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Analyzing the Wired Article on the Hugo Awards, Part Two

Posted on August 25, 2015 | 1 comment

Yesterday I kicked off an analysis of the Wired article “Who Won Science Fiction’s Hugo Awards, and Why It Matters” with a word frequency analysis. It’s ironic that an article covering a struggle over diversity in science fiction would focus so heavily on men. Here are a few of the findings:

  • The pronoun “he” was used 74 times, and the pronoun “she” only 16.
  • The nouns that were mentioned 20 or more times were, in order of frequency, Puppies, people, Beale, and Hugo.
  • Mentions of male authors greatly outnumbered mentions of female authors.
  • Mentions of white authors greatly outnumbered mentions of people of color.
  • The list of people who had won Hugos that appeared at the beginning of the article included only white men. Ursula Le Guin, Octavia Butler, and Connie Willis–women and people of color who have also won Hugos–had to wait until the very end, after the leaders of the Sad and Rabid Puppies, people who gave up Hugo nominations, Pancho Villa, MC Escher, Darth Vader, Churchill, FDR, and Stalin.

This isn’t unusual. This is same-old, same-old, an everyday erasure of diverse voices. It’s the sort of thing that happens when a journalist goes with the flow in the midst of a backlash. Worth pointing out, but let’s move on. I have two more interesting erasures to look at.

Here’s an obvious one that I bet most everybody missed.

[T]he balloting had become a referendum on the future of the genre. Would sci-fi focus, as it has for much of its history, largely on brave white male engineers with ray guns fighting either a) hideous aliens or b) hideous governments who don’t want them to mine asteroids in space? Or would it continue its embrace of a broader sci-fi: stories about non-traditionally gendered explorers and post-singularity, post-ethnic characters who are sometimes not men and often even have feelings?

There’s a word missing here, and that word is fantasy. The Hugo awards are for science fiction and fantasy. So this article that is supposedly about the future of the genre has left out half.

Oops.

What else has been left out? Well, let’s look at the choice given in the paragraph I just quoted. It’s between white men with ray guns fighting aliens and mean governments and stories about diverse characters with feelings.

This is really just a fancy rephrasing of the Sad and Rabid Puppies claims that anything with diversity is just about identity politics.

No way, nohow.

Believe it or not, authors who include diverse characters also include diverse plots and new ideas. Feelings are only one aspect of a genre that is constantly pushing boundaries, always going bravely “where no one has gone before.”

Just off the top of my head . . .

  • Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein asks us: what happens when human beings use science to play God?
  • Octavia Butler’s Parable of the Sower gives us a possible vision of life-after-apocalypse, and her trilogy Lilith’s Brood explores not only the complexities of interspecies mating but also the way they’re affected by a differential of power.
  • Ursula Le Guin’s The Dispossessed shows us a vision of a post-capitalist world and then questions her own utopia.
  • Amy Thompson’s The Color of Distance dives into the hard science of ecosystems.
  • Nnedi Okorafor’s book of short stories Kabu-Kabu invites us to jump into a taxicab driven by a magical madman and then cheats us of the kind of endings we have been conditioned to expect.
  • Molly Gloss’ Dazzle of Day gives us a spaceship with plausible physics — one that didn’t break the speed of light.
  • Samuel Delaney’s Dhalgren presents an apocalypse that breaks time and space, with a book that breaks the genre.

I would suggest that anybody who reads books like these and sees only identity politics is missing out. These books represent an ever broadening horizon of new life, new civilizations, and new ideas.(1) They help us understand the world in a different way, see possible consequences of new technologies, look at different options for the running of human society. In short, they’re the future of science fiction and fantasy.

Which is what the Wired article was supposed to be about, after all.

By Robbert van der Steeg (originally posted to Flickr as Eternal clock), via Wikimedia Commons

By Robbert van der Steeg (originally posted to Flickr as Eternal clock), via Wikimedia Commons

Notes:

1. You might be asking, “But what about the menz? Are you saying they can’t have diverse plots and fresh ideas?” On the contrary: white male authors moved beyond ray guns decades ago.  I just finished rereading Roger Zelazny’s Nine Princes in Amber and gorged myself on the setting, which was so vivid it turned into one of the most compelling protagonists I’ve ever met. Short of Robert Holdstock’s worlds, that is. Meanwhile, China Mieville gets an A+ for the antihero in UnLunDun. And I will never look at parasites the same way again, after devouring Scott Westerfeld’s Peeps. Don’t even get me started on what Steven Moffat and Neil Gaiman did for Doctor Who. And then there’s George Orwell, whose dystopia 1984 is one of my three favorites.

