How to Know You’re a Crazy Liberal: Move to Florida
I’m a graduate student at the University of Florida, as some of you well know (studying science fiction and fantasy and postcolonialism and anything that fits into the cracks). The experience, thus far, has taught me a few things about what it’s like to be a graduate student and a teacher, and about myself. That last part is what this post is about. I’ve always considered myself to be fairly moderate in my political beliefs. Yes, I am for universal healthcare (though I would be willing to settle for significant regulation if someone would bother to come up with something that makes sense) and I am also for gay rights (particularly marriage, which I could go into here, but won’t). But I don’t go so far as to think that we should tax the living hell out of the rich (although I think we should punish the rich accordingly whenever they screw up and not give them passes just because they have money). I could go on and on about my beliefs, but I think ultimately it will either paint the picture that I’m fairly liberal or at least somewhat moderate. But all that changed when I moved to Gainesville. I was moderate in Santa Cruz, but here I am a crazy liberal. I don’t know what to make of that, except that I know I have to be very aware of my personal beliefs when it comes to teaching my classes. Contrary to popular opinion, not all liberals are out to brainwash your children and turn them into tree-hugging hippies. In fact, I don’t want to brainwash any kids (not really, anyway, though I may joke otherwise). I do, however, want to expose them to different beliefs and ideas, because if they’re going to be useful, productive members of society, they have to be capable of actually thinking about things, even if it goes against what they believe in. Living in a vacuum does these kids no good whatsoever (and if the conservative or liberal fascists who think otherwise, that’s their problem, not mine; I can’t be bothered to deal with people who think it acceptable behavior to intentionally provide their children with an exceedingly limited and biased viewpoint of the world, and then get upset when they grow up and actually want to know what the world is really like). This is all part of the south, though, right? After all, the University of Florida was the first time I saw public praying on a university campus, and also the first time I have been accosted by born again Christians looking to save my immortal soul at school. Even my students have completely opposite views from me and I suspect that they think me remarkably crazy leftist as a result. Maybe, but I don’t know if I’m that deep in the south in the middle of a university. Such places tend to be a little more liberal than the rest of the world. So maybe I should be afraid of what actual red-ville looks like. I suppose what this all amounts to is this: it’s a strange experience to find out you’re actually more insane than you thought you were.
Writer Problem: Genre “Bias” as Weakness?
Stay with me here. The other day I was thinking about my writing and wondering if one of my problems is that I always write the same genre (or genres, since I occasionally do fantasy, but mostly do science fiction, as far as short stories are concerned). I don’t know how many of you who read this blog are writers, but I’m curious how many of you attempt to write outside of your “comfort zone.” For me, my comfort zone is science fiction and fantasy, because those are the genres I tend to read and enjoy the most and the ones that fill my head more often than anything else. But can thinking only of those things hurt your writing? I don’t know. I’ve started to think that for someone like me, it can, because must of what I write seems to suffer from a lack of character and an excess of plot (something that has been identified by some people to be a male thing). The thing is, while I do read pretty much only science fiction and fantasy, I do occasionally venture outside of that and have, on occasion, enjoyed books so far outside my far outside of my chosen genres that the only thing that remains the same seems to be the language being used (that, of course, is because I can’t read any other languages, although I do have a knack for reading Spanish). For example, I really enjoyed The Dragons of Eden by Carl Sagan, a science book about the evolution of human intelligence. That might not be a great example, though, since science fiction and science often go hand in hand, even though the former tends to get the science very wrong. So, how about a “literary fiction” example: Fog of the Season’s End by … While you could consider this book a pulp-style novel, it is actually a character piece about people dealing with some of the darkest aspects of South Africa’s apartheid. It is one of my favorite books that I was forced to read while at UC Santa Cruz (in a class on South African literature, actually). Maybe I should write a novel like that (not about apartheid, per se, but something that looks at the world I live in, or something). I often feel like I am not educated enough to do that, though, as if I am not in-tune with the world in the way some of the best literary writers seem to be. My fingers aren’t on the world’s pulse. I don’t know where I’m going with all of this, except that I seriously wonder if my obsession with genre fiction might be hurting me. I even tried to break out of it on Saturday in an attempt to do something new, only to find myself resorting to the same science fiction things that dominate some of my most recent work (well, a little different, but I immediately found myself needing to go into the future in order to pull off what I wanted to do). Maybe I have a psychological condition that perpetually puts me in the future, or I just don’t care about the present enough to write about it, or I simply want to write stories that don’t work in the world we currently live in (give it twenty years and who knows). What do you all think about this?
