amanuensis1 (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
amanuensis1) wrote2006-08-07 11:34 am
amanuensis1) wrote2006-08-07 11:34 am
Muggles. Gotta live with 'em.
Whoa, are we all really that upset over that article in The Guardian about Lumos? I didn't find it negative, really; the article's written by someone who is not only NOT a fan but admits she hasn't even read the books or seen the films ("Well...some of them"). She's not a fannish type at all. She's gone into it frankly baffled by the whole concept of fans who sink into their medium so deeply. She is, to belabor the obvious, a classic mundane (which is what we called 'em before Rowling got Muggle into the OED). And she observes, and there's an air of "okay, this remains distant and odd to me," but, gosh, me, I don't expect anything else from mundanes. I thought the piece was presented with a reasonably neutral "not for me, and some of it's definitely strange to me, but, wow, there's a lot of devotion and variety here" air.
Given that the article didn't purport to be a detached record of the event, I think we got lucky that she didn't shriek "weirdoes weirdoes weirdoes!" all through it. Maybe some of you feel she did? Because she doesn't think Snape/Hermione is so much about empowering women as it is titillation? Because she thought some of the discussions/topics were lame or unfounded? Because the idea of HP bestiality got to her? Shoot, I think we got off light. And she does end on this positive note:
Given that the article didn't purport to be a detached record of the event, I think we got lucky that she didn't shriek "weirdoes weirdoes weirdoes!" all through it. Maybe some of you feel she did? Because she doesn't think Snape/Hermione is so much about empowering women as it is titillation? Because she thought some of the discussions/topics were lame or unfounded? Because the idea of HP bestiality got to her? Shoot, I think we got off light. And she does end on this positive note:
It's all amazing. And seeing anybody, let alone 1,200 people enthused with joy about anything is really quite uplifting. And not just anything. Books! It makes my girlish, swotty heart swell with pride.Maybe that wasn't enough for fan readers. Perhaps a lot of you feel you've had enough of this kind of "not for me, but, whatever floats your boat" editorializing. Maybe in the same way I don't exactly want to see more films like Brokeback Mountain but rather am waiting for the gay James Bond to unapologetically flaunt the queer all over the screen.
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One of the things that bothered me about this article that no one has really touched on is the fact that this wasn't an American paper but a British one. American culture is different from British, we react differently to different things. Reading the article made me feel as though she came "across the pond" to poke fun at American pseudo-intellectuals in a forum where they would have little recourse.
How many of us have read a hard copy of the article? If it weren't for the Internet how many of us would've known what she had written it?
I've been dressing up on weekends for fun since I was little. (My whole family, including grandparents were really into the Bicentennial celebration in the mid 1970s.) I've done Rev War, Buckskinning, Civ War, SCA, and Sci-Fi Cons at various times over the last 30 years. I've seen various media representations of all of the above and I found the abovementioned article to be one of the worst.
Instead of trying to learn something, she poked fun. Her article reminded me of the "popular girls" that used to torment me in grade school for being smarter and more imaginative than they were. Since it was in a forum that few of the attendees would ever read in hard copy, who cared if a bunch of middle-aged, disaffected, American housewives were teased.
It's one thing when it's good natured teasing but I, at least, felt there were some very nasty undercurrents in the article, that struck a very sour note with me.
I'm not going to say fandom of any stripe isn't weird. I've been in enough to know that each fandoms have their own weirdnesses and some are weirder than others. But what I've found and why I've stayed past the point of what brought me to begin with is the acceptance.
Fandom in all stripes is one of the most accepting places I've ever been priveledged to be. As long as you share a similar interest, we don't really care about your ethnicity, religion, gender, physical abilities, or sexual orientation. She didn't care to look at that side. All she wanted to do was show off the American geekettes so her readers could snicker behind our backs and that disgusts me.
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