Jim Carrey, Guns, and Kick-Ass 2 (Late Thoughts)
I said I would throw in my two-cents on this Jim Carrey story. I realize I’m late to the party on this one, but I feel compelled to talk about the entire issue. Instead of trying to summarize the whole damn situation, I’ll just block quote something from the Guardian: Carrey, who has been an […]
Postcolonialism 101: Misery Tourism (or, How the Genre Community Still Essentializes Africa)
“What is misery tourism?” you might ask. At its most basic, “misery tourism” refers to the ways peoples from wealthy, usually Western nations “tour” the “developing” or “undeveloped” world in order to “learn” something. The process is almost always attached to an assumption of superiority, whether directly acknowledged or buried in the subconscious. To partake […]
The Weird Tales / Save the Pearls Fiasco: Preliminary Reactions
(Disclaimer: This post is a preliminary reaction. I have not read the novel in question and can only respond to what others have said about it. As such, what follows will not be based on what I know about the book itself, but rather a series of curiosities and questions that I suspect will be […]
SF/F Rant of the Day: Privilege is Not Equal
You’re probably already familiar with the shitstorm that erupted on Peter Watts’ blog over acrackedmoon’s “review” of R. Scott Bakker’s novels. If not, then you should glance through to see what has been going on (this is not the same as the other shitstorm which also involved acrackedmoon’s comments, though certainly the issues are related). Here, I […]
Duke and Zink Do America — Where My Politics Go to Live
If you’ve been a reader of this blog for at least a year, you’ll have noticed that I’m rather political. I’m also hesitant to post about politics on this blog, in part because this is supposed to be a space about genre fiction, writing, and so on. That doesn’t mean I don’t talk about things […]
An Addendum to “The West’s Third World Others (or, Hey, Thailand Has Prostitutions, What’s the Big Deal?)
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!