Current Events > "Liberals" turn against literature.

(+) Yeah! (+)

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/jun/04/incel-movement-literary-classics-behind-misogyny

I guess the concept of flawed protagonists dealing with unrequited love is problematic now.
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your topic title and article seem unrelated to one another
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mario2000 posted...

your topic title and article seem unrelated to one another

I think he's upset that his group are being attacked. Redcaps get oddly defensive of incels

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also great gatsby is a boring piece of shit and kids should not be subjected to it regardless
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mario2000 posted...

also great gatsby is a boring piece of shit and kids should not be subjected to it regardless

Philistine.
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mario2000 posted...

also great gatsby is a boring piece of shit and kids should not be subjected to it regardless

I feel this way about Catcher In The Rye and yet people are like "OMG this is a masterpiece!"
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I some times like to go on to Amazon and read self-published books.

There are some good ones.
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I don't know, I think it's a worthwhile critique of how many of our cultural touchstones center around the issue of unrequited love and frame it from sympathetic, male eyes.

I choose The Things They Carried to pick on here because its a favorite of mine. I think its brilliant, but it offers a prime example of the way our literary culture has long treated rage and aggression as if they are normal features of (white) male sexuality. (The racial component is of course significant here, since the exact opposite has long been true for depictions of black male sexuality, which have been represented as essentially and problematically aggressive.) The literature we choose to teach our children evidences how untroubled we are by this disturbing cliche that rage and a fascination with violation are characteristic features of (again, white) male sexuality. This is of course one of the main points of OBriens beautiful book, but it doesnt change the fact that as a teenager I had read many fictional accounts of mens rape fantasies long before I had ever read a literary account from the womans perspective of rape, or even of consensual sex. I was trained to accept that male sexual frustration was a serious issue because I read hundreds of pages about it before the age of 20, far more than I read about issues of undoubtedly greater social import, like the legacy of slavery, the alienation of women and people of color from public life, or the violence of the settler colonialism on which the United States was founded. Perhaps these novels even coached me into taking male sexual frustration seriously through a kind of frightful education: look what happens, they seemed to say, when men dont get what they want.

And these are just the books I read in high school. Dont even get me started on DH Lawrence, W Somerset Maugham, Ernest Hemingway, Harold Pinter, Henry Miller, Saul Bellow, Vladimir Nabokov, John Updike, Norman Mailer, Bret Easton Ellis, or the patron saint of elevating male bullshit: David Foster Wallace. Though many of these authors are justly celebrated, they have all repeatedly treated male sexual frustration as if it deserves pride of place among the great issues of Life. Lolita even succeeds in conjuring sympathy for the desires of a pedophile...By contrast, novels of womens frustration with society not sex like those of Edith Wharton and Kate Chopin, are classed as special interest pieces: feminist fiction or womens fiction, not Great American Novels.

She's not bashing these books, but raising what I believe to be a pretty fair point. We have so many cultural models for loving someone who doesn't return those feelings, which are ingested by the time you get to college, but very few depicting the other side of the arrangement.
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mario2000 posted...

your topic title and article seem unrelated to one another

Welcome to a Mal_Fet topic
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UnfairRepresent posted...

mario2000 posted...

also great gatsby is a boring piece of shit and kids should not be subjected to it regardless

I feel this way about Catcher In The Rye and yet people are like "OMG this is a masterpiece!"

The true piece of shit is Great Expectations.
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davyheinz posted...

UnfairRepresent posted...

mario2000 posted...

also great gatsby is a boring piece of shit and kids should not be subjected to it regardless

I feel this way about Catcher In The Rye and yet people are like "OMG this is a masterpiece!"

The true piece of shit is Great Expectations.

Wut

That's like one of the greatest works of literature in all of history
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Like a lot of things, context is important, and especially with stories like these, the classroom is a good place to examine these works contextually, and noting that everything has to come from something, and these works are a product of the feelings and beliefs of their authors. When you remember the human creators of these timeless works, you can still lose yourself in them while remaining grounded.
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anyone who likes catcher in the rye more than ham on rye really doesn't know whats going on

i think a problem is these works are multi thematic and to boil it all down to one thing seems silly. but such is the critical studies dept

TheUsualSuspect posted...

mario2000 posted...

your topic title and article seem unrelated to one another

I think he's upset that his group are being attacked. Redcaps get oddly defensive of incels

genosect is that you?
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Antifar posted...

as a teenager I had read many fictional accounts of mens rape fantasies long before I had ever read a literary account from the womans perspective of rape, or even of consensual sex.

How many works of literature are there where the protagonist has rape fantasies and it's put in a positive light
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Bloodychess posted...

TheUsualSuspect posted...

mario2000 posted...

your topic title and article seem unrelated to one another

I think he's upset that his group are being attacked. Redcaps get oddly defensive of incels

genosect is that you?

lmao
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Bloodychess posted...

TheUsualSuspect posted...

mario2000 posted...

your topic title and article seem unrelated to one another

I think he's upset that his group are being attacked. Redcaps get oddly defensive of incels

genosect is that you?

Geno hates all conservatives, I just shit on the Trump cultist variety
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