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Analyzing the Wired article on the Hugo Awards

Posted on August 24, 2015 | 2 comments

I have a lot to say about the Hugo awards, but even more to say about the discourse surrounding the Hugo awards. Let’s start with the Wired article, “Who Won the Hugo Awards and Why it Matters.” For an objective-seeming article, they sure did give a lot of air time to Theodore Beale and the Sad Puppies. They reduced the various arguments over the aesthetics of science fiction to identity politics. And they privileged male voices over female ones.

Don’t take my word for all that, though. Wired is for geeks, yes? Let me be a geek for a moment and give you a word frequency analysis. Here’s a list of words sorted by frequency. (Many of the “little words” like articles and prepositions have been removed, and where the same word was used the same number of times, they’re listed in the order in which they appeared in the article.)

Enjoy.

(74 to 30 words)

He is I who Puppies

(29-20 words)

people are said have with it not been they his Beale be was like Hugo

(19-10 words)

their Sad Hugos had We about one me has she no When because more just were you Martin all I’m don’t up some fiction winners sci-fi want Best doesn’t which says other white Would Awards into out Her from Torgersen told very Bellet

(9-5 words)

year what science New it’s nominated those most Writer them Story Black Puppy Correia can then going go first Day fans women ballot writers Though After much even author blog will him say got My mean nomination Award among fantasy come authors time Past years many male While Rabid few where before John ever over Worldcon room did also man novel made same we’re woman how that’s get asked something think being enough back Losers

(4-3 words)

SINCE future words too nominees voters World night often Puppies? there Short won us understand know goes way year-old see really two gay do book against thinks Both books merely called saying they’re he’s Vox considered reason once Jemisin consider every away political little win winner down withdrew Sasquan Three-Body Problem dream love trophy voted include genre color three final movement broke felt voting number Puppygate record Convention announced question popularity slates February categories W Campbell its history sometimes men vote Game wasn’t fan turned rocket Editor Mixon winning female There’s here ways our matter Puppies’ Brad Why novelist phone name named politics person whose Times racist actually popular need stuff himself slate son American example point if around half-savage including anyone gets let idea still any certain replaced Now attempt sense read write Annie together sister own honor Martin’s too? give Liu translator Cixin Liu’s Novel-winning don rubber coneheads Alfie

(2 words)

highest writing K Robert Gods changed each hands tell stories backlash campaign dominated mostly leaders faction calls itself rules process meanwhile plus Spokane Saturday everybody’s minds year’s released finalists Hugos’ become largely fighting either hideous characters membership least closed George RR novels HBO defend wrong single took home five only Related Long Here’s gave far behavior left-leaning troll middle added simply human lives none explaining could care less thing former reached didn’t came based explained Wendell serious right? start call Justice value Water Falls beset whenever Leckie’s debut using earlier Army assertions fact pretty oppose currently quality Ooh well married leader Theodore Voice complex later speaks four published age Native rode genetic racial women’s suffrage democracy America feels claims use acknowledged she’s run screaming Nora should dark system your am Given Certainly hard Look blogged went off outspoken wanted hole nerds sworn continued simple started gains literary makes Thor Culture Max message heard these lesbian shit decades You’re right force names toys acknowledge met may aren’t ones tie-dye week turning community guy loves lot brings having attended rejects everyone agrees Baen teenagers optimistic showed Ken L Wesley Chu Alfies data committee Kloos

(1 word)

