sex." People assume that someone who's quiet is being aloof rather than shy, or unfeeling rather than reserved. I've done some volunteer work in death-penalty abolition, and met victims' family members who didn't ask for the death penalty for their loved ones' murderers, and lots of them have gotten hate mail or media coverage suggesting they didn't really love the people they had lost. People can be really threatened when our psychological mythology is bucked.
I do find it worse when something well-written comes up with a situation I have difficulty contenancing. I've been on a bit of a Josephine Tey binge recently and I just read [i]The Franchise Affair[/i] for the first time, and liked it much less--not because of the story itself, but because the narrator was so aggressive in pushing the story's conclusions. It always struck me as sort of quaint and charming when both Inspector Alan Grant and Lucy Pym believed that faces were clues to characters--but less so when the narrator affirmed that everyone with slate-blue eyes was sex-crazed, and various "good" characters expressed their desire to beat up a sixteen-year-old girl (or their approval of it having happened). I live in a world where the beating of even very nasty sisteen-year-old girls isn't something I can heartily embrace, and having it so aggressively pushed on me was rather unpleasant. But in order for me to care, I have to either care a certain amount about the author or some element of the story, otherwise I can just write it off as "it takes all types." (It's so dreadful when you have the feeling an author you admire would scorn you or despise you personally, or vice versa).
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This reminds me of an utterly awful (published) science fiction work I read - it ends with the utter destruction of the world and pretty much everyone in it. I could just see the draft of this novel being discussed in a writer's group and people saying, "Yeah, well, there's a lot of action and the plot is pretty well-paced, but I just don't *care*", and the author then upping the stakes - not just destruction of the city, but the country! No, the world! They must care now!
(My only concern was that the more irritating of the main characters survived, leaving open the potential for a sequel.)
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It's not a position I can embrace, and the parts of the letter Kingsolver quotes are obviously written emotionally rather than critically. (Which isn't to say it's not a thoughtful response, it's just personal rather than detached, which is how I think we're trained to respond to Questions about Literature). But I still like that Kingsolver admits that it got to her, and that although it didn't mean she was ready to start censoring herself and the stories she felt were important, it helped her articulate a sort of perpetual uneasiness which made her thoughtful.
Of course, Kingsolver is doing this as a very, very polished writer--and in her essays, when she writes about her own divorce or miscarriage or rape she tends to be quite terse--so it's not quite the same instinct as angstfic, but I think it's related.
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