Better later than never, I say, and so shall you when you watch the this episode in our vidcast wherein I recap my Magic: the GatheringDominaria prerelease experience and ask the question: When is a troll actually a troll?
And here are the show notes!
0:01 – VidCast Begins
6:42 – This Week in WoW Raiding
10:30 – How I Started MMORPG Raiding
29:30 – “Commercial” Break
30:11 – The Magic: the GatheringDominaria PreRelease
Too Early for Streaming is a video-cast (aka vidcast) where no topics are too sacred to be discussed in depth. Trisha Lynn is a presenter and prefers Tiny Leaders where no one has a real advantage at all. I swear, there should be more Tiny Leaders events at GPs….
Finding the time to listen to hour-long episodes of podcasts which are eligible for the 2016 Hugo Awards wasn’t easy for me, but that’s what today’s article is about. The eligibility requirements state that the podcast must be a “non-professional” production—that is, no other company paid the podcaster(s) to make it—and at least one episode has to have been produced during the calendar year in question.
As such, then, I decided to pick one episode from a currently eligible podcast whose description interested me the most and I’ll be basing my recommendations on just the one episode. Unlike the “three episode rule” which I’m borrowing from former GOA contributor Kara Dennison, I think that I’d be able to tell what’s going to be on my nomination and/or platform lists before March 31 from just one episode.
Once again, in no particular order, here are my impressions of podcasts which are currently eligible for the 2016 Hugo Award for Best Fancast:
First Impression: This episode was a mixed bag for me, mostly because of the expectations which were raised due to a titling error. For an episode whose title claimed that it would talk about the state of the sci-fi genre, there was only a somewhat cursory examination of it. The episode began with a lively discussion between Black Girl Nerd website creator and podcast host Broadnax and contributor Lauren Warren, whose think piece for the website about how to fix Project Greenlight after Matt Damon’s “white mansplaining” gaffe to African-American producer Effie Brown caused a bit of a sensation. I appreciate how Broadnax and Warren talked about how the piece was written and that it went beyond hollering what was wrong about the gaffe but moved past and talked about how to fix the problem, something with which I’m very familiar. I loved the lengthy interplay between these two colleagues whose discussion ranged far and wide across the pop culture and media landscape, which was why I was surprised with Broadnax’s more laid-back approach to her interview with “Out of Time” webseries creator Steve Kasan. I appreciate that she allowed him the space to talk about how he felt about diversity in genre media, but to go from such a light-hearted and engaging conversation between equals to a more stilted and less conversational interview was jarring to me. It also doesn’t help that it doesn’t sound like Broadnax even watched an episode of the series at all. Why didn’t she ask more about the thought behind the diversity of the characters? Or how Kasan and co-creator Rodney V. Smith’s take on time-travel in sci-fi works and how it’s different than other people’s take? Those are the kinds of questions I would have asked myself as an occasional podcaster, and I’m disappointed that they weren’t asked. The final segment on NekoCon was another bit of a letdown for me because while her conversations with attendees were interesting for getting a perspective on diversity at anime conventions from the average fan, she never had her interviewee’s give their names or handles. And that’s a big no-no from a journalism perspective because as Sir Terry Pratchett commented in The Truth, getting the names of the people you interview helps you “sell” your work more.
Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: No, but I’m sure this would win several other awards in general geekery and lifestyle podcasts categories.
First Impression: Instantly my back was up despite the excellently-produced original theme song because as the description states and as they say in the intro, this podcast is dedicated to talking about bad books. And even though I’ve read other Spider Robinson books and I don’t recall if I’ve read this specific one, I don’t think that Robinson is the kind of person you’d call a “bad” author. This meant that I was instantly inclined to think that this podcast was not for someone like me. And yet, I was completely surprised how fair they were with the material. Friedman and Collision gleefully point out the problems with tone and the problems with misogynistic and/or sexist attitudes towards women; listening to them talk about it in a completely fair and open way made me think about how I might be perceiving the book and its author through rose and nostalgia-tinted glasses. Another thing that I appreciated about this podcast was how both Friedman and Collision were unafraid to state that they thought a part of the book was bad, but then they thought a bit longer about it and changed their mind. The last 15 minutes of the podcast is dedicated to answering listener email, which shows that this show has definitely reached a critical-growth stage to where they actually have long-time listeners and fans. After finishing up this episode, my instant reaction was to wonder if they would ever read Lady Slings the Booze, just so I could see what they think of the characters in that Spider Robinson book.
Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: Yes, despite the fact that they denigrated the pun wars in the book.
First Impression: Unlike the co-hosts in this episode, I’ll put my disclaimer before the review: One of the contributors to this podcast is Mike R. Underwood, and he and I were on “The Smurfette Principle in Marketing” panel at CONvergence 2015; since then, we’ve followed and ReTweeted each other a lot. I deliberately chose to listen to this particular episode because I know that my reading shelf is very sparse when it comes to works by Asian and Asian-American authors. One of the things I immediately liked about this episode was how much it was like a casual, free-flowing conversation. Each of the guests were engaged on their own, but also allowed to chime in and comment on what the other guests were saying. Also, like the best in talk radio, there were several times where I wanted to join in the conversation as well; I credit this to co-hosts Duke and Rios’ skills as interviewers who except for two awkward bits (one with Yu and one with Chu) were able to manage this five-way conversation with ease. Based solely on her appearance in this episode, I got the impression that Yu’s author persona is gruff and prickly; both Duke and Rios were able to work with it and get her to open up when they asked her what her reaction was to getting the call that she was nominated for a short story Nebula in 2012. From a hindsight perspective, it was also very fun to hear Chu talk about his experiences as a beta-translator for Ken Liu, whose translation work for The Three Body Problem helped that book win a Hugo in 2015.
