The idea of an organization whose members are all, by mystical powers or by definition (or both), inherently good crops up here and there in sci-fi and fantasy, but that idea has never quite set right with me (even though it turns up in fiction I like). Perhaps the best known examples that I’m familiar with (and I’ve no doubt there are even more I’m not), are the Jedi in Star Wars and the Heralds of Valdemar in Mercedes Lackey’s Velgarth books. Though vastly different in many respects, both organizations fit the category of groups whose members you know are automatically good. And both drive me up the wall for that reason.
You see, while I enjoy Good vs Evil on the cosmic scale, when it comes to individual characters, I prefer something a bit more ambiguous and, dare I say it, realistic. And, in truth, the older I get, the more of a problem I have with Evil. I know, it sounds weird to find Good more believable than Evil, but look at it this way – it’s very plausible for someone to wish to be Good and try their hardest to do all the Right things and be a truly Good person, but it’s a lot harder (for me, at least) to swallow someone wishing to be Evil. As far as I can tell, looking at the real world, most people who have committed evil (or even Evil) acts were doing so for some kind of personal gain or because they thought they were doing Good.
Which leads us to the problem of good-by-definition groups. Or perhaps I should say the problems there of.
Now, the Jedi and the Heralds are somewhat different cases, even if they share the same, or most of the same, problems. The Jedi locate and train Force sensitive children to be light-side Force users who protect the galaxy (or at least the Republic) while swearing off personal attachments an, theoretically, anyway, emotional extremes and passions. Heralds are chosen by mystical Companions because they are good at heart and are trained to protect Valdemar while loving freely and generally otherwise having a normal (if likely to be messily short) lives. But the two organizations have pretty much the same job – mystically good guardians of their government and the people there in.
(I’m skipping other major problems with the Jedi, like, if being Force sensitive is hereditary, don’t you want Jedi to breed, not become celibate monks?)
So, the shared problems? Well, first off, rather like Evil, Good isn’t that simple. Unless the enemies of the Republic or of Valdemar are Evil, you would think a mystically Good organization would want to keep fighting to an absolute last resort, especially if they’re connected to or chosen by a cosmic Good. Granted, the enemies we’re shown in both sets of stories are generally Evil, but somehow neither quite addresses the conflict inherent in having the cosmically Good connected/chosen fighting for one particular country, however large. This smacks uncomfortably of the whole true race, God on our side kind of thing that we mostly don’t want to hear in the real world. Though a story that actually faced up to that and had their Good being, recognizably, our idea of evil could be pretty interesting. (And might well exist out there. I am known for preferring light fiction to the darker, deeper variety.)
There’s also the fact that having a Good organization either cuts out internal conflict or makes a bizarre hash of it. Star Wars: Episodes I-III are a good example of this. I can argue, convincingly, I think, that the Jedi are as responsible (or more responsible) for Anakin’s fall than Palpatine is. Did Lucas intend that message? If so, he didn’t make it quite clear enough, and if not, wow did he mess up. I can’t quite tell whether we’re supposed to view the Jedi as being mistaken in their ascetic world view or whether we’re supposed see Anakin’s refusal to follow it as the beginning of his fall. Now, partly this might be because we’re used to (or I’m used to) thinking of love and caring for others as a good thing, but I think part of the problem is that we’ve been told the Jedi are Good. Now, that doesn’t necessarily mean infallible, but it certainly raises the question of what it means for them to be wrong about major issues.
The Heralds also have a problem (and, now that I think about it, there’s a certain similarity of situation here) in dealing with members who mess up due to emotional distress. In Magic’s Pawn, one young Herald goes kind of (very?) crazy after his twin brother is killed and ends up slaughtering the people responsible (and then some, if I remember right). His Companion repudiates him, making him no longer a Herald, and he kills himself. Um…the boy went mad, shouldn’t cosmic Good have stepped in there somewhere, preferably before the slaughter and helped him? Again, it isn’t that Good has to be infallible, it’s that Good’s mistakes (or the agent’s of Good’s mistakes) raise problematic questions. It doesn’t help that in the third book of that same series, Magic’s Price, the main character goes a bit crazy after being raped and tortured and kills the people responsible (and two more-or-less innocent bystanders) but his Companion helps him get sane again. Cosmic Good, you confuse me. (And, yes, I know the Companions are “human,” but still…where’s the consistency?)
