Monday, September 10, 2007

BIG DICKS: NOT WHAT THEY USED TO BE

Warning: This is a rant. For the sake of preserving some friendships, I'm not naming names. That’s really not important anyway. I want to open conversation.

Recently I picked up a book, and within the first 80 pages we had seen a 10 year old girl get raped by her uncle, and a father rape his daughter with a group of armed friends, while he insist he’s simply seducing her.

In another book, a large naked creature’s dick points toward a “helpless” woman like a “magnet.”

Yet in a third, a modern day ogre breaks into a women’s house, kills her boyfriend, and she offers herself to the thing. He literally tears her open while having sex with her, and afterward she falls in love with him. IN. LOVE. WITH. HIM. HER RAPIST! IN LOVE!

WTF? Why is it that women and young girls are so often described as the sexual play things for men, usually with penises bigger than a humanly possible?

What is it about horror that many writers think this is somehow scary or entertaining?

Have these writers ever met real women? Or are they simply living out some kind of sicko fantasy? Later making sure the men/creatures get their comeuppance as the writer purges his demons through his writing?

The women usually have no personalities in these stories, and exist only to be fodder for men to handle in whatever way they see fit. They have no life outside of the men, and seem to be defined by them, and whether they have them—which only speaks for the writing because most of the characters are one dimensional and have one propose. Many times, as I said before, they seduce and crave the creatures, sometimes even after being raped. Because you know, there’s nothing like falling in love with your large penis rapist. Happens everyday. Women don’t have real minds, you know.

Of course the female characters survive torture that no real person could endure, just to die horrible deaths. Many times even children—boys and girls—are subject to this abuse.

I don’t understand it.

But when a writer comes up with a cork-screwed penis-having juggernaut character roaming the countryside raping and pillaging the women for seemingly NO REAL REASON AT ALL, and he is cheered on by his peers, it makes me wonder. Of course, where else can you be accepted (and, dare I say, expected) to enjoy the brutalization of women, and children, even in literature?

The bad guys themselves are usually dull, unentertaining characters, filled with unrequited rage. They hate for no better reason than they can, and exist for much less.

This is not a rhetorical question. I really would like to know what it is that appeals to writers and readers who enjoy this? Of course something other than, “It’s fun” or “because I can” would be nice, too. But I can’t expect too much.

Big dicks and all.

***

Disclaimer: Any resemblance to true and actual stories both living and dead is probably a warning sign and you should in all probability check yourself or seek a writing coach immediately.

18 comments:

Anonymous said...

this is something that's always disturbed me greatly about a lot of the horror fiction out there.
in fact, i'd say that this sort of thoughtless misogyny is the biggest problem with it, and i really wish that most those (almost always male) writers would realise that 1) rape does not equal sex and 2) that it's hurtful in ways well beyond the scope of simply being 'horrifying.'
it's sadistic, mean spirited, wrond headed, and altogether useless when it comes to portraying any ideas other than the fact that they can't tell the fucking difference between a rape scene and a sex scene, or they're simply the absolute laziest of writers and think 'gee, if i have the dude rape a little girl... then everyone will KNOW he's a villain!'
and, leaving all sociopolitical ideas aside, it's simply incredibly cliche and if a writer wants to show us something different, they should start by not resorting to such disgusting cliches.
it also shows an incredibly callous disregard for the experiences that their readers may have had to deal with.
.
in other words, i completely agree with you and i'm glad that you made this post.

Gwyneth Bolton said...

Wow. I had no idea it was this bad in horror fiction. But when I think about the cliches that reign supreme in horror cinema, I'm not surprised. I will say that there seems to be an alarming trend in a lot of urban fiction I've read lately where young children are suffering abuse and molestation. Sometimes I think we can look at the state of affairs in the world at any given moment and get a clear idea about why certain things prevail. In this case, where women and children seem to be seen as less than, are objectified and otherwise mistreated on a regular... (Just think of how many husbands have killed there wives and children in the past few months...) the the reign of the big dicks doesn't really surprise me at all...

Gwyneth

Anonymous said...

While objectification violence against and abuse of women and children can be horror themes there is a lot of lazy writing out there. It's too damn easy to use these things, as you said, as characterizations or for shock value. I see too many people using "he molested his kids" the same way I might use "He had brown hair and blue eyes."

It's a cheap shot. It easy to use these real life horrors instead of making them a symptom of something else. And because they are used so cheaply they don't get the reaction they used to. It's not how horrible/gory/brutal your writing is, it's what you do with it.

Chesya said...

Shawn,

I agree with you. I also think this is a HUGE problem in horror fiction. I just don't see it's appeal.

Gwen, agreed.

Chesya said...

Anonymous said, "It's not how horrible/gory/brutal your writing is, it's what you do with it."

Yep.

KPaffenroth said...

Yes! I have been shocked at how adolescently phallocentric a lot of horror is. Seduction and even legitimate terror are harder to write, so simple brutality and quantity seems to take over. I was accused of being a prude the last time I pointed this out, so thanks!

Anonymous said...

