Machiavelli, Mary Sue, Supernatural, and Gale from The Hunger Games

What do all of these have in common, you ask? Allow me to elucidate, as Scat Cat once said.

Actually Mary Sue isn't really going to fit with the rest. She's the "one who doesn't belong," if you will. Which is ironic, considering that's essentially her role in bad fanfiction. But back to the first question before we let her take over everything.

Instead, let's look at Niccolò Machiavelli, Supernatural, and Gale from The Hunger Games in yet another post about violence in fiction. If you're curious, I've addressed violence in fiction before, mainly here and here. It's been a while, so I hope it doesn't feel like I'm obsessed with the topic, but in reality I do spend a lot of time thinking about it, and may even be a bit obsessed. I am concerned with whether it's ethical to portray violence in an entertaining manner. It seems to me that to be effective, violence must inherently be cruel. I'm going to discuss why I think so here.

Now before you get annoyed with me because Machiavelli didn't write fiction, let me just address his part in this discussion. In my experience, people who have heard of Machiavelli and who reference him tend to be a bit harsh in their judgment of him. Just in case you aren't really familiar with him, he was a Renaissance writer who created a kind of manual for rulers entitled The Prince in 1513. From wikipedia:


"Machiavellianism" is a widely used negative term to characterize unscrupulous politicians of the sort Machiavelli described most famously in The Prince. Machiavelli described immoral behavior, such as dishonesty and killing innocents, as being normal and effective in politics. He even seemed to endorse it in some situations. The book itself gained notoriety when some readers claimed that the author was teaching evil, and providing "evil recommendations to tyrants to help them maintain their power."

See what I mean? Harsh. But I read The Prince some years ago, and Machiavelli doesn't, in my opinion at least, advocate violence. He does take a practical approach to ruling. In one passage he talks about how to administer violence--that may not be how he puts it (it's been a long time since I read it), but the gist was, if you're going to do violence to people for some reason as a ruler (put down an uprising, say) you have to do it as quickly and as extremely as possible. You should always draw out benevolence, because people have short memories when it comes to benevolence. Violence they remember much more clearly. So to avoid becoming unpopular, don't draw it out. Do it thoroughly, do it fast, and make it memorable. So he's not going to back a ruler like Joffrey, for instance, (should I revise the title of this post to include Game of Thrones? Too much?) because the violence Joff does is constant and he pretty much has no idea about the whole benevolence aspect of ruling.

Who could forget that crossbow?

For the purposes of this discussion, I'd like to take Machiavelli's advice to rulers and apply it to violence in fiction in general. Meaning, in a fictional setting at least, the most effective violence is quick, thorough, and memorable.

Is violence always most effective when administered quickly, thoroughly, and memorably? Good question. Is "quickly, thoroughly, and memorably" the same as cruel? Another good question. And can one categorize such effective, potentially always cruel violence as good or evil? Ethical or unethical? Also a good question. These questions bring me to Gale.

It's been four years since I read The Hunger Games, so please correct me in the comments if I misremember something. Also, I'm going to be talking in detail here, so, spoilers ahead. You have been warned.

Specifically, I want to talk about Mockingjay and Gale's attitude towards violence in the rebellion. I really enjoyed the books and one reason they resonated so well for me was the way Collins addresses violence. She specifically questions the way we voyeuristically use violence as entertainment. On top of that, she questions the use of violence by the rebels. This is significant, because it would be easy to simply accept their use of violence as necessary, ostensibly a legitimate use of violence since the rebellion intends to overthrow a terrible regime. To bring it even closer to home for the reader, Collins has Gale, a main supporting character and love interest from the beginning, display a talent for designing weapons. Katniss becomes uncomfortable with how brutal the weapons he develops are. They also have disagreements because Gale doesn't have a lot of scruples about targeting areas where innocents will be killed. Ultimately, Gale is at least somewhat responsible for the death of Prim, Katniss's sister. Katniss's love of Prim is the reason she went to the Hunger Games to begin with. The importance of Prim's life cannot be overstated. Gale's talent and inclination for violence end Prim's life, undoing everything Katniss sacrificed for. It's never clear whether he is directly or indirectly responsible, but at the very least, the bombing that killed Prim was based on his design, using the ingrained belief that people in their society have that little parachutes bring good things, rather than bad. The way the bomb drops are timed, the intent is to kill first responders, and Prim is acting as a first responder when she dies.

Heavy stuff. The message is: to be effective, violence must be cruel. And, I would go so far as to say, it must be evil. Does it fit into the Machiavellian "fast, thorough, and memorable"?

I think so. The bombings orchestrated by the rebellion are not part of a long, drawn-out punishment-fest, unless I misremember. They are surgical strikes, quick, incisive, and brutal. They certainly are effective and memorable. By targeting first responders, they are all the more effective in crippling the enemy. But they are not ethical.

