Sigh. This makes me think I totally failed at making my point.
We can't have that conversation because we're too busy mocking, defending the mocking, enjoying the mocking, etc. She was speaking from ignorance of film history, but voicing something that has been regarded as common wisdom in the world of publishing children's books -- which is where the Hunger Games franchise originated -- for decades. It was clumsy and poorly done, but it wasn't a demonstration of unbridled narcissism. She made what she believed to be a legitimate point, badly.
And it might still be a legitimate point. We don't know that. We can't talk about it or think about it because now we have to mock, defend mocking, debate mocking. Essentially, we have to behave in ways that give the victim narratives more credence instead of taking an opportunity to discuss whether they still mean anything.
If it was an "outrageously silly argument," then one has to presume that, in a capitalist country, the industry of publishing books for children has been wrong about something pretty important for decades. Given that the industry in question has been pretty good at making money, I doubt this.
The hunger games literally is a book franchise. It is a children’s book franchise, and the author and other people from the world of publishing children’s books were involved in developing the movies and casting and all the rest of it. And honestly, this conversation makes me think that I am unrealistically optimistic. She may be right in her belief that male audiences can’t deal with female artist if even something like this is so difficult to parse. I may want so badly for the Woke people to be wrong about everything that I’ve developed my own version of confirmation bias. If the context here is so truly unimportant, and the desire to mock and dunk is so completely overwhelming, then she probably is right. God damn it.
For me, this is one of those Known Unknowns. While my books have all sold well, I have no idea if they'd have sold better with the name "Harold Dale" on the cover instead of "Helen Dale".
I'm pretty confident, at least for the first one, the prizes I won mattered more than anything else (based on the Nielsen Bookscan sales figures at the time), but even then, definitive proof is hard.
There is likely some truth in the old trope here, at least for kids, but I think it may be less about flat-out sexism and more about the types of books that women who write for kids tend to write.
I've been offering free homeschool consulting to parents since COVID started. Mostly they ask about mathematics but sometimes I end up talking to them about other things. One common pattern is that little girls become voracious readers and little boys don't. I tell the parents to stop giving their little boys the complex interpersonal narratives that made their daughters love to read. Instead, give them nonfiction about the biggest snake, the bloodiest battle, the fastest airplane, etc. Then, once a love for reading is established, try again with fiction. This tends to be very successful advice.
So how much of it is an unconscious association with female name=boring story about how people feel about each other? As you said, a Known Unknown.
As a boy who grew into a reader/writer, I can confirm this is basically my bias. It’s less specific about what I expect to find in a book written by a woman and more an awareness that I tend to enjoy books by men more. Certainly not a 100% correlation but if you gave me a choice between two books in my favorite genre and only told me one was written by a man and the other a woman, I’d pick the one by a man.
I think part of that is also traditional publishing’s selection bias. Agents and publishers tend to be young to middle aged women and they tend to pick specific kinds of books to attempt to publish. So I think that it’s less boys prefer non-fiction and girls prefer fiction (although that’s certainly a factor in the equation) but also that the books that are popular right now are aimed at girls much more than boys.
As a kid, and even still, all things being equal, if I'm being totally honest, if I'm say at an airport I will pick a book with a male name on the cover over a female name - mainly due to some unconscious idea that the female author will focus on "fluff" more than the male author would. This is definitely some sort of unconscious sexism.
However I have read many excellent books by female authors, and I love Holly's writing so maybe that redeems me a little bit from the raving misoginst that I am.
No, not a misogynist, LOL. "Unconscious sexism" is probably about right. Which is something everyone has, to some degree, I think. But I can't recommend Barbara Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible," JK Rowling's mysteries (published under the name Robert Galbraith), Lionel Shriver's "We Need to Talk About Kevin," and several other female authors highly enough. Definitely worth checking out, if you like to read.
I was reminded of Peter Bogossian’s (et al?) book “How to have impossible conversations.” Honestly asking ‘How do you know that?’ leads to more interesting conversations than just saying “lol yer wrong” but it’s way easier to have that kind of conversation in person!
I mean... "Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman" wrote the Dragonlance novels which I'm pretty sure were aimed squarely at teenage boys, since girls playing RPGs was about as rare as hen's teeth, IME, back in the day. And Tracy is actually a dude!
I dunno. I cannot comment intelligently on this topic because I'm obviously not the norm. The fact that it's never occurred to me to care about an author's wedding tackle does not in any way imply that's typical. :-/
I never can decide if I wish I was more, or less, like the rest of my species.
