Meta: It Doesn't Feel Like That's a Story

[chasingtides]

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 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.

Comments

[amory-vain.livejournal.com]

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.
I feel like a lot of that genre consists of "look at Sally performing a task that the boys said she wouldn't be able to! Isn't that special and wonderful, even though said skill is considered completely unextraordinary in boys?" Which is crap, because if we're really equal, why am I supposed to be so excited about a girl doing something boys do all the time? The female characters in these stories come off looking like the mentally-handicapped sibling, for whom managing to hold a spoon properly at breakfast is a major victory.

(obviously, not exclusive to women's rights, but more sermon!lit in general. I'm thinking in particular about the massive amount of historical fiction I used to read)


Sadly, I can't think of an well-done treatment of this sort of issue in published fic off the top of my head--though I will say that until I was in the middle of high school I often thought back to the number of Star Wars novels I read in my youth when framing minority issues. Whether they mean to or not, a lot of sci fi lit does a fairly good job of addressing issues of race/gender/sexuality through their treatment of nonhuman species, often. And it is sad that the portrayals seem to need to be disguised this way for them to make an impression.

[amory-vain.livejournal.com]

On a re-read, maybe I should've picked a better analogy than "mentally handicapped sibling." Erg.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

In middle school, I had an English teacher who fed us a great deal of sci-fi and fantasy, so by the time I was in high school, I knew I could go to, say, Le Guin for things. On the other hand, if I went to my local public library or checked out my summer reading lists, they were full of stories that ready like that.

"Look at Janey going to school even though she's disabled! Let's cheer for Janey even though the only thing causing her difficulty are the problems set up by society, like stairs and the fact that no one believes she could be smart!"

The ones for women and people of color read the same way. To me, some queer lit reads that way, but, again, I don't read a lot of queer lit (queer theory, yes, queer lit not so much) so I'm not a good judge.

I know I've talked about World War Z before, but it still stands as a good example. There's a character in a wheelchair who fights zombies. He talks about how his wheelchair does limit him in his ability to fight zombies, but he works with it and he's successful and, hey, he's fighting zombies and doing better than most able bodied people did. That character earned his story. He's not special because he's in a wheelchair. He's special because he kills zombies.

[amory-vain.livejournal.com]

To me, some queer lit reads that way
I read a lot of GLBTQA lit in high school, in the middle of my major totally-fetishizing-gay-men phase, and yeah, I'll say it's just as bad, though the approach is somewhat different. Instead of holding queer characters up as awesome for ordinary accomplishments, they end up hyper-normalizing them. Most novels read something like "Todd's just like everyone else, except he's in love with his team's running back. Watch him go through his day JUST LIKE YOU, KIDS, and then fall in/out/in of love. With a man but that's not important. I don't know about you, but I want to read about an individual, not Todd-the-everyman-who-happens-to-be-gay. xP

Ooh, WWZ is definitely moving up a spot or two on my to-read list! That's the kind of thing I love to see. :D

[maladaptive.livejournal.com]

...No... yeah that's about it.

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.

[littledarkvoice.livejournal.com]

First of all, word!

Second of all, I feel like I have two preferences when it comes to stories about women/minorities, and I like to read one or the other, depending on what my mood is like that day. The two preferences are as follows:

1. Stories where the society in question, for the most part, has gotten over or lacks its various prejudices, and the woman/minority hero kicks some ass and makes some pretty explosions or gets their Ph.D.

2. Stories where the society in question hasn't gotten over or doesn't lack prejudices entirely, AND AGAIN the woman/minority hero kicks some ass and makes some pretty explosions or gets their Ph.D. While the prejudices they face are an obstacle, they shouldn't be the only obstacle to the main character (grad school isn't hard simply because people don't like that I have ovaries, it's also hard because it's hard, dammit!) and the character should have some traits beyond what people perceive as their "disadvantage". They are commended for their ability to fight zombies rather than just their ability to get out of bed. Nor are they punished for their "ambitions" in the end. (If there's anything worse than a "minority overcomes" story, it's "minority overcomes for a while but dies tragic death anyway" story.)

I think these two preferences fit two different need sets that everyone has depending on the day of the week. I feel like Option 1 is to some extent the wish-fulfillment option--not naive wish-fulfillment, since we should all be working for a prejudice-free society. I think, on days when we are sick of sexist bullshit, we should be able to take comfort in a book where girls always have been knights and that's perfectly okay, because why read if it doesn't make you feel better? These societies can also give us a model to work towards, too.

Option 2, on the other hand, is just as important. I think it's important to see characters who do have to struggle against society's stupidity, but their gender/race/religion/disability/sexuality/what-have-you can't be their only problem in an After School Special kind of way. Also, this kind of thing strikes me as important when writing in historical genres--realistically, if I'm writing a story about a woman in Ancient Rome and staying true to the time period, she'll have to put up with some sexist bullshit. This doesn't mean she can't kick ass at the same time despite her culture.

So--two different options, for two different moments in one's reading. However it all comes together, I think the key is treating characters as characters, and not solely as their Issues with a capital I. Hope that makes sense?

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

I think you've hit the nail on the head - it's in these stories that the character's minority status provides their only obstacles in life. For my Izzy Willy-Nilly example, she's not moody and unhappy because she's in high school and because the senior was "using" her on a date and because she's a teenager and by definition, most teenagers are moody and unhappy, at least part of the time. Instead, she's moody and unhappy because she's lost her leg - when she had both legs, she was happy as a clam.

And it's this - the only difficulty in a character's life is their minority status - that might be getting to me. It smacks of, "If you were just normal, you wouldn't have any problems." It's a patently false statement - life is hard, regardless - but it also carries the subtle undercurrent that the discrimination/oppression/etc is the fault of the minority - if they just knew enough to be male, straight, white, etc, then they wouldn't be having these problems.

[chasingtides.livejournal.com]

(You know I've seen people doing that with sexuality too? "I don't care if you're gay or straight or purple with pink polka dots!")

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.")

[rugbybaby.livejournal.com]

I wonder how much it has to do with the storyteller. Granted, I have not tossed myself out into the literature world. I don't have as good a grasp of what's out there. But in theory, I think one of the reasons we have the stories we do, and not the ones you're talking about, is because people can't get to that place themselves. That they can't see past a disability they don't even have. It's not even a plot point. It becomes the plot itself because they kind of don't get it. And this really encourages me to read other literature by folks who know what they're talking about, but as you pointed out, how do you get your hands on it?

I wonder if authors think real life is too complicated to put in their stories. Like if it's all for entertainment anyway, keep it simple and don't rock the boat.