honors TRUE travel extraterrestrials tales imagined rocket-shaped Isaac Asimov Arthur C Clarke Harlan Ellison Philip Dick Heinlein recent expanded storytellers gays lesbians presentation August rockets joined Goddesses ethnicities genders sexual orientations whom spaceships Early shift sparked organized resulted two-pronged played dirty taking advantage loophole arcane enables relatively dominate Motivated bought memberships Washington PM vast auditorium packed trufans dressed wizard garb corsets chain mail prevail? upon mere contest recommending balloting referendum focus brave engineers ray guns aliens b governments mine asteroids space? continue embrace broader non-traditionally gendered explorers post-singularity post-ethnic feelings? stake forked dues allowed June cast ballots whopping percent bestselling epic adapted Thrones gathering integrity predicted dramatic evening began appearance cosplaying Grim Reaper Puppy-endorsed candidate Puppy-provided Novella Work Form instead preferred full list Laura J stirring speech post meticulously described venomous Internet troll-troll ground between belong here’ believe must find non-toxic discuss conflicting points view closing stand marginalized groups seek seen fully Birth helps pedigrees towards motivation entitled outrage wake defeat compatriots silver ship looks marital aid begs target them? campaigns fairness Larry Utah accountant gun store owner NRA lobbyist created ago seeing SPCA ad featuring forlorn canines staring camera singer Sarah McLachlan joke That leading cause puppy-related sadness boring message-fic laughing initially spokesman cartoon manatee speak English kept super complaints overly others Social Warriors plot development Particular targets derision Chu’s Nowhere decides traditional Chinese family phenomenon lies inexplicably Ann Ancillary protagonists gender Leckie conveys pronouns throughout Correia’s York best-selling Warbound finalist lobbying effort chief warrant officer Reserve preachy fun bristle blogosphere sexist homophobes argument interesting beef class-based Torgerson blue-collar speculative snobby exclusionary ignore conservative CHORFS Cliquish Holier-than-thou Obnoxious Reactionary Fanatics East deployed lamented cognitive dissonance soon becomes criteria window notes interviews African-American know-it-all lecture race identity anti-diversity storytelling ought Ah course particularly add militant self-described libertarian blogger loosely God origins offered recommendation absolute posted directed followers nominate precisely Beale? electronic rocker shortlived group Psykosonik wealthy Minnesota entrepreneur Republican jailed tax evasion languages father children youngest boy six great-grandfather Pancho Villa according SJW blood details significant kids qualify tribal mix Mexican analysis Nonetheless voluminous writings writes hobby working designer openly opposes diversity homosexuality quibbles Northern Italy representative um highly inclined security liberty thus easy manipulate favors direct obviously emailed disappointed failed quote Wall Street Journal’s label despised conversation sort walking designed MC Escher turns unexpected dizzying sampling noted NK educated ignorant launched explication research expect supports term intentionally baiting word overtones calling offend crap next beat half-savages Europe actual proper Africans African-Americans leads problems shitting top toilets indoor plumbing okay? civilized Hundred Thousand Kingdoms populated brown-skinned matriarchal warrior Darre characterized interaction opens comments section stop train bitch standard modus operandi supremacists jail helped believes character plays Performance art Andy Kaufman embraces nemesis role inhabits star circling outer rim solar Darth Vader breathing heavily wants enraged flipping tearing hair completely losing chaos generally destructive kind incendiary rhetoric possible naïve piggyback worst accused providing politely moderate front shit-stirring provocateur worked distinguish themselves Churchill FDR wound side Stalin whether tarnished association hacked found part lead small publishing company Castalia House editors goals leave big smoking giant Fuck massive gesture contempt watch burn forward administrators modify nominating try prevent manipulation proposals supporters control Specifically numbered vile faceless minions hardcore shock troops mindless perfect obedience acknowledging solely contrary anti-SJW Okay might deploy lord minion acts mainstream press reporting gaming April fan-favorite edged outside field cared treated nerd-on-nerd violence unfortunate ugly confined literature’s crummier neighborhoods inconsequential longshot revolt push traditionally underrepresented maligned sub-genre they’ve everywhere sound starship engines exist vacuum Adria Richards Twitter-shames dudes cracking off-color jokes PyCon tech developer conference fired fields murder threats GamerGate threatening rape temerity offer opinion videogame strain comic apoplectic Captain hatred change frog yes happened uttered peep ribbit Wars raging levels corners society Substitute weaponry verbiage easily so-called mens’ rights driven froth Mad Fury Road Charlize Theron seeks rescue bunch sex slavery sidekick another flashpoint emerged telephone weeks plan Xanatos gambit set enemy does loses surprise email sent ceremony crowing scorched earth strategy pursued SJWs evidence hold initiative wrote major demonstrates extent politicized degraded left predicting convert send loud clear Bring claimed victory Scalzi three-time opponents war folks straight anywhere stands shoulders minority trans- bisexual folk put groundwork laid lots position firmly plant feet bullshit large absolutely rabbit vanguard creators consumers nerdiverse several protest minute subset playing getting taken else defined curiosity if? yearning wonder modern feel infected academic torpor correctness aside supporter grumbled self-indulgence MFA kid yourself knew wouldn’t sell unreadable support waiting Sasquan’s annual Masquerade costume competition begin Friday overheard clad swathed companion similar type promoting agree self-published urban things Goodnight Stars received partly days emotional interview hall controversy bullied SJWs’ awesome public face figure ball abstractions knows great seven-book Monster Hunter series ally workshop baby friends tense wiping tears hurt Blonde-haired fair-skinned covered tattoos Portland Oregon adopted who’s Vietnamese mom grew liberal inclusive environment noses [after hearing] N-word growing trying persecution narrative ponies freeway different cars heading direction Dude car driving What’s folded everything badge queer shape-shifters crap’ real’ grasp Nerd everybody Khaleesi roundabout select works surely million written proof? collected linked File well-considered almost without fail special sustaining lost counting show utter sincerity hoity-toity accolade bestowed Ivy Leaguers frequent claim caliber included Ursula Le Guin Octavia Butler Connie Willis referred Meryl Streep longshoreman excluded highbrow politically correct shouldn’t second reward truckloads money sat hotel overlooking center River Can’t sells copies doing innovative? enormous success blinded struggles nearly except amidst throngs acknowledges merit self-publish increasingly reckoned predicts eventually share formally discriminated learn necessarily anything campaigning nominations logrolling gone during run-up graying fandom concerned average event free volumes audience? nominee Toni Weisskopf stirred home? swarmed hateful discourse name-calling? People’s refusal under trufan tent? broken sure repaired throw Party tradition he’d fall printed invites Welcome Mocked Assholes hired band rented square-foot historic mansion magic markers winners’ cones Kevin midnight hopefully last bestowing dubbed Alfred Bester Demolished first-ever streamlined s hood ornament take sting Late parallel universe hadn’t intervened trophies extra decided Eric Flint eloquence rationality posts kerfuffle legendary Silverberg biggest cheers honored Marko who’d first-time until would’ve anyway clearly stunned important German-born Hampshire Puppy-powered making again shaking hand knowing tonight beats