Plots Are Not Copyrightable
(I am not directing this topic to any specific event, though I know some of you who read my blog will remember me making this statement in relation to a particular incident; here, I am not making the argument in that relation, but in a more general sense.) As much as writers might want to keep their plots and storylines safe from thieves, the reality is that short of never putting your work in print and keeping it locked in a volt and buried in your backyard forever, you cannot protect your plots anymore than someone can protect their children from experiencing bad things. No matter what you do, you’ll probably find that someone has “stolen” your plot already. Why? Well, because plots are not copyrightable. J. K. Rowling can no more protect the plot of Harry Potter than you can protect the plot of your yet unpublished novel. Rowling, however, can protect what amounts to her intellectual property, and there are instances where she has gone after people for what seem like clear acts of plagiarism (I don’t know enough about them to have judgment, except in the case of that encyclopedia thing that Rowling killed with the power of a lawyer). But Rowling has not won cases against plagiarism by arguing for plot; yes, she has made those arguments, but what has worked for you are a collection of factors (characters looking and acting remarkably like her own characters collected with plot, setting, etc.). If she were to argue that someone had stolen her plot, well, then you’d be opening up a can of worms in the writing community, with everyone suing everyone for supposed thefts. Personally, I think this assumption that one can protect his or her plot stems from an inability to acknowledge that originality is mostly dead. Outside of the “seven plots,” there are far too may near-exact plot replicas flooding the mainstream markets; there are enough Dan Brown rip-offs as there are Tolkien rip-offs (okay, so maybe that’s a bit much, but you get my point) all because of the fact that plots cannot be protected. Maybe they should, but then where would we get our literature from? It doesn’t take a genius to look at a few of the most popular fantasy novels and see where they overlap. Many arguments have been made that Eragon and Eldest by Christopher Paolini are directly taken from Star Wars, which, of course, stole directly from mythology with the help of a fellow who knew quite a bit about the stuff in the first place (Joseph Campbell). But George Lucas isn’t suing Paolini presumably because he’s smart enough to know a bad lawsuit when he sees one (and that might be one of the few things he gets credit for in the smart department, since his directing style, while not absolutely wretched, truly pulls away from the greatness that Star Wars once was—it’s still good, just not as good as it used to be). Plots, to be fair, are simply not original elements by a long shot. They certain can deviate and change little bits here and there, but, ultimately, plots are a constant mimic of themselves, like self-replicating mental machines drilling themselves into parts of our psyches where we have to really dig to be able to yank them out and see what they’re up to. The best kinds of stories are those that can take an overused plot and turn it into a powerhouse fantasy epic (or insert your favorite genre here). Nobody suggests that Tolkien or J. K. Rowling (except Orson Scott Card, who is obviously a very special brand of crazy) be brought up on charges of plagiarism, despite the fact that, if we assume plagiarism to include plot, these two are probably some of the most prominent plot plagiarizers of all time, from the very inclusion of prophecies and chosen ones to evil magic rings and fantastic unintentional allegories about real events. So, either we hold our favorites up to the guillotine just as we hold up the ones we dislike, or we let it all go and acknowledge that we don’t own plots, we just use them. The characters make the world go round, not the writer-as-god-directed storylines that pull them to and fro for no other purpose other than to get to the end (they’re more complicated than that, but that’s for another place and another time). And now I want your opinion. Leave a comment!
Writing Prompt #6: Random Death
Well, now that we’re in the month of October, it’s high time for yet another writing prompt! This month’s prompt is to write a short story or novel chapter involving the following: An unknown person is found stabbed to death. Seem simple enough, right? So have at it! You’ve got the rest of the month. Let me know if you’re taking part in the comments!
