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Vague thoughts on the misremembering of marginalised creators
Inspired by this essay about the misremembering of Captain Kirk, I had some extra thoughts on tumblr and then I had some EXTRA extra thoughts and decided it was probably time for a proper post.
So to rephrase myself and then add some new ideas:
The essay does a pretty good job of going through how we misremember a beloved character who can, if you squint super hard, be squished into a Manly Man. And how the diversity of an original creation get homogenised in remakes into something less diverse and subversive that claims to be more so, based on a whitewashed nostalgia of the original.
It doesn't really address how this affects beloved characters and creators who are Too Obviously Marginalised for that to work (and I mean it's already super long and can't cover everything)
Kentsarrow brought up How To Suppress Women’s Writing, which definitely feels relevant.
To give a specific example: Jane Austen as an author, and Darcy as a character.
Jane Austen is remembered as a Nice, Romantic Upper Class Regency Lady who wrote girly, romantic, soppy, sexy stories about Manly Upper Class Regency Men Who Have Known Many Lovers But Are Overcome By Passion for Feisty Girls. This is...not very accurate.
She was actually a pragmatic, satirical woman who liked being a spinster and, while gentry, wasn't super upper class. Her books do contain romance, but are pretty low on sexiness and soppiness even for the period, have a pretty strong emphasis on social commentary and complex non-romantic relationships, and consistently hate on promiscuity or sexual aggressiveness from men. The moral is generally that social norms are flawed but ignoring them is dumb. Her characters, like her, are generally gentry but not SUPER DUPER upper class.
We can’t even entirely blame men for it, though they are definitely the worst. Female fans are also invested in remembering Austen’s complex, subversive narratives as paeons to privilege and toxic masculinity. As with Kirk there’s the thing where Darcy being a sleazy womaniser (heavily contradicted by the text) is treated as much more plausible than him being queer (mildly contradicted by the text)
Some of this is “I know it isn’t like that but this is more fun”, but the pop culture understanding of Jane Austen is definitely dumbed down Georgette Heyer, and then all the Hot Subversive Takes end up feeling more stale than the 1800ish originals.
Anghraine has some great posts on this (and I'm a little paranoid she's rolling her eyes at my simplistic summary above ;)), see: Us discussing Sexy Regency Hero Darcy and her issues with the adaptation of Pride and Prejudice everyone says is super accurate.
I feel like cultural misunderstandings come into this as well, the way people’s preconceptions (because of the media they’re used to, racist ideas about other cultures etc) make it difficult for them to engage with the text as it actually is. Like because Japanese gender norms are different, I feel like a lot of Western fans just cannot see the difference between an anime character written from a feminist perspective to subvert gender norms, and one written from an incredibly sexist perspective to fit gender norms. Which on the one hand is understandable (I have this problem myself) but it leads to a lot of VERY TERRIBLE takes on anime. Combine this with the misremembered past and bad attitudes to women’s writing/genres and you end up with All The Terrible Opinions On Sailor Moon.
Another example that occurred to me is Octavia Butler: until I read her books, I'd gotten the impression she was a Worthy Marginalised Author Of Great Works Exploring Race And Gender. People generally bring her up as having written Good Deep Progressive Science Fiction...and pretty much leave it at that without going into specifics. So I was expecting something a bit heavy and dry but thoughtful.
What I got was WEIRD ALIEN ORGIES. Which were very well written and absolutely did explore race and gender, but they also explored tentacle alien sex in great detail. And I mean I understand why Xenogenesis doesn't come up in recs for Sexy Alien Orgies because it's all deliberately disquieting (unless disquieting is your kink, I guess)
But I don't understand why Wild Seed doesn't come up in discussions of immortals because it's a fantastic and inventive take on the genre. In general it feels like people just remember her books as being About Black Women rather than About Black Women Being An Immortal/Having Sex With Tentacle Aliens/Being a Vampire etc.
Of course I imagine a lot of people just remember her name as a useful one to namedrop to make it clear they're Aware Of Marginalised Authors, and they haven't even skimmed the summaries of her books enough to realise they have a plot beyond A Black Woman Is Black And Female. But that seems like it's part of the same general effect.
I had a similar experience reading Samuel R Delaney, who used to be brought up when someone wanted TWO black SF author names to drop but again noone mentioned how weird and cool (and gay!) his writing is.
