What you put in, what you meant to put in, and what they got out

[zwol]

I'm peripheral to peripheral in what is now generally called RaceFail '09; I am close friends with some of the people on the fringes of it (notably shweta_narayan) and have nodding acquaintance with some of the people at the center (met at a con once, read their blog, sort of thing). To first order my reaction has been disappointment in some of those nodding acquaintances. I thought they were better people than they have demonstrated themselves to be.

One thread of it, though, I think I might have something constructive to say on. I write computer programs for a living. My employer tests these programs to make sure people who weren't involved in writing them can figure out how to use them. I don't do it myself, because one of the iron rules of user testing is: you don't let the programmers in the room. The programmers know how the program works, so if they are allowed into the room, they see the testers being confused by the program and think argh! stop making mistakes! But they're not the testers' mistakes — they're the programmers', for not making the right action obvious. My coworker Jono explains this phenomenon in more detail here.

So too, perhaps, with fiction. This whole thing started (to oversimplify a bit) when matociquala wrote a book containing a character who has characteristics that can be read as racial stereotypes. I am using hedge words here because I have not read the book. Avalon's Willow and deepad say they read the book that way; I believe them. matociquala says that her intent was not to write the character that way; I believe her too. Because it's easy to put things in fiction that you didn't mean to put there. Just as it's easy to put confusing in your user interface when you didn't mean to.

And so too the proper response. When I get test results and they say that my UI is confusing, yes, my immediate reaction may well be to think THER DOIN IT WRONG!!!1! to myself, because I have an ego just like everyone else. But then I fix the damn program. Likewise, when an author writes a book that someone has a negative reaction to, for whatever reason, they are entitled to think THER READIN IT WRONG!!!1! to themselves. For a moment. And then they should go write a better book, because the problem is with the book, not the reader.

I think, for the record, that matociquala understands this, both in general and as specifically applied to Blood and Iron; she has said things in the larger discussion that are not helpful, but I read most of 'em as intent to do the right thing not coming through because words are hard, even when you write novels, and especially after two months as a target of a whole lot of anger.

[EDIT: queenpam points out that I'm oversimplifying the user testing thing a bit. It's actually good to have the programmer in the room so they see directly where the problems are, can ask "why did you do that" type questions, and can intervene if the tester-user gets completely stuck, but you mustn't allow them to coach the tester in the use of the program. I think the analogy still goes through, since it's about the reaction the programmers/authors have to the reception of the work.]

Comments

[solconeja.livejournal.com]

My freshman year writing course's topic was writing about photography. One important thing I learned about analyzing art is that the author's motives and thoughts are often unknown, and the piece has to speak for itself. An argument can be made about the piece based on evidence in the piece itself, and people can find meanings in photographs that the author didn't intend. It seems to me that a photograph (or book) can be two completely different things depending on whether or not the author's intent is known.

It's sort of like J.K. Rowling announcing that Dumbledore is gay. I thought, "Well, if you had wanted anyone else to see him as you do, maybe you should have mentioned it in the books." I still don't think Dumbledore is gay, and his creator clearly does.

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

To me, Dumbledore is gay--because she said so.

From the books--I only read the first four or five (or the first five, skipping the fourth? I forget), I didn't really get the impression that he was or wasn't--it was a non-issue (except, you know, British headmasters... hmm).

Apparently it wasn't that important to the story (up to that point--I got tired of reading the books; did catch up on the mythos after it was all over, and it was somewhat important to the back-plot, if I remember correctly?), and I certainly didn't see it in the characterization in any particular way... I didn't read anything that spoke one way or the other to me.

Ah, the subjectivity of reading. And writing. Sometimes it's a miracle communication happens at all.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

Yah, I think I'm saying that the author's intent doesn't count for purposes of the "is this a bad use of stereotypes?" question, because it's just so easy for the author to not notice their use.

I like the "Dumbledore's gay" notion because we shouldn't be assuming that all characters whose sexual preferences are never relevant enough to warrant mention on-page are het.

