Lee (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
randomling) wrote2013-02-21 04:31 pm
randomling) wrote2013-02-21 04:31 pm
(no subject)
One artefact, at least for me, of being depressed and low on energy, is that I watch a lot of movies. There are quite a few I want to post about, but one I watched yesterday really stuck in my head because I was discussing something similar with my parents only the other day.
I've been thinking a lot about genre fusion lately, because I'm in the beginning stages of writing what looks like a gay paranormal romance. Paranormal romance started out as genre fusion itself, really, and while m/m is a growing romance genre with its own paranormal subsection, writing this still feels like genre fusion to a certain degree. (To, at least, the degree where I'm wondering whether I'll have room for all the paranormal and romance elements I want to include.)
Where this is relevant to genre fusion is that I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit? the other day, which for those who haven't seen it, is a lovely, wacky fusion of 1940s hard-boiled detective story and, well, Looney Tunes. One problem genre-fusion pieces often have is incongruity - how can you have this element and that element next to each other? - and like all good fusions, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? makes a feature of the incongruity. (Another great example of a genre-fusion movie using incongruity to its advantage is Shaun of the Dead.) The way that Who Framed Roger Rabbit? builds this incongruous universe is by creating two separate communities - LA and Toon Town - and then having them mix, with disastrous and hilarious results.
The end product partly uses the Looney Tunes elements to spoof the hard-boiled detective story - though gently, with love, and interestingly, never down-playing the tragedy that sits at the heart of the detective story. I am interested to note that I saw this movie several times as a child, and had played it thinking that it would be a light, funny movie that I wouldn't have to think too hard about. It's true, it has plenty of light, funny moments, but the central storyline has both tragedy and peril, neither of which are themselves made fun of. I found it a much more affecting film on rewatch than I had remembered from childhood, and I'm keen to get it on DVD so I can rewatch it and start to pick apart how it does what it does.
(I really must either pick up a book on film criticism or take a class at some point. I want to understand the language, and A Level English Literature only takes one so far.)
***
My laptop died last week, taking a very great deal of my data with it. This sucks, though I do have a new computer, because the data it took includes the story I've been writing. There is a computer guy trying to fix it, so hopefully I'll get it back. In the meantime, I've been doing all the research. Because my main character is among other things Jewish, and I am not, this has included me trying to find out as much as I can about Jewish British culture, and Judaism in general.
I should really have expected this process to whack me upside the head with my WASP privilege. (Perhaps I didn't because I am, in fact, privileged.)
I'm still not sure if I have gleaned enough information to write my character with any degree of accuracy or sensitivity. I have a good idea of his general personality, and of many other things about him, but what I'm struggling with is figuring out how growing up in his particular segment of the Jewish community might have affected how he thinks, feels, acts. The thing about religion is that, it seems to me, the ways it affects you are myriad, and pervasive, and often really subtle. I'm in my 30s and still unpicking all the different ways my exposure to Christianity has affected me - and I didn't even have a "proper" Christian upbringing*.
I'm also keenly aware that Joel (my character) is just one person with one experience of one part of a community, and I need to resist the temptation to try and make him representative of everything ever, and to hobbyhorse about issues I know very little about, and to use him to explain All I Have Learned About Judaism. Because none of those things have a place in a novel. I have to say I'm finding my research really interesting and trying to absorb everything I can, because it's a topic I'm quickly discovering I really know next to nothing about (hello again, privilege). But the original core purpose of the research was to inform how I write about Joel, to understand that aspect of him better. I'm sure I haven't yet understood enough - there's part of me that's fairly sure I can never really understand enough about any culture that isn't mine - but I think at some point you have to start trying and seeing what mistakes you make. Reading on its own won't be enough; I will have to try and fail and be corrected and take that on the chin and know better next time.
I bought the Writing the Other ebook, which I'm hoping will teach me some of what I need to know to help me avoid these pitfalls. And perhaps there are many more that I don't even know about - I've never really written about a culture that wasn't mine before, unless you count US culture (and we have so much exposure to US-originated entertainment in the UK that often US culture doesn't "feel" foreign, though it only takes one USian cultural beta to remind me that it ACTUALLY IS).
In sum: I don't really know how I want to summarise all of this. I wanted to make a note of what I'm doing and why and some of the reasons I'm having wibbles. I'm not sure what else there is to say here. (I'm not after cookies! I wanted to write about it in case it was helpful for someone else to read in an "I'm not alone" sense, but I know this is not something I get special praise for. It's just a part of trying to write a book that doesn't have a totally whitewashed/WASP-washed cast.)
