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syncope at 02:54pm on 11/05/2009
syncope at 02:54pm on 11/05/2009What I wanted to do today: write Star Trek fanfiction, because that's what I do now. I accept that it's only a natural and logical progression that one day I would wake up and be a person who writes Star Trek fanfiction. Fine, that's happened, no need to rail against the dying of the light. What I did not anticipate doing today: reading post/blogs about how fiction works. What am I talking about? This sums it up.
I am reading this after talking for an extended time today to someone about stories, storytelling, and language theory. I think the commentary on the above linked post is informative even aside from the commentary about The Thirteenth Child (that's the name of the book, right?).
I feel that this round of "are you fucking kidding me, scifi publishing?" is illustrative to people in fandom because here we have a very good example of how defending your friend out of love can go wrong. Just because you love them does not mean they can't be wrong. It's hard to have your creative works criticized, but this happens. It smarts when a bad review isn't along the lines of "the protagonist was boring" but is instead "...the premise of this book is genocide...I suspect the author is unaware of that." <---------SUCKS, inorite? What I have to wonder is how all along the line of this book being developed no one said anything about that. NO ONE said to her "maybe you shouldn't make this an AU of the real world but instead you should create a whole new world, like, on a different planet where you don't have to disinvent an entire population of people..." I think I might have told her that.
Did anyone else watch the recent PBS series, "We Shall Remain?" I feel like the attitudes demonstrated by LMB are exactly the ones that series attempted to fight against--fundamentally I think a lot of Americans still view Native people through the lenses we're taught as children: the Pilgrams came and fixed those backwards native people who used beads for money (haha, silly, naive, ignorant children!) and wore feathers in their hair (quaint hippies!), but that was a long time ago now and is only relevant for HISTORY, all the natives are gone or run casinos now. No social problem anymore! We all get along now!
Let's ignore the silly white ladies for a second, let's talk about the Geronimo (SPOILER ALERT FOR REALITY!!!) episode of "We Shall Remain."
When I was watching that (blessedly alone and without commentary from my familial peanut gallery, yay!) episode, what really moved me was how Geronimo was presented as a HUMAN BEING and not one of the many myths different groups tell about him. I've always found the Geronimo story fascinating, mostly because that story informs my personal life history. When I was a kid, I lived in a town with a historic fort where Geronimo was kept when he was arrested by the US government. We went to that fort on school field trips and all that. Once when I was, idk, maybe in first grade we went to the fort and our teacher explained that Geronimo was a wild Indian from out west who rampaged around and killed people, but FINALLY he was caught and imprisoned so people would be safe. Also, because he was so crazy, people yell Geronimo! when they do something crazy/unsafe. I went home and was telling the story of going to this fort to my mom and she said "did you see the Geronimo plaque?" and upon learning I had, she told me to go help my grandfather in the garden. You know how childhood memories take on a texture, whether that be a smell or a color or a symbol to represent it? For me Geronimo Day smells like rich soil and tomato stalks.
My grandfather explained to me that, no, Geronimo was actually a hero who refused to give his land away and only surrendered when the government promised to spare his people and leave his land alone, but he was betrayed and murdered. Geronimo is a symbol of how native people were systematically displaced from their land and he should be respected as a hero, that he is a name that represents so many who never had a name--or were given names by white people and had their real names stolen. This is about the time I realized that what I learned in school was not always exactly right. Geronimo has always been a symbol to me of how we're lied to as children to make the Myth of America work. He's an old friend and something of a mythic hero figure in my mind.
Apparently, he was also quite a character as a dude. I LOVED watching his story take shape as the story of a real life lived by a flawed guy who his own people saw as so unstable and full of revenge they never made him a chief, but that doesn't mean they don't love him still to this day for the force he was in their lives. His real story is the myth of the man who loses his family and spends his entire life getting revenge--but along the way he was wild and did his thing and was a person, like me and you and your neighbor. And Geronimo wasn't even the name he went by to his own people but just one of many names! WOW! The current, western way of naming gives a lot of power to the specific name people go by so I found that aspect of his story to be really enlightening. And also illustrative (again) of how white people always assume every culture is fundamentally like their own if you erase the wacky clothes and weird religions (WRONG!).
At any rate. Mainstream American culture has worked relentlessly and tirelessly to erase the Native experience from our shared history. You can do that by telling a little girl that Geronimo was a crazyass Indian who committed crimes or you can do that by just thought-experimenting native peoples out of existence.