Horror has the benefit of having few restrictions, if any. Yet that also makes it an open forum for anything and everything, including the juvenile fantasy seeker/writer who thinks horror is nothing more than a big ole sandbox where you can shit freely and call it literature.

I totally agree with you, Chesya, on this kind of clueless, uninspired, nonsensical fiction. We're in a business that is hard to define because of the wide spectrum of topics, approaches, and quality. (See my September 2, 2006 Storytellers Unplugged essay called "Poop On a Plate" at http://www.storytellersunplugged.com/archive/2006_09_01_archive.html. It's not about the soulless raping and unreal, ridiculous characters you mention, but touches on a similar idea...that of crap being pedaled as horror fiction.) Some think that the main function of horror is to shock (and maybe in many ways it is.) Yet to those who are really young or those who don't get out much, cruel corkscrew penises raping women who will then come to love them are, perhaps, shocking. And titillating. However, I wish this type of story had it's own category, a little subspecies that we horror writers could point to as we would point to a fucked up cousin at the family reunion.

Beth Massie

Anonymous said...

I've come across a couple of these stories recently and they're generally very poorly written. I assumed they were written by beginner writers who fancy themselves geniuses because they've mistaken being disgusting for writing horror. How widespread is this? If this has become acceptable, it explains a lot about the decline of horror publishing.

Tyhitia Green said...

Chesya,
You and I have discussed this, and you know we agree on this. The "men" writing this "horror" are quite similar to the pedophile you described in your other posts. I include horrors of the world in my writing as well, but it is done tastefully, and I kill men in my stories...

Anonymous said...

I conpletely agree. Not sure what it is about those stories, but I get tired of reading them.

Anonymous said...

Yeah, I've been sent more than a few books like that for purposes of review. I didn't refuse to review them for the subject matter. Richard Laymon wrote basically the same thing in his novel, THE CELLAR.

But you know what about Laymon's book? It was actually SCARY!

It was actually HORRIFYING!

And what's more, the characters were well fleshed out and it all had a POINT! Even the monsters had a point.

A few months ago I read a review novel where nearly every chapter ends with a woman being raped and murdered by a guy who turns into a creature who has a dick so huge it kills the woman. In one chapter, the monster man then kills the 4 year old daughter and pisses in her mouth. The monster-man is played as a tragic character. All gay characters also die including those who only experienced gay sex one time in their lives. Not many survivors except for - I think - two or three straight men. I'm not going to read it again to be sure. None of these women were more than poorly written cyphers in the story, killed in the same chapter in which they appear, and the women the author saved to the end were all drug abusers or were involved in lesbian sex. The author was clearly going for gore and the hideousness of sex. What the author wasn't going for was Horror or scares.

All said though, there is another value to this equation. Many and I mean MANY women write novels where their female protagonist is raped and then falls in love with her rapist.

So part of this equation is, Why is the Luke and Laura saga on daytime soaps considered the most popular TV soap opera love story ever among women? Because, after all, their saga began when Luke raped Laura. In fact, do a search on the words
Luke and Laura
and see, among the 1.5 million returns on this, just how many women remain enraptured about the whole thing even after 30 years. The eventual marriage of the Laura character to her rapist in 1981 remains the most watched hour of daytime television in history. Then other sopa operas cop;ied the successful formula. They too saw significant gains among women. In daytime soaps during the 1980s, women falling for their rapists became huge creating the term, "Supercouples".

There is a WAY larger problem here. But I'm a guy so maybe I shouldn't notice.

Val Grimm said...

Thank you for writing about this. I recently came across ads for a mockumentary horror film which I won't bother to name which was supposed to be a collection of essentially snuff films that a serial killer took as he abused, tortured, and killed his victims. I was disgusted---and there's a lot of that sort of thing out there (Saw, Hostel, etc.) Some woman from Ain't It Cool News panned the film because it was poorly done, although she praised the good work of the actress who played a tortured, sexually abused victim. I was so angry when I read this that I almost posted about it to my blog, but then I didn't want to give the film publicity.
The real horror to me is that someone would read or watch this stuff and find it entertaining. And there must be a lot of them, because those franchises are thriving. *shudder* Then again, I admit to having watched "Silence of the Lambs." But a lot of this stuff encourages audience members to identify with the monster characters rather than with the victims. At least Sotl didn't do that, although it did engage in transbashing.

C. Holden Blackman said...

That's one thing that I liked about the Clive Barker novella, Raw Head Rex. Raw Head was a pre-Xtian Celtic demon. He was basically a metaphor for masculinity. Raw Head Rex (whose name fairly screams big dick was big enough and powerful enough to bite off a pony's head, and then up end its lifeless body in order to let its blood run down his throat. Yet, when when he encounters a woman, who is on her period, the smell of her menses evokes some ancient half-forgotten memory that god is a woman. Upon recognizing the smell, he turns and flees in abject terror, running right through the wall of her house.

Anonymous said...

Chesya,

I'm a bit late getting over to read this, but...unless you give examples, this one's hard to jump in on. I want to emphasize what I write below is not meant to support or defend bad writing. What you describe may be just that; or it may be something else.

I think there are times when sexual violence works really well in fiction. And then there are times when it doesn't.