Is this a Hugo Award-worthy work?: Yes, despite the low fidelity of their recording. But if more people subscribe to their Patreon, I’m sure they could fix that.
At this most recent CONvergence Con (a sci-fi/fantasy-based convention in Minneapolis, Minn.), I was one of the panelists on two different panels that sought to speak about where and how women can exist in formerly male-dominated genres and spaces.
In The Smurfette Principle in Marketing panel, we tackled the idea that there isn’t often a lot of merchandise available for girls and women because there is often only one woman or girl in a group of men or boys in any given genre show, book, or movie. In the Genre Feminism panel, we spoke about why it was important to increase the visibility of women or girls in a genre show, book, or movie (along with other visible minorities as well) and how people as creators and consumers can promote these ideas.
Specifically to creators, I talked about Geena Davis (whose name I couldn’t remember at the time; apologies, Ms. Davis!) and how back in December 2013, she wrote a guest column for The Hollywood Reporter about how easy it can be for screenwriters to increase the number of roles in film and on TV for women and girls:
Step 1: Go through the projects you’re already working on and change a bunch of the characters’ first names to women’s names. With one stroke you’ve created some colorful unstereotypical female characters that might turn out to be even more interesting now that they’ve had a gender switch. What if the plumber or pilot or construction foreman is a woman? What if the taxi driver or the scheming politician is a woman? What if both police officers that arrive on the scene are women — and it’s not a big deal?
Step 2: When describing a crowd scene, write in the script, “A crowd gathers, which is half female.” That may seem weird, but I promise you, somehow or other on the set that day the crowd will turn out to be 17 percent female otherwise. Maybe first ADs think women don’t gather, I don’t know.
It’s not often that I get to see the fruits of efforts like these so soon after I talk about them, and from a formerly problematic source as well.
Anyone who’s read this blog for any period of time knows I have a love/hate relationship with Penny Arcade creator Mike Krahulik. On one hand, he’s an intensely creative individual who helped pioneer innovations in cartooning, comics, and the marketing thereof. On the other hand, he’s a self-proclaimed asshole who has a lot to learn.
I’m quite pleased to be able to say that after the most recent iteration of the Dickwolves Debacle, the same Mike Krahulik who felt compelled to make a $20,000 donation to the Trevor Project after he made some uneducated remarks about transpeople seems to be also leveling up when it comes to how he depicts characters who aren’t like him in his art.
Recently, Penny Arcade debuted another one of their “one-page worlds.” This one is called Nightlight, and it’s about a first-time father who is told by an Ancient Keeper-type that now that he’s become a parent, he must definitely kill any monsters he finds under his child’s bed.
In his news post for the strip, Krahulik talked about the genesis for the world, but was quick to add: “We’re focusing on Dad’s specifically but honestly the role of a home’s monster hunter can fall to anyone really. I kinda want to meet that big sister.”
Child’s Play community manager Jamie Dillon followed up in the comments to the comic by saying: “We just had a long neat chat about it at lunch, and the world is so cool. Single moms, grandparents, siblings — whomever is the protector of the house is the one who can see the monsters and fight them. I’ll let the guys share other details as they want, but it’s not exclusive to dads.”
But perhaps even better is the news post from Monday, showing that not only are they going to do a longer-form story in this universe, but that Krahulik is taking the time to accurately depict the young girl who will be in this story:
I wanted Grace to feel authentic. I wanted her to be a real little girl and I have zero experience with little girls. I have two boys of my own and more often than not my house is packed with 10 year old boys. Tycho gave me a hard time when I told him about all my Google searching. “They just wear shoes” like everyone else he told me. I know that girls wear shoes…what I don’t know is what kind of shoes Grace wears. Does she wear flip flops? Boots with tights? I don’t know what kinds of outfits she wears. Is she a hoodie and jeans girl or does she like skirts and dresses? I don’t know how she likes to comb her hair or if she wears any jewelry.
The fact that he’s doing this research and thinking this deeply about this character is awesome. In addition to his own spouse as a resource for what young girls are like, he’s also got the experiences of Dillon and Child’s Play project manager Kristin Lindsay, as well as any of the other PA staffers who have female children or nieces or cousins or siblings. He’d be foolish not to tap their resources and experiences.
It’s a little thing, but it’s a start. At the end of this month, I can’t wait to see what kind of Home Protector Grace is for her little brother.
When I checked my email Monday morning, I was expecting to see the usual: job search referrals, ThinkGeek newsletters, Facebook notifications, maybe a notice from my local library telling me that my copy of Captain Vorpatril’s Alliance was ready for pick-up.
I did not expect to see a notice from Scribd.com claiming that I had violated a copyright.
What followed was a flurry of emails, some conversations with my webhost, another with my attorney, a lot of waiting—and finally, a sensible resolution.
But most importantly, I got to experience how a lot of “good intention” can almost be turned into a road leading into hell.
It all started back at the end of May when the Spring 2013 edition of the members-only publication of the SFWA Bulletin arrived in their mailboxes. Within its pages contained a long-running column written by authors Barry Malzberg and Mike Resnick called Dialogues.
The topic for this issue revolved around the flurry of criticism that both had received from both members and non-members regarding two of their columns not more than three issues previous about “lady editors” and “lady writers” and the cover on one of those same issues which featured a buxom redhead in a chain mail bikini.
Long-time readers of this blog are already rolling their eyes in exasperation, but Malzberg and Resnick didn’t agree with the critiques and set forth to reply to their “anonymous” detractors. A whirlwind of discussion arose, and I posted my thoughts on how the whole mess could have been avoided in the first place.
