That Bitch Goddess, Love

On Homogeneity and Beauty

2010-06-29T16:59:00.000-07:00

I have a love/hate relationship with the television program “What Not to Wear.”

On the one hand, there’s something immensely satisfying in watching a woman being made over. And they are mostly women—despite the fact that there are an equal, if not a more substantial number of men in desperate need of a make-over. When a woman who was previously dowdy and hated her own looks suddenly comes out at the end looking confident, happy and put together, it feels like a kind of redemption. A shallow, superficial redemption but a redemption nonetheless. As a feminist, I am both aware of the illusion of beauty standards and the power that can be found in a tube of lipstick (I am currently sporting a shade called “Stiletto” by Kat Von D. It’s a delicious shade of orangey red that makes me feel like Marlene Dietrich despite the fact that I have not showered today and am 60 pounds over the weight I wish to be). The right dress can confer onto a person a dignity and a confidence not even prescription drugs can match. For men, I believe a similar kind of transformation occurs when they put on a good suit. Suddenly, they are James Bond. Clothing and costume are incredibly important aspects of our identity, even more than that: they are the matter by which we create our physical identity. A change of job, occupation and ideology is often accompanied by a change in dress. This is true regardless of sex and gender as the revolving door of teenage subculture attests to daily.

So when the women come out at the end of “What Not to Wear” I always feel good for them, even if I don’t agree with the clothing, hair and style choices made, because they feel good about themselves. This is where my hate comes in.

When “What Not to Wear” makes-over a dowdy and dumpy woman, the results are always beneficial. These women had no style to begin with and, consequently, they had nothing to lose but their chains—so to speak. But the women who are trying, that’s always a bit sad because somehow they end up erasing something odd and ugly and wonderful about those women. My friend Louisa was the first person to point this out to me. She said that Stacy and Clinton erased people’s individual styles and all turned them into . . . well, into Stacy. It doesn’t help that Nick Arrojo gives everyone and their mother a Mom-bob. The women on “What Not to Wear” are inevitably homogenized, turned into merely pretty women.

Beauty is something that is not very well understood. The Greeks conceptualized it as balance, symmetry and harmony. If one looks up the word “beauty” in the OED the definition contains this meaning along with the idea that it is what is pleasing to the senses, especially the sense of sight. If this the case then I could assert, totally without any basis but that of my own eyes, that that in modern industrialized countries very few people are ugly and very few people are beautiful. To my mind, both beauty and ugliness are defined by the fact that they are extremes. We have a notion of what is or should be beautiful based on movie stars and models. However, I argue that if you really look at these people a lot, you begin to notice how similar they are. The noses, the mouths, the eyes all contain that Greek notion of balance and symmetry. Bodies too, for excess of fatness or thinness is immediately criticized. On the red carpet of any event, celebrities who dare to wear anything unusual are immediately castigated as the “Worst Dressed”—regard the famous Bjork swan dress incident for an extreme example. Beauty is standardized, not simply in that we promote a certain ideal of beauty but in that in order to be considered beautiful one cannot be in excess, neither in dress nor in feature. A certain level of homogeneity is required in order to be considered beautiful. It is a mediocrity that appears both unattainable and yet, within reach if one is willing to work hard enough.

And make-over shows prove that this is not just some beauty corporation conspiracy theory. I, too, can attest to the difference a haircut can make to the way my face looks. Of course, as I said above there are simply not very many extremes of ugliness or beauty anymore. Most women, IMHO, are just simply and naturally pretty and as such can become prettier with the application of mascara. This is both a state of mind and a modification of what is already there.

Despite my firm belief in the fact that most women are pretty, if not quite as put together as they should be, I have a real problem with beautiful heroines—which is obvious so I repeatedly complain about it over and over and over again, ad nauseam—for two reasons that I will discuss, though there are more reasons, I assure you. I have named these reasons as follows:

1. B is for Banality—this reason is an issue of narrative and prose structure. I’m sick unto death of being introduced to heroines by physical descriptions. And these descriptions include the reaction of the hero’s wang to the heroine. I get it! She’s hot! And you know what? I don’t care! Okay, that was a lie. I do care but I would rather the details of her physical appearance arose organically from the story rather than through some lengthy description of her titian-colored hair or whatever, that is stuck somewhere in the first three chapters of the book. It reminds me of The Babysitter’s Club books wherein Chapter One was entirely dedicated to telling you who the characters were and what they looked liked—Maryann has braids and she’s the mousy, quiet one! It is also something that defined most of my childhood games with my sisters. “Well, I’m a princess and I also have magical powers and a sword and red hair that is long and flows down to my waist, like Sorcha in Willow.” I wish I was making that last part up, but I’m not.

Moreover, I think physical descriptions of heroines are used in lieu of actual character development. I would suggest to all writers that before you even begin to think of what hair color you heroine has, whether she is beautiful or merely pretty or actually plain or even totally ugly, that you should figure out what the hell kind of personality she has because there are a slew of heroines who suffer from total lack of personality but have awesome hair. The second suggestion is to actually not say she is beautiful, because I never believe it. Sometimes when you tell me she’s beautiful it makes me downright antagonistic, I admit it.

Why? quite frankly, because it’s depressing. The heroine never just happens to be beautiful. Her beauty is directly related to and often responsible for the hero’s initial interest in her and since no other virtues ever manifest, one could correctly conclude that love is only for the beautiful. He sees her and then he loves her. Somebody pass me the Xanax because if that’s true, I’m gonna need that and a bottle of vodka.

2. The Lady Gaga Effect—I love Lady GaGa. I love her. I adore her. I worship at her feet. You should know that first before I get into this section. Lady GaGa is a weirdo. Have you seen her outfits? Fantastic, but bizarre. There’s something freakish about her. Even though she is blonde and pretty and thin, there’s a monstrosity there in the way that she dresses and presents herself that I find refreshing. Her music is neuroses disguised as pop songs. Her stage shows are about death and fear. When she’s interviewed she presents as a calm, composed, intelligent and creative young woman. Quite frankly, I’m not sure why she became such a superstar. Because beneath all that, she’s weird. And her weirdness is such that it really makes some people irate. Like people who hate her, really hate her. There were rumors going around that she was really a man—that’s just odd. That’s not the sort of thing that would happen to Madonna or Britney Spears. Why?

I read an article in the London Times by a woman named Caitlin Moran who summarized, much better than I ever could say, what I’ve always thought about Lady GaGa:

I have just come up with the theory that, if you have one of your heroes lying tipsily next to you, you should tell them all the pretentious pop-culture theories you have come up with about them. So I slurringly tell her that the difference between her and, say, Madonna, is that you don’t penetrate Gaga. Her songs and videos are – while sexual – about dysfunction and neuroses and alienation and self-discovery. They’re not, in any sense, a come-on. Despite having worn very little clothing for most of her career, Gaga is not a prick tease.

“Yeah! It’s not what straight men masturbate over when they’re at home watching pornography,” she confirms. “It’s not for them. It’s for… us.” And she gestures around the club (emphasis mine)

To confirm this statement I would say that with a few notable exceptions, most of the straight men I know hate Lady GaGa. Because, you see, she totally deflects the gaze. That underwear she’s wearing? It’s not for them, thus the rumors that she was really a transvestite.

Which leads me to my second theory about beauty: there is a kind of beauty that, to paraphrase Ms. Moran, cannot be penetrated. It cannot be gotten at, especially through sight. And not through years of intimacy with it, not through words, not through sex not through violence, not through death will it ever be known. It is a kind of beauty that constantly escapes capture. It hovers perpetually on the horizon of our vision and our conceptions and while it remains in sight, it is always out of hands’ reach. And it is monstrous. It incites desire but not lust. It is a beauty that borders ugliness, that toys with the repulsive, the grotesque, and the foul. It is a discomfiting dis-ease that does not incite or excite the sexual but makes us feel it nonetheless.

Can you imagine if a heroine was that kind of beautiful? The covers of the book might actually implode from the ramifications. Because if there is one thing that heroines are meant to be, it is penetrated.

A Very, Very Short Romance Novel: Part 1

2010-05-27T21:19:00.000-07:00

Regalia had been abducted by pirates the previous morning at around 8 o'clock. In retrospect, it seemed an odd hour for kidnapping, especially by pirates. One doesn't usually think of pirates getting up early, but then the sea never sleeps so she supposed that neither do pirates. What was more curious was that she lived in a land-locked area of Great Britain.

"But we're inland," she told the motley crew of pistol-toting, saber-wielding, gold-toothed ruffians.

"Dinna matta, lass," said their brawny leader, who was also--given the accent and the kilt--Scottish as well as a pirate."Ay, but you are a comely wench, aren't ye?" And gave her a wink.

Fortunately, just as Regalia was beginning to fear her virtue would be forcibly stripped from her by this brutish but strangely attractive privateer ("I dinna wurk for the Chrown, lass. I've me own code of honour!"), their post-chaise was held up by a conveniently placed gang of highwaymen, all in greatcoats, tricorns and masks! Good heavens! And she hadn't even had breakfast. How very unsporting.

"Yer money or your life, milord," rang out an impudent and deliciously baritone voice.

Uh oh, thought Regalia, looking for a place or a pirate to hide behind.

Stay Tuned For Part 2!

Lists, lists, and more lists: a memoir of a reader

2009-12-28T10:21:00.000-08:00

I believe I started making list of books I wished to read when I was in high school. To illustrate the ginormity of my inner geekiness, I suspect I was the only 16 year old who skipped school to go to the library in order to look up books about books. From these tomes, I accumulated volumes of paper, all of which are lined with my elegant-yet-totally-unreadable handwriting, all of which list books I wished to read. Most of these earlier lists are in a file, in a box, in my parents' garage. I shall probably take them with me when I move out of state again because God Forbid I should give up my lists.

In any case, what do these lists consist of? Well, they are books, sometimes songs, with title and author. Why I wrote them down and from where, I do not know. Only past Lazaraspaste can answer that question. But here are some of them in a folder I found when cleaning out my paperwork during the holiday break. My goal is to consolidate them, but I don't know how I will do this. I think I need an iPhone because I would like one centrally located, ever accessible list so that when I am standing in the airport bookstore or the Barnes and Noble or the used bookstore, I will be able to call up my grand and teetering list and figure out what to buy. Not, if my 500+ books listed on LibraryThing is any indication, that I don't have enough books already but clearly I have a problem.

I know many of you have Kindles or Sonys and while I would like an ereader, I'm not a fan of the fact that the formats are so rigid. I would like to have the option of buying ebooks from anywhere and having the format be easily transferred to my ereader. Also, I can't afford it. If I get an iPhone, I can't get an ereader and I think I would use the iPhone more. If any of you out there have any opinion on this, please share with me.

I enjoy list making. Although, as a consummate and perpetual list-maker, I find certain kinds of lists disgraceful. For example, The Top 100 Books of the Century or the Year's Best. Well, not really. I mean, its very arbitrary, list-making is and any you make is going to have problems, even for you. You'll invariably forget something important. This is how To Do lists and grocery lists work as well. The best lists are ones that admit to their randomness and then explain what the book is about and why they've included it. My personal favorite of this sort is anything by Michael Dirda. Michael Dirda works for the Washington Post and has very broad tastes. I have discerned this from reading Classics for Pleasure, a book that jumps around genres quite liberally. Something I appreciate as a romance reader.

One of the chief reasons I became a librarian was my love of list making (I also like indices but let's not go there). What is a library catalog if not a gigantic list? What are the shelves if not the physical manifestation of that list? Libraries, in recent years, have become less about books and more about other shit. Like community education and technology, and while that's all fine and good, we still need books. I'm not one of those people who thinks that books will disappear because the thing about a book is that aside from the ability to read, you only need sunlight to operate one. This is very handy. I do not trust technology because technology breaks. It does. It does all the time. Things don't download. You lose everything if you don't back up. Things are scattered and hither and yon and you have to recollect them whenever you transfer to a new device. I've lost songs going from one computer to another, even with Geek Squad shifting everything over. I do not like the idea of losing my collections. I realize I'm a rarity but then while I think they're are many readers out there, there are even less people who are literate and even fewer book lovers. Yes, I am a terrible snob, thank you. I think a book is a piece of art. Its like owning a painting. I also have this theory that literacy, not just the ability to read but the ability to read for more than one meaning, works out to about the same percentage that its always been. I know people who don't read the same book more than once. This I find very shocking. I mean, how are you to know the book if you don't read it more than once? How can you possibly pick up nuance, say?

In any case, I'm looking for better ways to make lists. If I can incorporate technology into my listmaking, that would be great. We'll see.

The Message of a Book: A Short Rant

2009-12-04T21:27:00.000-08:00

This post was inspired by a discussion over at All About Romance a few months ago.

Can we just never talk about the message the book is giving to children ever again? Please. Pretty please. Or, you know what? Hey, let's at least have like a two month moratorium on this discussion every year. We'll call it "Let's NOT Think About the Children Month". It'll be great. We can discuss books without talking about how they affect readers. No, the word is "effect" because apparently there's this belief still circulating around that somehow art will cause you to do things. For instance, if you watch "The Last Temptation of Christ" one too many times you will become an atheist. Or if you read about romance novel alpha, bad boys somehow you will then go out and find yourself an abusive relationship. Can we just please admit that this is just not true? That art does not cause things? Except boredom on occasion.

Or maybe that it's the opposite parallel. Maybe girls read books with bad boys in them because that's who they are attracted to already. Ever thought of that? And I've said this before but "bad boy" is a loose and ambiguous term. I have a love for literary bad boys at the very least and yet, I find myself in stark disagreement with certain people about who they refer to as a "bad boy." Not only does the term change definition from person to person but one can also be attracted to some bad boys but not all bad boys. Just because I fancied Lestat doesn't mean I'm going to date Ted Bundy. This whole conversation and line of thinking is so chock full of bad reasoning that I can barely keep from running around and smacking people upside the head. Do you know what is a stronger factor in determining whether or not a young girl ends up in an abusive relationship or destructive sexual patterns? Shockingly (and Freudianly?) it is her relationship with her father, especially during her teen years when she feels like crap all the time and the other teens around her are basically no different from a pack of feral dogs.

Don't you think that perhaps Bella's attraction to the paternalistic, controlling Edward in Twilight was more a product of the distant and cold relationship she had with her father? He never talked to her. He barely checked in with her on how she was doing or why she would make the sudden decision not live with her mother and stepfather (I heard somewhere that Stephanie Meyer's early version had her running to Forks because her stepdad had made an inappropriate pass at her)? Oh no, it could never be the dysfunctional family relationship. No, no. Bella's questionable attraction to Edward is clearly a direct result of her love of Wuthering Heights.

