not the best strategy for productive engagement.

I’m sorry then, because nothing was meant to be insulting in any way. I’m not aware of any Southern Vampire Mystery contention and wasn’t meaning to use it. I saw the thread and was interested by the nature of some of the commentary itself, so, since it seemed to be a replying sort of place, I commented on some of the topics brought up above. I’m apologetic if it was taken in a different spirit. I usually keep a number of thoughts to a single commentary post, so they are often long, and I’m often dry when laying out ideas, but I didn’t expect it would be a problem. Again, not intentional.

I’ll just add something about this:

The thought about “dragging fiction into reality” wasn’t a comment aimed at anyone here, it was actually a comment in direct agreement to both your 911 observation and Robin’s argument above. I meant that sometimes an argument, however well thought out and interesting, is not completely appropriate to the context. That doesn’t — to partially answer Milena — invalidate the speaker’s thoughts. We might be relating our thoughts to a large well of established fact, and maybe what informs our words is valid, but that doesn’t mean that everything that we think about is totally appropriate and well seated within the context all of the time. For example, my anger over the mistreatment of a neighbor’s pet doesn’t mean I should then be angry with my local ASPCA, although my anger, and the reasoning behind it, might be valid. It’s about decontextualizing something to fit a need, which is very often a non-beneficial thing.

I agree with Milena that a person’s reaction to a work of art — any reaction — is valid. That’s not the issue. Their reaction is valid for them, but perhaps not for everyone else. In my opinion, that’s an important thing to take into account when writing a paper. That’s the difficulty with artistic critique as a whole when you specialize in an area other than direct application or presentation critique, either by avocation or occupation, and why I think the application and skill of creative writing, or any other kind of work, needs to be recognized as separate from both its appreciation and the reaction to it from a societal point of view, which again are likewise different topics. In my personal opinion, that’s why there are academic papers for art history and literature, but not exactly the same sort of work done on, say, a painting itself as an object. There can’t be. Once you put the same art in the context of its history, however, taking into account the society, artist, and audience, you can respond to it with more precision. A painting itself can be responded to and discussed, and people write critiques and very thoughtful studies on what the painting meant to them, what it could mean, or how it’s taken as a whole within its setting, but these aren’t the same sort of discussions as one exploring African identity as uniquely expressed through a specific multi-media trend, and, no matter how great critic A’s take on painting B is, if the painter disagrees, the painter’s creation isn’t erased simply because someone else had a related thought. I also feel that these distinctions are of particular importance in pop culture studies.

Building on that and the first of Milena’s responses, I’ll come up with examples that I think might be more directly appropriate: Regarding “[...] this would mean that, if a book is not intentionally about racism, it couldn’t be racist” — that’s not exactly what I’m going for, either. Both Robin and I touched on this above, and I’m guessing you guys have spoken about this a lot yourselves, so briefly, in this above book series in particular for instance, racism is particularly and intentionally discussed, but in an allegorical and metaphorical way. It’s completely valid to talk about racism in relation to such a book, and I’m sure the author is expecting it, but to take the subject out of the book’s context is weakening the intended argument. So why do it? My discussion of one segment of rural Louisiana society versus another against the setting of a real place and space is informed by a totally different context — the real history of that town and its people — and that’s one argument. My discussion about something like the meaning of the soul after being inspired by a book that talks about human nature is another argument, although it’s inspired by and not directly related to the literal events in the book itself. That needs to be clarified so the discussion can continue without getting off track. So, similarly, if I was to discuss the theme of the other, or of race, or of patriarchal hegemony, as inspired by the writings of [author], I would be on firmer footing, but that footing weakens when I propose a story is racist because it had a lack of physical description of one type or another, or didn’t take place within a certain cultural setting that I might have personally found preferable, or even, perhaps, used a word or imagery that, at the time and place of the creation, didn’t carry the same connotations as what the reader out of time and place would have it say.

However … I can and may argue that a society producing the audience or writer of a said work is racist because of the way in which the work is put forth and/or accepted. Totally different paper, though. In cases where these arguments point to a freestanding work, I feel they sometimes run the boundaries of ethical taste … especially when the work is too recent to have full objective taking, but in the context of a certain society, if you have enough material, you can make a strong enough argument. That’s a tough one to pull off, and when it happens, its not the literature that’s taking the front seat but the sociology and anthropology, and the art and culture is working as part of your reference.

