(no subject)
Jun. 23rd, 2004 04:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stakebaitBwah, fandom wank deleted itself! Is there a word that means “perfectly embodying its own definition”? Like if onomatopoeic (thank god for spell check) and self-referential had a baby?
I have new glasses. No one has yet commented, but I like anyway. Now I must google for a place to donate the old glasses, or rather the older old glasses that were formerly my spares.
I also have shiny, dentist-clean teeth. Now all I need is a haircut and a pedicure and I will be as put together as Mers ever get. And thanks to the good influence of TBQ, for the first time ever I’ve been complimented on my flossing. Also, the dentist asked how I feel about my teeth. I know I live in the land of the therapized, but honestly I can’t remember feeling much of anything about my teeth since the headgear came off. I don’t really emote about my spleen either. But he does magic tricks, is close to my office and shares my last name, so he can probably stay.
It takes an East Village... I stopped in last night to pick up a stuffed cabbage from the little Polish store on First Ave. The guy didn’t have change of a $20, so he said “pay me next time.” So very trusting, and I’m not even a regular customer. And they say New York isn’t a small town.
Morning meeting, while long, was surprisingly full of laughter. Favorite exchange:
Boss of Mer: “blah blah blah new introductions.”
Mer: “There are no old introductions.”
Managing Editor of Mer, in yet another I-am-my-own-
point moment: “It’s redundant.”
Finished Kit Reed’s Thinner Than Thou. Wanted to like it, because it’s dystopian science fiction and a fat chick manifesto, but alas, no dice.
Closest analogs would be, I think, Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale, both of which I loved. (Also maybe some John Brunner.) It’s clearly a cautionary tale. But both of those present fully realized worlds. Some attention is given to why we got here.
In Thinner Than Thou, it really isn’t. The most that can be said is that it is intended to be a straight line extrapolation: if we keep going the way we are now, we’ll end up here in a couple of years. But while that works in theory, it doesn’t really do down in the details.
Even the slogan “I can make you thinner than thou”, makes no sense. “I am thinner than thou” would work, and so would “thinner than them”, but you *means* thou. I can make you thinner than yourself? No, really, I’d like to see you try.
The government, apparently, has taken some kind of coercive interest in physical appearance, or at least weight. For the sake of the narrative, I assume this is in there to make simply opting out of the dilemma, reforming your own consciousness rather than other people’s behavior, not an option. But why and how is never addressed.
Is it because of supposed health risks and higher medical costs? Because of some kind of fat moral panic akin to the war on gin in the 1800s or the war on drugs in the 1980s? Do we still have a representative government, and if so, did this have popular support? Does it still? If not, what convinced our representatives to do this anyway? Bribery? If we don’t have one, what’s replaced it? What exactly is the enforcement mechanism here? And how do the people who do opt out at the end propose to evade it?
Maybe I just hallucinated the government part, but I could swear I saw it there. Although that does raise the question of where the fat people who get humiliated at Jumbo Jigglers come from, and are they the only fat people left or what?
The social part is considerably more fleshed out, but again, once you get down to the nitty gritty of worldbuilding, it doesn’t ring true. A major commercial empire is producing everything from sandals to ice cream and diet remedies, and USING THE SAME LOGO for all of it, and nobody notices except some crazy guy in the desert?
The whole point of logos is that they be recognizable to the end consumer. If you don’t want the connection known, you don’t brand them like that, and if you do, they’ll be known. Even if you don’t, periodically some journalist will call attention to the vastness of your corporate holdings.
Then there’s the issue of competition – because no other brand of weight loss formula or guru is ever mentioned in this weight-obsessed culture, despite the fact that it apparently doesn’t work very well. In fact, every single brand name mentioned in the book turns out to be owned by a single guy. How did he drive all his competitors out of business? And why didn’t the anti-monopoly laws kick in?