It just doesn't scan. Moreover, plenty of people fall in love with the wrong people, especially when they are young. Rarely does it happen that one meets a life partner in the hormone addled days of their youth. It happens, but not often. Why? Because when you are a teenager you are technically a sociopath. And everyone knows sociopaths have difficulty make good life choices.

Spinsters, Bluestockings, and Other Aging Virgins

2009-12-02T19:40:00.000-08:00

I think I might be a spinster. Is there a checklist or something I can look at to make sure? Let's see: over-educated, check. Glasses, check. Governess, oh no but teacher and librarian sort of equals that, terrible fashion sense, nope. Phew, this close to being a spinster.

But if I am a spinster and my life was a romance novel, then any day now Mr. Wonderful Pants should be coming along to sweep me off my feet. Which would be good because my love of beautiful shoes has completely ruined my feet. The bone below my big toe actually aches. However, I think that my shoes are the major fashion item preventing me from being a spinster.

In any case, I prefer romances featuring spinsters and bluestockings the most. It has to do with Disney's Sleeping Beauty.

When I was between three and five I was obsessed with several things: Mr. Darcy, The Nutcracker, The Magic Flute and being a Sleeping Beauty princess. My love of Mr. Darcy was born of having viewed the old Masterpiece Theater version of Pride and Prejudice. I thought Mr. Darcy was a dreamboat. According to my mother, I used to pretend to kiss Mr. Darcy. I also wanted to be a ballet dancing, opera singer. Unfortunately, I was unable to carry either a tune or a rhythm. Such is life. I was also the oldest child of a family of girls.

By the time I was five I was very aware of the fact that eldest sisters rarely, if ever, get a happy ending. In order to get a happy ending one must the youngest or the only child. I was neither. I was convinced that somehow this dream of being a ballet dancing, opera singing princess in a story would some day come to pass. After all, if sudden transformations into great beauties have taught us anything then they have taught us that sudden transformations into great beauties are possible.

Imagine my bitter disappointment when none of this actually occurred. Ah well, what can you do. The other aspect of myself that characterized my childhood was deep sensitivity to anything that stank remotely of injustice or unfairness. That being said, it always seemed to me to be extremely unjust that ugly step-sisters and eldest children got the shit end of the deal in fairy tales. I mean, why should birth order rule you out of having a happy ending?

Which brings me back to spinsters, bluestockings and other aging virgins. Here then is coterie of ugly step-sisters and eldest daughters, albeit not in those terms, who are finally getting their happy endings. This coterie also includes any girls with glasses.

Favorites of this genre include, but are not limited to:

Mary Challoner in The Devil's Cub

Annelise Kempton in The Devil's Waltz

Beth Armitage in An Unwilling Bride

Penelope Featherington in Romancing Mr. Bridgerton

And most especially, Sophie Hatter in Howl's Moving Castle which is not a romance but amazing, amazing, amazing.

What I think I like most about these stories is that these heroines are not the object of initial desire, but somehow by being their own self, they become beloved. While standards of beauty have changed, the one that has remained the same is that if a woman is to be successful in love then she must never be herself. This is the central thesis of the infamous The Rules but it is not a new thesis.

Yet, these stories reject the notion that in order to be loved or sexually desired that a woman must hid her intelligence, push her beauty like a drug or crumble in the face of danger. In short, to exhibit masculine qualities rather than feminine virtues. It's rather heartening, but is it true? This I do not know.

Epilogues or Babies + Schmoop = Puke

2009-12-02T13:16:00.000-08:00

Personally, I like children and someday I hope to have one or two. However, children are not romantic. They are very opposite of romantic. As my father is wont to say, children are the enemy of gracious dining. I think this could be extended to most activities.

And yet, children populate the epilogues and indeed, the logues of romance novels. Why is this? The heteronormative imperative to procreate? Mmmmmm, maybe but I think not so much. I think it may be a genre standard which is to say that the romance genre is in a certain respect the opposite of tragedy in two ways:

1. It postulates a worldview in which the ultimate reality is happiness not grief and

2. It reifies the domestic. Epic and tragedy deal with Great Matters, matters of state, matters of God, and while romance does this, too, it does it on a more mundane level.

Thus the proliferation of babies is a symbolic measure of both of these standards. First, babies represent the continuity of generations as birth is the opposite of death. Second, babies represent the joy of the domestic. I say joy and not pleasure or happiness because children bring all of these things but when they are throwing a tantrum in the shoe department of the Nordstroms one rarely feels pleasure. Joy connotes a certain spike of pain along with the happiness, at least in my mind.

Despite this symbolic measure of babies, they aren't romantic. Babies cry and shit and throw tantrums. They do not care if you are tired or hungry or horny. They rarely if ever negotiate. Oh sure, the baby is funny and adorable and says awesome things that you only wish you could still say, but that doesn't take away the fact that the baby got some sort of sticky goop all over the couch . . . which you sat in. Not romantic.

So when novels end with the hero and heroine smooching over the sleeping head of a toddler all I can think to myself is, yeah right! One party would be off trying to do the following: laundry, the dishes, take a shower, sleep or watch something other than Caillou or Handy Manny.

"Quick Henry!" the heroine ought to say in low panicked tones. "While Charles is asleep, I'm going to take a shower."

"I'll move him to the crib."

"No, don't do that. You'll wake him up. Just let him sleep right there."

"I need to vacuum up these cheerios. If I leave him here, he'll wake up at the sound."

"So don't vacuum."

"But I can't vacuum when he's awake, because he yanks the cord."

"Ssshhhhhh, you're gonna wake him up."

"Can't I do anything in this house?"

Well, at least that's the way it goes in my family. My point is that children don't necessarily strengthen a relationship or offer convenient moments for making out. I would like to see less babies and births in epilogues. I like the concept of an epilogue but maybe authors could just jog it down the road a few years to the vow renewal or a toast a child's wedding. That would be better than babies.

Books I've Bought: A Photo Essay

2009-11-06T15:43:00.000-08:00

I love library book sales. I love used bookstores. I love thrift stores. Why? Cheap paperback books. I used to scour the thrift shops of the East Village for hidden romance treasures, certain in the knowledge that they knew not what they had. And indeed, they didn't. The following proves it.

I bought this in a bookshop located in the upstairs of an old 18th century building in St.Ives, Cornwall, UK. I can't remember how much I bought it for but I was stoked by the fact that at that time none of Heyer's books were in print in the United States.

I believe that I purchased this at a used bookstore here in SLC called Central Paperback Book Exchange. This is a strange story. The hero is married at the beginning of the book and then he is convicted of his wife's murder. In order to save him, the heroine marries him. There's a trial.

I first read this book online. I had checked it out as an ebook but then later found it at a library book sale. I paid 25 cents.

I found this on my parents bookshelf. I do not know how it got there. My mother never read Barbara Cartland. The only novel my father talks about reading (though it is not the only one he's read) is The Magic Mountain by Thomas Mann, which he hated and never finished. He's on page 123 and he's staying there.

I got this at the library book sale last week. It was in the free pile. I have not read it yet.

Library Book Sale. 25 Cents.

Look at the back!

I haven't read this one either. I should. I mean, hello! or rather Avast! Pirates!

Laura Kinsale will have to forgive me. Despite the words "Note for Resale" printed on the cover, I bought this book at the library book sale. Awesome sauce right?

I had to hunt this sucker down. I can't remember what I paid but it was waaaaaaaaaay more than 25 cents. I've mentioned it in a previous post.

I love this book. It is a delightful romp involving relatives and grave digging. Got it at Central Paperback Book Exchange for $8.00.

Got this in the free pile! Woot. I love the library book sale. LOVE IT!

Salvation Army Thrift Store, NYC. $1.00. The cover is trying very hard to suggest the Pre-Raphaelites.

I got this in Denver for $2.00 at a used bookstore called Two Dollar Books. Apt. I have no idea what this book is about. I haven't read. Sometimes I just buy books for the covers.

True pulp fiction and all for only a $1.00. Library again. The size of this book is weird, too. It's more a large square than the rectangular shape we are familiar with. Really more like a magazine or a comic book than book-book.

I pulled this out of a pile of donations someone had given to the library when I was working at Flushing. It's from the 80's but the picture looks like 1940's film noir.

This is just a sampling. I have a lot of books. A lot. I think at last count, it totaled somewhere around 500 volumes. I might need an intervention, but if I don't rescue these books, who will?

Fatty Fat Fat Fat

2009-10-02T11:35:00.000-07:00

Over at All About Romance Abi Bishop has written a post on fat heroes and heroines in romance.

Fat and love. Love and fat. The question, as far as fat in romance is concerned is this: Will the reader find a fat hero/heroine believable as a romantic lead? Or does being fat preclude having an erotic experience because fat is somehow a signifier for that total lack of sexual attractiveness? A recent survey (conducted by me, just minutes ago) of internet porn has concluded that there are a lot of fat, ugly, and fat n' ugly people fucking a lot, in various positions all for the titallating enjoyment of viewers across the world. That said, if fat people can fuck in amateur porn and get a lot of viewers, why is it so unbelieve that fat people can fall in love and fuck both other fat people and thin people. Another survey, also conducted by me via observation of couples over the years and repeated viewings of the old TLC show A Wedding Story, has suggested that people pair off in the strangest manner. I postulate three kinds of pairngs off:

1. Looks Like It's About Time I Got Married and Bred Terrifying in its simplicity, I believe that this video entitled "I Guess You'll Do" really summarizes the heart of this sort of pairing, that being the title. Of course, to be fair not just anyone will do. It has to be someone moderately attractive, of similar background, of a similar class. Someone uncontroversial who meets the standards set by cultural (usually petit-bourgeosie) norms. This person will be a fine, albeit boring companion who you will come to resent for not being truly compatible. However, on the upside their very dullness will never discomfit you either with passion or misery. You will have a 50% chance of divorcing depending on how well you tolerate boredom. Arranged marriages also fall into this category. Literary examples of such couples include: Mr. and Mrs. Collins and most characters in sitcoms about married people.

2. Companions in Mind Boggling Dysfunction This pairing usually happens because both parties have deep unresolved Freudian issues. Many of the rich and famous illustrate what happens when these sorts of the relationships occur. They can be identified by their manic-depressive nature. When they are good, they are really, really good. But when they're bad, they're horrid. The spectrum of fucked up swings from the mild mania of the Tommy Lee/Pam Anderson relationship to the murder/suicide "relationship" of Sid Vicious/Nancy Spungen. This relationship dies either metaphorically when one of the two parties gets their shits together or when it literally dies because one of the two parties commits a murder. Regardless, it never ends well.

3. The Companionate Marriage Which hardly ever happens and even when it does, it can look from the outside like either #1 or #2 depending on the day (see Revolutionary Road for a literary exploration). However, there are some external indices that one might be able to use to determine whether a couple falls into this category.

Is one person a lot better looking than the other person? Is this person the man? Does he still look at the woman like she's a minor deity?

Is one person a lot better looking than the other person? Is this person the woman? Is the man poor? Does the woman still think he's awesome?

Do both parties seem to have a good time together no matter how lame the actual event is?

Do both parties seem to have the same sense of humor?

Do both parties agree that that guy over there is a douche? Do they communicate this fact only with their eyes?

Do they fight well?

Do they close ranks?

Are they affectionate?

Did they do one of the following: get married despite the fact that they belong to different religions/races/cultural backgrounds, against family expectations? Against social expectation? Against "God's" expectations as defined by family/culture/fundies?

Did one literally or metaphorically go to hell and back for the other and (here's the kicker) expected nothing in return?

What does this all have to do with being fat or fat and romance? Well, it all circles around pairing off #1. The thing about pairing off #1 is that in certain social circles marrying/dating/fucking a fat person is a revolutionary act tantamount to getting involved in an inter-racial dating in the 1960's. Yes, I'm serious. People would rather be with someone unexceptionable to their social circle than with someone they actually have an erotic (emotional, spiritual, physical) connection with because . . . what's the word I'm looking for . . . oh, right! they're bourgeosie. Petty at that.

The discomfort people have when reading about love occuring between certain people stems from two problem areas:

1. The reader's cultural expectations of what love looks like and does

2. The reader's own ambiguous desires.

Let me tackle the first one first.

People, depending upon multiple factors, have certain cultural expectations about love. What Romantic Comedy in film has taught us is that unattractive people end up together. Also, that their love story doesn't warrant 175 minutes of our time rather only warrants an interlude, a relief from the intensity of the attractive main characters. This is why RomCom best friends only fall into three categories quirky, fat, or ethnic/not-white. These people and their refusal to fit into mainstream standards of beauty by being odd, racially different and/or fat . . . well, they don't deserve love. If they really wanted to be loved, they would act normal/lose weight/be white. Regard Queen Latifah. Queen Latifah falls into all three categories and therefore can never play a romantic leading lady. This is because she is fat, black and quirky (what with being a former rap star and all). I heart Queen Latifah. Who wouldn't want to get involved in a romance with Queen Latifah? Oh, apparently the focus group.

Or what about Judy Greer best known as the quirky best friend from 27 Dresses and 13 Going On 30 (also as Kitty on Arrested Development but that's not really relevant to RomCom). Ms. Greer is thin, funny and pretty. However, she is not pretty in a way that is symmetrically pleasing. She's pretty, but odd looking forever excluding her from the role of Romantic Heroine.

Unless you are the female lead in a John Waters' movie, the chances of a female who deviates from the normative standard beauty ending up as the main character of a love story is slim (Ha!) to none.

Similarly, in real life people in pairing group #1 do not want to date/fuck/marry fat, quirky, non-white, ethinic people because then they would be embarassed in front of their friends, their family, their boss. Fat, quirky, non-white, ethnic people can only marry other fat, quirky, non-white ethnic people because even if they aren't really compatible they will be forced by circumstance to settle for the comfort of familiarity rather than the joy of compatibility. Pairing #1 is not about love. Pairing #1 is about convenience, the convenience of not having to feel even slightly uncomfortable. More than that, it is about maintaining a power structure with pretty, white people on top and everyone else in various stratified groupings beneath. If one is beautiful enough (mainly pertains to females) or rich enough (mainly pertains to males) then one may jump from your class of quirky, non-white, ethnic . . . as long as you aren't too quirky, too unwhite, or too ethnic . . . into the higher stratifications. I would also like to point out that true compatability is about balance and because the balance betwen one person and an other is a strange alchemical and specific process, true compatibility doesn't necessarily occur where you'd think it should. Another way to say it is, sometimes you two look really good on paper together but something in the actually mixture fails the recipe.