pencil and notebook3

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Reading the Hugo nominations

Posted on July 12, 2015 | Leave a comment

A year ago, I thought the Hugo awards were determined by some Highly Knowledgeable Panel of Experts. I didn’t realize it was a vote available to a broad range of science fiction fans, and so I never expected to be able to participate in the decision. Now, thanks to all the ruckus, I paid my $40 supporting membership to WorldCon, and I’m doing my due diligence to read through the nominations.

That $40 is a stupendously good deal! You get to download excerpts or full versions of most of the nominated works. (This is at the discretion of the nominee.)

However, the voting is a big job indeed. There are a lot of categories, and five works per category.  I’ve decided to limit myself to only a few categories and to stop reading a selection if I determine it should go below No Award or if I decide not to vote in that category. My priority is the novel category, since the winner gets listed in the public library’s Hugo and Nebula winner handouts, which I’ve consulted many times over the years. However, I’ve been sampling other things as well.

Here are a couple of things I’ve looked at:

The Goblin Emporer, Novel. I bought this yesterday and am about 1/4 way through it. It will be a contender, though I haven’t looked at the others yet.

“Listen,” a Doctor Who episode. Pretty good psychological drama, though not the quality of the first Doctor Who episode that was ever nominated. I’ll likely not vote in this category, because I’m not all that interested in three of the competitors, so it wouldn’t be fair.

Voters everywhere are puzzling over what to do about the Sad and Rabid Puppy nominations. Cross them off the list because they were produced by slate voting? Cross the Rabid Puppy nominations off the list because the guy who made the list and then threw out a call to fascists and gamergaters and men’s rights activists, Theodore Beale, is a self-described Good Sociopath who advocates white nationalism, “peaceful” ethnic cleansing, and an end to women’s sufferage?

I haven’t made up my mind. I’ve started with due diligence, but that led me to this gem of a quote, from a collection edited by Beale:

With Brad’s present offering, “The General’s Guard”, the casual reader might be tempted to dismiss it as just another “anything boy can do girl can do better” propaganda piece, written in placative submission to the tripartate goddess of modern feminism: Hysteria the Relentless, Outrage the Untiring, and Unreason, handmaiden of PMS . . .

Whew. Unless I have accidentally flipped over to a mirror universe, I can safely say that most readers would not enjoy a book filled with this kind of political diatribe.

However, I will give Sad Puppy nominations a fair chance.

cats voting

(edited on 7/12 to remove mention to short story collections, which are not actually on the ballot)

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My last sci fi culture war post

Posted on June 22, 2015 | Leave a comment

June 22 2015 – Time for me to move on and get cracking on the Clarion West writeathon! Over the last few months I’ve been blogging about a sci fi culture war declared by a creepy weirdo. All the drama and excitement is still going on, and I’m probably gong to continue to be interested in it and writing about it. But dear readers, I’ll spare you any future posts. If I have anything else to say, I’ll just edit one of the earlier posts or append my thoughts to this blog post.

