Monday's blog about the old-fashioned gender roles in fantasy novels got me thinking about other overused plot devices that tend to aggravate me enough that they distract me from whatever I'm watching. This is a list of the ones that really get my goat, as the kids say.
1. Marriage is awful!
Epitomized by a shrill wife and a dumb henpecked husband. (Christina Applegate and Jim Gaffigan in Going the Distance, Jaime Pressly and Jon Favreau in I Love You Man) Is this the only way married couples are funny?
2. The Wait, What?
Starting stories in media res, that is, after some sort of game-changing event, only to immediately switch back to events however many days or hours earlier. (V, Firefly, Fight Club, How I Met Your Mother) Otherwise known as, let's start things off with a cliffhanger so you can't leave!
3. The Comical Incompetent
Someone who does not cook often decides to cook a meal. They are not just unskilled, they are suddenly without any common sense. (Friends, Bridget Jones' Diary) Look, I'm not a good cook. But since I can read, I can follow a recipe. So can everyone else.
4. The Kevin James
Heavyset, not so Brad Pitt-esque man, skinny, hot wife/love interest. (According to Jim, the Simpsons, Family Guy, Knocked Up, Superbad, everything Kevin James: King of Queens, Hitch, The Dilemma, Grown-Ups) Not to call out Mr. James as a complete Quasimodo, but did he really need to be married to Winona Ryder in his newest movie? It's not so much that I think it's unimaginable that a hot girl would like a slightly shlubby dude, it's more that I don't understand why the girl has to be so very hot. I know, I know, it's a male fantasy. But would it be impossible to cast women who are a little more normal looking?
5. The Stifler
Totally pleasant lead character mysteriously has completely repellent friends. Often found in comedies. (The Sweetest Thing, American Pie, the Hangover) I think this is usually an effort to make the leading man/lady more appealing. But come on. We all judge the person we're dating by their friends.
6. The Feminist's Delight
Ladies give up their careers in order to be with the man they love. (How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days, Fool's Gold, 27 Dresses) It's like a code. The moment you see a woman rushing around, talking on a Blackberry and holding a disposable coffee cup, you can just assume that she is about to learn the importance of giving up on her career so she can make it to her new boyfriend's adorable nephew's teeball game.
7. The Best-Laid Plan
One last heist and then I'm getting out of this business, I swear! (The Italian Job, The Score) Could the possibility exist that the costs of that final heist will outweigh the rewards? There are more examples of this one, but frankly I find this concept so dull that I usually can't make myself go see this type of movie.
8. Men Don't Make Passes at Girls Who Wear Glasses
Lady takes off glasses, is suddenly more attractive. (She's All That, My Big Fat Greek Wedding) Ahem. As a lady who wears glasses, I am insulted, insulted I tell you, by the implication that glasses don't make you look good. Also, who wants to put contacts in every morning at 7am? Not this girl.
9. Diagnosis: Consumption
Cough once, die in twenty minutes. The only example I want to list here is Moulin Rouge, since this is a spoilery plot device, but really, we all know this one. If you're watching a period film, the person who coughs has a dramatic deathbed scene fast approaching. I mean, plenty of people had tuberculosis in Ye Olden Times, but there were so very many ways to die back then. I'd like to see more people dying of cholera. I will also accept snake bite, because I enjoy Oregon Trail references.
10. Abstinence, kids!
Couple gets together, man dies, woman is left pregnant. Also, having sex once gets you pregnant. Again, I'm only going to list one example here (Cold Mountain) since this is a big spoiler. But honestly. I think this is the one that annoys me most. Currently. As is probably clear by now, I'm easily irritated.
What about you? Which over-used plot device really gets your blood boiling?
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Monday, September 27, 2010
Fear not, fair maiden. A cliché has come to save you.