As part of my original article, I had included a link to a .PDF which I stitched together from images found elsewhere on the Internet and had uploaded to my account on Scribd.com. This document contained low-res scans of the entire Dialogues column called “Talk Radio Redux” so that readers could determine for themselves whether Malzberg and Resnick’s reply to their critics was reasonable or invalid.
Though I didn’t get my college degree in either journalism or communications, I do know the importance of a primary source. As someone who wrote many English papers, I know how important it is to cite your work when making a point and provide references that anyone can access.
Until Natalie Luhrs at Radish Reviews posted the scans, all of the previous commentary on the Bulletin‘s content was based on selective excerpting which had been re-typed by the critics; this made it all too easy to dismiss the critics’ concerns. One of Mike Resnick’s supporters even illustrated this train of thought in the comments to Luhrs’ post:
Would you care to show all the columns [from issues #199 to 201?] The one that started the flame war? The first response? When you censor things like you do in this article, you only reinforce the idea that Resnick and Malzberg are right.
I don’t have the rest of the articles. If someone wants to provide me with images, I will be MORE THAN HAPPY to post them. My not posting them is not censorship–you will note that this site is not run by a “them” but by ME. As a private individual and as someone with significantly less power in the speculative fiction community that Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg, I have no power to censor them.
Amy, could you provide me a link to what leightonmeester is responding to? Because I was startled in a different way when I read that section and all I could think was, “Surely, that didn’t appear in a professional arena…?
When I posted the .PDF to Scribd.com, I had briefly weighed the importance of respecting the Bulletin‘s and the authors’ copyright on the material against the more compelling journalistic need to ensure that the entire story was being accurately told—but only briefly. I scanned Scribd’s Terms and Policies pages and came away with the feeling that my re-posting of the images of the publication as part of my critique of the article and the situation fell under the “fair use” doctrine. I uploaded the .PDF, finished writing my article, and moved on to other stories.
Until Tuesday, that is, when Scribd sent me a boilerplate message stating that a third-party claimed that I had interfered with their copyright, referencing the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) (.PDF).
See that picture up there? The girl in the purple cheongsam wielding the double-bladed lightsaber? That’s me as Darth Shampoo—an irreverent take on a character from the Ranma 1/2 franchise—the first cosplay costume I would ever do. That picture was taken during the second Anime Expo I ever attended back in 2000; since then, while I’ve worn outlandish outfits to conventions, I’ve only cosplayed one other time at an anime or other genre convention.
However, I’ve always appreciated the art and artistry of people who do choose to go to conventions and dress up as their favorite characters for an entire weekend. In the several years since I started going to genre conventions, I’ve watched the fandom cosplay community grow and change in part due to the Internet and rise of dedicated forums and social media as well as the change in conventions themselves.
Nowadays, instead of waking up and hoping to see your picture in the galleries of the now defunct A Fan’s View website run by Kevin Lillard, a cosplayer attending a convention can hope that their picture made it into cosplay galleries of national media outlets like Business Insider, websites for internationally funded cable channels like BBC America, or even your local Fox affiliate station such as this one in Salt Lake City, Utah.
Announced this year in April as “Cosworld” and purporting to be a documentary about cosplayers and the costuming world, what premiered instead on August 27 on the SyFy network was instead something more similar to the TLC show “Toddlers and Tiaras” than SyFy’s own competition reality series “Face Off.” Eight women (Holly Conrad, Chloe Dykstra, Yaya Han, Riki LeCotey, Monika Lee, Jessica Merizan, Victoria Schmidt, Becky Young) and one man (Jesse Lagers) were cast to appear in the show. The format of each episode followed this rough formula:
Cosplayer decides to attend a convention and plans a costume.
Cosplayer goes shopping for materials for the costume and plans its design.
Cosplayer has various difficulties with making the costume (with or without help from friends and/or significant others).
Cosplayer goes to convention with or without a finished costume along with a voiceover “announcing” their arrival; attendees gush over the costume and take many pictures.
If costume isn’t finished, cosplayer attempts to finish costume: Will they succeed?
Cosplayer enters masquerade contest.
Masquerade contest is over: Who will win the cash prize?
Interspersed with taped interview segments and tons of B-roll from Anime Expo 2013—seriously, anyone who’s been to the Los Angeles Convention Center knows what it looks like!—viewers could watch all the drama that comes with the cosplaying world take place at five genre conventions across the U.S. ranging from Wizard World Portland in Oregon on the West Coast all the way to MegaCon in Orlando, Florida in the East.
When episodes started to air, there was a great uproar from the cosplay community and other geek-adjacent media venues. Amid the outcry that the show wasn’t really representative of the experiences of the majority of the people who cosplay and parts of it were staged and/or manipulated by the producers, there was also the charge that the show just wasn’t that good.
[Editor’s Note: This article has been partially revised from its original form at the request of the SFWA to remove material which may have infringed on a copyright.]
Considering that I’m not a member of the SFWA (Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America), anyone reading this article can take it with so much salt that they go into a self-induced hypertensive shock. But rather than add my name to the list of voices condemning writer-members Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg for their ill-written rebuttal to critiques of their anti-feminism in the organization’s most recent quarterly newsletter, I’m going to instead talk about how the entire mess could have been avoided in the first place. And to do that, I have to throw Bulletin writer/editor Jean Rabe under a bus.
Problem #1: It all began when issues #199 and #200 of the Bulletin came out in Fall 2012 and Winter 2013 wherein as part of their ongoing dialogues about the industry, Resnick and Malzberg spoke about a certain selection of other writers and editors. Since the Bulletin is a print-only publication that’s only available to SFWA members, I only have E. Catherine Tobler’s recollection of the dialogue to go by, for now:
How fantastic, I thought, because I, being a writer and an editor and female, had a keen interest in [learning about other female writers and editors]. I love reading anthologies such as Women of Wonder (and its sequel) and seeing how women impacted and contributed to this forward-looking and -thinking genre I love. I hoped they might include the women who inspired me and introduce me to many I hadn’t yet discovered.