And again, I find this insistence of “historical interpretation” of vampires to be, at the very least, beside the point. The first “historical vampires” were, in fact, completely different from almost any literary interpretation

Of course. Although in my case, that bullet point was aside from a larger point and only added in to comment on Jessica’s own notated aside, although her note was made so long ago the subject has probably come up for her by now. Not sure what in that back and forth constitutes an insistence on historical interpretation, although maybe you’re referring to something else you guys have argued about and I wouldn’t know.

Yet, at the time when the idea of the vampire as a figure started spreading throughout Europe and producing literary vampires, they were practically immediately transformed from bloated, ugly corpses that haunt their loved ones into the seductive, pale, blood-drinking creatures that eventually evolved into what we “know” today .

This is its own subject, but what we modernly recognize as the “literary” vampire spread the idea of the same, rather than the other way around (if I am reading that correctly), and then that figure grew and morphed as popular culture was informed upon again by other fiction writers of the romantic era on. The creation that informed the modern vampire figure was a satire of bourgeois society’s envies, fears, and desires, and high society’s mores, failures, and attitudes. That’s pretty well established as part of the history of the Romantic movement — tied to the Industrial Revolution, etc. — and although comparison of historical interpretations is sometimes awkwardly placed within a particular literary critique (depending on, like I said above, the context), comparative studies are totally well worth it and certainly relevant. The study of a culture’s mythology is always considered alongside its artistic and psychological development. So, to say the topics are always removed from one another, well, I’m not so sure I agree with that, but, yes, again, that’s another topic.

@Miriva: Basically, you’re saying the PC police are running amok? I’m honestly not being funny, but that’s what I get from I think what you’re saying. Please feel free to correct me.

Heheh, well … Sometimes it happens, but sometimes the decontextualizing and misplacement of arguments is due to something else. It all depends. That wasn’t what I was saying, but I won’t disagree that it can happen — everyone has emotions — although one would hope people would be objective when officially presenting work.

When I commented above that people were more likely (at least it seems so) to focus on literature set in the deep south as racially charged when other work might escape without notice, I was particularly thinking about how the easy way to go, while attractive when looking for a topic, is not always the best path. Given a book set in Georgia and a second book about bunnies, many people might simply look at the book set in Ga and think of the word ‘racism,’ whether that thought appeared in their head bidden or not. Nonetheless, their brain starts implanting images and thoughts directly after, in response to their own associations. The book, meanwhile, hasn’t even been opened yet. And perhaps in this case, it’s the book about bunnies that’s the real shocker, but the reader most likely has to be convinced that that cute little bunny on page 8 is really burning that turtle out of malice reminiscent of a certain pogram. And once that’s established, the real question is not whether the message itself is there, or who is fairly and equally and truthfully represented, but what page 8 actually means.

Doesn’t it stand to reason that authors may not be well-versed in fantasy or horror paradigm either? It seems to me that most seem to have lifted ideas more from films and pop culture (including TV and print advertisements) than literature and often did so without realising, and often without awareness of the origins of each concept.

Oh, totally! And I really appreciate your example, by the way. My own comment was a twist on Robin’s earlier posted question, in the idea it might give a little more of a pointed alteration.

I’m not sure I agree about the more part, since the paper medium has only recently been eclipsed (and by eclipsed I mean that a paper based format is not, in this larger culture, our central media focus any longer, like it was even 20 years ago) — that’s an interesting question itself — but for those working in the past 10 or 15 years, perhaps so. As a matter of fact, I’m working on a project right now that is supposed to be informed by very specific cultural aspects, but for various reasons, members of the group have limited knowledge of the deeper (or even actual) nature of the aspects being used, or the history or information behind them. I have to struggle to keep sight of what the population THINKS people used to do and say in regard to these issues and what actually happened and was true to form, in order to make it seem realistic enough while still keeping it relevant to another person who has no idea what the reality is. (Sorry if that’s a bit obtuse but I can’t by law lay the project out directly, although I thought it would be interesting to consider.)