I guess it says a lot that I'm less enraged about this as I am half-amused. Europeans have been pretending away native peoples for as long as the two groups have interacted--what's new, folks.
We Shall Remain You can watch the episodes online.
I am reading this after talking for an extended time today to someone about stories, storytelling, and language theory. I think the commentary on the above linked post is informative even aside from the commentary about The Thirteenth Child (that's the name of the book, right?).
I feel that this round of "are you fucking kidding me, scifi publishing?" is illustrative to people in fandom because here we have a very good example of how defending your friend out of love can go wrong. Just because you love them does not mean they can't be wrong. It's hard to have your creative works criticized, but this happens. It smarts when a bad review isn't along the lines of "the protagonist was boring" but is instead "...the premise of this book is genocide...I suspect the author is unaware of that." <---------SUCKS, inorite? What I have to wonder is how all along the line of this book being developed no one said anything about that. NO ONE said to her "maybe you shouldn't make this an AU of the real world but instead you should create a whole new world, like, on a different planet where you don't have to disinvent an entire population of people..." I think I might have told her that.
Did anyone else watch the recent PBS series, "We Shall Remain?" I feel like the attitudes demonstrated by LMB are exactly the ones that series attempted to fight against--fundamentally I think a lot of Americans still view Native people through the lenses we're taught as children: the Pilgrams came and fixed those backwards native people who used beads for money (haha, silly, naive, ignorant children!) and wore feathers in their hair (quaint hippies!), but that was a long time ago now and is only relevant for HISTORY, all the natives are gone or run casinos now. No social problem anymore! We all get along now!
Let's ignore the silly white ladies for a second, let's talk about the Geronimo (SPOILER ALERT FOR REALITY!!!) episode of "We Shall Remain."
When I was watching that (blessedly alone and without commentary from my familial peanut gallery, yay!) episode, what really moved me was how Geronimo was presented as a HUMAN BEING and not one of the many myths different groups tell about him. I've always found the Geronimo story fascinating, mostly because that story informs my personal life history. When I was a kid, I lived in a town with a historic fort where Geronimo was kept when he was arrested by the US government. We went to that fort on school field trips and all that. Once when I was, idk, maybe in first grade we went to the fort and our teacher explained that Geronimo was a wild Indian from out west who rampaged around and killed people, but FINALLY he was caught and imprisoned so people would be safe. Also, because he was so crazy, people yell Geronimo! when they do something crazy/unsafe. I went home and was telling the story of going to this fort to my mom and she said "did you see the Geronimo plaque?" and upon learning I had, she told me to go help my grandfather in the garden. You know how childhood memories take on a texture, whether that be a smell or a color or a symbol to represent it? For me Geronimo Day smells like rich soil and tomato stalks.
My grandfather explained to me that, no, Geronimo was actually a hero who refused to give his land away and only surrendered when the government promised to spare his people and leave his land alone, but he was betrayed and murdered. Geronimo is a symbol of how native people were systematically displaced from their land and he should be respected as a hero, that he is a name that represents so many who never had a name--or were given names by white people and had their real names stolen. This is about the time I realized that what I learned in school was not always exactly right. Geronimo has always been a symbol to me of how we're lied to as children to make the Myth of America work. He's an old friend and something of a mythic hero figure in my mind.
Apparently, he was also quite a character as a dude. I LOVED watching his story take shape as the story of a real life lived by a flawed guy who his own people saw as so unstable and full of revenge they never made him a chief, but that doesn't mean they don't love him still to this day for the force he was in their lives. His real story is the myth of the man who loses his family and spends his entire life getting revenge--but along the way he was wild and did his thing and was a person, like me and you and your neighbor. And Geronimo wasn't even the name he went by to his own people but just one of many names! WOW! The current, western way of naming gives a lot of power to the specific name people go by so I found that aspect of his story to be really enlightening. And also illustrative (again) of how white people always assume every culture is fundamentally like their own if you erase the wacky clothes and weird religions (WRONG!).
At any rate. Mainstream American culture has worked relentlessly and tirelessly to erase the Native experience from our shared history. You can do that by telling a little girl that Geronimo was a crazyass Indian who committed crimes or you can do that by just thought-experimenting native peoples out of existence.
I guess it says a lot that I'm less enraged about this as I am half-amused. Europeans have been pretending away native peoples for as long as the two groups have interacted--what's new, folks.
We Shall Remain You can watch the episodes online.
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