Violence! Rape! Agency! The rapiness that comes before

[Datepalm]

legal teeth or some other institutional custodial capacity to restrict, limit or decrease publication of information.

Well, you and I don't have that capacity, ( or very little of it at least, in some sort of idealized capitalist consumer protest (non)sense) but arguably the publishers do. I don't quite see it stretching to something as nuanced as the shade of reader identification with a tertiary character, but I am thinking about things like whitewashed covers, etc.

[Shryke]

legal teeth or some other institutional custodial capacity to restrict, limit or decrease publication of information. critique that incorporates and furthers awareness of a novel, say, propagates, reproduces, and increases publication of the original information and adds new information to the mass of publications.

the suggestion that critique is similar to censorship is therefore manifestly orwellian.

Limiting censorship only to legal or institutional practices is rather selling it short

[Lord O' Bones]

For the love of fuck. Spoiler tags. God knows I'm guilty of it myself.

Pro-tip: If you demand a spoiler tag, spoiler the post you quoted.

[Grack21]

Pro-tip: If you demand a spoiler tag, spoiler the post you quoted.

Oh shit.

[Lyanna Stark]

Excellent title kalbear.

What I was ham-fistedly trying to investigate was that fantasy stalwart of the promised couple, you know the hidden prince with his promised princess, who are forced together by prophecy and strike bitchy sparks from each other until the tinder of lurve takes light. They often turn out to be perfect affairs and so I wanted to look at the opposite possibility, as I did with some other things in these books, as it seemed to me that arranged political marriages might just as easily be extremely unpleasant affairs. I’m slightly uncomfortable with having to have a 'reason' for a given character to be gay, but in this case the thinking was that if the promised princess is a lesbian then this particular promised couple can never, ever work out to be the glorious romantic union of myth.

Oh, I am gleeful. Does this mean that by understanding what the author's intent was, I am no longer metaphysically inferior and do not need to bow to the NO-GOD?

If this is true, that part of the reason for the apparent prevalence now is that it's a new toy that authors get to play with, then will we, in 10 or 20 years' time, see less of it in the genre?

Who knows? We might get a backlash and see more stuff like courtly love, but I'm doubtful. Chaste sparkly vampires and reflective lute playing just don't have anything on violence, sex and gore since humans crave drama and excitement. It should also be noted that the general public only recently caught up with Tolkien (the movie releases = where people like my sister realised that Middle Earth was a rather nice place to visit, even for non geeks) and cheap ripoffs like Eragon are hitting the shelves. It will probably be another decade at least before we have extracted ourselves from this second (or is it third?) wave of Tolkien idolising.

[Grack21]

Eh, Lyanna, do you even know who Joe Abercrombie IS?

[Happy Ent]

Does this mean that by understanding what the author's intent was, I am no longer metaphysically inferior and do not need to bow to the NO-GOD?

The No-God is your salvation, mortal. The tyranny of your inferiority is authored by the Hundred, by the God to whom you abase yourself.

Fault, blame, meaning: our Holy Consult promises the end of those things.

Edit: Diaeresis added.

[Kalbear]

Not a lot of time, but: Veronica Mars is a very good subversion of a lot of the tropes and is just awesome writing in general. It's very good.

On Tyrion/Tysha: the biggest issue I have with it is that Tysha's rape serves as a way to define Tyrion, but it doesn't actually do anything about her. She's a prop. It's a cheap stunt and it's a very common way to ploy sensitivity onto a male character by virtue of showing how much they have suffered because of their lover's horrible plot, blah blah blah. It's cheap, it's exploitative and it's all super rapey. If you want that whole thing to be even more grimdark, you can just have Tyrion be forced to kill Tysha. Or you could just...not. This has similar explanations in plot and story to other fantasy stuff - GRRM was exploring what it really meant in caste back then, how if you were on the bottom rung things just sucked ass and it was dangerous to mingle with the upper rungs, etc, but it's also about Tyrion being made edgier and more sympathetic by raping someone else.