Marginalised creators are consistently erased and forgotten, but even the ones who are remembered are remembered wrong.
So to rephrase myself and then add some new ideas:
The essay does a pretty good job of going through how we misremember a beloved character who can, if you squint super hard, be squished into a Manly Man. And how the diversity of an original creation get homogenised in remakes into something less diverse and subversive that claims to be more so, based on a whitewashed nostalgia of the original.
It doesn't really address how this affects beloved characters and creators who are Too Obviously Marginalised for that to work (and I mean it's already super long and can't cover everything)
Kentsarrow brought up How To Suppress Women’s Writing, which definitely feels relevant.
To give a specific example: Jane Austen as an author, and Darcy as a character.
Jane Austen is remembered as a Nice, Romantic Upper Class Regency Lady who wrote girly, romantic, soppy, sexy stories about Manly Upper Class Regency Men Who Have Known Many Lovers But Are Overcome By Passion for Feisty Girls. This is...not very accurate.
She was actually a pragmatic, satirical woman who liked being a spinster and, while gentry, wasn't super upper class. Her books do contain romance, but are pretty low on sexiness and soppiness even for the period, have a pretty strong emphasis on social commentary and complex non-romantic relationships, and consistently hate on promiscuity or sexual aggressiveness from men. The moral is generally that social norms are flawed but ignoring them is dumb. Her characters, like her, are generally gentry but not SUPER DUPER upper class.
We can’t even entirely blame men for it, though they are definitely the worst. Female fans are also invested in remembering Austen’s complex, subversive narratives as paeons to privilege and toxic masculinity. As with Kirk there’s the thing where Darcy being a sleazy womaniser (heavily contradicted by the text) is treated as much more plausible than him being queer (mildly contradicted by the text)
Some of this is “I know it isn’t like that but this is more fun”, but the pop culture understanding of Jane Austen is definitely dumbed down Georgette Heyer, and then all the Hot Subversive Takes end up feeling more stale than the 1800ish originals.
Anghraine has some great posts on this (and I'm a little paranoid she's rolling her eyes at my simplistic summary above ;)), see: Us discussing Sexy Regency Hero Darcy and her issues with the adaptation of Pride and Prejudice everyone says is super accurate.
I feel like cultural misunderstandings come into this as well, the way people’s preconceptions (because of the media they’re used to, racist ideas about other cultures etc) make it difficult for them to engage with the text as it actually is. Like because Japanese gender norms are different, I feel like a lot of Western fans just cannot see the difference between an anime character written from a feminist perspective to subvert gender norms, and one written from an incredibly sexist perspective to fit gender norms. Which on the one hand is understandable (I have this problem myself) but it leads to a lot of VERY TERRIBLE takes on anime. Combine this with the misremembered past and bad attitudes to women’s writing/genres and you end up with All The Terrible Opinions On Sailor Moon.
Another example that occurred to me is Octavia Butler: until I read her books, I'd gotten the impression she was a Worthy Marginalised Author Of Great Works Exploring Race And Gender. People generally bring her up as having written Good Deep Progressive Science Fiction...and pretty much leave it at that without going into specifics. So I was expecting something a bit heavy and dry but thoughtful.
What I got was WEIRD ALIEN ORGIES. Which were very well written and absolutely did explore race and gender, but they also explored tentacle alien sex in great detail. And I mean I understand why Xenogenesis doesn't come up in recs for Sexy Alien Orgies because it's all deliberately disquieting (unless disquieting is your kink, I guess)
But I don't understand why Wild Seed doesn't come up in discussions of immortals because it's a fantastic and inventive take on the genre. In general it feels like people just remember her books as being About Black Women rather than About Black Women Being An Immortal/Having Sex With Tentacle Aliens/Being a Vampire etc.
Of course I imagine a lot of people just remember her name as a useful one to namedrop to make it clear they're Aware Of Marginalised Authors, and they haven't even skimmed the summaries of her books enough to realise they have a plot beyond A Black Woman Is Black And Female. But that seems like it's part of the same general effect.
I had a similar experience reading Samuel R Delaney, who used to be brought up when someone wanted TWO black SF author names to drop but again noone mentioned how weird and cool (and gay!) his writing is.
Marginalised creators are consistently erased and forgotten, but even the ones who are remembered are remembered wrong.