As I guess you’ve read over and over — although I can’t know how many of you are actually interested in creative writing as an applied craft — writers always suggest that you read, and read more, then read what you think you’ll hate, then read more again, if you want to write. I realize there are folks out there that push on with publishing stories without doing this, the same as there are draftsmen out there that draw serviceably but have no particular passion to do more than that. Sometimes that’s enough for a person, and it’s their lives and their time and their career, so they have full right to do so, but that doesn’t diminish the impact learning to appreciate a wide range of art and culture has, or the impact of how that can color and inform your own life and work, just the same as how your own personal family history and personality are tools you bring to the table.

Me, myself, can ignore what does and does not inform an author’s work and take it at face value, but that doesn’t always mean I consider it “good” (for me), and if an author is creating a seriously toned yet thinly plotted novel with a theme based on a parody of a parody of a satire, I’ll probably find it too irritating or boring to finish, but I might not. I might like something else about it. Or, if they are slyly aware of what they’re doing, I’ll be really entertained. That doesn’t mean I hold academia to the same considerations. They produce different work for different reasons, and I think that the more universally read and informed a scholar is on the topic he or she is taking on, the better the discussion.

The length and tone of your comment surprise me a little, but I don’t mind getting a comment on an old post: that’s why I keep them open.

I’m glad @Milena and @FiaQ jumped in. So many things under discussion in the Sookie books are contested and fraught.

I’ll just add something about this:

No matter how much academia wants to drag fiction writing into the real world so they can have something to talk about, fiction will never be nonfiction. Creative writing will never be history, or journalism.

I’m an academic, and a lot of the posters here are as well. We may get things wrong, but at least most of us know that insulting our way into a new community is not the best strategy for productive engagement.

I’d also ask how well-read the speakers are in regard to the fantasy or horror paradigm. While neither the Southern Vampire nor Twilight series are fantasy or horror in overwhelming respect, the focusing on their use of fantasy and horror themes can only be meaningful when fully informed by the concepts and literatures from which they’re lifted.

Doesn’t it stand to reason that authors may not be well-versed in fantasy or horror paradigm either? It seems to me that most seem to have lifted ideas more from films and pop culture (including TV and print advertisements) than literature and often did so without realising, and often without awareness of the origins of each concept.

For instance, a classic vampire trait of not be able to tolerate the sun was pretty much invented by Jimmy Sangster, a scriptwriter for Dracula, a Hammer Film film, in 1957/8. And yet the majority of readers and authors strongly believes this trait originated with Bram Stoker’s Dracula, due to two facts: Dracula (1957/8) is an adaptation of Stoker’s novel (even though the adaptation has little in common with the novel) and the aargh!-the-sun-is-killing-me! vampire trait was so heavily recycled through films and novels next twenty or thirty years since Dracula that many aren’t aware of the origins of that trait. None of these people seems to be aware that Jimmy Sangster invented the trait pretty much as a deus ex machina when he wrote himself into a corner.

In order for criticism to appropriately relate to a work and not to the speaker’s own emotions, the book needs to intentionally be taking on the issues that would be at hand in such a discussion.

I’m sorry, but this sounds very much like privilege-speak. First of all, this would meant that, if a book is not intentionally about racism, it couldn’t be racist, which I find completely wrong; and second, a reader’s reaction to a work of art — any art — is no more or less legitimate if it pertains to an element that is not “intentionally” in focus. In fact, the very idea that there is a way to somehow objectively decide what a book is about is… well, at the very least, old-fashioned.

At that time in history, “vampires” were generally understood to be demons that lodged in the corpses of cursed deceased, in the place of souls. Silver was a repellent to demons, and so …

And again, I find this insistence of “historical interpretation” of vampires to be, at the very least, beside the point. The first “historical vampires” were, in fact, completely different from almost any literary interpretation, up to and including the fact that, originally, they did not drink blood but rather strangled their victims, while they themselves often vomited blood and were — funnily enough — recognizable by their unusually ruddy complexion (ruddy for dead people, presumably). Yet, at the time when the idea of the vampire as a figure started spreading throughout Europe and producing literary vampires, they were practically immediately transformed from bloated, ugly corpses that haunt their loved ones into the seductive, pale, blood-drinking creatures that eventually evolved into what we “know” today . Thus, when analyzing literary vampires, I think it quite silly to rely on any real-world traditions about them. The artistic interpretation of the myth was always removed from the legend, even at the time when it was uncertain whether they were invented or real.

