Life on Queen Street

I would like to take this opportunity to go on record as saying that the argument "X movie or Y TV show was so good I missed it on first viewing" is bullshit.

It's a movie. It's a TV show. It's filmed performance. Its only job is to capture your attention as you watch. If you need to watch something three or four times to realize that you actually like it, it has failed in its primary job, which is to engage your attention and emotions and entertain you.

If you see a play or a movie or a TV show and you like it enough to see it again. It has worked.
If you see a play or a movie or a TV show and it intrigues you enough to see it again. It has worked.
If you see a play or a movie or a TV show and you hate it but keep watching it because everyone else thinks it's fucking awesome until you buckle to peer pressure and admit that, on the fourth viewing, you have seen the error of your ways, hallelujah and come to Jesus! It. Has. Failed.

This is not a book. We are not reading. Our brains are not actively engaged. We are watching. We are passive. You, the performer/writer/director are meant to be engaging us, not the other way around. AND YOU'VE GOT ONE SHOT.

If you fuck it up, you lose.

The weekend was marginally productive. No surprise to me but the account of my surgical adventure is not exactly flowing from me for my life writing class. I did get some editing done for the anthology we're putting out, so not all was lost.

Media Consumed Recently:

Movies
Imagine Me & You

TV
30 Rock 2.12
Battlestar Galactica 4.03
Doctor Who 4.03
ER, Bones, L&O:SVU latest episodes

Books
Still working my way through Anna Karenina - Russians are wordy, God!

Doctor Who was a serviceable romp that once again highlighted the differences between Donna and Ten's previous companions. I can see the much more traditional sidekick/partner dynamic NuWho is trying to build between them and I like it. However, the best part of the episode was the trailer for next week - why hello, old friend. You look particularly made of awesome in that jacket. Good to see you, please proceed to kick much ass.

I'm tempted to break up with BSG and if the Internet weren't in love with the show, I would probably wait and watch the whole thing when it comes out on DVD. I'm not loving the idea of waiting another year for the last 10 episodes and I'm not loving the fourth season so far. The performances and individual scenes have been very good. The overall effect, I find to be less than the sum of its parts - with only 20 episodes left, BSG should be starting to give us some answers butis laying more questions on us instead. 17 episodes left and I'm not feeling terribly confident about Ron Moore and his writers' ability to answer them all by the end of the series run. I have a terrible feeling we're going to be stuck with a Trek-esque two-hour finale to wrap things up rather than a proper third act to the series.

I'm also not loving the way BSG is throwing out story beats of all of a sudden like ( spoiler ) More scifi tokenism - it's really not very progressive to have all these strong female characters if you're going to spend all your time making them crazy (Starbuck), grasping (Roslin) and untrusty (Tory, Boomer, Caprica, Gina, Starbuck, Roslin). C'mon, Ron, take your head out of your press clippings and take a look at how you are actually portraying the women on your show.

Finally, Tina Fey has officially made my short list of women I want to be when I grow up. Tina Fey is made entirely of awesomesauce and snark. It's a beautiful thing.

Those who follow the ever cool, ever useful, ever hysterical romance novel blog Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books know that over the past few days they've discovered a systematic pattern of plagiarism in the works of Cassie Edwards.

They posted what they found (through the work of a third party who found something hinky in the tone of some of the narrative) and the whole thing snowballed from there as more readers got in on the action. I believe the series is now up to five parts, demonstrating habitual plagiarism from secondary sources about Native American life, tribal culture, practices and, I think, flora and fauna of the American West. To be fair to Edwards, she isn't the only author to get hit with this - even Ian McEwan was accused of plagiarizing from the memoir of a WWII nurse-trainee. Quite often in the process of writing, authors will absorb details from real life and spit them out again in prose and the question of what constitutes plagiarism when fact is mixed with fiction is an ongoing debate (see Malcolm Gladwell's "Something Borrowed" from the New Yorker). Personally, I fall down on the "if you use someone else's words, you're copying. If you rewrite someone's words without attributing them, you're copying" side of the line - basically, if my philosophy prof would fail me for it if I did it in an essay I'd handed it, it's plagiarism and it's not on.*

But in the eyes of fellow romance-writer Jennifer Crusie, whether or not Edwards is a plagiarist is not the issue. What's at issue, in Crusie's mind, is whether or not Smart Bitches is being mean to poor old Cassie Edwards. What Crusie wants to know is not whether or not Edwards has been systematically ripping off the work of other authors but whether or not Edwards ran over their dog because we all know that what really counts in the world of journalism, which I submit the Smart Bitches posts are, is whether or not the journalist likes the subject.

