Exploiting Writers + Factory Fiction = Ultimate Fail

[yael_heiman]

I imagine that a lot of you already heard about I am Number Four and James Frey, but just in case you didn't...

I would respond to it, but The Sparkle Project does a much better job of that than I ever could.

Needless to say, I will be loudly and obnoxiously boycotting both the book and the movie.

Comments

[tabular_rasa]

Urgh, not only is a classic example of passion for fame over passion for the art itself, but it's exploitative as well? FUN TIMES.

[insanepurin]

You know what this whole thing reminds me of? A short story called "The Great Automatic Grammatizator" by Roald Dahl, which details exactly what Frey is doing now. I won't say much to give it away, but the ending speaks for itself.

[intertribal]

Yeah, gross. Every time the trailer for I am Number Four comes on TV I lecture anyone who's present about what's behind it.

[in_excelsis_dea]

Of everything in the article, this annoyed me the most: "Of her protagonist, he told her: "Her parents, they should be dead."

Um...what? Why?

I seriously don't get the whole "parents must die" trope that is in YA at the moment. If the parents aren't dead, they're deadbeats or workaholics or sometimes both. Or they die to further the plot. And I'm not saying that it's necessarily a bad thing when the plot warrants it. But this plot sounds like it could function perfectly well without dead parents. And he's all flippant and tells her to kill them off anyways.

[yael_heiman]

Because angst is cool and edgy.

What's even more annoying about this trope is that it's often used as an excuse to make the character seem more strong and independent. This is stupid. I know loads of people who are really independent and who have two living, caring parents. Many of the people I know who have absent parents or bad relationships with their parents actually tend to be less responsible.

[future_guardian]

Oh boy, where to begin

[ryl]

I read a lot of YA ficton from the '70s (Paula Danziger, et al) and the trope then was "the parents must be divorced or in the process of getting a divorce." Because kids with happily married parents were like, so dull or something. Dead parents is the new, hip update to that apparently.

[miritsu]

Thanks for sharing. I remember Colleen Doran--she writes the wonder A Distant Soil webcomic, and is a huge advocate for writer's rights--wrote about this, and I wondered if this was the book she'd mentioned. Now I know.