“Sometimes closing has its ups.”
Not terribly clever or interesting, but there ya go.
Categories: Random Musings
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by Candy • Saturday, June 11, 2005 at 01:05 PM
Update and Disclaimer: People seem to be reading wayyyy more into this than I meant for them to. I think a quick clarification of my stance is in order:
1. No, I’m not picking on Brenda because she’s Christian or an inspirational romance author. I’m picking on Brenda because of what she wrote on her blog.
2. Unlike some people out there, I honestly don’t believe that inspirational authors put any sort of pressure on the RWA board of directors to come up with the graphical and language standards. Last time I checked, prudishness, intolerance, a false sense of moral righteousness and general assheadedness are all human traits that are not even remotely close to being exclusive to Christians.
3. That what-if scenario I give below? It picks on inspirationals and Christians only because Brenda writes ‘em. If she’d written in another genre, my example would’ve used THAT. I say this quite explicitly below, but people seem to breeze by the statement and then attempt to make it a godless heathens vs. Christians kind of a thing. IT’S NOT. I’m just pointing out that because Brenda doesn’t have a stake in this, she has the luxury of being extremely removed from everything, hence the ability to finger-wag and tut-tut at all the outrage that has been expressed.
Keep these points in mind as you read the article below. And if you want to rant about the persecution of Christians in this society, by the way, here’s a hint: please don’t. Try living as a non-Muslim woman in, say, Afghanistan, or read about what happened to Kate Rothwell’s Muslim friends in Bosnia, then get back to me about what it means to be persecuted, mmmkay?
Brenda Coulter has the word: RWA has suspended the graphical standards, and are now convening a committee to study the issue.
Brenda also does some finger-wagging over the ranty, enraged bloggers who expressed so much outrage over the issue. My take on the big fuss? Good job, girls! I seriously doubt that action would’ve been taken so soon if people hadn’t lit a fire under the RWA’s asses about this.
And I can’t help but think that Brenda is able to take this extremely detached view on all the ranting because of who she is and what she writes. She has no stake in this (though to be fair she has expressed concern about the graphical standards and the way it was implemented without membership input). She finds erotic romances morally repugnant. Though she certainly has no beef with them being published or read (she’s straight but she ain’t narrow), she certainly has no vested interest in ensuring they’re well-represented in the market. I wonder how she’d feel if the following had happened:
Conditions in America are very different. Much of the population is agnostic, if not outright atheist. However, inspirational romances have hit the market and are really starting to take off--a whole bunch of Christian women are eating these up like candy and buying them by the bucketload. A bunch of inspy writers try to start an Inspirational Romances chapter, only to be met with barely-veiled disdain and bizarre obstacles. Some judges sometimes choose to not read these books because they think they are philosophically bankrupt (though they have no problems with inspys being printed or read). Then the RWA comes up with the following graphical standards for covers to avoid offending the non-Christian readers:
No depictions of churches, crosses, crucifixes or Jesus allowed. People on the covers are not allowed to seem as if they’re in a prayerful stance.
And the following words are not allowed on websites that they link to:
Jesus, God, Bible, any Bible verses, Christ, any references to Christianity as the one true religion or the Christian God as the one true God.
All in the name of not offending non-Christian readers, of course, or trying to unduly influence impressionable young people who haven’t decided which religion to believe in yet.
Now lest any of you think I’m a hater of religion or depictions of Christianity in my romances by coming up with this example, I’d like to note that I’m doing this solely because Brenda’s a writer of inspirationals, and I’m trying to come with an example that’ll hit home. If she was a chick lit writer, I would’ve use chick lit as an example, or romantic suspense, paranormal romance, or whatever other sub-sub-sub-sub genre she happened to be writing.
All right, Brenda! Have at it in the comments.
by Candy • Friday, June 10, 2005 at 05:43 AM
Maili, in her usual Very Interesting Linkage, pointed out a couple of conversations on the Romantic Times boards in which people ponder: why erotica? Why erotic romance? Why do so many people obviously love sexually explicit romances? Why are we buying them by the bucketload?
The short answer is: Because we enjoy getting turned on.
Am I being too obvious, here?
Oh, but then these books are appealing to prurient interests! They’re nothing but PORN! some people might cry.
See, this is the part that gets to me, every time. So reading certain books makes certain nubbins perk up in interest and raises the probability of the reader engaging in hot monkey sex (or hot monkey nubbin-rubbin’) exponentially. Is that bad? It’s another sensation that’s stimulated when one reads books. Why are sexual urges especially evil or bad or dangerous?