Then there’s the issue of WHY it doesn’t work very well, since apparently the manufacturer *has* an effective formula, but he only shares it with his elite. Because, um, it’s not clear why. It’s sort of implied that the rest of us can’t afford it, but certainly more people could afford it than live in his little compound, and more would find a way to afford it once it became obvious that it really, no fooling, worked. And frankly once you’ve put the money into developing it, even cutting your profit percentage makes tons of business sense if it exponentially increases your buyers.
It’s also implied that he doesn’t share it because he doesn’t actually want to wipe out obesity, even in a way that keeps his cash cow alive by having everyone take it in perpetuity. This is because he has Weird Personal Issues and wants fat people around to envy, lust after, revile, and generally take them out on.
Which is okay, I guess, but then when in the climax of the book he’s taken down, the next guy steps up and proposes business as usual. Why? He’s got no such issues that we know of. The ending seems to suggest that this is a systemic social problem, but in that case, it should have had systemic social causes, not unique psychological ones.
The guy is also way too cartoony in his evil. He’s proposing to kill the old for no apparent reason, especially given that extending life was his original goal. I guess the idea is that old people are ugly and ugly people mustn’t hang around to pollute the polity, but this seems to me to be a distraction and a specious argument, basically there to prevent anybody sympathizing with him (as is the fact that he keeps his fat lovers in stalls instead of in apartments).
Then there’s the good guys, who seem to have all the relevant issues implausibly contained in a single family – an anorexic, a competitive eater, a woman who doesn’t think for herself and is facing an unwanted face lift and a father who embodies the society’s problematic attitudes. Essentially as far as I can see, no one in this family ever thinks anything that’s not connected to food or looks. Even in a dystopia, this isn’t normal. Or if it is, we need to see that, and if it’s not, we need to see why this family in particular is getting the short end of the licorice stick.
And there’s the troubling off-hand assertion that the attempt to cure anorexia (albeit by scarily extreme means) is about destroying all the pretty girls. I don’t buy it. It could be one person’s motivation. It could be several people’s motivation. But by the time you’ve got an organization of hundreds, you’ve got dozens of different reasons for being there. And you’d think some of them would be people who were cured themselves and were grateful.
Basically I think that’s the flaw of the whole book: this idea that anyone who looks different is being intentionally persecuted by a conspiracy of people who hate us is paranoid, simplistic, and frankly, much *less* scary than the idea that there is no external enemy to fight.
And to the extent that there *are* enemies – people who feel entitled and even obligated to judge, for whatever reason -- I think this story is still giving them too much power. The liberation of fat people doesn’t progress any further than the thrill of shame and the power of transgression and rage. It never gets to the place where there is no shame and a sandwich is just a sandwich. If you don’t care what people think of you, you don’t have to overthrow them. Oh, sure, tell the world by all means. But to me it would be a much happier ending to see people change the channel or walk away.
I’m also annoyed by endings that say “what happens is up to YOU”. First of all, cop out much? Secondly, I find second person accusing, aggressive, and inaccurate, all of which is distancing. No, it’s not up to me, because I don’t live in your depressing little world and you can’t make me. Third, it reduces the book to a mere morality play, and however much it is that, to be a good novel it needs to be something a little more complicated and difficult as well.
I have new glasses. No one has yet commented, but I like anyway. Now I must google for a place to donate the old glasses, or rather the older old glasses that were formerly my spares.
I also have shiny, dentist-clean teeth. Now all I need is a haircut and a pedicure and I will be as put together as Mers ever get. And thanks to the good influence of TBQ, for the first time ever I’ve been complimented on my flossing. Also, the dentist asked how I feel about my teeth. I know I live in the land of the therapized, but honestly I can’t remember feeling much of anything about my teeth since the headgear came off. I don’t really emote about my spleen either. But he does magic tricks, is close to my office and shares my last name, so he can probably stay.
It takes an East Village... I stopped in last night to pick up a stuffed cabbage from the little Polish store on First Ave. The guy didn’t have change of a $20, so he said “pay me next time.” So very trusting, and I’m not even a regular customer. And they say New York isn’t a small town.
Morning meeting, while long, was surprisingly full of laughter. Favorite exchange:
Boss of Mer: “blah blah blah new introductions.”