That’s not what I found. I found a dialogue that seemed more focused on how these “lady editors” and “lady writers” looked in bathing suits, and that they were “beauty pageant beautiful” or a “knock out.” I am certain no condescension was intended with the use of “lady,” but as the dialogues went on, I felt the word carried a certain tone—perhaps that was a fiction of my own making. As I listened to these two men talk about lady editors and writers they had known, I grew uneasy. Something wasn’t right.
Almost synchronous with her [Catherine Tarrant’s] entrance was that of Beatrice Mahaffey as Raymond Palmer’s assistant editor when Palmer left Amazing to originate a series of his own magazines (beginning with Other Worlds) and I will leave it to you to introduce her; you knew her from the SF community of your early years and were, with so many, an admirer. She was competent, unpretentious, and beauty pageant gorgeous … as photographs make quite clear. Tell succeeding generations all about her, please.
Mike
Ah, Bea Mahaffey…
She was the only pro I knew in Cincinnati when we moved here from the Chicago area more than a third of a century ago. She was incredibly generous with her time and reminiscences, and I spent a lot of time with her, on the phone and in person, duting the first few months when I was learning my way around town.
Anyone who’s seen photos of Bea from the 1950s knows she was a knockout as a young woman.
and
[Mike Resnick:] Another story is from nonagenarian Margaret Keiffer, who lives just a couple of miles from us. She’s the widow of super-fan Don Ford, who ran the 1949 Worldcon, and founded both Midwestcon and First Fandom. Don also created CFG (the Cincinnati Fantasy Group), the venerable local club to which Carol and I belong. According to Margaret, during its first few years of existence CFG was populated exclusively by men. Then Bea joined. Then the members’ wives got a look at Bea in her swimsuit at the 1950 Midwestcon. Then the club’s makeup changed to the 50% men and 50% women that has existed ever since.
Where Jean Rabe Went Wrong, #1: Having just learned through incoming president Steven Gould that Rabe was appointed to be editor of the Bulletin by outgoing president John Scalzi then-president Russell Davis when previous issues were months late, I can understand that there’s a chance that Rabe may not have gotten a good chance to read and review that particular Resnick/Malzberg dialogue too carefully before it went to press. Which is minor fault number one. But the even bigger fault is not recognizing that publishing such an article without a balancing viewpoint was a disservice to the membership.
I believe that as the editor of a professional trade organization’s newsletter, it’s Rabe’s job to ensure that not only does the magazine come out on time, but that it addresses the membership as a whole, from the old veterans who can remember casual conversations with Robert Heinlein to the new writers who have just become eligible for membership by selling their third piece of prose, from the “old white guys” who pioneered the genre conventions to the new non-white, non-male members who are finding new ways to address those conventions.
Many of these new writers are women, and many of them are vocal about expressing their displeasure about misogyny in the fandom. Many of them are men who have been just as vocal in decrying sexism in the industry. Rabe should have known about both of these factors and should have had a response from the SFWA addressing those issues as an article from one of the women mentioned regarding her experiences in the industry or a current female writer/editor talking about how things have changed since Resnick and Malzberg’s time. If there wasn’t enough time to solicit either of those articles, then possibly this lack of representation could have been mentioned in a “Letter from the Editor” asking for an alternate commentary on those times. And those members would have been mollified or at least pleased to know that their voices were as important as Resnick and Malzberg’s, that their SFWA membership money wasn’t going to an organization that didn’t acknowledge views that were important to them.
The worst part of all is that this isn’t the first time the SFWA has had problems with some of its older members doing or saying things that are misogynistic and offensive in the 21st century, as the the reaction surrounding the Harlan Ellison boob grab from the 2006 Hugo Award ceremony shows. (A copy of Ellison’s “apology” can be found here; proof that Ellison didn’t really apologize can be read in this comment on an unrelated entry on Scalzi’s blog.) Having “survived” that issue, an editor with a little bit of foresight would have been aware that this could be an issue with its membership again, and any steps to curtail it would have been seen as a public relations coup.
Problem #2: On the cover of Issue #200 was a barbarian standing over a downed giant, sword liberally coated in blood. But it wasn’t just any old barbarian.
Rabe—who certainly would have been aware of Hines’ win in 2012 and what he wrote about which made him worthy of the nomination—should have thought twice about making the cover of the 200th issue an image of a woman in improbable armor. Or, if as Tobler sympathetically suggests the cover was meant to evoke a sense of nostalgia towards what fantasy covers used to look like, perhaps this should have been mentioned in that same “Letter from the Editor.” Again, any comment from Rabe would have been welcome and defused the tension surrounding the second half of the Resnick/Malzberg dialogues, but to my knowledge that didn’t happen.
Where Jean Rabe Went Right, #1: If there’s something that Rabe did correctly, it was to include an essay by Jim Hines called “Cover Art and the Radical Notion that Women Are People” in a subsequent issue, #202. But as you’ll read, by then it was “too little, too late.”
Problem #3: Issue #201 was the Spring 2013 issue, and it included an article by writer C.J. Henderson. According to writer Betsy Dornbusch, Henderson wrote about “staying power and reinventing oneself for career longevity.” And yet, he used an interesting example to illustrate his point:
The reason for Barbie’s unbelievable staying power, when every contemporary and wanna-be has fallen by the way-side is, she’s a nice girl. Let the Bratz girls dress like tramps and whores. Barbie never had any of that. Sure, there was a quick buck to be made going that route but it wasn’t for her. Barbie got her college degree, but she never acted as if it was something owed to her, or that Ken ever tried to deny her.