This is true for a lot of things, but sex and violence seem to be the areas where art and craft need to be there in fiction for it to work. If they're not, you get a mishmash of gross ideas that go nowhere.

I'm guessing that you've probably read sexually violent scenes in fiction that are superb and you didn't notice the stuff you're mentioning or else you didn't mind it because you were wrapped up in the story itself.

And then, these examples, where the writing did not come alive, so you noticed the really awful politics and lack of humanity in the fiction.

A writer may want to repulse a reader's sensibilities in a scene, but the reader should never be made to feel repulsed by the writer's sensibility itself.

I believe that a good writer can pull off an offensive scene and still make it work. Bentley Little has had scenes in his novels that I could not, for the life of me, write or even want to imagine -- but they work beautifully, adding to the horror and the spine-chilling aspect to his work.

In another writer's hands, this stuff might seem just disgusting or perverted, but somehow Little can create such a perfectly-imagined world that it's like stepping into a nightmare and being taken to places you didn't think you'd go. Yet at the same time, we know this is not the real world and nothing in the story reads like a fantasy for a sicko.

I believe that most of the Edward Lee fiction I've read is largely nightmarish and metaphorical -- with the primary metaphor being the taboo of the body itself. Lee, a great guy, may or may not have tremendous body fears, but I think his ability to translate this into fiction (in some of his horror work -- not all) makes him a complete original. He goes where his nightmares and fears go, and he puts it into fiction.

Now, in another writer's hands, this might not work -- because it would not be as authentic to them. But for Edward Lee, I believe it works most of the time.

I'm using Bentley and Lee as examples because they're two of the horror novelists I've read that have utilized either outright sexual violence or the threat of it in fiction. Both seem to me to be speaking in the language of nightmare and metaphor, not in terms of reality. I know both of them, and they are both good folks. They just go where the nightmare goes and they ride it to see where it takes them.

Having written all this, Chesya, mainly to bring in a couple of examples, it would be interesting to know what books you're talking about.

Sex and violence both are difficult to grapple with as a novelist, because once the reader shuts the book in dismay or disgust, that's it. Game over.

For the record, I've written two novels where the threat of sexual violence was part of the story -- The Abandoned and Afterlife. Each dealt with it differently. In Afterlife, a woman has erotic dreams that become more threatening to her -- and her sense of self -- as they continue, and she doesn't know if they're real or imaginary.

In The Abandoned, the threat is to both men and women, and it definitely deals with the idea of stepping into a nightmare.

I think most intelligent readers know when a story goes into nightmare territory, and when it is more about a threat in real life.

Sex is a powerful force to write about, and I don't think writers should shy away from it. But I believe that sex and violence are such difficult subject matters that it takes a lot of artful writing and thought to make them work -- particularly in the kinds of scenes you're describing.

bellatrys said...

Hi, I just found this older post by following a circle of links via rydra_wong's roundup - Maurice Broaddus pointed me here - and I wanted to say this is a very interesting observation you made here.

I'm not a Horror reader myself, being pretty much strictly SF/Mystery/Historical, but part of this phenomenon that you are describing (women as blank slates to have the male character's story written on them, whose suffering is only important in so far as it affects the main, of-course-male charas) is so common in other genres as well that a writer for DC Comics, Gail Simone, came up with an acronym for it "WiR," short for "Women In Refrigerators", named after one of the most infamously archetypal examples in mainstream comics.

It was, and remains, of course an extremely controversial and denied statement...sigh! Because there is no relevance to the fact that the proportions are so *disproportionate*, it's all coincidence. (TV Tropes Wiki calls it the Disposable Woman cliche.)

But it's since become shorthand for "female character killed/mutilated/raped/all-of-the above to goad The Hero into vengeance/angst" all across the board, not just comics, such that "The Fridge" is almost as ubiquitous in fannish circles as "Redshirt" - online discussions of movies like, frex, "The Bourne Identity" or shows like "Heroes" reference it routinely.

--Writers get Bonus Fridge Points when the fridged woman is also the only ethnic minority - media is all about the intersectionality of issues, you know, just in a totally wrong-headed way!

Unknown said...

Good post. I came to read this by way of rydra-wong's racefail links, but it is creepy how women are things to which horrible stuff happens in some horror books.

I actually stopped reading horror from people I didn't know/authors I wasn't already familiar with because of a horrifying short story where a woman was killed by being eaten by a monster and responded in a way that was something like a orgasm (in her death throes). I was so disturbed that I took a step back from the genre on account of how the writing was actually scarier than the stories.

It's one of the reasons I'm a bit freaked out by slasher stories. Reading about women being turned into meat is just... A problem.

Anonymous said...

I actually stopped reading horror from people I didn't know/authors I wasn't already familiar with because of a horrifying short story where a woman was killed by being eaten by a monster and responded in a way that was something like a orgasm (in her death throes). -- Skyward

There's actually a technical term for that type of cannibalism-porn.
It's called "Vore".
Don't ask me how I know this.

"I wish I had never heard...
I wish I had never seen...
Ia... Ia... Cthulhu Fthagn..."
-- "Dagon" (actually a film adaptation of "Shadows over Innsmouth")

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