I Love a Cliché

Madeleine Robins January 6th, 2009

A few weeks ago Kate Elliott posted a valuable piece somewhere else about clichés, and in the course of the discussion she recommended I enlarge upon the comments I made there.  One of the hazards of encroaching age is that I no longer remember where the discussion was, only that it was lively and interesting: you woulda loved it.  And now that the holidays are over and I have two brain cells to rub together, I’ve come here to outline what I was trying to say in that post.

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Memo to Hollywood: How to do (and not do) an adaptation

Kevin Andrew Murphy December 31st, 2008

I have just watched The Seeker: The Dark is Rising, a year after it came out (DVR is your friend, except maybe in this case) and I’m gasping in horror at how bad it was, and for no good reason.  You’ve got all the elements that would seem to make a great movie:  Beloved children’s classic as source material?  Check.  Lavish sets?  Check.  Gorgeous costuming?  Check.  Actors ranging from competent to excellent?  Check.  Impressive and appropriate special effects?  Check.  Script by a competent screenwriter?  Um, well, I understand they got the guy who did the adaptation for Trainspotting, which I understand was a decent movie, but….

First off, let me make one thing clear: Departure from the source material is fine.   The Wizard of Oz dumped the scene in the Dainty China Country from the movie adaptation because it was boring, extraneous, and painfully lame.  Glomming the Good Witch of the North and Glinda the Sorceress of the South together makes sense from a dramatic perspective, though making her a bubbly airhead was a bit much (although the MGM version does have her fans).  Having the Wicked Witch of the West be responsible for the poppies is fine for purposes of drama, and having them be foiled by snow as opposed to field mice is likewise fine for purposes of staging.  Mary Norton’s The Magic Bedknob and Bonfires and Broomsticks do not contain Nazis, musical numbers, a young Miss Price, or magical football matches with talking animals–though all of these things are very fun in Bedknobs and Broomsticks, a movie I adored as a child and had to thank for introducing me to the equally good (if significantly different) book.  And Alfonso Cuaron’s version of A Little Princess took numerous liberties with the original novel, including but not limited to moving the setting from London to New York, making Becky black instead of Cockney, and most significantly, having Sarah’s dad not be dead of bad investments in India but instead poisoned by mustard gas and MIA in WWI.

The difference here is that The Wizard of Oz, Bedknobs and Broomsticks and Cuaron’s A Little Princess are all great movies.   The reason The Seeker isn’t is not because elements were changed, but because elements were changed for the wrong reasons and the wrong way. Continue Reading »

And Now a Word from Your Friendly Neighborhood Webmaster

David Louis Edelman December 20th, 2008

DeepGenre is transferring web hosts and upgrading WordPress installations in the process (after which it will walk and chew gum at the same time). Everything should look exactly the same to you after the move’s all done, but things might be a bit daffy for a day or two around here. I mean, daffier than usual.

If you’re reading this post, then congratulations, you are one of the cool kids. You’re reading DeepGenre on the new server. Please go out and buy lottery tickets now while your luck holds.

If you’re not reading this post, congratulations, you are a paradox. Please have your cake and eat it too, and let us know if there’s a sound when a tree falls in the forest and nobody’s there to hear it.

Publication basking: Busted Flush here, latest Wild Cards novel

Kevin Andrew Murphy December 9th, 2008

I got my author’s copies of Busted Flush yesterday, the latest Wild Cards novel which I wrote part of. I’d seen bits and bobs of the other author’s sections during the writing phase, for character approval and to see that we were on the same page, but this is my first chance to read the whole thing together and I’m enjoying it. So far I’ve read Melinda and Caroline’s sections at the beginning, then skipped ahead to reread parts of what I wrote (since there’s no plot surprises there, but there’s the fun of seeing your words in actual print).
Busted Flush cover shot
I’m not certain how many other authors do this, setting aside a day for enjoying the book when it comes out. Lots of times I know it hasn’t worked out, due to life, deadlines and other realities (and today not so much either, since I’m having a friend over to help install a new hard drive in the new computer and attempt to transfer what files were saved from the dead one), but when it happens, it’s nice to be able to just sit back and bask.

