Part Memorial/ Part Love Note

This post leaves BookWorld, because sometimes the larger world intrudes...

I know it's been several weeks since the Aurora, CO shootings, but sometimes it takes me a while to come up with the right words for certain situations. I'm not vain enough to think that many people care about my opinion on what happened, but as we learned from Rent “The opposite of war isn't peace, it's creation.” And in order to attempt to wrap my brain around such a random violent act I've undertaken this act of creation.* 

I've gone to the movies twice since it happened, once to see The Dark Knight Rises. I will admit that both times I was hyper-aware of people getting up and leaving the theater, or even just shifting in their seats. Much like when I flew back to New York in October 2001, there was a completely different feeling in the room. An act that we all viewed as normal, or sometimes exciting, had been transformed into something completely alien and vaguely threatening. As we all tried to adjust to the new world created from acts of horrible violence the whole experience took on a more serious and somber tone. It was not something I had ever expected to feel in a movie theatre, the place we all go to escape reality, now suddenly oppressively weighted with it.

And much like flying now comes with a new set of rules, so does going to the movies. Most of the major chains are banning any sort of masks and fake weaponry in theaters, some are even starting bag searches and talks of metal detectors. While I completely understand and support these measures, it does make me a little sad as well.

Some of the happiest times in my adult life have occurred at midnight movie screenings. It always involves a large group of my friends and even family and an even larger groups of total strangers gathering together for a single purpose. Since most midnight screenings involve really geek-centric movies there were always great costumes on display. I once went to a Harry Potter screening where I sat in front of Princess Leia and Indiana Jones, and they were a lot of fun to talk to while we waited excitedly for our movie to start. I almost never engage in small talk with strangers, but somehow all those rules fall away for midnight movie screenings. There's always a sense of camaraderie and shared passions and pure joy at seeing something we've all been waiting for. It's a completely different experience than seeing a movie at any other time during the run – people applaud and cheer, no one texts or talks to their friends – we're all there to be completely transported to a new world. (One of my favorite moments was when an entire theater of Potter fans boo'd a Twilight trailer. Awesome. Then later when that same audience went silent as we watched Severus Snape make the ultimate sacrifice and show us an amazing love story.) I hope that theaters don't decide to take these midnight movies away from us, but, more importantly, I hope people don't stop going to them.

I don't think we should forget what happened in Colorado, but we can't let the actions of one disturbed man ruin one of the few ways we as a community gather together to share in a common interest. And we can't blame the movies, because it's not Christopher Nolan's fault that someone took his art and used it as a backdrop for his violent act. We all need the escape that the movies provide, and we also need the emotional catharsis that art, when done well, can provide for us.

So I will absolutely be there with the rest of my nerdy brethren at the midnight release for Frankenweenie. And The Hobbit. I'll leave behind my Wench-y personality for a few hours and talk to the other fans as we wait in long, cold lines to be transported away to magical worlds full of new and old fictional friends, refusing, as all good heroes do, to let the bad guys win.

*One of my heroes, Kevin Smith, expounds upon this idea at the beginning of his podcast Fat Man on Batman #8. I highly recommend giving the first fifteen minutes a listen.

Darker Shades of Rage

This one gets even more down and dirty, and personal, so proceed with caution friends and relatives.  And faint hearted strangers...

I thought I had gotten all of my rage out in the last post about the 50 Shades phenomenon, but then I saw this...

And then I decided to write a sequel.

It's kind of hard to put my rage into words that wouldn't get bleeped on network television. While I love those words, and use them often, I try to be a little more elevated with my vocabulary on this site. Just know that under all of this is a very heartfelt f*ck you.

The reason this, and the whole 50 Shades thing, makes me so mad is this continued idea that there's something wrong with people who are into bondage and dominance play without the holy sanction of reading these books. Liking to get spanked does not inherently make someone a bad person. Or a mean person. Or in need of a therapist. Or a potentially violent sociopath. It just means that the pain/pleasure centers in our brains play really nicely together. It has virtually no bearing on our moral compasses or our interactions with the world.

Additionally – nothing takes the fun out of a BDSM scene like someone worrying that they're not being “nice” enough. Stopping all the time to question the other person, tentative spanks, and extremely loose knots ruin the illusion and the moment. The pain and the implied danger are what make it fun. Constantly hearing “Oh my god, was that too hard?” does not. That's why you have safe words (or gestures if you're gagged.)