Here’s a summary of what I’ve written so far.

The bizarre story of how sci fi fandom reacted when a member of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of Amercia called a fellow author a half-naked savage and followed it up with more hate speech: Neo-fascism in science fiction, 2013-2015.

Some follow-up thoughts I had on the concept of political correctness, including my general opinions and the history of the term as one-percenter propaganda.

A suggestion on how to deal with hate speech of the kind the sci fi community has been facing.

 

A look at how the culture wars might affect TOR Books.

That’s all!

6/22/2015 Update – Very happy to see that the TOR boycott has been countered by a book-buying campaign.

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Oh, that’s bad news for sci fi publishing

Posted on June 20, 2015 | 1 comment

So there are some culture wars going on in the world of sci fi book publishing, and by culture wars, I mean that a neo-fascist with influence has openly declared war on feminists and dragged all kinds of people from all ideological stripes into it. What happened yesterday is all-around bad news for readers and writers of sci fi.

Some context: we’re in the throes of a controversy over Hugo ballot nominations. A group of conservatives who have been complaining about anti-conservative bias in sci fi publishing have been putting together slates of mostly conservative authors. They called it the “Sad Puppy” slate. For the first two years, it included nominations in several categories. This year, though, it included so many nominations in so many categories that it almost entirely pushed out non-Puppy nominations.

There have been many accusations and a lot of outrage, but this wasn’t necessarily the intent of the Sad Puppies. The Puppy nominations swept the ballot in part because Vox Day, owner of the new publisher Castalia House, put out his own Rabid Puppies slate the very next day, which had considerable overlap with the Sad Puppies slate, and then made a call out to Gamergaters to pay the thirty bucks or so to make nominations. (As it turns out, only the Sad Puppies nominations that were also on the Rabid Puppies slate made it onto the final ballot.) If you give Sad Puppies the benefit of the doubt, their movement was co-opted by Day.

As part of the general atmosphere of accusations and outrage, an editor at Tor books made a Facebook comment that was broadly taken to slander all Puppy supporters and authors. Ordinarily, it would have gone unremarked and unnoticed by almost everybody and dropped out of the Facebook feed, as such things do . . .

. . . except that Day saw fit to take a screen capture and release it several weeks later, thereby re-igniting the firestorm.

To make a long story short, Tor — which publishes a wide variety of conservative and other works — is now facing a boycott. It was called by Day, and also by others. (To his credit, Larry Correia, the original Sad Puppies slate-maker, has asked people not to boycott Tor. Thank you for that.)

Day went farther than this. He wrote:

. . . if Ms. Gallo and Mr. Nielsen Hayden are still employed by Tor Books in 2016, I will not nominate any books published by Tor Books for any awards. . . . I am the leader of the Rabid Puppies, I do speak for them, and I have absolutely no doubt whatsoever that they will follow my lead in this regard. I am not concerned about whether the boycott is “successful” or not. The simple fact is that if Macmillan is at all interested in the long-term success of Tor Books, it will jettison both Ms Gallo and Mr. Nielsen Hayden . . .

In chess terms, this is what would be called a “fork.” If Gallo and Hayden are fired, many progressives will be angry and stop buying Tor books. On the other hand, if Gallo and Hayden are not fired, Tor also faces a boycott, plus a threat to take away Hugo nominations — which is a credible one, since Day swept the nominations this year.

Either way, Tor’s hurt, and who loses out? The readers.

Meanwhile, who benefits? Vox Day, who openly spouts hate speech of every flavor, and the publishing house he runs. That’s creepy.

The other bad news? Day is likely to keep on with his war, distracting authors fro the important job of writing and readers from the important job of reading.

Anyhow, I went ahead and ordered a book from Tor, The Goblin Emporer by Katherine Addison. New author, hope I like her!

Further reading

For a firsthand look at Vox Day’s most extreme views, without the noxiousness of going to his blog, try the google search:

“Vox Day” site:http://wehuntedthemammoth.com/

For more on the Tor boycott, including who supports it and who doesn’t, visit “The Hammer of Tor 6/19”

For more on the overlap between the Sad and Rabid Puppy slates, visit this post from the ComixMix website.

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Doctor Who: Invasion of the Ant People

Posted on June 15, 2015 | Leave a comment

From my collection of dollhouse pictures, I bring you . . .

Picture of dollhouse living room invaded by ants

kristinking.org

A living room full of ants. Because . . .