GRRM goes for a lot of rape though. It's just there. At least as often as everyone is raped or threatened with rape or expects rape it doesn't make everyone victims and prey, which is somewhat refreshing; too often you get the whole notion that rape is the worst possible thing that could ever happen to anyone ever or if you get raped, you turn Dark and Edgy and Vengeful. When a lot of times rape victims just...move on.

[Horza]

Eh, Lyanna, do you even know who Joe Abercrombie IS?

Of course she does, Joe Abercrombie is the pen name of the popular Sci-Fi writer T. Covenant Bakker, better known as the author of the Malazan Book of the Fallen.

[Datepalm]

Limiting censorship only to legal or institutional practices is rather selling it short

No, it's not. Censorship requires enforcement, and even calls for censorship require that the desire for enforcement be present there. Given that we don't, infact, have the capacity to tell an author what to write*, it makes no difference, except one of quality and tone of rhetoric, whether I phrase my opinions about something as -

"It is my entirely personal opinion born of the complex and unique interaction between the sentient being that is me and this here text that I did not enjoy this book very much. This is due to my accumulated life experiences, ideology and personality causing me to find the graphic portrayal of the flogging of a horse to death, used as a source of levity and humor, unpleasant."

or

"Fuck, not again with the pointless killing animals so a book feels all 'gritty' without having to actually write well. Ugh, they really should stop writing that fucking shit."

...given that I at least am not calling on even the most loathsome books to be un-written or written differently in so much as single comma.

But, like Solo said, the conflation of the two - pretending that by saying 'I don't want to read this crap anymore,' i'm actually saying 'I want this crap censored, burned, gun totting thugs to pull the author out of bed at night and tell him what to write, etc' you're actively trying to stifle and delegitimize my ability to say anything at all.

*outside our slight effect as consumers and generators of internet furor. I think this is at most a side effect of the purposes of the debate here though, which is to talk about stuff for fun and righteous fury. (At least, thats what I do here. What joy you manage to derive from these exchanges remain a mystery to me. :) )

[mormont]

Limiting censorship only to legal or institutional practices is rather selling it short

Erm, no. This is what censorship actually means.

'Slippery slope' arguments rely on showing that there is no clear obstacle stopping a slide from the top to the bottom. Contrarius' attempt at constructing one here is fatally flawed because he himself points out that there is such an obstacle in this case:

3. B. Do we have the power to make the author change his work?

In the case of posters on a literary message board, obviously we don't have this power.

Anything he writes after this point is sadly irrelevant to the 'slippery slope' argument, whatever its other merits. Rhetorically speaking, he just killed it himself.

It's hard for me to see how 'censorship' can possibly be defined to include anything short of the power to make an author change his work - or how that power can be defined in any way other than 'legal or institutional'. An editor has the institutional power to make an author change his work. A government has the legal power. A book chain might have the institutional power, through refusing to stock the book. What other form of power can enforce censorship?

[Lyanna Stark]

Eh, Lyanna, do you even know who Joe Abercrombie IS?

Yeah he is this dude who writes books about Highland Sheiks? No?

Damn, foiled again!

*outside our slight effect as consumers and generators of internet furor. I think this is at most a side effect of the purposes of the debate here though, which is to talk about stuff for fun and righteous fury. (At least, thats what I do here. What joy you manage to derive from these exchanges remain a mystery to me. :) )

What is the "real" effect of said internet furor anyway? Apart from Anonymous, it seems that in general, internet furor remains on the internet and doesn't actually spread very far. (If it did, surely all the scorching vitriol we've spewed on stuff like Twilight and the Yeard would mean no more of that type of novel would ever be sold or even looked at again.)

[Galactus]

Limiting censorship only to legal or institutional practices is rather selling it short

It's actually even more strict than that: Censorship is having someone (a censor) going through a work *before publication* and making cuts/judgements/alterations. Eg. fining or throwing someone in prison for something they've already published is technically not censorship.

