Wiscon part II
27/5/07 15:49![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
owlectomyI need to state right up at the top that I'm sort of in a Wiscon frame of mind and, well, maybe a little more political than I am on a day-to-day basis. Just so you can be advised.
Please explain slash to me
A panel of slash-related people including![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
yhlee and moderator Sharyn November, children's book editor, who by her own admission didn't "get" slash at all but was playing a little dumb for the sake of the panel. She declared by the end that as long as it wasn't hurting anybody or making money, it wasn't a big deal, but she didn't get it and probably never would-- and I'd agree with that; slash is like pickles. It tastes good or it doesn't, and is not amenable to persuasion. Or to some extent, explanation. All the panelists had their own reasons for being interested in slash, and in the audience there were more yet (thankfully, Sharyn November was a hard-ass moderator and didn't open the floor to everybody who wanted to say when their birthday was). But I don't know, isn't after-the-fact analysis somewhat beside the point, if it's such a "you get it or you don't" thing?
However, I will subject you to some analysis anyway! It was Kotani Mari's essay on slash that kept talking about egalitarianism as a feature of slash (note, she was talking about Kirk/Spock, specifically not about anything Japanese). And that brought me back to some of the BL that I've liked, and also to that book Twilight that I had such an ambivalent reaction to.
I love screwed-up power dynamics, I think. That's what I love on some visceral pickle-like level. But somehow I can't help overthinking it, "This guy would not make a good boyfriend in real life, he is possessive and he thinks it's okay to be contemptuous of people and I bet he would not do the dishes." Not so with yaoi, and honestly-- I think it's as much because of the language barrier, and the particular genre sensibility, as because it's m/m-- it just takes place in a universe where that is completely, utterly, totally Not The Point. However, I still didn't like Gravitation in part because it's gratuitously mean to tell someone their poetry sucks. So, I dunno. Pickles.
ANYWAY.
They got to talking about badly-proofread fanfiction.
"...fanfiction that's, like, written in LOLCATS."
"I can has cheezburger," said (I think?) Sharyn November by way of explanation. "Cats can't speak English."
Somehow I resisted the urge to shout "I can has boysex." This is the kind of atmosphere there was.
Sharyn November closed the panel with, "What is the weirdest pairing you have ever encountered?"
I raise my hand like a schoolchild, please please call on me I know the answer!
"Jesus/Judas."
People are scandalized/delighted.
The audience calms down, and Sharyn November gives a "You broke my brain" look and says: "Jesus Christ."
(laughter.)
"So to speak."
I think another audience member just about outdid me with Shadowfax/ Bill the Pony, though. (Eeeeeeewwww).
Also, Care Bears. But children's cartoons, it's like shooting low-hanging fruit in a barrel.
Feminism and Japan
One of the panelists was Laurie Toby Edison, whose blog (mostly on body issues) I've been reading for a while, and she talked about the book of photographs she'd taken of Japanese women, and mentioned that there was some difficulty to finding a U.S. publisher because "there wasn't a market for books that say that Japanese people are just... people." Which could be a reason why so much English writing on Japan annoys me so much. I was beginning to think, okay, am I the one who's dense and naive, thinking that Japanese culture is not some impenetrable monolithic thing? And this ties in great to how one of the Japanese panelists, Manami (didn't catch her last name) was dressed as a sort of clockwork-robot traditional Japanese person-- wearing a kimono, with a headdress of a mouse and USB cables, and with an actual motorized clockwork-turnkey sticking out of her back. It was a kickass costume, but I think it is also a great representation of how often people try to pin Japan down as either "technology paradise" or "geishas and cherry blossoms," and... these are both conceptions that can be very objectifying to women.
Kotani Mari talked about a lawsuit that she had been involved in where a book was published by Shufu no Tomo claiming that Kotani Mari was her husband's pen name. Which leads in to Joanna Russ's How to Suppress Women's Writing -- "She didn't really write it." And in fact Kotani translated Joanna Russ's book, which I think is fantastic.
One of the issues that was raised was how it's very easy to declaim another country's sexism and feel smug and superior. One of my undergrad East Asian Studies profs talked about how colonialism often justifies itself by saying "We're saving their women from their men," and you can really see it in the modern rhetoric against Islam. Which is not to pretend, of course, that all cultures are the same, or anything. But that's one of the things that bothered me about Congress drafting a bill telling Japan what to do about comfort women. Go ahead and take the stick out of your own eye first.
Now, they were going to talk in the next panel about the Japanese "Sense of Gender" award, and I really really wanted to go to that panel... but I wanted even more to go to the cultural appropriation panel, so I did!
