I was surfing the internet hoping to find some material to work on for my expository paper on 'chick literature' and I came across this youtube clip featuring two female authors and their discussion on the genre in general.
There are a few interesting points to be raised for discussion in this clip and most of it has to do with the author on the far left (as you probably would have noticed from her responses in the clip). I personally felt that the author on the left was very hypocritical and condescending in the way she views the genre (even though she claims that it is not necessarily a bad thing to have this particular genre called 'chick lit'. I will discuss a few reasons why I arrived at this conclusion below.
Notice her initial usage of the word 'marketing' at 0:46 which she quickly corrected to 'demand' (but reverted back to marketing later on in the dialogue). When she used the word marketing, a few thoughts immediately came into my mind. The first and perhaps most important one would be that these particular books have to be packaged in a certain 'ideal' way in order to appeal to the particular masses. The underlying assumption is that men and women like to read different things because they are inherently different. Preconceptions about the type of content women like to read but men avoid then creeps into the picture, reinforcing gender stereotypes which are arguably constructed in the first place. Particularly, her discussion on how there exist the general idea that chick lit is of a lesser genre yet "millions of women love to read about shoes and dating and men" seemed hypocritical as she herself gave the impression that she was leaning towards the former.
This impression was confirmed later when she talks about how there seems to be 'shame' associated with chick lit and she 'wonders' who or what is generating this shame. She then made a comment about how it cannot be men who are doing it as they are not reading chick lit or not even thinking about chick lit. In essence, it has to be women who are propagating such thoughts as only women would read about things as frivolous as shoes and dating and men (remember the works on power relations pertaining to writing we read earlier?). The most interesting point came at 4:08-4:10 when she reacted very negatively to the question of whether she would classify her work as chick lit. She claimed that writers should not classify themselves as specialists of certain genre as it would restrict the scope of their work but it sounded more like an attempt to rescue herself. Then she once again made the comment that in order for the books to sell, they have to be packaged in certain ways and how that is done is really up to the publishers.
It is interesting that even a female author who writes books classified as 'chick lit' would react so negatively to the classification. Even though throughout the dialogue she tried to sound neutral or even supportive of the growth of this genre, the vibes she gave off were very negative indeed if we were to scrutinize the things she said. I would have expected a male author writing books belonging to a more 'masculine' genre to have this kind of reaction but her?? I am puzzled indeed!
There are really a lot of stereotypical ideas about the people who read chick lit and the writers themselves. I think that many writers in general pride themselves in being cultured, well educated deep thinkers about the numerous issues in life. Chick lit is light hearted and often described as frivolous and bimbotic, hence the reluctance in any association with the genre.
ReplyDeleteI must point out that since you like reading chick lit too and are on the receiving end of these jibes, you would have an inherent bias in defending the genre. :)
ReplyDeleteThat being said, I think reading, like most other human preferences, shouldn't be judged.