[Datepalm]

What is the "real" effect of said internet furor anyway? Apart from Anonymous, it seems that in general, internet furor remains on the internet and doesn't actually spread very far. (If it did, surely all the scorching vitriol we've spewed on stuff like Twilight and the Yeard would mean no more of that type of novel would ever be sold or even looked at again.)

I'm thinking there have been a few cases where fan outcry has gotten stuff like covers changed and that sort of thing? Ie, marketing decisions with racist assumptions, rather than any effect on the actual work of the author.

[Richard]

Ugh - sorry about that - 'll teach me to cut and paste from Pages

Limiting censorship only to legal or institutional practices is rather selling it short

Quite. And it's disingenuous too.

Exhibit A - the fatwa against The Satanic Verses had no legal standing whatsoever anywhere outside Iran; even within the Islamic world, it was widely deplored by legal and religious authorities. Forty eight out of forty nine Islamic nations refused to endorse it. Nonetheless, it was a massively powerful piece of cultural censorship, to which, to its eternal shame, the British left kowtowed. It ushered in the obnoxious doctrine that writers should not offend, a stench that still hangs around the literary world today.

Exhibit B - it is almost impossible to find a mainstream Hollywood movie in which a black man has (consensual) sex with a white woman. There is no legal or institutional force behind this - simply the understanding that portraying such an act would be "box office poison", which leads in turn to super-effective self-censorship.

Exhibit C - also regarding Hollywood, the renowned "Bechdel test" (see B above).

Disliking or critiqueing an author's work is a perfectly normal and healthy function of art and society. Believing that an author can be told what they should or should not write (or have written) is a potentially lethal cultural toxin.

Knowing the difference is wisdom.

[mormont]

Exhibit A - the fatwa against The Satanic Verses had no legal standing whatsoever anywhere outside Iran; even within the Islamic world, it was widely deplored by legal and religious authorities. Forty eight out of forty nine Islamic nations refused to endorse it. Nonetheless, it was a massively powerful piece of cultural censorship, to which, to its eternal shame, the British left kowtowed. It ushered in the obnoxious doctrine that writers should not offend, a stench that still hangs around the literary world today.

The fatwa against The Satanic Verses was indeed deplorable and awful, but did it in fact succeed in 'censoring' the work? Factually, I'd say the answer is 'no'. You can buy the book freely almost anywhere in the world, including many Muslim countries, and in fact it can be easily argued that it has remained in print for twenty-three years precisely because of the fatwa. There's no way it would still be in print without the interest that generated. (Not that I'm suggesting the fatwa was a good thing.)

Although, to be fair, your claim appears to be that it actually censored hypothetical other works that weren't ever written for fear of causing offence, which is (of course) an unprovable claim- but not, I think, a particularly credible one if one takes a brief look at the actual output of the 'literary world today'. It's really not hard to find books that are, if anything, more radical than The Satanic Verses.

Exhibit B - it is almost impossible to find a mainstream Hollywood movie in which a black man has (consensual) sex with a white woman. There is no legal or institutional force behind this - simply the understanding that portraying such an act would be "box office poison", which leads in turn to super-effective self-censorship.

This is a fair point, but it remains that case that if a studio wanted to release such a film, they could. They would not be censored. Really, what you're talking about here is commercialisation and timidity, rather than censorship. And it can hardly come as news that commercial studios selling lowest-common-denominator movies are excessively timid.

(Plus, in order for this to happen you'd have to have more leading-male black actors, which is IMO a more serious deficiency and probably explains a lot of this particular lack.)

Disliking or critiqueing an author's work is a perfectly normal and healthy function of art and society. Believing that an author can be told what they should or should not write (or have written) is a potentially lethal cultural toxin.

Easy to say, but where exactly are you drawing the dividing line between these two things? If I say that I didn't like the treatment of women in 'The Darkness That Comes Before', am I telling you what to write or just critiquing you?

