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For why certain notions of love and consent may have been (no pun intended) up for grabs here,...

The Rideout Case. (It made huge national headlines, for daring to ask 'does a married man have a right to rape his wife?')

I point that out, Zara, not to show I disagree with your definition of consent, which is certainly sound, (so I don't disagree at all) but to illustrate that Koslow and the gang were coming through the decade where 'consent' simply wasn't required, if certain circumstances were met, (I.e. the couple were married or cohabiting.) I know that sounds insane. But there it is.

http://law.jrank.org/pages/24504/Oregon ... -Some.html



The case was one where Greta Rideout brought suit against her husband for having sex with her when she refused. (She lost, by the way. You had to have been there. It was the late seventies.)

In that 'the universe is a really small place' category? None other than Linda Hamilton ends up playing Greta Rideout in the TV movie.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0081402/


All my way of saying that the times they are a-changin' might be true, but that the times DO matter, within the context of the definition of love, self love, belovedness and consent that you're addressing. The writers penning our episodes did not 'spring to life' in 1987. They were the young adults of the 1960's and 1970's, and 1980's. Each decade leaves its mark, and leaves its mores. Those change (hopefully for the better) as the times do. But the fact that cases like Rideout were being heard tells us that you don't have to be in a different century (or a different country) to be considered 'property' of one kind or another. (Not just by the general populace, but by the law.)

It's things like this that lead me back to issues like slavery- (another form of person-rape.) It's ugly. It's evil, reprehensible, unconscionable and horrific in what it does and what it fosters. It's all those bad adjectives and more. - And it was also perfectly LEGAL, at a certain time in US history. (Yes, kids, you could own a person. You could even kill them if they annoyed you. Or even if they didn't.) For this reason, certain places in the South regularly referred to the US civil war as "The war of Northern Aggression." Time matters, in terms of perspective, and that die hard legal axiom about 'what would a reasonable person think?'

Perspective is a persnickety bi*ch, ain't she? (And she give me no end to grief.)

Huge hugs as ever, Zara. Your wonderful post about consent and love for some reason triggered that name 'Rideout' in my brain, so I thought I'd share. (You might find it has little to nothing to do with what you were elaborating on. But for some reason, that was the 'bell' that got rung in my little brain as I read it, and Karen's thoughtful response.

Squeezes for everybody,

Cindy

Cindy,

Hugs in advance! This is going to be a rather passionate reply. This is an important issue. I maintain that certain notions are not up for grabs at all, even when one perspective differs drastically from another, for the simple reason that (contrary to popular belief) not all perspectives are equally valid.

Yes, your post does indeed have little to do with what I was pondering, because I was not talking about what is legal (or what any given generation in any given culture assumes is legal), but rather what is loving. At no time in history, ancient, modern, or whatever, has nonconsensual sex qualified as an act of love. All kinds of unloving or anti-loving things have always been "legal," as you pointed out, and such acts are often "justified" in terms of contemporary legality by people who benefit in some way from denying that rape is rape, or who benefit from rationalizing or excusing the behavior of sexual aggressors. But "legal" does not equal "right" or "good" or "love." That's why moral progress that gradually changes the laws of the land into more humane statues is always a valuable undertaking: moral advancement relies upon the existence of greater ethical laws that good people live by. Laws of the land are like speed limits: they provide the bare minimum standard for what a society deems safe, civilized behavior in everyday life. But love requires effort, practice, and concentration. "Least common denominator" thinking almost never results in loving beliefs, attitudes, or behaviors. Laws provide opportunities for people who get harmed by anti-love to seek justice for their suffering and to try to prevent others from being harmed in similar ways.

Legality never justifies, in any way, acts of unlove. Some human beings have always understood this fact. Usually the people with the strongest understanding are victims of unlove, along with those who deeply empathize with those victims. The victims of loveless crimes have certainly felt this painful fact in their bones, from time immemorial, no matter how legal or illegal rape, coercion, or manipulation was deemed to be by their surrounding society. To argue that proponents of sexual aggression didn't know any better at the time they promoted nonconsensual *anything* in terms of "love" does not make their crimes, errors, or mistakes (whatever you want to call it) any more genuinely loving. Law may or may not call these aggressors "innocent." Love, however, understands exactly where aggressors have come from, yet still dares to hold them accountable for their failure or refusal to love. Rape is (and always has been) rape, and cannot be excused by an appeal to ignorance or everyone-else-is-doing-it-too reasoning. Not even when our legal system exonerates the rapist.

