Women Rise in Sci Fi (Again)

This year’s major science-fiction awards had strong female representation, but don’t call it a feminist victory for the genre just yet. 

Rose Eveleth Nov 5 2014,

A detail from the cover of The Mirror Empire, the latest title from Kameron Hurley. (Angry Robot) 

In February of this year, Ann Leckie’s book Ancillary Justice won a Golden Tentacle Award from The Kitschies—an award that celebrates “the year's most progressive, intelligent and entertaining works that contain elements of the speculative or fantastic.” Leckie was elated. The Kitschie trophy is a hand-sewn stuffed tentacle of sorts, and it sits proudly on Leckie’s mantle. “I was like, ‘Oh that’s really wonderful, how could anything be more validating,’” she says. “I love my golden stuff tentacle with the sparkly pom poms.”

Then the rest of the awards rolled in. First there was the Hugo Award for Best Novel. Then the Nebula Award. Then the Arthur C. Clarke. Scattered amongst them is a BSFA Award and a Locus Award. It was hard for Leckie to believe. “It was kind of like hallucinating,” she says. “It’s still kind of like hallucinating. I’m sitting here on my couch and I can turn my head and see them on the mantle and it’s really hard to see that they’re there.”

It appears as though women in science fiction are having a moment, and perhaps even more. This year, women were nominated for, and won, close to half of the major science-fiction awards out there. And much of that work touched upon gender in some way. In Ancillary Justice, the main character is a space ship (this sounds strange, but it’s worth reading the book to see what I mean) and the genders of the characters are continuously ambiguous. LIGHTSPEED magazine Kickstarted a series called “Women Destroy Science Fiction” that showcases work entirely written and edited by women. It asked for $5,000 and got $53,136 in return.

But to say that all of this represents progress for women in the traditionally male-dominated world of sci-fi oversimplifies the history of the genre a bit.

As with anything else, women have long been working alongside men to create fiction that covers on science, the future, technology and more. Mary Shelley’s book Frankenstein is often cited as one of the first classics of the sci-fi genre, and even before that Margaret Cavendish wrote The Blazing World—a satirical utopian vision—in 1666. “We’ve been doing this for ever,” says writer Kameron Hurley. This idea, that women have always been beside men everywhere from the battlefield to the writers’ room, is one that Hurley thinks about a lot. This year, her essay “‘We Have Always Fought': Challenging the 'Women, Cattle and Slaves' Narrative” on the long history of female fighters and why history writes them out of the picture, won a Hugo Award for Best Related Work. (She also won another Hugo this year for Best Fan Writer.)

Like the fighters she wrote about, Hurley says that female science-fiction writers are often forgotten. “It’s always Asimov and Heinlein,” she says. “You don’t hear about Russ or LeGuin. And there are very particular ways that people talk about it. One of those is by saying ‘well she did it, but it wasn’t really science fiction,’ or ‘her husband has a big impact.’”

When men wonder where all the women in science fiction are, those women can point out that they’ve been there all along. 

Today, both Hurley and Leckie say that female voices in science fiction are far louder than they used to be, largely thanks to blogs and social media. Now, when men wonder aloud (as they often do on their blogs) where all the women in science fiction are, those women can take to the comment section and point out that they’ve been there all along. They can use Twitter and Facebook not just to promote their work, but to connect with one an other. “We mirror a lot of what the overall culture is doing now,” Hurley says, “which is saying that we have always been here you’re just not listening. And we’re able to do that now because there are more channels. There’s incredible profusion of all of these other avenues for us to get our voices out there, and to collaborate right. To say okay let’s go flood that comment system, and have dialogue around that.”

Leckie agrees, saying that there is a community of women writers who have been bolstered by their ability to find and support one another. “The Internet really lets people connect that wouldn’t have in the past, and lets conversations happen and connections happen. That’s really something that happens, I’m not sure it’s a club with membership cards but I think there’s some kind of community.”

But both Leckie and Hurley express a combination of optimism and cynicism when it comes to whether or not women in the science fiction world are actually making progress, and how quickly. Leckie points out that this isn’t the first time women have been in the spotlight for writing award winning science fiction. “Sometimes I feel very optimistic about it, I say look at this, there are more women getting awards,” she says. “And then I look back and the ‘70s. The ‘70s was a decade that was crammed with prominent women science fiction writers, and a lot of women made their debut in that decade or really came to prominence.”