So Shady Ladies, or Wicked Christian's Bitches, or whatever your fandom has named itself, if you do find this new world you've entered into arousing and you want to play in the scene being condescending and judgemental about it is not the way to gain entree. There's quite enough anti-kinkster feeling floating around without people attempting to bring it into the community.

Oh – and to further shatter your illusions- the best place to find men willing to dominate you isn't Wall Street, or in the mythical handsome billionaires club. Generally those guys are the ones keeping all the professional lady-doms in business. The best place to find the guys willing to tie you down and spank you – Renaissance Faires and Sci-Fi Conventions. That's right ladies- those Star Trek nerds you mocked in high school, they're the ones with the best dungeons and toys. In fact last week at Comic-Con I can guarantee you that hotel rooms across San Diego were host to scenes of Batman tying up Wonder Woman and flogging her until she invoked the safe word. (Which was probably Superman. Nothing takes the power out of little Batman like hearing the name of that Kryptonian goody-two-shoes.) So run with that image next time you pick up your “naughty” books.

I realize I've devoted a lot of space to these books, and over-shared about my own personal life, but I really feel strongly about the things I brought up here. Growing up in a fairly conservative area and knowing that the women who led the pack in a lot of slut-shaming and pearl clutching are now shelling out cash for these books and acting like they discovered BDSM is pretty insulting and hypocritical. I've had these women ask me why I would ever want to read The Sexual Life of Catherine M, or inform me that the library would never stock something like Juliette. And clearly, from the title of the companion book I just presented, there is still a stigma attached to my interests. That somehow because I came into my kinks pre-Gray they're still evil and wrong, because I didn't go about it in the majority-approved fashion. And sometimes choking on hypocrisy makes me really angry.

I'll close once again by saying that if these books do actually open up some honest and non-judgemental dialog about sex and kinks and pleasure that will be great. Unfortunately I just don't see that happening. But what do I know? According to the Macleods, I'm not a nice person. 

Fifteen Shades of Rage

This one's going to get Cinemax After Dark, so family members and sensitive friends might want to skip it.

So unless you've been living in a cave for the past few months you're all aware that the latest publishing phenomenon is the Fifty Shades of Grey trilogy. And anyone who knows me at all will not be surprised to learn that I have a few issues with both the book and the phenomenon. Once again I put myself in the line of fire of the millions of rabid fans, but luckily very few people read this blog – so I'm probably safe.

As most people who know me will realize it's not the down and dirty BDSM I have a problem with, it's the following myriad problems, in no particular order:

• Most of the women carting around these books are the same women who give me dirty looks and clutched their pearls for reading Marquis De Sade or Anais Nin in public. Ladies – I hate to break it to you – the S in S&M (which Fifty Shades focuses on) is named for the Marquis. So from now on I expect to be able to read 120 Days of Sodom anywhere I want, perhaps now with a post-it on the cover reading “It's like 50 Shades of Grey, but with a Better Vocabulary.”
  
  
• This whole trilogy started as online Twilight slash fiction. Essentially it's Edward and Bella getting a little kinky. The only major thing that changed from fan-fic to bestseller was the names and taking away the sparkly vampire element . And judging from the horrible, repetitive, high school girl prose, that's really all that changed. I imagine that the editor they assigned to it had to get stupid drunk to get over the pain of paying for this drivel and passed out before they could bust out their red pen. If that's the bar we're setting for published works at this point I fear for the future of the written word. And I kind of enjoy the fact that some libraries don't want to stock it because it's so poorly written, not because it's naughty.
  
  
• Most people (women) buying these books are buying it for some sort of e-reader, and most say it's because they don't want people to know what they're reading. And I call bullshit on that ladies. Especially since every other bored soccer mom is reading the exact same thing. It's not particularly naughty or salacious if every one's doing it. You can't claim to be a naughty kinkster unless you OWN it. Let your freak flag fly people.
  
  
• I have a problem with how some of the kink is handled. And it essentially breaks down into two areas:

  
  
  a) They spend a lot of time setting up Christian's (the lead male/ dominant) troubled childhood and even send him off at the end of book one for some serious therapy. Guess what people – not everyone into BDSM, or the vast majority of sexual fetishes/kinks, has had some sort of troubled childhood, or needs a psychiatrist. As Dan Savage likes to say “It's a kink, not cancer.”