P.S. As a small update, there’s now an interview with me and the rest of the Busted Flush authors up at Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist for anyone who’d like to read it.

Don’t You Wish You Lived Then? (Musings on Class and Fantasy)

Madeleine Robins December 4th, 2008

I used to get asked that question a lot in my Regency-writing days.  The short, simple answer: No.  No painless dentistry, eccentric provision for sewage, no penicillin and no concept of asepsis, and the condition of most women was not one that I aspire to.  But the women who asked the question usually had been complimentary about my writing, and I am weak, and did not want to blurt out the first thing that came to my mind (which would be: Whaddaya, crazy?) and so I’d say something like “Well, they sure knew how to dress, didn’t they?”  Because twenty seconds’ musing on why these readers of mine thought that the Regency might be a swell time to live returned the conclusion that they were talking about a fantasy of the Regency, in which they would be duchesses in pretty clothes, and always say and do the right thing, and they would get to marry a prince, and all their trials would be wrapped up by the end of the last act.

It was easy (particularly when I was younger) to see this as a rather childish wish; with the wisdom of age, give or take, I think that life is hard enough and if the fantasy of living in a magical then-and-there and being beautiful and clever and well dressed helps a reader get through the day, I’m glad to have provided that service.  For me, however, part of what I love about writing about the past, or the future, or fantastic societies, is the chance to play with the fallout from that most human of pastimes: organizing ourselves into castes.  

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Introducing Book View Café

Madeleine Robins November 19th, 2008

I’m formulating my thoughts on this whole politics/class/fantasy thing–an issue which fascinates me as a writer and a human.  But (as with many fascinating topics) every time I write something I realize I need to think a little more.  So pardon me while I think, and I’ll be back to the topic in a day or so.

Meanwhile, I want to let you know about a new venture started by a group of women writing in SF, fantasy, horror, mystery, and romance: the Book View Café.  Writers such as Ursula LeGuin, Vonda McIntyre, Irene Radford, Katherine Elisska Kimbriel, Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff, Sarah Zettel, and, well, <i>me</i>, are putting up screenplays, stories, poetry and even whole novels.  Right now it’s all read for free, while we’re in the shakeout period.  Thereafter some of it will be free, some will be free if read online, some available for download for a nominal fee. 

The idea is to make a place where we can get our work before readers in a new way–stories that are out of print, experimental, or otherwise unavailable.  There’s also a blog with posts by the site’s various authors–updated daily, and as diverse as we are.

Looking for something good to read?  Want to check out a writer you haven’t tried before?  Check out the Book View Cafe.

Caliban and His Mirror: a Guest Post by James Enge

Kate Elliott November 11th, 2008

Commenter James Enge posted a rumination on fantasy and politics on his own blog, and I received his permission to repost it here for your reading pleasure (or for you to take issue with–we’re equal opportunity).

Herewith:

Caliban and His Mirror: Fantasy and Politics (or not):

by James Enge
Deep Genre has had a couple of interesting posts lately about political values in epic fantasy–specifically the old “SF Diplomat” question of whether fantasy is inherently reactionary. The first was (by Kate Elliott, and the next by Lois Tilton; both have provoked interesting comment threads, and with luck there may be more posts to come.)

In the comments to Kate Elliot’s piece, Mark Tiedemann (a sometime Black Gate writer, among other perhaps more notable things) suggested that fantasy was not necessarily interested in politics–he described it as an “added benefit” for fantasy but not essential. “Fantasy is not about systems but about the essentials of self, and the problems of the given story are designed to reveal those qualities of character which are outside of or beyond ‘politics.’”

I was going to just comment with something like “Word!” or “True dat!” but my experts tell me that no one says that stuff anymore, and they also refused to tell me what people do say. (”For your own safety,” they keep insisting, as if that arrest for misuse of “groovadelic” in mixed company hadn’t been expunged from my record years ago.)

So instead I wrote

Great post and fascinating comments. I especially like Mark Tiedemann’s point. Matters of governance in a fantasy novel are rarely about politics; they’re identity symbols. This can be bad (in an Iron Dream sort of way) or good, but it’s not necessarily advocating reactionary political values. It has more to do with the Freudian “family romance.”

