Fifty Shades of Gay, and other (offensive) stories

You can't fail to notice the proliferation of several things in the media at the moment:

- The rising aggression between Middle Eastern and Western diplomacy.

- The rise of really, really badly thought through media items.


I'm not suggesting one is in any way responsible for the other - necessarily. 
Let me be more specific:

Twilight erotic fan fiction turned 'spankbuster' bestseller trilogy, Fifty Shades of Grey, by now infamous E.L. James, has sold an estimated 5.3 million copies in print and, most notably, in ebook format. That means in Britain it has out sold Dan Brown's previous chart toppers, the Highway Code, and the Bible.

I have not read all of it. But I have read enough. Let's not beat around the masochistic
bush here: it is very badly written. I'm not being snobby. I don't like the Harry Potter books (I know - GAH!), but I do think J.K. Rowling has studied her form and implemented it with skill. E.L. James has not. It is poorly conceived, rendered in clunky, unnecessary and repetitive prose. If you ask me, the sex scenes are written like biology text books. AKA with such robotic literalism that the chance of me getting off on it is equal to dry-humping the corner of a disconnected microwave.

The issue here shouldn't be taste - but it invariably is. Taste is representative of morals, both individual and collective. Taste informs us of who we are. Taste tells us what is right, and what is wrong. And if someone's taste is different, how do we deal with that?

The recent conflicts in Libya and elsewhere have been partially attributed to the offensive anti-Mohammed video made by a middle-aged Californian douche-bag (although there is now speculation about it's creator and circulation). The American embassy was burnt to the ground, the ambassador executed. Russia is considering blocking Youtube as a result. Pakistan and Bangladesh reportedly already have. Google has agreed to ban the clip in India, Indonesia, Libya and Egypt, to comply with state laws. 

Salman Rushdie has recently released his memoir of being in hiding during the fatwa years after the publication of The Satanic Verses. It's called Joseph Anton, after his pseudonym during that period - from the first names of his favourite authors, Conrad and Chekhov. Speaking to the BBC, he comments that he doesn't think that book would be published today. He thinks publishers wouldn't take the risk. Recently, Channel 4 declined a press showing of a documentary about the history of Islam due to 'legitimate threats' from undisclosed extremists. The action then, agreeing with Rushdie's view. 

Respect is important. It's more than important. Mutual respect for everyone, regardless (and perhaps because of) differences is key to democracy. Not just democracy, but basic equality on a one to one level. The older I grow the more I realise the importance of respect.

But, to quote Rushdie, as well as the right to respect, in a free society we should all also posses the 'right to offend.' Being offended goes hand in hand with being able to speak freely, and consequently to act freely. When a government denies its citizens the right to offend they are essentially denying their freedom of speech, and thus their freedom. 

People talk a lot of shit in Britain. People talk a lot of shit in the US (Particularly Mitt Romney). But talking shit is as essential to democracy as talking sense - although, of course, the definition of 'sense' is debatable, as it should be. It should not be state regulated. Imagine if David Cameron enforced what the definition of Sense in Britain was, like an autocrat? Shudder. And no more red faced cartoons of him falling over in the tabloids. 

A personal example:

I'm bisexual. I'm more on the gay end (um?!) of the spectrum, but I want to be honest with you. I grew up in a small part of the rural South West of England. As you might imagine, not everyone was happy about this aspect of myself that is as inherent as my white skin and brown hair. There is nothing I can do about it. It wasn't a decision. It is part of me. It's not the whole part, but it's an important facet. 

When phrases like, 'That's so gay,' were going around, I wondered, 'Am I offended? Is this belittling me? By someone saying this, are they saying "being gay" is bad, and thus, that I am bad?' When I heard people say it, I would think of the kids who used to say things to me at school, the strangers who would make assumptions at parties, the adults who should know better but still cling onto their childish prejudices. I think about how people are afraid of things they don't understand. I think about how at first everything is foreign and strange and scary. I think about how we all stereotype in order to understand something at first. I think about how the stereotype is never the full story. 

I think about how we are all just trying to make sense of things with what we've been given, from our culture, our family, from what we can perceive with our senses. I think about this, and I think, 'Am I offended when people say "That's so gay".'

As it turns out, I am slightly offended. I am slightly offended because it strikes a personal chord with me - it chips at an insecurity. It's the obvious negative inference. I might tell them to think about it. I might say, You know, that's kind of offensive. Or I might not. What I would certainly not do, is fire bomb their house because I felt personally attacked. 

Think about why they're saying it: are they saying it to offend gay people? Are they saying it to make a statement that they themselves are not gay? Are they saying it because their group of friends are saying it? Are they saying it to be cool, to be normal? Have they thought about it at all? Am I so insecure that I have to torch their house? Will that actually solve any of the issues here??


(Incidentally, Fifty Shades of Gay is actually a real book. Which, frankly, is unsurprising: the copy always gets copied.)

