(no subject)

[stakebait]

Meme borrowed from rysmiel:

My journal is called _____ because _____.
My subtitle is _____ because _____.
My friends page is called _____ because _____.
My username is ____ because _____.
My default userpic is _____ because_____.

My journal is called Mud on the Walls because I was really annoyed by the introduction to a recent anthology of SF short stories which quoted someone (Ellison, I believe) describing the brave new fiction contained therein as being some kind of grand futuristic city with spires reaching to heaven and no mud on the walls. I've seldom read anything that so completely misses the point and pats itself on the back for doing so.

Real cities have mud on the walls. To me, good SF is precisely the SF that has mud on the walls, that shows who put it there and how it's different from the mud we know, and how it and they and we are the same. Cities without mud on the walls are like characters without blood in their veins: insipid, too high concept. At best, unfinished, or abandoned.

To me, this is not praise. And I think it's not an accident, either, that for all the contempt for the comfortable and familiar that is shown elsewhere in the essay, in the end the high compliment... sounds like a lot like the Jetsons' retrofuture.

This vision of what it means to be an artistic Movement, even the terminology of self-conscious movement, the glorification of the individual vision uber alles and the paranoia of the editor and the market as crushing that (despite some spotty lip service to the Will of the People, the People are clearly too stupid to know what's good for them), the rejection of comfort as cynical commercialism in the author and useless escapism in the reader, the exaltation of discomfort as the proof of merit -- this is not new stuff. This is, actually, kinda dated stuff, a very Modern conception of the artist.

And as a consequence, much more appealing to middle class educated white males. Another anthology with similar rhetoric admitted in its introduction, I believe by Michael Moorcock, that they had trouble getting work from women. I'm not surprised. Even those spires are Mighty Phallic.

I don't doubt the sincerity of their efforts, but this is not a viewpoint that makes room for a vision of a world you'd want to live in as inspiration and solace for those who are oppressed here and now, or for the renewed sense of personal efficacy that comes from watching a traditionally powerless person rise to become a fantasy hero, or for collaboration or conversation or oral traditions or any of the other historically feminine models that come out of tapestry weaving and quilting bees and old wive's tales instead of Starving in a Garret for one's Unique Vision, Finnegan's Galaxy, which the bourgeoisie will Never Understand.

Um, kay. Or that's the stuff I fled into genre to get away from. I like that us is them here, that there isn't any hard and fast division between the Serious Artistes and the Mere Entertainers, or between the writers and the audience; that we're all presumed to be going for, in good faith, the most interesting and compelling book we can on the subjects that interest us, and if there's some intramural sneering it hasn't gotten to the point that it's received truth.

The funny part is, I often like the actual stories in these anthologies a lot, and the writers they cite. Some of my best friends are books by China Meiville. It's the mission statements I don't like. What gets up my left nostril is the idea that I must like only this, or relegate everything else to the pile of guilty politically incorrect pleasures. The lesson I've learned from sexual politics is that any revolution premised on people being ashamed of what they actually enjoy has rot at the core.

I don't accept that art to be worthwhile must serve the purpose of spurring us on to change the world, that pleasure is reactionary and unsettling is king. Dude, I love a book that shakes me out of my worldview as much as the next obsessive reader, but if that's all you read you're not so much unsettled as peripatetic, wandering aimlessly from one jolt to the next until you don't even have a point of view any more, much less a place to rest from the journey.

I mistrust revolutions that want us to plow under all our flowers and plant corn, much less concrete. And much as I heart New York, it has its own kind of mud on the walls, from spray cans and poster glue and junkies and community gardens and the law of unintended consequences. I wouldn't want to live in a city that didn't. I sure as hell don't want to build one. And I believe if anyone did, it wouldn't last the day clean.

In the future they're envisioning, I'd be one of the people at the base of the towers, throwing mud on the walls to draw attention back down from the spires to the earth they're rooted in and the things that are only people-high, and hoping something sticks.

Phew. Verbose day, evidently. I'm sure you're shocked. Now for the rest of the meme. I don't have a subtitle. My friends page is called "friends", because I like easy, transparent naming where you don't have to guess. My username is "stakebait", because it was the email address I came up with for Spike for the RPG from Hell.

My default userpic is early Willow saying "I make my own fun" because I'm reclaiming my early Willow love, and because that's what I try to do here in LJ -- dorky yet determined to make the kind of entertainment I want and not wait for someone else to provide it.

It's really just a more positive restatement of what's long been one of my favorite quotes from Dorothy Parker: "If one cannot be happy one must be amused." A lot of people find that depressing, but I've always found it hopeful. Happiness may depend on circumstances outside my control, but I can *do* that.

Comments

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

*hugs* I know it's hard sometimes. It was always dealing with the other feminists, the ones who honestly believe I am promoting the oppression of women, that made me cry.

You probably guessed this already, but I don't think any of us have anything to be ashamed of. We're reclaiming pornography, making it so everyone is sometimes a subject and sometimes an object and the creators and the consumers know each other and are the same people, so there's no longer a power imbalance or a gaping divide that being bad can strand you on the wrong side of. I don't see how that's not a huge win for feminism, especially as compared to making something furtive and therefore beyond our influence but not in the least stamping it out.

Plus, pretty.

[halimede.livejournal.com]

And it's another instance of spurious commenting to have stuff emailed to me! I do hope you don't mind. With you expressing things that turn out to be important to me so beautifully on a very regular basis, I 'll probably do this fairly regularly. *g*

[stakebait.livejournal.com]

Hee! I don't mind at all, and thank you. Though it does make me think LJ should add an option for "email this comment to me", at least for public posts.