She has always been a role model for young girls, and has remained popular with millions of them throughout their entire lives, because she maintained her quiet dignity the way a woman should. [emphasis by Dornbusch]
Where Jean Rabe Went Wrong, #3: Dornbusch laid out very well exactly what’s wrong with Henderson’s premise and why it’s faulty to hold up Barbie as a positive role model of longevity, so I’m not going to repeat it. However, it’s an editor’s job to review every piece prior to publication to see if the writer is making claims that the organization can’t defend, especially the opinion pieces.
And if indeed a writer does make claims that aren’t easily defensible, it’s an editor’s job to note that while the publication stands by the writer’s right to his/her opinion, that it’s not the opinion of the organization as a whole. Again, such a statement—either behind the scenes in the private forums for SFWA members or a public notice on the website—would have gone a long way towards defusing the issue; as far as I researched, nothing to this effect was done by Rabe or the board of directors. If Locus editor-in-chief Liza Groen Trombi can admit to her editorial mistakes regarding an ill-written April Fools’ joke, why are Jean Rabe and the Bulletin above reproach regarding misogyny?
Problem #4: Recently published in Summer 2013, issue #202 contained a “rebuttal” by Resnick and Malzberg to the criticisms of their dialogue from issue #200; in the real world, Rabe probably would have been fired for letting the situation come to this point. As noted earlier, the issue contains a piece written by Hines which was probably prompted by the debate on the cover art from #200, but it was overbalanced by the somewhat incomprehensible back-and-forth between Resnick and Malzberg. Special thanks go to Natalie at Radish Reviews who had been able to obtain low-res images of the article so that both SFWA members and non-members could read and discuss the outrageous statements like this one from Barry Malzberg regarding the detractors:
What makes this statement outrageous is Malzberg’s partial assumption that because there are some people who wished that the article had not been published in the Bulletin, then the injured parties may have wanted to suppress his and Resnick’s words. Of course, he retreats from committing himself to that false agenda (“to my knowledge that is not at the time part of the complainers’ agenda”), but by throwing in the word “suppression” he deliberately and mistakenly calls into mind an image of a specter of Senator Joe McCarthy or something Orwellian.
There’s also this statement by Mike Resnick, referring to the cover of issue #200, which I’ll return to later:
Both Natalie and Jason Sanford do an excellent job in explaining exactly why the latest Resnick/Malzberg dialogue is offensive, so I’m not going to go into it here. At this stage, however, I think that once writers start throwing around claims that they’re being “censored” in an opinion piece and calling their critics “liberal fascists,” it’s time to review with those writers what censorship actually means from a legal standpoint and how to properly respond to critiques written on the Internet.
I point to attorney and blogger Ken White at Popehat who in 2009 had to create a special tag for articles on the site about “thin skinned weenies” who were claiming that their First Amendment rights were being violated. White’s first paragraph explaining the new tag is as follows:
Let’s be clear—the right to free speech is the right to express oneself without state retaliation. It is not a right to speak without social retaliation. Speech has consequences. Among those consequences are condemnation, vituperation, scorn, ridicule, and pariah status. Those consequences represent other people exercising their free speech rights. That’s a feature of the marketplace of ideas, not a bug.
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances. [emphasis mine]
As no one from either of the gentlemen’s home states has introduced a bill into either the House or Senate asking that Mike Resnick and/or Barry Malzberg be prohibited for writing in the Bulletin about “lady writers” and “lady editors,” neither of them can credibly claim that they’re being censored. The fact that Rabe even gave them an opportunity to revisit the subject in issue #202 is proof that the editorial board of the Bulletin is encouraging their right to speak freely about their previous comments.
But instead of letting Resnick and Malzberg’s purple pens get away from them, Rabe should have done the following:
Ensure that they understood exactly what it was that they wrote which some people found offensive.
Explain the rationale of why it was offensive to them in a way that they would understand.
Read their ensuing article to make damn well sure that they weren’t sticking their feet in their mouths again.
Fact-check every claim made by Resnick and Malzberg to ensure that it wasn’t fallacious or damaging to the organization.
That way, Resnick could not have gotten away with his above statement regarding romance novel covers. And while it may probably have a grain of truth within it, that doesn’t mean that readers and fans aren’t as critical of romance novel covers and their sociological implications as Hines was in his essay and blog posts on science fiction and fantasy covers. In fact, a quick Google search brought up this article written in 1999, which can also incidentally be taken as proof that when it comes to decrying sexism in book covers, the romance readers were ahead of the curve. And let’s not forget this entire category of posts by the women behind Smart Bitches, Trashy Books. There’s even an entire doctoral dissertation on romance novel covers (link goes to a PDF), written by Dr. Jayashree Kamble in 2008.
If I could find those articles and/or have those references at my fingertips within the six hours it has taken me thus far to write this article, surely Rabe or one of her associate editors could have done the same amount of research—or more—and found better examples to show to Resnick and let him know that his rationale was faulty and how he could make his piece stronger.
Because that’s the other job of an editor: to point out where things don’t make any sense and most importantly, help make a writer’s work much stronger. And I think this is the most egregious error that Rabe committed: she left her writers out to hang themselves with their own words.
The task force also aims to “solicit further, detailed opinions from the membership as a whole about the Bulletin as part of an upcoming stage of the project.” I know that I’m not a SFWA member, but in sending a link to this article to vice president Rachel Swirsky and Scalzi as part of their work on this task force, I hope that what I’ve written can help them make the Bulletin a newsletter that the present and future membership can be proud of.