So before you jump to write an offensive comment about me in the comments box, think about it: at least you can make that comment. You can tell me I've got it all wrong, that I'm prejudiced, degraded, immoral. That I don't know what I'm talking about. That your opinion is the only right opinion. 

And thank goodness that you can. 

MAGICAL REALISM - whassat all about, then?

I have just for the third time recently replaced back on the shelves, between Okri and Rushdie, 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. My problem, as ever, is this: What's it all about?

Is there something wrong with me, I ponder neurotically, splaying the pages of Midnight's Children wide in search of some hidden meaning, that until now, has eluded my philistine, unimaginative brain? Why shouldn't a cloud of butterflies surround the woman you love - particularly if you live in literature?? It's a metaphor. And are metaphors after all, not the prerequisite of literature? If it happened in a movie it would be ridiculous, cliche, absurd. But when you do not actually see it A.K.A in writing, then it is more of a hint, a suggestion, an abstraction of an idea that leads to an image IN YOUR MIND.

I am certainly no fact-obsessed purist. I do not solely want to read diary entries, memoirs, travel literature and GASP!, shocking celerity reveals passed off as writing. I'm not the person who says, 'I just can't get into it knowing it's not real.'

Literature is, in many ways, the freest artistic genre. You are not confined by limitations as with many other mediums (the painter and the size of the canvas, the colour of the pigments; the photographer and the constant problems with light and composition - even the weather.). (Martin Amis said as much last week at the Hay Festival, incidentally). Thus you can inject it with endless amounts of imagination. In theory, I'm very much in favour of Magical Realism. I'm all for concept taking over from the specifics of the physical world. One of my favourite novels, Brave New World, does just this - set predominately in a dystopean future version of the UK, actuality is somewhat sidelined by concept; which is the point of the fable-like tale really. Within fantasy we glimpse fable, then moral dilemma, a warning and truth.

All three of the novelists I have mentioned that have recently come under the (mystical) umbrella of Magical Realism have spurned the term. Ben Okri prefers to see his work as 'dream-logic' narrative, stating, 'I grew up in a tradition where there are simply more dimensions to reality ... nobody has an absolute reality.'

Fair enough. I'll buy that. But I still couldn't finish The Famished Road. I wonder if an exceptionally inspiring English Lit teacher could explain something I am obviously not getting, and persuade me to look at it differently. As for now, I do not feel like the 'magical' aspects of the 'realism' add anything. If anything, they cloak the humanity of the stories and make them into something untouchable and almost laughable, like fairytales.

After getting so perilously close to the end of 100 Years of Solitude, I remarked to a friend that, 'I loved the irony of it all. I mean - the families' concerns are so petty.' To which I was greeted with a stoney face and the remark that, 'It's not meant to be ironic. You are actually supposed to care about the dirt-eating girl and the ever-decreasing size of the colonel.' But then, I am English and it was originally written in Spanish. And English is a horribly ironic language.

(If you consider yourself such a teacher as mentioned here, please get in touch by the way.)

This post is full of naked women, no?

If we go to the other end of the literary Cool Spectrum, we find ourselves surrounded by goblins and dragons and reading Terry Pratchett. I do not like his books - the humour seems infantile and nerdy to say the least - but I like the brashness with which he condemns Magical Realism, saying that it is, 'like a polite way of saying you write fantasy and is more acceptable to certain people ... who, on the whole, do not care that much.'

Ultimate Magical Nerdom - Terry Pratchett.

Unsurprisingly, the term was originally coined by an art critic. Franz Roh first used the phrase in 1925 to describe a painterly offshoot of Surrealism known also as The New Objectivity. But it was later that it became adopted by several prevalent European writers in Buenos Aires (and with the publication of Jorge Luis Borges' Historia Universal de la Infamia in 1935) that Latin American Magical Realism really took off.

Gabriel Garcia Marquez clearly follows in this tradition - characters eating dirt, coming back from the dead, obviously I've mentioned the butterflies - but I still just don't get it. What extra element does it bring to the prose? To me, (I have yet to find a Magical Realist novel that thrills me or that I cannot put down) this genre, while, admittedly forced upon its writers at least in name, is something I just can't understand as interesting. Perhaps if it was done in a different way - could Virginia Woolf's Orlando be considered a Magical Realist novel?? - from what I have read, then all the disparate pieces of real life Argentina and fantastical spirit world of the elders could be brought together in a powerful, evocative, relevant work of prose.

As it is, I feel like Magical Realism is a bit like the Hitcher going nu-rave in Series Three of The Mighty Boosh - opposing elements 'combining to make something not quite as good as either.'


Maybe we should all just watch this entertaining Surrealist-style film featuring a young, pre-Female Eunuch Germaine Greer and ponder the conundrum??

If you strongly disagree, please leave a comment. I would love to be swayed. Also, any reading suggestions, anyone?