colonialism

So, it's true, I put my foot into the mess of 'racism' posts - sufficiently so that the blog owner asked me in a not so polite manner to LEAVE!

:)

One of the threads I am following involves a discussion about the almost exclusively all-white characters in most fantasy works.

Now, let me be pretty clear here - I fell out of love with a lot of fantasy material around the time that every book became a medieval something or other quest type princess save the world type epic. I just had a knee jerk reaction to it.

Now, let me make a confession - back when I was 14 or so I went through a romance novel phase. I particularly liked the Barbara Cartland and Gothic Romances and books with titles like the "Lion and the peanut" (making that up) but you know the ones I mean. I must have read 500+ of the things in about a year and then - poof, I moved on.

At the time I didn't make much of the situation. My life as a child, a reading child, was all about pissing off my parents. They felt that punishment for inappropriate behavior was to require said child to read say 3 hours of James Joyce - at ll years old. My parents approved of literature. So, what's the surprise that I developed a fast affection for pulp by hackneyed writers. So in the years prior to Romance Novels I read my way through Zane Grey westerns, Tom Swift, Nancy Drew, Nurse Nan and the endless list of serialized works. Yes, I read non-serial works too - but gathering collections was a really good way to earn a parental glare and thrown up hands.

However, today I got to re-thinking something I said last night in the mess. Back when I was 14 Romance books were booming - they were literally flying off the shelves so fast they left contrails. Now, most romance novels are like potatoe chips - a lot alike. So, what fueled this boom? Going back in time I should point out that at that exact same time women were also burning their bras (foolish) to represent female freedom (not foolish) - so how are these two things connected?

Well, last night I suggested that the boom in romance novels was a feminist reaction to the transforming female role in the American culture. Women were achieving more money at work but paying a price in the bedroom. Being raised in a culture one way and having underlying issues change during your life time is complicated. Women began 'testing' the cultural mythos on which they were raised by playing out every possible variant of that mythos within the framework of romance novels.

Eventually, most romance novel readers reached a point of cultural saturation and sales tapered off a bit and the demand became stranger or we started to see a mixture of speculative fiction entering the romance market.

Now, back to my thoughts about current fantasy offerings. Remember when I mentioned I was a bit turned off by all the medieval quest things? Why? If my speculation about romance has any legs then what is fantasy doing or about? One thing I also don't like is books full of armys and warfare and KINGS!!! Why? Well, because that is my family history, my cultural history -- that is a cunieform for COLONIALISM. Fantasy is probably written by more women than men at this point and it seems to me that underlying these adventures are issues of female power and colonialism as a mechanism of change. Almost always the princess/female has some extraordinary gift - she isn't enough as a regular woman - and she is charged to find some relic to save the world from EVIL - or the king next door.

What are women really fighting? Sure, I said colonialism but that is probably an issue I could make an argument for across genres - they are also fighting a battle of the extraordinary woman hard pressed (she is close to losing everything) What are women losing?

Now we can shift a bit to look at Supernatural romances and again we see where the male is no longer even human - he has become magical and 'authority figure' which is representational or a metaphor. Her love and devotion are being examined against ideals, morality, religious dictates - and she is being compelled by the magical - a force beyond resistance.

Now, I could also make the argument about the alpha male mythos and how it becomes possible to speculate that this archtype is moving toward extinction.

I am not really venturing answers today - except to say that nothing is ever quite what it seems. It is my suggestion that the publishing giants are missing the boat - WOMEN ARE THINKING - they read, they devour books, they think in the round, slowly...and then one day they close the cover of that book and move on.

Books are about the struggle.