Not Fit For Office: Sarah Palin
No, this is not a regular feature here. This is one of those random off-topic posts. I don’t expect many of you to agree with me here, though if you take a moment to read my arguments and understand why I would never support Sarah Palin in any position, maybe you would agree too. I am not a democrat or republican, but am registered independent. I voted for Barack Obama because he was, to me, the better candidate (he seemed to be the only one who actually had any idea what non-rich Americans were going through). I expect some of you reading this are conservatives, and that is fine. Just hear me out. In a short discussion with a friend at the University of Florida the other day, I brought up that I did not like Sarah Palin. Initially my reasons were that I considered her to be remarkably stupid (and she did a fine job making that case for me in the debates, and elsewhere), but my friend disagreed. She said that Sarah Palin was going through a lot and that she was simply folding under pressure. Why? Because Palin had, apparently, sent her son off to Iraq just prior to heading out to do all those interviews that made her look pretty much unprepared for the position she had been nominated to run for. My rebuttal to this ended the conversation because of a fundamental disagreement between us, but it is this rebuttal that I want to display here. I do not care whether or not Sarah Palin sent her son off to Iraq prior to running as vice president. Why? Because if she cannot handle that kind of pressure, how the hell does she expect me or America to believe she can handle the pressure of the oval office? What if she had been President? Would we simply give her an out because she was having a hard time in her personal life? No. And why? Because the people who run this country do not have the luxury of allowing their personal lives to affect the way they function as politicians. We have that luxury (we being non-politicians, all the various collars of workers, etc.), and as such, we expect those who make sure the gears keep turning to have the moral, physical, and psychological fortitude to do their jobs (with exception, perhaps, to unexpected serious illness, like a heart attack). If Sarah Palin were President and sent her son off to Iraq, it would not be acceptable for her to act un-according to her position; we would expect her to do the same job she should have been doing before, keeping us safe, enacting policy, etc. A lapse in that, particularly in a time of war or during a crisis, is simply unacceptable. From individuals outside of that position, perhaps it is acceptable. I do no begrudge average mothers being terrified about their sons; I do not find anything wrong with grieving or displaying any sort of emotion. I do, however, have an issue with someone in a sensitive position performing excessively poorly and other people telling me that I have to give them a break. No. If you have your finger on the big red button, I will not give you a break for pushing it in a fit of emotion, nor in any other instance in which other people might be harmed by an inability to do one’s job as President, Senator, or whatever other political position there might be. We expect more of our politicians, or we should. So, Sarah Palin’s send off of her son, assuming that’s true, is not an excuse for poor quality of action. It’s not. If that is her reason, I don’t care. She had a job to do, and she failed to do it adequately. She lost as a result and was labeled by her actions. And this is not even talking about her pre-mature resignation from the position of Alaska’s Governor, an entirely new issue that demonstrates, to me, why she is not fit for office. Why anyone would look at her and think she deserves a slot in the oval office is beyond me. She quit Alaska. She wasn’t impeached, the position wasn’t terminated without her knowledge (and that would be silly, since Alaska needs a governor), or any other reason. She quit. Just imagine to yourself, if you will, what it would be like if she quit as President. What then? Exactly. And that is all I have to say about that. Again, this will not be regular here. This blog is about science fiction, fantasy, writing, and things related to that; it is not about politics unless it is directly relevant to the previously mentioned categories. But every so often I have to speak my mind. Feel free to leave angry messages in the comments. Or argue with me, if you like.
