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I have no idea how well or poorly this is going to go over, but I've not got another place to put this. I also have no idea if I'm making sense.
I like stories with explosions and action and I most definitely want stories that are giving me something to sink my teeth into. I think it might be obvious where I lean if you look at what fandom I am in - Supernatural, Torchwood, Dr Who, Harry Potter, The Dark Is Rising, Good Omens, Sherlock Holmes. I like the flash and the bang and the feel of action in the very modern genre sense.
This is counterbalanced by my desire to see issues hashed out in stories. I enjoy stories that aren't - for lack of a better way to put it - about happy, straight, white, able-bodied, Christian men. I like stories that try to take a look at the real world. I want stories I can relate to, as a queer, disabled, female bodied reader. I want stories that can teach me, as well. Stories, as much as anything else, can teach you how to live in the world - even fantasy stories. Even fairy tales, after all, have core lessons (although I hope none of us are running around riding talking blue bulls).
Finding a happy medium for these desires in storytelling - both as storyteller and listener - is hard for me. I first came up against this as a storyteller when I joined![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
lgbtfest this year. I wanted to tell a story about not fitting into the monosexual box, but I didn't want to preach or pull out of character or sound like an after school special that reassures us that "different people are okay too" but only reinforces the idea that there is a "normal" that "good" people adhere to.
When I was younger, I encountered this in a lot of books. In memory, the YA section was full of preachy after school special books. Sometimes it was the poor girl learning to live life with a disability - and it only served to remind me that the disabled are separate and need coddling. Many "women are people too!" books seemed, to my mind, to only reinforce the concept of a sexual dichotomy, that women are inherently different from men somehow. For the most part, I didn't read queer books and perhaps there aren't as many, but I can easily imagine what they could be like.
A key to these stories is that the crux of the story is that a character is disabled or female or a person of color. That would be the entire point. The whole movement of the plot is that, for example, Izzy was in an accident and now she can't walk. It's her inspirational story of how she learns to live with herself when she can't do anything she loves and an able-bodied person teaches her that she's still worthy of love*.
I've seen that done horribly a lot. I've seen it done well a couple of times, notably in the film Murderball. Of course, Murderball is about sports and a sports team, not an inspirational story of learning to overcome "difference" to function in the world.
I find it's a line I can often, disappointingly, draw between published fiction and pieces I read online. In fully published storytelling, I find that - with some exceptions, obviously - that if you have a main character of any kind of minority, dealing with the issues of that minority, the majority of the plot will be focused on that. The entire story - novel, movie, television episode, short story - is about this problem. In the above example, Izzy's entire life, as far as the reader can tell, is about her missing leg. There is nothing else. It's not that she's a concert violinist with an amputated leg who is trying to navigate Prague while being chased by Nazis and stairs are posing quite the issue; it's that she can't be able-bodied (and able-bodied = happiness or wholeness) and she needs to be taught to by happy by the "normal people*.
In unpublished, self-published, etc. storytelling, often a character may encounter discrimination of some kind, but they're also doing other things with their lives. Norrington is trying to hide his relationship with Jack Sparrow so they aren't tried for sodomy, but, even as they're trying to trick the governor, they need to find the long lost map to the Fountain of Youth before it falls into the hands of the plague-ridden undead and they unleash endless undeath on the whole of the Caribbean.
Am I just reading the wrong books? Is there a way to get people to talk about better stories, when they exist, or a place where we can talk about the problems of stories that treat minorities in this manner?
*I'm using Cynthia Voigt's Izzy Willy-Nilly as an example because I've been cleaning out bookcases to donate books to the local library book sale and found it. Some well meaning person gave it to me when I was 9 and dealing with living with my own disability. I do not advise giving this book to any young person living with a disability. Ever.
I like stories with explosions and action and I most definitely want stories that are giving me something to sink my teeth into. I think it might be obvious where I lean if you look at what fandom I am in - Supernatural, Torchwood, Dr Who, Harry Potter, The Dark Is Rising, Good Omens, Sherlock Holmes. I like the flash and the bang and the feel of action in the very modern genre sense.
This is counterbalanced by my desire to see issues hashed out in stories. I enjoy stories that aren't - for lack of a better way to put it - about happy, straight, white, able-bodied, Christian men. I like stories that try to take a look at the real world. I want stories I can relate to, as a queer, disabled, female bodied reader. I want stories that can teach me, as well. Stories, as much as anything else, can teach you how to live in the world - even fantasy stories. Even fairy tales, after all, have core lessons (although I hope none of us are running around riding talking blue bulls).