Kate Elliott wondered, in a very civil way, what the hell we were talking about. I can’t speak for Mark Tiedemann, but here’s what I was talking about.
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On Fantasies and Kings

Lois Tilton November 9th, 2008

In addressing the charge that genre fantasy displays a reactionary political bias by setting so many of its works in genre-medieval kingdoms, Kate Elliott aptly points her finger at lazy worldmaking instead. To which I would add the pernicious influence of the publishers’ marketing departments, who find it easiest to sell what they have sold so often before.

The question still remains, however: What is it about monarchy that seems to be so attractive to fantasy authors? Or conversely, what is it about fantasy that seems to find monarchy so attractive?

Fantasy is the oldest kind of story, rooted directly in myth, the tales of gods and other wondrous beings who did wondrous deeds at the beginning of time. Moreover, fantasy continually revisits its roots, seeking to revive and capture that primal wonder.

It is for this reason that there is always a backwards-looking strain in fantasy fiction, usually not because of any reactionary political leanings of the authors, but because this branch of fantasy seeks the divine, the numinous, the wonder of those times when myth was alive.

There is a limit to how far back we can go. Our species has lived on Earth for about a hundred thousand years, but the historical record covers only the most recent five percent of that time, and that incompletely. We know from the finds of archaeology that our distant ancestors had religious beliefs, that they entertained hope of an afterlife, that they probably had invented gods and worshiped them. But we can only conjecture about the actual content of their myths, the stories the people told about their gods. This is the realm of the imagination, the realm of fantasy.

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In the wake of the USA presidential election, Deep Genre is thinking about politics, class, and fantasy and science fiction.

Kate Elliott November 7th, 2008

Lois McMaster Bujold, at her Denvention Guest of Honor speech, talks about science fiction and fantasy as “fantasies of political agency.”  She remarks that “Even the world-building itself is often a political argument. And, oh boy, are the political aspects of the fiction ever valorized in the reviews.”

And is she ever right!

Now and again I read what strike me, as a writer of fantasy, as some rather puzzling claims about fantasy.

Is fantasy an inherently conservative genre?  Does it look back to an “idealized past” or represent a fetishization of, say, feudalism and aristocracy?  If you write about monarchy, are you authoritarian in your heart of hearts?  Are all “traditional” fantasies, or “epic” fantasies, or “heroic” fantasies, about restoring the hierarchical status quo and/or wrapped around a monolithic and absolutist vision of good vs. evil?  What is up with these modern day fantasy writers who write novels set in reactionary monarchies and don’t write a story about overthrowing the monarchy and establishing a democratic government like the one they are fortunate enough to live in?  Is there something *wrong* with them?  Or are they just pandering to the audience that reads this reactionary pap and dreams of that happy day when they were the lost prince seeking to reclaim his stolen throne?

All the statements in the above paragraph are paraphrases of statements or reflections I have read online–nor did I have to look too hard to find them.

I’m perfectly happy to agree that on an individual case by case basis we can find examples of all the statements above within published fantasy novels.  Indeed, I basically agree with China Mieville’s statement in an Autumn 2000 interview that

“If you look at stereotypical ‘epic’ or ‘high’ fantasy, you’re talking about a genre set in magical worlds with some pretty vile ideas. They tend to be based on feudalism lite: the idea, for example, that if there’s a problem with the ruler of the kingdom it’s because he’s a bad king, as opposed to a king. If the peasants are visible, they’re likely to be good simple folk rather than downtrodden wretches (except if it’s a bad kingdom…). Strong men protect curvaceous women. Superheroic protagonists stamp their will on history like characters in Nietzschean wet dreams, but at the same time things are determined by fate rather than social agency. Social threats are pathological, invading from outside rather than being born from within. Morality is absolute, with characters–and often whole races–lining up to fall into pigeonholes with ‘good’ and ‘evil’ written on them.”

Mieville rightly goes on to point out that there is plenty of fantasy that does not fit this stereotype.

I tend to think that many of these elements, where they do appear, come about as a result of lazy world-building rather than political agency.  Lazy world-building is an issue of craft, not politics.