I owned *every* Dragonlance book that came out. I also owned (up to a certain point) every "The Babysitter's Club" book that came out. So I am probably effectively useless as a yardstick for the rest of H. sap. ;)
I will admit that I can empathize with Zack's confusion above. This very post is the first time I've heard about this entire "event", and the pull quote you selected... only talks about film. So if he's in a similar boat, I can understand why he might have thought the transition to a conversation about books was confusing, even knowing that the movies were books first. (I've read them, and haven't seen the movies, so, make of that what you will.) If J. Law spoke about the issue of boys not reading books written by women, well, that isn't information that is made especially clear by the rest of what is written here.
I'm certainly aware of the trope, and why the Potter books were published under the name they were. But it's only stated that Lawrence's comment is *based* on this trope, not that she actually spoke about it herself. So for those in the audience to whom this is their first introduction to the entire kerfluffle... they're going to be missing some context that you, as the author, who has potentially even actually watched (or read, or whatever) said interview may be in possession of.
I mean... that last parenthetical is indicative. I don't even know what *outlet* this interview came from, or whether it was published as print or video, let alone any of the other contents of it.
So I'm not sure it's even so much that "the internet is killing our brains" (although I wouldn't want to have to defend the thesis that it isn't) as much as "most of the people who heard anything about this at all will only have heard a pull quote or two". So the meta-context is sort of that almost nobody dunking on Lawrence probably has any real context for what they're dunking *on*. And that the internet has turned a lot of people into complete assholes who interpret everything they read there in a maximally negative possible light. :-/
Hopefully some of that made some kind of sense, and wasn't just inane babbling. :)
You've actually helped me see, as Zack did, that my confirmation bias is very strong that Woke opinions are automatically wrong. I explained repeatedly that the context here is that Lawrence was talking about the framing of the franchise she had going into it, which was the context from the world of children's book publishing, and that the whole thing was done by specialists in turning children's books into other media. But it's just so much more fun to dunk and mock! Who cares about context? A woman artist commented about women artists and there's an opportunity to dismiss/ignore her. I had pretty thoroughly convinced myself that such things were decades past, but I think that's my confirmation bias for Woke = always wrong. "Fuck the context, there's an actress I wanna mock" makes the idea at the root of the children's publishing industry trope that Lawrence was talking about, the framing she got going into the project, much more plausible than not. I think I was wrong about this one. I'll write about it again in a week or two after more reflection.
I think you're trolling me. You are more than intelligent enough to understand the context of a book being turned into a movie and the conversations that would be had at that point, and I've explained it patiently many times now. This isn't Twitter and you don't get to troll me here. You're gone.
Point well-made, but. BUT. If Lawrence weren't a Blue Church acolyte, I suspect most people would have given her a pass, or at worst given her some good-natured ribbing over it.
I'm just happy that we have female authors in the modern era writing stories about heroes (heroines) who happen to be female, rather than preaching at us about "girl power."
Suzanne Collins did a very good job of making Katniss a reluctant hero, the same sort of character that Mel Gibson seems to play in most of his movies. I'm also happy that JK Rowling did similar with Hermione and Minerva McGonagall. I knew from the moment I saw "Minerva" (the Roman goddess of wisdom) that I was going to like her character. No in-your-face preaching by either of those authors. Just well-written smart, tough characters who happened to be women.
Cross sex pseudonyms have been a big thing for a long time and it went both ways. IIRC a lot of male authors in the 19th century used female names to sell more books. But those weren't adventure stories for teenagers.
The JK Rowling thing seems unnecessary. I grew up reading Enyd Blughtion, and Rowling is very much part of that tradition.
Should people "dunk" on her (or others)? No. But, does the conversation about books/authors pertain to what she said? Not in my opinion.
Yes, Hunger Games is originally a book series, but she quite clearly says "movie." They may not identify with characters from books, but they definitely identify to them in action movies. And have for a long time.
Again, just my opinion.
Men/boys can and do identify with women led action roles in movies. They like bada** women doing bada** things. Do all? Of course not. Do many? Yes. Men/boys loved Tomb Raider. Practically every guy immediately brings up Sigourney Weaver in this because they loved her as that lead action role! Terminator. It has a bada** woman doing bada** things so it is loved by them. Kill Bill! None of those characters were running around in skimpy clothes or whatnot so we can't even say that they only love them if the characters are half naked. Those 3 are brought up the most and they're not all bewbage and skimp at all. (At least from what I remember. Been a while since I've watched them) G.I. Jane! It was loved. She had a shaved head through most of the movie and it was still loved. By men too!