Cultural Appropriation Panel
I know some people were bothered by the mixed messages that came out of this, but I think... well, maybe it comes down to that "wanting a gold star" thing. Maybe the first thing to do is accept that there is no way to do this that's going to magically give you the bulletproof "I hold absolutely no prejudices" vest and make you immune to criticism. And that includes avoiding writing about other cultures entirely.
But it all seemed to come down to "be respectful, be humble, and do a hell of a lot of research, not just book-reading, but through lived experience." So that you can get it right. Yet--
Well, I tried to say this in the ensuing discussion, but I don't think I actually said what I wanted to say.
Is "getting it right" really the only important thing? Yes, it's certainly important, yes. But it's not just about the writer and the appropriated culture-- it's about the audience as well. If you write about a culture that's "cool" (as Native American cultures were in the '70s/'80s and Japan arguably is now) then you get a certain amount of mileage from the audience's perception of "this is cool and exotic and trendy." And I am concerned about that because the perception of "cool and exotic and trendy" is rooted in things like power and class (French accents are sexy. Mexican Spanish accents are not.) It's not arbitrary. And to benefit that, even if you've done all of your homework, strikes me as somewhat... I dunno, problematic? But one of the other discussion participants said something interesting in response to that, which is, if you've done your homework and you produce something that does not reflect a cartoon understanding of Japan... you're not going to appeal to the people who have that cartoon-level interest. You might do something that is actually kind of subversive.
(Note that I am not saying that it is bad on an individual level to be interested in some cultures more than others. It's pretty much inevitable unless you are immortal and have the time to be interested in every culture equally. But I think it's bad for us as a society to fixate on certain cultures in certain ways.)
This was all part of the after-panel sitting-in-a-circle discussion, and the one thing that annoyed me about that was... there were a couple of people who seemed to think their opinions were really really special. And that may be the case, but that's what the panel itself is for. The discussion is for everybody and their stupid opinions, not just the same five people over and over again. I can understand wanting to have an unmoderated discussion, but I don't think it worked that well.
Tiptree Auction
They auctioned off a bunch of nifty stuff.
All of it was too expensive. For example, the banned-book bracelets! And banned-book tote bags, and banned-book T-shirts! (I get the impression there were a lot of librarians at Wiscon). Some of it was sort of in my price range, but all of it ended up going for more than I was willing to pay. Which is okay by me because the auction itself was entertaining. Ellen Klages (and I realized very late that it was that Ellen Klages, of "The Green Glass Sea") was hilarious in yellow-and-black striped tights. Next year I may bring more money and a preparedness to spend far more on items than they are actually worth. Oh yes: there will be a next year. Although it may not happen in 2008.
When Good Books Happen to Bad People
Or, should we buy Orson Scott Card's books? Assuming that we like them?
This was... an audience-centered panel that actually worked. Kudos tonihilistic_kid's moderating; he made sure to call on people who hadn't spoken yet, so no one person could take over the discussion. He also seems far nicer in person than on his livejournal; I had gotten an impression of him as a person who was rarely nice but often right. Which may still be the case. I feel more inclined to buy his books now, which is actually rather to the point!
One of the other panelists made the point that, if we decide not to buy books based on the author's personal beliefs, "Aren't we punishing them for being honest?" And there's the point that the great thing about free speech is that it "makes it easy to see who the assholes are." But the point I tried to make is-- what's so bad about punishing people for publicly holding horrible opinions? If we can collectively say, it is just unacceptable to say that, then it won't change that person's mind, of course. But it will take it out of the discourse a little bit. It means fewer kids will grow up hearing and believing it.
And there's a little bit of an Overton Windo thing going on-- the Overton Window is this idea that people will take the most extreme idea they've heard at one end of the spectrum, and the most extreme idea that they've heard at the other end of the spectrum, and will believe that a moderate opinion is just about exactly in the middle. (So: we hear Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, and we hardly hear any voices that are "leftist" by international standards, so even though moderates know that Ann Coulter is a nut job, the country creeps rightwards). So, again: assuming that we have that power (which is, yeah, highly questionable), I think it's a good thing to say, it is not acceptable to say this.
nihilistic_kid made a point about how we seem to be fixated on social issues when maybe we should be concerned about how so much of trade publishing is controlled by gigantic conglomerates. And I think that is a good point, and I should be buying more small-press books.
Okay. That's the end.
Good hotel, planes on time, nothing more to report.
