I finally pinpointed what exactly irritates me about The Help
I’m used to the magical Negro trope, so that’s not it. It was a sympathetic movie too.
What’s wrong with The Help is illustrated in this post over at Dear Author where Jaili wrote that she thought Cajuns were part black, and liked the stories because they were written as if the Cajun characters were real people, not minority tags and stereotypes.
It was almost all about sex where mixed race characters were concerned. Authors did used this to their Cajun characters as well. Such as describing Cajun characters – especially heroes – as tall, dark, exotic, and black-haired. Oh, and let’s not forget sensuality.
They however went further than with the usual mixed race crowd. While they occasionally referenced a history of discrimination and bigotry against Cajun people, they treated Cajun characters as everyday people with ordinary problems and needs. It had the kind of balance I liked. An acknowledgement of what those characters had to deal with while still leading ordinary lives.
That was how I came to believe Cajun people had black and white heritage. The moment I understood my understanding of ‘Cajun’ was wrong, my mind was so blown. It had also completely destroyed my almost only line of defence.
That’s it exactly. Stockett writes a bit about the black main characters in The Help’s past and tosses off a few words about their lives, but it is sparse in comparison to how she fills out the lives of Skeeter, her mother, and her friends. The colors are reserved for the white character’s inner lives. The black characters, while noble and sympathetic, exist mostly to support the white characters. and even the villain Hilly is a far richer character than the heroic Abilene as far as her interior life.
Real characters have fully drawn inner lives and interact with the people within their lives in an intimate way. Props only interact with the main characters. Real characters have complex motivations. Props are motivated by the real character’s needs and desires. Props rarely have color to their lives, romance, intimacy, excitement, inward confusion or other qualities of humanity that makes a real character. Props serve a few or one function as a foil for the real characters.
Apparently, Cajun people were real characters in romance. That should have been the dead giveaway to Jaili that Cajuns weren’t black if several American majority authors were writing Cajuns as real characters and real people having real romance.
This is one of the reasons why black readers want to read in the niche. They want to read about real characters who are black, not black people as props for the other real people.
The Help presents black people as props for white people’s lives, and it doesn’t draw the black characters as real people in their own right with intimacy and inner lives that have nothing to do with whites. The black actresses were very good props and emoted well in relation to their relationships with white people. We have little idea of their inner lives though. It’s as of they depended on the white characters for their reality.
Yeah, that’s what irritates me.
How Evil Loves
I know this topic isn’t very hearts and flowers for Valentine’s Day, but it goes with my Work In Progress.
Ayn Rand’s writings expose her psyche as Nazi-level evil. It’s interesting how she defines love. She despised the tenets of Christianity. She rejected anything that didn’t smack of self-fulfilling superiority over others and the Do What Thou Wilt philosophy Crowley and other prominent Satanists espoused.
You asked me to explain the meaning of my sentence in The Fountainhead: “To say ‘I love you’ one must first know how to say the ‘I.”
The meaning of that sentence is contained in the whole of The Fountainhead. And it is stated right in the speech on page 400 from which you took the sentence. The meaning of the “I” is an independent, self-sufficient entity that does not exist for the sake of any other person.
A person who exists only for the sake of his loved one is not an independent entity, but a spiritual parasite. The love of a parasite is worth nothing.
The usual (and very vicious) nonsense preached on the subject of love claims that love is self-sacrifice. A man’s self is his spirit. If one sacrifices his spirit, who or what is left to feel the love? True love is profoundly selfish, in the noblest meaning of the word — it is an expression of one’s highest values. When a person is in love, he seeks his own happiness — and not his sacrifice to the loved one. And the loved one would be a monster if she wanted or expected such sacrifice.
Any person who wants to live for others — for one sweetheart or for the whole of mankind — is a selfless nonentity. An independent “I” is a person who exists for his own sake. Such a person does not make any vicious pretense of self-sacrifice and does not demand it from the person he loves. Which is the only way to be in love and the only form of a self-respecting relationship between two people. ~ Ayn Rand.
I realize you have to put the oxygen mask on yourself before you can take care of others, but Ayn Rand goes beyond that. She is intellectual and logical on the surface, couching her meaning in misleading sentiments that most can superficially agree upon, such as damning-self sacrifice. No, love is not solely about self-sacrifice, but she obviously knows nothing about love or good. I wonder how Ayn Rand would define a mother’s love? Of course, somebody like her wouldn’t have children, and she made the choice not to do so, because children require care and giving.
Evil can not relate to that sort of love. Self-serving infatuation is fleeting and true love is not all about you. True love endures and gives. Love is forgiving, love is long-suffering, and love sees and believes the best, or it won’t last. Period.
Moving Servers
FYI, I’m changing hosts and transferring domain names, so this site might go down and be down for a few days.
What if women approached sex and romance like men do?
I remember posting a video positing the question if women as horny as men in the former rendition of my site. My favorite part was a gender role reversal in a strip club. It was so funny. Here’s another one–what if gender roles were reversed in bars? I like the part with the fat guy.
