Padlocking the lovely unsullied mind

[oursin]

Further to my snark yesterday I have realised that the article in question manifests a phenomenon (or two related phenomena) which were in play in a couple of my other posts towards the end of last week.

One is the designation of a group which will be the manifestation of certain qualities that we, the privileged and the ones with cultural power, will deem desirable and worthy and which we have absolutely no intention of practising ourselves. (We may think of this as some kind of unholy hybrid of Angel-in-the-House-ism and Noble-Savage-ism. Members of the group in question will act as attractive containers for the qualities in question and keep them tidily out of the way of Real Life.) In spite of all evidence to the contrary and all practicality, we will insist that this group (and so many cultures have designated this group as specifically female) will be the custodians of (for example) pure traditional values.

I think this also relates to the sex-ed post because of the extent to which people go on believing, all evidence around them not withstanding, that until they are exposed to Evul Sex-Ed Lessons in the classroom, children today don't think about sex and have no idea what it's all about and continue to believe to an implausibly advanced age in storks and doctors' black bags as the origin of baybeees.

The other phenomenon is the We Will Tell You Wot Real Culchah Is! - we note that in the Hewlett story a large element of the problem seems to have been that the young Chinese were enthusiastically engaging with cultural forms that Hewlett and Albarn disapproved of.

On whoever is On Topp designating cultural value, I think of two sf riffs on this: Philip K Dick's The Man in the High Castle, in which what the hegemonic Japanese are looking for as molto-tipico USian art is things like Mickey Mouse watches, much to the distress of the antique shop owner; and in Walter Jon William's Drake Majistral series, in a somewhat different register, the alien species who are the masters of the universe have appropriated Elvis impersonation as the preferred human cultural product.

This also (in my mind, anyway) intersects with the trope of 'women writers gain respect for writing about srs bznz of Real Manly Kinds, like WAR'. Because yet again that's about what subjects Matter, rather than being OMG totally trivial.

Though when a man (HAI! M Flaubert) writes a woman-centred novel focussing on female experience, it is Searing Indictment of Society: when women do this it is (but of course) Mills&Boon/chick-lit/Aga-saga.

/end rant

Comments

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

That article was so unbelievably patronising about women who actually manage to write about Important Things. Well done *pats on head* you've managed to do History without your head exploding. Of course, lots of women have been doing 'history' for quite a while* - Antonia Fraser, Ellis Peters, the Falco woman, but of course those are only stories, not proper academic history. And it's about boring things, not kings and wars.

And then being so pleased with themselves that they've noticed women are doing it, as though that makes them champions of equality or something, rather than actually re-evaluating what's thought of as 'proper' history.

* Ignoring all the women who have been doing 'proper' history.


It's been quite interesting reading the various reviews of Mamma Mia!, which were largely (but not totally - IAMC) split on gender lines. Women, even if they qualified their statements by saying it's not objectively a great cinematic triumph piece of art, said it was fun and enjoyable and people go see it to cheer themselves up. Men, on the whole, wrote sniffy little reviews about jukebox musicals and how no-one can sing, and of course it's not a real film at all, but I suppose womenz on hen nights might like it.

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

I think all the emphasis on kings and wars and and the selfish (if not downright destructive) activities of rich men is why I started losing interest in history. Not that I don't love history--I DO!--but not history-as-she-is-wrote. "The Devil in the White City" is practically falling over itself on every page to salivate over the Chicago kings who presided over a city of unbelievable poverty and 'solved' the garbage in the streets issue by sending their families to live out in the country.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

Though when a man (HAI! M Flaubert) writes a woman-centred novel focussing on female experience, it is Searing Indictment of Society: when women do this it is (but of course) Mills&Boon/chick-lit/Aga-saga.

YEAH.
THAT.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

When I went to see the Bluestockings exhibition at the NPG, there was a small exhibit in another gallery on Victorian women historians, who were srs bznz - e.g. the Stricklands badgering to be let look at original State Papers for their work on the queens of England.

And on women writing about war, have these people not heard of Testament of Youth?

Oh yes, and on Mamma Mia, which does indeed sound fun (a senior male academic of my acquaintance loved the stage show to pieces) - for men, maybe a movie can't be acceptable fun without violence, blood, and stuff being blown up. Or possibly classic physical comedy routines.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Plus extra props for their amazing SKILLZ in writing female POV, sigh.

that was me. sigh. reposting

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

MME BOVAREE
IZ ME

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

*lists the women in fiction she can identify with*

Margaret Prior in Affinity.

Hmm. Somehow I thought it'd be shorter.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

I like that quotation from Will and Ariel Durant, which sadly I have not ever been able to find in one of their books, that the focus is on the river (often of blood) sweeping through and taking everything along in its wake -- but civilization is what takes place on the banks, the food-gathering and child-rearing and storytelling and home-making.

