Five Critical Essays and a Squee!
Apr. 17th, 2020 09:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
forestofgloryWelcome to five fandom 5+1s and a meme! This is a series of posts about stuff that’s important to my own personal fandom history. I wanted some space to talk about happy and whimsical stuff and explore the different ways I’ve experienced fandom over time. I thought it would be fun to borrow the popular fanfic structure of 5+1 things. I’m using the word fandom very broadly here, to include SFF book fandom, transformative fandom, and just liking things. The things I’ve picked to talk about might not be the best or my favorites but they are fundamental to my experience and have shaped my thinking.
1. “Pornography By Women For Women, With Love” by Joanna Russ (1985) AKA the essay on slash or more spefically K/S. I first read this essay before I was a fanfic reader, but I recently reread it and I loved it both times. Russ’s pure joy at finding out about slash and sharing it with other women is just so great to read in an analytical essay about slash as a way for women to enjoy romance without the burden of gender. There are some things that don’t hold up (eg slash writers know about lube now) but there’s a lot that resonated with me as a reader of slash. This essay helped me understand and appreciate that slash is a medium with a rich tradition of people of marginalized genders writing for each other.
2. “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” Ursula K. Le Guin (1986) This essay is about the shapes of story and what we think makes a good story. Le Guin argues that domestic tasks traditionally done by women such as gathering wild oats or child care are not seen as heroic and story worthy. This eassy is critical to my critical to developing my viewpoint as a feminist critic; it made me look at not just who is important in the story but also what labor they do, and just how traditionally feminine activities are shown in a narrative. Sadly, I reread this not that long ago, and found it to be rather gender essentialist, but it was still very important in shaping how I see stories. (This one is not available online but I recommend this essay about it )
3. ”Denvention 3, Guest of Honor Speech” Lois McMaster Bujold (2008) This speech helped develop my understanding of what genre is. Bujold starts off with my very favorite definition of a genre which is "any group of works in close conversation with one another". But she also talks about how SFF works are frequently “fantasies of political agency,” and that is such an interesting way of looking at SFF. Because characters do so often have political power, that they use to push the story forward or are fighting to gain control of, and I think this definition ties back to why SFF so frequently favors stories about royalty. This speech gives me tools to see patterns in a lot of different stories.
4. ”Political agency and changing the world” by Jo Walton (2008) This Jo Walton’s response to Bujold’s speech above. Walton responds to Bujold's idea of “fantasies of political agency” but says that she sees something different, that in SFF the world is a character, and if the world is character then the world should change as part of the story. I just really love that idea-I really enjoy worldbuilding, and for me part of the pleasure of good SFF is building and understanding of how the world works, so this inclusion of the world as a character really resonates with me.
5. “Freshly Remember'd: Kirk Drift” By Erin Horáková (2017) This essay deals with Captain Kirk, masicultivity, and how our views of characters change with time. It’s totally fascinating and well worth reading even if you know nothing about Star Trek. It’s also important to me personally because reading this made me want to actually watch some of the original Star Trek, which then led to me watching a lot of other Star Trek for the first time. (That’s why I’m currently watching Voyager)
+1 SQUEE The Untamed: A Primer by Gin Jenny (2020) We don’t often talk about recommendations as part of the critical conversation but they play an important role-it’s really important to share what we like and why we like it! I’m currently obsessed with the Chinese drama The Untamed and Jenny does great job of explaining what is so awesome about it!
1. “Pornography By Women For Women, With Love” by Joanna Russ (1985) AKA the essay on slash or more spefically K/S. I first read this essay before I was a fanfic reader, but I recently reread it and I loved it both times. Russ’s pure joy at finding out about slash and sharing it with other women is just so great to read in an analytical essay about slash as a way for women to enjoy romance without the burden of gender. There are some things that don’t hold up (eg slash writers know about lube now) but there’s a lot that resonated with me as a reader of slash. This essay helped me understand and appreciate that slash is a medium with a rich tradition of people of marginalized genders writing for each other.
2. “The Carrier Bag Theory of Fiction” Ursula K. Le Guin (1986) This essay is about the shapes of story and what we think makes a good story. Le Guin argues that domestic tasks traditionally done by women such as gathering wild oats or child care are not seen as heroic and story worthy. This eassy is critical to my critical to developing my viewpoint as a feminist critic; it made me look at not just who is important in the story but also what labor they do, and just how traditionally feminine activities are shown in a narrative. Sadly, I reread this not that long ago, and found it to be rather gender essentialist, but it was still very important in shaping how I see stories. (This one is not available online but I recommend this essay about it )
3. ”Denvention 3, Guest of Honor Speech” Lois McMaster Bujold (2008) This speech helped develop my understanding of what genre is. Bujold starts off with my very favorite definition of a genre which is "any group of works in close conversation with one another". But she also talks about how SFF works are frequently “fantasies of political agency,” and that is such an interesting way of looking at SFF. Because characters do so often have political power, that they use to push the story forward or are fighting to gain control of, and I think this definition ties back to why SFF so frequently favors stories about royalty. This speech gives me tools to see patterns in a lot of different stories.
4. ”Political agency and changing the world” by Jo Walton (2008) This Jo Walton’s response to Bujold’s speech above. Walton responds to Bujold's idea of “fantasies of political agency” but says that she sees something different, that in SFF the world is a character, and if the world is character then the world should change as part of the story. I just really love that idea-I really enjoy worldbuilding, and for me part of the pleasure of good SFF is building and understanding of how the world works, so this inclusion of the world as a character really resonates with me.
5. “Freshly Remember'd: Kirk Drift” By Erin Horáková (2017) This essay deals with Captain Kirk, masicultivity, and how our views of characters change with time. It’s totally fascinating and well worth reading even if you know nothing about Star Trek. It’s also important to me personally because reading this made me want to actually watch some of the original Star Trek, which then led to me watching a lot of other Star Trek for the first time. (That’s why I’m currently watching Voyager)
+1 SQUEE The Untamed: A Primer by Gin Jenny (2020) We don’t often talk about recommendations as part of the critical conversation but they play an important role-it’s really important to share what we like and why we like it! I’m currently obsessed with the Chinese drama The Untamed and Jenny does great job of explaining what is so awesome about it!
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Date: 2020-04-17 06:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-18 06:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-17 09:52 pm (UTC)I enjoyed the analysis of Le Guin's theory -- and have added the rest to my (infinite) e-TBR thanks to Instapaper.
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Date: 2020-04-18 06:54 pm (UTC)I summarized it to my walking partner as "The current zeitgeist retcons canon" -- do you think that's accurate?
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Date: 2020-04-19 05:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-17 11:18 pm (UTC)Her take is very interesting; it must have been such a THING when K/S was pretty much the only slash game in town. Now it's so ubiquitous that I think women are writing it for a thousand more reasons than she's listed in her essay, but I think she makes good points about what appeals about slash to a certain segment of readers/writers.
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Date: 2020-04-19 05:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-18 03:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 05:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 01:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-19 05:58 pm (UTC)