Here’s a redux of Opposite World, what if women were as horny as men? I still chortled at the strip club part.
Best Sport Ever
This puts Nascar to shame. The British bunnies can’t compete with the Swedes yet. It’s very big in Scandinavia.
“You want mini lop for the cool and positive attitude and hare for the bigger size and long back legs,” Ms. Hedlund says. “But you don’t want too much temperament; you’d want a mix of a cool and a competitive attitude.” LINK
I wants one! I want one of those super cool bunnies with much swag that would put my cat and dog in their place (they would be all around the same size)
I hate my web host with a passion. It’s a pain in the ass to change hosting, but I have to do it. Site has been down off and on for over a week. They don’t give a damn.
Composite Sketches of Fictional Characters
This is the coolest thing. I wish I could see this for commercial genre fiction or our books. Shoot, I wish I could draw that well ’cause I’d do it! It would be awesome.
Emma Bovary
She was pale all over, white as a sheet; the skin of her nose was drawn at the nostrils, her eyes looked at you vaguely. After discovering three grey hairs on her temples, she talked much of her old age…Her eyelids seemed chiseled expressly for her long amorous looks in which the pupil disappeared, while a strong inspiration expanded her delicate nostrils and raised the fleshy corner of her lips, shaded in the light by a little black down.
Writing in Color Redux, the Zane edition
Zane is all for AA book segregation for one very simple reason–the fact is it makes money, and as a publisher she’s clear that’s what she cares about. “They sell better. That’s been documented. There’s no question about that. When someone goes into a bookstore and they’re looking for African-American books, they’re going to look for the African-American section. “
Money is the trump card in this day and age. With the success of Terri McMillan’s Waiting to Exhale in the early nineties, publishers drew in a breath as they saw a fresh and untapped niche with a seemingly insatiable hunger for books that had characters that looked and identified as the readers did. Many black women buy books based on the race of the character and author. They are wonderfully loyal and voracious readers, similar to romance readers. Writers made and are making careers writing for these readers. Separate publisher imprints were established, with editors and other personnel hired for this niche. Obviously, those publishers and writers want those readers to easily find their books. Those readers want to walk into a bookstore (or click into one) and easily find the books they want written by black women about black women.
Without the niche, AA niche readers wouldn’t get the types of books they prefer, authors would lose their careers, and publishers would lose revenue. Seems simple and straightforward, right?
Other black authors writing within and dependent on the niche were asked for their opinion of it in the article. It’s interesting that articles by the mainstream about the black niche only asks those black authors writing within the niche, not those few black authors or readers such as Oprah outside of it. The replies by those dependent on the niche for their careers must be carefully worded. It’s as if the media asked a vampire romance author to critique her genre niche. She’s going to be very careful not to anger vampire romance readers or those who acquire her books, no matter if her opinion that the market is over-saturated, limiting, derivative, and publishing needs to move on.
Noire stays on point–like Zane, she’s about the money. “…it’s more important to place our books in an area where our proven target audiences actually shop. People basically know what they’re looking for when they walk into a bookstore, and we have to make it easy for them to find it.”
Bernice McFadden would like to write books that are accessible to everybody. The niche limits black commercial fiction authors in a way authors of other races aren’t limited. ”White people and others avoid the AA book section like the plague. They believe that the stories housed in that section were written exclusively for black people. They believe that there is nothing in our stories that they will be able to relate too – which of course is untrue.”
Tanisha Christie is practical. If you move the AA books into genre, readers are pissed, authors and publishers lose money and careers. She knows there is no easy solution (other than giving up the money, which is not an option for most). She mentions a multicultural section (opposed to an AA section), “…which is probably the ‘safest’ place to put authors of color but this comes with a price, that Zane speaks of, authors might get lost and Terri Woods will get shelved near Alice Walker.”
Here is the question that matters, the one that the mainstream won’t ask and those within the niche can’t voice.
Why are AA women the only ones with our own special racial book niche? (Most AA niche books are women’s fiction). Why don’t Asian women want a niche? There’s lots of Asian women readers who could financially support a racial niche. Why not Hispanic women? Their numbers are growing by the moment. They read. (Oh, Kensington tried that with the Encanto imprint, a dismal failure). What about Jewish women? They aren’t a race, but they are a homogeneous group with shared culture and history, along with a history of oppression and exclusion. Why don’t they want to solely read books by and about other Jewish women? With the numbers in publishing, that niche could cordon off half the bookstore shelves.
Why don’t other races or discrete groups of people clamor for books that reflect themselves instead of reading the same books the majority does?
We know the answer. Other groups of people trying to make in the USA don’t tolerate segregation the way we do. I think most people know bone deep that nothing good comes from being separated from the mainstream. They want to be a part of the mainstream, not niched away from it.
So, why do American blacks tolerate it, and in the case of the book niche, prefer it? I say continue because blacks have been formally segregated in this country in ways other races haven’t experienced, for a far longer time. We’re used to it and conditioned to it. For a long, long time the chitlin’ circuit was our only option for nonhostile, inclusive entertainment.