Edwards, who writes those buckskin and feathers bodice rippers where a pure-hearted Native American stud brings the joy of good sex to misguided white pioneer women across the Southwestern United States that every girl I know read at least once in high school, is regularly slated on the blog for being, well, not a very good writer. And she isn't, not even by the somewhat bell-curved standards of the genre. Then again, Smart Bitches Who Love Trashy Books is a blog who's stated raison d'etre is no bullshit reviews of romance novels. My favourite section of their blog (after the semi-weekly round-up of cover art horror perpetrated by romance publishers worldwide) is called "Good Shit vs. Shit to Avoid". My point is that the collected oeuvre of Cassie Edwards is an egregious offence against the canon of English literature but she's hardly the only author who's ever gotten a bad review on their site, even if they did call one of her books the worst book ever and another "the literary equivalent of maggot infested cheese". Smart Bitches is a review site, this is the internet, people say mean things and, seriously, anyone who thinks that the Smart Bitches treatment of Cassie Edwards is unfair have never read an English gossip column because, holy hell, they make Candy and Sarah look like kittens.

Crusie's statement that Edwards "doesn't deserve the constant humiliation this site heaps on her" irrespective of the fact that any humiliation derived from the latest series of posts is entirely down to Edwards own shoddiness in failing to properly attribute her sources or her own outright mendaciousness is boneheaded, logic-free bullshit and, frankly, I'm surprised at Crusie for perpetrating it. How Smart Bitches feel about Cassie Edwards is irrelevant to the issue at hand: either she's a plagiarist or she's not and whether or not anyone thinks Savage Moon is the greatest work of fiction ever or something one would normally expect to find only after it has passed out the working end of a sheep is neither here nor there. Shame, Ms. Crusie, shame.

Luckily for me and the Intertoobz at large, we have Nora Roberts, speaking for the forces of reason and sanity and hot monkey sex with Irish multi-billionaires (if she made Rourke a Scot, I'd probably spontaneously combust):

Reporting isn’t bashing, and very often reporting isn’t nice.

I don’t know Cassie, and would never bash her. But I will bash, again and again, the act of any writer copying another’s work--and calling the work his/her own.

Tolerating it or defending it isn’t standing up for the writer, it’s standing up for the act of copying.

(care of Fandom_Wank)

No love from Queen Street for you, Ms. Crusie. I am officially rededicating the portion of my fiscal planning otherwise reserved under "oooh, does Jennifer Crusie have a new book out I might find cool" to Nora Roberts who is, as Stephen King said, ice cold and continues to be a one classy and stand up lady.

Ms. Roberts, you are made of awesome.

Tip of the hat to the ever linkalicious cleolinda for the original FW link.

*FWIW, McEwan did acknowledge the bio he cribbed his line about 'daubing Valerian on ringworm' or some such from. Whether or not that constitutes sufficient attribution is an argument that pro- and anti-McEwan critics have been banging on about for six years now (this is England, Tall Poppy Syndrome is definitely a factor). I do not know what, if any, attribution or credit Edwards gives the secondary sources she borrowed from.

I haven't been hearing nearly as much about the upcoming FCC meeting about concentration of media ownership on LJ as I would have expected to, given the impact greater concentration of media ownership is likely to have on political and social discourse in the US.

There's a similar problem in Canada - we call it CanWest Global, which is currently trying to get the CRTC to let it buy Alliance Atlantis with US money from Sachs Goldman.

Um, can you say "No"?

It's probably too late to complain to the CRTC - although I encourage everyone to e-mail their MP and tell them that the CRTC should tell Izzy and the Aspers to go fuck themselves.

"Free speech" isn't very free when it's bought and paid for by the Aspers, Murdochs and Blacks of this world.

