Yes, I know this is one of the five books I read last year.
Yes, I know I’m meant to be reading new books and cleaning off my shelves.
No, I don’t care.
So here’s an unlikely confession: I never shipped Drarry.
I know! It’s a classic! It’s Enemies to Lovers, one of the greatest tropes of all time! In Philosopher’s Stone, Harry rejected Draco’s offer of friendship, so for the rest of their time at Hogwarts, Draco takes it upon himself to make Harry miserable. In Chamber of Secrets, we discover that Draco complains about Harry in the Slytherin common room regularly. In Half Blood Prince, Harry follows Draco around, to the dismay of Hermione and Ron. Harry thinks more about Draco than his own future-love-of-his-life, Ginny. I mean… They’re obsessed with each other.
It’s all right there, being subtext, ripe for the picking.[1]
Truth be told, I never shipped any of the characters in Harry Potter. Shipping just wasn’t on my radar for that series. There were so many other interesting things going on—Who has time for romance?
Last year, I read John Green’s Turtles All the Way Down, which is about a teenage girl who has OCD. Some stories about mental illness are inspiration porn—somebody overcomes their mental illness and gets better forever, and it’s such a relief to them, and also romantic love is what fixes them.
Green doesn’t do that. He writes about OCD as someone who knows it intimately, and he doesn’t pull any punches. Ava “got better without ever quite getting well” (281).
And yet other stories are torture porn—everything is done for shock value and the portrayal of mental illness is dangerously inaccurate and harmful. 13 Reasons Why (2017–present) immediately comes to mind, though I have to add the disclaimer that I haven’t watched it. I’ve just seen a lot of criticism of the wayit handles suicide.
Additionally, people who are mentally ill are portrayed as violent and dangerous in the media (see pretty much every crime procedural and any video game that takes place in an asylum), when statistically, the exact opposite is true. People with mental illnesses are much more likely to be on the receiving end of violence.
…Popular culture just doesn’t do well with portraying mental illness accurately and in a way that isn’t harmful.
There are outliers, of course. Crazy Ex-Girlfriend (2015–present) is very careful about the way it handles mental illness. I really loved United States of Tara (2009–2011), though I’m sure it’s problematic in some ways. Silver Linings Playbook (2012) got a lot of praise for its portrayal of bipolar disorder. No portrayal is perfect, but shows and movies that try hard to get it right really feel different.
Books, whatever their subject matter, create a snapshot of the time they were created in. They tell us what people were thinking about at the time they were written. The stories we choose to tell say a lot about who we are.[1]
Stories are how we create the narrative of our history. Books written today will be part of history and part of how we tell our history. News articles aren’t going to be read by the masses in 50 years, but novels are. Every high schooler in the United States reads The Great Gatsby, and its portrayal of “the Roaring Twenties” is generally how people picture that time period. As far as anyone living knows, that’s exactly what it was like (for wealthy white Americans in that region, anyway).
I’m not an expert, so I don’t know, but I wonder if it would be safe to say that the books that really last, the ones that will be added to the literary canon, are the ones that capture important cultural moments.
The romance and romantic comedy genres have a lot to offer. They explore a lot of themes that are common to everyone—and I’m not actually talking about the theme of romantic love, because aromantic people exist. I saw Crazy Rich Asians (2018) recently, and that movie is all about class and immigrant families. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2002), one of my favorites, is about family. Love, Simon (2018) is a coming-of-age story. Romantic relationships are just the avenue romantic comedies take to explore these things.
People have been making and enjoying romantic comedies since people first started telling stories. (Before that, they probably just enjoyed watching their neighbors’ dramatic love lives unfold.) People have different opinions on what makes a good, classic romantic comedy. We define “romantic comedy” as a story in which the lovers have to overcome some obstacle to be together and in which they do end up together (thus satisfying the classical definition of a comedy), and there are many, many variations on the theme. No movie is going to satisfy everybody’s criteria, and no one has ever been completely satisfied with defining one romantic comedy as the be-all-end-all of romantic comedies (which is probably why we keep making them). But there are maybe five romantic comedies everyone can all agree are perfect.
On one hand, it’s an oppressive institution that creates two classes of citizens under tax and social codes and is part of a history of patriarchal control of women and their assets.
On the other hand, it’s a symbol of commitment for people who fall in love and want to spend their lives together, and that’s beautiful! It’s even more beautiful now that everyone can legally marry their partner regardless of their gender in many countries.
Also, you know, ~the patriarchy~ and heteronormativity. That part might matter less now, but it’s still baked into how marriage works, both interpersonally and on a societal level, and just because marriage is more about a loving partnership these days doesn’t mean the patriarchy and heteronormativity don’t take their tolls.
Content/Trigger Warning: Discussion of abuse, mental illness, and a suicide attempt. I also touch on the racism and ableism that the characters display in the book, though I should mention that the author makes them that way intentionally.