Yes, Koslow, et al, came through a time period in America where "consent" simply wasn't required, if certain circumstances were met. But their 18th century source material itself explicitly contradicted that exact same legal-but-unloving belief. This is why sexism or racism or any prejudicial mindset is so dangerous: it blinds us to truths about the reality of our crimes against groups of people who live outside our accepted norms. It blinds us to history. It desensitizes us to the pain of those who suffer from our unlove. I repeat what I said in my earlier post: the original women authors who concocted the French tradition of "Beauty and the Beast" wrote their fairy tale to specifically address the issue of (what we now call) consensual sex in their own time and culture. You could say the victims of a societal crime wrote a story that opposed and revised the prevailing notions of "property" and "consent," using their own (non-1980s and non-21st-century) words and concepts. For further insight, I offer an earlier post I made elsewhere in the forum on this topic:

Regarding fairy tales and transformations...

I am aware of the impact of persectives.

Yes, it is obvious that Koslow, et al, rewrote the story according to their own era's (and race's and gender's) prevailing mores, but more than that: they rewrote the story according to the mores of the oppressive and exploitative culture that they had internalized. They expelled from the tale the original (and female) concerns of the tale. Their story expresses "love in its deepest and purest form" as an exclusively male domain. When the primary female character expresses "love" in this story, it is not actually love. Their "Beauty" wasn't Beauty; but they insisted that she was, regardless of her behavior, because calling Catherine's behavior "loving" or "beautiful" served to "legalize" or "legitimize" the dark side of 1980s romantic notions. Which in turn fosters nastier "romantic" notions in the decades that have passed since then. Calling Catherine "Beauty" also perpetuates such unwholesome rationalizations in the fandom of today. My illumination of the consent issue in Koslow's B&B is only one example that a pertinent (21st century) article brought to light in my mind.

For further insight into this aspect of my train of thought, I offer up the new Mote that will follow this post. I believe Rilke perfectly explained the central flaw in Koslow's masterpiece, all the way back in 1903.

Now. Having said all that, oh, yes, yes, indeed: the Rideout case was (and still is) a very big deal. It was a landmark legal case that added desperately needed momentum to a cultural shift toward recognizing the rights of women in particular, and all sexual partners in general. I am glad that bell got rung in your brain. Thank you for sharing the reminder!

Peace and light,

Zara

In his collected Letters to a Young Poet, Rilke described the predicament of a good writer who nevertheless failed to be a great artist, due to the sexism inherent to his artistic process. Considering the sexism and racism inherent to the process of producing Koslow's B&B, I believe Rilke's words apply directly to this television series, as well as to Rilke’s original subject (Richard Dehmel):

Rainer Maria Rilke wrote:...whenever I have discovered one of his beautiful pages, I am always afraid that the next one will destroy the whole effect and change what is admirable into something unworthy. You have characterized [Koslow, et al] quite well with the phrase: “living and writing in heat.” —And in fact the artist's experience lies so unbelievably close to the sexual, to its pain and its pleasure, that the two phenomena are really just different forms of one and the same longing and bliss. And if instead of “heat” one could say “sex”—sex in the great, pure sense of the word, free of any sin attached to it by the Church—then his art would be very great and infinitely important. His poetic power is great and as strong as primal instinct; it has its own relentless rhythms in itself and explodes from him like a volcano.

But this power does not always seem completely straightforward and without pose. (But that is one of the most difficult tests for the creator: he must always remain unconscious, unaware of his best virtues, if he doesn't want to rob them of their candor and innocence!) And then, when, thundering through his being, it arrives at the sexual, it finds someone who is not quite so pure as it needs him to be. Instead of a completely ripe and pure world of sexuality, it finds a world that is not human enough, that is only male, is heat, thunder and restlessness, and burdened with the old prejudice and arrogance with which the male has always disfigured and burdened love. Because he loves only as a male, and not as a human being, there is something narrow in his sexual feeling, something that seems wild, malicious, time-bound, uneternal, ambiguous and doubtful. It is not immaculate, it is marked by time and by passion, and little of it will endure. (But most art is like that!) Even so, one can deeply enjoy what is great in it, only one must not get lost in it and become a hanger-on of [Koslow's] world, which is so infinitely afraid, filled with adultery and confusion, and is far from the real fates, which make one suffer more than these time-bound afflictions do, but also give one more opportunity for greatness and more courage for eternity.

Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet, translated by Stephen Mitchell, 1984. New York: Vintage Books, 1986.

Beauty and the Beast: The French Tradition

Catherine Bernard: “Ricky with the Tuft” (1696)
(I cannot find an English translation of Bernard online, but Russell Peck gives this good summary in his excellent Beauty and the Beast Bibliography.)



Marie-Catherine d'Aulnoy: "The Ram" and "Green Serpent" (1698)
(Translated by Macdonell and Lee in 1892.)



Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Villeneuve: Beauty and the Beast (1740)
(This is the original version of the B&B we are most familiar with today. Compare two translations: J. R. Planché, 1858 and Ernest Dowson, 1908.)



Jeanne-Marie LePrince de Beaumont: Beauty and the Beast (1757)
(Written in English, adapting and abridging Villeneuve for a younger audience. Both the French filmmaker Jean Cocteau and American writer and producer Ron Koslow based their own retellings on Beaumont's B&B. Koslow's project, in turn, also regarded Cocteau's 1946 Beast-focused film as an essential inspiration for the 1980s television series.)

You know I'm never going to dislike (and scantly disagree) with Rilke. (LOL)

Let me parse you just a little, just so you know which statement I'm addressing. (I just think that makes it easier, for both of us.)


I maintain that certain notions are not up for grabs at all, even when one perspective differs drastically from another,

Carefully, and only for emphasis, I maintain that statement to have this flaw. "Notions" ARE "perspectives." Prevailing ones, (which are OFTEN later realized to be wrong, -and thank goodness for that- often hold sway, and for a long time? What does that tell us? It tells us that the 'holders' of that notion, that opinion, that perspective, think they are right. (History, as it turns out, really does belong to the victor.) Human beings owned each other for centuries prior to the US Civil war. The enlightened Greeks kept slaves. So did the Romans and the Egyptians. It wasn't considered a moral issue, it was considered a property issue. My army beat your army. To the victor, the spoils. That makes "right" and "wrong" a perspective, and not so absolute a thing as you or I would like to be. (Do right and wrong exist? Surely. But just what that is is perspective driven, not 'right and wrong' driven. (Because if it was 'right and wrong driven' there would never have been slaves in the first place, Rideout would never have been necessary, and the Bible would be devoid of certain passages. All for starters.)

for the simple reason that (contrary to popular belief) not all perspectives are equally valid.



Too right and I agree. They aren't. There are the prevailing ones, and the not prevailing ones. We both HOPE the prevailing ones also exist under that parameter 'the right ones.' Hang with me a second, because I swear we WILL sneak back to the show, here.

At no time in history, ancient, modern, or whatever, has nonconsensual sex qualified as an act of love. All kinds of unloving or anti-loving things have always been "legal," as you pointed out, and such acts are often "justified" in terms of contemporary legality by people who benefit in some way from denying that rape is rape, or who benefit from rationalizing or excusing the behavior of sexual aggressors. But "legal" does not equal "right" or "good" or "love."


That is so right, fair and true a statement it is not funny. (Sometimes, given my family history, I'm not that sure that prohibition wasn't a good idea. But it was an unenforceable one, -and it funded organized crime- so that was that. It was repealed. We may be fixing to have that same throw down with cannabis, as a nation. We will see.) But anyway, I agree with everything you wrote, there.

That's why moral progress that gradually changes the laws of the land into more humane statues is always a valuable undertaking: moral advancement relies upon the existence of greater ethical laws that good people live by.



I lovingly agree, with the following caveat: Moral advancement relies on the eventual acceptance of those laws by the general populace (here comes that common denominator) over time. It is not 'what they think is right.' It's what they will DO, regardless. (See Prohibition.) You can't make a law you can't enforce means something. (It means you can't legislate for the good and right and holy, yet be unable to enforce your legislation.) That impacts everything from how we drive to how we love. (It shapes our perceptions on what is and isn't allowable, and by extension, what is 'right.')

What is Cathy again?

A lawyer.

All lawyer jokes aside, (and according to Shakespeare, they're all valid) Koslow either accidentally or on purpose thrust Our Heroine into the one profession that guaranteed we would get at least SOME episodes focused not only on 'what is right?' (Gentle Rain, among others) but 'does the law protect the right?' (Does it show a loving regard for its populace? Does it at least show a fair one?)

