TVTropes Now available in the app store!
Open

Follow TV Tropes

Following

"How are villains supposed to act if not in problematic ways?"

Go To

InigoMontoya Virile Member from C:∖Windows∖System32∖ Since: Aug, 2014 Relationship Status: RelationshipOutOfBoundsException: 1
Virile Member
#1: Aug 14th 2017 at 8:59:43 AM

The title of the article is "Toxic drama on YA Twitter" [1] but I instead chose this quote, which comes from the comment section and summarises pretty well my opinion, as the thread title. The article isn't very long and is interesting, but here's a TL;DR if you don't want to read:

     TL;DR 
The Black Witch is a recently published YA book (point of order: no, I haven't read it) featuring a protagonist who gradually "unlearns" their bigotry as the story unfolds. It opened to positive reviews, then a blogger by the name of Shauna Sinyard apparently managed to single-handedly turn Twitter against it, mostly by quoting various characters saying racist things. And when you attract the ire of Twitter, it's rarely pretty. The book reached a Goodreads average score of 1.7 due to a Tumblr downvote campaign, before gradually improving as reviews from people who had read it started coming along. The blogger who started it all refused to answer questions for this piece (as is her right), but then her surrogates insisted that the journalist had "scared" her to the point she feared for her life. Hardly anyone would go on record about the controversy for fear of reprisals. It doesn't seem to have hurt sales, though, in fact one might cynically suggest that it will improve them.


Here are my observations:
  • Many of the people discussed here seem to subscribe to what I call the Ctrl+F school of literary criticism, which judges books simply based on the presence/absence of certain words. See also all the calls for Huckleberry Finn to be banned because it contains the word "nigger". The (possibly unrepresentative) teenager interviewed for the piece didn't want to read the book after reading all those "distressing" quotes. Using this approach, one can "demonstrate" that George Orwell was a freedom-hating Stalinist. Why else would he write that "War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength."?
  • Twitter users are exhibiting swarm behaviour akin to starlings and certain species of fish. You get a remarkably coordinated hate campaign even though no one is coordinating anything. Each individual adjusts their behaviour based on signals by their immediate neighbours alone.
  • The following quote is particularly noteworthy:
    Reading a book specifically because it’s been called out for racism doesn’t make you a champion of independent thought. It makes you racist.
    It's usually advisable to pay lip service to liberal ideals, even when arguing for censorship. "I'm all for free speech, but <proceeds to explain how everything they disagree with doesn't fall under free speech>". See, it's not hard. Even the stupidest white nationalist is savvy enough to preface everything they say with an "I'm not a racist, but". Here we have a rare example of someone who dispenses with those niceties entirely and states that if people on Twitter have declared a book to be racist, you should just take their word for it. It's a refreshingly frank endorsement of cultural collectivism.
  • Despite making semi-plausible claims that their opposition is due to the fact that the author doesn't have the range of experience to write about someone rejecting racism, I strongly doubt this is what motivates most haters. People with authoritarian personality traits have a strong preference for immutable truths. The very idea of a racist stopping to be a racist infuriates them. "Once an enemy, always an enemy" is much more reassuring. IOW, critics are disingenuously arguing that they would have been better placed than the author to write a book on this topic, when in truth they don't want any book written that features the "unnatural" transformation of a bigot into a non-bigot.
  • Hilariously, while the adults are busy calling for each other to be broken on the wheel for being Literally Hitler over a YA book, the kids are shown deserting Twitter for other places where they can discuss books they like in a more mature way. I suggest the grown-ups follow their lead.

edited 14th Aug '17 9:32:14 AM by InigoMontoya

"Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man; and his number is 0x29a."
SeptimusHeap from Switzerland (Edited uphill both ways) Relationship Status: Mu
#2: Aug 14th 2017 at 9:51:58 AM

This thread sounds like an invitation to drama. Denying it.

If you want to discuss the book, the Literature forum may be good for it.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Add Post

Total posts: 2
Top