Rock Band Tonight!
Just in case you haven’t seen, there’s a Rock Band party at La Casa McJuddMetz tonight. If you know us, show up! We need someone to help us burn through all of these new tracks.
Hate Twilight? Hate Bieber? Hate Women?
There’s a little misogyny in the hatred of Twilight and Justin Bieber and all the other things that teenaged girls love, and I wanted to unpack that.
Because one of the things I said yesterday that Twilight was a teenaged girl’s power fantasy, which it clearly is – the drab girl goes to a new school, finds that every boy there wants her, but she can ignore all that because the most special boy in the world who’s waited his whole life for someone like her comes along to change himself in every way for her.
This may seem dumb. But consider the teenaged boy’s power fantasy, wherein your parents are shot dead, leaving you free with your wealth to buy all the cool gadgets and go beat up clowns in alleyways, and you’ll see that almost all power fantasies are, at heart, silly.
Now, admittedly, the phrase “teenaged girl’s power fantasy” is going to get some hackles up because, yes, not all teenage girls are the same and there are many who would rather go running with Katniss than Bella. Fair cop. But there are millions of girls reading and re-reading Twilight because for them, it’s the dream of what they want to be.
And it is scorned.
Twilight is the butt of everyone’s jokes, the automatic punchline. Even people who’ve never read Twilight hate Twilight. And there are very legitimate reasons to dislike Twilight, but I think a large part of the reason Twilight slips so easily into that “Need a flavor of the month to kick? Why not Twilight?” is because girls like it.
Because stereotypical teenaged girls also like Justin Bieber… And as I’ve noted before, he too is the automatic kicking boy of jokes. It’s not like the metal and rap bands that boys like, with their over-the-top posturing and hyper-masculine shouts, aren’t equally as stupid, but somehow Insane Clown Posse (or even more popular bands) never quite reaches the level of “auto-joke” that Justin Bieber does.
Stereotypical teenaged girls also like romantic comedies. And rom-coms, another female power fantasy, are widely agreed to be awful, acquiring both critical denigration and a “Eeyew, who’d watch that?” But action films, the teenaged boy’s powerful fantasy, may not get the critic’s thumbs-up, but mostly society thinks that well-done action films are kinda cool.
Compare, say, The Transporter to 27 Dresses. Which one’s the more joke-worthy? Even though they’re both by-the-numbers, competently-done versions of their genre?
And I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the more embarrassing versions of power fantasies are invariably the girly ones. The quiet message here is that what you want now is not just foolish, but actively embarrassing, something to be shucked aside. You women with your silly dreams, go discard them the moment you grow up, because what you want now is to be gotten rid of.
There’s some very deeply-rooted misogyny in there, I think. It’s like we’re almost afraid of young females agreeing on something, as though it scares the shit out of us as a society. And if it was just one instance, I might write it off… But the fact is that every time I see something that teenaged girls think is cool, everyone immediately jumps on the bandwagon and agrees it is only not awful, but cringeworthy. Which sends a bulletin to teenaged girls that whatever you like, you should change that shit right away. Because you’re kind of silly and stupid, and maybe you should alter yourself to like better things.
Meanwhile, comic books and videogames, the secret male nerd pasttimes of my childhood, have gone mainstream to the point where pretty much everyone agrees Batman’s a badass and hey, can’t we play some Madden or Assassin’s Creed? Aw, man, wasn’t Pokemon great?
(Which is why I think YA is causing some discomfort in the nerd communities, because mostly girls read YA, but reading is cool… isn’t it! Should we take it seriously now that girls own it?)
Which is why I don’t make them the butt of my jokes. Yes, Twilight’s problematic. So’s DC’s nearly female-free comics reboot, along with the inflated breasts and suddenly submissive, dully-sexual women. And it’s perfectly okay to analyze why they’re difficult from a sexual perspective, and to discuss the bad lessons they may be causing people to internalize.
But as far as making “Edward and Bella” the butt of my auto-humor when I’m searching for “the worst book in the world”? I’ll pass. Because hey, those teenaged girls may be silly, but they’re no sillier than I was when I was rooting for Batman to be the most bad-ass, smartest guy in the world. Hopefully, like me, they’ll take the best parts and leave the silly behind.
The Surprising Strength of Twilight
For research into my new book, I had to read Twilight. People had told me that Twilight was an abomination unto the Lord, a scabrous pile of poop that a talentless hack had shat out to plague the world.
I didn’t believe it.
I always believe there’s some appeal to a bestselling book, even if that appeal does not necessarily lie in “prose.” Take the Da Vinci Code, for example. Are the characters wooden? Yes. But the thing people don’t get about Dan Brown is that his characters are not the central characters. He spends far more time describing the parquet floors of the Louvre than he does on his protagonist’s motivations. Once you realize that Dan Brown’s priorities are inverted and his locations are actually his lead characters while his lead characters are background, the novel moves quite swiftly.
And Twilight, well, I didn’t want to read it because Bella’s character sounded like she’d annoy me… But I assumed it had some appeal. Why would millions of teenage girls read it otherwise?
And lo, Twilight did one thing better than I’d ever seen it done, something so perfect that before I read Twilight, I didn’t realize nobody had ever captured the moment before:
Stupid, silly New Relationship Energy.
