Black Mirror, and a rant on body image
Oct. 18th, 2008 11:25 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
osprey_archerI need a project. I haven’t written anything (aside from school papers, which don’t count) since the Wonderfalls story, and my mind is as foggy and gray and claustrophobic as a particularly bad episode of Law & Order: SVU.
I should eat more fruit. Sometimes that helps.
Anyway, if you want for me to write anything this is the time to ask. I’m thinking of resurrecting the Rubinyan/Taybur/Imajane fic or possibly attempting something Pushing Daisies; or more Torchwood is always fun.
***
I’ve been reading Nancy Werlin books recently, which probably doesn’t help with the claustrophobic thing—her main characters are intense and lonely and angry and strangely compelling with it.
Sometimes. Some of her books I love, like Locked Inside, but some not so much. Are You Alone on Purpose? is useless except that its title is essentially a thematic statement for the rest of her books, but it’s the first thing she published so I’ll cut some slack.
But Black Mirror—oh, how I despise Black Mirror.
Black Mirror is better written than Are You Alone on Purpose?, which isn’t a good thing when the main character, Frances Levanthal, is such a loathsome person—Frances is a well-delineated loathsome person, unique and memorable in all her angry, egocentric glory.
Of course, Marnie Skyedottir from Locked Inside is also angry and egocentric, but she’s also clever and capable of compassion, although she expresses it badly. Frances Levanthal is a sucking black hole of hatred toward the world.
She also spends and incredible amount of time having Issues with her appearance (which Marnie never does), and okay, I realize that this is something that many people find interesting to read about and the fact that I’m not one of them does not make this a bad book.
What makes this a bad book is that Frances’s Issues are all solved by the realization that, far from being ugly, she’s a pretty girl with a nice figure. This is the resolution to the problem of Ugly in so many books and movies and TV shows, and I despise it beyond reckoning because its constant repetition says, essentially, Yes, being ugly is an unspeakable fate. It’s so terrible we don’t dare inflict it on any of our characters, because of course ugly people never live decent lives.
I especially hate this “solution” when it’s coupled with a platitude about how inner beauty, or beauty being in the eye of the beholder so everyone is beautiful really, because if the author or producer or whoever really believed that, the main character would have been left fat and acne-spotted. Moreover, the idea that everyone is beautiful isn’t true—anymore than the idea that everyone is smart or athletic or God knows what is true—and everyone knows it isn’t true, but instead of admitting it and attempting to get over appearance issues honestly the world just goes on about “loving your body.”
Hello? Self-acceptance does not need to equal self-adulation. No one insists that you should love your inability to sing or do algebra or run marathons in order to be a whole and complete person, but your body, that you must adore. “Love your body” doesn’t help girls get over their appearance woes, it just adds another level of angst. Not only can girls hate their acne and their freckles and the breasts and et cetera, but they get to feel GUILTY for not adoring every single iota of their appearance.
But Locked Inside is a really good book. Really it is. It’s just so much HARDER to write good reviews.
I should eat more fruit. Sometimes that helps.
Anyway, if you want for me to write anything this is the time to ask. I’m thinking of resurrecting the Rubinyan/Taybur/Imajane fic or possibly attempting something Pushing Daisies; or more Torchwood is always fun.
***
I’ve been reading Nancy Werlin books recently, which probably doesn’t help with the claustrophobic thing—her main characters are intense and lonely and angry and strangely compelling with it.
Sometimes. Some of her books I love, like Locked Inside, but some not so much. Are You Alone on Purpose? is useless except that its title is essentially a thematic statement for the rest of her books, but it’s the first thing she published so I’ll cut some slack.
But Black Mirror—oh, how I despise Black Mirror.
Black Mirror is better written than Are You Alone on Purpose?, which isn’t a good thing when the main character, Frances Levanthal, is such a loathsome person—Frances is a well-delineated loathsome person, unique and memorable in all her angry, egocentric glory.
Of course, Marnie Skyedottir from Locked Inside is also angry and egocentric, but she’s also clever and capable of compassion, although she expresses it badly. Frances Levanthal is a sucking black hole of hatred toward the world.
She also spends and incredible amount of time having Issues with her appearance (which Marnie never does), and okay, I realize that this is something that many people find interesting to read about and the fact that I’m not one of them does not make this a bad book.
What makes this a bad book is that Frances’s Issues are all solved by the realization that, far from being ugly, she’s a pretty girl with a nice figure. This is the resolution to the problem of Ugly in so many books and movies and TV shows, and I despise it beyond reckoning because its constant repetition says, essentially, Yes, being ugly is an unspeakable fate. It’s so terrible we don’t dare inflict it on any of our characters, because of course ugly people never live decent lives.
I especially hate this “solution” when it’s coupled with a platitude about how inner beauty, or beauty being in the eye of the beholder so everyone is beautiful really, because if the author or producer or whoever really believed that, the main character would have been left fat and acne-spotted. Moreover, the idea that everyone is beautiful isn’t true—anymore than the idea that everyone is smart or athletic or God knows what is true—and everyone knows it isn’t true, but instead of admitting it and attempting to get over appearance issues honestly the world just goes on about “loving your body.”
Hello? Self-acceptance does not need to equal self-adulation. No one insists that you should love your inability to sing or do algebra or run marathons in order to be a whole and complete person, but your body, that you must adore. “Love your body” doesn’t help girls get over their appearance woes, it just adds another level of angst. Not only can girls hate their acne and their freckles and the breasts and et cetera, but they get to feel GUILTY for not adoring every single iota of their appearance.
But Locked Inside is a really good book. Really it is. It’s just so much HARDER to write good reviews.
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no subject
Date: 2008-10-18 05:16 pm (UTC)Actually, because of the way the show is presented, which is very vested in the visual medium (how's my alliteration?), I find that Pushing Daisies fic tends to vary a bit more in style than usual fic. It'd be interesting to see what you come do!
no subject
Date: 2008-10-19 05:34 pm (UTC)