Criticizing our Fandoms
I want to start by thanking people for their contributions to the discussion on Avengers and Black Widow. While I don’t expect or want everyone to agree with me, and I didn’t agree with everything that came up in the comments, you gave me a lot to think about and helped me to refine some of my thoughts and reactions to the film.
That was a weird discussion for me. Again and again, I found myself talking about the bits of the film I found problematic. After a while, I started feeling like I was just hating on a movie I generally loved. (Overall, I’d rank it as one of the best superhero movies I’ve seen.) It started to feel uncomfortable.
I also saw responses that felt less like argument over the points I was making and more like, “HOW DARE YOU CRITICIZE JOSS WHEDON???”
I’m not surprised by this. If anything, I’m surprised there wasn’t more of it. But it led to something I feel is important. Namely, the fact that we love a story or its creator does not and should not make it immune from criticism.
I love Doctor Who. I think the show does a lot of things well, particularly in some of the matter-of-fact ways they portray race and sexual orientation. On the other hand, the season six episode “Closing Time” opens up with the tired stereotype of Craig the overwhelmed and clueless father, because as we all know, guys aren’t supposed to be able to care for an infant. That’s the woman’s job!
You could argue that this was about Craig’s character, not a broader statement about men and women and caregiving. Or you could say, “But Doctor Who is awesome Donna Noble saved the whole universe you’re crazy you’re only seeing sexism because you’re looking for it stop inventing problems that don’t exist!”
The former has the potential for discussion. The latter kills discussion and gives a free pass to any problems that crop up in the show.
It’s hard to criticize stuff we love. The cognitive dissonance can get nasty. Am I a bad person for loving something that includes sexism or racism or whatever? If I watch or read it anyway, am I excusing or even supporting those flaws?
I don’t think so … unless we choose to excuse or ignore those flaws.
Joss Whedon has done a lot of things I like and respect. He’s also made choices that leave me banging my head on my desk. Looking at this as an author, I spend a fair amount of time trying to fight things like sexism and sexual violence. That doesn’t give me a free pass, and to this day I continue to make mistakes or trip over my own sexist assumptions.
It’s easy to criticize people and things we don’t like. (Star Wars prequels, anyone?) But I think it’s equally important — probably more important — to be willing to take a critical look at the stuff we love, to accept them as perhaps awesome but also imperfect, and to talk about the warts, too.
What do you think? And how do you reconcile it when a story you love makes that kind of misstep?
See also: How to be a fan of problematic things.
Tim H
May 10, 2012 @ 12:51 pm
One of the things I firmly believe is that every human that’s ever walked this planet is massive bag of prejudice, desire, and foolishness. The job of the storyteller is to explore this fact (and inevitably reflect it).
I recently read Saladin Ahmed’s brilliant Throne of the Crescent Moon, and it reminded me of how much I loved the Horse and His Boy as a kid. So I began re-reading it only to realize that CS Lewis portrays the Calormene as buffoons, while Narnia and the North represent everything pure and good. It’s pretty much racist. So should I hate the book? I hate that part of it. But it’s also a story of forgiveness and redemption. And I love that part of it.
I’m not saying we shouldn’t judge. Just that we should have more mercy than judgment. And use stories to try to understand where we’ve been and where we’re going. And if the Hulk represents unbridled male rage, what should Whedon have done to tell that story? I think he managed it, even if it’s not pretty or fair.
David Dyer-Bennet
May 10, 2012 @ 1:16 pm
I can talk at considerable lengths about problems I see in Doc Smith and Heinlein stories. At least I have the excuse that these were written, and I first read them, a long long time ago.
Actually, there’s a point around there somewhere. It seems to me that the discussion is rather different for “current” works (certainly something brand new is one) than for much older works (there isn’t a sharp line between them of course). I don’t expect something written in the 1930s to fully match today’s progressive thinking on a lot of topics, but it’s still of some interest to observe the differences, and to note where the work was ahead or behind the thinking of the time it was written in. But when looking at a brand-new work, it is appropriate to criticize it in terms of today’s attitudes, isn’t it? (And if so, then we get to ask how much slack Avengers should get cut for having character history going back to much older times attached, plus one character who’s an actual time traveler.)
