The following video might be of interest to anyone who read my previous post. It’s also a video I’m teaching my students this semester in my “Writing About Postcolonialism and Genre Fiction” class. Anywho!
The latest shitstorm in the SF/F community comes in response to acrackedmoon’s criticism of Pat’s (of Pat’s Fantasy Hotlist) controversial perspectives on Thailand and travel (acrackedmoon offers a counter here). The short version: Pat reinforces some stereotypes about Thailand and non-Western culture, some of them through sexist and/or racist lenses, gets called out on it without the bells and whistles of mutual respect, and then posts a rebuttal under the threat that he “will monitor the comment section,” which turns out to be code language for “I’ll let anyone who wants to call acrackedmoon a dirty name, etc. post whatever they want, even if they’re full of shit.” A part of me wants to bring in every postcolonial non-fiction book I have ever read in order to tear apart Pat’s original post and his response, but the amount of effort needed to do that should probably be spent on more productive measures. But I am going to say something here by way of an insufficient summary and an insufficient criticism of my own. I should note that I don’t know Pat. He may very well be a nice fellow. But people these days aren’t judged by the selves we don’t get to see, but by the selves presented to the public. Any claim that “Pat is a nice guy in real life” seems to miss the point entirely: if you’re not a racist, sexist, or whatever-ist in your personal life, then why would you use your public persona for non-satirical, non-parodic opinions about other people’s cultures? acrackedmoon is right in more ways than one, but the accuracy of her (?) criticisms seems to have fallen victim to the “you could have said this without being a bitch” argument (and the “bitch” is not implied, but spoken — see the comments on Pat’s blog). Is Pat a racist/sexist/etc.? Yes. But so am I, so are you, and so is everybody (don’t bother suggesting otherwise; you are and you have to deal with that, and not because you’re white or a man — everyone is racist, sexist, etc.). Perhaps not to the same degree, but enough to reasonably say that none of us are “pure.” Does Pat know he has racist/sexist/etc. opinions? No idea. I know I have them, but because I am aware, I try to challenge them when they spring up, to varying degrees of success. Is Pat challenging his? It doesn’t seem so. His response is all defense and no (or few) admissions. One rather interesting response to this comes from of a literary discussion of Forrest Gander’s Core Samples of the World from OF Blog of the Fallen (a.k.a. Larry, the Book Eater): Recently, there was a post that took another blogger to task for his depiction of her native Thailand (and his views on Islam and near-slavering over this “Girls of Geek” calendar). When reading Gander’s prose-poem and the passage I quote above, I could not help but note the complete difference of approach between him and Pat. Where Gander notes the discomfort and explicitly states how “the foreigner can’t control his situation; mastery eludes him,” Pat in his response to the Requires Hate posts does anything but acknowledge his obliviousness to how his words showed a callous disregard for a complex situation. No, the narrative there is that he was just pointing out an uncomfortable “truth” about the sex tourism industry over there (while neglecting to point out or being very unaware that sex trafficking is a very serious problem in both the United States and his native Canada). Of course, the way he put it was taken as very condescending at the very least, not just by acrackedmoon, but by several others who read it. But what happened is that there was no communication to hint that hey, ya know, maybe a native’s perspective might just be more valuable in this case than someone who, like the people in the Holiday Inn commercials, think that they “know” a culture or society just because they visited a few places over a period of days, weeks, or months. Problem is that it takes several years at least for an outsider to become acutely aware of an insider’s perspective. Lord knows that in 2012 there are still all sorts of Mississippi Burning or Deliverance jokes told about my native American South region. Oh, sometimes there’ll be that bright, enlightened person who wants to sound all sympathetic and say “I am impressed by how much you’ve changed since the KKK days,” in that grating tone that seems to accompany an elderly adult patting the head of a young child who is tempted to kick that oldster’s shins but has to refrain from doing so because s/he’ll be in big trouble. It is understandable that after a while of being talked down to, as if an adult from another society/culture were a gifted child, you grow tired of being polite and being deferential to the irritating dumbfucks who can’t bother themselves to learn more than the most superficial aspects of your culture/society. (Read his full post if you want to see what else he has to say.) That’s a fairly long quote, but one that, I think, gets to heart of the matter without running the risk of that evil “tone argument.” Those of us who live in the West, who benefit from its inherent privileges, must be willing to interrogate that very position in order to get beyond, or at least to work through, our biases about elsewhere.