Do the ends justify the means? Or the reverse? Does the process of setting aside ethical considerations in the winning of a war taint the outcome irretrievably? Collins raises these questions, and I have a great deal of respect for her for doing that.

Okay, so looking at Machiavelli's approach to administering violence and Collins's questioning of violence as entertainment and its use in effective, unethical ways in a rebellion, what I come away with is a sense that violence in fiction is really problematic. In most fiction, violence occurs either to harm the protagonist (and get the story moving) or it is administered by the protagonist as a righteous act (to punish the bad guys and achieve the end goal). I don't know about you, but often I really enjoy stories with both kinds of violence.

Which brings me to Supernatural.

Supernatural is a good example of fiction I really enjoy and am a fan of, but that I have to admit is problematic in a lot of ways*. The gender stuff is cringe-worthy, for instance (the absolute worst thing the guys can call one another is a woman). For a couple of seasons there were essentially no female characters at all, except for the occasional flashback with Mary Winchester. In terms of LGBT stuff, the show is usually pretty weak, too (notable exception, the episode with Felicia Day). Characters continuously go out of their way to assert their heterosexuality--so much so it really starts to feel like they are protesting too much, you know? The race stuff isn't always great, either, as the the vast majority of people of color on the show are evil (at least up to season 7, which I just finished). Rufus is a notable and lonely exception, and he's dead by season 6. We see him again after in flashbacks and otherworldly moments, but overall he's only in a handful of episodes.

Anyway. Supernatural is also a very violent show. My husband, who is sensitive to violence, can't watch it. The violence in the show doesn't really bother me on a visceral level because it's so over the top. Jessica Jones was much harder to watch. The special effects guys on Supernatural are really into blood splatters. And in terms of how violence is used as a story device, I actually enjoy it. There are scenes where the main characters torture bad guys, and these don't bother me at all. Sometimes I even want to see the bad guy du jour suffer some serious punishment at the hands of the Winchesters. Ruby springs to mind, oh my gosh did I want to see her die. Not Dick Roman, though---I just enjoyed James Patrick Stuart's portrayal of him so much, I didn't want him to die. Anyway. This enjoyment I experience of the violence in Supernatural is very much at odds with my sense of ethics and whether it's okay for violence to be a form of entertainment. And whether it's ever ethical to use violence in an effective/cruel manner, as explained by Machiavelli and illustrated by the use of Gale's weapons designs in Mockingjay.

I continue to watch and enjoy Supernatural because I long ago accepted that I will end up enjoying problematic fiction, and as long as I am willing to admit that it's problematic, as long as I am willing to discuss how it's problematic and not dismiss concerns raised by others about it, then I'm being ethical about it.

But it's one thing to enjoy and consume problematic fiction. It's quite another to produce it.

I've blogged before about the trickiness of writing in a genre like dieselpunk, for instance, because of the genre's long tradition of orientalism. It's actually probably the blog entry that got the most response over the course of this blog's life. I wrote the entry working from the assumption that if you are writing true dieselpunk, avoiding orientalism is really tricky because in a dieselpunk story, the main characters are white and western** and in most stories they encounter mysterious, exotic, dangerous foes/locations that stereotype and otherwise disparage real non-western** cultures and people of color. The resulting discussion was really illuminating for me, at least, because others pointed out that some of my basic assumptions where flawed. There's no reason that a main character of today's dieselpunk fiction has to be white and western. Anyway. My point is, it's really worthwhile to discuss these ethical dilemmas, because people can shine a light and provide a perspective that I'm lacking. So here I am with my latest dilemma:

How do you use violence in fiction in an ethical manner?

That was the question that spurred the writing of After the Fall, the second book in my decopunk dystopian trilogy (after The City Darkens). I'd been reading a lot about grimdark and its popularity in fantasy fiction. Some writers were really problematizing it, especially the use of sexual violence as titillating horror. And I asked myself, how can you portray sexual violence in a way that would remove all possible titillation? And that gave rise to the concept of a scene in which rather than describing what was happening to the person being assaulted, I zoomed in on a witness to the scene who is hiding, terrified. I focused on her reactions and mental state. I think it was effective without being titillating, though you'd have to read it yourself to see if you agree. For me the whole book became an exploration of violence and whether it can be righteous and justified. The main character of After the Fall, Ginna, is a basically good person, unlike Myadar, the main character of The City Darkens, who really is more neutral in moral alignment--Myadar's not driven to do good so much as serve her own interests. Ginna witnesses the aforementioned assault and essentially makes a deal with the god Luka (we'd call him Loki in our world), god of chaos, to become an instrument of divine wrath (although there's actually more going on there, but you'll have to read the book if you want to know about that). Soon she experiences a loss of control when confronted with those who are perpetrating violence around the ruins of the city in which she lives, and when she comes back to herself, she finds she has slaughtered them.