I would also suggest that Mieville’s neat encapsulation above has more to do with the mythology of American exceptionalism (or perhaps with the fading dream of the British Empire) than with any real understanding or unreflective adoration on the part of writers of “cod-epic fantasy” of manorialism and feudalism, chieftain level societies, the early development of states, the rise of absolute monarchy, or any of the permutations in between and beyond or outside.  Bad rulers vs. good rulers?  Good simple folk?  Pathological social threats?  Moral absolutism?  If you were paying attention to the recent USA election, this should all sound familiar.

And I would go further and suggest that some people make assumptions about fantasies, especially those they have not read, which may on the surface seem to fall into “stereotypical” categories but which do not fit so easily into that stereotype if they are read with a clear gaze.

The past is a foreign country, as L.P. Hartley famously wrote (although I admit I know not one other thing about him).  Writers may choose to write books set in different cultural historical political and social settings for a variety of reasons.  Writers may not necessarily choose to use sledgehammer and red flags to signal their themes, but that does not therefore mean they are writing epic or traditional settings  out of an unthinking embrace of an idealized past that never existed.  Many of us have much more complex motivations regarding our desire to explore the history and tapestry of the human condition.

The Fortress of Solitude

Constance September 23rd, 2008

Superman Flies Lois Over Manhattan

What do you think? Was the 1978 Superman the best movie made from a comic book, with all other attempts going downhill after that, with the exception of the first two Spidermans (2002 & 2004)? And maybe, Batman Begins (2005)? Oh, wait! There was also the excellent first X-Men (2000).

We shall not even mention the ludicrously exacrable awful X-Man ast Stand (2006) — which seems to be more generally the quality of comix-to-movies and / or video / computer games-to-movies, alas and alack-a-day!

Back to Superman, 1978, the past prophesizes the future. We begin not on the planet of Krypton, but in the Depression with voice over telling us specifically that this is the 1930’s and a world-wide economic disaster has taken place, while black-and-white comic book pages flip. One wonders why, since after that we get the credits, and then the movie properly begins and we’re on Krypton.

However, with the 1930’s global Depression invoked, the trial on Krypton of traitors to the state, and then the denial and rejection of brilliant Jor-El’s warning of coming planetary destruction by the same power elite that passed judgment of the traitors, it feels like today’s headlines.

It’s lovely how the director does not rush us through any of this. The film takes just the time it needs to set-up what needs to be set-up. It remains interesting to look at through this leisurely beginning, leisurely despite the tension and pressure of special effects planetary destruction. Partly this is because the Intro is mostly narrated by Marlon Brando as Jor-El, just the first on-screen member of this all-star cast.

Then we finally get to the best parts of the movie, Superman’s adoption by the Kents and his growing up in rural Kansas. The photography’s tenderness in recording the small details of that life provokes one to wonder whether the director or the cinematographer grew up there too. The glory of the wheat, gold and rose in the lingering sunset glow, sleeping with the bakelite radio tuned in to the local R’nR station, the paper window shades with circle string pulls, the vane windmills, the barns — I know all these details intimately also from my childhood. Then Clark must leave the warm, nurturing pastoral nest, to begin his adult super education via Jor-El’s technology, in the Fortress of Solitude, grown via that same technology out of the empty ice blades at the top of the world.

Next follows assuming a mask and courtship, simultaneously. Such cute bits: no phone booths into which he can change from Kent to Superman, the most extreme looking-up-a-girl’s-skirt scene ever, as Lois Lane dangles from the helicopter teetering at the edge of a skyscraper’s roof deck, x-raying Lois’s lungs through her clothes with his super vision when he advises her not to smoke.

It’s all foreplay and courtship from the moment Superman (not Kent, despite Superman’s Kent mask’s attraction to her) and Lois Lane set eyes on each other. Innuendo, double entendre, her interview of the man who saved her, giving him his name — Superman — gathering his vital stats, most importantly that he’s neither married nor has a girlfriend. She asks if he can, um, well, eat? Meaning, do you, can you fuck? Even better, there is no way that Margot Kidder can be described as anything but, well, homely. This is all lead-up to that marvelous overflight of New York City, which neither Vaquero nor I have ever forgotten. Seeing this movie again for the first time since 1978, seeing the Twin Towers — the flight is even more magical.

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