When Joe Maxwell won't send police protection over for the old folks in "Seige" its bogus, sure. But it also highlights the nervous breakdown New York was having with itself, at the time. No one felt safe. More, no one felt there was a place they could go, for safety. (The cops were too outnumbered, and the criminals were both too numerous and too canny.) Every time Cathy goes up against a variation on this theme, she looks stupid (No Way Down, ACS, etc) but she's in there swinging. Many people had simply deadbolted their doors, bought a gun, and given up. Others just plain moved. Hollywood had a field day with this theme, ("Midnight Cowboy," "Taxi Driver" "The Warriors" etc, were all set in New York. Because setting them just about anywhere else wouldn't have made much sense.)

So Cathy is a lawyer, a professional proponent for the right and the good, (we hope) in the meanest city in the US, (so the crime statistics told us) and (circling back to your very important theme) we HOPE she has it in her to also be a champion for love. Considering that we're not sure if she even liked herself in the pilot, we understand that this is going to be a "journey" for her, rather than an "event." (Considering that in their first face to face encounter with him, she heaves a headlamp reflector at his head, we better hope so, huh?)

So, Cathy is a work in progress, (As is Vincent, as are we,) and you and I are both stuck with the same dynamic. The one Ron Koslow and his fellow writers were stuck with. The notion (however popular and wrong) that love was a strong emotion (your Rllke letter was golden for that, by the way) and we know only that everyone is 'finding their way along.' It's a fairy tale, so we take it as a given that they're the 'meant to be' couple, no matter what the obstacles are. (Until Linda Hamilton leaves and Cathy buys the farm, -snort.-)

If "Cathy" didn't make that journey, that means Koslow didn't. (Hamilton played the character she was given, but not the one she wrote.) It points out that the largely male staff of writers were similarly 'blindspotted' to the notion of 'real love' vs. a poor facsimile. (In the 80's where 'facsimile rules' could have been a tee shirt slogan, this is kind of sad.) Or perhaps it was just as your Rilke letter proposes, men 'love like men,' with a very masculine slant to that equasion, and are by definition, 'incomplete' in their understanding of "love," to some extent.

But love requires effort, practice, and concentration.


You're not kidding!

Legality never justifies, in any way, acts of unlove.

Actually, (shiver) it does exactly that. (It makes holding a slave legal. It makes raping your wife legal. You have to buy health care, right now, want it or don't.) It 'justifies' the morally wrong, and makes it allowable. That's why bad laws are such a burden, and they foster so much that is wrong. (We hope our heroine is plucky enough to see us through some of those. Good luck, Cathy. It's a misguided, moral morass of a jungle, out there. Now go save the old people, the kids, and whoever the heck you were trying to save in No Way Down, before the explosion. We're rooting for you. And that's early on, in the series.) Even when I don't give her credit for brains, I have to give her credit for trying, I guess. (LOL)


The victims of loveless crimes have certainly felt this painful fact in their bones, from time immemorial, no matter how legal or illegal rape, coercion, or manipulation was deemed to be by their surrounding society.




Yes. And sometimes, bless them, their voices are heard.


To argue that proponents of sexual aggression didn't know any better at the time they promoted nonconsensual *anything* in terms of "love" does not make their crimes, errors, or mistakes (whatever you want to call it) any more genuinely loving.

Not that they don't know better. That for them, it isn't even a moral question, sometimes. It's about 'who has the power' not 'who has 'right' on their side. It's exactly the problem New Yorkers were coming up against (hard) during the period the show got made (And before. And after.) The "wealthy and powerful" might rule it, but the desperate and afraid got to live in it, if you will. (Go get 'em, Cathy! Be a lawyer and fight for the right!)


Love, however, understands exactly where aggressors have come from, yet still dares to hold them accountable for their failure or refusal to love. Rape is (and always has been) rape, and cannot be excused by an appeal to ignorance or everyone-else-is-doing-it-too reasoning. Not even when our legal system exonerates the rapist.



Bravo, too right! And again, "Go Cathy." (You'll get him shot at, and blown up, but at least we HOPE you're doing it to fight everything you just mentioned above.) There's a principal at stake here, one of 'right' over 'law' and sometimes 'right within the law' and Our Couple is in there swinging for it, together. People championing love not just for themselves personally, but for a populace in general is one heck of a brave thing. One they'll both lose some skin over, but never lose faith. God Defend the Right. Or at least Vincent and Catherine defend it. Somebody's got to. <smile>

This is why sexism or racism or any prejudicial mindset is so dangerous: it blinds us to truths about the reality of our crimes against groups of people who live outside our accepted norms. It blinds us to history. It desensitizes us to the pain of those who suffer from our unlove.



