100 sci fi women #78: Vyr Cossont

Following the announcement in April by Iain Banks that he has terminal cancer, it would seem that Vyr Cossont might be his last creation of a wonderful female science fiction character. I love the books of Iain Banks, with “M” and without, and am terribly sad about his sickness but I will write more about that separately. But what I did want to say here was how much I have enjoyed the women in his books – and most of his books have great women characters. In fact many of the Culture books have a female character at their centre, and these are women who are smart and capable and know how to look after themselves. They aren’t always the hero, but they are always interesting. Banks’ range of wonderful women help to add to the interest and accessibility of science fiction for women, and give us role models (even if some of them are covered in fur). It would be nice to hope that maybe the diagnosis is wrong, and that maybe we will get to meet a few more of these women in time.

Vyr Cossont, Lieutenant Commander (reserve)

The Hydrogen Sonata Iain M Banks

Vyr doesn’t really want to be a hero, or at the centre of events which might effect her entire civilisation, but she steps up when it seems that this is the case. Vyr’s passion and talents lie in music and she is driving herself slightly crazy attempting to master the incredibly difficult Hydrogen Sonata on the Antagonistic Undecagonstring when she is whisked off to undertaken tasks for which she doesn’t even understand the reason. While she was really only a Lieutenant Commander because of her music playing, as one of the few people left, she is thrust into an altogether different military role and while not enthusiastic, accepts that the job has to be done. Talented, interesting and engaging enough to have captured the attention and confidences of one of the oldest people in the universe, she also proves herself to be smart, adpatable and resourceful. She is also determined – whether it is growing additional arms in order to play an almost unplayable instrument, defying her mother or seeking to solve the mystery at the centre of her civilisation – and courageous enough to be willing to engage in any number of near-death activities. And when it is all over, she choses life and an uncertain future of potential adventure over the Sublime, and whatever that might entail.

Not so much as a by-your-fucking-leave

Six sentence review: Kushiel’s Dart

Kushiel’s Dart  Jacqueline Carey

I found this book extremely readable, despite some doubts about some of the choices around setting and religious notions. The world of the novel has deliberate references to our own world and religious mythology but the purpose of this referentialism is not particularly clear. Despite this, the characters are engaging and the story is emotionally compelling, even if soem of the politics of the world is overly complicated and not actually that interesting. In the end, the most interesting part is the story of Phedre and her discovering of herself and her capabilities. It also comes with a fair dose of reasonably well written BDSM eroticism as Phedre’s  position as an anguisette means that she gains genuine pleasure in pain. Despite my intitial doubts, I enjoyed the ride and am looking forward to reading the second novel.

Six sentence reviews: Django Unchained

Django is very clearly a Tarantino film with its clever dialogue followed by ultraviolence, but it also captures and reflects Taratino’s love and knowledge of film with its fabulous pastiching of the spaghetti Western and blaxploitation genres. The open titles with set that tone which is followed through in many of the details including the spectacular use of music. Dr King Schultz is a fantastic character, and ther performances are strong – Samuel L Jackson is almost unrecognisable. I feel that critiques that pose the film as one of white-rescue-of-black man are unfair – Django clearly has agency and it is he who rescues himself. My only concern in the racial politics is the idea that Django is “that one man in 10 000″, which ignores the strutural, social reasons for the answer to Candie’s question “why don’t they just kill us?” But the film’s political edge does extend to a kind of revealing that behind the privilege and the fancy-ness of existence lies great exploitation, and that the greater the fancy, the greater the exploitation.

 

WWBKD? What would Brian Kinney do?

So it was terrific news this morning that the English Parliament has passed a Bill on marriage equality, and certainly something that our Australian Parliament should get their arses into gear and do too. And David Cameron did well to support it as the leader of the Conservative Party…or wait. My thoughts about this changed when AM reported that one of the reasons that Cameron felt strongly about supporting marriage equality is because he felt that marriage is the best institution in which to bring up a child. OK, then. Hmm. Which led me back to my fundamental question, what would Brian Kinney do?

One thing that Queer as Folk (the US version) was quite good at doing over its run (except perhaps in the end of the last season), was exploring the vexed idea of what does “equality” and “acceptance” mean to queer people. Is acceptance and equality just the right to “be as boring” as everyone else? Does acceptance mean having to be like everyone else? Is equality really assimilation? While the show had an underlying theme of the struggle for equality and acceptance as a them, Brian’s character was carefully used to problematise this struggle, particularly where queers were expected to ‘mainstream’ themselves to achieve this acceptance.

While I think it is fundamentally wrong that any group of people are denied the rights another group of people have, and if boring, middle class straight people can get married, why should queer people also be entitled to this right? But does it then make them boring and middle class. Is what David Cameron doing saying, we can’t pretend they don’t exist, so let us make them as much like us as possible? If we make queers like us, can we then deny or hide to ourselves that which makes us uncomfortable about them?