I'm in Dublin, sitting on my bed, contemplating the vaguely penitential decor of my residence room and thinking that I've made a huge mistake...

Lady J told me that the first few days were going to suck and they do/it does. I'm lonely and nervous and feeling dislocated and undone. I'm also exhausted but I don't so much have jet lag as jet malaise: I feel like some languid fading French film star, reclining in her chair, a cigarette smoking fitfully between two long, attenuated fingers as she contemplates the remains of her days... Not literally obviously, but I think I can see the end of my tether from here and, as the end of all the running around trying to get myself organized and here nears (tomorrow - Registration!), the reality of what I've committed to is sinking in - and I think maybe I'm fucking insane.

Anyway, I'm here. I have stuff for my kitchen and the makings for toast and tea tomorrow morning (and M&S chocie biccies because there was a need for something familiar). My bed is made, there's a curtain in the shower (there wasn't this morning, so this is an awesome thing) and, although hot water appears to be something that happens elsewhere, I will be able to shower tomorrow and have a cup and some toast in my own (shared) kitchen before I head to school. There are worse things.

Also, Atonement will be showing at the cinema down the road, which has got to be a sign, right?

Speaking of - Keira Knightley wore a ripped bedsheet to the London premiere of Atonement and the Fug Girls are off at New York's Fashion Week, forcing me to imagine what Jessica and Heather would have to say about Knightley's decision to go out in public dressed like The Princess Bride meets The Mummy.

And really, my imagination fails: fashion is so not my bag - reading Vogue offends my socialist principles and brings me over all strident and didactic - and to critique something well (as opposed to merely criticizing) you need to love it, or at least the idea of it.

That said, although I look at that dress and cringe ever so slightly - that one-shouldered, Olympian goddess look is always hard to pull off even when the designer doesn't drink an entire bottle of Stoli after discovering her new husband cavorting with one of the male models from her spring show naked except for a kitchen apron, a choker and her favourite pair of Jimmy Choo's and go on a booze, diet-pills and rage-fuelled rampage through her studio, screaming 'how could you fuck him when Andre Leon Talley called me a "true original" when he saw my collection in Paris' while stabbing her dress-maker's dummy repeatedly in the chest with a pair of shears only to wake up hung-over and spent the next morning to realize that Knightley was due for her last fitting in 15 minutes, leaving her just enough time to cut away the worst of the rents and figure out that if she wrapped the tatters around Knightley's chest she could say that she was going for a 'Winged Victory meets Punk' and no one would ever have to know about Jonathan and Gaspard and the goat - I like Knightley's "fuck you and fuck off" attitude to the tabs who've made a small fortune the last year staking out her home with photographers and scrutinizing her appearance with much pharisaical hand-wringing and minatory prognostications about her health. I mean, if you know your appearance is gonna be raked over the coals no matter what you do, why not go all out, eh?

I just spent five minutes looking up "minatory" (going 'min, min, min... it means bad and vaugely hectoring... min, min, minimim, mina, miniature, miniatory, minatory! Oh, thank Christ'). I can't decide if this means I'm in the right place after all or merely that I'm a geek with a shoddy memory - or if those things are even mutually exclusive.

Things I've Learned About Ireland:

the phone cards are not actually cards... they're pieces of paper and you have to call one number, dial in your pin and then dial the number, if you can still remember who you wanted to call by that point

beer is surprisingly expensive and that seems wrong on so many levels (and apparently is, as I understand that the gov't is jacking up the prices to get people to drink less - because that's ever worked before)

they know not from KD (that's Kraft Dinner to you Europeans, Americans and other heathens), in fact, they know not from maccaroni! O_o o_O I have no idea what I'm going to eat for the next year

it's humid. I hate that

By way of Digitalfemme: From the NYTimes: "By cultivating an identity perceived as white to the point of excess, nerds deny themselves the aura of normality that is usually one of the perks of being white" - presupposing of course that all nerds are white and all nerds are the same.

Um, bullshit? Methinks the academic in question should consider extending her research into 'nerd' culture beyond rewatching Revenge of the Nerds. Either that or the US is even more different from Canada (or at least urban Canada) than I imagined.