This was the time of Ursula K. Le Guin and Vonda McIntyre, who both won joint Nebulas and Hugos. Anne McCaffrey, Kate Wilhelm, Joan Vinge, and Marion Zimmer Bradley were all nominated for Hugo Awards that decade. In 1973, the Alice Bradley Sheldon, who wrote under the pen name James Tiptree, Jr. wrote the famous, feminist short story called “The Women Men Don’t See.” Joanna Russ’s feminist science fiction book The Female Man was published in 1975 and nominated that year for a Nebula.

Then, Leckie says, the ‘80s and ‘90s happened. The rate of women nominated and winning awards dipped down again. And today, once again, society has this idea that women who write science fiction are a strange and interesting breed. In other words, today the community is having the same conversation it had in the ‘70s about women writing science fiction.

To say this represents progress for women in the traditionally male-dominated world of sci-fi oversimplifies the history of the genre. 

And the challenges to being a female writer today are, while not entirely the same, quite similar to those of the earlier female writers. The Hugo Awards, for example, are decided by a vote—those who are members of the World Science Fiction Society decide on who is nominated and who, ultimately, takes home the prize. Which means that winning involves some amount of self-promotion—something women are discouraged from doing far more than men. Hurley points to the different reactions people have to Seanan McGuire (who sometimes writes under the pseudonym Mira Grant) and John Scalzi as one example. Both have been on the Hugo ballots regularly for the past 10 years. Both self promote on social media, reminding readers that if they liked their books or stories, they could vote for them. But McGuire gets flack for her promotion, while Scalzi does not.

Whether or not science fiction is going to repeat its own history, ducking back into the male-dominated years, remains to be seen. But Leckie and Hurley are generally, if cautiously, optimistic. “When I won I felt it was more of a win for the community,” says Hurley. “I think the community certainly had things to say and they were saying them by voting for me.” And Hurley also points out that winning isn’t everything. “It came with this sense of Peter Parker: With great power comes great responsibility. You realize wow people are listening to me, so I better be really clear about using my powers for good.”

Adobe spies on reading habits over unencrypted web because your ‘privacy is important’

That’s their story and they’re sticking to it.
However, what they collect and the stated reasons for collecting it, says publisher requirements and piracy paranoia are the reasons.

From THE REGISTER:

Adobe confirmed its Digital Editions software insecurely phones home your ebook reading history to Adobe – to thwart piracy.
And the company insisted the secret snooping is covered in its terms and conditions.
Version 4 of the application makes a note of every page read, and when, in the digital tomes it accesses, and then sends that data over the internet unencrypted to Adobe.
This Orwellian mechanism was spotted by Nate Hoffelder of The Digital Reader blog; the plaintext information transmitted also includes the title, publisher, and other metadata about the ebooks. This data is needed, we’re told, for enforcing the usage licenses covering the books.
“All information collected from the user is collected solely for purposes such as license validation and to facilitate the implementation of different licensing models by publishers,” Adobe said in a statement.

Adobe explained that the data it collects is for digital rights management (DRM) mechanisms that may be demanded by publishers to combat piracy, and gave a detailed list of what and why it needs such specific information:
User ID: The user ID is collected to authenticate the user.
Device ID: The device ID is collected for digital right management (DRM) purposes since publishers typically restrict the number of devices an eBook or digital publication can be read on.
Certified app ID: The Certified App ID is collected as part of the DRM workflow to ensure that only certified apps can render a book, reducing DRM hacks and compromised DRM implementations.
Device IP: The device IP is collected to determine the broad geo-location, since publishers have different pricing models in place depending on the location of the reader purchasing a given eBook or digital publication.
Duration for which the book was read: This information is collected to facilitate limited or metered pricing models where publishers or distributors charge readers based on the duration a book is read. For example, a reader may borrow a book for a period of 30 days. While some publishers/distributers charge for 30-days from the date of the download, others follow a metered pricing model and charge for the actual time the book is read.
Percentage of the book read: This information is collected to allow publishers to implement subscription models where they can charge based on the percentage of the book read. For example, some publishers charge only a percentage of the full price if only a certain percentage of the book is read.

The CERTIFIED APP tracking has nothing to do with authenticating the ebook and, by their own admission, everything to do with “piracy” concerns. Which suggests that sending a full library scan every time one ebook is opened is no accident or bad coding.