Please explain slash to me
A panel of slash-related people including
yhlee and moderator Sharyn November, children's book editor, who by her own admission didn't "get" slash at all but was playing a little dumb for the sake of the panel. She declared by the end that as long as it wasn't hurting anybody or making money, it wasn't a big deal, but she didn't get it and probably never would-- and I'd agree with that; slash is like pickles. It tastes good or it doesn't, and is not amenable to persuasion. Or to some extent, explanation. All the panelists had their own reasons for being interested in slash, and in the audience there were more yet (thankfully, Sharyn November was a hard-ass moderator and didn't open the floor to everybody who wanted to say when their birthday was). But I don't know, isn't after-the-fact analysis somewhat beside the point, if it's such a "you get it or you don't" thing? However, I will subject you to some analysis anyway! It was Kotani Mari's essay on slash that kept talking about egalitarianism as a feature of slash (note, she was talking about Kirk/Spock, specifically not about anything Japanese). And that brought me back to some of the BL that I've liked, and also to that book Twilight that I had such an ambivalent reaction to.
I love screwed-up power dynamics, I think. That's what I love on some visceral pickle-like level. But somehow I can't help overthinking it, "This guy would not make a good boyfriend in real life, he is possessive and he thinks it's okay to be contemptuous of people and I bet he would not do the dishes." Not so with yaoi, and honestly-- I think it's as much because of the language barrier, and the particular genre sensibility, as because it's m/m-- it just takes place in a universe where that is completely, utterly, totally Not The Point. However, I still didn't like Gravitation in part because it's gratuitously mean to tell someone their poetry sucks. So, I dunno. Pickles.
ANYWAY.
They got to talking about badly-proofread fanfiction.
"...fanfiction that's, like, written in LOLCATS."
"I can has cheezburger," said (I think?) Sharyn November by way of explanation. "Cats can't speak English."
Somehow I resisted the urge to shout "I can has boysex." This is the kind of atmosphere there was.
Sharyn November closed the panel with, "What is the weirdest pairing you have ever encountered?"
I raise my hand like a schoolchild, please please call on me I know the answer!
"Jesus/Judas."
People are scandalized/delighted.
The audience calms down, and Sharyn November gives a "You broke my brain" look and says: "Jesus Christ."
(laughter.)
"So to speak."
I think another audience member just about outdid me with Shadowfax/ Bill the Pony, though. (Eeeeeeewwww).
Also, Care Bears. But children's cartoons, it's like shooting low-hanging fruit in a barrel.
Feminism and Japan
One of the panelists was Laurie Toby Edison, whose blog (mostly on body issues) I've been reading for a while, and she talked about the book of photographs she'd taken of Japanese women, and mentioned that there was some difficulty to finding a U.S. publisher because "there wasn't a market for books that say that Japanese people are just... people." Which could be a reason why so much English writing on Japan annoys me so much. I was beginning to think, okay, am I the one who's dense and naive, thinking that Japanese culture is not some impenetrable monolithic thing? And this ties in great to how one of the Japanese panelists, Manami (didn't catch her last name) was dressed as a sort of clockwork-robot traditional Japanese person-- wearing a kimono, with a headdress of a mouse and USB cables, and with an actual motorized clockwork-turnkey sticking out of her back. It was a kickass costume, but I think it is also a great representation of how often people try to pin Japan down as either "technology paradise" or "geishas and cherry blossoms," and... these are both conceptions that can be very objectifying to women.
Kotani Mari talked about a lawsuit that she had been involved in where a book was published by Shufu no Tomo claiming that Kotani Mari was her husband's pen name. Which leads in to Joanna Russ's How to Suppress Women's Writing -- "She didn't really write it." And in fact Kotani translated Joanna Russ's book, which I think is fantastic.
One of the issues that was raised was how it's very easy to declaim another country's sexism and feel smug and superior. One of my undergrad East Asian Studies profs talked about how colonialism often justifies itself by saying "We're saving their women from their men," and you can really see it in the modern rhetoric against Islam. Which is not to pretend, of course, that all cultures are the same, or anything. But that's one of the things that bothered me about Congress drafting a bill telling Japan what to do about comfort women. Go ahead and take the stick out of your own eye first.
Now, they were going to talk in the next panel about the Japanese "Sense of Gender" award, and I really really wanted to go to that panel... but I wanted even more to go to the cultural appropriation panel, so I did!
Cultural Appropriation Panel
I know some people were bothered by the mixed messages that came out of this, but I think... well, maybe it comes down to that "wanting a gold star" thing. Maybe the first thing to do is accept that there is no way to do this that's going to magically give you the bulletproof "I hold absolutely no prejudices" vest and make you immune to criticism. And that includes avoiding writing about other cultures entirely.
But it all seemed to come down to "be respectful, be humble, and do a hell of a lot of research, not just book-reading, but through lived experience." So that you can get it right. Yet--
Well, I tried to say this in the ensuing discussion, but I don't think I actually said what I wanted to say.
