Portait of the Artist as a Younger Man, II

[bellatrys]

In the last entry, we saw how Ellison managed to cram in just about every single nasty stereotype of women from antiquity into under five pages, along with enough self-flattery to choke even Lee Siegel (well, that may be an exaggeration.) Seriously, we've got that 1) women are vain, 2) shallow, 3) materialistic, 4) fickle, 5) bullying, 6) gullible

Comments

[sajia]

And I thought that the Bengali secularist/Muslim revolutionary films and novels of the last century were sexist.
Have you ever thought of taking down Alan Moore for the way V brutalized Evie in V for Vendetta? Glorifying abuse in the name of consciousness-raising, yeah, that's so progressive.

[marlowe1]

The problem with that theory is that V was brutalized in the same way. It's not supposed to be a heroic gesture, but a methodology that turns the reader against V - at least partially. That's why Alan Moore wanted sympathetic fascists involved who truly believed in their cause - because it wasn't interesting for him (or the reader) to have an all good V vs. and all evil tyranny.

[sajia]

Yes, but Moore had Evie saying "Thank you, V, for all that you've done for me." And the film is even worse, because where in the novel Evie is an emotional adolescent, in the movie she's quite mature, so there's an even less justification for the kind of psychological game playing. V never admits that he might have been wrong to hurt her.

[nenya_kanadka]

I never did get why it was So Important that the pacifists be stopped, in this episode. I thought Kirk was always giving speeches about moving beyond violence and learning to evolve to a better way? Except when he was shooting Klingons, of course....er... (Which was pretty much Federation Good, Klingons Bad, at least until later, in the movies/TNG/DS9.)

[nenya_kanadka]

In the episode, Edith Keeler's peace movement somehow prevents the US's entry into WWII until it's too late and the Axis wins (which basically means that the Japanese don't attack Pearl Harbour, I'd assume, because the US doesn't pose a threat). It's not really the peace movement that's the problem (Spock notes that Keeler had the right idea at the wrong time). The question is, why must Edith Keeler die when there are at least three other options -- take Edith Keeler back into the future with Kirk and Spock, or take her into the future through the Guardian to prove everything they've said and then take her back. Spock basically proposes a false bipolarity (Keeler lives and destroys the Federation/Keeler dies and preserves the timeline) when there are other options that don't involve sacrificing the saintly woman on the altar of history.

Cheers, Jon

[nenya_kanadka]

That should be 'two other options.'

Yup

[bellatrys]

Now, every author does this to a degree, or you don't have a story. You set up some parameters and exclude various options so that you have a conflict, you have a dilemma, and (ideally) people can't say "but why didn't they just use the radio?" or something obvious like that, there's an internally-consistent reason why they can't just radio for help or whatever, (altho' IRL most TV and movie scripts fall down pretty badly in that "plausibility" regard, (often connected to continuity problems too) and that gives us lots of fun reasons to shout at the screen and MST3K them and write snarky essays or parodies of our favorite or least-favorite shows.) Every drama is necessarily somewhat "contrived" (even ones based on RL situations, they have to be pruned down and uncomplicated to work onstage) because the point of the story isn't solving the murder/escaping the wrecked ship/catching the Evil Overlord before he sets off his Space Bomb, it's *really* about the chance for great lines and lots of emoting, to get all meta

[ide_cyan]

These are very interesting entries.

Minor correction: Doctor Who started airing in 1963, not 1962.

Problems

[marlowe1]

--Or how delaying the entry of the US into WWI longer than the over 2 years of history would allow Germany to magically make the A-bomb before us when the best scientists had fled the Reich due to persecution, and even the Soviets our allies couldn't manage to do the same while cribbing off our notes. Ironic, perhaps, that the underperforming German A-bomb program featured the ambivalent help of one Werner Heisenberg

Here's where you are giving the Great Man theory yourself. Because of Einstein and the rest of the bunch, the U.S. managed to create the atomic bomb. And most of these scientists were German Jews that fled. However, the U.S. program also required money and resources and it wasn't kicked into gear until the U.S. officially entered the war. The Germans had nuclear ambitions well before they decided to invade Poland and they were working to create the A-bomb throughout the war. A two year delay could have pushed back the U.S. program long enough for Germany to obtain that technology.

Could it have been different? Could