Recently, I traveled to Edinburgh with a friend. We'd just done the obligatory Edinburgh Castle tour and were more or less wandering the city on our way to a radical feminist bookstore my friend had read about in my Lonely Planet. For anyone still reading after that bit about the radical feminist bookstore, there is a lot to see in Edinburgh during the Fringe Festival, which is when we were there. I think there were more people juggling at any given time than there were people just walking about with no dangerous objects hurtling through the air in front of them. In some areas you couldn't go ten feet without being handed a flyer by an earnest youth asking you to come see a free comedy show. Somehow in the midst of all the excitement, my friend spotted another bookstore. Upon closer inspection, it was a very particular kind of bookstore. No, not THAT kind of bookstore. It was all fantasy and scifi books.
So, no beating around the bush: I am totally unable to resist fantasy books. I started reading them in junior high and even though these days I mostly read what we might call non-genre fiction, if someone hands me a fantasy book, I can't put it down. I try not to read them too frequently, because honestly it's not very healthy for me. I will hold off on eating and sleeping in favor of reading and for those not in the know, that is like Sarah Palin being all, I would rather do that than talk in a folksy way about the liberal elite while an eagle stands next to me.
Knowing I had an exciting night to spend in the airport on the way home from Edinburgh, I figured my best option was a fantasy book to gorge on. I managed not to buy out the whole store and picked out a nice thick book to read obsessively for a few hours.
I picked it out for two reasons. One, it clearly had a female lead character, which is always something I like. Two, it was written by a female author. While I don't only read books by women, I figured I'd rather support a random female author than a random male author. Women only make 75 cents to every dollar men make, or something like that.
I read the entire book in one giant gulp. To be fair, I had hours free, I wasn't that tired, and the book was fun. Fun enough, anyway, that I may or may not have gobbled up the two sequels as soon as I got home. But we're nearing my point now.
Much as I enjoyed the book, there was one aspect of it that made me angry. The story took place in a world in which women were subordinate to men and had traditional, old-fashioned gender roles. For anyone who is a frequent reader of fantasy books, this is a pretty common situation. Most of them take place in worlds where medieval society is the norm. You get swords and sorcery instead of guns and cell phones. Despite the addition of dragons, fabled swords, and magic, a lot of these books retain the gender roles that were common in medieval society in Europe. I've been a reader of this kind of books for years and after reading this latest entry, I've come to an important verdict.
Creating a fantasy world where the women are subordinate to the men is complete crap. It is clichéd and annoying and completely unnecessary. You are creating an entire world. Anything is possible in a fantasy book. Time travel? Sure. Using your mind to throw a lightning bolt at your enemy? That's also fine. So why do so many of these books insist on using that old trope? I can't even say that kind of thing is always written by men, because obviously that isn't true.
I know there are plenty of fantasy books out there that don't fall victim to this problem. But I'm throwing down the gauntlet now for all the fantasy writers out there.
Any book that takes place in a world where the women are subordinate to the men, where the good women tend to be virginal, where the women who break out of those preconceived roles are unusual, is automatically clichéd hackwork. Usually I'm not one for sweeping generalizations, but here's one I feel pretty firm on: there is nothing new to be said about a fantasy medieval society where the women are supposed to stay at home. For anyone finishing off a series, fine, go for it. But any new series that you're contemplating, stop and do some rewriting if you've automatically assumed the women will be second class citizens.
I'm not saying this is the only cliche afflicting fantasy writing. Frankly, there are quite a lot of them, which I also find frustrating, since, as I said before, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. Anything. Literally, anything.
What's the big idea, you killjoy, you say? To that, I have to admit that I'm just a little disturbed that so many authors, when given the choice, create their new world by putting women in their place. In your invented world, the women shouldn't still be stuck in the kitchen or the bedroom. You can still have a delicate flower of womanhood as your female lead, if you have to (even though that is totally lame). Just give her all of the same opportunities as your male characters. And while we're at it, let's employ the fantasy novel version of the Bechdel rule here. Don't let your male characters outnumber your female characters by so much. There should be women besides the love interest and the mother. Creating that middle-aged bachelor wizard? Have it be a woman. Salt of the earth soldiers to keep your main character grounded? Throw in a few women. There is nothing to be lost by letting women play these roles. This kind of old-fashioned attitude is not helping a genre that often suffers from neglect and condescension from more mainstream readers. We may not have equality in the real world yet, but if we can't even have it in our fantasy worlds, I'm not sure how much longer I can hold onto my favorite form of comfort food. Oh, who am I kidding. I"ll keep reading the damn things. But some real ingenuity would make those long nights at the airport a lot more enjoyable.
