From: dstein@charon.math.ucla.edu (David Stein)
Subject: Re: Political Correctness + Sci-fi
Reply-To: dstein@charon.math.ucla.edu (David Stein)
Organization: UCLA, Mathematics Department
Date: Tue, 29 Dec 92 13:37:40 GMT

  Crawford Kilian defends the labeling of crankiness, bigotry and 
  "girls are emotional and dumb" attitudes as political:
 
       Those attitudes are political insofar as they prescribe 
       certain kinds of actions towards certain kinds of people 
       with whom we share the planet. 

  Before I respond to that, let me note that I picked on Crawford
  because he displayed a tendency that runs rampart in this group 
  to the point of driving me mad -- the reduction of literature to 
  politics.  It was in that context that my objection was raised.

  So while I think that your use of the word "political" is too wide if 
  one keeps politics to mean issues related to forms of goverment and
  administration (I may think girls are in general dumb, but this does 
  not mean that I will support a goverment or even a company policy 
  against women pilots -- I may even support some form of affirmative 
  action), I do admit that a semantical argument about this may not 
  convince you once you feel that any attitude that affects other people 
  is automatically political in nature. 

  Instead, let me return to the literary origins of the dispute. 
  You complained about Godwin's lack of imagination, and then
  wrote:

        suppose the chick was a 90s superwoman quite capable of 
        breaking the pilot's neck, jettisoning him, and flying 
        the shuttle down by herself--what's the moral of the 
        story then? 

  As someone already pointed out, your comment is irrelevant to the
  existence of a moral in the story.  More than that, however --
  your use of the 90s superwoman stereotype is as silly as Godwin's
  use of the dumb girl stereotype.  Its only effect is to highlight 
  the author's own intellectual laziness as he missuses a readily 
  available cultural construct of his time.  In your case, I suspect
  the reason was your loosing sight of the literary in favour of the
  political -- in the next paragraph you write:

        But political values can hinder a story's literary 
        qualities, as I think they did in Godwin's case.    

  The only way I can connect this statement with your preceding 
  criticism of Godwin is that you think it was Godwin's belief
  that "girls are emotional and dumb" that led him to employ the
  characterization he did.  

  First, there is no reason I see to think so.  Just because 
  Godwin used the stereotype does not mean he expressly believed
  that girls are (or tend to be) emotional and dumb.  I bet if 
  you asked him at the time he would hardly answer positively.
  If you'll use a 90s superwoman character in your next book
  you'll be enforcing the stereotype, but will it mean that you
  think women in general are, or even should be, like that?  No, 
  it will mean you will be using the streotype either to make a 
  point are out of laziness so that you do not have to employ your 
  mind in order to flesh out a believable character of your own.

  Second, even if he did believe "girls are emotional and dumb"
  it would not tell me anything about his political stance at the 
  time.  Which parties had an opinion on this?  And later, when 
  such issues indeed gained a political dimension, one's stated
  political beliefs often clashed dramatically with one's actual 
  beliefs and actions. Hypocrisy is always alive and well. 

  Third, Godwin's missuse of the stereotype is only one of many 
  problems with the story -- the artificiality of the assumptions 
  one had to make, and the improbabilities implied by some of them.
  
  The core of the moral of the story is "stupid kids die".  One of
  the reasons it is a classic, I suspect, lies in the fact that it 
  is not customary, even today, to kill kids for stupidity in the
  SF/Fantasy genre.  So in meta-genre sense the story may be viewed 
  as radical and hilarious.  But the science-fictional aspects of it
  are horrible, and the prose and characterization are mediocre.  

  In this context, Godwin's missuse of the stereotype fits in much
  better as a sign of the failure of literary, rather the political,
  values.

 - David
  
   
 





     








~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
I'm not a native speaker of English, so I'm not sure what I wrote.
Flames will be ignored unless you post them in perfect Czech.
================================ - David (the metamathician) - ===
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