Mer: “There are no old introductions.”
Managing Editor of Mer, in yet another I-am-my-own-
point moment: “It’s redundant.”
Finished Kit Reed’s Thinner Than Thou. Wanted to like it, because it’s dystopian science fiction and a fat chick manifesto, but alas, no dice.
Closest analogs would be, I think, Brave New World and The Handmaid’s Tale, both of which I loved. (Also maybe some John Brunner.) It’s clearly a cautionary tale. But both of those present fully realized worlds. Some attention is given to why we got here.
In Thinner Than Thou, it really isn’t. The most that can be said is that it is intended to be a straight line extrapolation: if we keep going the way we are now, we’ll end up here in a couple of years. But while that works in theory, it doesn’t really do down in the details.
Even the slogan “I can make you thinner than thou”, makes no sense. “I am thinner than thou” would work, and so would “thinner than them”, but you *means* thou. I can make you thinner than yourself? No, really, I’d like to see you try.
The government, apparently, has taken some kind of coercive interest in physical appearance, or at least weight. For the sake of the narrative, I assume this is in there to make simply opting out of the dilemma, reforming your own consciousness rather than other people’s behavior, not an option. But why and how is never addressed.
Is it because of supposed health risks and higher medical costs? Because of some kind of fat moral panic akin to the war on gin in the 1800s or the war on drugs in the 1980s? Do we still have a representative government, and if so, did this have popular support? Does it still? If not, what convinced our representatives to do this anyway? Bribery? If we don’t have one, what’s replaced it? What exactly is the enforcement mechanism here? And how do the people who do opt out at the end propose to evade it?
Maybe I just hallucinated the government part, but I could swear I saw it there. Although that does raise the question of where the fat people who get humiliated at Jumbo Jigglers come from, and are they the only fat people left or what?
The social part is considerably more fleshed out, but again, once you get down to the nitty gritty of worldbuilding, it doesn’t ring true. A major commercial empire is producing everything from sandals to ice cream and diet remedies, and USING THE SAME LOGO for all of it, and nobody notices except some crazy guy in the desert?
The whole point of logos is that they be recognizable to the end consumer. If you don’t want the connection known, you don’t brand them like that, and if you do, they’ll be known. Even if you don’t, periodically some journalist will call attention to the vastness of your corporate holdings.
Then there’s the issue of competition – because no other brand of weight loss formula or guru is ever mentioned in this weight-obsessed culture, despite the fact that it apparently doesn’t work very well. In fact, every single brand name mentioned in the book turns out to be owned by a single guy. How did he drive all his competitors out of business? And why didn’t the anti-monopoly laws kick in?
Then there’s the issue of WHY it doesn’t work very well, since apparently the manufacturer *has* an effective formula, but he only shares it with his elite. Because, um, it’s not clear why. It’s sort of implied that the rest of us can’t afford it, but certainly more people could afford it than live in his little compound, and more would find a way to afford it once it became obvious that it really, no fooling, worked. And frankly once you’ve put the money into developing it, even cutting your profit percentage makes tons of business sense if it exponentially increases your buyers.
It’s also implied that he doesn’t share it because he doesn’t actually want to wipe out obesity, even in a way that keeps his cash cow alive by having everyone take it in perpetuity. This is because he has Weird Personal Issues and wants fat people around to envy, lust after, revile, and generally take them out on.
Which is okay, I guess, but then when in the climax of the book he’s taken down, the next guy steps up and proposes business as usual. Why? He’s got no such issues that we know of. The ending seems to suggest that this is a systemic social problem, but in that case, it should have had systemic social causes, not unique psychological ones.
The guy is also way too cartoony in his evil. He’s proposing to kill the old for no apparent reason, especially given that extending life was his original goal. I guess the idea is that old people are ugly and ugly people mustn’t hang around to pollute the polity, but this seems to me to be a distraction and a specious argument, basically there to prevent anybody sympathizing with him (as is the fact that he keeps his fat lovers in stalls instead of in apartments).