[Chaldanya]

Exhibit C - also regarding Hollywood, the renowned "Bechdel test" (see B above).

I must confess that I'm confused by your reasoning here. Do you mean that a movie that doesn't pass the Bechdel test sinks without a trace (so laughably untrue). Or. Do you mean that Hollywood shouldn't even consider the Bechdel test at all when making movies (most of the time it doesn't anyway).

N

[Datepalm]

The fatwa against The Satanic Verses was indeed deplorable and awful, but did it in fact succeed in 'censoring' the work?

I think it could legitimately be regarded as a call for censorship. Whoever issued it did indeed want that book to not be written or read, by anyone, ever, and wanted this enforced by legal mechanism. (Nevermind talked about or critiqued.) This is not what we're doing here. I might wish there were less books about raped lesbians out there, but I don't want the choice to read about them removed. I want people to maybe make different choices, and have different choices available to them - I achieve this by, like, talking about how much I think endless portrayals of raped lesbians are harmful or bad writing or whatever. Say, in threads like this.

This is a fair point, but it remains that case that if a studio wanted to release such a film, they could. They would not be censored. Really, what you're talking about here is commercialisation and timidity, rather than censorship. And it can hardly come as news that commercial studios selling lowest-common-denominator movies are excessively timid.

I think that that is exactly the studios participating in the non-censory critiqueness with us. (In a massively unbalanced way. Whether its so unbalanced as to render their influence genuinely censorial...well, i'm already a commie. In any case, this thread, this mode of criticism, (which is what this debate is about), is anyway of the side of Orwells angels as the powerless party.)

They'll 'argue' -by making movies - that there should be no Black leads because....(doesn't sell, not necessary, no good actors, colorblindness, thats reality, etc, etc...) and we'll argue back - by seeing or not a given movie, and bitching about it on the internet - that there should be Black leads becuase...(perpetuates invisibility of minorities, racist against black actors, doesn't reflect viewing public/society, is boring to watch only white people, we're missing out on eye candy, etc, etc...)

The Studio/author/publisher choosing to self censor (or not self censor and let it all hang out, in some instances. To create the things that they create, essentially) is akin to my choosing to not read/watch. Or, subsequent to reading/watching, to not like.

They can say what they like, (no miscegenation in the movies! No black people on the covers! All women in work to be sex workers!) and I can say what I like. (Fuck that!)

[Lyanna Stark]

Exhibit B - it is almost impossible to find a mainstream Hollywood movie in which a black man has (consensual) sex with a white woman. There is no legal or institutional force behind this - simply the understanding that portraying such an act would be "box office poison", which leads in turn to super-effective self-censorship.

Dunno if they actually shag (prolly not), but Hancock has a relationship of this kind, no? And I rarely, if EVER watch Hollywood movies unless it's under duress, so sorry if I am hazy on the details.

Easy to say, but where exactly are you drawing the dividing line between these two things? If I say that I didn't like the treatment of women in 'The Darkness That Comes Before', am I telling you what to write or just critiquing you?

If you say that about tDtCB you are just in need of seeing the light and possibly also metaphysically inferior. :P

Really though, some comments in these threads have been rather close to "This sort of thing should not be written!", but it's really been on the right side of criticism vs calls for censorship, I think. Note that "calls for censorship" isn't the same as actual power to censor stuff.

Re Tyrion and Tysha:

My main concern about this is what it's meant to lead to for the plot, or alternatively what it is meant to lead to for Tyrion's character. A repentant arc? Some sort of self acceptance? Eternal brooding and self-loathing? (I guess for the latter, at least he is not an elf or a vampire.) At present, it's just a lament that keeps going on with no resolution an no forward momentum except for the brooding, the self-loathing and woeful comments. I fully expect Tyrion of the next installment to have to excuse himself mid-dialogue with "Sorry, need to have a small break for some urgent brooding."

