handful_ofdust

Bah! Th'boy needs to read Great Expectations.

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But it's not exactly SFF, is it?;)

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No—and you know I'm being facetious.

But I don't believe in condemning a trope in and of itself, either. It's what you do with it. I love stories where the hero is built up and then torn down. I know one of my first experiences with this was reading Dune Messiah in my early teens, and I loved that razor-blade line between jihad on one side and the golden path on the other, with the human side of Paul emerging from the narrow crack between them by a triumph of will. It's worth delving into the Chosen One trope if you can tell that story afterwards. But we all know which was the popular one between Dune and Dune Messiah. There is the love of the Chosen One in genre fiction, as there is a role for both Superman and Dexter.

There is the well-established trend, and I don't think it's a bad one, to go against five hundred years of protestant elitism. The idea (and I'm pretty sure it's always been lifted from Revelation) that there are "God's Elect" and that there are people who deserve, by right of divine selection, to rule the world, has not done western civilization much good. I think it is because it eliminates, by divine-rinso-whiteness the sin of the individual, so the collective sin has no bearing on them as individuals. So the sense of collective responsibility for collective actions disappears, and "sins of omission" are not considered. Looking at this in the context of the English Civil War, it's obviously a popular power-grab at the right of kings, but the people need to establish by what justification they do claim divine right. Representative democracy, in my opinion, is one of the more elaborate justifications, and not necessarily a bad one.

But, I would argue, this background elitism leads to a culture that has an out-of-sight-out-of-mind attitude towards garbage, poverty in other places caused by its own prosperity, violence in other places caused by its enforcement of peace. It is the very crux of privilege to ignore consequence, and in that way, being Chosen by Calvinist predestination or by Baptist rebirth don't look all that different politically.

I'm a little enheartened by current events in Egypt, to draw out by analogy. Many of the arab states' leadership has been "chosen" by their allegiances, been "client states" if you will. At one time, the Soviet Union also had kingmaker privilege, but those days are over. Perhaps Sudan shows that China is beginning to have this level of influence. But I digress...

I notice there is an attempt to quickly fasten on the Chosen One in these political situations by the dominant puritan culture. Will it be El-Baradai? Who can we put in place of our good friend of so many years, Mr. Mubarak? Will it be General X or Statesman Y? Notice how we're already sizing up "our guy" and placing bets (with a heavy thumb of threat of force on the political scales). God forbid we allow the rabble to choose their own leadership! We make things worse by using elite status to select Chosen Ones to cooperate with.

So yes, invoking Ursula LeGuin in saying that all SF is analogy, I think "Chosen One" narratives are part of the dominant culture's puritan past and contribute to its inability to see its shadow and take responsibility for its actions as a collective whole. This has real consequences, because we are, above all, a story-making species and stories matter.

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Stories absolutely matter. I'm just not always sure our motivations for telling ourselves these particular stories are always the same motivations some people seem to want to assign us. For example, like jihad vs. golden path, for me, the flip-side of "chosen jerk" is "changeling"--and is that a story you really want to deprive people who truly do need to tell themselves that their difference is a sword and a shield rather than a wound--that the family which rejects them isn't "really" theirs, and that people who'll respect and embrace them for who they are actually do exist out there somewhere, waiting to be found--of?

Yeah, we lie to ourselves, like we lie to others, but sometimes we also tell the truth in advance. Stories help with that, too.

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Ah, and there has to be a Clark Kent behind that Superman, doesn't there. So yes, two thumbs up to the changeling trope. I'd like to see more changelings on the thrones.

True about motivations, but as I was coincidentally just saying to someone today, we don't often get ownership of the "you" that we have to live with, unless we want to live a really sheltered life where we don't run into conflicts with anyone else's beliefs or expectations, or get to know many people, and trying to explain your motivations is a bit of a wank-job anyway. Unless it goes to court, I think it's generally optional and the option is best honoured in the breach than the observance. All I know is that any sentence that begins "I am" is ultimately false. Of that I am certain. ;)

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While I think I get what your mother was trying to tell you, uh...no. I am the ultimate authority on me, anda s such, I will never accept or privilege someone else's impression of "who I am" over who I know myself to be. Yes, this will cause strife; already has, actually. But if people who've never met think they know me better than I know myself, all I can ever say is: They're wrong.

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No, that's what I thought she meant at first, and I was pretty horrified that that was how she saw herself.

It took a while for me to understand that what she DID mean is that you don't get ownership over what's in people's heads, and that space between that and your own head is illusory. There is no space, because there is no point that will ever touch and there never will be.

A bit of a homemade existentialist, really.

So, by her rules, if you want ownership over that you in someone else's head, you need to treat it like the work of art that it is. It's a performance art, and until you want to take on that responsibility, you'll never be able to simply be yourself.

If you don't want to take responsibility for it, you need to let go of other people's ability to harm you with it.

Or maybe it makes more sense in Zen koan: Look and tell me the colour of your own eye.

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So what she was saying was "don't be THAT guy" - in this case, that guy who always thinks you should have realized he was just kidding?

(Or, for a different example, one of our customers at work, who holds that any errors resulting from her typos are *our* fault, because we should have realized that she meant to write "1" and not "11" - after all, why would she want 11 of something?)

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Yeah, I think I get what you're saying. Don't take people's projections personally. Especially not your own.

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As I’ve mentioned before, I think the prevalence of monarchies in fantasy is due, not to a genuine love for the feudal system, but because it greatly simplifies plot mechanics if you can limit the number of characters upon whom the fate of the kingdom/planet/universe depends; and I suspect this is often the reason behind the Chosen One trope as well.