Is "getting it right" really the only important thing? Yes, it's certainly important, yes. But it's not just about the writer and the appropriated culture-- it's about the audience as well. If you write about a culture that's "cool" (as Native American cultures were in the '70s/'80s and Japan arguably is now) then you get a certain amount of mileage from the audience's perception of "this is cool and exotic and trendy." And I am concerned about that because the perception of "cool and exotic and trendy" is rooted in things like power and class (French accents are sexy. Mexican Spanish accents are not.) It's not arbitrary. And to benefit that, even if you've done all of your homework, strikes me as somewhat... I dunno, problematic? But one of the other discussion participants said something interesting in response to that, which is, if you've done your homework and you produce something that does not reflect a cartoon understanding of Japan... you're not going to appeal to the people who have that cartoon-level interest. You might do something that is actually kind of subversive.
(Note that I am not saying that it is bad on an individual level to be interested in some cultures more than others. It's pretty much inevitable unless you are immortal and have the time to be interested in every culture equally. But I think it's bad for us as a society to fixate on certain cultures in certain ways.)
This was all part of the after-panel sitting-in-a-circle discussion, and the one thing that annoyed me about that was... there were a couple of people who seemed to think their opinions were really really special. And that may be the case, but that's what the panel itself is for. The discussion is for everybody and their stupid opinions, not just the same five people over and over again. I can understand wanting to have an unmoderated discussion, but I don't think it worked that well.
Tiptree Auction
They auctioned off a bunch of nifty stuff.
All of it was too expensive. For example, the banned-book bracelets! And banned-book tote bags, and banned-book T-shirts! (I get the impression there were a lot of librarians at Wiscon). Some of it was sort of in my price range, but all of it ended up going for more than I was willing to pay. Which is okay by me because the auction itself was entertaining. Ellen Klages (and I realized very late that it was that Ellen Klages, of "The Green Glass Sea") was hilarious in yellow-and-black striped tights. Next year I may bring more money and a preparedness to spend far more on items than they are actually worth. Oh yes: there will be a next year. Although it may not happen in 2008.
When Good Books Happen to Bad People
Or, should we buy Orson Scott Card's books? Assuming that we like them?
This was... an audience-centered panel that actually worked. Kudos to
nihilistic_kid's moderating; he made sure to call on people who hadn't spoken yet, so no one person could take over the discussion. He also seems far nicer in person than on his livejournal; I had gotten an impression of him as a person who was rarely nice but often right. Which may still be the case. I feel more inclined to buy his books now, which is actually rather to the point!One of the other panelists made the point that, if we decide not to buy books based on the author's personal beliefs, "Aren't we punishing them for being honest?" And there's the point that the great thing about free speech is that it "makes it easy to see who the assholes are." But the point I tried to make is-- what's so bad about punishing people for publicly holding horrible opinions? If we can collectively say, it is just unacceptable to say that, then it won't change that person's mind, of course. But it will take it out of the discourse a little bit. It means fewer kids will grow up hearing and believing it.
And there's a little bit of an Overton Windo thing going on-- the Overton Window is this idea that people will take the most extreme idea they've heard at one end of the spectrum, and the most extreme idea that they've heard at the other end of the spectrum, and will believe that a moderate opinion is just about exactly in the middle. (So: we hear Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, and we hardly hear any voices that are "leftist" by international standards, so even though moderates know that Ann Coulter is a nut job, the country creeps rightwards). So, again: assuming that we have that power (which is, yeah, highly questionable), I think it's a good thing to say, it is not acceptable to say this.
nihilistic_kid made a point about how we seem to be fixated on social issues when maybe we should be concerned about how so much of trade publishing is controlled by gigantic conglomerates. And I think that is a good point, and I should be buying more small-press books. Okay. That's the end.
Good hotel, planes on time, nothing more to report.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
28/5/07 02:43 (UTC)The bit with Islam is a bit trickier. On the one hand, in some cases the women do need to be saved from some seriously draconian laws. On the other hand, (1) those laws seem to have arisen primarily out of pre-Islamic cultural traditions, and (2) we have a tendency to look at genuine Islamic traditions and see them as "oppression" when the women practicing them perceive them in the exact opposite way. And the more horror stories I hear about gang-rapes going unpunished in the U.S., and the more nasty misogynistic objectifying billboards I see reducing women to their component body parts and treating us like men's toys, I wonder more and more whether Islam doesn't have a point about women AND MEN dressing and behaving decently, and the sexes remaining mostly separate in public interaction. Not because women can't be trusted not to tempt men (sadly, I see some Muslims make this very justification, male and female) but because men can't be trusted to behave themselves and too readily blame women for their shortcomings.
It just amazes me, though, that Americans see oppression in a piece of cloth on a woman's head but turn a blind eye to real oppression.