Ginna is seriously distressed by this, and ultimately after she witnesses and survives yet another extreme act of violence, she cuts herself off from the part of herself that taps this divine wrath. After that, Ginna just isn't very powerful anymore. She tries to do the right thing and she tries to help those she sees as innocents, but she isn't successful.

I've received some critiques of the novel that were pretty discouraging to me. Two different readers criticized Ginna for being too passive. That critique brings me to the Mary Sue connection, but let me set that aside one more time and come back to it in a minute. Instead, let me address what one reader told me: that all these terrible things happen to Ginna and those around her, and she never triumphs against the perpetrators, so the book is frustrating. It's a valid critique. I see that. Ultimately I wrote the book that way because for me as a writer, the purpose of the book was to explore whether I could write about a good protagonist who perpetrates violence righteously in an ethical, non-titillating way, and what I found was that I couldn't.

Really Subway? REALLY?

I'm not saying it's not possible. I'm saying I haven't figured out how to do it in my writing. I mean, I think Collins did an amazing job dealing with violence in The Hunger Games trilogy. So much so that I was really taken aback by the marketing of the movies, particularly Catching Fire, in which YOU TOO could win a Victory Tour. It's like, really, guys? Did you read the books? No? ::facepalm::

So part of the reason I've been so stuck when it comes to writing book 3 of my own trilogy is the whole, how do I do this? How do I give Ginna back her violent power, but have her be essentially good, and not make the violence titillating and feed the idea that it's okay to be entertained by it?

As an aside:
You understand that this blog post is entirely focused on violence in fiction, right? I'm not even going to start to address whether violence is ever justified in real life. I really haven't figured that one out at all. I love Gandhi and Malcom X and what they each stood for, you know? I've had plenty of moments where I'd choose violence--but would I be right to do so? Real life is far, far too complex and complicated for easy answers.

Back to the questions at hand:
In fiction, it's much too common for violence to go unquestioned and unchallenged. Sam and Dean can use torture as a method of interrogation/punishment because they are only ever going to use it against nonhuman monsters. That's what makes it okay. But try telling that to my husband.

Dean waterboarding a demon with holy water, IIRC.

"No, really, honey, it's okay that they're cutting into that guy helplessly tied to a chair screaming his head off, because he's not human. He's a demon."

My husband's response would be a slow nod, and something like, "Sure, sweetie. But I don't want to watch it, okay?" He's very sweet and nonjudgmental of my shows. But underneath that, I know what he's thinking (because I've read many of the same books he has, I guess). Making the victims of the Winchesters' violence nonhuman is just an easy way to bypass any questions about whether torture is ever okay (even in fiction). Same goes for any other violence employed by a righteous hero against villains, human or not. In Rambo IV, Rambo can kill 3 people per minute (after his first kill) because he's the good guy and they are the bad guys and it's satisfying to see bad guys get killed. After all, we all have people in our own lives who richly deserve punishment of some kind (maybe not so extreme as death, but there are slaps going to waste among some folks at my work right now, I can tell you...). But each and every bad guy who gets killed by a good guy is someone's child. Some have brothers or sisters, friends, children, etc., who love them and will grieve them when they don't come home. People, even in fiction, should never be easily disposable.

So that's one problem I'm facing with book 3. How do I embrace Ginna's talent for violence? Does she somehow magically pass it on to Myadar? Myadar wouldn't have nearly the trouble Ginna does with it, because Myadar isn't fundamentally good. But where would that take the story? I don't think I'd like what Myadar would do with that kind of power (it's actually an interesting idea--I may go there for a bit--let Myadar have the wrath and Ginna be unburdened, but ultimately Ginna would have to take it back, because she wouldn't like what Myadar would do with it, either).

The other major problem--aside from questions I've been wrestling with to do with POV and who my narrator(s) should be--is this criticism I got from two readers about Ginna being passive.

Mary Sue, this is your moment.

You can't tell, but her eyes are purple.

I was reading some blog articles today that addressed the popular complaint among book (and, I would add, movie) reviewers that a female protagonist is a Mary Sue. Here's one of these blog posts, and here's another. It's apparently very common, and I remember seeing someone on a forum say that Phedre from the Kushiel books is a Mary Sue, for instance. One blogger addressed this tendency as a pet peeve of hers, because to her, the label is often misapplied, and it's too vague to be meaningful anyway. She felt that often the ways people apply the label are contradictory--the character is too perfect, the character is too flawed, etc. And really what underlies the complaint is that the character is female, because if a male character had all the same characteristics, there would be no complaint. I've certainly seen some of that with Rey from The Force Awakens. A lot of Star Wars fans are very frustrated with how quick she is to learn the Force skills she displays, and that she also has fighting skills, and also has brilliant mechanical skills. It's possible that there would be complaints if Rey was a guy, but I'm betting there wouldn't be as many. Ultimately I agree with Erik Kain, who said that it isn't that Rey is a Mary Sue, it's that the whole movie is so rushed. The good guys have a three minute brainstorming session that leads to the solution to destroying the new and improved Death Star, folks. The filmmakers tried to jam too much in to 135 minutes.