It is interesting how this can be seen played out in popular culture. In Modern Family, Mitchell and Cam are a white middle class couple, parents to an adoptive daughter whose lives revolve round family, worrying about appropriate school and the balance between being a stay-at-home parent vs a working parent. Sure, Cam likes to take photos of their young daughter dressed as famous pop divas, but overall, their eccentricities are mild compared to those of their straight relatives. While it is good that mainstream American television now regularly includes queer characters, there is something about this mainstreaming which lends itself to a reasssurance that queer folk are Just Like Us.

Actually, lke the Nice Ideal Us. Not the poor, deviant, challenged, messy us. For a long time I have wondered whether the emphatic emphasis on marriage equality may actually do harm to the diversity of queerness, and potentially to diversity more generally, as the married-with-children-mortgage-and-dog model becomes further entrenched as an ideal. At this point I should declare that I am not queer-identifying (well, mostly), and that I am (upper) middle class and white and probably boring. But I am not married though I do have a long term partner and three children. And , despite it being the 21st Century, I am often amazed at how rare the non-married thing is.

The thing I wonder, and have wondered for some time (and thanks to Mathew for being the first person I explored these ideas with over one of our very many long lunches) is whether this kind of approach to marriage equality might create a two-tiered system of queerness – those who can “pass”, who are like straight middle class folks with their nice families, and those who do not, who choose to live their life in a different way. While the term “homosexual lifestyle” is offensive, their are aspects of non straight middle class culture which are excluded from the idea of nice, married life. And queer people are not the only ones who live outside this ideal. Do these things which unsettle the centre of society get more hidden? Brian Kinney loathed queer people who tried to be straighter than straight folks to gain equality.Because is it really acceptance is you have to be someone else to be accepted. Many queer people genuinely want to get married and live quiet suburban lives and more power to them, they absolutely should be able to do so. and it is not a surprise that they would desire that too, as overwhelmingly from our childhoods we are exposed to this as an ideal. But let us not think that is the only model of being and let us not exclude the single parents (queer or straight), the polyamorous, the celibate, those who want to live their own lives in their own ways. Let’s make sure acceptance is not only on straight-people terms. Let’s make Brian proud.

Six Sentence Reviews; Sherlock (seasons 1 and 2)

So Sherlock is good: well written, extremely well directed, clever and entertaining. But that doesn’t mean it is without fault. The gender politics are abysmal: not only are the women almost exclusively minor or secondary characters, they are almost entirely foils or mistreated beyond all measure. And sadly I think Steven Moffatt has taken Sherlock into a very (recent) Doctor Who-ian space – with the bad guy so uber-powerful and the need for Sherlock’s response to be so extreme, that you wonder how the next series can be anything but anti-climatic. However, one can hope. But sometimes one wishes one had seen how he had solved all the mysteries that get referred to in passing!

Misogyny Blues

I never read Puberty Blues nor have I ever seen the film. I am not entirely sure how I missed both of these. Of course, I knew what the book was about broadly – girls in the surf culture of Sydney in the 1970s and the implications in terms of sex and other things. Nonetheless, it means that coming to watch the series I have very limited preconceptions.

The series was beautifully acted and directed for the most part and I thought the writing was very strong. I really enjoyed it. But that didn’t mean that it was without its moments of discomfort. In fact, the moments of discomfort were its strongest feature. Puberty Blues confronted the sexism and misogygy face by women of this subculture – particularly young women, for whom joyless sex was a compulsory rite of passage. One had sex because it was the entree card to being cool – as long as one didn’t do it too soon, or with too many different people. And this role of women to be used as objects for sex in order to gain acceptance, was reflected in the ways their mothers acted – except in the case of Debbie and her mother the school principal.

For me, the characters one really feels for in Puberty Blues are the girls on the periphery – Cheryl and Freida in particular. Cheryl is the chief “mean girl” dictating permission to enter the “cool” group. But her role in this group is tied in a complex way to her relationship with the boys. For most of the series she is not “going round” with anyone, but she is expected to provide sexual services to the boys, while they also dismiss her as a “moll” when she engages in what the boys deem is socially transgressive behaviour such as getting drunk. Meanwhile Freida is repeatedly gang raped by the boys, and then is shunned socially when not being used sexually. Freida’s plight is ultimately what moves Debbie and Sue to act decisively against the established social order.

What is interesting though is the timing. A version of Puberty Blues has not been made since 1981. It is thus possible to see the production of Puberty Blues at this time politically, particularly given the bleak depiction of teenage sexuality and the treatment of girls and women. To me it says that the debate about the treatment of women has been reopened in this country – before Julia Gillard made her speech about misogyny, before Jill Meagher’s murder sparked Reclaim the Night marches, before we looked on in horror at the recent events in India. The way Puberty Blues approaches these issues does not indicate to me a view that these are closed topics or the past. The series calls into question the treatment of women, the dismissing of their sexual needs and the exercise of power that is involved in the sexual degradation of women. Puberty Blues is about power relationships, and the exercise of power, and speaks to the need for women to work together to support each other and increase their power.

