The Tyranny of the Audience
Apr. 10th, 2004 12:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jere7myA curious thing happened at the Royal Albert Hall in 1966. Bob Dylan, for the second half of his much-anticipated concert, plugged in. The audience had come for a folk music concert; many of them were shocked and upset that their ears were being assaulted with an electric guitar. People walked out; people booed. This was not lost on Dylan, whose rendition of Ballad of a Thin Man was raw, angry—and, for the first time, turned against his audience.
Afterward, one audience member cried "Judas!"—it's preserved perfectly on the CD—and was rewarded with widespread applause. Dylan's laconic, whined answer: "I don't believe you." Then he played Like a Rolling Stone, with that same sickened anger, thanked his audience, and left the stage, to perfunctory applause and a taped recessional recording of God Save the Queen.
It was a significant event in the history of rock and roll, and books have been written about Dylan going electric. But it's also interesting as a portrait of an audience. From their perspective, they'd paid for something and weren't getting it; they were perfectly right to complain, in their point of view. But in hindsight it became clear that they were present for a pivotal concert; there are boatloads of people today who wish they could have been there, and I imagine most of those who were there tell their grandkids about it.
I think about the Royal Albert Hall concert when I see people reacting to new SF. As a writer, I want to push boundaries, challenge my readers, do the unexpected—but time and time again I hear people say, particularly on Usenet, "I didn't like the main character" when the story depended on an unlikable main character, or "I don't like nonlinear storytelling," or "this season was too dark," or a dozen other things that make me hesitate to try anything unusual. I want to take them by the shoulders and say, "I don't believe you."
As SF readers, I think we have an obligation to challenge ourselves, to seek out the interesting as well as the comfortable. We shouldn't read (or watch) things that we don't like, but we should be interested, sometimes, in digging to learn what an author is trying to say—even if it's not personally appealing, even if it means swallowing something galling from time to time. I worry that the vast array of choices the modern world offers is turning us into gourmands, wrinkling our noses at whatever is not custom-prepared for our palates. By keeping such straitlaced opinions we miss opening ourselves to important works, things that might change our opinions, just as the people who walked out of the Royal Albert Hall missed an epochal event in the music they love. And we discourage writers from producing challenging works, by making them harder to sell.
Example: There are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, purple prose being foremost, followed closely by misuse of the word "glaive." I have no quarrel with anyone who's read it and hated it. But I know many, many people who "couldn't get past the rape." A protagonist who commits rape, in some eyes, is irredeemable. Never mind that the rape is the core of Donaldson's point about the Land and unbelief, and the defining act of Covenant's character; Covenant committed rape, which makes the book unreadable—whether or not it is interesting.
(I should make an exception here for people who have personal reasons for being unable to read about rape. That's not what I'm talking about, as I hope is clear.)
I try to approach a work with open eyes and faith in the author. If there's something interesting there to be found, I hope I'll find it, and I'm willing to suffer in the search. I have my own arbitrary hot buttons—enlightened feminist pagan wish-fulfillment, e.g.—but my goal is to overcome them. If I come away from something with a preconceived notion overturned, I count it a victory.
Then again, I also like watching Welcome Back, Kotter, so my horse can't be all that high. :)=
Something is happening, and you don't know what it is.
Do you, Mr. Jones?
Afterward, one audience member cried "Judas!"—it's preserved perfectly on the CD—and was rewarded with widespread applause. Dylan's laconic, whined answer: "I don't believe you." Then he played Like a Rolling Stone, with that same sickened anger, thanked his audience, and left the stage, to perfunctory applause and a taped recessional recording of God Save the Queen.
It was a significant event in the history of rock and roll, and books have been written about Dylan going electric. But it's also interesting as a portrait of an audience. From their perspective, they'd paid for something and weren't getting it; they were perfectly right to complain, in their point of view. But in hindsight it became clear that they were present for a pivotal concert; there are boatloads of people today who wish they could have been there, and I imagine most of those who were there tell their grandkids about it.