Picture of an ant invasion featuring a Dalek and the Jon Pertwee Doctor.

kristinking.org

The Third Doctor dropped a bag of flour, and apparently his Dalek housemate didn’t notice.

Tisk, tisk.

 

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Enid Blyton on gender, class, and race

Posted on June 15, 2015 | 3 comments

Updated Feb 2018

Children’s author Enid Blyton helped shape my gender identity as a “tomboy.” Her Famous Five series included a girl who called herself George, dressed as a boy, and was always delighted to be mistaken as one. In contrast, her cousin Anne liked dolls and dresses and always leaped at the opportunity to keep house. Both characters were sympathetic, but Blyton clearly favored George.

I liked dolls and was offended to be mistaken as a boy, but if I could have chosen, I’d have been George. She ran around getting dirty and she could row a boat all by herself, to the island she owned. She didn’t take nonsense from anybody. She was powerful.

I read every single Famous Five book I could find. The library didn’t carry all of them, but most libraries carried at least a couple. So any time I found myself at a new library, I went straight for the card catalog.

I returned to Blyton in adulthood, once again scouring libraries for her books. The minute I found her books online, I ordered them all straight from the U.K. Now I own every single one Famous Five book, and my spouse and I have been reading them to our kids off and on for several years.

I enjoy them as an adult now, and not uncritically. Blyton wrote in the 1940s-1960s in the U.K., and back then people had much different views of race, class, and gender. So I take note of those aspects in her books.

Let’s start with gender. George is powerful, but Anne is disempowered. She’s a scaredy-cat and her love of dolls is “babyish.” She goes along with the group but never initiates anything. Her love of traditional feminine activities is looked down upon. It’s not all bad, of course. Her caution makes her a good spy and often keeps her from getting captured so she can run for help. But on the whole, I absorbed the message that girlishness made you weak.

Next, class. The Five were solidly middle-class. The villains were mostly working class. The Five often hooked up with another child in their adventures, and those children often tended to be working class — often the unwashed masses who were in need of shoes or a pocket handkerchief, but once given them, used them wrong. Sometimes their parents were the villains and they had to be sent to a civilized home after the Five landed their parents in jail.

On the other hand, the working class status of the friends gave them spunk, critical climbing and exploration skills, a range of animal companions, and the freedom to sneak around. So long as they were willing to conform to the middle class standards of the Five, they were accepted as equals.

And finally, race. I saved this one for last because it’s most interesting to me. One of the books featured a possibly* mixed-race boy nicknamed “Sooty” because the kids at his school thought his black face looked like soot. (Side note: I edited this to say “possibly” because in the comments, J makes a good case for Sooty being mixed Anglo/Mediterranean or “Black Irish” with dark hair, dark eyes, and olive skin.)

My spouse and I had a heck of a time with the name “Sooty”! We were worried that if we read the book as is, our kids use the nickname on the playground and we’d get called into the principal’s office. Nobody wants to get called into the principal’s office! So we explained to the kids that “Sooty” was rude nowadays and substituted his actual name, Pierre, which was quite tricky to do on the fly. I kept saying “Soo-Pierre.” (We did well enough, by the way, that there weren’t any playground incidents.)

Pierre’s nickname was offensive by today’s standards, but the kid himself was cool. He invented nifty gadgets, he was a star student at school, and he was clever and brave. With Pierre, Blyton subverted a whole bunch of racial stereotypes. Nicely done.

The other people of color that the Five run into are “travellers,” which in modern terms would mean Roma. (The term “gypsies” is actually a nasty racial slur). The color of their skin is not important to the narrative and is rarely called out — the books focus on the Roma characters’ class status much more strongly.

One Roma girl, Jo, appears in many adventures. She’s one of the barefoot and dirty people, and also one of the most admired. Most fascinating to me, though, is that in more than one adventure, she is George’s doppleganger. (Check out the excerpt below.)

What does that make George?

I have no answer to that question, so I have to leave it hanging.

So I have no definitive answers to the question of race in Enid Blyton’s work, but quite a bit of curiosity! I updated this post today because of the recent Guardian article, “First modern Britons had ‘dark to black’ skin, Cheddar Man DNA analysis reveals.”

But I will say that I enjoy her books. Give them a try. You might too.

Excerpt

Five Fall into Adventure by Enid Blyton.

‘What’s your name?’

‘Jo,’ said the girl.

‘But that’s a boy’s name,’ said Dick.

‘So’s George. But you said she was a girl,’ said Jo, licking the last bits of ice-cream from her fingers.