Brava, to that statement.

Also, love and light right back to you! You're a marvel and a pleasure. (Oh, and BTW, regarding one of your earlier posts, you hold on to those 'dissed' kids, my dear.) I'll take a person in their passion over one just in their 'profession' any day, and those hard-to-reach-kiddos you've got your hands on likely need you more than they can ever, ever say. They don't always 'connect' emotionally with other people. (It's part of the disability spectrum, on some of them. Finding love of any sort can be so hard, for them.)

They often need what they don't know they even want. And they always need a champion, no matter what. You stay in there swinging for them, Zara, as long as time and circumstance allow you to. It's a good thing when you do. Hopefully, your students see that, and appreciate you for it. (And whether they do or not, I really, really do.) I pull hard for the disenfranchised kids. (to the point where it gets me in a little trouble, sometimes, but what the hell.) You only get to be an idiot rebel once. (smile)

Very many huge and lasting hugs, and more thanks for all you wrote and linked to,

Cindy

Hello Cindy,

Um, I was using "perspectives" as a Zara-speak synonym for "notions"...

I appreciate the dire import of the slavery issue, and the nature of history, and the purposes and limitations of legal codes, and your hopes for Catherine's goodness (and effectiveness) in a dangerous city, and Koslow (et al)'s personal context for writing about characters who live their lives and struggle with the ethics of NYC livin', and I understand the fact that Catherine and everyone else in the story are fictional characters created by fallible human writers, cast, and crew for a fictional universe--characters who only do what they do and say what they say because their writers wrote down their actions and dialogue for actors to perform.

And. I repeat: A person who engages in interactive sexual activity without their partner's consent is not respecting or loving their partner (and, I would argue, that person is also not respecting or loving himself or herself). A person who attempts to coerce their partner into sexual activity is not respecting or loving anyone. It is not respectful or loving when a person attempts to persuade their partner to engage in sexual activity after the partner has refused, or indicated reluctance, or communicated ambivalence, or decided at any moment along the way to refrain from further sexual activity. Yes = Yes ; No = No. When no explicit answer is given, that Absence of Yes = No. When Maybe appears, Maybe = Maybe, where one's right is always reserved to say Yes or No at any time.

To sum up. Consensual sex, by definition, requires CONSENT. Love respects everyone's right to consent to sex. If someone has NONconsensual sex with someone, it is NOT an act of love. Period.

From Pilot to TLBL, the "love" that Catherine Chandler receives from many of her fellow Topsiders is coercive and manipulative, sometimes nonconsensual... AND (although she does make intermittent progress away from this negative pattern during various episodes of the series) the "love" that Catherine frequently expresses is also coercive and manipulative, sometimes nonconsensual. Sometimes her unloving belief or act is simply a failure (or refusal) to respect the person she is supposed to be helping, or even loving. Other times, this disrespect get ratcheted up to astonishing levels of unthinking cruelty. The "love" being promoted via the purported heroine of the tale is not truly love.

I think the non-love in this story is being excused and justified so that someone, whether fictional or factual, can maintain the false belief that it is okay to force tea (or sex, or romance, or cooperation, or submission, or whatever you want to call it) on someone else in the name of love. I also think that uncritically buying the story's premises and imitating it produces a loveless fabrication that can desensitize us to what the online milieu has dubbed "rape culture."

You say that right and wrong are not absolutes. I do not wholly disagree. I believe that right and wrong, like love and anti-love, exist along a range or spectrum of possibilities (shades of gray, to quote Elliot Burch ), and that the scope of that spectrum generates different applications in different contexts. But: there *are* ultimate poles of right/wrong, good/bad, love/unlove that define the range between them. I like how Vincent/Roy Dotrice & Durrell Royce Crays put it in "Ashes, Ashes": "One either moves toward love or away from it...There is no other direction." In a society that accepts slavery as legal and normal, there can be loving slave owners, and very, very unloving ones. There can be loving slaves, and unloving slaves. There can be loving corporate executives and department managers, and quite evil ones. There can be loving wage-slaves and there can be hateful wage-slaves. But in any society, ever, there cannot be loving rapists.

