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I’ve just finished reading Candy Tan and Sarah Wendell’s Beyond Heaving Bosoms: The Smart Bitches’ Guide to Romance Novels, which is an affectionate, insightful, and hilarious lambasting of a genre that both authors love. I think it’s worth reading purely for the funny, although its capsule history of the romance genre (and brief romp through romance subgenres) are interesting for their own sakes, even though I would have enjoyed a more detailed section about subgenres in particular.
However, they briefly hit on a pet peeve of mine. The book is quite worth reading otherwise, but I just had to share.
Specifically, Tan and Wendell argue that the romance genre is inherently revolutionary, which is a move that slash fandom has made me wary of. I think in both cases there’s a kernel of truth to this argument: het romance and slash are both largely genres by women, for women, and there is something revolutionary about any marginalized group making a space where its voice is dominant.
But I think people who buy into this argument often go far beyond this kernel of truth and believe that their genre either is or ought to be revolutionary about everything. On the one hand, I am all in favor of self-improvement projects, and I think there’s a lot of pleasure (leaving aside, for the moment, the social justice benefits) to be gained from, for instance, watching/reading/playing more diverse source materials and striving to connect with a more diverse range of characters.
But on the other hand, the idea that a genre is justified by its inherently revolutionary nature leads to the embarrassing spectacle of fans twisting themselves into intellectual pretzels trying to rationalize that X, Y, or Z seemingly non-revolutionary (and note I say non-revolutionary, not anti-revolutionary) trope or pairing or whatever is actually totally revolutionary. As if that were the only possible excuse for liking something. Because we need excuses to like what we like.
And honestly, I’m sick of arguing about whether such-and-such a thing is revolutionary. It’s such a reductive question. Is Jane Eyre revolutionary because of the primacy it gives to Jane’s voice and her passion and her desires, to the extent that its forthrightness shocked many contemporaries? Is it anti-revolutionary because it channels those things into a marriage to Rochester (or because of its treatment of Rochester’s first wife Bertha)?
Of course the question is unanswerable. The book is both things at once, and a lot of other things as well. Most art is like that. If we could boil it down to one word, what would be the point?
However, they briefly hit on a pet peeve of mine. The book is quite worth reading otherwise, but I just had to share.
Specifically, Tan and Wendell argue that the romance genre is inherently revolutionary, which is a move that slash fandom has made me wary of. I think in both cases there’s a kernel of truth to this argument: het romance and slash are both largely genres by women, for women, and there is something revolutionary about any marginalized group making a space where its voice is dominant.
But I think people who buy into this argument often go far beyond this kernel of truth and believe that their genre either is or ought to be revolutionary about everything. On the one hand, I am all in favor of self-improvement projects, and I think there’s a lot of pleasure (leaving aside, for the moment, the social justice benefits) to be gained from, for instance, watching/reading/playing more diverse source materials and striving to connect with a more diverse range of characters.
But on the other hand, the idea that a genre is justified by its inherently revolutionary nature leads to the embarrassing spectacle of fans twisting themselves into intellectual pretzels trying to rationalize that X, Y, or Z seemingly non-revolutionary (and note I say non-revolutionary, not anti-revolutionary) trope or pairing or whatever is actually totally revolutionary. As if that were the only possible excuse for liking something. Because we need excuses to like what we like.
And honestly, I’m sick of arguing about whether such-and-such a thing is revolutionary. It’s such a reductive question. Is Jane Eyre revolutionary because of the primacy it gives to Jane’s voice and her passion and her desires, to the extent that its forthrightness shocked many contemporaries? Is it anti-revolutionary because it channels those things into a marriage to Rochester (or because of its treatment of Rochester’s first wife Bertha)?
Of course the question is unanswerable. The book is both things at once, and a lot of other things as well. Most art is like that. If we could boil it down to one word, what would be the point?
