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anghraineThere are readings that are more offensive or Wrong, but few are so purely annoying as the ones that are based entirely on external things. It's like "well, it might seem OOC for Darcy, but as a man of his time..." or "Cassian is a spy, so he must have done it."
I'm all for considering context, to be clear. But reducing characters solely to context without any grounding in their characterization is just ... argh. And on top of that, the "context" is usually reductionist and over-generalized in any case. For instance, people (including historians!) often go on about how a real life Darcy would never have married a real life Elizabeth and P&P is a romantic fantasy. This ignores actual if rare marriages across equally broad social barriers, and particularly ignores the contemporary reception of P&P as astonishingly true to life (sometimes as a criticism, but true to life).
At most, a few peoplewrongly thought it was inconsistent in terms of personality. But not inconsistent in terms of social verisimilitude. And "a real life Darcy" is usually facile in any case, because Darcy is not real. Yes, fiction influences and mirrors reality (though it does not directly translate to it), but a character is a constructed being. The qualities they have are the qualities they are written as having, regardless of what a typical person would do or be in their circumstances. We can debate what qualities they're written as having, but that's a very different discussion from equating (supposed) general tendencies with specific characterization, especially (as in most cases) when the character is supposed to be exceptional, anyway.
Like, you can't make a legitimate argument about Cassian by simply importing James Bond tropes. There's no reason to assume they apply to Cassian in particular. If there's no grounding in his characterization in the film (whether a characterization I agree with or not), you're not even talking about Cassian—just a spy-shaped outline. Or some other outline, given the modern AUs. But reducing him to "a spy" or, worse, "a man" is a terrible argument!
It does (as might be expected) bother me most of all with P&P, which specifically deals with the danger of lumping people into categories and applying generalizations about the categories rather than really looking at the particular person, and even more specifically deals with it in terms of class and gender. Darcy assumes that Elizabeth would want to marry him if the opportunity presented itself because she's a woman of inferior status, without consideration for who Elizabeth as an individual is. Elizabeth leaps over and over and over to wildly mistaken conclusions about Darcy based on categorical generalizations, even late in the novel. Generalizations unrooted in character are always a bad argument, but for P&P of all things????
Anyway. It's always irritating and I wish people would do less of it, the end.
I'm all for considering context, to be clear. But reducing characters solely to context without any grounding in their characterization is just ... argh. And on top of that, the "context" is usually reductionist and over-generalized in any case. For instance, people (including historians!) often go on about how a real life Darcy would never have married a real life Elizabeth and P&P is a romantic fantasy. This ignores actual if rare marriages across equally broad social barriers, and particularly ignores the contemporary reception of P&P as astonishingly true to life (sometimes as a criticism, but true to life).
At most, a few people
Like, you can't make a legitimate argument about Cassian by simply importing James Bond tropes. There's no reason to assume they apply to Cassian in particular. If there's no grounding in his characterization in the film (whether a characterization I agree with or not), you're not even talking about Cassian—just a spy-shaped outline. Or some other outline, given the modern AUs. But reducing him to "a spy" or, worse, "a man" is a terrible argument!
It does (as might be expected) bother me most of all with P&P, which specifically deals with the danger of lumping people into categories and applying generalizations about the categories rather than really looking at the particular person, and even more specifically deals with it in terms of class and gender. Darcy assumes that Elizabeth would want to marry him if the opportunity presented itself because she's a woman of inferior status, without consideration for who Elizabeth as an individual is. Elizabeth leaps over and over and over to wildly mistaken conclusions about Darcy based on categorical generalizations, even late in the novel. Generalizations unrooted in character are always a bad argument, but for P&P of all things????
Anyway. It's always irritating and I wish people would do less of it, the end.
no subject
on 2019-01-16 06:13 am (UTC)no subject
on 2019-01-16 05:01 pm (UTC)