World Fantasy Con: What Are the Taboos in Fantasy Today?

[kate_nepveu]

Wow, this won the poll in a landslide. So:

Description:

What Are the Taboos in Fantasy Today?
They shift with the times. Is the writer ever really free to write about ANYTHING?
Sharyn November (m), John Grant, Tom Doherty, Steven Erikson, Lucienne Diver

November (sdn) is Editorial Director of the YA line Firebird. Grant is a novelist and co-

Comments

[swan_tower]

You take fantastic notes.

My thought on seeing the panel topic was, not so much that there are subjects we cannot address, but certain portrayals of those subjects are taboo. So, you can talk about rape, but portraying rape as okay . . . ? Nnnnngh.

I often think one of the idiotic mistakes made by those who try to ban (especially children's/YA) books is, they don't want fiction to address those topics at all. They are trying to enforce taboos of subject matter. Far better, in my mind, to pay attention to how the topics are being addressed.

[kate_nepveu]

I cheat at panel notes by typing them on a portable keyboard + PDA

[swan_tower]

Yes, in Japan they put two chopsticks together and stick them upright in a bowl of rice for the dead. So Japanese people, and anybody who's lived in Japan for very long, tend to twitch if you do that. (Likewise, you want to wrap your kimono et al a particular way -- right over left, I believe -- because the other way around is how they dress corpses. And you shouldn't lay your bed out with your head to the . . . north? . . . for the same reason

[kate_nepveu]

Live people wrap robes left over right. _That_ at least gets mentioned in all the guidebooks, in the sections about ryokan or baths, but if the chopsticks were mentioned I missed it (which is possible).

The rest of what you say makes sense to me--including, duh, of course those are food taboos, and much of a type with others, even if they aren't religious.

(General comment: I am trying really hard to suppress my instinctive reaction, which is to categorize taboos as rational and irrational, because I know it's insulting. If it leaks through anyway, I apologize.)

[swan_tower]

It's hard to write a story palatable to American audiences wherein the main character sacrifices their own individual freedom for the good of conformity and the community, and have that truly be presented as a good thing.

[swan_tower]

We only like certain kinds of self-sacrifice. Giving up your life for the greater good? Sure. Saying farewell to the man you've fallen madly in love with and going along with an arranged marriage because that is what will be best for your family and your children and your community? Not so much.

Kind of follows, though - stories are about people, and ideally about people who are interesting. People who always do exactly what they're told and never think for themselves are... well, scary, in real life, but also uninteresting as characters to center a story around.But it kind of betrays our cultural biases that we so easily leap from "conformity for the good of the community" to "doing what you're told and never thinking for yourself." I imagine people from cultures that prize individualism less and community more might look very askance at your statement

[anonymous]

Steven Erikson here. Fascinating follow-on to the panel. This was ten in the morning and I'd had about two hours sleep, hence my fade for the second half. It's curious to see the various taboos being discussed here, and alarming to realize how many I've broken in my Malazan series and in my other works. There's a protagonist who rapes two women (within a cultural context that 'permits' it); in my Bauchelain/Korbal Broach series the two principal characters are sociopaths, one of them a serial killer (the point of view is from their manservant) -- and neither one gets their just rewards (just a lot of bad karma and bad luck). And overall, principal characters can be gay, bi, or in one case maddeningly celibate, and none of it is an issue. One 'taboo' we didn't get to talk about is one of the most subversive I can think of right now, and that's gender roles. When you're stuck with medieval-sourced fantasy you get princesses and tomboys and not much else. You would not believe the stir caused by my having women soldiers in my

[swan_tower]

Partly that's an outgrowth of people having a bad understanding of real medievalism. Pop culture presentations smooth over a lot of the messy edges and nonconformist types.

[kate_nepveu]

Michael Flynn did a presentation at Boskone this year, I think, about the Real Middle Ages. I believe he mostly focused on scientific thinking and advances, as research for _Eifelheim_, however.

[ex_greythist387]

As a medievalist I find it difficult to tell how much of Gentle's Ash is portrayal and how much is reimagining re: gender roles. :P It isn't only the pop-culture presentations; it's the prevailing ways things are taught, too.