This accusation isn't restricted to characters who display some aspects of Mary Sueness, either. Apparently there are people out there who will accuse Hermione Granger of being a Mary Sue. Meanwhile Harry Potter is this kid raised in a closet who somehow manages to be The Ultimate Hero and good at Quidditch, a sport he's never even heard of, without even trying. Don't get me wrong, I love me some Harry Potter, but come on, double standard, anyone?

In one of these articles I read, maybe in the comments section, I'm not even sure anymore, someone made the point that being "too passive" is a flaw people throw at female characters who are good, and that struck a chord with me. And then in another spot someone talked about how deeply discouraging and stifling it is to be a female author and try to write a character who won't be accused by someone of being a Mary Sue.

To be clear, no one accused Ginna of being a Mary Sue. The feedback I got was much more constructive. But this complaint about her being passive has really bothered me, because I don't think she's passive at all. She does stuff. She makes a deal with Luka. She goes on wrath-fueled rampages. She uses her wits and talents to survive in a very dangerous setting. She puts herself at great risk to protect those she loves and those she sees as innocents in danger. The trouble isn't that she's passive, it's that she's unsuccessful. She doesn't actually manage to save most of the people she tries to save. She doesn't manage to stop bad things from happening. She doesn't save the day.

Why doesn't she succeed? Well, that's my cynicism and frustration with the world at work, I think. Plus the sense that I have that in the second installment of a trilogy, it works for the ending to be unhappy. Look at The Empire Strikes Back, for one example of a second part that most people agree is the most powerful installment of the three original films. I'd argue that that's because it's so dark. But my cynicism is at work in After the Fall, I fully admit that. And having identified that, I really want book 3 to remedy it--what I mean to say is, I want Ginna to win in book 3. I want her to triumph over her adversaries in a major way.

Which brings me back to my violence dilemma.

How does Ginna win against the fascist tyrants who rule in Helesey without turning the wrath back on? And if I can enjoy shows and novels where a good protagonist is violent, why can't I figure out a way to write a good protagonist that is violent? Grumble.

What do you think of the questions I raise here?
Do you ever think about the portrayal of violence in entertainment?
________________________________________
*The link takes you to an article that's been reblogged because the original link I'd saved doesn't seem to work anymore. The original article, "How to be a Fan of Problematic Things," is by Rachael at the Social Justice League.
**I use "western" and "non-western" here despite the objections some have raised (after all, who defines what's east and west?) because I'm talking about orientalism, a phenomenom in literature (and I would argue, many other forms of media) which pits cultures from the East (the "Orient" means the East) against dominant cultures of the West. However, I also tend to extend the meaning of orientalism to include the stereotyping of cultures not traditionally viewed as part of the East, such as South American cultures.

Deadpool -- I didn't love it, Part 1: The Overview

I didn't hate it, either, but after all the hype that seems to be building exponentially on Twitter, I really went into it expecting more. Which, I believe, is part of why I wasn't that impressed. I think if I'd gone into Deadpool without hearing about how hilarious it was and how original and irreverent and surprising and all of that, I might have actually found it funnier, more surprising, and maybe even original. Though ultimately the conclusion I have come to is that Deadpool is unusual but not original.

But before I go further with this review...

HERE THERE BE SPOILERS. LOTS AND LOTS OF SPOILERS.


Anyway.

The first unusual bit comes with the opening, a frozen scene of a car accident which might as well have the word (abbreviation?) "FUBAR" written across it. As the camera winds and pans out, what appear to be credits begin scrolling, except that they are... unusual. Instead of actual names, they are things like, "A Hot Chick," "A British Villain," "A Moody Teen," "A CGI Character"... the producers are listed as "Asshats" and the writers as "the True Heroes Here." So that was cute. Except all the cliches promised are delivered without a twist. I was hoping, I guess, that there would be something interesting and unexpected about the hot chick, the British villain, and the moody teen. But the hot chick, played by Morena Baccarin (I'd watch a much crappier movie to see her) is just a hot chick. Sure, she doesn't take shit from an asshole in a bar, and eventually she does stab a villain (doesn't kill him though), but ultimately all she is, is a hot chick. A damsel to be rescued. More on her later. The British villain is all evil, no complexity, and he succeeds in making the viewer hope Deadpool ignores the advice of the CGI character trying to convince him to be a hero and not shoot the Brit in the face (Deadpool delivers). More on the CGI guy later, too. The moody teen gets defined right away by Deadpool, who says she'll spend the whole movie brooding silently or saying mean things... and she does. Pretty boring, actually. Pretty abysmally boring, to be honest. Why would you put together these elements? I mean, on the one hand you have a movie that's trying to be unusual (at the very least) with a surprising number of crude jokes (it's true that you don't tend to see Spiderman or even Iron Man referencing his masturbation habits the way Deadpool does), but then they just build a story that's nothing short of one big cliche, and they populate it with characters who are also all cliches, except maybe for Blind Al, who, I admit, does stand out: she's an acerbic, elderly, blind, African American woman who is Deadpool's roommate.