Linda McQuaig has always been a little too far the left for me (or even for me, depending on your point of view) - that said, her most recent book on Canadian-US relations Post-11/09/01 is entitled "Holding the Bully's Coat", four words that form the most concise, excoriating and to-the-point indictment of Canada's moral and policy failures in the Bush-era I've ever read - but her column on Conrad Black and The National Post's impact on Canadian political discourse is worth a read:

He used his ample resources to create the National Post, a vehicle that helped him push the mainstream debate in Canada considerably to the right. Black relentlessly used the Post as a platform for himself and a host of like-minded commentators to ridicule the Canadian taste for equality and strong public programs, to denigrate what amounted to the Canadian way of doing things.

Black liked to present the Post as an irreverent, scrappy upstart of a newspaper that shook up the staid Canadian media scene and challenged the establishment with its "take-no-prisoners" approach. The only problem with that image was that, far from challenging the establishment, the Post was – and is – the establishment.

It may well have been a scrappy upstart, but from the beginning it was an attack-dog fighting on behalf of Canada's financial elite, who have never been shy about defending their own interests. Could anyone seriously argue that, before the Post came along, we had heard insufficiently from business on the subject of the need for tax cuts, free trade or deficit reduction?

Seriously.

Up to 35 years in a US penitentiary? Couldn't happen to a nicer guy.

eta:

"July 13, 2007, will be remembered as the end of the line for two wealthy Toronto businessmen: Conrad Black and Ed Mirvish. Both were larger than life and spent time in the spotlight. One, born outside of Canada, made it his cherished home, while the other renounced the country of his birth to obtain a foreign honour. One was known for his self-deprecating humour, humility, common touch and generosity. History will be the ultimate judge of these men.

David Haig, North Bay, Ont."

"I'm very conscious of the change in Canada since I was here before," says Christie the day after the premiere of Away From Her at the Toronto International Film Festival.

"And the change is very disturbing," the veteran performer and activist (primarily for nuclear disarmament and animal rights) adds.

"I think a lot of the world looked up to Canada – I feel like I might make myself cry – because it's a wonderful thing to have someone not participating in the stuff you feel that you yourself are struggling against. And here was this whole country that had decided to pursue a path of common sense and gentleness. That was terribly gratifying for all of us. So it's like a friend has gone."

From the Toronto Star.com

Indeed. Linda McQuaig's latest is called Holding the Bully's Coat, which I found a disturbingly apt metaphor for Canadian foreign policy since Mulrooney. Reason enough to vote for Stephane Dion? Is it time for another Quebecois visionary to come in from the snow? I know this road Martin and Harper have taken us down is no good. At the very least, when Canadian soldiers are dying in the field, the most compelling defence of their mission should be coming from the PMO, not Maclean's Magazine.

Surfing the electronic break out past Blog@Newsarama this morning and came across this analysis of Frank Miller's work, which mentioned that Miller wrote about a girl Robin in The Dark Knight Returns to avoid any implication of a gay relationship between a now 55-year-old Batman and Robin. Unfortunately, I find that entirely plausible, particularly given the way I've seen Miller's diegesis evolve over the last 20 years but, man, I feel like someone's kicked my puppy while telling me that the Easter Bunny doesn't exist. I mean, I'll still take my chockie Easter eggs anyway I can get them but it's just not the same.

One more illusion bites the dust on the long, hard road towards wisdom.

Once again, this leads me to ponder whether the author's politics should be a factor, if not the deciding factor, in choosing to read her work? This question covers a vast grey area and implies (at least to my mind) that a qualitative judgement has already been made regarding the putative value of the work from a creative perspective (i.e. it's not crap). I suppose that the higher the critical and cultural value you place on something, the easier that decision is and generally with regards to "high culture" we accept that the cultural and historical significance of a work outweighs any ideas or characterizations that would considered regressive or biased to modern audiences, as with Shakespeare's The Taming of the Shrew for example. But what about "low culture" - movies and TV and pulp novels and comics and music and everything else that exists in the spectrum of contemporary entertainment? The question I'm asking is less a question of whether or not it's reasonable for someone to read or buy or view works by someone who's politics and worldview they may disagree with than a question of whether or not it's hypocritical believe one thing and read stories or watch TV shows that may or may not reflect different ideas? From a strictly personal position - withour regards to questions of censorship or imposed standards of political or moral correctness - what duty do I owe myself to pursue entertainment that reflects my beliefs?