[sologdin]

Exhibit B - it is almost impossible to find a mainstream Hollywood movie in which a black man has (consensual) sex with a white woman. There is no legal or institutional force behind this - simply the understanding that portraying such an act would be "box office poison", which leads in turn to super-effective self-censorship

actual or perceived market mechanism. consistent with my prior, i'd include the production/distribution decision-making processes of cartel managers as "institutional custodial capacity to restrict" these types of publications. it matters little to me what the reason behind the restriction happens to be--whether it's the state restricting the publication of specific dissident writings or the cartel managers restricting publication based on likely return on investment.

rship is having someone (a censor) going through a work *before publication* and making cuts/judgements/alterations.

this is the more reasonable objection to my definition. my initial response is to limit the concept to its roman significance. we might quibble about whethet prior restraint exhausts the meaning of censorship, but agreed that it's the principal means of restricting publication.

i like mr. blackstone's statement on this, which lays it out nicely enough in terms that we've been discussing:

And therefore, in fuch profecutions, the only facts to be confidered are, firft, the making or publifhing of the book or writing; and fecondly, whether the matter be criminal: and, if both thefe points are againft the defendant, the offence againft the public is complete. The punifhment of fuch libellers, for either making, repeating, printing, or publifhing the libel, is fine, and fuch corporal punifhment as the court in their difcretion fhall inflict; regarding the quantity of the offence, and the quality of the offender ^x. By the law of the twelve tables at Rome, libels, which affected the reputation of another, were made a capital offence: but, before the reign of Auguftus, the punifhment became corporal only ^y. Under the emperor Valentinian ^z it was again made capital, not only to write, but to publifh, or even to omit deftroying them. Our law, in this and many other refpects, correfponds rather with the middle age of Roman jurifprudence, when liberty, learning, and humanity, were in their full vigour, than with the cruel edicts that were eftablifhed in the dark and tyrannical ages of the antient decemviri, or the later emperors.

IN this, and the other inftances which we have lately confidered, where blafphemous, immoral, treafonable, fchifmatical, feditious, or fcandalous libels are punifhed by the Englifh law, fome with a greater, others with a lefs degree of feverity; the liberty of the prefs, properly underftood, is by no means infringed or violated. The liberty of the prefs is indeed effential to the nature of a free ftate: but this confifts in laying no previous reftraints upon publications, and not in freedom from cenfure for criminal matter when publifhed. Every freeman has an undoubted right to lay what fentiments the pleafes before the public: to forbid this, is to deftroy the freedom of the prefs: but if he publifhes what is improper, mifchievous, or illegal, he muft take the confequence of his own temerity. To fubject the prefs to the reftrictive power of a licenfer, as was formerly done, both before and fince the revolution ^a, is to fubject all freedom of fentiment to the prejudices of one man, and make him the arbitrary and infallible judge of all controverted points in learning, religion, and government. But to punifh (as the law does at prefent) any dangerous or offenfive writings, which, when publifhed, fhall on a fair and impartial trial be adjudged of a pernicious tendency, is neceffary for the prefervation of peace and god order, of government and religion, the only folid foundations of civil liberty. Thus the will of individuals is ftill left free; the abufe only of that free will hereby laid upon freedom, of thought or enquiry: liberty of private fentiment is ftill left; the diffeminating, or making public, of bad fentiments, deftructive of the ends of fociety, is the crime which fociety corrects. A man (fays a fine writer on this fubject) may be allowed to keep poifons in his clofet, but not publicly to vend them as cordials. And to this we may add, that the only plaufible argument heretofore ufed for reftraining the juft freedom of the prefs, “that it was neceffary “to prevent the daily abufe of it,” will entirely lofe it's force, when it is fhewn (by a feafonable exertion of the law) that the prefs cannot be abufed to any bad purpofe, without incurring a fuitable punifhment: whereas it never can be ufed to any good one, when under the control of an infpector. So true will it be found, that to cenfure the licentioufnefs, is to maintain the liberty, of the prefs.

Blackstone, Commentaries IV.11.13