When he threw open the comments on a blog entry about the show to people who had questions about his first guest appearance, the following exchange took place:
Q: I think TBBT has really made geek chic in some respects, which I’m all for! Do you think the show’s had an impact making geeks more mainstream and funny?
Wheaton: I think it’s part of the general uncloseting of geeks, if that makes sense.
It’s no secret that I originally thought BBT was making fun of us, and I couldn’t get into it. It wasn’t until late in the first season that I gave it a real chance and ended up seeing that it was laughing *with* us and not *at* us. I love that the show embraces its geekiness, refuses to dumb down its humor, and manages to find a balance between mainstream and nerd humor. That’s a lot harder than it seems, and is sort of like playing Comedy Operation. If you touch the sides, the audience’s red nose lights up and instead of laughing, there’s a loud buzzing noise. It isn’t pretty.
Based on those words alone, I put “The Big Bang Theory” on my list of shows that were kind to geeks and science; however, some opinion pieces I saw earlier this year had me questioning his words.
The first one I saw was from Kris Naudus, a writer with whom I worked when I was at Wizard Entertainment. She’s currently a content manager for gdgt, but in her free time, she maintains a blog at LiveJournal where she posts her musings on pop and geek culture. She’s not a fan of TBBT, but because so many of her friends and family enjoy it and keep recommending it to her, she thought she’d give it another chance.
I usually insist that I don’t like this show because it’s not really nerdy; it’s just making fun of nerds, and that offends me. But this episode didn’t offend me as a geek or nerd. It offended me as a woman, and as a decent human being. Sheldon’s behavior was disgusting and the fact that the episode plays it for laughs and lets him get off scot-free, means that in a way, they condone it. We’re supposed to accept it because “that’s just the way Sheldon is.” It’s absolutely awful that part of the show’s premise is “these guys can’t talk to women,” but then they’re all given girlfriends before they’ve actually learned that lesson. Or really, Sheldon hasn’t learned that lesson, because he doesn’t need to, because he has Amy and Amy doesn’t care because of the way she is. Which is a shame, because I like Miyam [sic] Bialik and how Amy isn’t a stereotypical girl character. Unfortunately, it also makes her an enabler.
Shortly after I watched the episode, I also came across a TEDx talk by Jorge Cham, the cartoonist behind Piled Higher and Deeper, aka PHD Comics, aka The Webcomic that Grad Students Get and Most Everyone Else Might Not Get.
His talk was about something he’s calling “The Science Gap,” that leap in perception between what academics, nerds, and geeks see regarding the world of science and what the rest of the “normal” or mainstream world sees. The relevant part of the talk starts at 4 minutes and 46 seconds into the talk; you can watch the whole thing below:
Let’s take a closer look at one of Cham’s comments again:
TBBT is a major TV network show that’s [also] supposed to be about scientists and researchers, and the show has a lot of fans—and I don’t want to offend them, especially on the Internet—but this show does… all the smart people in this show have [these] glasses, they dress really weird, they’re socially inept, and all the pretty [and] cool people, they’re blonde, they’re dumb, they’re outgoing, etcetera. And so, I don’t have anything personal against the show, but I do sort of worry about what these stereotypes, what impact they have on society in general.
Long-time readers know that I’m definitely the kind of person who will put her money where her mouth is, and rather than just take someone’s word for granted regarding claims that a piece of entertainment is misogynistic or unrepresentative of a particular sub-culture, I’m going to check it out for myself. So, I hopped on over to the CBS website where “Egg Salad” had been streaming and I watched the entire episode.
Because Naudus was so thorough in her review, a lot of the twists and turns of the story were spoiled for me and so I don’t feel as if I can be as completely objective as a person watching the episode during its first run or without the benefit of the fan-wiki and a review by a trusted source would be. During my viewing of the show, I paid close attention to the scenes where Sheldon was interacting with his assistant Alex, because for the last four years I’ve been an assistant to various people in many different industries and know first-hand what it’s like to work for someone who has a very strong sense of self like the Sheldon character does.
The scenes where Alex felt uncomfortable and insulted as her boss started describing her as being full of hormones and/or having her emotions controlled by them like a lesser human being was equally as uncomfortable to me because I could see how I would react in exactly that sort of situation, having seen it in the workplace. I’ve also done human resources work during my career and I know how unnerving it is to have someone show so much disrespect towards you and your position without realizing that they’re doing so, as in the scene where Sheldon told the African-American woman from human resources that she was “a slave” to her body chemistry. And knowing that the other three scientist characters were equally as guilty of inappropriate remarks and behavior in the workplace regarding their female co-workers didn’t make things better because it showed that even Leonard as the most “normal” of the four was a terrible co-worker and colleague.
With those three things in mind and having seen how similar Naudus’ conclusion about the episode (“Sheldon hasn’t learned [his] lesson, because he doesn’t need to, because he has Amy and Amy doesn’t care…”) was to my conclusion about Observe and Report (“Even at the end of the film, [Ronnie] is still posturing, still arrogant, still a dick, but this time he’s got everyone else around him affirming and agreeing that he should continue to be this way….”), I came to my first realization about “The Big Bang Theory”: Because of the nature of episodic sitcoms on the major non-cable networks in the U.S., it is in the best interests for the writers of TBBT to keep Sheldon and the other main characters as being portrayed as stereotypes of geeks rather than showing positive growth and change for as long as possible; ergo, this show is not very kind to geeks at all.
On the other side of the coin is Cham’s claim that this show isn’t kind to science through its portrayal of young, intellectual researchers in academia. One could be cynical and say that the only reason Cham is saying this is because he is the executive producer of a feature film based on his comics as well as an ongoing web documentary series which portrays realresearchers talking about realscience and he just wants the additional views on YouTube, but I don’t think that’s it.