Finding a happy medium for these desires in storytelling - both as storyteller and listener - is hard for me. I first came up against this as a storyteller when I joined
lgbtfest this year. I wanted to tell a story about not fitting into the monosexual box, but I didn't want to preach or pull out of character or sound like an after school special that reassures us that "different people are okay too" but only reinforces the idea that there is a "normal" that "good" people adhere to.When I was younger, I encountered this in a lot of books. In memory, the YA section was full of preachy after school special books. Sometimes it was the poor girl learning to live life with a disability - and it only served to remind me that the disabled are separate and need coddling. Many "women are people too!" books seemed, to my mind, to only reinforce the concept of a sexual dichotomy, that women are inherently different from men somehow. For the most part, I didn't read queer books and perhaps there aren't as many, but I can easily imagine what they could be like.
A key to these stories is that the crux of the story is that a character is disabled or female or a person of color. That would be the entire point. The whole movement of the plot is that, for example, Izzy was in an accident and now she can't walk. It's her inspirational story of how she learns to live with herself when she can't do anything she loves and an able-bodied person teaches her that she's still worthy of love*.
I've seen that done horribly a lot. I've seen it done well a couple of times, notably in the film Murderball. Of course, Murderball is about sports and a sports team, not an inspirational story of learning to overcome "difference" to function in the world.
I find it's a line I can often, disappointingly, draw between published fiction and pieces I read online. In fully published storytelling, I find that - with some exceptions, obviously - that if you have a main character of any kind of minority, dealing with the issues of that minority, the majority of the plot will be focused on that. The entire story - novel, movie, television episode, short story - is about this problem. In the above example, Izzy's entire life, as far as the reader can tell, is about her missing leg. There is nothing else. It's not that she's a concert violinist with an amputated leg who is trying to navigate Prague while being chased by Nazis and stairs are posing quite the issue; it's that she can't be able-bodied (and able-bodied = happiness or wholeness) and she needs to be taught to by happy by the "normal people*.
In unpublished, self-published, etc. storytelling, often a character may encounter discrimination of some kind, but they're also doing other things with their lives. Norrington is trying to hide his relationship with Jack Sparrow so they aren't tried for sodomy, but, even as they're trying to trick the governor, they need to find the long lost map to the Fountain of Youth before it falls into the hands of the plague-ridden undead and they unleash endless undeath on the whole of the Caribbean.
Am I just reading the wrong books? Is there a way to get people to talk about better stories, when they exist, or a place where we can talk about the problems of stories that treat minorities in this manner?
*I'm using Cynthia Voigt's Izzy Willy-Nilly as an example because I've been cleaning out bookcases to donate books to the local library book sale and found it. Some well meaning person gave it to me when I was 9 and dealing with living with my own disability. I do not advise giving this book to any young person living with a disability. Ever.
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I really hate the books about women that fall into this, too. "This girl dresses up as a boy and does things as well as a boy can!" You see it a lot in fantasy-- it's why I could never get into Tamora Pierce's Alanna books. I don't want to see a girl overcoming prejudice to become a knight. It's fucking FANTASY, I want to see a world with FEMALE KNIGHTS ALREADY IN IT. I am so tired of fantasy and sci-fi with our prejudices in it where women have to omg!overcome. Yeah yeah it's all uplifting and crap and I do love a good cross-dressing story, but it's just so tiring to see so many worlds where anything can happen and it's full of the same old crap. How uplifting is that?
This also contributes to the idea that "books about minorities are books about minorities." Books about black people are about being black, not about being black people who do people things. Even fantasy books you get the same old, same old racism, except they really are purple* but they still have to omg!overcome. It's odd because I do love stories about racism, but it's always so simplistic when it really doesn't have to be. And especially in YA it has that afternoon special vibe.
*I absolutely hate the "I'm not racist, I don't care if you're white, black, or purple!" People aren't purple, stop being so facile.
From:
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And yes. I do think that this kind of story turns minorities into objects. It encourages the idea that only stories about straight, white, able-bodied men can be stories - all of the rest are lesson plans, not really interesting or plot-ful but designed to only Teach You To Be A Better Person. And then even the amazing, well written, well plotted, amazingly characterised stories that involve minorities are pushed aside, assumed to be the horrible lesson plans that no one really wants to see - not the minorities they're about and not the people they're designed to teach. (Although, sometimes I wonder if these stories aren't designed to teach minorities that these hardships are their own damn fault for not being "normal enough.")