‘Yes, but George is short for Georgina,’ said Anne. ‘What’s Jo short for?’

‘Don’t know,’ said Jo. ‘I never heard. All I know is I’m a girl and my name is Jo.’

‘It’s probably short for Josephine,’ said Julian.

. . .

‘It’s really strange,’ said Anne, at last, ‘but Jo is awfully like you, George – same short curly hair – only Jo’s is terribly messy and tangly – same freckles, dozens of them – same turned-up nose . . .’

‘Same way of sticking her chin up in the air, same scowl, same glare!’ said Dick. George put on her fiercest glare at these remarks, which she didn’t like at all.

‘Well, all I can say I hope I haven’t her layers of dirt. . .’

For Further Reading

“Primary school removes Enid Blyton’s Famous Five children’s classics so it could win a race equality award”, Craig McKenzie, The Daily Mail,  December 7 2013.

Blyton, who died in 1968, wrote some 800 books. They have been translated into nearly 90 languages and sold more than 600million copies worldwide.

One of her best-known characters is Noddy, although her greatest output involved adventure books such as The Famous Five and The Secret Seven.

Many contained references that were commonplace at the time but were later deemed racist, sexist or anti-Semitic and subsequently cut or altered.

“Are the Famous Five as racist and sexist as I remember?” by Anna-Marie Crowhurst, Xojane, May 29, 2012.

. . . erm yes, yes they are. They’re still amazing though.

“Jo, the gypsy,” Serge, from the website serge-passions.fr.

Jo is the most recurrent secondary character in the Famous Five series. We see her again in “Five Have A Wonderful Time” and then in “Five Have Plenty of Fun”. Enid Blyton often calls on Travellers (gypsies) in her books. The Galliano Circus series shows us young Carlotta [?], a circus rider, whom we also meet in the “St Clare’s” series. Those characters give the author the opportunity to get us closer to people of a different background, who are often critized, and whose talents and qualitites she underlines.

and

An attaching character, Jo loves her freedom, and refuses any constraints. She loves walking barefoot, singing and dancing in front of the fire. It’s the rebellious, free, primary side of childhood that Enid Byton makes us feel, and we are not insensitive to it.

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Steven Moffat’s work is more complicated

Posted on June 11, 2015 | Leave a comment

I read with great pleasure a post by Jack Graham on the multiple failings of Steven Moffat, showrunner for Doctor Who. Though a devoted fan of Doctor Who, I also enjoy shredding it to bits on the grounds of politics, gender, and race. It gives my brain something fun to do. I’m in agreement with Graham’s closing remarks:

The people in power, the privileged, deliver something, and instead of saying “thanks boss”, you say “not enough – do better.”  Moffat has a harder time pleasing everybody because more people are politicised and vocal about stuff like sexism.  The neoliberal feminism of a privileged ‘ally’ isn’t good enough for them.  And that’s as it should be.  Be reasonable, I say.  Demand the impossible.

I also agree with mostly everything Graham says in his post. For instance: “In Moffat’s show, women are overwhelmingly defined by their traditional gender roles or bodily functions.” Yes. That’s very annoying. Also: “I think the reason that lots of people think Steven Moffat’s version of Doctor Who is sexist is because it repeatedly acts and sounds sexist. Yes. I agree. And: “Moffat’s repeated tendency to have him cosy up to rulers, presidents, kings and queens, bosses, presidents, etc., is quite revolting.” Good point, and a disturbing departure from Classic Who. Finally: “He makes Doctor Who safe for neoliberalism.” Whoa . . . hadn’t noticed that, but now that Graham mentions it. . . yeah. A lot of Classic Who is about the rebels beating the empire, and I miss that.

At the same time, though, under Steven Moffat’s direction the show has done some remarkable things with both gender and politics. Here are five things (out of many) I’ve absolutely loved:

1. In “The Beast Below,” an authoritarian is deadlocked by a moral dilemma it can’t solve. It uses a fake kind of democracy to enforce the status quo: those who dissent are thrown into a pit to be eaten. The status quo relies on everybody forgetting the underlying societal injustices. What ultimately solves the problem? Amy Pond forcing the queen to abdicate.

2. Male domesticity plays a key role in the show. Most dramatically, in “Closing Time,” the plot resolution hinges on the bond between a father and his baby.  For example, Rory is the one who wants to settle down and have a baby, and Amy is the one who wants to put off her wedding in favor of having adventures. Rory has a nurturing occupation (nurse).  And Rory’s father is shown doing household chores. In short, men are moving beyond their traditional gender roles.

