(no subject)
Here's a good essay about how to be a fan of problematic things. (Yes, it's from last year, but it's been making the rounds in the geekosphere lately.)
Some of you may be wondering why I enjoyed Sucker Punch but not Cryptonomicon, even though the problematic elements in Sucker Punch are far more in-your-face and lushly portrayed. All I can answer is that Sucker Punch had steam-powered zombies, zeppelins, dragons fighting World War Two bombers, and Scott Glenn tossing off great one-liners-- and Cryptonomicon didn't.
(Plus, whatever Zack Snyder's faults, he seems to understand that putting young women in mental institutions and lobotomizing them is A Bad Thing. Neal Stephenson, on the other hand, wants us to pity his protagonist for outright insulting his girlfriend and her colleagues to their faces, immediately running off to the Philippines for a year, and then returning to find that her friends think he's a big jerk. Also, Stephenson doesn't seem to find anything problematic when, in the first scene we meet her, his Strong Female Character (tm) cuts the watch off his protagonist's wrist for getting too close to her, but in the last scene, she breaks her leg and has to be carried around like a useless lump by the protagonist.)
Some of you may be wondering why I enjoyed Sucker Punch but not Cryptonomicon, even though the problematic elements in Sucker Punch are far more in-your-face and lushly portrayed. All I can answer is that Sucker Punch had steam-powered zombies, zeppelins, dragons fighting World War Two bombers, and Scott Glenn tossing off great one-liners-- and Cryptonomicon didn't.
(Plus, whatever Zack Snyder's faults, he seems to understand that putting young women in mental institutions and lobotomizing them is A Bad Thing. Neal Stephenson, on the other hand, wants us to pity his protagonist for outright insulting his girlfriend and her colleagues to their faces, immediately running off to the Philippines for a year, and then returning to find that her friends think he's a big jerk. Also, Stephenson doesn't seem to find anything problematic when, in the first scene we meet her, his Strong Female Character (tm) cuts the watch off his protagonist's wrist for getting too close to her, but in the last scene, she breaks her leg and has to be carried around like a useless lump by the protagonist.)