*FWIW, I went to a religious primary school, but neither of my parents practiced in any meaningful way (my dad is an atheist, my mum was excommunicated from the Catholic church when she married my dad who was divorced, has been a kind of religious seeker all her life, was a Buddhist for a while and now practices Sufism). I've tried to go back to church a few times - I always cry when I sing hymns (I don't know why) and I feel inspired by the idea of having a personal relationship with a higher being, but somehow I can't reconcile that with my commitment to rationalism and science. This feeling of being torn between spiritualism and rationalism itself feels bogus to me, because in theory I believe that science and religion are not mutually exclusive, but some part of me is convinced that I personally am not allowed to believe in God and believe in the scientific method. This is all somewhat complicated by the part where I am queer, don't really conform to my expected gender role, am disabled, and if I was going to have a religious/spiritual life I'd like it to be able to include those parts of me.
That's quite a lot of words. I think that's it for the day!
I've been thinking a lot about genre fusion lately, because I'm in the beginning stages of writing what looks like a gay paranormal romance. Paranormal romance started out as genre fusion itself, really, and while m/m is a growing romance genre with its own paranormal subsection, writing this still feels like genre fusion to a certain degree. (To, at least, the degree where I'm wondering whether I'll have room for all the paranormal and romance elements I want to include.)
Where this is relevant to genre fusion is that I watched Who Framed Roger Rabbit? the other day, which for those who haven't seen it, is a lovely, wacky fusion of 1940s hard-boiled detective story and, well, Looney Tunes. One problem genre-fusion pieces often have is incongruity - how can you have this element and that element next to each other? - and like all good fusions, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? makes a feature of the incongruity. (Another great example of a genre-fusion movie using incongruity to its advantage is Shaun of the Dead.) The way that Who Framed Roger Rabbit? builds this incongruous universe is by creating two separate communities - LA and Toon Town - and then having them mix, with disastrous and hilarious results.
The end product partly uses the Looney Tunes elements to spoof the hard-boiled detective story - though gently, with love, and interestingly, never down-playing the tragedy that sits at the heart of the detective story. I am interested to note that I saw this movie several times as a child, and had played it thinking that it would be a light, funny movie that I wouldn't have to think too hard about. It's true, it has plenty of light, funny moments, but the central storyline has both tragedy and peril, neither of which are themselves made fun of. I found it a much more affecting film on rewatch than I had remembered from childhood, and I'm keen to get it on DVD so I can rewatch it and start to pick apart how it does what it does.
(I really must either pick up a book on film criticism or take a class at some point. I want to understand the language, and A Level English Literature only takes one so far.)
***
My laptop died last week, taking a very great deal of my data with it. This sucks, though I do have a new computer, because the data it took includes the story I've been writing. There is a computer guy trying to fix it, so hopefully I'll get it back. In the meantime, I've been doing all the research. Because my main character is among other things Jewish, and I am not, this has included me trying to find out as much as I can about Jewish British culture, and Judaism in general.
I should really have expected this process to whack me upside the head with my WASP privilege. (Perhaps I didn't because I am, in fact, privileged.)
I'm still not sure if I have gleaned enough information to write my character with any degree of accuracy or sensitivity. I have a good idea of his general personality, and of many other things about him, but what I'm struggling with is figuring out how growing up in his particular segment of the Jewish community might have affected how he thinks, feels, acts. The thing about religion is that, it seems to me, the ways it affects you are myriad, and pervasive, and often really subtle. I'm in my 30s and still unpicking all the different ways my exposure to Christianity has affected me - and I didn't even have a "proper" Christian upbringing*.
I'm also keenly aware that Joel (my character) is just one person with one experience of one part of a community, and I need to resist the temptation to try and make him representative of everything ever, and to hobbyhorse about issues I know very little about, and to use him to explain All I Have Learned About Judaism. Because none of those things have a place in a novel. I have to say I'm finding my research really interesting and trying to absorb everything I can, because it's a topic I'm quickly discovering I really know next to nothing about (hello again, privilege). But the original core purpose of the research was to inform how I write about Joel, to understand that aspect of him better. I'm sure I haven't yet understood enough - there's part of me that's fairly sure I can never really understand enough about any culture that isn't mine - but I think at some point you have to start trying and seeing what mistakes you make. Reading on its own won't be enough; I will have to try and fail and be corrected and take that on the chin and know better next time.
I bought the Writing the Other ebook, which I'm hoping will teach me some of what I need to know to help me avoid these pitfalls. And perhaps there are many more that I don't even know about - I've never really written about a culture that wasn't mine before, unless you count US culture (and we have so much exposure to US-originated entertainment in the UK that often US culture doesn't "feel" foreign, though it only takes one USian cultural beta to remind me that it ACTUALLY IS).
