FA+
Shop
Handling Then in the worst of Nows
9 years ago
General
Slip States
Writing for many is a purgative exercise, a way to deal with the things we love and hate in ways make some sense of the world we're living in. If you’ve read any of my stuff, you know I play with historical fiction a lot. I love hanging out with the ancients, the explorers and the bohemians. Creating 'furry' historical fiction in these settings brings these stories to a whole different level. Using sapient animals lets you handle the dark parts of history that came before us however you want. Feel compelled to explore racial, gender or class conflicts? Furry gives you metaphors for that. Want to rose-color the same chapter in history and go a direction where none of these things plague us? You can tweak that out if you want to. The parallels cut as close or far from the mark as you need to in the furry lens because we see things differently through the rodent’s eyes, no less than the elephants. Are you scared of what lurks underfoot? Or are you frightened that this great world around you will crush you without warning?
In a very real sense, we were asked us these questions last week when the free world elected that guy. I won’t say anything new about the racist, misogynist, authoritarian, exploiter of white working-class resentment at America’s helm come January. Today people we know and love are justifiably scared for their physical safety, their scarcely-improved health care, their marriages, their religious freedoms and jobs, all so this elite swindler can pass himself as the true savior of “us” versus “them.”
Being Canadian, and white, I’m obviously not in any firing line. South of the border nobody would see my bisexuality. So I laughed with everybody else at this idiot who could barely string a sentence together, listened to media lining a bubble of smug bias I didn’t know I occupied, and made it worse by amplifying what a cakewalk the US election was for Hillary on social media. And why not? Americans and Canadians live in a land where crypto-fascists don't take power (anymore) all and I’m safe from authoritarian monsters.
Until Tuesday we presumably all were.
It’s taken me several days to process the sick horror that comes with seeing Susan B. Anthony’s legacy spat on and people of color being told their marginalization should become domestic policy. This comes as a wake-up from pretensions I’ve long held without realizing them, that made screwing around with history such light, diverting fare. I could put everything bad people did in lurid technicolor on the written page because the Caligulas and Hitlers of the world are supposed to be far behind us. Or in the sense that they exist now, they are someplace else in bad parts of the world that we’re lucky not to live in. Cause we're better don't you know.
I finally started catching up on old shows and watched the first episode of The Knick a couple weeks ago. Clive Owen’s chief physician from turn of the twentieth-century New York was an openly racist bastard to Andre Holland’s African-borne Parisian-trained surgeon and this was 'okay' because it’s an accurate, embattled portrayal of the distant, horse-drawn bygones that will likely going to lead to a reckoning. After the election on Tuesday, I saw the second episode where this injustice is doubled-down on, the black surgeon sent to toil in the hospital’s basement despite his obvious competence and extensive education. Now the show that drew me in now thoroughly depresses me. It’s set 116 years ago…
Before November 8th, I could write an openly misogynistic detective into one story and a sexually abusive businessman into another without apology or having to explain their context in history because I 'knew' these were representations of people we’d never have to bend a knee to ever again. Because WE'RE progressive, WE'RE ahead of the moral curve and only getting better! Back pats all around! Certainly nobody’s stumbling across my shit and thinking “this writer gets ME with this character," but as Alex Beecroft noted in this excellent article on historical representation in fiction bombarding historical 'reality' at a reader is no virtue in and of itself. It can divorce a reader who seeks some form of escape. Or understanding. Or reflection on what came before means to people living right now. The article came out well before the election and what was great food for thought that week was a serious prognostication of the right now. We're going to have a lot of people reliving the darker parts of history outside of the pages in coming months, maybe years. Cultural, ethnic and religious representation, whether in mainstream entertainment borrowing from history like Game of Thrones or small press work coated in looser furry metaphors has the potential to help or hinder how we look at ourselves, now more than ever.
The train wreck of last week compels some sober questions as to how we deal with fictionally representing a past that is sadly more cyclical than we were willing to face. We’ve long known that people with evil, vengeful intentions were among us but we never thought they’d get the reigns of the free world while being so brazenly open about what they represent. The bigots of influence had learned to be more subtle, hiding in their shadows. Not anymore. We refused to take them seriously.
So, at the moment, I’m doubting a lot of things I take for granted in writing what I write for fun and occasional profit. Handling the past in fiction doesn’t feel like it can or should be a completely escapist outlet right now. Maybe not for a long while. Or on the other hand if it is, the villains in our stories shouldn't be given the benefit of being regarded as simply 'of their time.' We're all going to exist as minor characters in someone's history book, long down the line. Would we want the mysoginists and racists of 2016 to be regarded as just typical actors in the grand scheme?
None of the past is behind us, not really. The villains twirling their whiskers are smiling right over all our shoulders. Perhaps our writing needs to be insurgent again, definitely more compassionate, more conscious about portraying where we've come from and where we're going as a result. If the difference between fiction and reality is that fiction needs to make sense, it must now also appeal to it.
