From: cjmchale@dsg.cs.tcd.ie (Ciaran McHale)
Newsgroups: soc.bi
Subject: Clive Barker's book "Imajica" (warning: spoilers)
Date: 14 Sep 92 19:14:37 GMT
Organization: DSG, Dept. of Computer Science, Trinity College Dublin


There are a few aspects of Clive Barker's book "Imajica" which I want to
discuss. If you plan on reading this excellent book then you might want
to kil this thread since I'll probably be giving a few spoilers.


The book is sort of science fiction/fantasy which gives the author
plenty of scope to introduce weird concepts and alien characters.
One of the main characters is a "mystif" (I don't have my copy of the
book handy so I hope I spelt that correctly) which is a humanoid being
which will appear to most people as their ultimate sexual desire. Thus,
some people will see the mystif as a good-looking female (perhaps
somebody that they knew in their past) and others will see it as a
good-looking male.

When we are first introduced to the mystif, it is in the form of a man.
Later on, it is occasionally described in the form of a woman, but from
the time that it and Gentle, another major character in the book, join
up together, the mystif is consistently referred to as "it" rather than
"he" or "she". Gentle, a man, and the mystif fall in love, yet for some
reason I did not view their love as being on par with the love/lust
between, say, Gentle and a woman called Jude (another main character in
the book).

A few notes of interest:

	o Not being able to classify the mystif as either male or
	  female and its subsequent relationship with Gentle is, of
	  course, what makes this book relevant to this newsgroup.
	o Although the mystif is mosty often referred to as a genderless
	  "it", I found it difficult to think of it as anything other
	  than "he". Perhaps this is because we are first introduced to
	  the mystif as a male and this first impression stuck with me.
	o Thus I tended to view the relationship between Gentle and the
	  mystif as a motss relationship rather than a relationship
	  between a man and an "it".

I was wondering if my non-acceptance of the Gentle-mystif relationship
was due to (i) internalised homophobia on my part, or (ii) a lack of
ability on the part of the author to write convincingly about non-motos
relationships. As far as possibility (ii) goes... there is a minor
motss relationship in the story (that of Clem and Taylor, a gay couple)
which I found much easier to accept than that between Gentle and the
mystif. Then again (a) Taylor died quite early on and afterwards was
a spirit inside Clem's head (and hence give them an emotional but
non-physical relationship) and (b) Clem came across a bit like a
stereotypical overly nice, charming queen; so combining (a) and (b), I'm
not so sure if I accepted their relationship or just felt warm fuzzies
for Clem as a nice character.

Hmmm... the above isn't totally coherent, but if you've read the book
then you'll probably be able to figure out what I'm on about.

"Imajica" is a long book (about 1140 pages) and it took me
approximately two weeks or more to read it. I noticed that I felt
uneasy reading the book and I don't think this was entirely due to me
not being used to reading such long books (I'm used to reading 300 page
novels which are a paced a bit faster). I think that part of my
discomfort with the book was internalised homophobia which expressed
itself in not being able to fully accept the androgeny of the mystif
and its relationship with Gentle.

Comments from anybody else who has read the book?


On a different aspect of the book, I must say that I liked the way that
the author never used the term "AIDS." Instead, the term used was "the
plague." At first I wasn't totally sure that the author was referring to
AIDS; perhaps he was trying to paint a slightly different version of the
world set in the present, but this doubt soon went.

So, why did I like the usage of "the plague" instead of "AIDS."
Two reasons:

	o "AIDS" is all uppercase (since it's an acronym). Thus, it
	  tends to stick out of the page like a sore thumb, especially
	  since I am used to the convention on Usenet of using
	  all-capitals to represent "shouting". Referring to it as "the
	  plague" makes sure that it is just another word on the page,
	  with no distraction.
	o "AIDS", as a word, has too much excess baggage associated with
	  it. Whenever I see the word, I immediately think of dozens of
	  other words/concepts such as "condoms", "gay disease",
	  "bigotry", "lack of funding" and so on. Using a different
	  term, such as "the plague" is, for me, much more neutral. It
	  means that I can concentrate on the story rather than have my
	  attention diverted in a knee-jerk fashion every time the word
	  "AIDS" is used.


Ciaran.
-- 
Ciaran McHale                                                             ----
Department of Computer Science, Trinity College, Dublin 2, Ireland.       \bi/
Telephone: +353-1-7021539 FAX: +353-1-772204 email: cjmchale@dsg.cs.tcd.ie \/
Newsgroups: soc.bi