SPOILER ALERT! If you have not watched Crazy Ex-Girlfriend season three and you don’t want spoilers, stop reading right now! I’m about to talk about the show, before the cut, so spoilers are coming right up, immediately. You’ve been warned!
In season three of the TV show Crazy Ex-Girlfriend, Rebecca Bunch is diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder.[1] BPD is a mental illness that is often vilified and, as with most mental illnesses, mischaracterized in most popular portrayals. But Crazy Ex-Girlfriend has been praised for its discussion of social stigmas about mental illness. The first season’s theme song addresses this immediately.
Crazy Ex-Girlfriend’s theme song asks for people to take a nuanced view of Rebecca’s behavior and her mental illness and to not just label her as “a crazy ex-girlfriend.” “The situation’s a lot more nuanced than that,” she points out to the animated singing heads.
Given that most portrayals of mental illness are trite, inaccurate, and played for shock value, it’s refreshing when a portrayal is honest and nuanced. Even if seeing it that way can kind of be uncomfortable at the same time.
Last month, I saw Bo Burnham’s new film, Eighth Grade (2018). I’ve been a Bo fan for a long time, since his days on Youtube (when he was super problematic, something he has addressed himself), but I was still a little skeptical when reviews of the movie were saying that “Bo Burnham understands teenage girls.”
Like… great, another man being praised for telling a story about teenage girls, like a man would have any idea what it’s like.[1] But I was familiar with Bo, and he has talked a lot about how he’s embraced appealing to young people, and young girls in particular, and how he takes his responsibility as an entertainer seriously because of the impressionability of his audience. So I went in with an open mind, albeit still skeptical.
You guys… Bo Burnham has read my diary.
Middle school was hard for me, the way it is hard for everybody. Kayla’s experience wasn’t exactly like mine, but the feelings of loneliness and awkwardness and desperately wanting to fit in are painfully familiar. Burnham skillfully captured the unique experience of being a 13-year-old girl at a public school in the United States.[2]
Puberty, and that general time of being a teenager, is confusing. Your body changes, you feel new weird-ass feelings, and those feelings are intense and overwhelming. The benefit of hindsight and also reading a lot of young adult fiction and articles about child psychology has helped me reflect and understand, though I wish I knew then what I understand now.
And that’s why stories like Eighth Grade are important. They can be ways to tell young girls that they aren’t alone, that they’re absolutely right that being a teenager is hard, and that feeling whatever they’re feeling is normal and valid.[3]
After all… Did you feel like you knew what was going on when you were a teenager?
Content Warning: Discussion of sexual assault and gendered violence.
Women have reason to fear men. As Margaret Atwood once noted, “Men are afraid that women will laugh at them. Women are afraid that men will kill them.”[1]
And the terribly sad thing is that no man is safe.
A Tumblr post. This “not all men” meme was going around for a while, until people started realizing that it is actually all men.
I’ve been let down by the men in my life many times, and the disappointment is always crushing. It feels like a betrayal.
An older man I know once complained to me that he thinks women are irrationally afraid of men. I tried to explain to him that it’s not irrational, that there are legitimate reasons, that often when men don’t get what they want (an acknowledgement of a catcall, for example), they become violent. What’s more, men have over time created power structures that make it difficult for women to seek justice and get protection from domestic violence and rape or death threats. He dropped the subject and we moved on, but I had hoped that he understood.
Then, later that night as we were walking down the street together, he wolf whistled at a lone woman walking past us.
I wanted to scream. He just didn’t get it.
There are a lot of men right now responding to the Me Too and Time’s Up movements by asking “Where is the line?” and “What are the rules?” Some public figures have expressed that they are afraid to even speak to women, for fear of being accused of sexually harassing them. Obviously, this is absurd; if you don’t want to get accused of sexual harassment, don’t sexually harass people.
Here’s a “rule” for you: Treat women like people.
“People” might be the key word there, but women’s personhood and autonomy is constantly under attack. How can we expect men to treat women like people when society and other power structures don’t? We socialize men to be entitled, and socialization can be hard to overcome.
Well, that’s what Me Too and Time’s Up are demanding. That men overcome it, now. We absolutely need to socialize boys differently, and we need to teach consent culture, but at the same time, we need men to step up and educate themselves.[2] People are—have been—dying, and we don’t have the time or patience to indulge ignorance anymore.
Science fiction is a subgenre of speculative fiction, so naturally part of the point of science fiction is to speculate. What if? science fiction asks. What if a scientist managed to reanimate a corpse? What if humans had to adapt to a desert planet? What would a fully androgynous society look like? What if robots were sentient?
What if humans made contact with aliens?
Extraterrestrial beings are a popular subject in science fiction because they invite us to speculate on a number of things. What might life on other planets or in space be like? How do they even manage to live in space? Would they be friendly? Would they invade us? How would humans react to discovering other life out in the universe?
A lot of alien invasion movies take an apocalyptic view, which makes sense, given the apocalypses we’ve visited on each other just on our own planet. So the question might become: How did those people endure and survive? How could we? What is the limit of human resilience?
El's Reading Journal 