Let's be clear here, though. In real life (not celebraty life) you can't be too beautiful either. If you actually look at people from pairing group #1 you will notice that everyone in there is merely reasonably attractive. Nobody in that group is ever truly, crazy beautiful. Astoundingly beautiful, intelligent, charismatic people are also excluded from pairing group #1 (except in RomCom because its Hollywood but you will notice that in RomComs they nearly always dowd everyone down so they look like the boy/girl next door . . . this is why everyone's hair suddenly gets browner) because they too represent an extreme. And any extreme whether fat, quirky, non-white, ethnic or charismatic, gorgeous and brilliant or even a combination of these characteristics (say you are strangely beautiful Harvard grad, Hindustani woman with a PhD in neuro-linguistics. You probably have a hard time finding a date. Yes, hard to believe but true) is too uncomfortable to deal with and thus must be avoided, regardless of how strong a love attraction there is.

For the reader of the romance, this cultural expectation and terror of being remotely uncomfortable makes them unlikely to read romances that feature the first extreme much in the same way the RomCom doesn't want to feature the fat, quirky, etc. extreme. I would also say that the reason we see the physical beauty extreme more in romances and romantic comedy is because physical beauty, while rare, is not as subversive as charisma which is even rarer. So a heroine or hero can be extraordinary in their physical beauty and yet because they are not extraordinary in wit, charisma or intelligence, they do not constitute as much of a threat as someone who is. Moreover, because the extraordinary physical beauty is manifested textually in romance novels, the reader is not actually confronted with the visual, observable impact of having to deal with such beauty. The beauty is contained in the language and the language is not overwhelming the way it would be if it were experienced directly.

This leads me to the second part, that the reader's desires are ambiguous.

Desire is a fluid, bubbling mess of contradicitons, paradoxes, and perversions stemming from all the unmapped Cthonic and Dionysian places in the soul. Most people do not even want to experience their regular everyday emotions, let alone the ones that make up their most profound and fundamental desires. So when we are confronted with literature or art that forces us to peel off the scabs and poke directly into that place, many people become so uncomfortable they flee. Others really dig this sort of experience of art (I'm one of them) because to them the painful stripping into the uneasy parts of the soul as a means to explore their desires is an enlivening experience. It may be because they are the sort of people who don't necessarily want to be comfortable or it may be because that art is "safe" in a way that life is not. That these desires can be expressed outside normal life in the catharsis of the theater.

However, some people do not believe that art is any more "safe" than lived experience. That art is perhaps more dangerous or equally as dangerous as life. For these people, encountering Others in their art who disturb the status quo and their expectations and preconceptions of love; who cause an upheaval of the fantasy are not welcome characters but "unrealistic" or "too real"; in short, discomfiting.

On top of which, people have absolutely no idea what they want. Let's talk about porn again. In porn we see this more easily because there's nothing like kinky sex to let us know where everyone really is on the crazy desire spectrum. If one's desires, regardless of those desires, are not "mainstream" then they are automatically a kink. For example, say you are dude and you are really turned on by fat, asian women. Not just sexually turned on but attracted as in "I would date her" which is not that the same as "I would jerk off to a video of her." But because you cannot express this desire as a normal attraction, it becomes fetishized. So you only watch porn of fat, asian women instead of hitting on them at the bar when you are with your buddies. Instead, you hit on the girls in the bar that are just pretty enough to be unexceptionable to the greatest number of people. Or to put it another way, to be pretty enough to cause a semi-state of arousal in the greatest number of men. It's like the Utilitarianist's guide to attraction.

My point is that because desire, that nebulous, amorphous, androgynous rogue, both encapsulates cultural norms and subjective tastes that when a reader (or anyone else) encounters a text with a heroine/hero who embodies the contradiction and conflict between status quo and personal preference, the reader will avoid dealing with the uncomfortable and almost painful sight of that desire and instead choose the normal by either criticizing the text as being "unrealistic" or "unbelievable" or somehow distasteful. Similarly, when dating peope will avoid the raw encounter with desire either by subsuming it via fetishization or total denial. Thus producing mass instances of pairing off #1.

The strength and power of love, as the force behind desire, is the power of subversion. First because love is not based on the worthiness or even the appropriateness of the beloved. It is just as true to say that no one deserves to be loved as it is to say that everyone deserves to be loved. Love is not based on merit. It seems easy to love beauty but it is not. It seems hard to love ugliness but it is not. The truth is that because love requires an upheaval both of social norms and personal comfort, that to love anyone, whether beloved or friend, mother or child, neighbor or enemy, is an act so difficult that the cynical are justified in questioning if love is even possible.

As a reader, I prefer my heroes and heroines to be in some manner profoundly flawed because what I chiefly like about romance is when it is able to dramatize how love is not about merit but grace. That it is a gift given for no reason. That it is an irrational and lawless act contained neither by the morality of the beloved nor by your own morality and that the power of love is in the power to make all other powers helpless.

Fat heroines and heroes are unlikely as believable romantic leads because the audience cannot accept the idea that this person who is cultural unacceptable as a sexually attractive object could then be found sexually attractive. We believe that fat men date fat women because they learn to desire that which is available to them. And we believe that when a slender, attractive man is dating a fat woman is that either he has a kink (pervert!) or that he sees beyond the fat and is attempting to help her to her true thin self (the fixer upper!). When a fat man dates a thin woman, we just think he must have money. That someone could love someone who is cultural unacceptable for the mere reason that they are themselves is beyond us. But why? we ask. Why, because he is himself. True love is tautological "I love him because he is himself" is an absurd statement and yet the most true. Despite this, it is a truth we consider unrealistic.

Today's Music Is . . .

2009-08-03T14:29:00.000-07:00

Here is a sampling of several songs I find particularly delicious. Enjoy!

"The Rake's Song" by The Decemberists

"True Romance" by She Wants Revenge

And last but not least:

"Wicked Game" by HIM

Sacrifice & Love

2009-07-09T10:40:00.000-07:00

Over at All About Books, Rike has posted a blog about inequality in romances and marriages. Comments, right off the bat, became very defensive about posters own marriages and what-not . . .

However, I do think that Rike has a point and as I was thinking about it, I realized that this is actually the main reason I hate the ingenue as a heroine. To me, the naive but beautiful ingenue encapsulates everything that is wrong with male/female relationships: that in order to be in relationship not only do women have to sacrifice themselves totally and without the man having to do anything either but aslo that in order to be in a relationship a woman has to start out on an unequal footing or else she cannot expect to incite desire in men. Anyone who knows me, knows that I have had a long standing disgust, nay antagonism towards relationships between younger women and older men. Invariably the man has money, perhaps not wealth but definitely is comfortably set. The woman is, if not strictly speaking beautiful, then at least very good at approximating it with the use of plastic surgery and yoga (see Bravo's The Millionaire Matchmaker for references). She is also invariably neither as accomplished as the man nor as innately intelligent/smart. When I see this in real life it makes me want to light people on fire. The only reason I don't is because I never seem have a convenient Molotov Cocktail on hand.

This is not love, people. This is prostituition in its most insidious form. It is an exchange, not of souls or even of bodies, not of minds or of hearts but of economic factors between the wealth of money and the wealth of beauty. I do not believe any of the men on Millionaire Matchmaker really want to find love. What they want is to buy love. This is why they are going to a matchmaker. And she's not an old school yenta of the Fiddler on the Roof variety. Oh no, she is a pimp, bringing these men only the best products, the most appetizing of merchandise. Every woman on that show adheres to current standards of "beauty" with no deviations at all, not in dress, not in hair, not even in face. There is nothing remotely individual about these women. I suspect it must be something in the water in L.A. making them all into Stepford Ho's. Not that I, personally, would want to have my body anywhere near these "millionaires" as most of them are so phenomenonly unattractive both in body and mind that one is literally gobsmacked with the idea that sexual desire could ever be possible. Can a vagina dry heave?

More to the point, none of these men are looking for love anymore than the women. What they are looking for is comfort but they do not have the honesty of true prostitution, a respectable trade in which money is exchanged for sexual services. The women want to be taken care of, protected, reverting back to chattel or cattle, as the case may be. Property bought and paid for by the wealth of old, smelly straight men who can't date women their own age because women their own age have been rejecting them for the douchie-wankers they are for the last forty years. The men are not merely looking for sex. If they were I would not hate them so. No, I am suggesting that they are looking for a trophy. The coup de grace to their success: a hot, young wife with a pussy that snaps back into shape like a newly minted rubber band.

The desire that rages as an undercurrent in these relationships is not sexual desire or the desire to be loved, at least not to a predominante extent. Rather I think that the driving motivation is twofold: on the part of the women I think the desire is for status and for safety, probably because, according to popular psychology, their fathers didn't love them or loved them too much. For the men, they are both trying to compensate for that time the head cheerleader didn't go out with them back in 1945 and they also want, like everyone, to be desired by that which they find desireable. The fact that they have to pay for it in some way, even if it is only in gifts and treats, makes it an illusion. I use sarcasm but my serious point is this: it is the desire for the comfort and security of love without having to take the risk inherent in actual love that makes this sort of thing disingenuous.

Which brings me back to the Unequal Relationship discussion back over at All About Romance. Let me first begin by giving my own definition of love. Love is dangerous. To love is to risk. Not just the risk of your own happiness and joy, your own heart because your love might be rejected but the worse risk, the more dangerous risk of being loved back as wholly and completely. By loving someone, regardless of the fact of whether they are lover, child, friend, mother, or brother, means that you risk not only suffering the pain and the loss inevitable in your own life but that you will now suffer all the pain and the loss in your beloved's life as well. If you love them, you will inevitably hurt when they hurt, feel anger at those who strike them, miss them when they are gone, ache when they lose someone they care about and worse, be powerless to prevent them from feeling that pain or sometimes even being able to ease it. It also means that you will have to sacrifice time, money, and desire. If they love you back, if the love is requited then this will be a two-way street. They will suffer for you, sacrifice for you as much as you sacrifice for them but it will not be easy.

The problem with real love like this is that as idealistic and transcendent as it sounds, it is not a very comfortable existence because you are constantly living on the precipice of tragedy. As my father says about having children, it's like giving hostages to fate. But I think the same can be said whenever you truly love someone. What if the baby stops breathing? What if someone gets sick? Loses their vision? What if the house goes into foreclosure or jobs get lost? What if they die? What if they leave? What then? Because of course, the more you feel joy the more you feel pain when the joy leaves. The higher up you go, the further you have to fall.

Having a relationship in which extreme inequalities of money, power, place, and privilege exist, in which there are such power discrepencies between one partner and the other, causes many problems, it is true. However, I think the reason people choose these relationships is because they simultaneously want to be loved and to love while still being in total control of their destiny, while still having a power over the relationship that does not exist when you really give in to love. The distance created by the inequal relationships acts as a buffer against the deep cuts that true love can cause. It's like armor, a shield against pain or disappointment. The fact that this doesn't work doesn't stop people from trying. It is very hard to give up control but the chaotic nature of love wants you to lose control, to give up your power. It wants to divest you and dillute you into just your existence. Look what Cupid did to Psyche. Love takes away everything you are as much as it gives it back. That people do not want to risk this, I understand. I understand that people want to be comfortable, that pleasant is often a better option than pleasure. I understand why one people don't want to risk anything. But I have nothing but contempt for those who pretend at love, who barter for it like a cheap Egyptian street souvenir, who used the simulation of it to garner power or money or status. That I find disgusting.

As for the unequal relationships specified by Rike, I may not have the utter contempt I do for the status hungry sort that I think invariably pollutes the May/December relationships between young women and old men, but I do think it is an absurd proposition because even though love may be about sacrifice is also about making the unequal, equal. True love cannot really exist between people when they are too different. Opposites only attract to an extent, like the yin and yang symbol they have to both curl into each other and incapsulate something that is like the other in themselves. Total sacrifice is only useful when it is being commited by a deity. Otherwise it just makes everyone miserable. You end up with two bitter people: one because they do everything and the other because they do nothing (see Jon & Kate Plus 8). I leave you with this scene from Moonstruck a movie about true love and family and being Italian.

Two Weeks Notice

2009-07-02T08:46:00.000-07:00

The romantic comedy genre is full of really, really bad movies featuring douchie male leads and women who can be politely described as harpies. Think Made of Honor in which Michelle Monaghan berates Patrick Dempsey for his sex-toy bridal shower (an accident on his part) like a prudish little schoolmarm instead of a sophisticated 30-something woman living in New York City. No woman I know . . . and let's be honest I know a lot of freaks and perverts, you know people who vote Democrat so my point of view is clearly skewed. . . would ever have a hissy over something that silly, especially something that was so clearly a mistake. They'd probably love it. But then, I don't know very many harpies.

It isn't very often you get a rom com these days with lots of witty banter and the sort of classic sexual chemistry of opposites at odds that you find in older films. In fact, the romantic comedies of the 1930's and 1940's (It Happened One Night, The Philadelphia Story, Bringing Up Baby) tend to have strong female leads and charming heroes whereas in modern romantic comedies, as I stated above, the tendency is adhere to gender stereotypes like something out of a Parade magazine or Andy Capp comic strip; misogynistic gender roles in which the man is a semi-retarded, ugly little doofus and the woman is mega-hot but total naggin, manipulative bitch. The fact that these sorts of comedies out number the witty-banter ones 10 to 1 is rather disturbing.

Two Weeks Notice, however, is an exception to this rather depressing rule. It features Hugh Grant playing my favorite of his roles, the lovable cad and Sandra Bullock as a type-A lawyer with a social conscience. However, Hugh Grant always comes across as intelligent and never dumb and Sandra Bullock is sweet, if neurotic. There's a great deal of back and forth but it is never cruel or mean-spirited. Moreover, nobody's fiance gets dumped at the end (number one rule of modern romantic comedies is that anyone who is engaged/married at the beginning of the movie will not be so at the end unless they are the quirky side-characters), nobody tries to date three different people at once, nobody interrupts a wedding at the last minute to make a declaration of love, and nobody learns a very important lesson about the true meaning of Christmas or whatever.