I think that through Cham’s experience having done a series of lectures all across the U.S. and abroad starting in 2005 and the work he’s done since then on his feature film and web series, he’s personally seen and spoken to thousands of young intellectuals in academia who are more socially adjusted, more stylish, and have more interesting lives and compelling stories about those lives both inside and outside of their field of research than the four main characters on TBBT. From physics grad Ameliz who wants to be a professional actress to architecture grad Matt who built and lives in his thesis, from the research teams at CERN who are working with the Large Hadron Collider to the unnamed woman who went from being a cancer researcher to a cancer patient, Cham more than anyone understands who exactly the average young scientist is and why he or she are nothing like the characters on TBBT.
“But TBBT is fictional!” I hear you say. “It’s not meant to be realistic! You should just chill!” Believe me, I hear and understand that viewpoint, but I think that the continued portrayal of scientists as being socially inadequate and only unattractive compared to the average person has a chance to harm real scientists. For example, on the PhD Comics YouTube channel, Cham aired a multi-part look at how fandom interacts with the real world, and what neurobiologist grad student and host Crystal Dilworth has to say about her reaction to the stereotypes in TBBT is interesting:
Dilworth: It’s interesting, your take on TBBT because for me I look at that show as propagating some, in my mind, negative stereotypes about scientists.
Lincoln Geraghty, professor of popular media studies at the University of Portsmouth, England: Well, indeed.
Dilworth: Especially for me as a woman, believing that in order to be a woman in science, you have to be both ugly, socially unequipped, and narrowly focused. Which, I’m a woman in science pursuing a PhD and I don’t find…
Prof. Geraghty: What’s your field?
Dilworth: Molecular neuroscience.
Prof. Geraghty: Oh, blimey.
Dilworth: So, Amy Farah Fowler is supposed to be me, and I don’t feel like I’m being accurately represented.
My immediate response, which I posted in the YouTube comments to the video, are that I understand what Dilworth is saying because as a scientist who happens to be a woman, it could be hard for her to be taken as seriously as an Amy Farah Fowler-type would be because Dilworth—in my opinion—is more conventionally attractive than the character is. By perpetuating the stereotype that Fowler is what all or most female neurobiologists look like, it harms her personally.
But even more damaging is the notion that “scientists” are a completely and totally different type of person than the average person can hope to become. We all know that through hard work, exercise, the right diet, and maybe the right fitness applications on your cell phone, a person can go from very unfit to reasonably fit in as few as nine weeks. But what about increasing one’s knowledge? Shouldn’t we encourage more interest in the sciences by encouraging people of all kinds to be interested in it?
In this same episode of TBBT, Penny, the audience viewpoint character and Leonard’s girlfriend, got jealous when she learned that Alex had attempted to ask Leonard out on a date. Alex, who is reasonably attractive, also happens to be a doctoral candidate in physics (which is why she’s Sheldon’s assistant). After pondering whether or not she should take community college classes in science, Penny decided that it all seemed too “boring” for her, and chose to start wearing “geeky” glasses instead as a way to keep Leonard’s interest in her fresh. Thus, creating a “fake geek girl” for Leonard to have sex with that evening.
But wouldn’t it be cool and provide a more interesting character arc to have Penny learn what the sciences are like, for her to find a science or a skill that she does like and for which she has a real aptitude? Wouldn’t in encourage interest in the STEM fields to watch how someone’s interest in the sciences can be piqued? And couldn’t it be equally as engaging and as funny as trotting out old stereotypes about geeks?
Until someone give me a production budget, a writing staff, and some actors, unfortunately, we’re never going to know that answer for sure. However, this doesn’t mean that we shouldn’t wish and ask for more from our entertainment.
Adam Ferrara attempts to jump a $1,000 used Cadillac over a ramp
Thanks to a recent bout of insomnia, I finally finished leveling out and editing the second of the two audio podcasts that Kara Dennison and I recorded while we reviewed the first three episodes of “Top Gear USA.”
The reason why I had to do a lot of editing work on this one is that while the audio tracks for Kara and myself were just fine, the one for our our special guest amateurautocrossracer Rob Lantz was considerably quieter, and so I had to splice out and amplify almost every part where he was speaking.
Originally recorded live on December 5, 2010, I hope you enjoy this blast from the “Geekly Speaking About…” past:
Luckily, “Top Gear USA” has been renewed for a second season, so there’s a chance we could do another podcast like this again to see how it has improved over the first episodes of its inaugural season. If you’d like to download the audio, you can do so by going to our page at TalkShoe. And despite all the audio problems, it really was fun doing this, and I hope to be able to do more live podcasts soon.
One of the things I’ve noticed while covering movie news for this site is that there are an awful lot of remakes and adaptations of existing movies, plays, and TV series that are being put into production, and it seems like it’s happening more and more often. In fact, it’s happening so often that I almost feel as if this kind of news deserves its own category tag.
Which is why I really appreciated this story from the Hollywood Reporter’s Risky Business blog from last week, wherein Jay A. Fernandez profiled the subject of one of screenwriter Adam Mazer’s recent true-life adaptation projects, Hal Berger.
With a working title of Snatched, Berger’s story is that he was married to a woman who was from South Africa who refused to return to the U.S. from that country with their son and after Berger got him back, she used a boyfriend and some fake passports to re-take her son from his school. And then, things got intense, as reported by the Huffington Post:
While living in South Africa for eight months to recover his son, Mr. Berger was faced with two false arrests attempts, several death threats, was ultimately imprisoned while entering the country from Namibia, and stripped of his human rights to see his child for months at a time.
While I disagree with Fernandez’s description of Berger as a “decidedly regular guy,” you have to admit that the story’s quite fascinating—which begs the question: What other real-life stories are out there that would make awesome movies?