All of this data collection is something the user signs up to when he or she downloads the software, Adobe says, and is covered in section 14.1 of the end user license agreement (EULA), which states:
The Software may cause Customer’s Computer, without notice, to automatically connect to the Internet and to communicate with an Adobe website or Adobe domain for purposes such as license validation and providing Customer with additional information, features, or functionality.”
While the EULA does appear to give Adobe the authority to collect this data, it’s clear from our comments section that readers aren’t happy with the situation. Neither is the EFF, which is calling ADE 4 spyware.
“Sending this information in plaintext undermines decades of efforts by libraries and bookstores to protect the privacy of their patrons and customers,” said Corynne McSherry, the EFF’s intellectual property director.
“Indeed, in 2011 EFF and a coalition of companies and public interest groups helped pass the Reader Privacy Act, which requires the government and civil litigants to demonstrate a compelling interest in obtaining reader records and show that the information contained in those records cannot be obtained by less intrusive means. But if readers are using Adobe’s software, it’s all too easy for folks to bypass those restrictions.”

It should be noted that the epub3 specification allows for similar data collection direct from the ebook itself, but no epub3 reading app to date has implemented it.

(DBW documented this back in 2012.)

Thus, Adobe might have felt compelled to offer the “feature” themselves.

Felix

Here’s What Happens When "Beauty" Becomes "Duty"

Inside World War II’s female beauty campaign.

Hailey Siracky BuzzFeed Contributor

 

 

 

 

The following excerpt was originally published in The WORN Archive, which compiles some of the best material from WORN Fashion Journal’s first 14 issues.

Julia Rogers’ first-ever grown-up ball wasn’t quite what she’d hoped for. In 1942, her soldier father took 16-year-old Julia and her mother to the Annual Regimental Ball. Just one year after Britain’s Utility Clothing Scheme was implemented, there was nary a ball gown in sight. “All the women in short dresses,” says Julia of the occasion. “It was disappointing.”

Her own dress was all practicality. Her mother, a dressmaker by trade, had fashioned the frock for Julia as she did all of her family’s clothing. Cherry red, lightweight, and easily washable, with a sweetheart neckline and a flowing skirt that came just past the knees, the dress was undeniably pretty — but hardly the elaborate gown one would expect to see (or wear) at such a fancy occasion.

Julia, who grew up in a family in which money was scarce, was used to having homemade clothing intended to last for years. “When the war broke out I had all the clothes I needed,” she says. “My mother made my dresses with enough seam allowances and hem lengths to make alterations as I grew.” When the British government introduced a system of clothes rationing during World War II, Julia hardly felt the blow. For others, however, the new system of policing the amount of clothing, fabric, and shoes civilians could purchase was an enormous adjustment.

The Making of a Pretty Propaganda

Keystone / Hulton Archive

Britain’s Utility Clothing Scheme was put into action on June 1, 1941. Fabric was at a premium worldwide, and anything available needed to be put toward the war effort. The scheme was carried out by Britain’s Board of Trade, under the direction of Prime Minister Winston Churchill — but Churchill was reluctant to restrict civilian dress. Partial to waistcoats and often seen looking dapper in bow ties and bowlers, Churchill understood the social and psychological relationships people had with clothing. He knew that clothes rationing would be detrimental to civilian morale.

Morale was of the utmost importance in Britain from the beginning of World War II until its end because, unlike World War I, this war required the involvement of the entire adult population. World War II, or “The People’s War,” saw men and women performing both civilian and military duties, and Britain’s government recognized that success in what would surely be a long struggle required careful attention to civilian confidence. It wasn’t until Britain experienced an extreme clothing shortage, in tandem with a serious economic downturn in 1940, that Churchill would finally declare clothes rationing a necessity. But even before the drastic measure of the Utility Clothing Scheme, Britain had embraced another fashion-centerd directive aimed at civilians on the home front.

Beauty as Duty was an official propaganda campaign targeting women, encouraging them to continue to pursue fashion and beauty despite the hardships that they had to endure, and discouraging the notion that devoting attention to their appearances was trivial or petty.

By urging women to maintain some focus on “normal” things like fashion and beauty, the campaign was designed to help them feel grounded amid the chaos of war. Alongside this, the government was addressing the unsettling new reality of women taking on what had traditionally been “men’s” work. Morale-centerd propaganda campaigns were hardly unusual, but this campaign was aimed specifically at women, a logical result of the unusually high percentage of the female population involved in home front war efforts.