I don’t really know how I got here but I enjoyed the commentary and am a little taken aback (but not surprised) with the recount of the panel.

1. I’d also ask how well-read the speakers are in regard to the fantasy or horror paradigm. While neither the Southern Vampire nor Twilight series are fantasy or horror in overwhelming respect, the focusing on their use of fantasy and horror themes can only be meaningful when fully informed by the concepts and literatures from which they’re lifted. For instance, I recall reading a discussion once revolving around a fantasy series where a reader took issue with how the author had treated the issue of race — meaning “racism” from an American point of view. However, the subject of this argument was a creature that didn’t exist on this planet, either in reality or in the world of the novel, and was not marginalized or alienated for any applicable reason. Neither was the book at all about equality, humanity, or injustice. In order for criticism to appropriately relate to a work and not to the speaker’s own emotions, the book needs to intentionally be taking on the issues that would be at hand in such a discussion. The study of literature has provided us with a framework and vocabulary to make sure such commentary agrees with the subject matter, so it’s a little short sighted to ignore all of that hard won structure, just like if a person were to write a paper on an ancient culture but from their own modern point of view without taking into account or understanding their complete lack of reference.

2. “[My note: But this has always been the mark of the vampire genre. This is why the original vampires cannot see selves in mirror. We are they. They are us.]”

But this is incorrect on both accounts. That the “other” is us is indeed a common lesson of the other in literature, but it’s not a mark of the vampire myth itself. It has been used as a theme in books where mythological creatures are humanized for whatever reason, but this is not by far the majority, and is part of a theme, not a genre.

For part two, originally, vampires could not bee seen in mirrors because mirrors used to be made of silver. At that time in history, “vampires” were generally understood to be demons that lodged in the corpses of cursed deceased, in the place of souls. Silver was a repellent to demons, and so … Now that silver is no longer used to make mirrors, this is misunderstood.

I do agree with the overall point, though. I don’t think 911 fear is a relevant issue, since the reassuring idea that fear can be dealt with more easily and tangibly than it really can be is a factor playing through hundreds if not a thousand years of fiction, not just the last few years of pop-vampire series.

3. Aaahh the race thingie. Of course, a book set in the American south gets questioned about racial equality on the basis of skin color description and a lack of more understandable stereotypes, but a book with another setting doesn’t get looked at twice. If the main character of the Southern Vampire Mysteries had been black, or hispanic, or Creek, then we’d have something to talk about, but she’s not. If the book were about the character of Bon Temps society in particular rather than the internal growth of Sookie, we’d have more to discuss, but it’s not. What we do have is a limited range of people this sheltered character knows, and a limited range of venues she visits, in which we see a variety of people. Some are explained and some are not, because to do elsewise would be irrelevant to the story. What we do have is a variety of suitors for Sookie who come from a wide variety of backgrounds — so wide, in fact, the spectrum doesn’t actually exist. At this point I’d respond to the Viking comment and reply, sometimes a fictional viking is just a fictional viking. I myself find her use of historical sterotypes and popular myth cliches a bit irritating, if not borderline disrespectful to any real anthropological elements she partially includes. In the same way I groaned because I saw her inclusion of a pirate vampire a tip of the hat to PotC fandom rather than an attempt to craft a historically correct Englishman (and I felt I was doubly right when he started talking about Tortuga), I saw her identification of Eric as a viking more of an attempt to relate his age and possible battle expertise more than anything else. The honest truth is, most people won’t recognize an old historical reference unless it’s one that exists (however bastardized) in romanticized popculture. She did that same thing later with the Romanovs. The Romanovs? Really? Why? Because it’s seeped into popcultural awareness through romanticized accounts. That’s the bigger issue, not that vikings are Nordic. In addition, and this might have been what Robin was saying, I’m confused at the alignment of an almost Iron Age culture with what we consider “white” identity today by audience members. It just isn’t the same thing (hardehar, I made a pun).