3. Shows often revolve around women’s issues of every sort. What saves the day in “The Doctor Dances”? A recognition of the plight of unwed mothers during World War Two.

4. Finally, the power dynamics between men and women are complex. The flirtation between River Song and the Doctor, which spans Seasons Four through Seven, is all about power. They’re engaged in a struggle for domination that lasts four seasons, and that they both clearly enjoy. She has power no other companion has ever managed: she can drive the TARDIS and she knows his name. And, although he apparently traps her in an artificial reality at the close of her story, she reappears inexplicably in a disembodied/embodied state.

5. The TARDIS got sentience under Moffat’s watch. She got to tell her own story and explain the role in his adventures that she’s always had. Sweet.

There’s such a wild abandon of creativity in Moffat’s work. It’s stretching in new directions all the time, and it’s offending and delighting people of every political persuasion. Art does that! So, while I’m perfectly happy to criticize him until I’m blue in the face, I’m equally happy to celebrate him.

But not just him — the show, and all the many writers who craft the characters and situations. It’s easy to oversimplify and place the criticism and celebration on him, which does everybody else a discredit. I’ve just started going back to my favorite episodes and seeing who wrote them, and my life is all the richer for it.

Update on June 15th, 2015

I neglected to mention that I found Jack Graham’s post through Philip Sandifer. It was a response to a post of Sandifer’s that I just got around to reading, “The Definitive Moffat and Feminism Post.”  Good stuff in there.

Here’s a quote:

Yes, the Moffat era of Doctor Who is sexist. Because it’s television made in a sexist society. But it has things to say about that society, and they are not kind things. I genuinely fail to understand anybody who claims that the Moffat era is sexist in excess of background radiation. This is a show that’s repeatedly telling girls that they can be as cool as the boys, that the boys don’t always know better than them, and that love and independence don’t have to be antagonistic qualities for women. It’s a show that tells rape survivors that it’s OK to not be defined by the terrible things that happen to them. It’s a show that says that women aren’t done being sexy once they get a grey hair and their first wrinkle, and that tells the Doctor off for thinking otherwise.

My tangential conclusion

Let’s end with a youtube video from the Chameleon Circuit, “Big Bang Two,” and a picture from the video. (Why? Because I like it!)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jsFleDHX3G4 

big bang two

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Getting to the ending

Posted on June 10, 2015 | 2 comments

Well, it’s been a year since I started my project on documenting the fanfiction workshop I taught in my son’s fourth/fifth grade class. I got distracted by the end of the school year and never came back to it.

There’s a lovely irony in the place I got stuck: “Getting to the ending.” Endings are, apparently, difficult.

The main thing I told the kids is that there are no hard and fast rules, but people have an intuitive sense of when something is ended or not. The main question to ask is, “Does it feel finished?”

I gave them three general options:

  1. Solve the problem or mystery or find the treasure
  2. Have the character fail to solve the problem or mystery
  3. Leave the solving of the problem or finding of the mystery to the future, but add a resolution

I also provided some examples by reading ending sentences out of various books and asking the kids why they felt a sense of completion.

From that small amount of guidance, most students were able to generate an ending. Some were stuck, and we worked with them individually, offering suggestions if needed. But in keeping with the rest of the course, I kept adult visions of “the proper story” out of it.  Once they felt the story had a sense of completion, it was done.

Next up: revision!

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Still got legs!

Posted on June 10, 2015 | Leave a comment

Legs! Still got legs! There’s life in this old horse yet, and I know there’s gonna be an awful lot of running to do!

. . . and . . .

“Yes, I am, well, yes I was, it’s complicated but I won’t explain it now because,” then he disappeared into a hazy fuzz, that man, I can’t explain why he does the thing he does. Oh my god, I don’t have a clue! These paradoxes are hard to construe! My mind is blown, I bet your is too. Well, I guess this is . . .”

It took FOREVER for the album to come in the mail. I figured I could just listen to the songs, over and over, on youtube. My son was considerably more anxious. Six-thirty in the morning: “Has it come yet?” My daughter complained the first ten times he played the song “The Doctor is Dying” but now she’s singing it too.

When it finally arrived my son abandoned screen time to listen to it. I drank fruit V-8 Juice and sprawled out on the hot concrete of the front porch, just listening. I think we might have to print out the lyrics and memorize them.

Anyway, this band is amazing.

chameleon-circuit-band-01

It’s not the words I most love, though they are brilliant, but the tunes. Deep, melodious, hauntinghappysadish, Idontevenknowwhat.

Enjoy.

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