Men loved Charlies Angels, Resident Evil(highest grossing franchise based on a video game...men love it), Wonder Woman, Kill Bill(legendary...men loved it), Underwold, Sucker Punch, The Fifth Element, etc, etc. These were huge movies. They didn't get that way from men/boys not watching/enjoying them. Underwold has like 5 movies. They kept making them because they did well. That included men. They loved them and many others. Underwold is/are my husband's favorite movie(s).
Women action roles had been around long before Hunger Games. Roles that did well and are still talked about today. They didn't get there without men/boys identifying with them and loving them.
If we are gonna talk books when she said movies, then we should also talk video games. Men/boys love women characters in action games. They definitely identify with them here. Many create women characters in games like Grand Theft Auto (online version), World of Warcraft, etc. Ask a guy what their favorite Street Fighter character is. Many are going to say one of the female characters. Play Mortal Kombat with guys. Many will choose Sonya Blade or Kitana, happily.
You'd be wrong to ever try to guess who is playing a character based on the character they chose because many times, that female character is being played by a man/boy. I would bet that you'd find them playing female characters a lot more than you'd find girls/women playing male characters. According to a Quantic Foundry survey, 29% of men prefer female characters while only 9% of women prefer male characters. They say that in a typical core pc/console game, about 60% of the female avatars you meet are played by a male player. I don't know how legit their survey is, but being a gamer and playing with tons of people over the years, that sounds legit. And this isn't a new phenomenon. For as long as I can remember, in many games, men/boys enjoy playing the female characters. You're actually playing as the character. Not just watching them for 2 hours. If that isn't identifying with a female character, I don't know what is.
I agree that it didn't need to devolve to ripping on her all day, but I also think she is just completely wrong. The conversation does need to be said so people will stop making the comments that are demeaning to men/boys. When your sex/gender is being mocked, demeaned, belittled, and you're called toxic constantly, I can see how that could lead to this situation where something that was so untrue was said about half the population, about people who have themselves been "dunked" on constantly, led to them grasping at the opportunity to "dunk" on one of the people perpetuating that narrative.
Sigh. This makes me think I totally failed at making my point.
We can't have that conversation because we're too busy mocking, defending the mocking, enjoying the mocking, etc. She was speaking from ignorance of film history, but voicing something that has been regarded as common wisdom in the world of publishing children's books -- which is where the Hunger Games franchise originated -- for decades. It was clumsy and poorly done, but it wasn't a demonstration of unbridled narcissism. She made what she believed to be a legitimate point, badly.
And it might still be a legitimate point. We don't know that. We can't talk about it or think about it because now we have to mock, defend mocking, debate mocking. Essentially, we have to behave in ways that give the victim narratives more credence instead of taking an opportunity to discuss whether they still mean anything.
Totally, totally wasted opportunity.
If it was an "outrageously silly argument," then one has to presume that, in a capitalist country, the industry of publishing books for children has been wrong about something pretty important for decades. Given that the industry in question has been pretty good at making money, I doubt this.
The hunger games literally is a book franchise. It is a children’s book franchise, and the author and other people from the world of publishing children’s books were involved in developing the movies and casting and all the rest of it. And honestly, this conversation makes me think that I am unrealistically optimistic. She may be right in her belief that male audiences can’t deal with female artist if even something like this is so difficult to parse. I may want so badly for the Woke people to be wrong about everything that I’ve developed my own version of confirmation bias. If the context here is so truly unimportant, and the desire to mock and dunk is so completely overwhelming, then she probably is right. God damn it.
For me, this is one of those Known Unknowns. While my books have all sold well, I have no idea if they'd have sold better with the name "Harold Dale" on the cover instead of "Helen Dale".
I'm pretty confident, at least for the first one, the prizes I won mattered more than anything else (based on the Nielsen Bookscan sales figures at the time), but even then, definitive proof is hard.
There is likely some truth in the old trope here, at least for kids, but I think it may be less about flat-out sexism and more about the types of books that women who write for kids tend to write.
I've been offering free homeschool consulting to parents since COVID started. Mostly they ask about mathematics but sometimes I end up talking to them about other things. One common pattern is that little girls become voracious readers and little boys don't. I tell the parents to stop giving their little boys the complex interpersonal narratives that made their daughters love to read. Instead, give them nonfiction about the biggest snake, the bloodiest battle, the fastest airplane, etc. Then, once a love for reading is established, try again with fiction. This tends to be very successful advice.
So how much of it is an unconscious association with female name=boring story about how people feel about each other? As you said, a Known Unknown.
