PCA Romance Panel 5: The Safe Spaces of Romance: Smart Bitches, Dear Author and a New Romance Documentary

Apr 02 2010 Published by under Pop Culture Association 2010

These are my notes from the PCA-ACA conference in 2010. Click here for contact information for the panelists in case you’d like to follow up. Please note that my notes are fallible, and attempt to communicate merely the gist of the presentations, not their entire substance.

Romance: Romance V: The Safe Spaces of Romance (4/1/10)
Session Chair: Pamela Regis, McDaniel College

“The Romance Community: A Room of One’s Own and Écriture Feminine”‖ Pamela Regis

Woolf – a room of one’s own means not just a physical room but all of the things women need to write at all

Cixous: women need to be free of men’s language

Claim: women have a room of their own in Romancelandia (she says this term was coined by SBTB which I never knew!) and ecriture feminine in the online community

Positions herself in relation to Woolf and Cixous as a reader, not as an expert. Sets aside voluminous commentary on both.

PR notes we still have attacks on the genre

For example, Lisa Fletcher’s book – uses postmodern theory to argue it is possible to read some of our culture’s most sexist and homophobic texts differently, especially historical romance novels

Online romance community evidences ecriture feminine, albeit not in a dialect she would recognize

Romance writers, mainly women, help create the space in which the romance community gathers

A virtual room which the SB’s furnish.

Uses 10 texts, from her keeper shelf, including Bet Me, Indigo, The Sheik, A Civil Contract, and Again as a sample.

Summarizes Cixous. “Break up the Truth with laughter”. , i.e. the old truth. The received truth.

 She focuses on Herendeen’s Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander.

The romance community is big.

They celebrate romance while subjecting it to scrutiny (cites Cassie Edwards scandal, which was reported by SBTB and caused CE to lose her contract).

Logos, ethos, pathos and humor all found at SBTB

Cites Veatch’s account of humor. Requires simultaneity – feeling normal about a violation of our affective commitments. Says whole blog works on principle that affective commitment that romance is trash, is bashed into the normality,  evidenced by the existence of years of posts, reviews, and comments.

Romance readers are not cool, but Sarah and Candy are cool. [Edited to add: I think the idea here is that the perception is that romance readers are not cool. SBs have found a way to break up this received truth with humor. They are romance readers, yet cool.]

Cites Beyond Heaving Bosoms – heroic wang, etc.

Sentimental themes in romance novels, track norms in culture: home, affection, sympathy, kinship

But SBs talk about sex scenes, while invoking sentimental basis of romance novels. We need to talk about those.

They furnish the room constructed by romance writers. They break up the phallocentric ideology.

Jane Litte, Blogger, Dear Author

Claims her position as a reader.  Cites Superwendy, Rosario, and Maili as inspirations.

Notes different viewpoints based on different cultural and sociopolitical backgrounds and how important that is to the blogosphere.

Online community emboldens readers to be proud of their love of the genre. Meets a need unmet in real life. That is the safe space, the woman’s place we have created together.

References Hilzoy’s Obsidian Wings, who claimed, a few years ago,  that romance novels are not books, but tools for relaxation or porn.

Responses to Hilzoy were numerous and quick. Showed she actually had a lot of romance readers among her blog readers.

Fast forward to 2010 – Laura who blogs on the front page of Daily Koz, prominent left wing political blog, passionate defense of romance. Represented seismic shift. Jane attributes this to online romance community.

“Growing Intentional Communities: The Popular Romance Project”‖ Laurie Kahn, Brandeis University

 Romance fiction as a financial powerhouse – unknown to many outside romland

Many also do not know about proliferation of romance subgenres

Her life’s work is to explore the lives of extraordinary ordinary women who have been dismissed and/or overlooked.

Has done documentaries on A Midwfie’s Tale and on Tupperware.

Now working on The Popular Romance Project for PBS

PBS seeks new model: documentary with ancillary website as an afterthought is old news. Need new concept, multimedia, web 2.0

Four interwoven cross-platform programs:

  1. Documentary film Love Between the Covers (she will write, produce, direct and write) – about romance readers writers bloggers editors agents cover art – an attempt to convey the world of romance novels.
  2. Library of Congress Center for the Book one day academic Symposium
  3. Nationwide Library Program with the American Library Association – nationwide discussion group program as well as traveling exhibit
  4. Popular Romance Project Website, created by the Center for History and New Media

Wants to bring all different groups together. Truly multiplatform.

Aims to stepback and look at popular romance novels in the context of popular romance across time, culture, sand also romcoms, films, advice manuals, courtship manuals.

She’s been attending all the conferences. Will be at RT end of the month, RWA in July.

Has board of scholarly advisors: Tara McPherson, USC, editor of Vectors, Tricia Rose, Brown, Ronald Walters, Johns Hopkins, Mary Bly, Fordham, Jack Santino, BGSU

 Folktales, advertisements, first person stories, video interviews, cover art,

She starts shooting this summer.

12 responses so far

Bouquets and Blogbats Feb 09

Feb 27 2009 Published by under Uncategorized

Some things I have really enjoyed traveling the Romanceland this month:

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1. The discussions of objectivity and bias in reviewing initiated by Azteclady at Karen Knows Best and Jane at Dear Author (and especially Janet/Robin’s tough questions, which I am still pondering). It may be easy to agree that some level of objectivity is desired in romance reviewing, but the devil is in the details.

2. Pub Rants. In addition to having a glamorous-sounding life and listening to cool music (she always lets readers know what’s playing in her iPod), she has great insight into the biz, and very direct advice for aspiring writers. This week Kristin talks about passing on a book that she later discovered another major press took on.

3. Wendy. I love everything Wendy writes, actually, but I especially love her posts on her work as a librarian. The posts on recommending a book to a patron, on what to do with donated books, on the panels she has organized…it’s fascinating to see the genre through her eyes. Too often we focus on the business end of romance, but I get probably 40% of my books from my local library. Libraries have a crucial role to play, I think, in determining and maintaining the romance canon, in keeping romance reading going in recession, in normalizing and integrating the genre for the general public. Wendy is an amazing ally to have!

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As promised, these are all about Triple R. It’s only fair, if 100% self-indulgent, that I direct my criticism inward. Warning: Comments which dispute what I say here will be creatively edited, but you may add your own criticisms (although if you make me cry I will delete it. I can only take so much.)

1. This blog is so unattractive you couldn’t pay me to set one toe out of my reader to actually view it. Mauve? Shudder. And the “design” (note scare quotes) sucks. Can’t you center a single frigging photo? And what’s up with that nasty looking sidebar? Have some pride, woman!

2. Voice: totally inconsistent. What exactly are you doing here? One day it’s another romance review, the next it’s some wordy confusing essay, the next it’s some silly list. Is this a hobby or academic? Some weeks you post once, other weeks you post 5 times. Random and annoying.

3. Introducing new features only to abandon them. How come you have only done one “Mad to Miss It”? And what happened to “What (Not) to Do Wednesday? Irritating.

4. Infrequent contests, no ARC reviews, no breaking industry news, no author interviews, no polls. Nothing FUN! Why would I want to read a ponderous review of a two year old category? Sheesh!

5. Making mountains out of molehills. The worst example of this — although there are many to choose from, believe me — had to be your post on kerfuffles. I mean, seriously. Not everything is worth a 1000 word meditation.

7 responses so far