Genre Bashing Dumbassery

[jimhines]

The Wall Street Journal published an article criticizing YA fiction last week that pissed a lot of people off. I’m not going to respond to the arguments made in that article, in part because smarter people than I have already done so.

Instead, I’d like to take this opportunity to introduce the Genre Bashing Dumbassery Scale (patent pending).

When

Comments

[jhetley]

If you're gonna go around rating dumbassery, you'll never get any work done . . .

"So many dumbasses, so little time."

[jimhines]

It was either this or write a more detailed takedown of the WSJ article. This was actually the quicker of the two options.

[kthanna]

That's pretty spot on...

It was very interesting to watch the internet thoroughly school the WSJ over the weekend.

Now I'll never be able to read another article without automatically applying the GBD... *sighs*

[jimhines]

"It was very interesting to watch the internet thoroughly school the WSJ over the weekend."

They did a round of that on romance a little while back too, with the "Romance Kills" Twitter tag, responding to an article that equated romance and porn. (I haven't read the article, so can't give that one a GBD score.)

I like that the internet makes these things more public, and allows for a much broader response from people who actually know and understand the genre.

[mmerriam]

(I haven't read the article, so can't give that one a GBD score.)

GBD: 8

[momma_lizzie]

I've always felt that any book, regardless of genre, that made a child interested enough to read it, is a win.So I don't understand people that bash on genres. And yes, there are some YA books that make me roll my eyes a little but again, as long as it gets kids reading, going to libraries and bookstores that's the important thing.

[jimhines]

Oh, sure. There are bad books in every genre, and books that just don't appeal to me personally. But to go from that to a broad, sweeping condemnation of a genre is just silly. And yep, there's a lot to be said for a book that gets a kid interested in reading.

My parents once told me they were happy even when I was reading Garfield comics, because at least I was reading.

[momma_lizzie]

I agree. And even now there are schools that are using graphic novels like Bone (I think it's by Jeff Smith but I'm not 100% sure) and other comic books to get kids interested in reading.

[serialbabbler]

Yep, Bone is by Jeff Smith.

[shashalnikya]

So much of this seems to come from ideas about what "counts" as a "real" book, and that people who write genre fiction aren't doing it right.

I can't stand blanket statements about genres. There's so much incredible variety within each, and I can name plenty of books that cross, blur or blow up the rather arbitrary lines between genres that it's almost impossible to make general statements in any case.

[jimhines]

Basically, I think it comes down to, "The books that *I* read (and write) are awesome, and those other books I don't like are crap."

The blanket statements tick me off too, and I see 'em so often, whether it's bashing romance, SF/F, literary fiction, or whatever.

[dawtheminstrel]

Oh thank you! The only reason I can see to engage in genre bashing is to make the basher feel superior. 10s all the way around!

[jimhines]

Sometimes somebody will get just a tiny sampling of a genre and assume the whole thing is like that. "Oh, I don't read science fiction because I once read Space Mutant Wars of X'Fdl'Prthwp, and it's all just ridiculously incomprehensible technobabble and silly space battles." I'd blame that one on ignorance and foolish assumptions, but not necessarily trying to feel superior.

[dawtheminstrel]

OK. True enough.

I get hot about how people value different kinds of writing, I guess. I used to teach in an English Dept and one of the things you see there is that the status of the faculty depends on the status of the writing they study. The Shakespeare scholar outranks the modern lit scholar, and the people who teach freshman comp really get dissed.

[elialshadowpine]

"Sometimes somebody will get just a tiny sampling of a genre and assume the whole thing is like that."

Uh-huh. Not SF, but with romance, I've run across so many people who read some rapetastic POS from the 80s and thought the genre was like that. It took me ages to convince my hubby to read romance. O'course, now he reads more of it than I do. *lol*