on the shadowlands of story and author

[kattahj]

Concrit vs. analysis is once again up for debate, and I choose to let most of it slide, except for a statement that I see over and over again in discussions and that is to me completely wrongheaded: the idea that criticism of the story isn't criticism of the author

Comments

[kattahj]

Good point - I was talking about criticism in the pejorative sense of both story and author.

Obviously, the same goes for positive comments ("Oh, this story is so mature and nuanced and shows such good morals!") but authors rarely have any reason to dislike that. Though I do recall an instant when a reader complimented The Phantom for being such a good fascist and the writers were all, "No, no no, The Phantom isn't a fascist!Fascism is wrong!"

[sakuracorr]

That was brillant.

[kattahj]

Wow, thanks! And I'm rewarded with Dalek porn!

[mtgat]

(In via metafandom)

But if they actually like the story, if they told it because they wanted to tell it, then of course the reviews are criticizing them as people. At that point, claiming that "I called the film misogynist, not the director" is splitting hairs.

Gonna have to disagree with you here. A film (or story) can be misogynistic without the same being true of the writer, director, actor, or anyone else involved with the project. Sometimes the point is to make the work *insert -ist here* in order to draw the audience in, make them sympathetic with the characters/themes who espouse the -ism, and then hope they do the thinking as a take-home exercise. Example: a story I posted last year had a fairly misogynistic thread running through it. Only one person thus far has brought it up in a review, and all I could think was: "Yes! Thank you!" That was part of what I was trying to show about the POV character without spelling it out in the icing on a cake

[tiferet]

As a sometime chan and cestfic writer, I'd have to agree with you both.

On the one hand, I've definitely had the reviews that imply that because I've written something that the reader found immoral and disgusting I must also be immoral and disgusting--especially because I made it pretty. Because we're all living in the world of the Comics Code and Crime Must Not Pay--funny, last time I checked a calendar it was supposedly 2005

[kattahj]

I think character and story are two different things, as I said above. What a character (even a POV character) advocates is not necessarily what the story advocates, even as a fantasy. (Sin City is very clearly a fantasy - I don't think even the most morally outraged of reviewers thinks Frank Miller and Robert Rodrigues want all women to wear kinky underwear in public.) RPGs, being a joined effort, makes this a difficult beast, but then it's rather impossible to criticize the story of an individual writer in a RPG.

Can an author write a story that is in every way opposed to his/her own world-view? Obviously. I think it happens a lot in profic, and to some extent also in fanfic. But I think the opposite is a lot more common, and I think the more the reviewer goes into the big wheels of what makes the story tick, the more likely it is that s/he steps on a couple of toes.

[kattahj]

Reviews that say "I didn't like this work because it glorified XYZ" are fundamentally different than reviews which say "Because [info]mtgat wrote about XYZ, she must approve of XYZ and also Q."

Leaving Q aside - I think the word "glorified" implies that the writer/director has taken a moral stand that the reviewer disagrees with. Obviously the reviewer can be wrong about that, but that's rather beside the point.

And I don't think anyone but a complete idiot would think that people like Frank Miller advocate actually ripping the dick out of people's pants and that all women should walk around half naked. It's a fantasy, and the reviews have centered around whether or not it's an acceptable fantasy.

I also think it's important to make a distinction between character and story. A character (even a POV character) can express a view that the story doesn't, because no character lives in isolation. (Unfortunately, the example that comes to mind is the Swedish "Doctor Glass", about a man who decides to commit a murder

Here via metafandom

[parallactic]

I agree with you that the story is personal to an author, and that the author is deeply invested in it, has put in aspects of him/herself, etc. But I disagree that to criticize the story is the same as to criticize the author.

But if they actually like the story, if they told it because they wanted to tell it, then of course the reviews are criticizing them as people. At that point, claiming that "I called the film misogynist, not the director" is splitting hairs.Just because the director made a movie about sex, violence, and murder DOESN'T mean that s/he are advocates of such in RL. They could be a pacifist, for all we know. While I think that the author's worldview colors the story in different ways, I don't think that the worldview of the story reflects the writer's, and it's hard to seperate the writer's worldview from the story they set out to tell. So it's simpler to critique the story for being misogynist, and leave the creator out of it unless we learn from a verifiable source that s/he's a card carrying misogynist. Another

Re: Here via metafandom

[tiferet]

Ah, but have I mentioned how much I hate the idea that if you allow someone to go 'unpunished' for something in a story, that must mean you condone it?

Re: Here via metafandom

[parallactic]

I'm all about characters dealing with the consequences of their actions, whatever they are. In fic, I dont care if they get punished or not.

Re: Here via metafandom

[kattahj]

Just because the director made a movie about sex, violence, and murder DOESN'T mean that s/he are advocates of such in RL.

I never said that it did. Stories like SC are obviously fantasy. The question becomes whether or not it's an acceptable fantasy.

So it's simpler to critique the story for being misogynist, and leave the creator out of it unless we learn from a verifiable source that s/he's a card carrying misogynist.

Of course it is, and I'd advocate doing that too. I just think it's extremely naïve to pretend that through doing this, none of what is said about the story will reflect upon the creator.

Another thing is that while some people might have found Sin City misogynistic, yet another group may have found it to punish misogyny.

Well, if people didn't have different opinions there wouldn't be much point in reviews at all, would there? ;-)

[zvi_likes_tv]

Except that a critique, unless it is a critique of a body of work, is a critique of a particular effort and expression, not a whole person. (I think this is perhaps clearest in those artistic efforts which get repeated, like musicians performing live or theatrical performances.) If I say, "this story is an unimaginative piece of crap," and it's the only story of yours I know, I don't know if you have no imagination or if you failed to exercise it when you sat at the keyboard on that particular day. I mean, making it to the final twelve on American Idol doesn't ultimately prove that people like listening to you sing, it shows that Randy, Paula, and Simon, heard six decent enough songs from you

[kattahj]

I agree to a part - if the reader thinks the story is badly written somehow, then obviously that's an isolated event, but if it's the themes and ideas of a story that's being put in question, I think having a bad day becomes rather a moot point. For example, if someone says "fics like this one that romanticize rape are immature and damaging" one can counter that in any sort of way, but not by claiming a lack of inspiration. (And for the record, that's not an authentic example. *g

Are you working on a different paradigm than I?

[zvi_likes_tv]

Well, yes, I suppose that the ideas that a story espouses have a presumption of being tied to the views of the author. But is that what this argument is about?

Because when I see people saying, "We shouldn't publicly discuss individual stories, because that is to criticize the author," I have never read it as a concern about the author's ideas and ideologies. I always assumed that people talking about ideologies have been able to speak directly about the ideologies, or else they were talking about fannish trends.

Re: Are you working on a different paradigm than I?

[kattahj]

Well, ideologies is a big word, but of course sometimes there's that. I was also thinking in the line of storylines, pairing types, kinks, OCs... the kind of things that cause comments such as "sick", "immature" and so on.

And as I said in the post, I'm all in favour of letting reviewers say that if that's what they feel. It's the "it's for your own good, and it's not about you anyway" attitude that bugs me.