So, no beating around the bush: I am totally unable to resist fantasy books. I started reading them in junior high and even though these days I mostly read what we might call non-genre fiction, if someone hands me a fantasy book, I can't put it down. I try not to read them too frequently, because honestly it's not very healthy for me. I will hold off on eating and sleeping in favor of reading and for those not in the know, that is like Sarah Palin being all, I would rather do that than talk in a folksy way about the liberal elite while an eagle stands next to me.
Knowing I had an exciting night to spend in the airport on the way home from Edinburgh, I figured my best option was a fantasy book to gorge on. I managed not to buy out the whole store and picked out a nice thick book to read obsessively for a few hours.
I picked it out for two reasons. One, it clearly had a female lead character, which is always something I like. Two, it was written by a female author. While I don't only read books by women, I figured I'd rather support a random female author than a random male author. Women only make 75 cents to every dollar men make, or something like that.
I read the entire book in one giant gulp. To be fair, I had hours free, I wasn't that tired, and the book was fun. Fun enough, anyway, that I may or may not have gobbled up the two sequels as soon as I got home. But we're nearing my point now.
Much as I enjoyed the book, there was one aspect of it that made me angry. The story took place in a world in which women were subordinate to men and had traditional, old-fashioned gender roles. For anyone who is a frequent reader of fantasy books, this is a pretty common situation. Most of them take place in worlds where medieval society is the norm. You get swords and sorcery instead of guns and cell phones. Despite the addition of dragons, fabled swords, and magic, a lot of these books retain the gender roles that were common in medieval society in Europe. I've been a reader of this kind of books for years and after reading this latest entry, I've come to an important verdict.
Creating a fantasy world where the women are subordinate to the men is complete crap. It is clichéd and annoying and completely unnecessary. You are creating an entire world. Anything is possible in a fantasy book. Time travel? Sure. Using your mind to throw a lightning bolt at your enemy? That's also fine. So why do so many of these books insist on using that old trope? I can't even say that kind of thing is always written by men, because obviously that isn't true.
I know there are plenty of fantasy books out there that don't fall victim to this problem. But I'm throwing down the gauntlet now for all the fantasy writers out there.
Any book that takes place in a world where the women are subordinate to the men, where the good women tend to be virginal, where the women who break out of those preconceived roles are unusual, is automatically clichéd hackwork. Usually I'm not one for sweeping generalizations, but here's one I feel pretty firm on: there is nothing new to be said about a fantasy medieval society where the women are supposed to stay at home. For anyone finishing off a series, fine, go for it. But any new series that you're contemplating, stop and do some rewriting if you've automatically assumed the women will be second class citizens.
I'm not saying this is the only cliche afflicting fantasy writing. Frankly, there are quite a lot of them, which I also find frustrating, since, as I said before, ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. Anything. Literally, anything.
What's the big idea, you killjoy, you say? To that, I have to admit that I'm just a little disturbed that so many authors, when given the choice, create their new world by putting women in their place. In your invented world, the women shouldn't still be stuck in the kitchen or the bedroom. You can still have a delicate flower of womanhood as your female lead, if you have to (even though that is totally lame). Just give her all of the same opportunities as your male characters. And while we're at it, let's employ the fantasy novel version of the Bechdel rule here. Don't let your male characters outnumber your female characters by so much. There should be women besides the love interest and the mother. Creating that middle-aged bachelor wizard? Have it be a woman. Salt of the earth soldiers to keep your main character grounded? Throw in a few women. There is nothing to be lost by letting women play these roles. This kind of old-fashioned attitude is not helping a genre that often suffers from neglect and condescension from more mainstream readers. We may not have equality in the real world yet, but if we can't even have it in our fantasy worlds, I'm not sure how much longer I can hold onto my favorite form of comfort food. Oh, who am I kidding. I"ll keep reading the damn things. But some real ingenuity would make those long nights at the airport a lot more enjoyable.
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