As a boy who grew into a reader/writer, I can confirm this is basically my bias. It’s less specific about what I expect to find in a book written by a woman and more an awareness that I tend to enjoy books by men more. Certainly not a 100% correlation but if you gave me a choice between two books in my favorite genre and only told me one was written by a man and the other a woman, I’d pick the one by a man.
I think part of that is also traditional publishing’s selection bias. Agents and publishers tend to be young to middle aged women and they tend to pick specific kinds of books to attempt to publish. So I think that it’s less boys prefer non-fiction and girls prefer fiction (although that’s certainly a factor in the equation) but also that the books that are popular right now are aimed at girls much more than boys.
As a kid, and even still, all things being equal, if I'm being totally honest, if I'm say at an airport I will pick a book with a male name on the cover over a female name - mainly due to some unconscious idea that the female author will focus on "fluff" more than the male author would. This is definitely some sort of unconscious sexism.
However I have read many excellent books by female authors, and I love Holly's writing so maybe that redeems me a little bit from the raving misoginst that I am.
No, not a misogynist, LOL. "Unconscious sexism" is probably about right. Which is something everyone has, to some degree, I think. But I can't recommend Barbara Kingsolver's "The Poisonwood Bible," JK Rowling's mysteries (published under the name Robert Galbraith), Lionel Shriver's "We Need to Talk About Kevin," and several other female authors highly enough. Definitely worth checking out, if you like to read.
I was reminded of Peter Bogossian’s (et al?) book “How to have impossible conversations.” Honestly asking ‘How do you know that?’ leads to more interesting conversations than just saying “lol yer wrong” but it’s way easier to have that kind of conversation in person!
Yep. There's a reason why they basically just say "LOL not Twitter, Twitter sucks too much for real conversations" in that book.
I mean... "Margaret Weis and Tracy Hickman" wrote the Dragonlance novels which I'm pretty sure were aimed squarely at teenage boys, since girls playing RPGs was about as rare as hen's teeth, IME, back in the day. And Tracy is actually a dude!
I dunno. I cannot comment intelligently on this topic because I'm obviously not the norm. The fact that it's never occurred to me to care about an author's wedding tackle does not in any way imply that's typical. :-/
I never can decide if I wish I was more, or less, like the rest of my species.
I owned *every* Dragonlance book that came out. I also owned (up to a certain point) every "The Babysitter's Club" book that came out. So I am probably effectively useless as a yardstick for the rest of H. sap. ;)
I will admit that I can empathize with Zack's confusion above. This very post is the first time I've heard about this entire "event", and the pull quote you selected... only talks about film. So if he's in a similar boat, I can understand why he might have thought the transition to a conversation about books was confusing, even knowing that the movies were books first. (I've read them, and haven't seen the movies, so, make of that what you will.) If J. Law spoke about the issue of boys not reading books written by women, well, that isn't information that is made especially clear by the rest of what is written here.
I'm certainly aware of the trope, and why the Potter books were published under the name they were. But it's only stated that Lawrence's comment is *based* on this trope, not that she actually spoke about it herself. So for those in the audience to whom this is their first introduction to the entire kerfluffle... they're going to be missing some context that you, as the author, who has potentially even actually watched (or read, or whatever) said interview may be in possession of.
I mean... that last parenthetical is indicative. I don't even know what *outlet* this interview came from, or whether it was published as print or video, let alone any of the other contents of it.
So I'm not sure it's even so much that "the internet is killing our brains" (although I wouldn't want to have to defend the thesis that it isn't) as much as "most of the people who heard anything about this at all will only have heard a pull quote or two". So the meta-context is sort of that almost nobody dunking on Lawrence probably has any real context for what they're dunking *on*. And that the internet has turned a lot of people into complete assholes who interpret everything they read there in a maximally negative possible light. :-/
Hopefully some of that made some kind of sense, and wasn't just inane babbling. :)
You've actually helped me see, as Zack did, that my confirmation bias is very strong that Woke opinions are automatically wrong. I explained repeatedly that the context here is that Lawrence was talking about the framing of the franchise she had going into it, which was the context from the world of children's book publishing, and that the whole thing was done by specialists in turning children's books into other media. But it's just so much more fun to dunk and mock! Who cares about context? A woman artist commented about women artists and there's an opportunity to dismiss/ignore her. I had pretty thoroughly convinced myself that such things were decades past, but I think that's my confirmation bias for Woke = always wrong. "Fuck the context, there's an actress I wanna mock" makes the idea at the root of the children's publishing industry trope that Lawrence was talking about, the framing she got going into the project, much more plausible than not. I think I was wrong about this one. I'll write about it again in a week or two after more reflection.