Instead you have Hugh Grant doing his best to channel Cary Grant at his goofiest and a plot based on the coming together of opposites. I think, though, that it is Sandra Bullock's character that really makes the movie. She plays Lucy, an intense, politically liberal, do-gooder. She's honorable and kind and a little manic but never really a bitch. She wants the world to be a better place and she's determined to make it that way. When she gets stressed out she over-eats (one of the few heroines, movie or otherwise who does. Who the hell stops eating when they are stressed? Answer: No one, that's why Americans are fat, because they are stressed out and poor. I hate heroines who don't eat. It is a lie!) until she makes herself sick. She's an overachiever but she doesn't nag or manipulate. She's just blunt. I find this very refreshing. I like her. I know her. She's a character who is more like the women I actually meet than the majority of female characters in romantic comedies who are caricatures of certain aspects of female traits. Take for example the excerable He's Just Not That Into You. Now I have three sisters, the majority of my friends have been and are women (I went to a small liberal arts college. The straight male population was minute), I have worked in female dominated fields most of my life and I have rarely come across a woman as desperate as the character Gigi or a little ho like Scarlett Johannsen's character or a nagging, frigid bitch like Jennifer Connelly's character. Nor do I encounter very many women who define themselves totally around their relationships with no outside interests or concerns. These are not the women I meet. Sometimes the women I know occasionally act like one of these stereotypes but these behaviors are not their defining characteristics nor the a representation of how they are the majority of the time. The fact that women are depicted in such a consistently awful light in romantic comedies is just disheartening. Therefore, I love the fact that Sandra Bullock's character is nothing like any of these. She may be intense and dutiful and a workaholic but she's not a bitch, at least not in the bad sense of that word. She's flawed but likable and realistic nor does she spend the entire film punishing Hugh Grant for some absurd mistake. It is more a film about them coming to the realization that they love each other. One of my favorite scenes is one in which they go to a lunch, order the same salad and proceed to switch, whilst carrying on an entirely separate conversation, various pieces of food from their plates. George takes all of Lucy's beets and then dumps all his ice cubes into her water. She stills all his croutons. Its very charming and the sort of thing very close friends, family or married people do.

I would like to see romantic movies go back to the old-fashioned sexual tension of something like a Katherine Hepburn and a Spencer Tracy in Adam's Rib, a Grace Kelly and Cary Grant in To Catch a Thief, or even a Woody Allen and a Diane Keaton in Manhattan Murder Mystery. It is curious that as gender and sex roles have changed and become much more loose and malleable, as women have gained power socially and politically that the heroines of romantic comedy films have become less charismatic, less powerful and more and more bitchy and weak. Seriously, what's up with that?

I leave you with a clip montage from Two Weeks Notice brought to you by some person on YouTube

Jarvis Cocker is a God

2009-06-03T19:03:00.000-07:00

This is Jarvis Cocker, minor deity and rock god.

Jarvis and I have had a long relationship, a relationship that goes back to 1995.

Picture it: Utah in late February of 1996. Grunge is dead. Eddie Vedder is spending most of his time in Washington D.C. doing god only knows what, Kurt Cobain has been in his grave two years, and most of the new music coming out are the bands that are the copies of the copycats. Sad. What's a newly minted rebellious 15 year old girl to do?

Right now, everyone firmly believes that the next big thing is going to be Ska and with the Big Band revival a la the Brian Setzer Orchestra there's a lot of horns playing on the radio. My parents are in Europe with my two youngest sisters. Neither I nor Elizabeth can drive at this point so my cousin Ammon (Whatup, homey?) is "babysitting" us. This entails hanging out and driving us around. We all have tickets to Ska Patty's Day, a series of rock concerts over a week featuring different Ska bands. We drive between Salt Lake Valley and Utah Valley attending events, skipping school and generally slacking. Ammon is delighted to be driving my father's delicious little sports car and all of us stay up way too late.

That's when I met Jarvis.

We got home just after Midnight and having the wonderful metabolisms of youth, did not go directly to bed but instead turned on the TV. It was there, at 2am, that I saw this:

This song was a revelation. Who is this band? we asked ourselves. Are they from the 80's? No, they weren't.

I had no idea who they were. I think I heard Pulp once on the radio and that's how I found out their name. This is pre-internet, people, back in the days when if you were interested in music you had to do a lot of footwork, you know really gumshoe it.

In any case, Pulp and by extension Jarvis Cocker has been with me ever since. He is responsible for my friendship with my friend, Lydia, who was the only other person in my high school who was into them as much as I was or possibly the only other person who even knew who Pulp were.

Jarvis is a lot like David Bowie in that they are both iconoclasts. The iconoclasm of Bowie is in his ability to destroy his own image and then reconstruct himself an entirely new identity all shrouded in lyrics and guitar rifts. Jarvis does a similar thing with his persona but not to the extent Bowie does. His iconoclastic tendencies are more within the way he uses pop music to comment on the world.

Regard the lyrics to Common People:

I took her to a supermarket
I don't know why, but I had to start it somewhere
so it started there
I said "Pretend you've got no money."
but she just laughed an said "Oh you're so funny."
I said "Yeah?
Well I can't see anyone else smiling in here
Are you sure?
Are you sure you want to live like common people
you want to see whatever common people see
you want
to sleep with common people
you want to sleep with common people like me?"
But she didn't understand
she just smiled and held my hand

No, she didn't understand. Or what about the amazing and little known "Little Girl With Blue Eyes?"

Little girl (with blue eyes)
There's a hole in your heart and one between your legs
You've never had to wonder which one he's going to fill 
in spite of what he said
You'll never get away hey 
you'll give it up one day come what may

Or what about this little passage from "Leftovers":

And so I come to you filled with guilt and self-loathing
And I am praying that you could make me good
And so I fall upon your neck just like a vampire
Yeah, like a vampire who faints at the sight of blood
And I told you once: I wanna be your lover
I'm gonna say it again
And then I told you twice: I wanna be your lover

So far Jarvis has released two solo albums Jarvis and the just released Further Complications which features at long fucking last a decent song with my name in it (Angie by The Rolling Stones doesn't count because no one calls me Angie, with the exception of my father on occasion). Behold the video for Angela at the end of this post. First, Jarvis is dressed like a lecherous English professor circa 1976. How awesome is that? Second, Jarvis is basically giving a concert on the steps of some random French doorstep. And Oh, Jarvis! Your dance moves are always so wondrously eccentric!

I could go on and on and on and on . . . okay, but I won't.

//
//

Common People Lyrics
Artist(Band):Pulp

Review The Song (2)

Print the Lyrics

Send "Common People" Ringtones to Cell

She came from Greece, she had a thirst for knowledge
She studied sculpture at Saint Martin's College
That's where I caught her eye
She told me that her Dad was loaded
I said "In that case I'll have rum and coca-cola
She said "fine"
And then in 30 seconds time she said
"I want to live like common people
I want to do whatever common people do
I want to sleep with common people
I want to sleep with common people like you"
Well what else could I do?
I said "I'll see what I can do"
I took her to a supermarket
I don't know why
but I had to start it somewhere
so it started there
I said "pretend you've got no money"
but she just laughed
and said "oh you're so funny"
I said "Yeah
Well I can't see anyone else smiling in here
Are you sure
you want to live like common people
you want to see whatever common people see
you want to sleep with common people
you want to sleep with common people like me?"
But she didn't understand
she just smiled and held my hand
Rent a flat above a shop
Cut your hair and get a job
Smoke some fags and play some pool
Pretend you never went to school
But still you'll never get it right
'cos when you're laid in bed at night
watching roaches climb the wall
if you called your dad he could stop it all
yeah
You'll never live like common people
You'll never do whatever common people do
You'll never fail like common people
You'll never watch your life slide out of view
and then dance and drink and screw
because there's nothing else to do
Sing along with the common people
Sing along and it might just get you through
Laugh along with the common people
Laugh along although they're laughing at you
and the stupid things that you do
because you think that poor is cool
Like a dog lying in a corner
they will bite you and never warn you
Look out
they'll tear your insides out
'cos everybody hates a tourist
especially one who thinks
it's all such a laugh

Rake-Tastic

2009-05-20T13:01:00.000-07:00

The trouble with rakes in romances is that the author is constantly telling us that they are ever so bad and ever so nototrious and oh so dangerous but then they don't actually do anything rakish except throw out a few sexual innuendoes and maybe get the heroine to try oral sex.

The topic for this post has been brewing for some time but I realized I really needed to write about it yesterday. What happened yesterday? Well, I was on a plane. The romance selection in the JFK Hudson News is crap . . . . although not as crap as the selectionin the Phoenix airport. So there I was, waiting for a flight and I needed something to read. I had read all the books I brought ith me so I was lacking distraction. The book I wanted The Madness of Lord Ian Mackenzie was not there. So I got Always A Scoundrel by Suzanne Enoch. Now I had heard good things and I really enjoyed London's Perfect Scoundrel. So yeah!

Now I finished the book on the plane which either tells you how fast I read or how long the plane ride was. I liked it. It wasn't a stand out in my brain but that's not the point. The point is that the hero, Lord Bramwell Johns, is not a rake. Oh it says he is, everyone says he is but he really doesn't do anything particularly rakish. I mean, the villain, the Marquis of Cosgrove was definitely a rake of the debauched variety. Now there was an interesting fellow! Clearly a sociopath and yet I found myself wanting him to be the hero because he was actually a rake so there was something to reform.

This is not a lone problem, isolated to Ms. Enoch's lastest book. Most of the time in romances we are told that so and so is The Most Vile Rake In Christendom and yet he doesn't do anything particular vile. I have decided that this is a threefold problem because I like things that come in threes.

First off, it is a problem of world view. The author relies too much on her audience knowing about Romanceland, the Regency period etc. She does not establish, separtately within the confines of her book the social mores and taboos of that world. This is not easy to do. One has to show how people view class, race, gender, and morality. This is hard because there is not one view on any of these things. Let's take JK Rowling for example. There are many weaknesses in the Harry Potter books but the one thing that Rowling did brilliantly was to establish how the world functioned not just on a practical level (with Quidditch and brooms) but on a moral level with the way that different wizards and witches related to and regarded Muggles, Voldemort, the non-human personages like golbins and so on and so forth. Rowling consistantly displayed what the standard, status quo approach was and what the violation of those standards were whether they were the Klu Klux Klan like activities of the Death Eaters or Hermione's SPEW (The House Elf Liberation Front).

The thing is you can do this with a few sentences or with a character's throwaway comments. Not every activity or dialogue needs to go back to the plot. World views need to be presented. Part of this is an historical issue because people tend to think of history as static rather than dynamic. Of course, there were certain standards by which the London ton operated but not everyone held to these standards. The standards that we read about are a middle ground, a mainstream status quo. The ideal of behavior and social interaction, not the actuality. An aristoicratic Tory family is going to have a very different view from even an aristocratic Whig family of how the world should be. A Lord interested in science is not going to have the same regard for manners as a Lord obsessed with fashion. Therefore there has to be some establishment either by a description or dialogue, secondary or passing characters that defines how the world is and whether the main characters are violating that is.

The second problem is that I don't believe that anyone actually knows what a rake is, because we don't have them anymore. They are extinct.

Two years ago in an effort to discover what a rake actually was, I went the Humanities and Social Science branch of the New York Public library. For those of you that do not know what that means, that is the one with the lions out front that they always show in movies. It is a closed stack library, which means you can't check books out. However, they were the only library that had all six volumes of E. Beresford Chancellor's Lives of the English Rakes.

What I learned from Chancellor is that a rake is a dead medium. It started with Charles II and had petered out before the end of WWI. Essentially, a rake a is a male slut. However, Charles II was a also a good man for the most part. I base this conclusion on how he treated his wife, his mistresses, and his bastard children. He liked them. He took care of them. He did not throw over the Queen because she was barren despite the fact that his heir was his dipshit brother James who had decided that whilst Paris may have been worth a mass for Henry of Navarre, London was not worth Protestantism for the Stuarts. So much for Scottish practicality. In any case, whatever his faults, Charles II wasn't a sociopathic criminal like our other example, Colonel Francis Charteris known to everyone and their dog as The Rape Master General. I think the nickname establishes what sort of a fellow he was but for a brief rundown go to the wikipedia. On a complete side-note, that picture looks like the opposite profile of the one they always use for De Sade.

That's a pretty wide spectrum of sin. So in the story, it has to be established what kind of a rake the hero is. And let's not confuse rakes with cads. Cads are respectable until the last minute when they do something rakish. Rakes are always rakish. So if the hero is a rake what has he done? What does he continue to do? How are these actions a violation of the norm? What taboos has he crossed that make him unacceptable? Is he unacceptable?

The third problem is that authors are reluctant to make their heroes anything less than heroic. This is because the hero is meant to be attractive to a large audience. You can argue that romance novels are not fan dictated but they certainly are far more than say Cormac McCarthy because the authors interact with the readers in a way authors of literary fiction do not. Thus the problem comes down to the fact that rakes are not a good bet. They are unpredictable. They do despicable things. You telling me that Lord Whatsit is rake and bad to the bone while the actions he takes in the story are so bloody noble does not sale me on the idea that this man is a rake. I need to be shown.

You know who was a rake? Vidal in The Devil's Cub. Vidal is a selfish, arrogant, manipulative little aristocrat and he was going to rape Mary because he was angry at her because he thought she played a prank on him. The only reason he didn't was because she shot him. He has morals but they aren't the sort of morals that your average 21st century American is going to be following. The reason that the book is so emotionally satisfying is because you know that it could have gone in another direction. It could have turned into Clarissa!

So in conclusion, I think there should be a four year moratorium on the word Rake because authors are just abusing it. I want a rake who is actually bad, damnit. And I want a heroine is going to shoot the bastard. Not someone who overwhelms him with her goodness.

That never happens.

An Open Letter to A Romance Novel Hero: Resurrecting the Idea

2009-04-30T08:44:00.000-07:00

Grey aka Robert Fordham
c/o Joanna Bourne
The Spymaster's Lady

Dear Robert,

Thanks for not being a dillweed. I apprecitate that. I don't know if you've noticed (you probably have. You are very observant.) but romance novel spies tend to be intensely retarded. By intensely retarded I mean, if they were actually spies they would be dead by now on account of failing to 1) comprehend human behavior 2) not noticing the holy fucking obvious and 3) generally acting like a 14 year old boy having a hissyfit, although that is probably quite insulting to 14 year old boys.