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

Testament of Youth may be about war, but I suspect it doesn't count because it is just an autobiography. *sigh*

It's noticeable that even fun movies about stuff getting blown up (which I quite enjoy) often feel the need to market themselves as dark, or cutting-edge, or reflecting some aspect of current life/affairs, or amazingly artistic, or with new sfx. They can't just be fun. (See, for instance, the latest James Bond, which was about 'reinventing' him and 'exploring his past' rather than just, for instance, watching Daniel Craig kill someone with his bare hands).

After a conversation with a (male) friend of mine, who did enjoy Mamma Mia greatly, I think another part of why male reviewers aren't too enthusiastic is that Everyone Knows men who like Abba are always screamingly gay.

[livinglaurel.livejournal.com]

//goes off track for a moment to FANGIRL VERA BRITTAIN WILDLY

(Shoot, what Wimmen Historical Fic Writerz can I think of off the top of my head? Mary Renault, Olivia Manning, Dorothy Dunnett, Rosemary Sutcliffe, Elizabeth Gaskell, Margaret Mitchell for Chrissakes and what about Rebecca West too....) (and what about contemporary suffrage fiction? Isn't that, like, REALLY neglected? PAH.)

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

I could not believe that Hewlett could come out with the tripe in that interview (to be fair, I'm not quite sure Kermode could, either; there was a sense that the interviewer might have been milking it for comedy gold).

Actually, a number of people I know were at the premier at the Manchester International Festival, and far from being riveted by the cross-cultural, truly sensitive exploration of Eastern values in a multi-media, multi-layered environment the most interesting thing they found to say about Monkey: Journey to the West was that Jude Law was in the audience.

[legionseagle.livejournal.com]

Oh, urg, yes. Ditto Anna Karenina.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately it's also possible to get the emphasis wrong in the other direction. History as taught in English schools seems (when it's not about WWII) completely to do with lifestyles without any attempt to put them in context; if, for example, you're studying villagers in the 12th century, it's worth mentioning the likelihood of armed men coming through raping and pillaging at certain times, and just possibly giving some idea of why.

[nineveh-uk.livejournal.com]

rather than just, for instance, watching Daniel Craig kill someone with his bare hands
Actually, I think it was about watching Daniel Craig tied naked to a chair, but tastes differ ;-)

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

I personally thought it was about Daniel Craig doing an Ursula Andress in his white shorts, but I think it unlikely that they'd decide to market it to men on that basis.

[sacred-sarcasm.livejournal.com]

I remember being extremely bored in history when we moved to doing 'social' history for a while rather than Kings'n'Battles. Not because I found the detail of how people lived boring, but because we never seemed to have time to do context or anything (and as we'd had no general overarching historical teaching - no learnings lists of kings of england, for instance - at any point during our schooling) I was floundering trying to work out 'where' we were. It's useful to understand how bad it was if your whole family were paying recusancy fines, for example.

[tree_and_leaf]

Though when a man (HAI! M Flaubert) writes a woman-centred novel focussing on female experience, it is Searing Indictment of Society: when women do this it is (but of course) Mills&Boon/chick-lit/Aga-saga.

A very effective way of, if not silencing, then trivialising, women writers. They get you coming and going.

[sollersuk.livejournal.com]

I was lucky, particularly at primary age when the one thing I didn't get was English history. On the one hand, I got Vercingetorix, Clothilde converting Clovis, Charlemagne and Du Guesclin. On the other I got Cradawg, Buddug and what's her name, the girl who saved up and walked all that way to buy a Bible.

[rivrea.livejournal.com]

Though when a man (HAI! M Flaubert) writes a woman-centred novel focussing on female experience, it is Searing Indictment of Society: when women do this it is (but of course) Mills&Boon/chick-lit/Aga-saga.

If I had received ten cents for every time that someone told me during my EngLit degree years that Jane Austen was only about gossip and the Brontës only about romance, I wouldn't have needed to apply for a corporate job afterwards. I could be retiring on the interest from the capital sum right now.

[oursin.livejournal.com]

Naomi Mitchison...

[caulkhead.livejournal.com]

Hilary Mantel, Pat Barker

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

Reminds me of a discussion on Evil Editor's blog (which I lost, most unfairly), in which I was insisting that soldiers retreating from a battle would be busily raping and pillaging, and everyone else said they would 'just be trying to get away'.

Meh.

I think UK Le Guin's fiction is brilliant, though, for the stuff happening on the banks.

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

I prefer Anna to Emma, if only because Anna only makes the mistake *once*.

[buffysquirrel.livejournal.com]

what!!!!

Where's my codfish?