At first, women’s involvement in the war was voluntary, but the December 1941 passing of the National Services Act made Britain the first country to conscript women into war-related jobs. While they did not have to bear arms, they worked in factories making munitions, uniforms, and parachutes, or in state-run canteens or child-care centers. All women under the age of 51 were required to register for war work, and by 1943, between 80–90% were doing their part to support the war effort. Julia herself served in the Women’s Royal Naval Service (WRNS) from March 1944 until September 1945. With this level of involvement, and with the majority of able-bodied men away from home, it was not surprising that the ideas of home front morale and the morale of women became almost interchangeable.

Getting the Message to the Masses

The Beauty as Duty concept first appeared in popular advertising. In December of 1939, an advertisement for Evan Williams Shampoo was accompanied by the caption “Hair Beauty — is a duty, too!” It was already a woman’s job to serve her country and her family; cosmetics ads began to promote maintaining one’s personal appearance as another responsibility women had to fulfill. It was an idea that made a lot of marketing sense. Manufacturers wanted to continue selling their products during a time of international crisis, and like everyone else, they shared the desire for the Allies to win the war. It was natural to connect their products to patriotism, and mainstream media’s encouragement of consumption helped validate an activity that may have otherwise been considered frivolous or unnecessary.

Lipsticks, soaps, and other cosmetics came with slogans such as “Beauty Is Your Duty” or emphasized the message that it was a woman’s “duty to stay beautiful.” These ideas were so strongly discursively linked that beauty and resisting the enemy seemed two sides of the same coin. British cosmetics company Yardley ran advertisements in 1942 with the heading “No Surrender,” which claimed that ideal women honored “the subtle bonds between good looks and good morale.”

Concerned about civilian confidence on the home front and convinced of the transformative power of fashion, Churchill grabbed hold of the Beauty as Duty idea. He began to turn it into official propaganda, and manufacturers were eager to cooperate. A year before the Utility Clothing Scheme was instituted, the British government assembled a group of editors from various women’s magazines to form a committee that would consult on the official message of Beauty as Duty. Their job was to ensure that the new policy was “relayed to women in accessible and appropriate ways.” Now, instead of appearing exclusively in advertising, the concept became an editorial mainstay in fashion magazines like Women’s Own and Vogue, as well as in publications like the photojournalistic magazine Picture Post.

Putting a Little Lipstick on a Brave Face

Via Flickr: 25342671@N07

Between his hesitation to ration clothing and his promotion of Beauty as Duty, Churchill clearly believed aesthetics were somehow crucial to success in the war effort. His opposition to clothes rationing came from his conviction that the government should not interfere with something as personal as “a man and his wardrobe,” demonstrating his belief that a person’s clothing served a far greater purpose than simply keeping covered and warm. While it was an unusual concern to focus on at such a time, it was also quite astute.

Personal appearance — enhanced through clothing, hygiene, and, in this case, cosmetics — is intensely linked to self-perception. Pat Kirkham, a design historian, author, and professor at the Bard Graduate Center for Studies in the Decorative Arts in New York, has written extensively on this topic. Kirkham describes a woman named Nella Last who kept a diary throughout the war. In one entry, Last writes about using “too bright lipstick” that “on dim days makes the corners turn up when the lips will not keep smiling.” The “brave face” she assumed was not symbolic but physically manifested with the application of lipstick that she felt would help her endure what was otherwise unbearable.

Kirkham explains that this emphasis on giving the impression of being “normal,” paired with having to take on new and difficult responsibilities, required British women to “make enormous sacrifices while appearing as if they had not done so.” Not only did women have to deal with conscription, new and unfamiliar employment, and concern for the lives of so many of their loved ones and for the future of the country and the world at large, but they had to do it all while remaining outwardly composed. To ask someone to appear untroubled during a time of such turmoil and uncertainty is almost absurd, but conversely, it also has the potential to be incredibly buoying.

It isn’t easy to do without, but to do without while giving the impression that little has changed offers necessary courage to one living in an otherwise terrifying situation. Women had no power over the volatile state of the world, and after conscription was introduced, they also lost control over which jobs they held and where these jobs took them; if they could succeed in appearing strong and unruffled on the outside, perhaps on the inside they might also feel capable of succeeding in the midst of the uncertainty that had become their lives. Fashion was no panacea, but during a time when everyone had worries in excess, it made sense to find comfort, composure, and reassurance wherever possible.

