Requiescat in Pascoe

I've been busy (what an excuse -- I've been idle) but I do have to stop by an blog the death of Reginald Hill. When I heard on Sunday, I went and count how many of his books I have on my shelf (twenty two, came the answer). I had a wee phase of trying to collect all the Dalziel and Pascoe novels. I had stopped because they were taking up too much space (especially as I was buying the hardback of each new one as they came out -- Hill was one of the handful of authors whose books I do buy the first available imprint of).

Reading his books was a physical pleasure. Could feel the enjoyment flowing through me: the mixture of mirth, dread and anticipation. He plotted to perfection (especially Midnight Fugue). He managed to combine high literature and low genre effortlessly. He was able to move from police procedural, to locked room and English country manor mysteries without breaking his fictional world. He also managed to keep the series alive, fresh and changing without ever 'jumping the shark' and being ridiculous or making silly changes. Unlike Christie, he seemed to actually like his bread and butter characters.

Throughout, he managed to inject a liberal and progressive sensibility into what is often a bastion of reaction. "It's a war on the streets" and all that. Dalziel was a reactionary pig, and Hill knew it, but humanised such a man.

I'll also throw in a mention of the perfectly villainous but also utterly ambiguous Franny Roote who was "persecuted" by Pascoe. I guess we'll never find out the truth about him now.

Another test

The Frank Miller test.

if the proportion of female sex workers to neutrally presented female people in his story is above 1:1, he fails.

Again, doubtless single instances of entire justifiability could be found, but as a genre critique, the more often a sample fails (or approaches failure) the more worried we should be.

Three tests...

This post from young master Stross has started some difficult thinking.

He applies a simple set of rules promulgated by Alison Bechdel which can be used as an interesting indicative test of movies and gender sensibilities:

1) Are there more than two women characters?
2) Do the women talk to each other?
3) Do the women talk about anything other than men/babies, etc.

It is suprisingly hard to think of any movies that pass the test. now, some, like Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill or Deathproof that do pass the test contain a great deal of sexism - in the latter, the lingering voyueristic camera shots, etc. and even though there are non-male related Tarrantinean conversations, the bulk of the female discussion is still about men, one way or another.

Charlies' Angels movies, sort of pass, but, again, often the discussion is about Charlie (and his ever presence).

Stross also links to Women in refrigerators which looks at the lazy way comics writers turn female characters into victims of rape, torture and violence as distinct from that meted out to male heroes.

What I want to add into the mix is Vladimir Propp and his Morphology of the Folk Tale - or rather, the extrapolation, similar to M.M. Bakthin's Speech genres - which indicate that genres are derived from distinct social relations and expectations - that is, almost, there is an objective genre which propells the author forwards, and that genre is related to the social conditions of the production of the text (as a lot of correspondents noted, a lot of genre fiction is targetted at males, which is likely to depower the female representation).

this, of course, feeds back, as Joseph Campbell's hero's path is pretty much the template for Hollywood actions stories.

The usefulness of this as a line of thought, that once you're aware of it, it can be countered, and Stross intends to ensure his fiction passes the test from now on.

Holliday reading

Well, I spent Easter reading a genuinely fascist novel. No, not a term of abuse, a genuine novel with fascistic sympathies from 1938. Dennis Wheatley's The Golden Spaniard.

It was worth the read - although it is mentioned on his Wikipedia article as having divided his core band of "modern musketeer" characters - that was in fact merely a device to implicate and demolish liberal sympathy for the Republican cause in the Spanish Civil War.

Louis Althusser thought that through fiction ideology could stand revealed - a rather soulless perspective on literature if you ask me - but this novel does illustrate a fantasy fiction world of a British fascist (although Wheatley assisted the British war effort, I don't think that dints his pre-war flirtation with the ideology).

It was fascinating to see how the ideology of fascis dovetailed neatly with the typical adventure story - and the absolute ruthlessness the author presumed his readers would find acceptable (as well as the sheer double standards of atrocity calling).

I can't, of course, condemn a writer for being partisan, after all, I read partisan leftist literature, but it is interesting to see the other side's point of view and how they construct their case. Both sides justified violence and atrocity by referrence to the threat from the other - the only thing that divided them, after the means, was the end.

The book stands as an interesting peice of literary archaeology that helps parse the debates over such things as Israel today. It is not that the study of literature reveals ideology concretised, but it reveals the working of rhetoric, an essential tool for intellectual self-defence.