How to Tell Stories
Nov. 22nd, 2010 09:34 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
handful_ofdustLawks-a-mercy! Actual practical standards set for Gender Equity in [Narrative--TV shows primarily, but it can certainly be transposed], here (http://ivanolix.livejournal.com/199285.html?format=light). Said standards could probably also be cross-purposed to deal with representation of any non-default character types, or even several different ones at once.
Otherwise, yuki-onna's been hosting an interesting post about meta/deconstruction. Which are concepts I actually have problems with, mainly because I'm not academic, so the language/jargon defeats me: Why's it gotta be so stiff?, as the fool in Venia's Travels complains. Then I dig a bit deeper, and realize that in fact I'm often playing with the same things that make up this quote-quote "genre"...unreliable POV and narration, for example, reading between the lines and playing with lacunae, all techniques which arguably form the backbone of literary horror.
(I also totally agree with her observation that unless you establish at the outset this is a parallel universe with no horror culture, there's really no excuse anymore for having characters who can't parse the whole Hey, whoa, the DEAD are coming back to LIFE, maybe that means these things are those things known as zombies. How do we deal with zombies? Yeah, let's do that, shall we? equation. See also vampires, werewolves, any other sort of cross-culturally understood monster; personally, I've never understood why people insist on telling the cops Oh fuck, there's a vampire in town!, as opposed to just saying Oh fuck, there's a guy who THINKS he's a vampire in town! One gets you help, the other gets you kicked to the curb--I sure know which one I'd choose.)
Okay...back to the war. 1,000/2,000 words, here I come.
Otherwise, yuki-onna's been hosting an interesting post about meta/deconstruction. Which are concepts I actually have problems with, mainly because I'm not academic, so the language/jargon defeats me: Why's it gotta be so stiff?, as the fool in Venia's Travels complains. Then I dig a bit deeper, and realize that in fact I'm often playing with the same things that make up this quote-quote "genre"...unreliable POV and narration, for example, reading between the lines and playing with lacunae, all techniques which arguably form the backbone of literary horror.
(I also totally agree with her observation that unless you establish at the outset this is a parallel universe with no horror culture, there's really no excuse anymore for having characters who can't parse the whole Hey, whoa, the DEAD are coming back to LIFE, maybe that means these things are those things known as zombies. How do we deal with zombies? Yeah, let's do that, shall we? equation. See also vampires, werewolves, any other sort of cross-culturally understood monster; personally, I've never understood why people insist on telling the cops Oh fuck, there's a vampire in town!, as opposed to just saying Oh fuck, there's a guy who THINKS he's a vampire in town! One gets you help, the other gets you kicked to the curb--I sure know which one I'd choose.)
Okay...back to the war. 1,000/2,000 words, here I come.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2010-11-22 04:15 pm (UTC)And what I meant about Miami Vice was that although it had the problems of its time, it also allowed every character to be sexual. Edward James Olmos got some. The Latina and black female detectives got some. The funny white sidekick guy detective got some. Of course our heroes were fetishized, but one wasn't fetishized to the exclusion of the other--they had tragic, sexy relationships with other people, as well as a verge-of-tragic, verge-of-sexy relationship with each other. Hell, there was a PLOT in Season One about a fellow cop being outed as gay, and this was back in, what--1983? When just admitting there were gay people was a huge deal, let alone that they had he right to do their jobs and not get harassed for it. Even he got the tragic sexy treatment, as I recall.