Deadpool is an antihero's origin story and not much else. It plays out nonlinearly, which was exciting back when Tarantino was doing it, I guess, though I never thought it was that big of a deal to begin with.

So before I come back to a discussion of the Vanessa character and the Colossus character (both of which relate to the only two times the movie managed to surprise me) let's recap. Deadpool is unusual in that it breaks the fourth wall quite a bit. A lot of the jokes are off-color in a way you don't generally see in a superhero movie. And... well, there's the thing that happens with Colossus, but I think you'll agree once I get to that that it's really not enough to make the movie original. Otherwise you have an origin story which I guess does have another unusual element--the motive for Wade to become Deadpool is that he's dying of cancer. Having a lead make a massive life change due to cancer has been done (Breaking Bad) but not so much with superhero stories (which actually relates to the other thing that surprised me). But besides El Cancer (as Deadpool calls it) the origin story isn't particularly interesting or original--Wade lets an evil private corporation do an experimental procedure on him, becomes their prisoner as they torture him for a while, eventually the procedure takes, and voila, he's a regenerating machine. He's also horribly disfigured but I'm sorry, that's not all that original. Plenty of superheroes go farther in losing their former looks--Swamp Thing, Beast, Hulk (who, granted, gets to change back and look human sometimes), V from V for Vendatta, Marv from Sin City, etc. Deadpool, as an antihero, scars more than most heroes, but that's so unoriginal TV Tropes addresses it. We're meant to like Deadpool because he snarks in the face of torture (don't we just love leads who do that?) but again, so not original.

"'Ba'al?! As in 'bocce'?" - O'Neill in the same scene as above, when he first meets his torturer.

What's even more disappointing as you peel back the layers is that one of the main things that makes Deadpool unusual is actually built on some old, overused ideas. Namely the crude humor. A lot of it grows out of the same old homophobia and misogyny powering all the "funny" not-gay-but-gay scenes in otherwise really good shows like Friends and Supernatural. And it's really too bad, because sometimes Deadpool seems to be embodying a new kind of masculinity, in which feminine poses and admissions of weakness don't undermine his strength. But then he "kisses" an early male encounter to cement his dominance over him, makes fun of the Brit for having the first name "Francis" (which clearly means the Brit lacks some essential masculinity) and provokes a fight in a bar by buying a guy a "blow job" shot and making it look like another guy sent it to him. Hilarious. What's more, Deadpool is just another man-child. He loves his toys (literally, he collects Voltron figurines) and can't face his illness with any kind of maturity, while Vanessa steps up right away. How many couples have we seen where this is the dynamic? Why aren't people sick of the man-child/woman-mommy relationship?!?

And despite the inclusion of Blind Al, Deadpool manages to be racist. DP gets in a cab driven by a South Asian man who is a wide-eyed innocent. The cabbie is soon so enamored of DP that he doesn't react when DP stiffs him, and in fact will gladly pick him up again later. The cabbie is in love but a rival has stolen his fiancee--DP advises him to kill the rival and kidnap the fiancee (and after a flashback in which he condemned stalking, too), and by the movie's end the rival is struggling in the trunk of the taxi, so it's clear the cabbie will do exactly as DP suggested. The cabbie's sole purpose in the film is to provide comic relief (though I gather he's not who the opening credits call the "Comic Relief"--that's DP's bestie, Weasel). If I were a South Asian man watching the film, I wouldn't be too happy with that guy as a representative of people like me.

Did you see Deadpool? What did you think of it? Did it live up to your expectations or, like me, were you let down?

More on the characters of Vanessa and Colossus in the next post...

Review of Naamah's Blessing by Jacqueline Carey

I had hoped to be able to provide a little interview to go with this review. Alas, Ms. Carey is working towards a publishing deadline and declined my request for the interview. Oh well! Here's the review, in any case.

Naamah's Blessing, by Jacqueline Carey, is the third book in the Naamah trilogy and the last of the Kushiel's Legacy novels. For me, this latter fact is very hard to accept. Like many, many readers, I have loved Terre D'Ange and the elegant prose of the novels Carey has set there, waiting anxiously for the next installment.