I read books not just to learn or to edify myself, but for the emotional impact. This is especially true of fiction. Basically, I want to lose myself in a foreign body. This means feeling everything the characters do. That means experiencing their grief, their terror, their joy, and yeah, their sexual ecstasy.
Why is sexual arousal much less acceptable than the grief many women’s fiction books attempt to make you feel, or the fight-or-flight adrenaline rush horror novels, adventure stories and thrillers try to inspire? Why is it OK to watch a person die in a novel, feel his every last death throe, but not OK to watch a person celebrate life in one of the most primal ways possible?
To me, it’s just one more sensation. And generally speaking, a book that successfully makes me feel a whole gamut of emotions and sensations is a very successful book. A novel that inspires no feeling or only one predominant emotion is generally not a book I’ll want to keep around. That’s why I have never really enjoyed Susan Johnson’s work; they turn me on, but I feel nothing BUT turned on through much of the book, and by the end my brain feels numb and tired from a surfeit of this one sensation. Emma Holly, on the other hand, puts me through my paces: her love scenes are more plentiful and more explicit than most Susan Johnson novels I’ve read, but I actually care about her characters and the actual story, not just the sexy bits of the action.
Reading is an inherently voyeuristic, invasive activity. Decrying how one activity is more unacceptably voyeuristic than the other strikes me as kind of odd. It’s OK if reading about all that sweaty bump-n-grind makes you uncomfortable. We all have our thresholds, and among many cultures, sex is a very difficult threshold to breach. You don’t have to read the books--by all means, read only books rated “warm” or cooler in the AAR sensuality rating scale. There are plenty of excellent books that don’t contain a peep of sex, and I’ve read and enjoyed many of them. But calling genres that feature explicit sex pejorative names or making insinuations about people who enjoy reading about the rumpy-pumpy? That’s just being an assclown.
And we all know assclowns make baby Jesus cry.
by Candy • Thursday, June 09, 2005 at 10:53 AM
Wendy asked a few days ago whether blog owners have the right to censor speech on their blog. Then Shannon picked up the gauntlet and answered it, then Wendy elaborated on it further.
I agree with what Wendy says about how so-called obscene language holds no actual power to hurt; they have only as much power as we allow them to. On the other hand, I think of blogs as a person’s personal kingdom. They’re free to do whatever they like with it, and that includes censoring, deleting or otherwise defacing comments that are left on the blog. Electrolite (now incorporated into Making Light), for example, has a most interesting “disemvowelling” feature, which basically removes all the vowels from particularly obnoxious comments, which is so ingenious and funny I can’t help but cackle at the idea and wish I were cool and smart enough to implement something like that here--but then the most obnoxious commenter in these here parts is ME.
And let me note here that I don’t LIKE it when people delete comments or ban users based solely on potty-mouth. I think it’s really fucking retarded. But then, I’m free to come to this here space and air how retarded I think it is.
All this preamble is leading up to this, the Smart Bitch policy on comments and language used in comments:
If you’re not a spammer, have at it, kittens. You feel the urge to spew some filthy language, gratuitous or not, in the comments? DO IT. In fact, the more creatively filthy, the better. So c’mon, bitches, motherfuckin’ show us what you got, you turdgobbling, cuntslapping, gerbil-molesting, Barbra Streisand-loving assbutlers.
p.s. Screw you, Wendy, you queefhuffing polesmoker. Now I’m all super-paranoid about my quotation mark usage. WAH!
by SB Sarah • Thursday, June 09, 2005 at 05:57 AM
Caro said, I’ve never found the Amazon New Releases particularly helpful because the only thing they seem to list is what’s at the top of the sales list. Far more useful is the recommendations that are based on my ratings and past purchases, because if there’s an author I click “not interested” for, they don’t show back up in the list.
So, this is an interesting question: what does Amazon recommend for you?
by SB Sarah • Wednesday, June 08, 2005 at 07:58 AM
I decided, because I am a sucker for buying more books when the last thing I need is to distract myself from all the things I have to accomplish this summer, to check out the New Releases in Romance on Amazon.com. Usually I use the Books(not)Free service for my train reading material, but as I become more and more obviously pregnant, and as it gets more and more humid and unpleasant outside, I find myself seeking cold, air-conditioned, dark spaces in which to lie down in silence and read. I’m going to read faster than the BnF can ship me books, so perhaps a few emergency purchases are in order.
Perhaps there’s a good recommendation in the top new books in romance this summer.