What chaps me about this type of literary criticism is it’s completely at odds with the creative writing craft. Certain authors are talented in different aspects of the creative writing skill set. Their personal skill set pretty much determines what sort of author they’re going to be, and in order to successfully write a book of creative fiction, they pretty much have to write this way from beginning to end, with side trips into other objectives and subjects being harmful to the main exercise. No matter how much academia wants to drag fiction writing into the real world so they can have something to talk about, fiction will never be nonfiction. Creative writing will never be history, or journalism. They may, in some ways, inform on one another outside the 4th wall, but so do painting and dance, yet no one in their right mind would watch a ballet then create a paper on how it was misinformed because there wasn’t enough red in it.

On another hand, this type of criticism is often delved into by academics who either don’t live in the south, or who make this their particular specialty, similar to how women’s studies academics sometimes focus on the role of females in literature when the entire role in question might not even exist in a particular examined work. I have nothing against area studies what so ever, but, like any other specialty, they are each one area of a universal whole, and can’t apply to everything or anything just because the academic in question decides so. I once noticed a passage in a Sookie Stackhouse book that went something like, “We get people of all types in, but I noticed that dinner is mostly mixed with all sorts while lunch is mostly white.” Or something like that. Then there was an offhand comment once that went something like, “That was the church most of the white people went to, although no one ever seemed to consider that or officially said it.” This is pretty realistic and detailed, especially for a book that doesn’t have to mention any of that at all. (I once had a friend raised in a large northern town comment that, in the south, he was surprised to walk into a bar and see people milling and mixing around with no real attention paid to who everyone else was, whereas, he explained, in his home town, people made a big deal about where everyone sat, who they were, and if your restaurant or bar was noticeably “equal,” though this often meant each culture and/or race sitting with their own crowd. He continued on to say that he had never before considered his state “racist” or what that might mean in a context other than what he had been raised to accept.)

Not only that, but, as Robin said, since the supes are — like so many fictional animals before them — used to explore concepts of fear and doubt and otherness, the people of La are consistently being shown as accepting or non-accepting of differences in very realistic ways in different situations and in differing, altering amounts. This is much more successful a “lesson” since the other does indeed remain other without the author having to be truly cruel, which is what allegories and fables are all about. Aaaaannnnnd circle back to the need to fully utilize and appreciate the structure and vocabulary of an area of academic study before qualifying a paper or statement as successfully academic …

So I was thinking a bit more about this issue, remembering the scene from True Blood in which Sookie shows up at Bills when his predatory vamp “friends” are there (his nest mates). In Ball’s Sookieverse, one of the most horrid vamps in that scene is a black woman, and I was struck by how easily that could create a link between her race and her sociopathic behavior in a way that is not/would not be ironized, either by Ball or a savvy viewer.

Again, I think Harris understands how loaded race is, especially in the South. So she creates a Viking vampire who, in the words of a friend of mine, does not have ideas about race informed by post-Enlightenment notions of social identity, and who has an incredible sense of entitlement and a sense of power/dominance that is not organized along racial lines. That IMO makes him more interesting as a character and provides an opportunity for readers to re-examine our understanding of social hierarchies and constructions of difference as they relate to those categories of circumstantial identity we most often identify in American culture.

“Did you ever know, that you’re my heeeeerrrroooooooo? you’re everything I’d like to beeeeeeeee.”

Thank you!

And IMO it was smart that Harris didn’t, for example, arm her supes with overtly racialized identities (or, like a series which shall not be named, with ridiculous faux-AA dialects), because then the supes play out these various dynamics within a geographical and temporal backdrop where race is unforgettable because it’s so much a part of the region (I would add class, gender, and sexuality, too, since IMO it’s all there), but it’s not hammered into us like a lesson.

So I don’t think Harris’s world is de-racinated at all (and there is diversity within the series, as well); on the contrary, I think Harris actually brings racial politics closer to the surface by not directly embodying them. For me, the Ball series, as much as I love it, is so much less subtle, so much less nuanced around these issues, that its strength is more in celebrating the sensationalistic and reveling in the gore, flattening out some of Harris’s series.

re. Sookie’s physical condition and the question of patriarchy in the series, this is where IMO you have to read a) Harris’s personal history and the trauma of her own rape, b) some of her other books like A Secret Rage (both discussed here: http://www.crescentblues.com/4_4issue/int_charlaine_harris.shtml), c) the idea of Sookie’s vulnerability as a critique of patriarchy rather than an endorsement.

