Life of Murphy

You know what's not a good thing to get when you're dead tired and recovering from a week-long bout of bronchitis?

Insomnia.

Got hit big time last night. Took forever to go to sleep (went to bed at ten, was still awake when the roomie and the pretty girl from upstairs came in), then everything kept me awake. The wind. The roomie going to the bathroom. Mysterious clanking fans. The cats. Planes passing overhead. Traffic outside. Everything. I swear at one point the pulse in my ears was too loud. It didn't help my stomach was upset from the antibiotics I've been taken for the sinus infection/bronchitis.

I wound up going out to the couch to change location and put on some music to act as white noise (it usually works if I'm having a hyper-hearing episode) and managed to drop off, at least for a few hours before my back decided enough was enough. I staggered back to bed, discovered the door hadn't latched properly and was open, closed and locked it. Then got up again a minute later as the plaintive mews of Spike at my doorway led me to realise that Angel had gone exploring and had gotten locked out. It's a good thing one can't last long without the other - I always know when Angel's gotten himself stuck somewhere, like the bathroom.

Finally back in bed, I lay awake for another ten minutes or so, cursing the world in general, then apparently dropped off. I wound up snoozing my alarm several times and was a bit late for work, but I really needed the sleep. And fortunately, things are relatively quiet here today. I've finally gotten through the bulk of the backlog (a week's worth of work was waiting for me when I came back) and one lawyer's in Whitby today. Alvin's due in, but not for a little while, so I can have my coffee and my breakfast yogurt and breathe a bit. Maybe even do some XP stuff, since I've been very quiet on that scene and I'm feeling a bit isolated.

Reality vs. Fantasy, aka All Sci-Fi/Fantasy Lovers Are Nerds

So, there's a couple of links on my friendslist this morning regarding this article by Gina Bellafante in the New York Times Arts Beat section, in defence of her 'review' of the HBO series based on George R. R. Martin's book A Game of Thrones. Ms. Bellafante apparently received a lot of negative feedback to her article, spurred by her perception/assumption/declaration that fantasy novels are "for boys". Her second post continues to push that assumption, with the following quote:

As I wrote in the review, I realize that there are women who love fantasy, but I don’t know any and that is the truth: I don’t know any. At the same time, I am sure that there are fantasy fans out there who may not know a single person who worships at the altar of quietly hewn domestic novels or celebrates the films of Nicole Holofcener or is engrossed by reruns of “House.”

Ms. Bellafante doesn't like the Fantasy genre - fair enough. But where she went wrong was in assigning gender preferences to particular genres and declaring that never the twain shall meet. You're either a Nerd and enjoy sci-fi and fantasy (probably from your mother's basement and in lieu of personal hygiene, the implication is) or you're Popular and like Sex in the City and romance novels (easy to read during spa treatments or when you're waiting to get your nails done). She categorises people are one or the other and refuses to countenance that there's a possibility of any kind of cross-over. In two articles, she manages to not only insult women by insisting they only like "girly" genres but also geeks of all stripes with the assumption we're all escapists from reality.

Back in high school, I discovered Stephen Donaldson and the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. Heavy stuff, especially at fifteen in a country town, with its themes on personal morality, punishment and the means as a way to the end. I loved it, since it gave my ever-hungry mind something to chew over. On the school bus one day, one of my friends saw what I was reading and said, kind of disparagingly, that fantasy was all "escapism", that it wasn't "real". I pointedly looked at the book in her hands, a typical romance novel and asked her if her type of fantasy - romantic fantasy - was any different. She kind of turned red and mumbled something and we went back to our books.

And I wonder why I didn't have a lot of friends in high school. *wry*

Any way, the point is, fictional works, by virtue of being fictional are all fantasies. They're the product of people's imaginations, creating a plot, characters, dialogue, interactions. The plot of a romance novel is no more likely to happen than the plot of a science fiction novel; an episode of House, with its complete disregard for how hospital protocols actually work is no more real than an episode of Buffy. Writers twist the world to fit their creations and to assign value to any genre as being more "real" than another is kind of naive. CSI, Law and Order, Sex In The City, Jersey Shore... they are all just as unrealistic as the worlds created by Tolkein, Lucas or Gaiman. DNA testing takes at least ten working days to be done. Murders can take months, sometimes years to get from crime to sentencing. People first thing in the morning look dishevelled and untidy and have morning breath and smudged make up and finding "the one" doesn't mean happily ever after (oh, don't get me started on that one!). And while there may be people like the inhabitants of teh Jersey Shore house, they're almost certainly being encouraged to play up their 'roles' to the hilt in order to provide more drama. Even my beloved The West Wing is fantasy - real government just doesn't work that way, as much as we want it to.

Oh, and professional wrestling is totally scripted. Sorry, mike_smith. ;)

The end point of all this is, besides the fact that Ms. Bellafante is a lazy critic and obviously didn't actually watch the show she was supposed to review, is that the line between 'realism' and 'fantasy' is a lot less distinct than the stereotypes assume. And Ms. Bellafante's stereotypes and assumptions, like all stereotypes and assumptions, fail to reflect the shades of grey that is the true human experience in an effort to delineate an "Us" vs. "Them", in order to make the debate as simplistic as possible. To have a right and a wrong. The problem is, the world doesn't work that way, and Ms. Dellafante's worldview winds up looking as based on fantasy as the genre she's criticising.

Fiction is entertainment and to that end, fiction must also be unrealistic. Otherwise no-one would be entertained, would they?

***

Finally, to her credit, Ms. Bellafante did post some links to rebuttals to her review which are pretty good. Therefore, I share:

Ilana Teitelbaum's response in the Huffington Post

Salon's Mark Soller Zietz's response (apologies, I can't actually open this one from work, so it may suck. I'll have to check it at home after work)

Regina Thorne of the Heroes and Heartbreakers site (another one I can't open, sorry!)