Week 5: Witches and Women in Genre

Prompt: Discuss the witches in Aunt Maria. Are they stereotypes or archetypes? What do the characters say about the way our culture models women with power?

Response:

Aunt Maria in the book Aunt Maria by Diana Wynne Jones certainly embodies many of the classic stereotypes of a witch, a strong iron willed female who manipulates those around her to do her bidding and "zombifies" men. While these views of witches are in fact widely held in the collective unconscious they paint too one sided a character to truly be an archetype and thus remain relegated to stereotypes. This vilification of strong woman is not limited to witches, in fact if you think back to even the most benign movies you will see this fear perpetuated. Classic Disney Princess movies are a fantastic example of this particular portrayal of women; Snow White, Sleeping Beauty, Cinderella, and even The Little Mermaid all feed into the idea that that strong assertive women are evil while feminine and gentle woman are inherently good. (Snow white vrs Evil Queen, Aurora vrs Maleficent, Cinderella vrs  Lady Tremaine, and Ariel vrs Ursula) This relegation of strong alpha women to evil or "bitch" roles demonstrates our current patriarchal culture's fear of female power and as gender equality progresses you can see a direct correlation in the media of more positively portrayed strong women (Rey from The Force Awakens). This progress, however, does not erase the years long bias our culture has created. 

 (case in point, thank you Fox)

The cool thing about the book Aunt Maria is that even the vilification of Maria the overall message of the book does preach gender equality and balance between the masculine and feminine within one person as seen metaphorically through the sister and brother, Mig and Chris, ultimately needing to work together to become successful.

Week 4: The New Weird

Prompt: Discuss what is "weird". Use specific examples from what you read this week. What do you think it is so compelling about the "weird?"

Response:

For this week I read Clive Barker's novella "Cabal". Interestingly enough this story can almost be divided into two separate plots and two separate genres. The story starts out with the main character, Boone, being gas lighted by his own therapist into believing that he was a serial killer. This part of the story goes on to reveal that Decker, the therapist, was the true serial killer and was using his patients as scapegoats. While certainly macabre (and more than a little messed up) this part of the novel lacks a lot of key supernatural and spectacular characteristics that weird fiction generally possesses. In fact, its gritty realism seems to be more fitting of the crime and psychological thriller genres.

This being said, the rest of the book after getting into secret city of Midian and meeting the nightbreed is certainly a prime example of weird fiction. When examining the nightbreed it is difficult to put a finger on what exactly they are, the physical and supernatural attributes are just an amalgamation of legends all blended into a nondescript entity that the reader can never truly know as well as an iconic vampire or zombie. In true weird fiction fashion, this sense of unknown, that defies the laws of nature without any sort of explanation, uses the reader's curiosity to compel them to read more.

(Key Take away: Boone's lover Lori was like the original 'ride or die' girl in the beginning there...)