The Naamah trilogy takes place several generations after Phedre and Imriel's stories, and this, at first, discouraged me. I loved them both so much! But I came to love Moirin as well, the "jade-eyed witch" who narrates the Naamah novels. Moirin, half-D'Angeline, half-Maghuin Dhonn, travels the world following the spark of her soul, and getting into a lot of trouble as she does. In Naamah's Blessing, Moirin finds that despite her many adventures, her greatest challenge lies ahead of her, and she must travel to the equivalent of the Aztec empire. Carey soon connects the challenges of this new setting to mistakes Moirin made in the first novel, Naamah's Kiss, pleasingly closing the circle of the plot.

I have always found that Carey's Terre D'Ange novels tap into my personal tastes--often right at a point in my life when I've been thinking about just the sorts of things her stories happen to address (for instance, I was seriously considering adopting a child at about the time I picked up Kushiel's Avatar). The Naamah trilogy was no exception. That said, I did pick up on a sense of fatigue in Naamah's Blessing. Perhaps it was because I knew it was the last one--perhaps had I not known that, I wouldn't have gotten that sense at all. However, Moirin herself has had enough of adventures by the time she reaches the Terra Nova, and she seems to really only want one thing: to settle into a monogamous marriage with Bao, so they can start having plump babies. I can't fault her for that; in my experience, a loving marriage and a plump baby are the keys to heaven on earth. Still, I think the novel lacked drive; it was certainly compelling, and a good end to the series, but it was no Kushiel's Dart.

I do have to say that I admire Carey's handling of the Aztecs and Incas. Some reviewers on Amazon complain that the portrayals were too flat or stereotypical--I didn't think so. Sure, I would have loved more description, for the novel to delve even more deeply into their culture. Perhaps this is one was in which it communicated fatigue. However, thinking back to the discussion some months ago on this blog about orientalism, I have to say that Carey sidestepped that pitfall very gracefully. [Spoilers ahead.] The characters travel to a strange, intimidating place, but it is not the Aztecs or the Incas who are sinister and evil. It is a D'Angeline, wielding power he attained through a demon Carey created and he accessed while still in Terre D'Ange. Yes, his weapons are the fearsome fire ants of the Amazon, but it is his evil that drives them. The Aztec and Inca characters themselves are multidimensional, believable, and range from honorable and brave to treacherous and villainous. This confirms my earlier realization about writing adventure stories: the big bad needs to be from off-world or a complete creation of the author's, in order to avoid any taint of exoticization and the like. This was quite effectively handled in Naamah's Blessing.

I absolutely recommend this novel, but if you haven't read Kushiel's Dart, start there. And give it about 330 pages before you make up your mind--there's a pretty sweet plot point that really throws the reader for a loop--one I very much enjoyed.

Adventure Stories & Orientalism

I'm so pleased that several people have commented on my post concerning dieselpunk and orientalism. I had already decided to write a follow-up post in order to delve more deeply into the question, as I really think it's worth discussing and it's something I mull over a lot. This is that post.

David Mark Brown commented on my original blog post about how he chose to flip character expectations around in order to challenge some of the problems of race relationships, etc., in his dieselpunk fiction. That shook me out of the assumption that the main characters of dieselpunk stories had to be westerners. I still have an issue with that, though, which is as a white westerner myself, I'm not sure how to believably write from the point of view of a nonwesterner or someone belonging to a nonwhite culture. I'm not ruling it out, just saying it would pose a considerable challenge to me. I've actually attempted to write from the pov of a black woman in the past (it was sci fi in a universe I built, so saying African American or Caribbean American doesn't fit). I never felt like I pulled it off, though.

A really big part of what troubles me is the issue of exoticism. Stephen A. Watkins commented on this blog post (which Tiyana Marie White wrote in response to my post), "I think there’s a difference between the aesthetic appreciation of something “exotic” meaning that it’s outside the norms of your experience and the type of problematic “exoticization” that results from fetishizing something that’s different for no reason than that it’s different." Exoticism/exoticization is huge for me. To be clear, the trouble I have is that I would like to write stories where the mc must go to some country foreign to them, to seek out some sort of treasure/have some sort of other adventure, much in the tradition of Indiana Jones. What I can't work out is how to impart all the thrills and fears of such a thing, without painting the culture as exotic and sinister. I'm not talking about describing the people in stereotypical terms (which isn't just offensive, it's also plain tiresome), so much as trying to achieve a tone of menace, etc., for the mcs, who are navigating a land that is foreign to them. Throw in some sort of cursed item(s) or whatever, and you have a recipe for your typical dark and threatening culture as seen in myriad books and films. The problem with that is that when you choose to represent a real Earth culture that way, you other them and contribute to a history of imperialism and oppression, something I don't want to do.