Quickie Movie Reviews (2009): Volume Eight
Another batch. There’s a little bit more science fiction and fantasy this time. Have at it: Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence (Mamoru Oshii)Following the acclaimed Ghost in the Shell, this installment follows Bato through a maze of virtual worlds and crazed robots as he tries to discover the reason for a string of brutal murders committed by semi-sentient play-bots (dolls). Beneath all this is the mysterious disappearance of the Major and her connection to Bato.Pros: Absolutely stunning visually. This film has taken Japanese animation to new heights, in my opinion, and any films that cannot match its beauty are missing something vital. The story in this, while hard to follow, is brilliant. There are a lot of fantastic ideas being portrayed here as far as cyberpunk is concerned. This is a must see.Cons: As mentioned, the story can be hard to follow and this one suffers from being quite obviously a serious film. There is little comedic relief here (though some). If you can’t devote your full attention to this one, then don’t bother. Rating: 4/5Value: $9.50 The Call of CthuluThis attempt at recreating one of Lovecraft’s most celebrated horror stories as a silent movie follows a small cast of related characters as they try to unravel the mysteries of the monstrous Cthulu.Pros: A novel attempt, that’s for sure. The producers of this film went all out to recreate the silent movie film, albeit on updated film technologies. It has a certain kind of Lovecraftian charm to it that would otherwise be lost to those unfamiliar with his work.Cons: As much as the directors tried to justify why they wanted to go with the silent movie approach (some nonsense about how the only good way to do Cthulu is to do a silent movie, and more nonsense about how silent movies don’t have dialogue, which they do), the entire project falls apart. This might have been terrifying in 1920, but we are in the freaking millennium, and as such, there’s no logical reason why one cannot update Lovecraft so that it might actually scare the crap out of viewers today. The silent movie approach doesn’t work anymore, and so anything that might be taken from Lovecraft ends up lost in the attempt to keep with his time period. It’s cut, but it just doesn’t work.Rating: 1/5Value: $1.00 The God Who Wasn’t There (Brian Flemming, Documentary)Flemming’s controversial short documentary takes a stab at Biblical accuracy and the problem of fundamentalist religion.Pros: A lot of brilliant observations are made here. Flemming is decent at making his point without dabbling in loads of slightly inaccurate facts and the like. It raises a lot of good questions and grounds itself firmly in the authority of some notable historians.Cons: Some of the points need stronger backing. I think this is too short to be as effective as it should be, and the ending falls far from the mark it needed to hit. There were a lot of great things in the middle, but Flemming needed to take this further. One of the things that bothered me about this documentary is that Flemming does not have the flair of non-theist critics like Dawkins or Hutchins. He needs to work on that.Rating: 3/5Value: $4.75 The Mists of Avalon (Anjelica Houston)Based on Marian Zimmer Bradley’s novel, this take on Arthurian legend takes a look at the events through the eyes of the women. From the birth of Arthur to the rise of his son, Mordred.Pros: The visuals are nice and the music is okay. The story takes forever to get to the meat and potatoes, but once it does, at least it is somewhat interesting. Too bad for all the other bits, though. It could be worse.Cons: Characterization is absolutely wretched in this movie. Characters act in ways that make no sense (parents just letting their children be whisked off forever, willy nilly, with barely any protest, and other things like that). This movie was supposed to highlight the women, which it does, but ultimately it made me hate the women more than I did the men. Why? Because all but a handful of the women are scheming, conniving, backstabbing witches. Only one or two of the characters are remotely likable. Also, the cast for this is a mixed bag (I think Julianna Margulies is a terrible choice; she’s annoying when she cries). Anjelica Huston is awesome, but she is not given a great role here. The men are inconsequential precisely because they are shoved off to the side. I could go on, but I’ll cut it off here. This one just sucks. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention that apparently people didn’t age during King Arthur’s days…Rating: 1/5Value: $2.00 The Man Who Wasn’t There (Billy Bob Thornton)Set in post-WW2 America, this tale of a barber disillusioned with his relatively meaningless life and his cheating wife collects together murder, blackmail, and noir to create an interesting psychological piece.Pros: The visuals are quite appealing and all of the actors fit right into place. The story itself is rather interesting, but, to be honest, the plot is mostly irrelevant. The key purpose of this tale is to examine the psychological arch of the main character.Cons: Some parts move rather slow and the feeling of the piece is, I think, problematic for most viewing audiences. There is not a lot of action here and most it is told in an internal monologue style. This makes for a piece that is incredibly introverted. It’s good, but imperfect in that regard.Rating: 3.25/5Value: $6.25 And there you have it. Comments appreciated!