Speaking of consistency, to return to Star Wars, Obi Wan, after defeating and maiming Anakin, leaves him to die of his wounds. Which seems to me to be pretty major Good failure there. (And possibly characterization failure.) There’s also the matter of the Jedi doing nothing to help the slaves on Tatooine, going so far as to not even help Anakin’s mother. If the Jedi are Good and slavery is at least evil, shouldn’t they do something? They’re barely presented as objecting.
Actually, some of these problems would still be problems if the organizations were merely centered on the idea of Good (or even good) and not cosmically backed up in any way. Their respective authors may have failed a smidge, there. But the problems wouldn’t seem as critical if the organizations were merely groups of people who wish to do good in organizations dedicated to doing good. Individuals and groups of individuals, trying to do their best, can and do screw up. But if they’re tied to the cosmic forces of Good in any strong way, there shouldn’t be major screw ups, especially not ones without explanation.
And I think the characters get short changed a little if they’re tied to Good. Not only is there the Chosen One problem (which I’ve ranted about before) but the world is more interesting if good and evil aren’t presented as Good and Evil, with appropriate baseball caps for everyone. Too much conflict, character growth, and complex plotting is tossed out when you hand out the baseball caps.
Perhaps I’ve just grown to want slightly deeper light fiction.
Thursday, August 21, 2008
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
Feminist Fiction
I’ve finally realized why discussions of feminist fiction often leave me baffled. There are really two reasons, one more global and one more personal. You see, I hadn’t realized that there are actually three categories (broadly speaking) of feminist fiction: that which inspires, that which enlightens or educates, and that which is all about venting. I also hadn’t taken into account my tendency to interpret things in the darkest possible way.
It’s not surprising that a person who believes that the message of It’s a Wonderful Life is that good people should sacrifice their dreams for the benefit of others finds far fewer works of fiction inspiring than most people. It’s also not surprising that, given my tendency toward gloom, I’m not really into reading fiction to gain more insight into the horrors of the world. And as for venting, well that usually works best if one is in fairly strict agreement with the one venting, and not so well if one disagrees.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with fiction that does any of the above, and no requirement that fiction must be feminist. But it was always disconcerting to have someone tell me that a work of fiction was feminist, then go on to describe something that sounded practically anti-feminist to me. Of course tastes and interpretations vary, but there was also the problem of vocabulary.
Definition time.
Venting is a category that’s fairly self explanatory. In it go the works that complain, and presume you share the complaint. This would, I think, mostly be short fiction, though there might be longer works. It is, I’m afraid, a category I’ve been told about, not one I’ve read, so I’m hard pressed for a concrete example of what I mean. It addresses a problem all people (or, in the case of feminist venting, women) are assumed to have, or at least to commiserate with.
In the enlightening or educating category are works that address either speculative problems (as in The Handmaid’s Tale) or real life problems faced by, in the feminist case, women. They are written to prevent the future in their pages from happening, or to change the present injustices, or to make people aware of the past injustices.
A lot of fiction about women, regardless of genre, at least hovers at the edges of this category because the difficulties women face seem always to be addressed by them. It’s hard, for example, to think of a fantasy novel with a woman protagonist who doesn’t have to overcome being a woman and all that means to her faux-medieval culture. That inability to escape the confines of “womanhood” makes the works seem more educational than inspirational, at least to me.
The works I categorize as inspiring are those in which the protagonist is happy and successful – for certain values of successful. Their protagonists tackle their problems with energy and enthusiasm – you might even say they like their problems (whether they’d admit it or not). Adventure stories are, to me, the penultimate example of this. But adventure stories rarely have female leads, or, worse, when they do, the very thing that makes them inspiring is abandoned. But this, this is what I want when I say I want a feminist work of fiction. I want fiction with a woman protagonist who has fun, fiction that says, no, shouts from the rooftop, “You can do this!” And doesn’t have to add “even though you’re a woman.”