There are some human activities that are evil, regardless of perspective or context or level of legal permissiveness. The moral/legal/cultural context may change the specific forms of movement along the ethical spectrum. But the reality of right/wrong, good/bad, love/unlove remains constant. Perspective only estimates our current position on this scale of morality. Perspective also tends to bias our view of reality in our favor, excusing our worst moments of stupidity, ignorance, wrongness, badness, and unloving behavior by any means at our disposal. Hence, why not all perspectives are valid as a means of measuring reality and morality. In the 1960s, 1970s, 1980s (as in the 1760s, 1770s, and 1780s), yes, some men were willing to rape their wives if their wives ever refused to consent to sexual relations with them...AND some other men living in the same time period and culture would never, ever, in a million years, have dreamed of raping their wives, no matter what. Law limits and informs; law does not compel, one way or the other. Law simply institutes penalties for behaving in certain ways that are deemed detrimental to society. Common law shapes our perceptions of right and wrong, yes. But we have an innate sense of justice and a longing for love that are hard-wired into our brains that exist prior to enculturation and that inform our responses to culture throughout our lives. Our inborn ethic guides us as we choose whether to embrace or resist all or some of our culture's teachings. Our instinct for love and justice will tend to urge many of us to seek out more information and experience about the greater laws of ethical life that influence us just as much as the contemporary laws of the land.

Even people born into a generations-old system of slavery or misogyny can still somehow "know" when people are being harmed by unlove within that system. We can "know" that according to viable standards of love, our culture may very well lie to us about right and wrong. That's why victims of unlove and people who sympathize with them will protest bad laws and customs, agitating for change.

Rape is rape. A person who rapes another person is a rapist. Nonconsensual *anything* is wrong.

I said earlier that legality never justifies, in any way, acts of unlove. You replied (with a shiver) that actually, it does exactly that. Looks like I need to clarify.

No. Legality never justifies acts of unlove. I see that in your following statement, you had to put "justifies" inside quotation marks, implying that the justification you refer to is, in fact, false. That was my point. Laws do not justify unlove. Some laws can permit unlove. Some laws can permit evildoers to rationalize their behavior, and can even excuse their evil within a specific culture or society. But those laws do not justify evil. Those laws are themselves a product of evil. Counter-cultural movement toward love in individual lives is the only way to discredit legal evil on a large scale and bring about positive change.

People in power who don't ask moral questions about their own behavior are also not any more genuinely loving due to their non-questioning ignorance.

Catherine was a character who, although a woman in a male-dominated society, held a significant measure of power in her world. And she abused it. A lot. And she abused the Beast she was supposed to be in love with. A lot. And she abused various guest characters throughout the series, people she was supposed to be helping to solve their problems. This pattern of abuse happened repeatedly. And she abused herself with her kamikaze vendetta against everything in the universe that hurt or frightened her. Constantly. And she hated examining her actions and attitudes too closely. And the story + storytellers praised her for living this crazy, violent, self-and-beloveds-destructive life. This is not good.

Based on the evidence available to me, I believe that Koslow and the other writers for the show expressed their overculture's male-dominant ideals in the story they created. I also believe Koslow honestly intended to challenge some of these ideals by establishing and exploring Catherine's identity as Beauty, and Vincent's identity as Beast. But TV-Land's enforced habit of misogyny and machismo prevented him from completing the work of art that he hoped to create. We can't know what a non-sexist B&B canon would have been, because we're not Koslow, and because Koslow never got to bring such a story into existence.

The Catherine Chandler of canon-as-it-came-to-exist represents the most that indulgent misogyny expects of us, as women. I am inclined to set my sights beyond her example. To glimpse who Catherine might have been, as a woman and as a Beauty, in the hands of astute storytellers known for presenting strong female characters in their own work, I highly recommend Wendy Pini's two B&B graphic novels, and Barbara Hambly's two B&B novelizations. Both authors, incidentally, conferred with Koslow and/or the television writers about the stories they were transporting into non-televised media. Both also made some significant changes to Catherine's characterization that (at least in my opinion) improved her potential for "heroine" status.

And know, my friend, that champions of the hard-knock kids have my support and admiration. You keep swinging too. Bless you for making some trouble on their behalf.

More hugs,

Zara

A question for Cindy:

In my previous post, I did not address one of your main points because it made me feel very uncomfortable, but I did not yet know why. I have been pondering, and I think I have a better understanding of my instinctive reaction now.