I guess what I’m saying is that it might be more accurate, and more effective, to attack the trope (if you’re going to) as lazy storytelling rather than as crypto-fascism.

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I agree totally. It's lazy, and shoddy, and sells lots of movies and books.

Damn.

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intertribal.livejournal.com

My off the cuff reaction: Oh Lord, how people are defining "reimaginings" these days. It's like, yes, your epic fantasy is so different because your hero is a redhead. Sorry; sometimes I get frustrated by claims that something radical and different is being done when really the results are the same.

I think I've said this before, but one of the reasons I identify more with horror than with fantasy is because there's less trope exaltation/trope angst, I feel. MCs can die, or not. Monsters can be killed, or not.

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I'm with you in finding horror more interesting/realistic, obviously, but also in terms of being equally tired of the "trope angst". It's a lot like the million and a half posts that blew up about Cameron's Avatar being A) Pocahontas in blueface and B) EEEEEEEEVIL WTF IS WRONG WITH YOU, WHITEY, THAT YOU KEEP TELLING THIS EEEEEVIL STORY?!?, for me: Even just considering that an amazing amount of fantasy is either written by Christians or comes out of a Christian cultural context, you're seriously surprised by the plurality of Special Person With Inborn Superpowers Saves The World stories? C'mon. Do something new, yes--feel free, please.Expect something new, demand it, support it. Just don't act like you're doing something ultra Brave and New by calling out a cliche for being a cliche.

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intertribal.livejournal.com

Yeah, pretty much.

I had heard so many of those complaints by the time I saw Avatar that I didn't even care anymore (not that I liked Avatar; as far as I was concerned the Navi and the Americans could all go down a black hole and leave the Super Cool Sentient Planet to the Super Cool Animals). And you know, part of it is this feeling I get that Avatar, etc., are just easy targets - where the hell is all the outrage for things that are still on the "approved" list, but equally problematic? I was just complaining to my mother last night that among the LJ community of progressive/enlightened 20-year-olds, there is still universal cheer for Law & Order: SVU. I think this applies to books as well - everyone points at LOTR and Narnia as "ooh! trope-ridden! shame! shame!" but I almost want to shake fantasy readers and say "come on! you think this isn't in your favorite escapist books?"

I feel like horror doesn't have this problem, and I don't know if that's because we don't want escapism or our escapism is very very strange or what. For sure, there are problems in the genre; maybe I'm just lucky to have fallen in with the right crowd.

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This is just off the top of my head, but I wonder if some books/writers get a reputation as the Thing to Dump on to demonstrate your own purity. Sort of like being the school nerd/slut/community scapegoat/etc.

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intertribal.livejournal.com

Oh yes. I think the litmus test of this is to post an excerpt/summary of a book by an SF Scapegoat, without proper names or author names, and see if the response is the same.

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kmarkhoover.livejournal.com

I totally agree. *nods*

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asakiyume.livejournal.com

Yes, I think this is something, for sure.

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leahbobet.livejournal.com

Oh, yeah. There's a lot of what we do on the Internet (and, well, in life) that's not really about the thing itself, but about resorting our own personal social hierarchies.

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I think there’s also an inverse of that, in which a reviewer reacts as though a particular trope has never been used before – like a few years back when apparently some conservative types got all up in arms about Happy Feet being omggaypropaganda because the plot could be boiled down to “bullied outsider saves his community, who then decide that being Different is OK after all” and everyone else just looked on in astonishment and wondered if said conservatives had ever watched *any other children’s movies at all.*

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...um, yes.;)

Seriously? This guy never read "The Ugly Duckling", or anything? Man.

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IIRC correctly, the person analyzing this response finally went “oh – I get it – you were one of the ones bullying the weird kids, that’s why you don’t like stories where that turns out to have been the wrong thing to do…”

Also, while it’s a strawman kind of example, I can never get over Wertham’s insistence that the motif of “injury to the eye” is found *nowhere* except for those evil sleazy comic books….

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greygirlbeast.livejournal.com

I don't find the post, or much of the subsequent discussion, so much interesting, as doggedly wrong-headed.

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For me, the "interesting" part is that it just keeps on coming up. It's like people have recently decided they need to police not only other people's fantasies but also their own, which seems an immensely joyless attitude to take.

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baggyeyes

I think they just want a cause to fight for. They probably do go out and do what they can to effect change in the world; after a while, everything looks like a valid target.

I could be wrong.

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There's something to be said for the idea that propaganda being disseminated through entertainment is an inherently negative concept, I guess, but...the idea that reading about Harry Potter and the Pevensies breeds a generation of stupes waiting around to get "saved" by some duly-elected saviour seems reeeallly reaching. Sort of like the idea that kids will read Phillip Pullman and immediately start hating on God; he's not that good a writer, sadly.

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sixteenbynine.livejournal.com

Their idea, as much as I can discern it, is not that they're waiting to be saved so much as that the more they see the same patterns reified outside themselves the less likely they are to seek out something different for its own sake.

Which is probably true, but it doesn't make the policing of other peoples' fantasies any less mean-spirited and crass. (And, as you mentioned, joyless.)

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starvinbohemian.livejournal.com

You know, I frequently disagree with you on these things, but I wanted to tell you that I really appreciate all the links you post because I've really enjoyed reading all the different points and discussions. Occasionally wrong-headed, sometimes enlightening, frequently disturbing, yet always entertaining discussions. :)

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