Hal Duncan's latest "Notes from New Sodom" column had me shouting, "Yes! Yes!" at the morning air as I read it -- one of those wonderful moments when somebody puts into words ideas that I've felt in my own brain only as pre-verbal tadpoles swimming through mud.
The topic of the column is the phrase "cultural appropriation" as applied to works of fiction, and Hal uses the TV series Avatar: The Last Airbender and the recent movie derived from it to launch into a learned, thoughtful, and vulgarity-filled argument against the phrase.
I've never been comfortable with the idea of "cultural appropriation" applied to fiction, or anything, really, because of the way those words turn culture into property and force any discussion of representation into a discussion of ownership. Instead, it should be a discussion of power. Power not only of one group over another, but also the power that stories wield. Words and narratives matter, they do things in the world.
For efficiency's sake, it's probably best to have the majority of the conversation over in the comments section to Hal's column, and I hope the conversation will be as lively and thoughtful as the column itself is.
Showing posts with label hal duncan. Show all posts
Showing posts with label hal duncan. Show all posts
04 July 2010
03 September 2009
Hal Duncan: Columnist of Sodom
Hal Duncan, known to some as The Slayer of Shibboleths, to others as The Scribe of the Book of All Hours, to others as The Notetaker of the Geek Show, and to still others as THE....Sodomite Hal Duncan -- this (super)man is now writing a regular column for Fantasy Book Spot, "Notes from New Sodom".
In his first column, Hal does what many of us have done in our early ventures with such things, he digs into definitions (and thus stakes some ground). This is Hal, though, so what he does is really not much like what any of the rest of us have done. It's longer, for one thing. And full of that inimitable, erudite lyricism, that voice, that essence (spunk!) of Hal.
And with this first column of his, he lets me achieve one of my greatest ambitions in life: to provide an epigraph. An epigraph taken from my second column for Strange Horizons, "The Old Equations", a piece I'd pretty much forgotten I'd written, in which I staked out some ground of my own. My view of genre as a term and idea has grown more ... well, frankly, neurotic (in its hesitations and divigations) ... since 2005, and it was fun to reread that piece, in which I had more confidence than I have now. Which is not to say I think "The Old Equations" is wrong, just that were I to write it now I wouldn't write it the way I wrote it then. But I could say that for stuff I wrote yesterday, too...
Anyway, welcome, Hal, to the Hall of Columnists. Long may ye reign, in time and wordcount!
In his first column, Hal does what many of us have done in our early ventures with such things, he digs into definitions (and thus stakes some ground). This is Hal, though, so what he does is really not much like what any of the rest of us have done. It's longer, for one thing. And full of that inimitable, erudite lyricism, that voice, that essence (spunk!) of Hal.
And with this first column of his, he lets me achieve one of my greatest ambitions in life: to provide an epigraph. An epigraph taken from my second column for Strange Horizons, "The Old Equations", a piece I'd pretty much forgotten I'd written, in which I staked out some ground of my own. My view of genre as a term and idea has grown more ... well, frankly, neurotic (in its hesitations and divigations) ... since 2005, and it was fun to reread that piece, in which I had more confidence than I have now. Which is not to say I think "The Old Equations" is wrong, just that were I to write it now I wouldn't write it the way I wrote it then. But I could say that for stuff I wrote yesterday, too...
Anyway, welcome, Hal, to the Hall of Columnists. Long may ye reign, in time and wordcount!
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Strange Horizons
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