My point, Robert, is that you behaved like a spy. Early on you had some wacky ideas about Annique but you didn't let these notions override what your senses observed, as a good spy ought. You noted the behavior of this woman and then concluded (correctly) that she was not the sort to do the kind of killing you had initially thought she had. Moreover, you realized that as a French operative she was duty bound to try to escape and you didn't hold that against her. In fact, you admired her for that. I appreciate you Robert Grey Fordham. I appreciate the fact that you aren't an asshat. Well done, sir, well done!

I am not a spy. I could never be a spy because I have all the delicacy and diplomacy of a mack truck speeding into a strip mall. Yet even I, ill-equipped as I am for the spying game, know certain basic facts about spying and, yes, the world in general, that seem to escape other romance novel hero spies who, for no discernible reason, get all pissy that not everyone's loyal to England. The adolescent naivite is shocking! Then they get all huffy and gruffy and start smacking around their beloved because they blame her for making them want her (yeah, that's her fault, right?) nor can they discern love from lust. What it constitutes, I think we can both agree, is a total failure of imagination. If I had fellows like that in my spy cadre, I would take them out back and shoot them myself because that kind of rocking, shocking idiocy just endangers everyone.

In any case, Robert, you are an all around terrific fellow. A true gentleman. A man of sense and with a sense of humor. Very underrated qualities.

Best wishes on your campaign against Bonaparte (Hint: you guys win!)
Angela

This Is Not A Love Song

2009-04-29T08:41:00.000-07:00

This is not a love song.

--- Public Image Limited

Vice Avenged: A Moral Tale by Lolah Burford is not a romance. But it is also not not a romance. It is a curious little book somewhere between fable and fairy tale, romance and picaresque novel. Quite frankly, I am not entirely sure what to make of it.

The tale goes like this: The Marquis makes a wager with some of his other rakehell friends to see who can defile a virgin of good breeding first. Someone puts names into a box and each gentleman draws one. The Marquis knows his victim. He was at school with her brothers, he spent a Christmas at her father, the Duke's home. He tells his fellow sinners that not only will he win the bet but he will be back by dawn the next day, victorious.

So he kidnaps the heroine, rapes her . . . or maybe he doesn't. Now this is where things get confusing. Or rather, here is where begins the confusion that is created by the title itself. Vice Avenged can imply two divergent ideas: first, that a vice, a sin is being avenged in the sense that someone has been wronged and that wrong is being avenged. But it also implies that vice itself is being avenged, that sin is somehow being justified. The second part of the title further confuses the issue. What is the moral of the tale? What morality is being defined here? Whose morality? Are we pro-vice or anti-vice?

When the Marquis kidnaps Cressida, as her name ominously is, he tells her that if her honor demands that she be violently raped then he will do that. However, if she would prefer, he could seduce her instead. He will have her either way, but the manner is up to her. She chooses the second and who can really argue with her choice?

Which brings me to rape. Here is the legal definition of rape brought to you by FindLaw:

"The crime of rape (or "first-degree sexual assault" in some states) generally refers to non-consensual sexual intercourse that is committed by physical force, threat of injury, or other duress. A lack of consent can include the victim's inability to say "no" to intercourse, due to the effects of drugs or alcohol. Rape can occur when the offender and victim have a pre-existing relationship (sometimes called "date rape"), or even when the offender is the victim's spouse.

In the case of this novel, physical force is not used. Threat of injury, however, is. I don't know what "duress" means . . . that is I know what the word means I just don't know the legal definition of it so I had to look it up here . I checked here at RAINN to see that they had to say about rape. Then I found this which means legally, The Marquis is guilty of rape which we knew.

However, despite knowing this even as I am reading it, neither Cressida nor I can quite make up our minds on how we feel about either the event or The Marquis. To complicate these varities of emotional responses to factual evidence even more, the rest of the novel essentially involves two plot arcs: the first is the revenges the Duke takes against the Marquis for the rape of Cressida, including forcing him to marry her to regain her honor, whipping him daily for a month, and eventually acquiring a lettre de cachet, sailing him across the channel and then abandoning him to die in the Bastille.

Sounds good, doesn't it? Isn't that what all fathers dream of doing to rapists? Only he never asks Cressida, never considers how she feels about the Marquis, the rape, the revenge, the marriage. In a way, the Duke perpetuates the rape into an never-ending event rather than a past incident. He extends it beyond the act and forces Cressida to live it again, again not simply because he forces her to marry the Marquis, her rapist, but because the Duke does not see his daughter as a person but as a possession, a means by which he himself has been dishonored. He does not see her anymore than the Marquis, who saw her as a means to win the bet. In some ways, I would argue, that the Marquis' act is more forgivable. It is easy to make an object of someone you have no intimacy with, no personal knowledge of, someone who is only a name and a position, a role. In my humble opionion, it is far worse to make into object a person you claim to love, a child, another with whom you have lived and shared food and conversation. For neither is there an excuse, but it seems to me that one is the result of an ignorant blindness and the other the result of a willful blindness. One is a crime and the other is a tyranny.

To further my point, the Duke's tyranny makes both his daughter and the Marquis victims. They are both under his thumb. The book, then, is not a romance, as I said. There is a love story there but it is a love story that is intertwined with a fable about crime, punishment, forgiveness and redemption.

It is not the Duke's place to take revenge on behalf of his daughter, particularly when she did not want it taken. It is only within Cressida's power to condemen or forgive the Marquis. Taking the power to choose how she proceeds from that first rape makes her again the victim.

The Marquis, himself, is not drawn as a total villain (though some would certanly disagree with me). He is, in some respects, no different than the Duke. He does not rape Cressida out of cruelty or perversion or misogyny. He rapes her because he is bored and entitled. He is an aristocrat, the heir to a dukedom himself. In that regard, he is a law unto himself. He is beholden to no one. All are his inferiors. None but himself is a person. While Cressida is an innocent, the Marquis is an ignorant. Both are confined entirely into the position that they were born into. The Duke's tyranny is not a tyranny to teach but a tyranny similar to the Marquis' rape; that is, it is born out of an expectation of entitlement. He is angry not because he is a father that loves his daughter (though that it is it in part) but because he is a Duke whose honor has been besmirched. These are not narcissitic characters, rather they are selfish, limited creatures made more of mores than imagination. They cannot imagine any perspective, any life but their own.

It is only when the Marquis is thrown into a life all together different that he becomes a changed man. It is only when Cressida nears to giving birth that she matures. Up until these events, both were mentally and emotionally children, living on the expectation that others would do for them, living on what was given rather than thinking.

The book is short, it probably constitutes a novella more than a novel. The prose is decadent and yet, sparse. For instance, the color of the Marquis' hair and eyes is never described. The characters are not caricatures but rather archetypes. This is what I mean by the story being more fairy tale or fable than romance. The specifics of personhood are not present in the prose. Moreover, this seems to be the point. It is only towards the end of the novel when hero and heroine begin to exhibit character. Up until then they seem to both be more pawns in a game someone else (society? patriarchy? family? god?) is playing.

The book was published in 1971, a year before The Flame and the Flower. It is dedicated to Georgette Heyer, of all people. I have looked for anything anyone has written on this book but what I find is hardly even worth mentioning in this farce of a blog. But it is a haunting, strange little tale and I will end this blog post the way this book begins:

They were sitting in a hell, the Marquis and his special friends . . .

At the Library Book Sale

2009-04-20T10:37:00.000-07:00

The library book sale is a treasure trove of romance novels. I went to the library on Saturday and discovered several classic Catherine Coulters with their glorious be-Fabio-ed clinch covers, several Rebecca Brandewynes, an African-American contemporary category title from 1984 and like 400 Jennifer Blakes some in hard-back. The best part is that paperbacks are only 25 Cents and hardbacks are $1.00. I had to resist the temptation to purchase all of the above.

I'm going back next week to see what new stuff they have. Maybe I'll even start making a circuit of the all the local branches every weekend. I'll take my camera with me and record what I see for romance posterity.

Are We There Yet?

2009-04-16T08:55:00.000-07:00

This series is exhausting me. What series you may ask? Does it matter? I don't read series anymore. I can't. I can't bear it. They make me feel like a nine year old on a cross-country car trip in which the car is a 1958 Edsel with no air conditioning and a 60 year old man at the wheel who refuses to stop for bathroom breaks or go over 40 miles an hour. In other words, all I want is out.

Let me clarify what I mean by a series. Here's what I don't mean: anything with an end, a destination, if you will, a clear narrative arc leading to a conclusion despite the number of volumes. Or anything in which each book is loosely connected to the last one, where the old characters appear or are related to new ones but aren't the main focus of the new story. Let's take a little quiz, shall we?

Harry Potter? Not a series because, and this is very important, it ENDS. That, my friends is the key difference. There is a finale, a closure, a cut off point for the story arc.

What about Jo Beverley's Company of Rogue books? Not a series because each book stands alone and you can read them out of order, some not at all, and never be left out of pertinent plot points. Characters from one book appear in other books, but it is like visiting old friends and you don't feel like you are being jerked around on a never-ending merry-a-go-round of drama, like an episode of "Days of Our Lives" in which ten years in real time only equals about 48 hours in soap opera time.

How about mystery novels in which the same detective solves different mysteries in each book? Okay. Now that's a tricky one. It depends. Let's take Agatha Christie's Hercule Poirot. Not a series. Why, because one does not have to read them in order. Hercule Poirot changes very little from book to book. Ditto Sherlock Holmes. Some may argue with me here, but the point is that the narrative structure of these mysteries is constructed around solving the individual mystery NOT the character arc of the protagonist. Mysteries in which the mystery is a device by which the character grows and changes from book to book are the type of series I'm talking about. Why these but not the others?

The main issue I have with series is this, if I may again use the car trip metaphor. Most series are like getting in the car and just driving for God-knows-how-long to God-only-knows-where. The driver clearly has no idea where they are going. There probably was never a destination in mind, in the first place. They are just rambling along, heedlessly. Stop! Stop! I want out.

Hercule Poirot mysteries are like riding around on a tourist bus. There's always the bus but you stop, you get out, you look around, take pictues, pee, eat and get back on the bus. There are several destinations that you visit but the bus remains the consistant element. Poirot would be the bus in this metaphor just in case you didn't catch that.

A story necessitates a destination. It does not have to be a grand conclusion or an illustrious site full of meaning. It could be the Denny's in the strip mall. But with many series you just feel like you are being jerked around from story to story, waiting for hints dropped in the first books to pan out in others and yet, they rarely ever do. There's always a point in the series where the author decides to be clever or suddenly realizes they've already done this or that the characters aren't interesting to them anymore and then they go and betray the whole charm and purpose of what the story had to say to begin with. Characters cease to grow and become caricatures of themselves, plots become either more and more absurd or just recycled from previous books, prose becomes stilted and choppy. Readers begin to ask themselves: haven't we been here before? This looks familiar. Oh my god, we've been going in circles. Shit!

Whenever I suspect something might be a series, I run, run, run in the opposite direction. I will not even start a -ology until I know for a fact that it is going to end. If I wanted rambling, pointless anecdotes that lead nowhere and leaving you feeling bereft of meaning or purpose, I'd read Proust (ba dum bum. Ching!) Hey! YA novels, sci-fi writers, fantasy authors, and romance mavens. You aren't Proust. You are working in genres that require an ending. If you want to write long, wandering, circling prose with no narrative structure or character development you have two options: One, write for "Days of Our Lives" or better yet, "Passions" in which both lack of narrative, absurd, random twists and total lack of character development are assets, or write experimental fiction in which you can discuss how the randomness and absurdity of your circling prose is a reflection of the random, absurd nature of a uncertain existence. Ta da! Problem solved.

But don't tell me we are going to the opera or to Shang hai or to Wally World and then take me on a never-ending tour of Canada. That's just cruel.

A Cheap Trick

2009-04-15T14:49:00.000-07:00

While researching my PCA/ACA paper I came across a most interesting book entitled Endless Rapture by Helen Hazen. Now for those of you who don't know, romance scholarship has now been listed in waves (Thank you, Eric Selinger for confirming this at dinnerlast week) and this book falls into the first wave which also includes Radway and Modelski. Most of these, as everyone knows, tend to be more pejorative than not. Hazen, however, seems to be taking the opposite tack. The following is going to be my attempt to summarize her argument.

What is at issue is how rape is constructed in 1970's bodice rippers. These rapes vary but they are events that mainly transpire between the hero and the heroine. Hazen is attempting to answer the question "If rape is bad then why does it show up in romances?" Hazen believes that the two general responses to this matter of rape are misguided and wrong. The first response to the contradictory nature and problematic portrayl of rape in romance solves the matter by positing that the rape fantasy indicates women really do want to be dominated and raped. The other response is that of first wave feminism (although in the book she only refers to it as feminism) which simply denies the fantasy. Hazen theorizes that feminism and romance are coming at the same problem albeit from different ends and wants to identify the connection between the "pleasure" women get from reading about rape in romance and the anger that suffuses the women's movement when it comes to rape and sexual exploitation.

I shall not go into detail about this book because I do not have the time and it would take way too much effort. What I want to do is point out two of the most interesting arguments that Hazen brings to bear on romance scholarship and feminist thought and then extend those with my own thoughts.

Hazen, in her final chapter, says:

The main difficulty with feminism itself is that the idea of revolution is inimical to its true purpose. The notion of equality in feminist thought means that women must be treated equally in the operation of the social order. But the actual concern of the movement and its very basis are individual and sexual. Feminism holds that the most serious problem women have to face is that men are mistreating women's sexuality and that from this mistreatment arise all the social inequities against which feminism protests. It argues that there is a "lower class" that must achive equality with the ruling class. The words used are those of revolution; the idea is of a battle, the kind of battle that comes from hatred. But hatred is not the real reason for the existence of feminism. The motivating agent of the movement is love, crudely disguised in words of sexuality. (Hazen 156-157)

I find this statement extraordinarily interesting. There is much that Hazen says about feminism that I do not agree with or that is simply dated (the book was published in 1982) but the central idea bears thinking about. It seems to me that what Hazen is saying is that even though there is much feminist thought that takes a socio-econimic position in regards to the inequality of women within society, that what is truly desired by women, all women is that they wish to be seen.