While I want to steer clear of any biographical criticism vis a vis Harris, I do think that the theme of rape plays throughout her books, and that her own personal history has made this an overt element in her writing. And isn’t it interesting that in books where a human woman is vulnerable, where the fictional world is dangerous for her, she’s perhaps seen as weaker, rather than as someone who is strong in refusing to be categorized as a victim.

For me, Harris’s insistence that the world IS dangerous for women, even within the confines of fiction, is different from victimizing women within those pages. And while the fantasy of heroine invincibility is often way more appealing to me, I find the realism in Harris’s books instructive and sobering in a good way. And as a critique of male violence directed at women. Now, will there be a point at which the scale tips and Harris starts to beat Sookie up beyond the point where her refusal to be a victim becomes futile and self-defeating? Maybe, but IMO we’re not anywhere near that point yet (ask me again in two weeks!).

I also see as a critique of patriarchy the way in which the male supes often posture for each other with Sookie as the token prize. None of these guys is an ideal match for Sookie, and I think she took a big step forward as a character when she told Quinn that she needed a male who would put her first in his life. This whole question of where once gets their sense of personal security — the notion of what it means to belong to someone and to be part of a community — so much of that resides in Sookie’s character, IMO, and especially in her relationships with the males around her, from Jason, who is constantly illustrating the limits of blood relationships, to Bill, who embodies the failure of idealized romantic love, etc.

For me, one of the things that really keeps this series alive for me is the way in which Sookie is attempting to negotiate her own personal boundaries, which are constantly changing, and simultaneously trying to find a place she “belongs.” This tension — on the one hand her desire to simply love and be loved, while on the other her stubbornness and innate independence — animates Sookie as a compelling character for me, such that I wonder how the hell Harris is going to resolve this in a way that works for the reader and for Sookie.

I wish the panelists had put their papers at the paper table; I would’ve loved to buy them but sadly I didn’t see them there.

I was at this panel and enjoyed this one most likely the most. The 2nd panelist brought up a lot of points about Sookie that I personally hadn’t thought about. “Sookie: Highly charged erotic scenes serve to relationship forward between competing men.” It would be nice if there was some way for Sookie to figure out how to defend herself w/o becoming a vampire herself (which thankfully, Harris has said she won’t do). ^_^

I agree — I loved all the papers on this panel. It’s a tribute to the richness and subtlety of the books and tv show that they generate such wonderful work.

Nikky wrote:

@ Robin: Yes, the panelists have EXTENSIVELY studied the books, both Twilight and the Sookie Stackhouse series.

I thik Robin was asking whether they gave read extensively in the GENRE, either romance or vampire, because that may contextualize Sookie in a new way.

Jill D. wrote:

I find it absolutely facinating that these people had the desire and inclination to completely pick apart something that brings me pleasure and escape.

Speaking as someone who tends to do this very thing, I find it is usually a sign that I am emotionally affected, either in a positive or negative way, by the texts. I look at it as a different way of reading, not better or worse than reading for enjoyment. Just a different way to interact with the material.

Robin wrote:

I couldn’t even finish reading the post, Jessica, because I was getting so wound up! OMG that thesis about True Blood is *dead backwards* IMO. DEAD BACKWARDS! And the thing about Sookie as stereotypical Romance heroine as facilitator of the patriarchy almost pushed me over the edge.

My own presentation focused on Sookie as a survivor and resistor, an active agent refashioning a naive Christian worldview into a more nuanced moral perspective that allows her to be true to herself in very difficult situations.

However, it must be admitted that Sookie is beaten, raped or nearly, and used, over and over in the series. And it is absolutely true that in the scene discussed between Eric and Quinn, they were more interested in each other than in Sookie.

On the other hand, I feel that this scene is more of an aberration than the revelation of a pattern.

But this is the way of literary criticism isn’t it?

Robin wrote:

Harris is writing a de-racialized South??????????????????? Holy smokes, that’s one f’ed up assertion.

This was a comment from an audience member. I want to believe it is wrong, but think about it: there are no regular/significant characters of color in a series set in rural Lousiana.

Yes, the vampires themselves represent the racialized other, but in a way that is even worse: having pale mostly caucasian undead stand in for real black characters?

How would you rebut that argument? I’d love a way to do it.