More simply: can a feminist read Frank Miller and still look at herself in the mirror in the morning?

At some point between now and the end of Battlestar Galactica's season, I may have to discuss my problems with this season and Ron Moore's attempt to wag the fandom's dog specifically - at least that's my take on what's going on (if you watch, you know what I'm talking about and if you don't, you don't care anyway). For now, a few general thoughts.

[Note: I briefly discuss Zodiac below. I don't consider historical facts spoilers but if you do, beware.]

There are certain dangers when writers don't play fair with their audience whether you're writing fic, novels, comics or television (movies are a slightly different beast). Principally, you risk losing their trust and their attention as a result. The consequences are magnified with the amount of time and money invested in the production - bad fic doesn't get read but bad TV can loose millions and end careers (hence, essential conservatism of publishers and network execs). Generally speaking, creators only need to follow one simple principle of "fair play" when dealing with your audience: if your heroine is going to shoot the bad guy in the third act, you introduce the gun that her daddy keeps in his bedside table in the first act. The innumerable variations on this idea aren't important. What is important is that you are always conscientious as a creator to give your audience all the information they need to reach the same point in the story as your characters - how well or poorly you do this is a question of talent and skill - just look at Shakespeare. But if you try to be coy with your audience, you not only risk losing their attention (either because they're confused or they're pissed off or some combination of both) you risk losing the thread of your own narrative.

For example, the story about a girl who shoots the bad guy who's menacing her is a different story from the one about a girl who is rescued when the dashing detective steps across the threshold and shoots the bad guy who's been menacing her is a different story from the one about girl who is about to shoot the bad guy menacing her when the dashing detective steps across the threshold and pulls the trigger is a different story from the one about the girl who believes she's shot the bad guy who was menacing her only to discover that her gun was loaded with blanks and it was Colonel Plumb with the parlour with a candlestick. The corollary to the principle that you always show the gun in the first act is that once you've shown the gun, you must use it - if you lead your audience to expect a certain result (our heroine shoots the bad guy) you take a risk if you choose not to meet those expectations.

However, that can still be a valid and interesting choice but you as writer need to be aware that your audience (let alone your characters - a post for another time) will react very differently to the ending where your heroine saves herself as opposed to the ending where she is saved. In dramatic narratives, the narrative is meant to create a specific emotional response from the audience be it triumph or tragedy, which is why expectation matters. If you build up your audience to believe that the heroine will pull the trigger and, in that final moment, a shot rings out behind her and we pull back to see the dashing detective emerge from the shadows, a smoking gun in his hand, you've created an expectation that has not been met. Even if the bad guy is still dead on the floor and the heroine and the dashing detective still drive off into the sunset, there is still that unmet expectation to be addressed.

Some writers use unmet expectations to create a specific mood but most, in my experience, don't seem to understand the difference between manipulating an audience's mood and a bait and switch. David Fincher's Zodiac is an excellent example of the former, a police procedural that ends with the same frustrating ambiguity as the real-life investigations into the Zodiac killings. It is a disturbing and unsettling movie, in large measure precisely because it fails to meet our expectation that, at the end of last reel, we'd see the forces of goodness triumphant and order restored. Sunday's episode of Battlestar Galactica is, despite some of the best performances of the season, the one of the latter, I think - the narrative equivalent of taking away the football after your audience has committed to punting.

Even if it all does turn out to be a ploy to foil Internet spoiler hounds on Ron Moore's part, he's sacrificed a big chunk of his audience's faith in his storytelling - your team may, in the end, wind up with a touchdown but your kicker will still remember what it felt like to thud against the deck and will be just that little bit more tentative on the next play.

Trust between people is hard enough to repair when you can talk face to face. Trust between storytellers and audiences is far flimsier and, in my experience, once lost, gone for good. Caveat scriptor.