Let me elaborate: First off, I am not a Marxist so there is that disclaimer, but it occurs to me that the inequality of women is based not on women as a "class" but rather as an "other"; and that the way men or patriarchy have dealt with the "other" is not merely to regulate "other" to an inferior status but to refuse to acknowledge its existence at all. In order to be equal one must first be seen as a person, as a being, as a subject and subjective "I". I believe what Hazen is suggesting here is something both the French feminists have discussed as well as others, though I do not believe Hazen develops it adequately. It is the idea that because women's bodies and sexuality are seen as "other" or abnormal they are rendered unequal. What I think is new is the way she puts this idea, the way she centers around love not sex, gender or the body: "the motivating agent of the movement is love" is a statement that takes theories of French feminism a step beyond embodiment to something I believe is essential to romance novels but has not yet been fully theorized.

Again, this is almost a throwaway comment in the book and not developed fully. Yet this suggestion that the force behind feminism, the reason behind the eternal question of "What women want?" revolves around both desire & the desire to be desired; more that the equality between male and female necessitates that women be seen by men not as men but as women without being rendered inferior. Moreover that women wish to be lovedl (platonically, paternally, romantically, sororially) by men--not as objects but as persons. I think Cheap Trick said it best: I want you to want me, I need you to need me. Sometimes pop music says things best.

I would like to develop this differentiation further but I haven't the space in this particularly blog post. Thoughts, ladies and gentlmen?

Haute Goth

2009-03-16T09:00:00.000-07:00

I had a dream last night . . . of course, I'm sketchy on the details . . . but it seemed to be one in which I was a romance novel heroine in the Victorian period and some fella was proposing to me. And, of course, though I can't remember the details I remember the overall atmosphere of the dream: disturbing and anxious are the two adjectives that come to mind.

It is very clear why I dreamt this: not only have I been mostly reading romance novels I have also been working on my paper for the upcoming PCA conference. My paper this year is on the Gothic so I've been reading a lot of literary theory about it. It's turned my mind to mush. This is not the first vaguely Gothic dream I've had since beginning this paper. I will not bore you, gentle readers, with tales of my dreams. There's nothing so dull as hearing someone else describe what their brain fired at them during the night. Rather what I'd like to discuss today has to do with a small observation I have been coming to all these weeks of reading about the Gothic.

Not a lot get written anymore. At least not entirely. Certain books--and this applies to all genres not just romance--use elements of the Gothic in their plots, but there are very few proper Gothics written anymore. And by anymore I mean in the last twenty years. Now this is entirely an opnion on my part, but it seems to me that romantic suspense has taken the place of the Gothic as far as thrills and chills go but to my mind romantic suspense has more in common with film noir or the detective novel than with the Gothic.

In thinking about this I began to wonder what it was that was missing from modern stories that was fundamental to the classic Gothic tale. I have concluded that it is comes down to two factors. The first is that the classic Gothic cuts off the heroine almost entirely from the rest of world, either by actual imprisonment or by the remoteness of the setting. The second factor is the element that I will refer to as friend-or-foe or everyone's-a-suspect. Not only is the heroine entirely cut off from the world at large but she hasn't any idea who to trust . . . now wait, that may be putting it too broadly. Let me try again. The second factor, friend-or-foe, is not simply that everyone is suspect but that there is not any definitive evidence that a threat even exists--making, paradoxically, the threat even more ominious because the heroine cannot even trust the evidence of her own eyes. This creep factor, the one that gets your blood pumping and makes your eyes go all round as you stay up all night reading, that is what I think is missing in modern stories. The unreliability of the narrative that tricks both narrator and reader into being blind to who the true villain is.

I haven't read a book in a long time where I haven't figured out who the villain or the hero is by chapter two in probably five years. Sad! I remember being a teenager, riveted to a story, so entirely engrossed in the tale of woe and horror that I managed to forget all the cliches of the genre. I want that feeling back again.

So my question is: do you think I am right? Do you think there is a place in a contemporary world for a proper Gothic? How would one go about writing such a thing? How could you bring back the element of surprise to the genre? How would one go about defamiliarizing the plot elements?

An Open Letter to a Romance Novel Hero

2009-03-09T15:59:00.000-07:00

Bastian Toussaint

c/oAnne Stuart

Black Ice

March 4, 2009

Dear Bastien,

But for the whole spy thing, you totally remind me of my ex-boyfriend. I am not exaggerating. You are him, down to the refusal to actually give a straight answer to even the most innocuous of questions. In fact, I have a deeply held suspcion that Anne Stuart may have actually based you on my ex-boyfriend. I have no proof of this because such evidence couldn't possibly exist. Yet, there you are . . . or he is . . . or whatever, on the pages of a book. Dude, you even fuck like him. It's kind of scary, I'm not going to lie. Maybe Anne Stuart dated my ex-boyfriend or knew somebody who did. This is actually plausible since the ex is the living embodiement of the Duke of Slut. How he hasn't contracted syphillis is a wonder. Perhaps he, and you, too, has some sort of deviant immunity to sexually transmitted diseases. That would make sense as I'm pretty sure you are both Scorpios and as everyone knows, Scorpios are in league with Satan. It isn't a very good league. The Scorpios just exchanged their immortal souls for the superhuman ability to whore-it-up without any consequences and to succeed in their revenge plots against all would be detractors.

You know Bastien, you really aren't all that different from the other Anne Stuart heroes. For example, you are pretty much the contemporary version of Christian from Waltz with the Devil. So it isn't just you that is modelled on my ex-boyfriend. All your fellow Stuartian heroes are just versions of him in different settings. This is why it doesn't surprise me that you ended up with Chloe or that Christian ends up with Annelise. Some readers would question such pairings: uber-dark hero/ordinary gal. Seems a stretch, right? But not me. No, no. I get it. Why? I've lived that scenario. I was Chloe . . . you know, sans the happy ending but then there is no happy ending with a guy like you in real life. Why? Because you are infuriating bastard. Asking someone how they are doing is not a violation of privacy nor is calling them in the middle of the day to see what they want for dinner. Just saying, man. You need to get some perspective. I can only hope for Chloe's sake that you actually do mellow out in the future. Also, having emotions is not a sign of weakness to your enemies or even your friends, for that matter.

In any case, Bastien. I'm glad you realized that life sucks without someone to share it with. Or rather, it sucks worse without someone to share it with. Weirdly, I actually think you are going to end up being a decent dad, all evidence to the contrary. Just don't get your panties in too much of a twist about grades. They really aren't that big a deal as long as the kid passes. And seriously, with all that spy money you can surely afford to send the kid to a good college without a scholarship.

Best wishes,

Angela

P.S. Say hi to my ex for me at the Annual Scorpio Sex and Death Ball.

You're Kind Of A Douchebag, Devon.

2009-03-02T14:29:00.000-08:00

This post is all about the ever popular and extremely beloved novel The Windflower by Laura London aka Sharon & Tom Curtis. Currently, this book is out of print, gosh darnit.

I've been thinking about Devon Crandall, erstwhile pirate and Duke of Earl. I've decided Devon's kind of a douchebag.

Before I go any further I would like to take this opportunity to discuss the word "douchebag" which I feel is one of the most useful words in the English lanaguage when describing personages of adverse character. A douchebag has many definitions being a slang term. The way in which I define it is as follows: a person, usually a man, who is arrogant, entitled, and smug. These qualities are inspite of the fact that they regularly behave with a moronic stupidity usually only associated with the mildly mentally retarded or people who have consumed too much beer. A person can act like a douchebag (such as when they have too many of said beers) and yet not be a douchebag. Douchebags are often victims of fashions, victims of fads, and members of fraternal organizations. Often they can be spotted by the smirk on their face (see George W. Bush) and their inability to understand irony or sarcasm.

An Open Letter to Devon Crandall, Duke of Thisandthat.

Dear Devon,

I'm not going to lie to you. I know you are a duke and super-hot and whatnot but you are, in point of fact, a douchebag. There's no getting around this point. We all think so. Rand Morgan, Cat, Raven, pretty much everyone on The Black Joke thinks you are a douchebag. When you aren't here we don't really think about you except when we have a need to roll our eyes. When you are here we can only stare, open-mouthed and shake our heads at your dumbassery. Seriously, Devon, you are a douchebag. Merry would think you were a douchebag, too, if she knew what the word meant. The fact that we have restrained ourselves from bitch slapping you like you deserve is more a testament to the fact that we are very indulgent than to the wonderousness of you.

Like, I don't get it Devon. I mean, I get that you want revenge. I am Sicilian, partially and Danish, partially so vengeneance is something I understand on a deep, biological level. But Devon, you suck at it. I know you are trying to serve this dish cold but you still behave like an antsy Hotspur (who was also kind of a douche), going off half-cocked (pun intended) and hot-headed when you should step back and think first. Dude, did you really think for more than half a second all together that Merry was Sir Michael What'sIts whore? Did you? Have you ever actually met a whore? Or were you basing your assumptions on circumstantial evidence and repeated viewings of Pretty Woman? I mean, Morgan got it. Of course, Morgan knows everything that goes but never interferes. You know, like God only cooler, like Johnny Cash. Sure he's an amoral bastard but that's why he's captain and you, sir, are a douchebag.

I'm not saying you can't reform, but you are going to have to take your head out of your ass first and start paying attention to the blatantly obvious. The number one rule of execuitng a really good plan is to stop and say to oneself "Huh, you know, things aren't always what they seem. What other possible explanations could there be for this evidence besides the conclusion I'm jumping, too." If you had been trained as a lawyer you would look a situation from all possible perspectives so as not to fuck it up and commit malpractice by not doing your due diligence. But you were trained as a duke, which pretty much guarantees that you are, through too much inbreeding, a doucebag.

Look, I do love you. You know that right? But since I love you I have to tell you this. That's what friends are for. Devon, you're kind of a douchebag and you are really starting to piss me off.

Yours Sincerely,

Angela

A Reflection On My Favorite Hero

2009-02-24T14:16:00.000-08:00

I have just finished viewing the section in the BBC 4 documentary Reader I Married Him on heroes. The documentary discussed in depth four heroes of romantic literature: Mr. Darcy, Mr. Rochester, Heathcliffe, and Rhett Butler. Watching this I found myself at a loss because with the exception of my brief crush on Mr. Darcy at the age of 3 (I had seen the Masterpiece Theater version of "Pride & Prejudice" ) I cannot honestly say that as a teenage girl any of these literary gentleman managed to capture my heart. There was one, however, and the rest of this post is about to take on the flavor of a shameful confession because the fictional character I have been in love with all these years is the Vampire Lestat.

I know. I know. Don't say anything. And before you ask, I was never a goth kid (too much effort), I've never been to New Orleans, and I find most vampire novel excreble. So how did this happen?

Picture it: 1994. I'm a sophmore in high school and a loner. I'm also in debate, a truly bad decision on my part but nonetheless there I am. Interview with the Vampire has just been released into theaters. I have no desire to see this film because I had always hated horror movies. They scared me. But the kids in the debate class are all talking about the film and I realize it is a book, too and being a voracious reader and unrepentantly curious, I get my mother to buy it for me. I read it. I loved it. I must read them all. I do. And there you have it, the tragic beginnings of an unrequited love.

So I suppose the next question is why do I love him over say Mr. Darcy or Mr. Rochester? Well I will tell you. I think, intially, it was because unlike Pride & Prejudice or Jane Eyre, The Vampire Lestat is told entirely from his perspective. It seems contrary since the classic romance hero is known primarily by the fact that he is unknown. For me at sixteen, romance played little to no role in my reading. My tastes then ran more to an attraction to romanticism than to romance; to the lone, wandering hero on a quest for meaning than on relationships. TVL pretty much fits the bill when it comes to romanticism. Lestat is a very Byronic narrator in many respects yet he lacks the brooding inertia of a true dark hero, like Louis in Interview. Instead, he possesses a sly wit and a sense of the absurd that is much more in line with the 20th century anti-hero. Fourteen years after I first picked up Anne Rice's books and I find a lot more there than I did intially, as one is want to do the further away from teenage hormones one gets. I am not so much awed by the gothic tragedy of the books anymore and I find myself shaking my head at Lestat with the sort of eye-rolling patience of a wife who is forced to listen to the same joke her husband tells every time they go to a cocktail party. I would characterize it as a fond annoyance. On the other hand, I've realized that Lestat is a lot funnier and cruder than I first thought when I read the book as a high schooler. I don't know how I missed that, but I did. He's a very unreliable narrator, you know. In any case, I have compiled the following list of traits as reasons Why I Love Lestat More Than Mr. Darcy, though really I feel like the true answer is because he's Lestat and that should end it. Very existential. So without further ado:

1. He's funny. I said this before but I'll say it again. I think it might be because he's French. No one ever knows when the French are joking the first time around. You have to attune yourself to their humor and then, suddenly, you realize that Balzac is a hoot! I completely missed this one when I was fifteen. I was earnest at that age I forgot to look for sarcasm. Then, upon wathcing the film, I realized that Lestat was a wit. That scene with the prostitutes is hysterical.

2. He's smart, but not only that, he's curious. I enjoy that in a hero. I feel like it is an underrated quality. There are many intelligent people out there but so few actually have the balls to explore anything let alone the terrain of their own mind. I appreciate that he wanted more out of life than money, he wanted meaning, a purpose, knowledge, something and he was willing to go and look for it.

3. He tries. He's got a rather indomitable spirit. He never just rolls over and dies. No, he has a plan. Sometimes it is a very badly laid plan but it is a plan nonetheless.

4. He doesn't take being a vampire too seriously. And God, don't all of them just? I mean, really ask yourselves of all the vampires out there how many really actually enjoy it? Not alot. They seem to find the whole moral question too much to bear, but that's because they are pussies. And if you look very carefully, you will notice for every brooding literary vampire there's his blonde, joie de vivre counterpart tempting him to be bad (Angel/Spike, Bill/Eric, that-guy-from-Moonlight/that-guy-from-Veronica-Mars, that-Canadian-vampire/that-dude-who-made-him, Constantine/Beauregard, Edward Cullen/James). The point is that Lestat never whines about being a vampire. Oh no, he enjoys it and I enjoy that he enjoys it. I feel like it is the equivalent of celebrities who complain about being celebreties and I just think to myself "What the hell is there to complain about?" similarly: you are immortal, hot and rich and get to kill with impunity. What's not to like?

I'm sure there's more. In fact, I'm almost positive. For the last few days I have been pondering this and trying to re-capture that first moment when I opened the red paperback of The Vampire Lestat and began to read. However, I haven't been able to quite manage it at all. Reading has always been a very visceral experience for me and trying to recall the emotions I felt at fifteen is much harder than I thought it would be. I suppose this is because as I don't feel the same way anymore I find it difficult to put into words how I once did feel.