It is difficult to accept the idea that beauty, especially in the middle of a war, should be deemed a necessity — nor was the notion universally accepted at the time. A lot of women in wartime Britain found it difficult to reconcile their inclination toward frugal austerity with the widespread encouragement of beauty. In other countries, notably Germany and Australia, governments urged women to disregard style and present themselves simply and plainly. British women struggled to make peace with their conflicting desires. Indulging in fashion during a time when every last bit of material and energy might be better used supporting the war effort was incongruous.

Although appearance was a concern, clothing was not to be overly extravagant or ostentatious. Women acknowledged that there was a difference between keeping up appearances and being frivolous. The Beauty as Duty campaign redefined concepts of necessity, triviality, and decorum by changing beauty from a matter of individual choice into a public concern. Items such as corsets, civilian hats, makeup, and nail polish were so important to women and such a fixture in women’s culture that, despite clothes rationing, the government was willing to set important materials aside to ensure their production.

Frivolity, too, was redefined as women began turning to the black market for stockings and lipstick. The ethics of buying black-market makeup were questionable, but doing so allowed women to define “need” in their own terms; by taking something luxurious and turning it into something necessary, they took control of one small aspect of an otherwise rationed and regimented life.

Aesthetics, Ambivalence, and the Luxury of Hindsight

Although the positive effects the movement may have had on women’s attitudes toward their situations are clear, one cannot overlook that a campaign like this suggests both a condescension to and objectification of women. One of the ideas surrounding Beauty as Duty was that the good spirits of men depended on the good looks of the women in their lives. The same Evan Williams Shampoo ad that claimed “Hair Beauty is a duty, too!” explained that “the men of the services on leave will expect and deserve it.”

Another concern this discourse was intended to address was that women’s conscription into factory work would lead to their being “masculinized.” Before the war, it was unheard of for women to do “men’s” work, and their doing so was unnerving to some. Beauty as Duty drew attention to femininity and ensured that it remained a central focus in their lives despite the fact that so many women now spent most of their time in the “male world.” A Ladies’ Home Journal article published in 1943 remarked that it was evidence of “the free democratic way of life that you have succeeded in keeping your femininity – even though you are doing a man’s work!” But if these concerns were a motivation for the Beauty as Duty campaign, they were not its central focus.

The directive, at its core, was aimed at making it all right for women to feel good about themselves, and at encouraging small indulgences and comforts in lives that were otherwise full of sacrifice, in the hopes that boosting their collective self-esteem would help the nation win the war. Kirkham argues that “makeup, corsets and attractive clothes, hairstyles and accessories meant different things to different women; they also had multiple meanings for individual women. Among other things, they brought the comfort of familiarity and continuities, memories of times past, signified femininity and played a part in constructing confident ‘fronts’ that helped boost individual and collective morale.”

Kirkham’s words encapsulate many people’s ambivalence about this historical moment — why one can find it difficult to be opposed to Beauty as Duty despite the fact that certain aspects of it allude to patriarchal subordination. Yet the campaign is also an acknowledgement of women’s changing roles and responsibilities, and an attempt to ease this transition. The power of fashion is often underestimated or misunderstood, and a love of clothing is too frequently written off as shallow or superficial. Beauty as Duty recognized the potential for fashion to function as a way to genuinely lift spirits and build confidence.

Fashion is what stands out most in Julia’s recollections of the Regimental Ball. Although growing up she was rarely in the position to afford luxuries herself, the dresses and uniforms at the ball remain bright in her mind. “If not as festive as in peacetime, it was still a grand sight,” she remembers. “All of the soldiers in their most formal of outfits … navy blue and scarlet with plenty of gold braid to brighten things up.” A few dances and a fancy cocktail later, it was time for Julia to go. “After midnight the soldiers were allowed to change into less formal uniforms. They would have been quite relieved to be able to wear something more comfortable. My father needed to change too, so we would have gone home, but not to return. The best was now over anyway.”

***

Hailey Siracky is a contributor to WORN.