I’m so glad you asked.
Hatshepsut After the death of her father, favored daughter Princess Hatshepsut begins to realize that she could possibly become the sole ruler of Egypt.
My fascination for the story of the only female pharaoh of ancient Egypt (whoops, spoilers) began with my first boyfriend who painted a rather evocative image of her in both words and pencil when he was studying her for one of his art classes.
There weren’t any wars conducted during her lifetime so I don’t see this containing any Ten Commandments-style epic scenes, but I see there being lots of intrigue and clashes amongst the other political factions that wanted her nephew Tutmose III to attain a full leadership. Bonus to this would be a subplot featuring the secret romance between her and her most trusted advisor.
The Soldier Bear After being found in the foothills of Iran, the men of the Second Polish Transport Company aren’t sure what to do with their pet brown bear cub. Luckily, Wojtek has his own idea about what he can do for his new friends.
The author of its Badass of the Week profile says, “The idea of a fucking alcoholic Nazi-fighting bear is so awesome that you’d think it was something out of a bizarre cartoon or a Sci-Fi Channel Original Movie” and why not, I say? It would be like Born Free, except with less fluffy-happy-bunny time and more awesome Saving Private Ryan action, perhaps with some M.A.S.H or Catch-22-style hijinks as well.
Young Justice When some kids reach the age of 15, they look forward to getting a permit to drive a car. All he ever wanted was a decent day’s wage—and what he did to get it would rock a nation to its very core.
The screenwriter looking to adapt this story should wait a few years as the murder of South African white supremacist leaderEugene Terreblanche (his last name means “white land” in French) by an unnamed minor is still being investigated. Hell, in the 16 hours since the time I first started drafting this article, the AP article I linked was fleshed out with much more detail.
Still, in a world where so many people are looking at the election of a black man to the highest government honor in the U.S. as a sign that racism is over, for this kind of treatment and resulting hatred and strife to still be continuing both shocks and appalls me—and makes me wonder how Kathryn Bigelow feels about making movies about post-apartheid South Africa.
Spacewomen of the Soyuz Friends since childhood, Dorothy, Stephanie, Naoko and Tracy have endured a rigorous training regimen and numerous hardships in order to become the first all-female deep space exploration party and the commanders of the starship Soyuz. However, what awaits them in the darkest reaches will test and try their very souls.
This is probably the most far-fetched and the most deserving of the title credit “Inspired by a true story,” but when I learned that real-life astronauts Dorothy Metcalf-Lindenburger, Stephanie Wilson, Naoko Yamazaki and Tracy Caldwell Dyson have broken the record for the most number of women who are in orbit around the Earth after this past week’s shuttle launch, I couldn’t help but think that it was a cool time to be a woman of science.
I was turning 9 at the time of the Challenger disaster of January 1986 and like many kids that year, I was watching the launch live in my elementary school classroom. My teacher Ms. Clyde (later, Caitlin) had been one of the finalists for the inaugural Teacher in Space program, but Christa McAuliffe just happened to beat her out, which is why we were watching it rather intently.
I don’t know how related it is to that, but legendary comics writer Chris Claremont released a book a year later called First Flight! which revolves around a maverick female pilot/astronaut and I remember loving the book when I first read it almost 10 years after its release. (Alas, the book is no longer in print; hooray for used bookstores!)
Combine the true facts with imaginary details of these women’s lives, toss in some Alien or Moon-style corporate intrigue along with healthy bits of science, and you’ve got an awesome movie right there.
In May 2008, the poker blogs were all abuzz about the simple fact that there has not been one really good poker movie since Rounders. A fewwriters poked their head into this story, but I think the most definitive comes from Change100 at Pot Committed, because she used to be a script reader in Hollywood:
One of the most successful films of the first half of 2008 was a movie about Las Vegas. And gambling. 21 was modestly budgeted, had one star (Kate Bosworth) but only in a supporting role, and got mixed reviews. Still, it earned over $24 million its opening weekend and has grossed over $80 million to date. If Rounders came out today with the same cast, it would probably earn a similar amount.
Why? There is one common thread these movies have and it’s not a deck of cards.
It’s wish fulfillment.
I personally think that Rounders is one of my favorite movies of all time, which I finally saw on DVD during my 30th birthday bash in my parents’ Las Vegas time share, a few days after I quickly lost $50 in the Planet Hollywood poker room.
I agree with Change100 (and possibly Otis) that the best sports or whatever movies are about wish fulfillment and making you think that you can achieve the same kind of success as the protagonist has. Who doesn’t want to say that they bluffed someone like Doyle Brunson and got away with it?
And the game of poker and everything surrounding it has a bunch of great stories to tell. You could take the same old sports inspirational formula and apply it to the story of Annette Obrestad, aka the youngest woman to win the first-ever World Series of Poker European Championship in London, who started playing online poker when she was 15 years old.
You know what would be a great story? Exposing the possibly-illicit backer system, where a player gets bought into events because the person with the money thinks they can win. However, what happens to someone when they have an inconsistent record—good enough to back, but can’t cash enough to make the rent? How would they ever be able to get out of that hole?
That would make a great story for the basis of Rounders 2, wouldn’t it?
Finding the time to listen to hour-long episodes of podcasts which are eligible for the 2016 Hugo Awards wasn’t easy for me, but that’s what today’s article is about. The eligibility requirements state that the podcast must be a “non-professional” production—that is, no other company paid the podcaster(s) to make it—and at least one episode has to have been produced during the calendar year in question.
Black Girl Nerds
I Don’t Even Own a Television
The Skiffy and Fanty Show
In May 2008, the poker blogs were all abuzz about the simple fact that there has not been one really good poker movie since Rounders.