The point that I "skipped over" was your positive assessment of Catherine's activity in the story. I think I can summarize your statements thus: In a time and place when most people did nothing, or too little, to try to solve society's problems, at least Catherine did SOMETHING. Doing something is better than doing nothing, so Catherine was right to be "in there swinging" against the criminal element of New York. Catherine's good intentions justify all the actions she took in her "fight for the right." Catherine's actions are therefore admirable. Catherine herself is therefore admirable; brave and heroic and loving.

How'd I do?

~ Zara

Contemporary experiments...

Home Free?

Home Petite Home

...that seem a bit similar to what the Tunnelfolk decided to do for themselves.

Found a thought (one of many good points) today in the essay, "What Should White People Do?"

Linda Martín Alcoff wrote:Sartre, who was famously pessimistic about the egalitarian potential of human relations, presented two options that can be taken toward the Other. The first involves an attempt to transcend the Other's transcendence, or negate the Other's own freedom, especially the freedom to judge and value. This mode is characteristic of hate and sadism. The other mode involves the attempt to incorporate the transcendence of the Other; that is, to have the Other's love, but freely of the Other's own choosing. This is the paradox of love: we want the Other to love us in a way that is absolute, unchanging, and reliable, but we want this love to be freely given without coercion. Thus we want the love to be simultaneously noncontingent and contingent. Sartre characterizes this as the desire to incorporate the Other's freedom within me, such that my needs and desires are still at the center and the Other exists only as a portion of my arranged world without real autonomy.

This describes exactly the nature of the Catherine-Vincent relationship. What interests me is that Catherine's (yes, yes, writer-created) attitude toward Vincent includes both her sadistic negation of "the Other's own freedom, especially the freedom to judge and value," AND "the attempt to incorporate the freedom of the Other." Catherine demands that her needs and desires stay at the center of the relationship and that Vincent must exist only as a portion of her carefully arranged world without any real autonomy. She also demands that Vincent never, ever criticize or question her ideas, choices, or behaviors, while at the same time reserving for herself the right to at all times override Vincent's (and other characters') ideas, choices, and behaviors with her own priorities.

And: Fanon has adopted this same dual priority in its collective storytelling project.

Vincent's approach to Catherine's "Otherness" (for she is definitely Other than whatever he is) employs Sartre's second option, but with a self-sacrificing twist: Vincent desires to incorporate the Other's/Catherine's freedom within himself, but he does so by placing HER needs and desires at the center of himself and submitting to her estimations of his Otherness...up to a certain point. In other words, Vincent is self-sacrificial, but he has some nonnegotiable boundaries, necessary limits to what he is willing or able to sacrifice. He honors Catherine's boundaries, period. She rarely honors his boundaries. What angers me is that a character who opens his soul to a degree practically unknown in Topsider/Catherine's/Fandom culture is condemned as weak, impotent, repressed, frigid, confused, leery of commitment. The storytellers required Vincent to operate according to a stereotypical personality trait of disabled characters that placed him in the disempowered position that women have traditionally occupied in romantic relationships. And in the end, many women in the story's audience began assuming attitudes toward Vincent that replicate misogynist and disableist attitudes toward women/non-males/Otherness. Often in the story (canon and fanon both), whenever Vincent reaches his limits and expresses his own irreducible need to maintain his own boundaries of self, Catherine and Catherine-focused fans rebuke him and try to bulldoze through those boundaries for their own purposes, never remotely wanting to realize that by doing so, they are destroying Vincent's Selfhood, and thus the very source of the co-opted freedoms and powers that they crave. It's like killing the goose that lays golden eggs.

The fact that the storytellers called this kind of psycho-sexual abuse "love" (and that fans then accepted and adopted this definition) rankles. The fact that they called the abusive protagonist a "strong female character" leads me to seriously question their implied definitions of "strength" and "love" and especially "femaleness." In order to make Catherine appear virtuous in light of the moral power they embedded in Vincent, they had to make-pretend that Catherine's activity in the story was always morally valid. They also had to make-pretend that Vincent's abjectification of himself was a noble quality that always promoted real love. Honestly? This approach ended up driving the central virtuous character (Vincent) literally insane, and it turned a potential heroine into a full-blown hypocrite. They allowed Catherine's "strength" to dominate and manipulate Vincent's "weakness," and then, often through Vincent's own dialogue, they praised Catherine for her "lovingkindness." Yuck.