In sum: I don't really know how I want to summarise all of this. I wanted to make a note of what I'm doing and why and some of the reasons I'm having wibbles. I'm not sure what else there is to say here. (I'm not after cookies! I wanted to write about it in case it was helpful for someone else to read in an "I'm not alone" sense, but I know this is not something I get special praise for. It's just a part of trying to write a book that doesn't have a totally whitewashed/WASP-washed cast.)
*FWIW, I went to a religious primary school, but neither of my parents practiced in any meaningful way (my dad is an atheist, my mum was excommunicated from the Catholic church when she married my dad who was divorced, has been a kind of religious seeker all her life, was a Buddhist for a while and now practices Sufism). I've tried to go back to church a few times - I always cry when I sing hymns (I don't know why) and I feel inspired by the idea of having a personal relationship with a higher being, but somehow I can't reconcile that with my commitment to rationalism and science. This feeling of being torn between spiritualism and rationalism itself feels bogus to me, because in theory I believe that science and religion are not mutually exclusive, but some part of me is convinced that I personally am not allowed to believe in God and believe in the scientific method. This is all somewhat complicated by the part where I am queer, don't really conform to my expected gender role, am disabled, and if I was going to have a religious/spiritual life I'd like it to be able to include those parts of me.
That's quite a lot of words. I think that's it for the day!
Religion at home
Shabbat is in fact primarily a home thing. It's having a really nice meal at home on Friday evening, and spending time quietly at home with people you love. For people who are traditionally observant, nearly all the observances are about changing the way you organize your home life (eg not cooking, not switching on and off electricity). You can go to synagogue if you want to, I'd even say it's encouraged, but it's by no means the main part of what Shabbat is.
Some people who have non-nuclear families and / or certain mental health issues can perceive that Shabbat as a home thing gets muddled up with Shabbat as a family thing. Celebrating it alone is certainly possible, though a bit, well, sad; normally when anyone celebrates anything they like to get together with people close to them. In good, vibrant communities people who have the resources to do so will invite single people and travellers into their homes so that nobody's left alone over Shabbat. This happens a lot in Oxford given that there's loads of students who are nearly all away from their nuclear families even if they're as straight as straight can be. And informal and semi-formal Queer groups will likely do Shabbat meals as an alternative-to-family thing, long before they get organized enough to do things like run services or even form their own synagogues. But in communities that don't function so well or just haven't thought about this properly, Queer people can sometimes pick up the message that they can't do "family" things unless they have a different-sex spouse and 2.4 kids, and feel excluded as a result.
Other things one might do at home: regular daily prayers; it's traditional to go to synagogue Monday and Thursday morning, though only the most religiously engaged people do that in modern society. But afternoon and evening prayers and morning prayers that are not on Monday and Thursday are nearly always carried out at home. Also keeping kosher; that's nearly entirely a home thing. Synagogues keep kosher too, of course, and some people will eat out only in kosher restaurants, but the bulk of what it means to eat only ritually appropriate food is a home-based thing. Two festivals which are primarily home-based are Pesach (Passover) and Chanukah (mid-winter festival of lights), and Sukkot (Tabernacles) has a major home-based component.
Re: Religion at home
Is there a middle ground with eating out, I wonder? Reading over the rules of kosher, I can see why keeping kosher while eating in a non-Jewish restaurant is basically impossible, but might some people, for example, decide to eat vegetarian food when they are eating out, to avoid some of the problems with meat not having been slaughtered in the proper way, for example?
Re: Religion at home
Usually we''ll do Italian or fish. At a breakfast place they might do waffles since they're not cooked on the griddle with the bacon and sausage. Fish usually broiled, since the flame will kind of obliterate the shrimp that was on there previously. For Italian think lots of cheese ravioli in basic marinara sauce.
More observant folks may stick to things like only fruit or veg. Possibly only what they peel themselves.
Re: Religion at home
Re: Religion at home
keeping kosher
Common compromises include: eat vegetarian food only, as you suggested. Some go further and eat only in strictly vegetarian establishments (so that they can be confident that none of the ovens, plates etc are ritually contaminated with non-kosher meat). Another variant is to eat only cold food, because cold food has less potential to ritually contaminate things than hot.
Another compromise is what's often referred to as "Biblical" kosher. Which is to say, people don't eat the species that are prohibited in the Bible, eg pig and pork products, shellfish etc, but do eat the permitted species such as beef, lamb, chicken, without regarding whether the animal was correctly slaughtered. Some will count halal meat as close enough to kosher, because the ritual slaughter is basically the same even if carried out by a Muslim rather than a Jew.
Re: keeping kosher