* Issues of degree don’t seem terribly relevant to me when it comes to generalized opinions of a foreign land. Does it matter that prostitution is less visible in the West than it is in Thailand? No, especially in light of the West’s involvement in the development of prostitution in Southeast Asia (do some research on Vietnam and South Korea if you want to see how America essentially turned a nominal, fairly normal human occurrence into a disturbingly common practice).** That, to me, seems to be the underlying problem with all that
If anyone wonders if my creative juices are still flowing, you’d only need to sneak in on some of the conversations I have with my girlfriend. I say “conversations,” but really these are long, surreal rambles I launch at her, which she finds amusing. This is one such conversation: Me: Would you prefer I court you in the old English way? I need to get a cool steampunk pocketwatch… That way, while we’re on a strolle, I could pull it out and say, “Hmm. My dear, it is half past seven. It’s mighty late and it will be quite chill soon. Shall I escort you home?” And you’ll say, “Why Reginald, that’s a capital idea!” And we’ll walk home and I’ll bid you good night and bow and gently kiss your hand, and you’ll scurry up to your room and I’ll look up to your window and you’ll flick on the light and lean out and blow me a kiss. And then I’ll walk with my cane and top hat down the snowy street whistling. Her: *laughs* Me: Good. It’s settled. I have this fear that you’ve copied every single bizarre fit of imagination I’ve had with you in the chat or on Skype or whatever and that you’ll one day publish them as part of your memoirs. The book will be called: In the Shadow of Greatness — Life as the Wife of a Mad Literary Genius. Her: Ha, that’s a good idea! Me: Or perhaps the title would be: The Anti-Teakettle Diaries: How One Woman Survived an Eccentric Writer for 75 Years. It’d be an instant hit. But you’re the reclusive type, so you’d refuse the call from Oprah to be on her show. And reporters from The Guardian and some new paper called The Flickerfist Quarterly will pile outside our door hoping to catch a glimpse of you on your way to work, perhaps for a quote. But you’ll be old, so they’ll look at you with respect and fear, because nobody knows what an old person will do. And you’ll scurry off to your little shop, called Tinkers and Pages Magical Emporium of Tinker Toys and Books. Her: *laughs* Me: You won’t make any money at the shop. Mostly, you just sit around winding up the little toys and giggling. And once in a while, a kid will come up with his parent and buy some cool thing, like a wind-up pheasant pirate or a rotating fobblefig. And then you’ll go home, walking as you usually do with your little cane, and the reporters will be there, as if they’ve never left, waiting to take more pictures. And you’ll never say a word. Only walk inside, put on the kettle for your hot cocoa, and read a book, which you’ll forget about when you fall asleep in your chair with old BBC re-runs on the tele. Somewhere in the basement is me. Trapped in a giant typewriter. The End. *long pause* I should put all that in a blog post… Her: You should. And here we are. With a blog post… Thoughts?
The folks behind Portal 2 (and the fans who love it) are a weird bunch. Clever. But weird. Take this, for example: Brilliant? You betcha. But damned creepy. I’d even go so far as to say the Portal 2 version of “This is Halloween” (changed to “This is Aperture”) is infinitely creepier and more relevant than ever. After all: what’s more terrifying than a collective of singing evil robots trying to convince you that you’re both safe and unsafe at the same time? Then again…there’s cake…
The latest episode of The Skiffy and Fanty Show is yet another reason why we’re totally awesome. No, we don’t have an ego. Promise. #85 should be fairly obvious based on the title. Myke Cole comes on the show to talk about Shadow Ops: Control Point, his latest novel, and topics such as: the military, the fantasy genre, sexy romances, random pop-culture references, and much more! Here it is. Listen or nothing bad will happen to you.
I’m not even going to preface this with anything on than this sentence, which is a sort of preface. Just watch: Possibly the clever take-down of FOX News ever. Even Jon Stewart could not have reached the wonder that is this moment, and that’s saying a lot…because Stewart is a real person.