I think you're trolling me. You are more than intelligent enough to understand the context of a book being turned into a movie and the conversations that would be had at that point, and I've explained it patiently many times now. This isn't Twitter and you don't get to troll me here. You're gone.
Tracy was a man though.
Ahh you already said that. Mea Culpa.
Tracy, Marion, Vivian and Evelyn are all not what they seem.
Point well-made, but. BUT. If Lawrence weren't a Blue Church acolyte, I suspect most people would have given her a pass, or at worst given her some good-natured ribbing over it.
I'm just happy that we have female authors in the modern era writing stories about heroes (heroines) who happen to be female, rather than preaching at us about "girl power."
Suzanne Collins did a very good job of making Katniss a reluctant hero, the same sort of character that Mel Gibson seems to play in most of his movies. I'm also happy that JK Rowling did similar with Hermione and Minerva McGonagall. I knew from the moment I saw "Minerva" (the Roman goddess of wisdom) that I was going to like her character. No in-your-face preaching by either of those authors. Just well-written smart, tough characters who happened to be women.
Cross sex pseudonyms have been a big thing for a long time and it went both ways. IIRC a lot of male authors in the 19th century used female names to sell more books. But those weren't adventure stories for teenagers.
The JK Rowling thing seems unnecessary. I grew up reading Enyd Blughtion, and Rowling is very much part of that tradition.
Should people "dunk" on her (or others)? No. But, does the conversation about books/authors pertain to what she said? Not in my opinion.
Yes, Hunger Games is originally a book series, but she quite clearly says "movie." They may not identify with characters from books, but they definitely identify to them in action movies. And have for a long time.
Again, just my opinion.
Men/boys can and do identify with women led action roles in movies. They like bada** women doing bada** things. Do all? Of course not. Do many? Yes. Men/boys loved Tomb Raider. Practically every guy immediately brings up Sigourney Weaver in this because they loved her as that lead action role! Terminator. It has a bada** woman doing bada** things so it is loved by them. Kill Bill! None of those characters were running around in skimpy clothes or whatnot so we can't even say that they only love them if the characters are half naked. Those 3 are brought up the most and they're not all bewbage and skimp at all. (At least from what I remember. Been a while since I've watched them) G.I. Jane! It was loved. She had a shaved head through most of the movie and it was still loved. By men too!
Men loved Charlies Angels, Resident Evil(highest grossing franchise based on a video game...men love it), Wonder Woman, Kill Bill(legendary...men loved it), Underwold, Sucker Punch, The Fifth Element, etc, etc. These were huge movies. They didn't get that way from men/boys not watching/enjoying them. Underwold has like 5 movies. They kept making them because they did well. That included men. They loved them and many others. Underwold is/are my husband's favorite movie(s).
Women action roles had been around long before Hunger Games. Roles that did well and are still talked about today. They didn't get there without men/boys identifying with them and loving them.
If we are gonna talk books when she said movies, then we should also talk video games. Men/boys love women characters in action games. They definitely identify with them here. Many create women characters in games like Grand Theft Auto (online version), World of Warcraft, etc. Ask a guy what their favorite Street Fighter character is. Many are going to say one of the female characters. Play Mortal Kombat with guys. Many will choose Sonya Blade or Kitana, happily.
You'd be wrong to ever try to guess who is playing a character based on the character they chose because many times, that female character is being played by a man/boy. I would bet that you'd find them playing female characters a lot more than you'd find girls/women playing male characters. According to a Quantic Foundry survey, 29% of men prefer female characters while only 9% of women prefer male characters. They say that in a typical core pc/console game, about 60% of the female avatars you meet are played by a male player. I don't know how legit their survey is, but being a gamer and playing with tons of people over the years, that sounds legit. And this isn't a new phenomenon. For as long as I can remember, in many games, men/boys enjoy playing the female characters. You're actually playing as the character. Not just watching them for 2 hours. If that isn't identifying with a female character, I don't know what is.
I agree that it didn't need to devolve to ripping on her all day, but I also think she is just completely wrong. The conversation does need to be said so people will stop making the comments that are demeaning to men/boys. When your sex/gender is being mocked, demeaned, belittled, and you're called toxic constantly, I can see how that could lead to this situation where something that was so untrue was said about half the population, about people who have themselves been "dunked" on constantly, led to them grasping at the opportunity to "dunk" on one of the people perpetuating that narrative.
Again, just my opinion.