The WORN Archive: A Fashion Journal About the Art, Ideas, and History of What We Wear / Drawn and Quarterly / Via drawnandquarterly.com

8 Tips for Moving When You Have a Ton of Books

By Kim Ukura

Being a mobile book hoarder can be a challenge. In the last 10 years I’ve moved 12 times, and my boyfriend and I are currently gearing up for move number 13. My family is, thankfully, always up to help, but they’ve started to balk at moving my library.

Although getting my books from one place to another is one of the most daunting parts of any move, it’s also one of the most satisfying. In the stress of setting up a new place, organizing my bookshelves always makes me feel calm and makes a new space start to feel like home. And after a decade of moves, I’ve got some well-honed (and simple) strategies for moving a ton a books.

1. Cull your shelves

One of the best things about moving is that it provides the perfect motivation to clear some of those books that have been lingering on your shelves. Beginning a month or two before your planned move, take a few runs through your bookshelves and ask yourself whether you really want to carry this book (among all the other books) to a new place. More often than not the answer will be a resounding no. Once you’ve pulled a book to giveaway, don’t look at it again – take the bags straight to a used bookstore or Goodwill to sell or donate and get them out of your hair.

2. Use small boxes

This seems fairly obvious, but it’s a mistake I always make. The small (16″ x 12″ x 12″) box from Home Depot looks reasonable, but it gets heavy when filled with hardcovers. I’ve found that liquor store boxes, banana boxes, and old shipping boxes (from all of the books I ordered online…) work well for books. If you do use bigger boxes, only fill them about 75 percent with books. Use the rest for clothes, office supplies or other light-weight objects. You can also fill the tops of boxes with paper or bubble wrap to protect the books.

3. Think creatively about packing options

If your move is a short one, reusable grocery bags (especially the $1 cheapies at the grocery store), storage baskets and even brown paper bags work well for packing books. Another Rioter suggested using suitcases with wheels to move books and putting your clothes (much lighter!) in boxes. Whatever you use, make sure the bottom is sturdy – books hurt when they fall on your feet.

4. Pack strategically and label judiciously

When you get ready to pack your books, pack strategically. Keep books that are shelved together in the same boxes so you’re not digging around for books that go together while you’re unpacking. And take some time to label your boxes in a way that makes sense to you. I generally write the genre and read/unread on the box, since that’s how I have my shelves arranged. This will save you time and frustration later. If you like the way your shelves are arranged, take photos so you have a reminder of where books generally go.

5. Box the books early

While it’s tempting to wait on boxing up books, I’ve found it’s best to deal with them early in the packing process. Having the boxes sitting around can be cumbersome, but packing them early means I’m still motivated to pack carefully, I still have good boxes to use, and I can cull a few extra titles as I’m filling boxes.

6. Pack carefully

If your books will be in storage before or after your move, pack the books spine down to protect them. You can also lay books flat or pack them standing up. I tend to use a mix of methods in each box. Just be sure none of the books are packed at an angle or bent in a strange way – they’ll be warped when you take them out.

7. Remember your emergency reading materials

Don’t pack all of your books! Make sure you leave out a few options to read just before and after your move, especially if you’ll be without your full library for any length of time. Put these books in the same box you put all of your other “emergency” supplies like contact information, medication, and cell phone chargers. Being without a good book would be a disaster.

8. Unpack the books first-ish (or get them out of the way)

I generally live in small houses, so having 20 boxes of books sitting around is a problem. Once the furniture is in place, the bed is made, and I’ve had some food, I take some time to unpack my books. Nothing makes me feel more settled than having my books on my shelves and, as a bonus, getting the books in place makes the entire house feel less cluttered. If you have a dedicated space for books (a spare bedroom or *swoon* a library) tuck the boxes away and deal with them in a reasonable time frame.

About Kim Ukura

Kim Ukura is a community newspaper editor and blogs about non-fiction and literary fiction at Sophisticated Dorkiness. Follow her on Twitter: @kimthedork
All posts by Kim Ukura

Why We Crave Horror Movies--By Stephen King

I think that we’re all mentally ill; those of us outside the asylums only hide it a little better – and maybe not all that much better, after all. We’ve all known people who talk to themselves, people who sometimes squinch their faces into horrible grimaces when they believe no one is watching, people who have some hysterical fear – of snakes, the dark, the tight place, the long drop . . . and, of course, those final worms and grubs that are waiting so patiently underground.

When we pay our four or five bucks and seat ourselves at tenth-row center in a theater showing a

horror movie, we are daring the nightmare.