Then there’s the good guys, who seem to have all the relevant issues implausibly contained in a single family – an anorexic, a competitive eater, a woman who doesn’t think for herself and is facing an unwanted face lift and a father who embodies the society’s problematic attitudes. Essentially as far as I can see, no one in this family ever thinks anything that’s not connected to food or looks. Even in a dystopia, this isn’t normal. Or if it is, we need to see that, and if it’s not, we need to see why this family in particular is getting the short end of the licorice stick.
And there’s the troubling off-hand assertion that the attempt to cure anorexia (albeit by scarily extreme means) is about destroying all the pretty girls. I don’t buy it. It could be one person’s motivation. It could be several people’s motivation. But by the time you’ve got an organization of hundreds, you’ve got dozens of different reasons for being there. And you’d think some of them would be people who were cured themselves and were grateful.
Basically I think that’s the flaw of the whole book: this idea that anyone who looks different is being intentionally persecuted by a conspiracy of people who hate us is paranoid, simplistic, and frankly, much *less* scary than the idea that there is no external enemy to fight.
And to the extent that there *are* enemies – people who feel entitled and even obligated to judge, for whatever reason -- I think this story is still giving them too much power. The liberation of fat people doesn’t progress any further than the thrill of shame and the power of transgression and rage. It never gets to the place where there is no shame and a sandwich is just a sandwich. If you don’t care what people think of you, you don’t have to overthrow them. Oh, sure, tell the world by all means. But to me it would be a much happier ending to see people change the channel or walk away.
I’m also annoyed by endings that say “what happens is up to YOU”. First of all, cop out much? Secondly, I find second person accusing, aggressive, and inaccurate, all of which is distancing. No, it’s not up to me, because I don’t live in your depressing little world and you can’t make me. Third, it reduces the book to a mere morality play, and however much it is that, to be a good novel it needs to be something a little more complicated and difficult as well.
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no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 08:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 08:54 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 09:01 pm (UTC)I am so glad there is a Mer in the world.
quintessence
Date: 2004-06-23 09:50 pm (UTC)I want to see your glasses! :)
Re: quintessence
Date: 2004-06-24 01:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 01:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 09:08 pm (UTC)Is there a word that means “perfectly embodying its own definition”? Like if onomatopoeic (thank god for spell check) and self-referential had a baby?
Quintessential? Recursive? Suomynope?
no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 01:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 01:46 am (UTC)*runs*
no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 01:53 am (UTC)Want to know something scary? I found two sites that mention it, but neither one's in English, and translating from German came up gibberish, so now I'm wondering if the whole thing is in backwards-speak.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 02:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 09:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 01:47 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 11:03 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 01:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-23 11:41 pm (UTC)Not a word, exactly, but I think that's what the phrase "sui generis" means.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 02:48 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 02:49 am (UTC)"Noun" is a noun. "Verb" didn't used to be a verb, but now it is.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 03:34 am (UTC)*grin* Have you read Slayer Slang yet? I'm in the midst of it now, and it used the word "verbing", which made me think of
no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 11:06 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 02:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 05:24 pm (UTC)glad to amuse
Date: 2004-06-24 01:04 pm (UTC)Re: glad to amuse
Date: 2004-06-24 02:18 pm (UTC)Re: glad to amuse
Date: 2004-06-24 08:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 05:52 am (UTC)::blinks at the thread of answers that follow::
See, this is why I return to LJ like a homing pigeon. You should use that sentence in print somewhere, where lots of people can see it.
no subject
Date: 2004-06-24 02:22 pm (UTC)Good review
Date: 2004-06-24 02:18 pm (UTC)Oh, and re: F_W, according to some lj trails they weren't deleted by the mods but by some peripheral player who somehow got the passwords. Who knows?
Re: Good review
Date: 2004-06-24 02:24 pm (UTC)I have no idea if it was rushed -- for all I know she's been slaving over it for years. But it does to me show signs of being too something -- if it's not rushed, maybe it's too close to the issue or too angry.