  
  
  b) The lead female Anastasia, who apparently grew up in Amish country as she's 21 and doesn't have an email address, is a wide-eyed virgin who hasn't even masturbated before meeting Christian. She then jumps into a full-time BDSM relationship and goes straight for the pain. That's like going from singing along with a song in your car to auditioning for a lead in a Broadway musical with no other steps in between. Really – a virgin with no experience, no fantasies, no self-pleasuring – just randomly decides she like being a sexual submissive. We're missing a few experiences somewhere in the narrative
.
  
  
  * I find it hilarious that all of a sudden all of these women claim to be into bondage and force and pain. Really ladies? Because I've found that most kinks show up in your mind somewhere before you and your book club get together to read a book and all decide you're submissives. And if you've made it to 35-40 without getting spanked during sex, or even thought about trying it, chances are you're not ready to jump into whips and ropes and domination. It takes a little while to build up to those things. And if you don't get off on the pain, or find pleasure in it, or properly prepare, it's just going to hurt.
  
  
• I feel really, really, really bad for all the unsuspecting men out there whose wives/girlfriends are reading this and suddenly decide they're into bondage. These poor men are going to hunt down the closest sex shop and buy the special Shades of Grey branded anal beads, floggers and ropes at their wives/ girlfriends requests, take them home, attempt to use them on an unprepared or unaware woman and then get kicked in the nards when the women find out that it actually does hurt. Especially since the book does not provide all the instruction you need to safely delve into BDSM.
  
  
• I am all for reading smut, but can't we read better-written smut? Or more honest smut? Or can't we all just acknowledge that we, as a species, like reading dirty books without all having to agree on one? And how exactly are the movies versions going to work? Because if they're true to the books it's NC-17 territory. And again I'm betting that most women waiting feverishly for these movies would judge me for my internet history, and some dvd purchases I've made.
  
  
• I think the thing that's most upsetting to me is that women are proving to be a powerful consumer base for the publishing industry, but we're putting all our power behind books like Fifty Shades of Grey, and Twilight, and generic books in the Bridget Jones mode/ genre. And I know I'm losing girl points left and right on this blog, but I feel that there are better uses of our literary dollars. At least when we're getting behind The Hunger Games there's a female character who takes care of herself and everyone else around her. Or the Harry Potter phenomenon that gave us Hermione Granger, Ginny and Molly Weasly, and kick-ass Professor McGonagall, and a better love story than most in the form of Lily and Snape. Or we should have made sure that Tina Fey's Bossypants sold as many, if not more, copies as Fifty Shades.

I really feel better for getting all of that off my chest. As a final caveat – if anyone reading this book did use it as a way to finally express their kinks or as a gateway to legitimately discovering their kinks, then that's great. And if this eventually leads to a more sex-positive, everyone gets off the way they want to attitude, awesome, we need that in this country. I just feel like it's a fad that could really backfire on pre-Shades of Grey kinksters. (Most of whom are not reading the book. Mainly because we read The Story of O when we were teenagers.)

Let the angry comments commence.....

BookWench is currently reading Sacre Bleu by Christopher Moore. Hilarious and informative.

I'm Back…and Still Angry!

I know, I know, I've been gone for a long time. I'm very, very sorry. I was away from the blog writing and producing my own web series. It's very literary and firmly ensconced in BookWorld, only a lot nicer than what I tend to write here. Check it out at blip.tv.

Now back to our regularly scheduled programming. I thought I'd dive back into my Shakespearean Pet Peeves. So here it is, the silver medal pet peeve:

Shakespeare Made Stupid 

 If you walk into any major chain bookstore at this point and head to the Shakespeare section you'll be hard-pressed to find a version of his works that has not been dumbed down in some soul-crushing, literature- destroying way. It kills something inside of me every time I see some student buying a version of a great work of literature that has been stripped of so much of what makes it beautiful.

I understand that the language can be daunting, but one of the major reasons we read is to attain knowledge - so use it as a way to learn. My parents started taking me to see Shakespeare productions when I was about four or five. I certainly did not understand every word, or even most of the words, but I could follow the story well enough by listening for the words I did know. Then when I was old enough to start reading Shakespeare on my own I could infer what the words I didn't know meant in context. Or I could use one of those magical dictionary things. Or I could ask my English teacher at school. Even while studying the Bard on a college level I ran into things I didn't understand, and I found a special dictionary just for Shakespeare's works. And now that the magical Internet exists there's really no excuse for running in terror from every thee and thou and bodkin. The one thing I never did was ask someone to dumb it down for me, because that's cheating.