If I look at what the story *could* have been, if I perhaps peek into the altered characterizations offered by Pini and Hambly, say, then yes, I can replace the fractured unBeauty that canon gave us with something more human and humane and honorable. This is what many fans do and have done, and this is what I do when I write stories that characterize Catherine as either Beauty or proto-Beauty. But in replacing canon-Catherine with noncanon-Catherine in my imagination, I must be careful not to ignore or excuse canon-Catherine's existence. I must also make very, very sure that I don't align my moral compass with canon-Catherine's example and join her in her unloving (and criminal) hypocrisy. This kind of unlove is also what many fans do and have done.

Being a storyteller, at any level of society, is a heavy responsibility. Looking at the shadow-side of this story inspires me to try to tell other kinds of tales about love and beauty. It also inspires me, via reverse example, to be as honest as I can about the things I witness and perceive in the world.

"The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism" by Audre Lorde (1981)

So. Considering the fact that I am exploring the dehumanizing "shadow-side" of B&B, and that what I think and feel about it runs the gamut from elation to depression, what, exactly am I still doing here, inhabiting the fantasy? Where's the good, where's the beauty, where's the hope? What did Koslow, et al, do right?

Simply:

They created Faeryland in New York. They told a fairy story well worth the telling and re-telling. They talked about things your can't talk about during the day. Their story asked questions. Their story made arguments. Their story explored causes and consequences. Despite all producer-and-network-inflicted odds, the storytellers introduced us to heroes and heroines of Love. They illuminated Beauties and Beasts in every episode. Angels and Demons. [And Human Beings, too.] To this day, their story touches me, makes me think, and I am eternally grateful. The fairy tale has changed me, my life, my relationships with others, my relationship with myself. Great art does that. And great fantasy especially does that for us.

Into the dire context of the urban 1980s, the storymakers brought to life a new composite incarnation of Narnia, Middle Earth, Camelot, and Wonderland.

Please notice that I did NOT say: Disneyland, WFOL, Shangri-La, or Hollywood's version of Oz.

There are vital differences in play.

"The Ethics of Elfland" from Orthodoxy by G. K. Chesteron

"On Fairy Stories" by J. R. R. Tolkien

"Imaginary Friends" by Ursula K. Le Guin

"Fandom: Not Just Funny Business" by Andrea Judy

Andrea Judy wrote:Even trying to define fandom presents some difficulties. The most succinct definition simply defines fandom as “the regular, emotionally involved consumption of a given popular narrative or text.” What this definition fails to look into is that fandom is a collection of fans, but not every fan is in a fandom or interacts with others.

Even the study of fandom in an academic sense is difficult to pin down neatly. Fandom intersects new media, communications, social sciences, and, as the economic impact of fandom grows, business. To keep it categorized in one academic realm is to miss out on other important aspects of fandom: trying to talk about the social interactions without also examining the texts that inspire this group and the economic impact of that interaction is to not look at the whole picture.

While businesses are actively wooing fans, there are certain fans who are not the ideal for a business model. The fans who actively participate, write fanfiction, argue over what a background character’s role really is, and who actively follow the writers aren’t always the ideal viewer. Why not? Because those fans are more likely to ask questions, to talk back, to share their ideas and remix the story presented to them, either through fanfic, fanart, or some other creative means. They do not just accept the story or products that are given to them. They believe they can create something different and work to transform the original into something new.

Fandom questions the power of ultimate canon of the universe and wants to interact with the text in a deeper way. People write theories to explain holes in plot points; they speculate on upcoming themes, they write their own back stories to explain away problems, they debate on what the symbolism means, and they discuss problems with portrayal of minorities. They want to be engaged with the text, not to just buy whatever product the company produces....

Beautiful Seasons in "Beauty and the Beast" presented by Kristin

Sinfest: "One Shade of Grey" by Tatsuya Ishida

Although the B&B television series delivered a decidedly mixed message overall, a few episodes do stand out for emphasizing the "feminist fantasy's" no-means-no ethic:

"Once Upon a Time in the City of New York"
"No Way Down"
"China Moon"
"Down to a Sunless Sea"
"Arabesque"

Curiously (or perhaps not so curiously), these episodes were NOT written by writer-producers Alex Gansa, Howard Gordon, or George R. R. Martin.