And that really is the problem I find with a lot of fiction intended to be feminist. The protagonist always has womanhood shackled to her ankle as a hindrance. They’re successful despite being a woman, they’re successful after they overcome their gender, they make it in a man’s world. I know that can be inspiring and I know that, to an extent, it’s realistic, but I can’t help feeling like it turns being a woman into, well, an albatross around the protagonist’s neck.
Maybe I’m overlooking how much other women do feel that way. Maybe that’s why it’s such a theme of feminist fiction. Maybe I’m not meant to lump being a woman in with the construct of a woman’s place in society when I read those books. Or maybe the authors lump the two together more than they intend. Maybe the simple fact that women in fiction tend to be women more than the men in fiction are men puts off my own gender fuzziness. I don’t know. I’d love to hear from people who feel differently about the enlightening category, or who find works like Alias, The Deed of Paksenarrion, or The Mists of Avalon to be inspiring. I want to understand the other point of view, even while I long to read something as inspiring as the Vorkosigan saga…but about a woman.
It’s not surprising that a person who believes that the message of It’s a Wonderful Life is that good people should sacrifice their dreams for the benefit of others finds far fewer works of fiction inspiring than most people. It’s also not surprising that, given my tendency toward gloom, I’m not really into reading fiction to gain more insight into the horrors of the world. And as for venting, well that usually works best if one is in fairly strict agreement with the one venting, and not so well if one disagrees.
There is, of course, nothing wrong with fiction that does any of the above, and no requirement that fiction must be feminist. But it was always disconcerting to have someone tell me that a work of fiction was feminist, then go on to describe something that sounded practically anti-feminist to me. Of course tastes and interpretations vary, but there was also the problem of vocabulary.
Definition time.
Venting is a category that’s fairly self explanatory. In it go the works that complain, and presume you share the complaint. This would, I think, mostly be short fiction, though there might be longer works. It is, I’m afraid, a category I’ve been told about, not one I’ve read, so I’m hard pressed for a concrete example of what I mean. It addresses a problem all people (or, in the case of feminist venting, women) are assumed to have, or at least to commiserate with.
In the enlightening or educating category are works that address either speculative problems (as in The Handmaid’s Tale) or real life problems faced by, in the feminist case, women. They are written to prevent the future in their pages from happening, or to change the present injustices, or to make people aware of the past injustices.
A lot of fiction about women, regardless of genre, at least hovers at the edges of this category because the difficulties women face seem always to be addressed by them. It’s hard, for example, to think of a fantasy novel with a woman protagonist who doesn’t have to overcome being a woman and all that means to her faux-medieval culture. That inability to escape the confines of “womanhood” makes the works seem more educational than inspirational, at least to me.
The works I categorize as inspiring are those in which the protagonist is happy and successful – for certain values of successful. Their protagonists tackle their problems with energy and enthusiasm – you might even say they like their problems (whether they’d admit it or not). Adventure stories are, to me, the penultimate example of this. But adventure stories rarely have female leads, or, worse, when they do, the very thing that makes them inspiring is abandoned. But this, this is what I want when I say I want a feminist work of fiction. I want fiction with a woman protagonist who has fun, fiction that says, no, shouts from the rooftop, “You can do this!” And doesn’t have to add “even though you’re a woman.”
And that really is the problem I find with a lot of fiction intended to be feminist. The protagonist always has womanhood shackled to her ankle as a hindrance. They’re successful despite being a woman, they’re successful after they overcome their gender, they make it in a man’s world. I know that can be inspiring and I know that, to an extent, it’s realistic, but I can’t help feeling like it turns being a woman into, well, an albatross around the protagonist’s neck.
Maybe I’m overlooking how much other women do feel that way. Maybe that’s why it’s such a theme of feminist fiction. Maybe I’m not meant to lump being a woman in with the construct of a woman’s place in society when I read those books. Or maybe the authors lump the two together more than they intend. Maybe the simple fact that women in fiction tend to be women more than the men in fiction are men puts off my own gender fuzziness. I don’t know. I’d love to hear from people who feel differently about the enlightening category, or who find works like Alias, The Deed of Paksenarrion, or The Mists of Avalon to be inspiring. I want to understand the other point of view, even while I long to read something as inspiring as the Vorkosigan saga…but about a woman.
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