Not only is it lazy, but it loses so much in the dumbing-down process. Frankly “But soft what light through yonder window breaks?” loses a lot of it's beauty and magic when it turns into “But wait, what's that light in the window over there?” And the philosophical musing of “To be or not to be, that is the question.” becomes the pedestrian “The question is: is it better to be alive or dead?” And once you stripped all the beauty and poetry away- you're not reading Shakespeare anymore. You're reading some modern editor's soulless version of one of the English languages most enduring artists. See- these things make me REALLY angry. And that's why my co-workers would gather around if someone asked me for one.  There was a pool going for what Shakespeare- related stupid question would finally push me over the edge.

Now- I'm not judging the storybook versions of the plays written for children. I think they're a great way to introduce anyone under the age of eleven to the stories of Shakespeare, so when they're old enough they can delve into the language. However, after middle school you should be able to make your way through the play in its original form.

So if you've read the Cliffs Notes, Spark Notes, Monarch Notes, Shakespeare-Made-Simple, or Barron's Side-by-Side versions of Hamlet, then I'm sorry to tell you – you have not read Hamlet. In fact, if it's one of the Notes versions, you haven't even read a book or a story. You've read what's left over when language, character, story and poetry have been removed from a cornerstone of the literary canon. And heaven help you if you ask me for an “English translation” of one of the greatest works of English literature, because I will absolutely give you a lecture about the language as I walk you to the shelf and hand you the most expensive version of the play you're looking for. I call it a stupidity tax, and my friend, you've earned it.

BookWench just finished reading Tough Sh*t by Kevin Smith.  He's my film-making inspiration, and this book was amazing.  I laughed, I cried, I used about 25 Post-it flags for the important bits.

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BookWench in the Crosshairs

So this post may lose me some major lit-nerd cred and one or more of my woman cards, because I'm going to go up against some of the pillars of lady lit nerd-dom...The Brontes. I've alluded to these issues here and here, and thought it was time to address them head on, mainly because I haven't had any really hateful comments directed my way in a while.

My first Bronte issue shouldn't raise too much ire, since it's mostly an opinion on the overall reading experience. I have never enjoyed reading a novel by a Bronte. It took me six tries to make it past the first three chapters of Jane Eyre. And the only reason I made it the last time was because it was required reading for an English class. To me they always felt dense and forced in a way I don't respond to that well. And I read books like this for fun. However, the Brontes always felt like work.

The issue I have that's going to get me hate mail is that I do not understand, at all, how the books Jane Eyre and Wuthering Heights are held up as romantic masterpieces. There is a major disconnect for me between those stories and any idea of romance or love.

Now, before everyone gets up in arms, I totally understand the appeal of the bad boy. A cursory glance at my dating history abundantly proves that. It's a laundry list of straight-up bad boys and, far worse in the long run, Eddie Haskell-type men. (I included the link for those under 30/ people not obsessed with Nick at Night in the late '80s.) This list, along with my Wench-y personality traits totally explain why I'm still single, but further exploration into that is material for a different blog that would reach Tolstoy-esque length.

Sorry...Back to the plot. For some reason these “bad boys” of literature really just piss me off. If it were just a moody, temperamental man with anger issues I would be on board, but Rochester and Heathcliff take it to a scary, abusive, borderline psychopathic place. And as much fun as I've had with bad boys if I had discovered one had an insane wife locked away in the attic while being engaged to me I think any sort of continued relationship would be out of the question. Even if the wife eventually died. Seriously Jane, he did it to one wife, the room's set up, who's to say he wouldn't eventually shove you up there.*

As for Heathcliff, he and Catherine together manage to ruin two families for multiple generations out of some very misguided views on love and revenge. And I understand the arguments that Catherine is a product of her time, and to some extent I respect that, but there is still a level of foolishly romantic child with little to no backbone that propels the story to it's fairly awful end.

And before the daggers appear at my throat, I do have a romantic side. I hide it under a lot of black clothing and attitude, but put in the movie Love, Actually and I'm a crying mess on the floor by the end. I just can not understand the idea of romance that involves such intense levels of lying and vengeance. And for women like the Brontes who were flouting social convention by being writers, I guess I've always been disappointed that the women in their novels seem to get the bad end of the deal.

So now between Team Edward and Team Bronte I'm popping on lit hit lists all over the place. At least with Team Bronte I expect well-written, correctly spelled death threats.

*Yes, I absolutely yell at fictional characters.  They make well fleshed-out imaginary friends.