The triumph of Twilight is that there is a hundred-and-thirty-page stretch where all Bella and Edward do is talk. Oh, they talk in different locations – they’re talking in the school! In the car! In the woods! In her bedroom!
And they’re talking only about how much they love each other!
Thing is, Stephenie has that silly first-blush of love completely down, where you’re so amazed that this person’s fallen for you that you keep regurgitating your origin story back at each other, endlessly creating your own mythology of How This Happened. You learn a new fact about someone, then slip back into “I can’t believe this is happening” and “You smell so good” and “I knew I loved you from the moment I saw you.”
She abso-fucking-loutely nails it. Which is going to irritate a lot of people who don’t like that kind of NRE. I mean, if you’re not a silly teenaged girl at heart (and really, I am a cuddler), then this sort of flighty repetition is custom-made to drive you batty.
Yet that does not mean it does not ring true. Having two characters do nothing but talk for a quarter of your novel, with no other people to interrupt or interject, and still maintaining my interest? It’s a feat few can manage.
Bella’s also far spunkier than the world gives her credit for, though – she keeps running off, disobeying and contradicting Edward, coming up with plans. I expected a total doormat… And Bella’s not an active lead, God knows, but she’s not quite an inert object either. (Though I dunno if her character suffers from Motivation Decay in later books.)
The troublesome anti-feminist overtones of Edward have been rehashed in depth elsewhere, as Edward Knows What Is Best For Bella And Bella Agrees… But what I find more troubling is the way all the other characters fade into the woodwork. This is a teenaged girl’s power fantasy where the world is bent to satisfy her, no different than a boy kicking ass as Batman…
And the supporting cast just vanishes. Bella is strangely cruel to those she doesn’t care about, and it’s disturbing me more and more that this is a classic teenaged fantasy. Anyone who isn’t attractive to Bella is flat-out invisible and interchangeable, to the point where they exist only to be dropped from the plot. In other words, I’m so special that I have all of these friends begging for my attention and I don’t even NEED them. I can just discard all human interaction to be with Edward. She seems to find the concept of “regular friends” actively irritating, which is disturbing.
jenphalian thinks that this is merely a weakness in Stephenie Meyer’s writing, that she’s not that good at keeping track of many people – but no, Stephenie handles the vampires just fine. It’s the everyday folks who become literally invisible, the ordinary kids who want to hang with the cool new girl, and the subliminal message is “If they’re not useful to you, they’re to be discarded.” That’s fucking concerning.
But overall, despite the Godawful prose, I can see the potent vampire heart distinctly NOT beating at the core of Twilight. I dunno if I can get through New Moon, not with so many actually good books out there (Holly Black is calling me, and I have two novels to crit)…. But there’s an appeal.
I just wonder how much NRE I can take.
Most Iconic Guitar Solo?
I was listening to Prozzak’s “Sucks To Be You” (Spotify link) the other day, and musing how I thought it had one of the most perfectly fitting guitar solos ever. Not that I’ll defend that choice; it’s a quirky little song, and the flamenco-style solo is just weird and somehow fitting for me.
But then I thought: what’s the most iconic guitar solo of all time?
“Stairway to Heaven” came to mind instantly, but then I realized that I couldn’t bring the whole solo to mind. The end weedly bits, yes, but I think for a solo to be iconic, the whole solo has to be something so memorable you can pretty much sing along with it. So after thinking for a bit, I settled upon “Hotel California.” You might not like the song, but I think pretty much anyone who grew up in the 70s through the 90s can sing along with that sucker.
But I could be wrong. Remember, we’re not looking for the best guitar solo here, but the most iconic – as in, the guitar solo that almost everyone knows, the guitar solo that is the most legendary. I was toying with one other choice here, which to me is incredibly obvious, but I’ll see whether I get swamped with that one in the comments.
(Cue Bart Calendar’s strong opinions.)
On Tarot Cards and Good Friends
Those of you who’ve been reading me for a while know that I don’t believe much in woo-woo superstition. (I believe in God and Christ, yes, but I’m of the firm belief that you start praying only once it’s your last option – do all the prep work before you bother the Big Guy.)
The one place I do place some faith in mystic potency? Tarot cards.
I usually don’t get them read, because the few readings I have done turned out to be eerily accurate, correctly predicting the sad arrival of my first girlfriend, a breakup with the girlfriend I was with at the time, and the future of my writing, among others. Sure, it could be coincidence (or, as Alan Moore suggests, “magick as the unconscious mind finding a way to express itself”)… but I now save my tarot card readings for major, major events.
And if I had to trust my tarot card readings to anyone, it would be Miintikwa. (Which, in fact, I have.)
She’s currently finishing up a book on the tarot, and is in a situation where a little extra cash could help her. So I’m telling you that if you feel like having your tarot read, she’s done some darned good interpretations for me, she’s sensible, and her rates are quite reasonable (starting at $5 for a simple three-card draw).
As she says: “I have been reading the tarot for over 20 years. The last 10 years, I’ve been doing it professionally. I have a knack for helping people find their totem animals, and I enjoy discovering past lives with my patrons. I have also developed readings with the explicit purpose of healing and guiding people to find their highest good. I also have readings to help people find love.
“My patrons have given me a lot of great feedback, and I apply myself to finding ways to do better with every reading.”
She approaches it seriously, with sincerity and wisdom, and so if you’re considering new life paths, check her out. So sayeth the weasel.