In any case, who else besides Mr. Darcy, Mr. Rochester, Heathcliffe and Rhett Butler captured your teenage heart? Come on, now. Confess.

Teresa Mederios' Heroines

2009-02-18T12:09:00.000-08:00

This Saturday, which as everyone knows was Valentine's day, I went to my favorite bookstore accompanied by my mother. For paperback loves, it is used-book heaven and chiefly among its qualities is the very excellent romance section. I can never walk out of there without at least three books. This time I picked up Teresa Mederios' Thief of Hearts, one of hers I had not read yet. I have always loved Mederios ever since I first read The Beast and the Bride. Not only is she funny, but her heroines are outstanding.

I think one of the chief problems I have with many romance novels is that there is a discrepancy between the heroes and heroines as far as characterization is concerned. More often than I would wish very compelling heroes are paired with heroines who are . . . flat. I wouldn't go as far as saying that they are TSTL or TGTBT (Too Good To Be True) but merely lacking in dimension. I suppose that this is because the heroine in many romances is merely acting as a place-holder for the reader. I know that there are those who enjoy or at the very least, over look this but I have no patience with place-holders, zeroes if you will. I enjoy falling in love with and rooting for the heroine as much as for the hero. Perhaps this is because I have always been a reader (I read early, frequently and everything) and therefore gender, looks, time, place, etc. I have no bearing on whether or not I identify with and want to travel along on the hero's journey. What does have a bearing on my desire to root for the protagonist is whether or not the author lets me see something about their character that is interesting, that develops them into a real flesh and blood person. It doesn't have anything to do with nobility or the classical definition of hero. It has more to do with me wanting to see their humanity. In this respect, I think many romance novel heroines are lacking. They have this tendency to be paperdolls rather than actual women neither in what they say or what they do.

I have never found this to be so with Teresa Mederios' heroines. I think this is because of the way that she introduces them to the reader. For example in Thief of Hearts we are introduced to Lucinda Snow not by her looks but by her reactions to the events going on around her, we are privy to her thoughts as she overhears a conversation aboard a ship and in a few lines become aware of how she thinks, how she behaves, how she views herself and how she believes other people see her. This is very typical of Mederios. She shows us who her characters are by their behavior and interior perspective rather than as an object viewed by others. Her heroines are very much subjects. Regardless of whether or not they are fat or thin, beautiful or plain, rich or poor, you always know what sort of person she is in those first few moments.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I have a very low tolerance for heroines defined mainly by their beauty. It isn't that I automatically dislike a story if the heroine is beautiful, it is just that I think that often the author gets lazy and infuses the heroine with beauty alone and no other quality. Georgette Heyer's Venetia is very beautiful but this is not her defining characteristic in the story. Her defining characteristic is her acute sense of the absurd and the ironic. Even before you know she is beautiful, Heyer gives her an initial dialogue that on the surface seems so very domestic but is, beneath, mocking. Mederios utilizes a similar technique, fixing into the words her heroines speak, their responses to those around them and the way they see the world a unique something that makes them more like real women and less like puppets in side-show. And because they are so very real and likable from the beginning even when they do things that are silly or foolish, I as the reader never feel they are TSTL because the behavior is based on the limitations of their character and perceptions not on the writing. It is very hard to forgive a heroine who you have been told repeatedly, if not explicitly, is perfect when she does something retarded or asinine. It becomes charming or at the very least, understandable, in a heroine who has from the first been as flawed and as real as an actual person.

Review-ish

2009-02-10T11:42:00.000-08:00

It is rare for me to have a visceral reaction to books these days even though I read as many as I ever did. And I read often. No, I read a lot. I probably read 4 books a week. When I was young I would fall into the book to such an extent that I would have physical reactions to the words: increased heartbeat, anxiety over the fate of the characters, tears, etc. experiencing in my own body what the characters were experiencing on the page. This is probably one of the reasons I have become and always will be a reader. It isn't simply the escape of reading, it is the ability to live another's life. Wherever you go there you are except sometimes with the right book.

I picked up Carolyn Jewel's Scandal based on a review I read over at AAR. They only gave it a B+ but I would give it an A. Not only did it create that rare visceral reaction in me but it had the equally rare quality of making me brood over it afterwards. In part this was because the characters were so well drawn that they had become flesh and blood people. It is much more common for me to experience characters as creations on a stage rather than as real people. Most of the time there is a veil between me and the stage, that invisible fourth wall that they speak of in drama classes, is something I always sense.

I don't always want to fall into the story so completely as I did with Scandal. It can be emotionally difficult. I admit to being one of those people that tend to absorb other people's emotions and vibrations, taking them into myself as if they were my emotions. It can be draining.

I have been trying to think why the Earl of Banallt and Sophie Evans' story had such an effect on me but I have a great amount of difficulty trying to pinpoint exactly why this story, of the stories I've read in the past while, was different. I have come to the conclusion that it was the prose itself. There is something in the way that Jewel writes that is very dissimilar to most other romances. With many romances, I think that there is a tendency to follow if not a formula, a pattern of language and story arc as a sort of form. I liken it to reading sonnet after sonnet and then suddenly finding yourself thrown into the immediacy of a pop song as you drive home. There's something in the three chords, verse, chorus, verse equation that hits you in the guts. Not that a sonnet cannot do the same thing but I believe it is the defamiliarization of the emotion, the lack of sameness to the way the moment is presented that makes that shift from one form to another so powerful.

Without the book in front of me I am unable to give any kind of close reading of Jewel's book in order to illustrate my point (I'm at work and the book is at home); however let me briefly discuss what I found specifically so compelling. Jewel takes a cliche idea (the plain, country mouse and the rake) and twists it. The book opens in the middle of things. Our hero and heroine have already met. They were friends of sort having met through her wastrel of a husband. Sophie is still wounded from that marriage, from the falling out she had with Banallt just prior to her husband's death. She's on the defensive. Banallt, on the other hand, has come to realization that he loves Sophie deeply and wants to marry her. The reader gets all this in the first chapter. What I mean by twisting the old story, is that usually we find that it is the hero who is guarding his heart because of a failed first marriage, that it is the hero that has to come to the slow realization of his true feeling towards the heroine whereas here, we have the opposite.

Banallt as a character is very interesting. It is stated repeatedly throughout the text that he is beautiful, yet what comes across more than his outward appearance is his character. Jewel gives us a very clear idea of the man he is and the man he was and how one could become the other and why. There are no dramatic villains here. Neither Banallt's deceased wife nor Sophie's dead husband act as the dark gloating ghosts of something like Rebecca. In fact, Banallt's wife has had less of an effect on his character than other incidents in his past. Tommy Evans, Sophie's late husband, is more of a villain but of the shallow, fortune hunting type. More importantly than his character is Sophie's feelings toward him which can be summed up as complex. She loved him, she hated him, she was disappointed by him, she learned not to trust him and yet she still wanted his love and admiration. This emotional ambiguity is not something I see a lot in romance. Or rather, to put it more accurately, many authors tell us how the characters feel towards each other but I, as a reader, do not see how they feel about each other. It never breaks through that fourth wall to become a living, breathing aspect of the person.

I've been attempting to write a story for a long time. This is not something new to me that I've just now decided to try my hand at. Rather, I have always been a writer (I wrote a play when I was 10, for example). But I have this disturbing feeling that my characters are flat, that they don't have that emotional zing to their personalities that makes them live on after the story is finished. It is a kind of magic and I'm just not sure how one acquires the knack for it or if it just happens to an author, unexpectedly and out of the blue much the same way it happens to a reader.

Heroes

2008-12-02T15:19:00.000-08:00

I have just finished editing the paper I gave at the 2008 PCA. It went from an 8 page speech into a 15 page writing sample for graduate school applications. It was through this process that I came across Lilian R. Furst's The Romantic Hero, or is he an Anti-Hero? ¹ an article that was published before I was born (frightening!) and has led me into contemplation on what makes a romance novel hero or to put it another way, what makes the romance hero different from the Byronic hero, the anti-hero, or the epic hero?

Furst says of the traditional hero that his

"essentially outward-looking orientation, his role as leader of men, his readiness to sacrifice himself to the cause he has espoused: all these traditionally heroic features are in diametric oppositon to the Ichschmerz that is the core of the Romantic hero" (57).

The Romantic hero she refers to is the one I have always thought of as the Byronic hero but I suppose that is a more specific version of the same. Regardless, it is not the heroes of romance novels she speaks of but the heroes represented in the literature of the Romantic time period. Later Furst differentiates the Romantic hero with his modern counterpart, the anti-hero, saying:

"What is lacking in the Romantic hero, however, is the modern anti-hero's ironic self-detachment. It is not only that the Romantic hero takes himself too seriously and too solemnly. His very idealism raises absolute standards and lofty expectations which preclude the spiritual flexibility, the willingness to shift position and even to compromise inherent in an ironical attitude" (66).

This leads me to ask the question: If the traditional hero is defined by his relationship to the external--that is the tribe, the group, the gods and his duty to them; and the Romantic hero is defined by his relationship to the internal--that is his idealism, his freedom, his soul and the actualization of his ego; and if the anti-hero is defined by his irony, his pettiness, his ordinariness and the glorification of the mundane world; then what defines the romance hero? A very confusing term and since it is so easily conflated with romantic let me coin a term for convenience's sake and call the hero of the romance novel the erotic hero since he owes a debt to Eros.

It seems to me that what these heroic literary models have in common is that their definition of self, of character is created in the tension between the "I" of ego and "the world" of the group. That the hero, regardless of his type, is in conflict with both himself and the outside world. Whether he battles the Trojans or the his own inner demons, the hero's glory, his fame, his heroism is dependent upon his individual actions and in-actions--what he does and how he does it. The continuation or rebirth of the group relies upon the personal actions of the hero and the glory of the hero offers immortality both to his own name and to that of his tribe; but it is a glory always earned in the defeat of, or the flight from Otherness. Ernest Becker talks much about the hero in his book Escape from Evil ² as a process by which the heroic action makes immortal the symbolic systems of the tribe so that while individuals do not live on their meaning does. In this way, heroes, whether they be the monster-slayering heroics of the epics or the humanistic and ego-centric exploits of the Romantics, share the commonality that their heroism is based upon a singular individual who is the primary focus of the story and who, through a journey either external and internal, meets the Other and defeats it; it is the heroic character alone which the reader follows on the transcendent journey. The encounter with the monstrous Other is either resolved through their defeat in battle, as in the epics, or in the tranformation of Other into an mirror that reflects back the hero's own soul as in the existential wanderings and tragic deaths of the Romantics who are not unlike an angst-ridden Narcissus. Other can be many things--opposite creeds, religions, races or nationalities--but the ultimate Other is always the female, is always woman and she is made either monstrous or a mere Echo of the male ego.

The erotic hero, unlike his cousins, is not defined by his defeat or transformation of the Other but his exchange with the Other. So that while all heroes encounter Otherness, the romance hero is the only one who is defined by his realtionship to that Otherness in a meeting which is neither fight nor flight. Rather he falls (as in falls in love, falls from grace), a word that I hope connotes the slipping of certainty, an action that shifts the all encompassing "I" from subject to object.

But what does it mean to fall? What does falling do to the hero? How does falling help to satisfy the inequity that seems to inevitably arise between "Self" and "Other"?

In my next post, I hope to examine the nature of falling.

______________________________________________________________________________________

¹ Furst, Lilian R. "The Romantic Hero, Or is He an Anti--Hero?" Studies in the Literary
Imagination 9.1 (1976): 53

² Becker, Ernest. Escape from Evil. New York, NY: The Free Press, 1975.

Beautiful Heroines Make Me Want to Stab Things: A Rant

2008-12-01T15:20:00.000-08:00

Despite the fact that I consider myself to be a very advanced reader--that is I read not only for pleasure and escape but also for knowledge and criticism, or whatever it is that distinguishes the two--I admit to a certain low brow reading habit in that I project myself into the hero. When I can't do this I get angry. These days I often have a hard time reading about beautiful heroines. I fully concede to the fact that this is because I do not consider myself a beautiful woman and thus it becomes difficult to relate or transpose myself into said heroine. Rather, I consider myself to be soundly average with the added drawback of being smart and not the least bit submissive--and if you don't think that's a drawback then you've never grown up in Utah. I swear to you all, sometimes it is like living in the worst parts of a Jane Austen novel. The point is that sometimes beautiful, endlessly desirable heroines with all their sexual knowledge or blazingly rampant naivete (see the heroines of Barbara Cartland and Laura London) make me very cross-eyed and stabby-stabby.

I realize, too, that I am a hypocrite in that I love, love the endlessly desirable, beautiful heroes. I know, that's a double standard if there ever was one, however, being a female I feel rather entitled to my hypocrisy for the simple reason that men have made physical and visual desire their sole provenance and have entirely left out the second sex. Like when a hot woman and an average man are walking down the street or sitting at a restaurant together no one wonders why she is with him. They just assume that it is because he has money or personality or something. Whereas a beautiful man and an average woman would be goggled at with everyone wondering what he was doing with her?

The thing that really sticks in my craw is that it isn't even true. The implication about beauty, I mean. You know, that it brings you happiness or joy. Ultimately it makes no difference. Oh sure, random people are more likely to treat you better and give you free scoops of ice cream at the gelato place but it doesn't seem to make any kind of difference in whether or not your husband will cheat on you, file for divorce or turn out to be gay. And of course then you get old and die and where is beauty then? Yet somehow everyone's still under the misguided impression that it is beauty that tames the rake. It isn't. I don't consider Diane Keaton any less attractive than Annette Benning yet Warren Beatty stayed with Annette not Diane. What's up with that? Probably something more to do with temperment and time of life than looks.

Not that looks don't matter because clearly they do but anyone who has checked out the personal ads on Craigslist will quickly learn two things: desire and beauty have nothing to do with one another and people are sick fucks. (seriously, message me and I will link you to something shocking, perverse and graphic that will make you snort milk out your nose).

-sighs- I'm not even sure if this is a trend of the novelists themselves. I think my abhorrence of the beautiful heroine is entirely due to the back cover. They are written thusly:

Verena McAdams may have only been a common haberdasher and former nun but her fiery blonde hair and courtesan's body made other promises. Overwhelmed by bussiness debt, she was forced to do the one thing that no gently bred lady should ever contemplate: file for bankruptcy.