Bottom-line, the niche exists because it’s what readers want, so it makes money. Money is our true god, so it’s not going to change as long as money continues to be made. There are no solutions to the niche. It does exist and it will exist.
What if a black author wants their books accessible to all races and not just niche black readers? They can write literary fiction, this works sometimes. They can not be American, but rather be Caribbean, British, African or whatever. This seems to work for some. They can write outside the niche. This only works if we both downplay our race and write diverse protagonists from the jump. This is what most minority (other races than black) genre and commercial fiction authors do, talented ones such as Tess Garritsen, Nalini Singh, and Majorie Liu. I love those authors. They have no niche, and I doubt if Asian readers of their fiction would tolerate and/or support one. Would I be less able to relate to them if they write works populated by characters of their own race? I don’t think so, but they would certainly make less money. Their mainstreaming route is highly uncomfortable and thus not an option for many black authors (which is a whole ‘nuther conversation).
As black commercial fiction authors, we are in a box we helped construct. Some find it nice and comfy and there is money to be made in it. Some feel limited and constrained, but that’s the way of the world. We’d best figure out how to deal with the status quo, because it isn’t going anywhere.
Joy is the reason for being
I’m digesting a few quotes to celebrate black history month*, and to get my own head together. Today, it’s Audre Lorde. Audre Lorde (born Audrey Geraldine Lorde February 18, 1934 – November 17, 1992) was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist.
Once we recognize what it is we are feeling, once we recognize we can feel deeply, love deeply, can feel joy, then we will demand that all parts of our lives produce that kind of joy. Audre Lorde
Lorde says Joy is a choice and feeling, and feeling should be recognized and embraced. Too often, it’s stuffed down and away, numbed and suppressed. Not feeling is a sort of grayness while feeling, any feeling is an explosion of colors.
I think the best writing is borne and carried along by feelings.
Our visions begin with our desires. Audre Lorde
I don’t aspire to or admire literary circles, but what Lorde describes is pretty much the same in commercial fiction. We have our boxes. Coloring outside those lines is not welcome. She saw her box, acknowledged it, but didn’t hesitate to step outside of it.
Black writers, of whatever quality, who step outside the pale of what black writers are supposed to write about, or who black writers are supposed to be, are condemned to silences in black literary circles that are as total and as destructive as any imposed by racism. Audre Lorde
Lorde was fearless and never silent. Those writers who conformed, who did what they were expected, those silent writers are forgotten, while Lorde’s words linger, well-remembered.
Your silence will not protect you. Audre Lorde
More about Lorde
*A few words about black history month. I wish we had black history every month as we do European history, but that isn’t the case. So it is a necessary thing. I think we need a native American month (especially), an Hispanic American month and an Asian American month too.
Give light and people will find the way
“Give light and people will find the way.” - Ella Baker
Ella Josephine Baker (December 13, 1903 – December 13, 1986) was an African American civil rights and human rights activist beginning in the 1930s. She was a behind-the-scenes activist whose career spanned over five decades. She worked alongside some of the most famous civil rights leaders of the 20th century.
She worked behind the scenes, never seeking the spotlight. She didn’t believe in leadership, she believed in empowering the common people to accomplish goals. So what she did was shine. She didn’t worry about how she shone, who she shone too, or what people would think about her light, she just let it shine freely. She lived a life that mattered because of that.
I think this is a lesson that can be applied anywhere. Shine is a verb. Verbs mean action. We need to do what we do, what is true to ourselves, and do our best. That’s all. And the rest will find its way.
Oklahoma is right below Kansas
Updated: They canceled their contest late Sunday. It would have been better if they’s simply put a call out for gay friendly judges and opened it up to same sex romance, but oh well.
A Romance Writers of America local chapter has banned same sex romances in their contest entries. How intolerant. Last time I heard, same sex couples had romance, and wrote and read about it too. The chapter is in Tulsa, OK, a bigger city than Topeka, but with the same vibe and weather.
ADDED: Not bashing OK (I was born three miles from the OK border) or Kansas, just saying there are a higher ratio of fundie and conservative types here.
– Note: MTM will no longer accept same-sex entries in any category.
An online uproar is starting because of this, and I hope once it’s brought to their attention, they will become ashamed of their actions. They need to change that contest stipulation so it doesn’t discriminate against a group of people who do have and live romance.
This sort of reminds me of recent decisions made by the Susan Komen Foundation (for breast cancer), which was headed by a few political conservatives with their usual short-sighted agenda. The Komen Foundation pulled funding to Planned Parenthood because it funds abortions. Planned Parenthood doesn’t force abortions on anyone though. There was an uproar because Planned Parenthood also provides breast health exams and breast cancer prevention services to women who would not be able to get them otherwise. The money from the Komen Foundation solely went for the breast services.
These conservatives talk about liberty and freedom from one side of their mouths and try to force and legislate their values and morality from the other. Liberty and freedom is leaving such choices between the individuals and their God.
The uproar and bad PR caused the Komen Foundation to backtrack and state they would fund Planned Parenthood after all.
Outraged uproar in response to stupidity and meanness is a good thing. We should do more of it.