[solconeja.livejournal.com]

My point about Dumbledore is that there's no evidence for or against it in the books, so the author's intent is missing from the work itself, and it's up to the reader to interpret.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

I think we're making orthogonal points. :) You're saying that since there's no in-text evidence readers are free to think of him as having whatever preferences they fancy. Which is totally true. I'm saying that it's fine by me that there's no in-text evidence, because (normative voice) I have no reason to know or care about the sexual preferences of the vast majority of people I interact with, so why should it be different in novels? Making the kinks of each of the Hogwarts faculty explicit in text would be a distraction, IMO.

[garote]

Agreed - it would definitely be a distraction. Hell, just the appearance of the word "gay" anywhere in the text would be a distraction to today's youth. Actually that makes me curious ... does the word "gay" appear anywhere in any of the novels?

[garote]

Okay, I just searched my highly illegal PDF editions of books 1-4, and the three letters G A Y do not appear in sequence at all. That answers my own question I guess ;)

[zwol.livejournal.com]

Actually I'm going to change my position a little. It would not have been detrimental to the story if Rowling had found a way to insert some offhand mention of Dumbledore's preferences, in much the same way as it is not detrimental to the story to specify characters' hair color when this plays no role in the plot. And it could have been a useful thing to do in the larger social discourse, precisely because people have this OMG TEH GAYZ reaction -- it's constructive to put characters out there that are gay but this isn't plot-relevant and doesn't make any sort of point. (see e.g. http://www.angryflower.com/homose.gif)

But I don't think it was wrong for Rowling to not do that, either, and I'm not looking to the Harry Potter stories for super awesome nuanced characterisation, anyway.

[kaolinfire.livejournal.com]

Though the answer is possibly less "write a better book" than with usability testing. Mutual friends linked me to this a few hours ago, which discusses "intelligibility" of material: http://ltimmel.home.mindspring.com/Duchamp-WisCon32-GoH-speech.pdf

((and then shared more personal responses to that speech))

Apparently minority groups often get told to "write a better book" by those that have different contexts for their reading, which--it's a trade-off; you can push people's minds with the right story (those receptive to such things, anyway), if you can get them to read it; or you can try to change the story to fit into more people's expectations (but maybe then the story is gone, or it's not the story you want to tell).

Fuzzy.

[zwol.livejournal.com]

In an earlier draft of this there were some musings about places where the analogy breaks down because the author is deliberately trying to break the rules, push the boundaries, deconstruct the stereotypes. I couldn't make it fit. Duchamp's speech sounds like it's about something similar.

And queenpam was also complaining about my having put all the burden to 'fix' things on the author, here (she doesn't like posting responses when she can just tell me things :-) I think I oversimplified there too, or perhaps just didn't make clear enough that I was specifically talking about the kind of problem that Blood and Iron is said to have.

[garote]

RaceFail??
Wait, wait, let me see here...
Having read none of the diatribes about it, I'm going to try and guess what the most "offensive" points about it were and are.
Okay, here goes.

- - -

"Science Fiction is too much the territory of white men." <--(offensive)
"And white men can't write about race." <--(offensive)
"And even when they try, it's a boondoggle." <--(offensive)
"And they should be humbled and ashamed of this." <--(offensive)
"And should abdicate their roles of power to people who aren't so white and male." <--(offensive)

- - -

Does that about cover the worst of it?

[zwol.livejournal.com]

All of those things were said, but they were by no means the most offensive things said or done, and I'm not sure who you are taking as the offendee.

I recommend you read these three guest posts on John Scalzi's blog, which capture the constructive bits of the discussion and avoid 95% of the flamage.

http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/03/12/mary-ann-mohanraj-gets-you-up-to-speed-part-i/
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/03/13/mary-anne-mohanraj-gets-you-up-to-speed-part-ii/
http://whatever.scalzi.com/2009/03/16/taking-one-for-the-team-k-tempest-bradford/