One option is to go ahead and represent some of the culture as sinister. For example, have some creepy big wig in the culture invite the characters to dinner, say, and then the characters proceed to navigate a house full of unnatural shadows and decorated with unsettling objects. The meal would be shocking to them as well due to whatever they're eating... if you've read my previous post, you might recognize this as a reference to Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, a movie that really beats you about the head with orientalist representations. As you may recall, part of the trouble with Temple is that it's not just portraying a culture in a very negative light, it's also doing so with blatant inaccuracies. Anyway, so let's say I want to have the creepy dinner chapter and I'm going to avoid the blatant inaccuracies. I'm still using items of the culture to create an aura of fear and danger. I could counterbalance that chapter with some sort of positive interaction in another chapter with much more approachable, appealing characters of the foreign culture. I don't mean yet another stereotype (lusty women who fall for the hero, mystical sages who provide guidance, etc.). No, I'm thinking more along the lines of the Colombian drug lord in Romancing the Stone (not a dieselpunk movie, but it operates on the same principal as interwar adventure stories with the mild mannered woman and rough and tumble male guide--think of The Mummy, same principle--who delve into a dangerous foreign land and encounter menacing characters, etc. in the pursuit of treasure). In Romancing the Stone, the audience is led to believe romance writer Joan Wilder and her adventuring guide, Jack I-forget-his-last-name are about to meet a stereotype of a Colombian thug: some backwards, unsophisticated guy who rides a mule. Turns out, the guy has modern ammenities, has read all of Joan's books, and the mule in question is a 4X4. Now, believe me, I'm not here to say that Romancing the Stone somehow avoided racist depictions because of this scene. Sadly, as much as I enjoy that movie, I think it's terribly problematic, too. But I digress. My point is that the scene challenges audience expectations. It does it, no doubt, in order to get laughs. Similar scenes abound in many films--and I think more often than not, they are there to get laughs. It's funny to set up expectations and then turn them on their heads.

My question is, do those sorts of scenes challenge expectations enough to be an antidote to the sinister scenes that paint a "foreign" culture as dark, dangerous, magical, etc.?

Anyway, to return to what Stephen Watkins wrote, I suppose another way to approach the issue of exoticism to interrogate whether those "sinister" representations fetishize the culture or simply represent it as unfamiliar to readers/viewers. When I wrote the as-yet-unpublished sequel to The River and the Roses I wanted to introduce Daniel Seong's family, and I wanted to do so intelligently. So I went on a Korean American chat board and asked a bunch of questions. The people on the board were super patient with me and helped to dispell some of the stereotypes I had knocking around in my head. They gave me insight into how to represent the family dynamics, the words people use, the way a dinner would play out, etc. It was all very cool and I learned a lot in the bargain. I'm reasonably sure I did a nice job of writing those scenes concerning Daniel's family. It's just a lot easier in the realistic setting of my modern day psychic mystery to not fall into the orientalist trap. In River, I can have Veronica come in as an outsider to a culture she's unfamiliar with, and have her be a bit uncomfortable and nervous about it, but still see it as a real, breathing, normal culture. Then again, she's not meant to be in a threatening situation. It's not an adventure story. Aside from her ability to commune with the dead (which really makes her more exotic than anyone else in the book), there's no magic, no cursed items, no spooky caves, no dungeon crawls, no evil villains (there are bad guys, but they are much more plebean). Is it possible to write adventure stories where there are all those things and not fall into the orientalist trap?

I suppose another option is to take the flipping-the-binary thing even further. Have a nonwhite and/or nonwestern hero who is dealing with a white, western villain. I mean, you do see that, of course. Nazis spring to mind. Is that the only way? Isn't avoiding casting nonwhite and/or nonwestern villains in a story just another form of discrimination?

Well, I've written myself into a corner. Help me out, folks. What's your take?

What is Dieselpunk?

After my recent blog post on Captain America: The First Avenger, I got a couple of questions about the terms "dieselpunk" and "decopunk." There's a pretty nice description of dieselpunk here, but I thought I'd talk a little about what it means to me.

I've come across a forum post where someone described dieselpunk as a scene rather than a genre, mainly, if I understand correctly, because of the dirth of actual dieselpunk fiction out there. I'll grant you that there aren't as many movies and TV shows with the elements that make up dieselpunk than there are capitalizing on the popularity of steampunk, but I think it's incorrect to say there aren't very many. In the last few months I've watched eight movies and two anime tv shows (notably Last Exile, which perhaps due to the fact that I watch it at 3am when I'm giving the baby his bottle and I have the sound turned almost all the way down, has come to a point where it is incomprehensible to me, unfortunately. I still really enjoy the soundtrack, though)--and of those eight movies, none were in the Indiana Jones series. There are also quite a few books that qualify, at least according to my definition.

So I should probably get to that.