Stephen A. Watkins
May 10, 2012 @ 1:51 pm
I think that this is an important concept. I’m a fanboy of many things. But too often Fanboys as a group get hyper-defensive about the things they love. But I agree that the willingness and ability to have deep, critical discussions about the things we love, and to recognize their flaws, is a valuable thing. Something doesn’t have to be perfect to be worthy of our love and fandom. But that doesn’t mean we can’t talk about the imperfections.
Mel
May 10, 2012 @ 8:07 pm
I, too, really enjoyed the movie, but I had some of the same problems you did.
As far as the free pass for Whedon? Not a chance. I don’t bow to the cult.
Nick Carmine
May 10, 2012 @ 9:51 pm
I think most people agree that it’s important to think critically about the things we love. As fans we do this in a less highly charged way all the time when we pick over continuity, fx, which plot lines were better than others, etc. At some point we just have to suck it up and realize that a) Being inflected (mostly unintentionally) by sexism or any of the other prejudices saturating our society does indeed make the thing we love less good, and b) The thing we love can be less good than it might/should have been without being entirely despicable & unworthy of the love and attention we give it.
Lots of us are comfortable acknowledging the prejudice in an older work, seeing it as a product of its time, and still enjoying the work and getting a lot out of it. This is fine & good. It would be horrifying to jettison all the art that is morally or politically problematic, and no one is suggesting that we do so. But it isn’t and shouldn’t be a free pass. The prejudice is still there and still bad.
Avengers and Dr. Who are products of our time, and our time in many ways sucks. This doesn’t make the problematic stuff okay. It means we should both criticize the problems *and* read these texts in the context of the (still prejudiced, though not in identical ways to 50 years ago) society in which they were created. In that context, I would very much like my own Tardis, please, and the thing with Hulk and Loki totally ruled.
SF Tidbits for 5/11/12 - SF Signal – A Speculative Fiction Blog
May 11, 2012 @ 1:06 am
[…] Jim C. Hines on Criticizing our Fandoms. […]
Steve Buchheit
May 14, 2012 @ 8:14 am
When the emperor has no clothes, it really don’t matter how well they carry it off or how ripped they are, they’re still parading down the street butt-naked.
I also had the recent example of enjoying “Ready Player One” immensely. There’s quite a few things that bother me as a writer (including the perennial “gun on the mantle piece” that fails to go off by the end of the book). Doesn’t mean I still can’t enjoy the book (heck, I’m reading/listening to it a second time). But it doesn’t mean I don’t have those moments of, “wait, that doesn’t make any sense at all.”
Tabitha
May 15, 2012 @ 9:35 am
Jim, first I want to say thank you for hosting this type of conversation in an environment where people obviously had no problems expressing themselves honestly. So frequently people jump to disagree without thinking – when if they would only think first and type second they might expand their ideas.
I think it is a shame that so many people took the opportunity to tell you their reaction to your direct post about the “Avengers” – but so few people are commenting now. Now that you’ve hit the heart of the matter where you are asking for more introspection and less raw reaction.
I believe that all creative ventures should be a stepping stone. They should provide us with a viewpoint (it doesn’t matter if we agree or not) and it is our job as the consumer or the audience or even the fan to take that view and talk about it. Especially to talk to people of the younger generations. We cannot step into a utopian society overnight – but we can make progress toward equality one generation at a time. It is for us to use our creative ventures to imagine what we want that equality to look like. It is also for us to acknowledge that power comes in all shapes and sizes and just because someone is not as physically or vocally “strong” as someone else does not mean that they do not use what skills they have to manipulate the world around them just as much.
Can someone be a fan and a critic at the same time? Absolutely! I believe that the two descriptors should not be competitive – they should be two sides of the same conversation.