Why? Some of the reasons are simple and obvious. To show that we can, that we are not afraid, that we can ride this roller coaster. Which is not to say that a really good horror movie may not surprise a scream out of us at some point, the way we may scream when the roller coaster twists through a complete 360 or plows through a lake at the bottom of the drop. And horror movies, like roller coasters, have always been the special province of the young; by the time one turns 40 or 50, one’s appetite for double twists or 360-degree loops may be considerably depleted.

We also go to re-establish our feelings of essential normality; the horror movie is innately conservative, even reactionary. Freda Jackson as the horrible melting woman in Die, Monster, Die! confirms for us that no matter how far we may be removed from the beauty of a Robert Redford or a Diana Ross, we are still light-years from true ugliness.

And we go to have fun.

Ah, but this is where the ground starts to slope away, isn’t it? Because this is a very peculiar sort of fun, indeed. The fun comes from seeing others menaced – sometimes killed. One critic has suggested that if pro football has become the voyeur’s version of combat, then the horror film has become the modern version of the public lynching.

It is true that the mythic “fairy-tale” horror film intends to take away the shades of grey . . . . It urges us to put away our more civilized and adult penchant for analysis and to become children again, seeing things in pure blacks and whites. It may be that horror movies provide psychic relief on this level because this invitation to lapse into simplicity, irrationality and even outright madness is extended so rarely. We are told we may allow our emotions a free rein . . . or no rein at all.

If we are all insane, then sanity becomes a matter of degree. If your insanity leads you to carve up women like Jack the Ripper or the Cleveland Torso Murderer, we clap you away in the funny farm (but neither of those two amateur-night surgeons was ever caught, heh-heh-heh); if, on the other hand, your insanity leads you only to talk to yourself when you’re under stress or to pick your nose on your morning bus, then you are left alone to go about your business . . . though it is doubtful that you will ever be invited to the best parties.

The potential lyncher is in almost all of us (excluding saints, past and present; but then, most saints have been crazy in their own ways), and every now and then, he has to be let loose to scream and roll around in the grass. Our emotions and our fears form their own body, and we recognize that it demands its own exercise to maintain proper muscle tone. Certain of these emotional muscles are accepted – even exalted – in civilized society; they are, of course, the emotions that tend to maintain the status quo of civilization itself. Love, friendship, loyalty, kindness -- these are all the emotions that we applaud, emotions that have been immortalized in the couplets of Hallmark cards and in the verses (I don’t dare call it poetry) of Leonard Nimoy.

When we exhibit these emotions, society showers us with positive reinforcement; we learn this even before we get out of diapers. When, as children, we hug our rotten little puke of a sister and give her a kiss, all the aunts and uncles smile and twit and cry, “Isn’t he the sweetest little thing?” Such coveted treats as chocolate-covered graham crackers often follow. But if we deliberately slam the rotten little puke of a sister’s fingers in the door, sanctions follow – angry remonstrance from parents, aunts and uncles; instead of a chocolate-covered graham cracker, a spanking.

But anticivilization emotions don’t go away, and they demand periodic exercise. We have such “sick” jokes as, “What’s the difference between a truckload of bowling balls and a truckload of dead babies?” (You can’t unload a truckload of bowling balls with a pitchfork . . . a joke, by the way, that I heard originally from a ten-year-old.) Such a joke may surprise a laugh or a grin out of us even as we recoil, a possibility that confirms the thesis: If we share a brotherhood of man, then we also share an insanity of man. None of which is intended as a defense of either the sick joke or insanity but merely as an explanation of why the best horror films, like the best fairy tales, manage to be reactionary, anarchistic, and revolutionary all at the same time.

The mythic horror movie, like the sick joke, has a dirty job to do. It deliberately appeals to all that is worst in us. It is morbidity unchained, our most base instincts let free, our nastiest fantasies realized . . . and it all happens, fittingly enough, in the dark. For those reasons, good liberals often shy away from horror films. For myself, I like to see the most aggressive of them – Dawn of the Dead, for instance – as lifting a trap door in the civilized forebrain and throwing a basket of raw meat to the hungry alligators swimming around in that subterranean river beneath.

Why bother? Because it keeps them from getting out, man. It keeps them down there and me up here. It was Lennon and McCartney who said that all you need is love, and I would agree with that.

