(Untitled)
This is a continuation of a discussion that I got into over on Lee Goldberg's blog that got severely off track. It's probably not of much interest to the majority of my flist, but click on the cut if you're interested.
( Blathering about etiquette vs. ethics and debate styles )
( Blathering about etiquette vs. ethics and debate styles )
*snicker*
You're welcome :-)
This may be tl;dr, but you did ask ;-)
I haven't and am not going to read Lost Girls. Reviews I've read have varied from lauding its innovation (as if derivative porn were something new) to criticizing its art. It seems that for a lot of people, it doesn't succeed as porn - but that's a matter of taste.
Not only do I disagree with Pierce's premise, but she's contradicting herself. I didn't want to get into it over there because while her reasoning doesn't make sense, she's gotten increasingly shrill with people who disagree, even those who are simply asking for clarification.
She's adamant that she's not making a call for censorship. But she didn't say "this makes me uncomfortable and this is why" she said it's wrong and bad, implying there's something wrong with anyone who disagrees with her. Further, the reason she makes for this moral judgment doesn't hold up.
She says she has no problem with fanfic (she's a former fan writer herself) at the same time she's trying to make an argument for "respecting the intentions of the author." She takes it as given that this is a good thing, despite the fact that it's usually impossible to know, even were it desirable. Later she tries to argue that she agrees that the text is more important for analysis, but she doesn't admit that these two concepts are contradictory. Apparently it's ok to use an author's characters without permission when their intentions cannot be known, she makes no argument for why we should take note of their wishes when they are known - she just asserts that we should. I don't know about you, but I don't find unsupported assertions to be at all convincing.
The fact that she's completely condescending of fanfic, calling it "training wheels," is a whole other argument for another day.
She says she has no problem with porn - that Lost Girls would be fine had it been written with original characters. It's the fact that these are characters from children's literature that is the problem. Now I could see where she could make an argument against the content of the book in terms of it's explicitness, treatment of women, especially young women, whatever. But those things wouldn't change if it were written with original characters.
She dismisses the idea of fiction as criticism on the grounds that it's difficult to do successfully. I disagree - I've seen some excellent derivative fiction which functions as commentary on the themes of the original - but since when is difficulty of the task an argument about its morality? She can argue that Lost Girls is unsuccessful as commentary, but that's not a reason it shouldn't have been written in the first place.
So it comes down to the fact that they are characters from children's literature. But why is this objectionable? I could buy an objection on the grounds that it is objectifying children by putting them in sexual situations - except that it's not. Lost Girls doesn't feature children - it features characters who's childhood we are familiar with, but who are grown up in the context of the work. I could also buy an argument that children might be attracted to it (given that these are familiar characters to them) when it's clearly inappropriate for them, except that there is little to no chance of a child running across Lost Girls by accident. It's porn. It's marketed as porn. The author identifies it as porn. Little Johnny is not going to accidentally find it in his local library unless they are also in the habit of leaving Playboy out with the other periodicals.
So basically this hits her squick, but why is that an argument for why it's "wrong"? If it bothers her, she may not be able to do much to control her visceral reaction. I can't watch or read about knee surgery - it makes me want to hurl. So I don't. But that doesn't make orthopedic surgeons bad people. But her expectation that others would feel the same, without providing any better reason, is just...bizarre to me. There may be plenty of reasons that Moore's work is offensive or dangerous but co-opting characters from classics to do it is not one of them.
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