I think about the Royal Albert Hall concert when I see people reacting to new SF. As a writer, I want to push boundaries, challenge my readers, do the unexpected—but time and time again I hear people say, particularly on Usenet, "I didn't like the main character" when the story depended on an unlikable main character, or "I don't like nonlinear storytelling," or "this season was too dark," or a dozen other things that make me hesitate to try anything unusual. I want to take them by the shoulders and say, "I don't believe you."
As SF readers, I think we have an obligation to challenge ourselves, to seek out the interesting as well as the comfortable. We shouldn't read (or watch) things that we don't like, but we should be interested, sometimes, in digging to learn what an author is trying to say—even if it's not personally appealing, even if it means swallowing something galling from time to time. I worry that the vast array of choices the modern world offers is turning us into gourmands, wrinkling our noses at whatever is not custom-prepared for our palates. By keeping such straitlaced opinions we miss opening ourselves to important works, things that might change our opinions, just as the people who walked out of the Royal Albert Hall missed an epochal event in the music they love. And we discourage writers from producing challenging works, by making them harder to sell.
Example: There are plenty of legitimate reasons to dislike The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, purple prose being foremost, followed closely by misuse of the word "glaive." I have no quarrel with anyone who's read it and hated it. But I know many, many people who "couldn't get past the rape." A protagonist who commits rape, in some eyes, is irredeemable. Never mind that the rape is the core of Donaldson's point about the Land and unbelief, and the defining act of Covenant's character; Covenant committed rape, which makes the book unreadable—whether or not it is interesting.
(I should make an exception here for people who have personal reasons for being unable to read about rape. That's not what I'm talking about, as I hope is clear.)
I try to approach a work with open eyes and faith in the author. If there's something interesting there to be found, I hope I'll find it, and I'm willing to suffer in the search. I have my own arbitrary hot buttons—enlightened feminist pagan wish-fulfillment, e.g.—but my goal is to overcome them. If I come away from something with a preconceived notion overturned, I count it a victory.
Then again, I also like watching Welcome Back, Kotter, so my horse can't be all that high. :)=
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no subject
Date: 2004-04-11 11:35 pm (UTC)But they are consciously lousy. Lucas was modeling his movie after the pulp serials. Donaldson was doing something similar, consciously modeling the Land after fantasy tropes.
The Land as a reflection of Covenant's internal state: His internal state is really boring, then. The story of a fairly boring person's trek through his subconscious is not terribly compelling.
We're going to have to agree to disagree, then, because I think Covenant is one of the most interestingly complex characters in fantasy.
And, for that matter, Tolkien clones rank just below Harry Potter slash with Mary Sues in my cosmology of fantasy writing. What they all boil down to is Middle-Earth without the parts that Tolkien worked hardest on. Without a complex world behind the plot, or even hints of same, you're just writing a lower-quality derivation of something else.
This is demonstrably false, because Donaldson gave us something in Covenant that Tolkien never gave us: a realistically complex character. All of Tolkien's characters are archetypes, and only Sam ever rises above them; this is fine as far as it goes, but Thomas Covenant is a living, bleeding, sweating human being. The Chronicles have a fundamentally different goal from LotR.
The Chronicles are not a Tolkien clone; they are a reaction to Tolkien, and a riff on his themes. The details and history of the Land—the elements of Tolkien influence—are the least important part of the book; they serve as a backdrop for the story, whereas in Tolkien they are the heart of the story.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-13 08:37 am (UTC)I did mention above that this rant was primarily directed at other works. Nevertheless, if you think Thomas Covenant is an interesting character the series about him is for you; otherwise, it has no redeeming value.
no subject
Date: 2004-04-13 12:10 pm (UTC)I would agree that one shouldn't read the Chronicles if one doesn't fine Covenant interesting, but the second clause is false. The Giants and Coercri, Lord Mhoram, Nom, Hile Troy, those roynishly lovable waynhim, Vain...there are plenty of interesting, likeable, and original things in the books other than the anti-hero. I've heard a number of people say that they didn't particularly care about Covenant, but the beauty of the Land kept them reading.