To me, dieselpunk is fiction genre (or, more broadly, a scene) that draws on sci fi from the 1920s-1940s. Dieselpunk differs from steampunk in that its machines have internal combustion engines. You don't see airplanes in steampunk--at least, not unless they are some sort of steam-powered clockwork. You do see airplanes in dieselpunk--prominently so. But you also see other, weirder vehicles like the vanships in Last Exile. Also, very often you see robots. The idea with dieselpunk is that the tech is retro-futuristic (a combination that I find delightful). Lots of dials, knobs, gauges, levers, and grease, but I could see a story where these old-fashioned machines allow for (minor) space travel or teleportation--much like Telsa's inventions in The Prestige are steampunk yet futuristic.

The time period encompasses the decades of history I find most interesting to study--the 1920s, especially in the U.S. due to Prohibition, are fascinating because they represent the moment when westerners entered the modern age. Probably because of that, much of the pulp fiction of the time involved exploration of nonwestern parts of the world--the exotic, mysterious places most threatened by extinction in the modern age. More on that in a moment, as it raises a rather thorny problem.

The 1930s provides the concept of noir--film noir, detective stories, and the rise of fascism in several locations around the world.

And the 1940s gave us World War II--a terrible time, of course, but also a time people remember as a golden age of victory gardens, radio programs, and shared purpose. In our memories, everyone was in agreement in the 1940s--the Allies were working together to oppose the evils of the Axis Powers, who in turn were working together to destroy everything good in the world. Through a simple lens, World War II is the most ethically accessible war, because there are such clear bad guys, especially in Europe. (Please understand, I'm saying this as a writer, not as a historian. As a historian, this sort of thing does not fly.)

So dieselpunk has a rich playground to run around in. Add to that all of the bright optimism and faith in science that preceded the dropping of the atomic bombs and the discovery of the death camps. Think of the excitement of the World's Fairs. And to top it off, dieselpunk has its own artistic style: art deco. In fact, a subgenre of dieselpunk (itself a subgenre of steampunk, of course) is decopunk--basically everything dieselpunk is without such an interest in the machines.

But back to the exotic lands, for a moment, and the problem they pose.

I may eventually devote an entire post to this minefield, because it's a doozy, and it's one I'm particularly concerned with because I'm liable to get caught in the middle of it one of these days. Orientalism.

What, you ask, is orientalism, and what does it have to do with dieselpunk?

In a nutshell, orientalism is the representation of nonwestern cultures (most often Middle Eastern, but it's just as valid for various Asian areas as well as any other part of the world where people are predominantly brown, in my opinion) through the filter of western ideas, desires, opinions, prejudices, etc. It's a form of racism with a long history in fiction. Probably one of the best examples of a movie that is both dieselpunk and orientalist: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. One of the big problems with orientalism is that writers who fall prey to it often misrepresent cultures or conflate two or more cultures. In the case of Temple, for instance, the goddess Kali is depicted as evil and ruling the underworld, which is inaccurate. Much of the cuisine is probably closer to Chinese than Hindu, as well. The attitude in days gone by among writers and fans of orientalist fiction was to shrug and say something along the lines of, "It's all the same anyway." (In case that's your attitude, try turning it around and imagining what it would be like for a Hindu or Chinese film to depict your culture as the same or at least jumbled with some other culture--usually belonging to a historical enemy. Now imagine that happening over and over in every book and movie that depicts your culture for hundreds of years.) For more on Temple's issues specifically, go here.

Nowadays I see a deep uneasiness in movies like Sky Captain & the World of Tomorrow--they so desperately want to be able to depict grand adventures like those of Allan Quatermain (a character who was originally more steampunk than dieselpunk) but they don't want to come under fire for racism. It's a pickle. I love stories of treasure hunts, dungeon crawls, scary jungles and survival in ice storms. But how do you write about exotic lands without othering those people the main characters, who by nature of being dieselpunk characters will be westerners, will encounter there? How do you portray a culture respectfully while simultaneously making it mysterious, sinister, and, in many cases, somehow mystical? What's a white writer in love with the retro-futuristic fiction of the1920s-1940s to do?

The best I've come up with is to take the story off of planet Earth altogether, and set the dungeon crawls, barroom brawls, and mystical encounters on other planets entirely (Firefly, anyone?). And don't even think about basing the alien cultures on specific (stereotyped and misrepresented) Earth cultures. Lucas did that and it's painful to watch. Of course, the real problem with that solution is that you've pretty much left dieselpunk behind once you leave Earth or at least an Earth-like setting. Yes, it's sci fi, but it's limited sci fi. Dieselpunk is not atomicpunk, and I can't see diesel engines powering even the most fun retro-futuristic space ships farther than a trip to the moon, maybe.

What do you think about dieselpunk? Do you like stories set in the 1920s-1940s?
How would you handle the orientalism problem?