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Aug. 29th, 2022 06:02 pmI am not pleased about the new film that's coming out soon that purports to be about Emily Bronte. I am not pleased about how it invents whole-cloth a romance that never happened. I am not pleased about how it implies that women's stories are not worth telling unless they contain a romance. [I've said it before and I'll say it again, the only romances the Bronte sisters needed was with writing. CHARLOTTE/WRITING OTP. EMILY/WRITING OTP. ANNE/WRITING OTP.] I am not pleased about how it seems to center men ~encouraging her~ to be a writer as though she needed men to nurture her genius. Above all, I am not pleased at the implication that she had to experience something in order to write about it.
I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate the cultural inability to understand that writing is a work of imagination and that it does not have to be built on experience. The idea that of course Jane Austen must have had some star-crossed romance or she wouldn't have been able to write her novels is just so stupid and insulting. It's so reductive that pretty much every story about a real writer becomes, "Here's how that writer lived the thing they wrote!"
NO! That's not how writing works! Not every work is a thinly veiled roman à clef! Some things are just made up! And that is a skill and it takes work! It is so lazy to just assume that anything some (especially historical) writer wrote about was a variation on something they experienced! It makes me so mad!
Maybe this pisses me off in particular as an asexual person who sometimes writes romance (and occasionally porn). I have zero experience with romance, but I don't need it. And frankly I'm offended that you think I and Emily Bronte and Jane Austen and whoever are not good enough writers to come up with that stuff all on our own.
I find myself quoting Terence over and over and over again: I am human and nothing human is alien to me.
I am also irked by the idea that only people of one demographic can write characters of that demographic. I realize that this tendency at the moment is a pendulum swing--for so long, writers of color were so marginalized that it was really necessary for people to say, "Uh, can you let us write about our experiences? And actually publish us?" I get that! That is a good thing! We need lots more writers from all kinds of diverse backgrounds and perspectives getting published!
But it does not therefore follow that people should only write about characters who are just like them. Anyone can write about anything! They just have a moral responsibility to do that as truthfully as they can and to do the research necessary not to perpetuate lies or hurt readers. And of course they have to be prepared for criticism if/when they get it wrong.
But just because publishing companies tend to let mediocre white writers who haven't done their research and have underdeveloped empathy publish nonsense that hurts people DOES NOT mean that white people should only write about white people or only queer people should be allowed to write about queer people. For god's sake, the entire point of the novel as an art form--regardless of whether you're the writer or the reader!--is to practice radical empathy and climb inside the head of someone who is not you.
NOT EVERYTHING THAT'S GOOD IS AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. UGH!
In closing, the perfect Bronte biopic already exists and it's called To Walk Invisible thank you and good night
I hate hate hate hate hate hate hate the cultural inability to understand that writing is a work of imagination and that it does not have to be built on experience. The idea that of course Jane Austen must have had some star-crossed romance or she wouldn't have been able to write her novels is just so stupid and insulting. It's so reductive that pretty much every story about a real writer becomes, "Here's how that writer lived the thing they wrote!"
NO! That's not how writing works! Not every work is a thinly veiled roman à clef! Some things are just made up! And that is a skill and it takes work! It is so lazy to just assume that anything some (especially historical) writer wrote about was a variation on something they experienced! It makes me so mad!
Maybe this pisses me off in particular as an asexual person who sometimes writes romance (and occasionally porn). I have zero experience with romance, but I don't need it. And frankly I'm offended that you think I and Emily Bronte and Jane Austen and whoever are not good enough writers to come up with that stuff all on our own.
I find myself quoting Terence over and over and over again: I am human and nothing human is alien to me.
I am also irked by the idea that only people of one demographic can write characters of that demographic. I realize that this tendency at the moment is a pendulum swing--for so long, writers of color were so marginalized that it was really necessary for people to say, "Uh, can you let us write about our experiences? And actually publish us?" I get that! That is a good thing! We need lots more writers from all kinds of diverse backgrounds and perspectives getting published!
But it does not therefore follow that people should only write about characters who are just like them. Anyone can write about anything! They just have a moral responsibility to do that as truthfully as they can and to do the research necessary not to perpetuate lies or hurt readers. And of course they have to be prepared for criticism if/when they get it wrong.
But just because publishing companies tend to let mediocre white writers who haven't done their research and have underdeveloped empathy publish nonsense that hurts people DOES NOT mean that white people should only write about white people or only queer people should be allowed to write about queer people. For god's sake, the entire point of the novel as an art form--regardless of whether you're the writer or the reader!--is to practice radical empathy and climb inside the head of someone who is not you.
NOT EVERYTHING THAT'S GOOD IS AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL. UGH!
In closing, the perfect Bronte biopic already exists and it's called To Walk Invisible thank you and good night