As long as you keep the gators fed.

The Books That Light Our Way

This is a guest post by Tova Mirvis, who is the author of three novels, Visible City, The Outside World and The Ladies Auxiliary, which was a national bestseller. Her essays have appeared in various anthologies and newspapers including The Boston Globe Magazine, Commentary, Good Housekeeping, and Poets and Writers, and her fiction has been broadcast on National Public Radio. She has been a Scholar in Residence at the Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University, and Visiting Scholar at The Brandeis Women’s Studies Research Center. She lives in Newton, MA with her three children. Follow her on Twitter @tovamirvis.

My ex-husband and I had divided the furniture, the money, the books. We sold our house, packed seventeen years worth of a shared life into boxes labeled with either my name or his. When I unpacked into my new bedroom, many of the objects were the same – the purple comforter, all my clothing, my desk — but so much of my life felt unfamiliar.

Though the house I was newly renting was just a few miles from the one we’d lived in together, it felt as though it existed in an alternate impassable continent.
I unpacked as quickly as I could, wanting at least the outer semblance of normalcy.

One of the first things I did was to place my books in their old spots on my shelves, arranging them, as I always had in every place I’d lived, by author, by sensibility, by how much I had loved the book.

Now a new category was emerging: books I needed to keep physically close at hand. They were books I had read previously, either weeks before or years, but in these uncertain days, they became newly essential. Around most people, I wanted to pull as deeply inside myself as I could, cover my outer self with a hard protective shell. Only with these books did I feel a sense of opening, did I feel that someone could understand how it felt to stand at this juncture.

On the nightstand by my bed, I placed a small pile of books, ones which I felt could lead me through these next weeks and months. They were books I saw as friends, as guides to what lay ahead.

One of these books was Aftermath: On Marriage and Separation by Rachel Cusk, a book which came out as I was hurtling toward my divorce. This was a book by an author I already loved, having devoured her novels and then her memoir about motherhood, which I read while I nursed a baby and had relished the raw honesty of her writing.

Then and now once again I felt as though Cusk was writing directly to me.

The opening lines: “Recently my husband and I separated, and over the course of a few weeks the life we’d made broke apart, like a jigsaw dismantled into a heap of broken-edged pieces.” Here was my life, in her sharp-edged stark sentences that spared little. Here, the pain of separation and also the necessity of it, for some of us.

And this, as she is sitting in church looking out at other families, mother father children. “We’re not part of that story anymore, my children and I. We belong more to the world, in all its risky disorder, its fragmentation, its freedom.” In Cusk’s descriptions of how lonely it feels to uproot your life, I felt a little less alone.

Next to Aftermath, I placed Devotion by Dani Shapiro, a memoir I’d read a few years before, though now I read it with new eyes, “I had reached the middle of my life and I knew less than I ever had before,” Shapiro writes. “From the outside, things looked pretty good. But deep inside myself, I had begun to quietly fall apart. Nights, I quivered in the darkness like a wounded animal.”

That anxiety, I knew all too well, especially at night, when the fears raged most freely. And yet, amid these articulations of fear and discontent and what it means to be searching and unsettled, the book contained a voice whispering gently, soothingly, from across the distance. In my darkest time, Devotion offered me the quiet gift of hope.

“Life was unpredictable, yes,” she writes later in the book. “A speeding car, a slip on the ice, a ringing phone, and suddenly everything changes forever.  To deny that is to deny life – but to be consumed by it is also to deny life. The third way – inaccessible to me as I slunk down the halls – had to do with holding this paradox lightly in one’s hands. To think: it is true, the speeding car, the slip on the ice, the ringing phone. It is true and yet here I am listening to my boy sing as we walk down the corridor. Here I am giving him a hug.  Here we are – together in this, our only moment.”

Next to these two books, I placed a volume of poems, New and Selected Poems, by Mary Oliver, a poet whom I’d read little of before this time in my life. I’d discovered her when someone sent me one of her poems and after that she became a nightly salve. Inside this volume there was one poem in particular I turned to, until I almost knew it by heart.  These words were my mantra to myself, a late night lullaby.

From The Journey:

One day you finally knew
what you had to do , and began
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice

And then:
But little by little
 as you left their voices behind
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own. 

On so many nights, I fell asleep to these words, with the feeling that they banded together with the other books stacked there, keeping watch over me, lighting the way.
_________________________
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