Simeon, Lord Ravenscock seemed the typical ton rakehell but he had a dark secret: he practiced law on the side. When Verena McAdams walked into his solicitor's office with her virgin's eyes and knowing hips, he knew that pro bono or not, this case would pay him in something other than legal fees.

By the time I get through the first little summary where it tells me how hot Verena or Serena or Belinda is, I've discarded the book and moved on to the next one on the shelf. It's like in the movie She's All That where we are supposed to believe that nobody noticed how freaking adorable and edible Rahcel Leigh Cook is . . . okay well maybe I'll let that one go because it is supposed to be high school and everyone knows teenagers are basically retarded sociopaths, but still, you get my point.

I'm not really interested in beautiful heroines unless you can somehow make me forget that they are beautiful. That is, I don't want to read about people who have one shiny characteristic and nothing else. You know how it is where in some books they keep mentioning how damn witty someone is but is never manifest that particular claim in the dialogue or how smart and ditto. Authors! Show don't tell. Jesus, that's creative writing 101. A character should have depth and their one gigantic attribute, whether it be beauty or penis, should not be mentioned every other page. The most loveable things about people aren't their looks. Besides, familiarity breeds obliviousness. At a certain point, you stop seeing how hot someone is and just start seeing Ted.

Back with a very few musings on Primogeniture

2008-09-26T11:54:00.000-07:00

So I was delayed longer than I thought I might be when I first moved. Not that I have done a single productive thing with the last 4 months.

Yes, all right that isn't entirely true but it is mostly true.

In any case, during this hiatus I read the new Julia Quinn book The Lost Duke of Wyndham which was a very good book overall. I did have one quibble though and it was this: It seemed to me that Jack oughtn't to have become the Duke. In the first place, he couldn't read which might work very well for say a duke circa 1034---by all accounts Charlemagne didn't read---but seems a very stong liability for a duke in the 18th century. Second of all, it didn't seem necessary to me for the happy ending and more importantly, it was rather disturbing to see such an adherence in a modern novel to the idea of primogeniture which has caused, among its many crimes, the Hapsburgs, Louis XVI (he wasn't a bad king exactly but he would have been a better watchmaker) and the Ottoman Empire. But most of all, Jack shouldn't have become the duke because he didn't want to be the duke and, unlike other reluctant dukes, he was not bound by primogeniture since as far as the world knew he didn't exist.

The course of romance narrative can, I think, be described as a spiral. Even when it begins in the middle of the story, that is after a Fall from Grace, there is implicit in the beginning the idea that the heroine/hero once lived in a better world, much like in fairy tales where the heroine moves from the tranquility of a protected home through trials and tribulations and finally into a happy ending that is greater than the idyll she began with. The happy ending of the romantic narrative re-establishes order but it is not the same order that previously existed; rather it is a better order, I would even say a redemptive order. Where this is true for The Lost Duke of Wyndham to a certain extent, the curious thing about the story is that it doesn't spiral up to establish a new order but circles to establish the old order that never was, namely that of a primogeniture. The problem with primogeniture is that it posits the superiority of certain people despite inherent character deficiences or efficiencies and gives to them the right to rule solely predicated upon the principle of whether one is the eldest son of the eldest son.

It might seem funny to pick at the idea of primogeniture in a genre populated with Earls and Marquesses, but unlike say The Devi'l's Cub or My Lady Notorious, the central theme of the plot of The Lost Duke of Wyndham is who is truly the duke? Is it the man who was born to the position or is it the man who was raised to and lives the position? Who is the true king? Who should rule? Should it be based on blood, legitimacy, or innate ability?

More curious, one of the central motifs of romance novels as far as female characters are concerned is that whether or not they are born a lady matters less than that they have the character of a lady. That is to say that more often than not the worth of a heroine and her winning of a better life and position is dependent upon the merit of her character not the quality of her birth. Therefore, I wonder why this same idea doesn't seem to hold true for heroes. Why is the primacy of Jack's birth more important than his actual ability to run a dukedom? And why is the primacy of birth only a mark of competency if one has been born within the confines of marriage? I mean, an elder bastard never rules but they are technically the elder. The whole idea of primogeniture is arbitrary and absurd, and though though this arbitrariness and absurdity is central to the plot in The Lost Duke of Wyndham it is never fully addressed. Quinn skims over the idea instead, using it as an engine to move the plot along without ever popping the hood. It is never more than a passing issue. The more important conflict, as far as the characters in the book are concerned, is whether Jack Audley is a bastard. But even here the curious lack of discussing of who really ought to be duke is troubling since Jack's main personal conflict is that while realizing that he is actually the duke by legitimate birth, he has no real desire to be duke. In fact, he would rather be thought a bastard than be His Grace. The two men vying for (or perhaps escaping from) this position never fully discuss with one another the very question at the heart of the book: who is the duke? and what makes a duke, birth or ability? When they finally are alone together over the marriage lines of Jack's parents, they still don't really discuss it. Jack says he doesn't want to be duke and Thomas replies honorably, but somewhat stupidly in my opinion, that it doesn't matter because the laws of primogeniture make him the true duke. Jack then tries to burn the record of his parents marriage lines but Thomas prevents him and when the rest of the cast shows up that seems to be that. If the questions of whether or not the dukedom would benefit more from Jack or Thomas, of who is better fit to be duke are ever asked then their answers are left hurriedly by the side of the road on the way to the epilogue in which Jack and Grace are ensconced in connubial and aristocratic bliss.

I suppose what seems particularly odd to me is that romance is so often criticized for its depiction of gender relations and rarely, if ever, called out on the strange love it has for the ancien regime.

Feminine Wiles: Short Skirts, Emotional Manipulation and Hair Tossing

2008-05-13T16:37:00.000-07:00

I read this article the other day.

One of the many, many unexamined assumptions this article has is that relationships with men are an either/or proposition. That is either a man will be charming, handsome, and infinitely sexually appealing but temporary or he'll be steady, responsible, and not terribly sexually exciting but marriage material. The implication is that if one wants to marry, one has to settle. How depressing. No wonder I don't hang out with normal people. Their views of life are so morbid.

The first problem with this either/or mentality is that it is demeaning to all parties involved. It suggests that a husband is something that is caught, like a large sea bass on a fishing expedition, and then hung on the wall of one's living room.

"My Cheryl, what a fine looking husband you have. He's quite the catch."

"He certainly is, Marge. You wouldn't believe the trouble I had snagging him. He fought me tooth and claw. In end I was forced to bash him over the head with a rock."

"I lured mine in slowly. The trick is to get him used to your scent first while leaving out food. At first he wouldn't even let me touch him, but by Spring, he would curl up on the couch with me, lapping up the cream."

"You're a magician, Fern. Mark was so feral!"

"He still is. Rowr."

Yes, snagged, bagged and dragged to the altar. Because of course no real man wants to be married to a woman. That's preposterous! Surely, the only men who are willing to tie themselves to one female are either so pathetic marriage is the only way they will get laid on a regular basis or because they have been utterly bamboozled by one's feminine wiles.

Now, I grew up Mormon . . . sort of. But that's not the point, the point is that there was an infamous tome that was circulated among Mormon women in the 1960's, the 1970's and even into the 1980's called Fascinating Womanhood. It circulated elsewhere but that is the context I know it from. This book was a guide for already married women on how to "fascinate" their husbands into a better marriage. The best part of this book (which is both disturbing and hilarious) is that many of the examples of fascinating women are taken from works of great literature. Characters from both Charles Dickens and Victor Hugo appear as prominent examples. The authoress (because aren't they always?) Helen Andelin also wrote a book for young, single women called Fascinating Girl which was all about how to go about this very snagging. I believe her husband, Aubry, wrote a book called . . . wait for it, people . . . A Man of Velvet and Steel. Yes, yes he did. I know.

The point . . . and I do have one . . . is that we aren't that far away from the conception that in order to be happy in marriage a woman must: 1. Settle for someone she may not be in love with or even sexually attracted to 2. trick him into proposing and 3. fake her way through the marriage via a series of deceptions, falsehoods and emotional manipulations.

Love in this paradigm, doesn't exist. They, being those authors and proponents of these sorts of texts eg. The Rules and the vast majority of articles in Cosmopolitan, don't really believe in love. In many ways, love is like Christian faith: it requires of us the belief in grace. That is that inspite of our fallibility we are saved; that we are loveable and loved. People don't really believe this. They look at themselves in the mirror and think "Eww"; they are universally aware of how they fall short of the ideal. The only way people think that they can be loved, can garner approval is by painting themselves as the ideal even though it is false. They must trick, fool and exploit others into loving them. The ironic part is that if you are loved for you facade your remain as unloved as if you had been rejected for your true self.

Love is not a Pygamlion project in which the beloved is a real fixer-upper. Love is not love if you love the other for what they can be or what you want them to be but never for what they are. If we force the other to reflect back at us the best of our own ego, that is not love; it is narcissism.

Though it seems to me that if 1out of 25 Americans is a sociopath then narcissism is rampant. That's also pretty depressing.

Questions about Virginity

2008-05-09T09:36:00.000-07:00

I am in the midst of reading Hanne Blank's excellent new book Virgin: The Untouched History. I would recommend that you get yourselves to the bookstore or library immediately and at least read the very interesting and incisive introduction. For excerpts and other fabulousness go here.

It occurs to me that the problem with virginity is that you are damned if you do and you are damned if you don't.

In fact, Virginity is a non-value. Whether it is valued in our culture today depends on who you are standing next to at the time. Are they conservative or liberal? Promiscuous or prudish? Do they view the empowerment of women as denying men what they want (that being sex, obviously) or as taking what women want (also sex)?

Therefore, Virginity isn't really about sex. It is about power; who has it and who does not. Does retaing my virginity free me or enslave me? Does losing my virginity make me powerless or powerful? If you wait, does that make you a fool? If you are picky, does that make you a feminist or a patriarch? Does a woman's power come from withholding sex or giving it away? Is it possible for a woman to ever take sex or does being penetrated preclude the female from ever being truly dominant despite other factors?

Can a woman's identity ever be made free from her sexual choices? Or is it eternally predicated on some conception of chastity?

Take Anne Coulter, for instance. Here is a woman who has made a name for herself as a bastion and pundit for a political party not known for the progressive policies on women's rights. And yet, Coulter herself is not only a powerful figure but a virginal one as well. In a culture where most famous women are aligned in some manner with a man, I can honestly say that I know nothing about Anne Coulter's personal life. I have know idea if she is married or not, in a relationship or not, has children or not. I think not, but I don't know. When I see her spoken of her or talked about, the private nature or her sex life is either a non-issue or mocked as sign of her frigidity and backwards thinking.

Yet, I am fascinated by the fact that Coulter's power is unattached to any specific male but rather is part of aligning herself with a vary male-centric poltical ideology. It is the very same sort of Virginal empowerment that intrigued me when I read about Elizabeth I. Of course, neither Coulter nor the Virgin Queen are actually virginal but it is a virginity of presence; of being powerful without any man in sight; of having a public position that ought to belong to a man; of being both single and singular.

America is a culture of extremes. We veer from one end of the spectrum to the other without finding a balance in the middle. I wonder if there is a place between Virgin and Whore and what it is like to be there.

On the Nature of Virginity in Heroines

2008-02-08T09:46:00.000-08:00

The majority of heroines in historical and regency romance novels are without doubt, virginal. This overwhelming slew of virtuous women is bothersome to many modern readers who feel that a woman's worthiness should not be determined by chastity. They are right. Virtue is not synonymous with an intact hymen. However, I do believe this consternation is missing the point about what virginity means in the tradition of Romance; meaning not just novels of the paperback persuasion but in the full sense of that term when applied to literature and narrative structure.

Let's begin with some general observations about the historical nature of virginity. It has been argued elsewhere that virginity in women is a valued characteristic of a patriarchal society because it perserves the hierarchial order of inheritance from father to son. Therefore virginity in women is prized because it maintains tribal and economic purity. I don't dispute this. However, a simultaneous truth to this argument is another; namely that motherhood is both dangerous and cumbersome. Pregnancy, both historically and presently, can lead to death. Childbirth killed many, many women. It was and is a risk. If one happens to survive the process, a woman then has a child, a child that needs to be feed and bathed, loved and hugged, cared for and protected. A woman invariably becomes tied to her child. Having children, as my father is wont to say, is like giving hostages to fate. What he means by this statement is that having children puts your life at the mercy of their destinies. Your destiny is suddenly tied up in their well-being on a level and in such a way that does not exist with any other person. As rewarding as the endeavor can be, there is a certain loss of freedom in having children. There is at the very least a certain loss in the ability to be entirely selfish and spontaneous.

Sex, being the predeterming factor to motherhood, is therefore troublesome to women. Add into that the fear of veneral disease (pox), the variety of social and religious pressures to refrain and sexual desire becomes a treacherous place for women (I would argue it is a treacherous place for men as well but that's a different blog.)

Romance is a love story but it is also, fundamentally, a narrative embedded in the idea of journey; of going from the safety of home to the adventure of the world. The virginity of the heroine is therefore a metaphor for several things besides good character. Northrop Frye in The Secular Scripture briefly discusses the concept of Virginity in his chapter on heroines. Without having the book in front of me, I paraphrase that he says virginity is to a woman what honor is to a man: the identifying feature of her freedom and her status as an independent person and not a slave. So like the goddess Artemis, a virginal heroine is neither mother nor wife and therefore has the liberty to go where she pleases when she pleases and act as she pleases. Retaining her virgnity is then an act that maintains her independence from the world of men.

Advances of in medical science since the Enlightenment, particularly since the advent of the pill, have changed our views about the nature of female sexuality. There have been, previous to this century, many more consequences for unprotected sex for women than for men (there still are.)

Besides this, it concerns me that having sex or not having sex is the determining factor of whether a heroine is considered strong. As if somehow by choosing not to have sex (or conversely choosing to have sex) makes you a victim of your circumstances, of the ideologies of the patriarchy or the religious right, when it may in fact have very little do with either and be a choice made more by inclination, temperment and sexual desire.

The point is that virginity in heroines is not necessarily some outmoded model of behavior romance novelists are foisting on their reading public in order to proselytize a conservative party line for the benefit of a universal and fundamentalist morality. That said, I think it would be more beneficial to ask the question of what this particular state of being does in the narrative structure of a particular story and for the character development of a particular heroine rather than simply repudiate her virginity as some sort of moral judgment of loose women everywhere.