bITS 'N CHUNKS
Ia everyone,
Here on GlobalComment this week I'm thinking out loud about something that really grinds my gears and touches my heart at the same time, and that'ssss....inclusivity! Please give it a read. Obviously that post is about media specifically, but let me tell you all...why I chose now and that topic. First off, as much as it seems we're taking two steps forward and five steps back, we really are getting there. I feel confident about it for once. But here's why I'm pushing: I am so sick of this shit. I've had a few incidents this year where I've seen people flip out over being asked to do the bare minimum, e s p e c i a l l y when it comes to issues facing folx with disabilities and matters of gender. I remember thinking to myself, "y'all seriously only do this when someone asks for an image description." The cry for intersectional feminism and progressiveness has become, "get your SHIT together already." I'm tired of seeing progressive groups turn to casual transphobia, transmisogyny, and ableism. That fails. The old media is starting to lap some of y'all and that's embarrassing. No one is out here about to do your emotional AND physical labor anymore. I'm not asking you to be inclusive, I'm telling you. Stop fan casting Idris Elba in to everything, hold your problematic faves accountable, start casting a more inclusive pool of actors because they're out there and if you don't see them find them, stop piggybacking off existing labor and calling it solidarity, and generally roll up ya sleeves and be better in 2018.
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Is what Antoine Doinel exclaims when his parents discover his shrine to Honore de Balzac in The 400 Blows. I think about that scene a lot when I think about what my writing templates are. Doinel ends up kind of sort of not really but really on purpose plagiarizing Balzac. But before that it's clear Doinel at least idolizes Balzac. You can interpret that scene however but to me Antoine was using Balzac as a sort of palimpsest. I had a conversation a few years ago in which I was finally able to articulate the concept of a "template" (not a concept I made up, by the way, just something I hadn't realized) to another writer. We were talking about -- wait for it -- fanfiction and what made our fics so unique. I had bowed out of the conversation because at least at the time I wasn't really writing fic anymore, or much of anything. But I had a Pepperidge Farms Back In My Day moment in which I revealed what I felt like I brought to the table. I remember his attitude was "I can write coherently" and I couldn't deny that argument because this was during the days where fic posted online was still kind of a joke. Depending on your scene you were either in it for the ludicrous porn, Chris Claremont was writing your comic series, or your show got canceled before the end of the season. And that's to say nothing of the big lumbering fandom giants like Star Trek, Star Wars, X-Files, DC & Marvel, and so on. The serious stuff was circulated in fanzines and only big authors with awards to their names had websites and webrings. So when he said that I was like, "mmhmm." Then I revealed something I was proud of and something of folly about my writing evolution, that my writing was often long and elaborate and extra melodramatic because that was what my template called for. "What do you mean 'template'?" Then I finally managed to articulate it: I was copying! No, wait, I was copying a format but almost to the depths of self-parody. I think we all do that, because who teaches you how to write before you learn how to write? Whatever you're reading. It just so happens that by then I was already reading Greek tragedies, Christian apologetics texts (more on that later), Russian literature, and Roman biographies and philosophical texts. I was all over the place with my clever Classical Literature references in my anime stories. What’s my favorite template? A mixture of Ancient Greek and modern Russian. Both of these taught me that I prefer psychological human drama and flawed beings. That's probably why I can't really do action scenes to this day. Russian lit taught me how to do a dark, brooding anti-hero without making them overly cynical and dark for the sake of being dark. From Ancient Greek (and later modern Greek) writing I discovered how to do believable dialogue against supernatural forces since in plays and poems, characters were often talking directly to the gods (or beings thought of as gods). I learned the cycles of plot development and probably most importantly the meaning of catharsis. But uh, I read the Iliad twice and still can't do a decent horse battle. Sigh. At some point I discovered the line between clever, intelligence, and pretention and realized I'd gone off the deep end, but by then I had stopped writing. But back to the whole template thing, because that's what my belly was full off that's what I spewed out. Like I said, it's not bad. It has a time and a place. I think of dense texts like The Name of the Rose where a little research and assumption of the audience is very rewarding. I still use templates, I just understand writing better now and I quite honestly enjoy postmodernism. A few things I'm proud of is my work was certainly unique and memorable. Somehow I never ended up on anyone's MST hit list and I'm kind of appalled. Once again with the bullshit!
This is another one that I really liked the concept of and I actually like the story overall, I just had no real interest in developing it further or working on it. It was a nice exercise. I was like, "a noir-ish underworld fantasy? Yeah." after most of this flash fiction challenge was full of stories of death and self loathing el oh el. This story is so...pure it just looks weird in comparison. While milling about in a bookstore one day I came across a book called Cold Sassy Tree. My friend informed me she had to read it for school (I did not) and didn't care for it because it was written by a Yankee and written entirely in dialect.
"Eaux," I said and set the book back down. Now, as it turns out Olive Ann Burns is very Southern and lived in and around the south pretty much her whole life, but a modern southern writer writing entirely in dialect was still kind of weird to me because we tend to avoid overuse. I think we all generally follow the advice of Flannery O'Connor and use dialect like a "spice". I don't think that's a specific thing to Southern literature but we all do seem to be weirdly self-conscious of it, probably because a lot of things written in Southern dialect are either inaccurate or meant as a parody. Anyway, I think about using slang and dialect a lot. I use it as a spice too but I'm not afraid to make a few regional jokes and sometimes I don't give a damn if the audience gets it or not. Like we can all make jokes about gentrification but what about arguments over which meat 'n three is the best? Slang serves a lot of purposes for me. In theory you set the stage and tell the audience where the story is taking place, but very region specific slang lets you know exactly where we are. Someone using gang terminology is either initiated or a wannabe and you get to set the context. Certain things even clue you in to what year it is. Using slang incorrectly may show a character as uncool or dated. In the old days, using more slang and dialect was my version of reclaiming my identity as a black author and a sign that I had stopped being afraid of admitting my Southern heritage. I even sneak in a few Southern Gothic tropes. These days, the internet will have you thinking that slang and cultural languages belong to everyone so it's getting a little murky for it to serve the purposes it once did. For me, anyway. I still sneak in little easter eggs every now and then and hope someone picks 'em up. Like a Bat-signal. Back to the bullshit everyone,
So...this became my sort of Dark Tower homage I think. I enjoyed the concept of the story and the main character but I lost a lot of steam with it, so you'll see later I tried to write another one and lost steam AGAIN before I just took a break and said nah. I think I know what I want to do with him I just need to give his story time to percolate. Meanwhile, this is technically the end and the other one is the...middle? Man, writing is fuckin' weird. |
Ia! If you've come this far, you're either looking for weird or you know you've found it... TRESPASSING
September 2018
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