In a very real sense, we were asked us these questions last week when the free world elected that guy. I won’t say anything new about the racist, misogynist, authoritarian, exploiter of white working-class resentment at America’s helm come January. Today people we know and love are justifiably scared for their physical safety, their scarcely-improved health care, their marriages, their religious freedoms and jobs, all so this elite swindler can pass himself as the true savior of “us” versus “them.”
Being Canadian, and white, I’m obviously not in any firing line. South of the border nobody would see my bisexuality. So I laughed with everybody else at this idiot who could barely string a sentence together, listened to media lining a bubble of smug bias I didn’t know I occupied, and made it worse by amplifying what a cakewalk the US election was for Hillary on social media. And why not? Americans and Canadians live in a land where crypto-fascists don't take power (anymore) all and I’m safe from authoritarian monsters.
Until Tuesday we presumably all were.
It’s taken me several days to process the sick horror that comes with seeing Susan B. Anthony’s legacy spat on and people of color being told their marginalization should become domestic policy. This comes as a wake-up from pretensions I’ve long held without realizing them, that made screwing around with history such light, diverting fare. I could put everything bad people did in lurid technicolor on the written page because the Caligulas and Hitlers of the world are supposed to be far behind us. Or in the sense that they exist now, they are someplace else in bad parts of the world that we’re lucky not to live in. Cause we're better don't you know.
I finally started catching up on old shows and watched the first episode of The Knick a couple weeks ago. Clive Owen’s chief physician from turn of the twentieth-century New York was an openly racist bastard to Andre Holland’s African-borne Parisian-trained surgeon and this was 'okay' because it’s an accurate, embattled portrayal of the distant, horse-drawn bygones that will likely going to lead to a reckoning. After the election on Tuesday, I saw the second episode where this injustice is doubled-down on, the black surgeon sent to toil in the hospital’s basement despite his obvious competence and extensive education. Now the show that drew me in now thoroughly depresses me. It’s set 116 years ago…
Before November 8th, I could write an openly misogynistic detective into one story and a sexually abusive businessman into another without apology or having to explain their context in history because I 'knew' these were representations of people we’d never have to bend a knee to ever again. Because WE'RE progressive, WE'RE ahead of the moral curve and only getting better! Back pats all around! Certainly nobody’s stumbling across my shit and thinking “this writer gets ME with this character," but as Alex Beecroft noted in this excellent article on historical representation in fiction bombarding historical 'reality' at a reader is no virtue in and of itself. It can divorce a reader who seeks some form of escape. Or understanding. Or reflection on what came before means to people living right now. The article came out well before the election and what was great food for thought that week was a serious prognostication of the right now. We're going to have a lot of people reliving the darker parts of history outside of the pages in coming months, maybe years. Cultural, ethnic and religious representation, whether in mainstream entertainment borrowing from history like Game of Thrones or small press work coated in looser furry metaphors has the potential to help or hinder how we look at ourselves, now more than ever.
The train wreck of last week compels some sober questions as to how we deal with fictionally representing a past that is sadly more cyclical than we were willing to face. We’ve long known that people with evil, vengeful intentions were among us but we never thought they’d get the reigns of the free world while being so brazenly open about what they represent. The bigots of influence had learned to be more subtle, hiding in their shadows. Not anymore. We refused to take them seriously.
So, at the moment, I’m doubting a lot of things I take for granted in writing what I write for fun and occasional profit. Handling the past in fiction doesn’t feel like it can or should be a completely escapist outlet right now. Maybe not for a long while. Or on the other hand if it is, the villains in our stories shouldn't be given the benefit of being regarded as simply 'of their time.' We're all going to exist as minor characters in someone's history book, long down the line. Would we want the mysoginists and racists of 2016 to be regarded as just typical actors in the grand scheme?
None of the past is behind us, not really. The villains twirling their whiskers are smiling right over all our shoulders. Perhaps our writing needs to be insurgent again, definitely more compassionate, more conscious about portraying where we've come from and where we're going as a result. If the difference between fiction and reality is that fiction needs to make sense, it must now also appeal to it.
We'll have to see. I don't consider myself an insurgent writer, but I know I go places others do not always go. There are also places I prefer not to go that others will go. What we show in the past and don't is something to be very aware of as a writer when you go back to to the past.
I don't know the answer on how we face this besides that I can keep writing the material I write that I think tells stories I hope intertwine issues with every day life. I'm always happy to beta read your pieces. If this changes what you write going forward that's not a bad thing. Writers often write pieces in response to what they've seen.
I just didn't think they had any power to bring those days back. I don't want my writing to provide any nostalgia, hence calling out what's wrong as what's wrong if I show it.