Six sentence review: Billy Bragg

With just Billy Bragg and a guitar on stage,  he probably talked more than played, but that was totally OK as he is interesting and passionate and thoughtful and still idealistic. The first half of the show he played Mermaid Avenue songs and talked about Woody Guthrie – his story about the Woody Guthrie festival he played was very entertaining (pays to know all the verses of This Land, apparently). In the second half it was standard Billy Bragg, including many favourites such as Levi Stubbs Tears and a reworked version of The Great Leap Forward. While I do perhaps suffer from cynicism about the union movement (and the actions of many unions in Australia of late have not helped this at all), There is Power in a Union is still a great song. And he kept my favourite to last, but there is no better way to finish that A New England. A funny crowd – largely over 40 and many still dressed in their public service upper middle management wear and the Canberra Theatre is not the best location – one would prefer to be standing somewhere clutching a beer – but not an event to miss.

Six sentence reviews: Fallen Dragon

Fallen Dragon Peter Hamilton

I bought this in an airport when I had run out of plane reading and knew that Peter Hamilton is pretty reliable for that kind of reading – hence the cover damage. It was an entertaining read, though I thought the first half was a bit slow in parts and probably would have benefitted from being rather tightened up. Like much of the Hamilton oeuvre, Dragon has a long build up to the relatively quick pay off, so it is fortunate that much of that build up contains interesting ideas. Again, as with the other Hamilton I have read, the exploration of the power and role of corporations and economics in setting limits on things like space travel and exploration are very interesting and, as with the Commonwealth setting books, it is corporations who wield all the power.  Characterisation is a little superficial at times and I think there were aspects of Lawrence’s character in particular which weren’t well articulated. Overall, excellent for reading on planes, especially in the second half, with interesting ideas, but ultimately not a book I would ever read a second time.

Six sentence reviews: The Daylight Gate

A new method of reviewing as I seem to find myself short of time….

The Daylight Gate Jeanette Winterson

A book about witchcraft and James I, Winterson naturally managed to weave issues of class and gender into it. In fact it is a story of power – of legal power and arbitary powers, of the power of love, of supernatural power and the power of belief.  It also strongly features the manipulation of power. The characters are beautifully drawn and the story is compelling reading, even though the outcome is clear. I thought the use of Shakespeare as a character seemed unnecessary and a little contrived, but that was one of the few narrative missteps.  Enjoyed very much the short but sad time it took to consume.

Once Upon A Time There Was An Active Princess..

There has been a fair bit written about Brave and how it provides us with a princess character who is active, who guides her own fate and who is shown fighting and doing other things. It has led me to think a bit more about Once Upon A Time and how it presents strong women characters guiding their own destiny. I still haven’t finished season one, and I haven’t watched every episode, so my analysis may be bounded by this. However, there are some key aspects of the show which make it an interesting addition to both the “princess” genre, and also mainstream television in general.

Firstly, this is the story of three women. Overwhelmingly, the story is about the SnowWhite/Mary Margaret – Evil Queen/Mayor – Emma relationship and the struggle between the three women. While Prince Charming/David  gets a look in, his character is more about enabling the Snow White/Mary Margaret story than being important in his own right. In fact, his Storybrook character is actually unconscious for the first few episodes. These three characters are the heart of the story and the conflict between Emma and Regina the Mayor/Evil Queen is the driving narrative force. Even when Rumplestiltskin/Mr Gold is about, he is usually enabling or assisting the main characters.

Secondly, all these women are strong and active. While Mary Margaret in Storybrook can be a little on the passive side, in her alternate and original life as Snow White, she is a skilled archer and fighter who can look after herself, trade with trolls and generally make a life for herself in the forest. She seeks solutions to her own problems and certainly does not sit around waiting for a man to help her. She and Prince Charming trade rescues and assistance – she is definitely not always on the receiving end.

Emma is central character of the show and she is definitely not a passive princess. As someone who has had to tke care of herself all her life, she presents a strong, independent character who will fight for what is important to her. As Henry’s birth mother she is intially reluctant to bond with him, but she manages to combine maternal ferocity with single independent woman strength. As Snow White’s daughter, she demonstrates the same characteristics as Snow, resilience and determination, a fierce sense of right and wrong and ability to fight for what she believes in.

While Regina is definitely evil, she still represents another strong woman character. She does not rely on men – in fact she is more likely to kill them off if they get in her way. She knows what she wants, and while what she wants is pretty awful, she works hard to achieve it. Her evil does not make her bereft of maternal instincts and she cares for Henry her adoptive son. She does show a determination which is admirable, even if we can’t admire the ends she strives to appear.

Interestingly, some of the other female fairy-tale characters who pop up have been rewritten to take on much more active characteristics than they have had traditionally – Red Riding Hood is a werewolf who learns to control her powers while her Granny wasn’t eaten by a wolf – she was the wolf. This retelling of fairystories to children who haven’t necessarily been exposed to the traditional versions of these tales as thoroughly as generations before them could help to reset ideas about princesses and women characters more generally. Once Upon A Time may not be Game of Thrones in terms of televisual and narrative quality, but it is a program one can watch with one’s children and which can promote an idea of woman characters as strong and self-determining. I’m hoping the rest of the season doesn’t change this.