В момента преживяваме една особена културна революция. Светът става все по-политизиран и изкуството, естествено, го следва. Вместо хомогенизация от глобализацията се случва обратното – гласът на „малцинствата“ става все по-силен (или много повече хора имат смелост да заявят, че са от „малцинството“, или става все по-hip да си ненормативен). Това роене означава все по-голяма отговорност от авторите и все по-голяма критичност към написаното. Авторът не само вече не е мъртъв, той е деен участник наравно с героите си в борбата срещу или за статуквото. Ако иска да е идеологически осъзнат, ще му се налага да чете и мисли повече, тръгвайки от позицията, че светът съдържа различни истини. Политическото четене означава и все по-малка примиреност с ретроградното, все по-малко извинения за тези, които не осъзнават привилегироваността си, все повече призиви за изтръгване от идеологиите, за премахване на наративите, които отново и отново налагат стереотипи и клишета. Накрая това е шанс за автора да е по-добър писател.
„Where I think I failed pretty badly is that Terez is really not a good character… That’s shoddy writing by any standard, but worse yet it plays into a really ugly stereotype of shrill man-hating (possibly quite thick) lesbian, and that badly undermines any attempt to do something interesting with this situation. If Terez is a much more convincing, multi-faceted, less stereotyped character with an authentic voice and a more believable motivation I’m sure many people would still have their problems with this scene but from my point of view at least it would be much improved… It doesn’t help at all that the female characters in the First Law ain’t that great across the board, really. Ferro is the only female point of view and for various reasons probably outside the scope of this particular thread I think I could have done a whole lot better with her too. I actually think the other (almost) rape in the series, in the second book, is worse, because it’s handled more or less completely disposably and the female character in that case, Cathil, is still more absent of personality than Terez and pretty much exists to elicit certain responses in the men. Which is kind of sexist writing 101, sadly. There’s also a rather ugly pattern, so obvious to me now that I can hardly believe I failed to notice it at the time, of pretty much all the central female characters having been the victims of abuse of one kind or another. I suppose you could say a fair few of the central male characters have been as well but that’s pretty weak sauce as a defence…. You might think the avoiding of shitty writing should be an obvious lesson for a writer. All I can say is, you’d be surprised how difficult it is in practice… „
Joe Abercrombie (http://asoiaf.westeros.org/index.php/topic/60165-violence-rape-agency-the-rapiness-that-comes-before/#entry2864601)
„I often tell people that I’m the biggest self-aware misogynist I know.
I was writing a scene last night between a woman general and the man she helped put on the throne. I started writing in some romantic tension, and realized how lazy that was. There are other kinds of tension.
I made a passing reference to sexual slavery, which I had to cut. I nearly had him use a gendered slur against her. I growled at the screen. He wanted to help save her child… no. Her brother? Ok. She was going to betray him. OK. He had some wives who died… ug. No. Close advisors? Friends? Maybe somebody just… left him?
Even writing about societies where there is very little sexual violence, or no sexual violence against women, I find myself writing in the same tired tropes and motivations. “Well, this is a bad guy, and I need something traumatic to happen to this heroine, so I’ll have him rape her.” That was an actual thing I did in the first draft of my first book, which features a violent society where women outnumber men 25-1. Because, of course, it’s What You Do.
I actually watched a TV show recently that was supposedly about this traumatic experience a young girl went through, but was, in fact, simply tossed in so that the two male characters in the show could fight over it, and argue about which of them was at fault because of what happened to her. It was the most flagrant erasure of a female character and her experiences that I’d seen in some time. She’s literally in the room with them while they fight about it, revealing all these character things about them while she sort of fades into the background.
We forget what the story’s about. We erase women in our stories who, in our own lives, are powerful, forthright, intelligent, terrifying people. Women stab and maim and kill and lead and manage and own and run. We know that. We experience it every day. We see it.
But this is our narrative: two men fighting loudly in a room, and a woman snuffling in a corner.“
Kameron Hurley, “‘We Have Always Fought’: Challenging the ‘Women, Cattle and Slaves’ Narrative”
Всъщност (и това е най-трагичното) романът има съвсем реална предистория:
The Decadence 