The RWA (that's the Romance Writers of Australia) held their sixteenth national conference in Sydney, from the 10th-12th August 2007. Here's a newspaper report from the conference which notes that 'The problem for Australian writers of romantic fiction is that it is largely ignored by Australian publishers, save for the odd outbreak of its younger sibling, chick lit. The global centres for romance publishing are New York, London and Toronto'.
In this context, it seems like a good time to discuss just one of the issues arising from Juliet Flesch's From Australia with Love: A History of Modern Australian Popular Romance Novels, that of national identity. Flesch argues that 'Australian romance novels are distinctively Australian in both style and ethos' (2004: 13). She demonstrates very convincingly that many Australian romance authors write about Australian locations and touch on specifically Australian cultural issues (e.g. in novels which feature remote outback locations or which describe Aboriginal culture and characters) but of course not all do (this is particularly the case with the Australian authors of historical romances set in Regency England).
I'm not quite so convinced by the suggestion that all the authors share a common Australian 'style and ethos'. There are a very large number of Australian authors (take a look at the list here) and to take just a few, I'd say that Anne Gracie's style is different from Stephanie Laurens' (who, incidentally, was 'was born in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka)', while Ally Blake's is very different from Margaret Way's. Flesch does, in fact, acknowledge that 'Each writer is an individual whose moral view, narrative preference and skill and sense of humour are different' (2004: 285).It's a relatively easy matter to identify the nationality of romance authors, although a difference between place of birth and place of residence may complicate matters. Jo Beverley, for example, was born in the UK but has lived in Canada for decades. On her website she describes herself as a 'Proud Canadian and English author'. Note that's 'English', not 'British'. Before Gordon Brown (who's Scottish) became Prime Minister he was quite keen to emphasise his Britishness and he wrote about
a Britain that is defined not by ethnicity but, at its core, by common values and shared interests that, in turn, shape our institutions. Britain pioneered the modern idea of liberty and, not least from Adam Smith onwards, there is a golden thread that intertwines this unshakeable British commitment to liberty with another very British idea – that of duty and social responsibility, which comes alive in civic pride, charitable and voluntary endeavour, and encouragement for what Edmund Burke called the "little platoons".It's hardly a new discussion, though. In 2005, for example, Julian Baggini wrote that
Most nations subscribe to universal values like freedom, but it is how these values come together – in Britain's case, in liberty married to social responsibility and to a belief in what Churchill called "fair play" – and then are mediated through our institutions and our history that defines the character of the country.
I wouldn't deny that there are some broad national differences (though one has to allow plenty of room for personal difference and also cultural diversity within a state). I've even tried to analyse some in the past. But I wonder if Flesch is maybe going a little far in suggesting thatAll previous attempts to capture what it means to be British and English have failed. Roger Scruton's essentially rural form of Englishness has nothing to do with the experience of the urban or suburban majority, while "cool Britannia" was a "metropolitan" construction which few outside the major cities - or in them for that matter - could identify with.
The problem is that Britain is wonderfully and irredeemably diverse, and the more specific your idea of national identity is, the more people it excludes. Go the other way, however, and you end up with something too thin. Brown's idea of Britishness included tolerance, liberty, fairness and civic duty. Those last two characteristics were also cited by Blunkett in his portrait of the English. But as the much wiser Lord Parekh pointed out, these can't be uniquely British values, as that would mean that the French, Indians or Danes aren't tolerant, liberal or fair.
British romance writers are generally unremittingly serious, while American authors depend more on wisecracking dialogue. The laconic humour in Baby Down Under (a characteristic Charlton shares with many others, including Marion Lennox) also distinguishes her writing as Australian. (2004: 259)She also reports that
Among the characteristics attributed by Australian writers to both hero and heroine are egalitarianism, independence of spirit, a sense of fair play and a sense of humour, as well as qualities which Lucy Walker might characterise as imperturbability and informality and later writers call being laid-back. At a writers’ forum [...] in 1999, one novelist commented that:Personally I haven't noticed many British-authored heroines pouting and walking off in a huff. Is this because I haven't been paying attention, or because I haven't been reading the books which feature these heroines? Or is it because whichever Australian novelist made the comments has a certain idea about how Australians differ from British people in general? There's no doubt that there are stereotypes about 'Poms', but whether many British people would recognise themselves in the stereotype is another matter. And I'm fairly sure that many, many British women would 'say it like it really is' rather than huff and pout.in confrontational situations between the hero and heroine, the heroine in a book by a British author is most likely to ‘pout and walk off in a huff without saying anything,’ whereas the Australian heroine is most likely to ‘tell the hero to get stuffed and say it like it really is.’ (2004: 259)
I suspect that there are differences between authors in terms of how aware they are of their own national identity and the extent to which they wish to promote/celebrate them. In 1957 Alan Boon (of Mills & Boon)
sent a copy of [Joyce] Dingwell’s eighth book, The Girl from Snowy River, to the Australian Minister for Immigration, with the comment, ‘We feel it is good propaganda for immigration.’ Dingwell [Mills & Boon's first Australian author] and her contemporary [and fellow Australian], Lucy Walker, both specialised in British heroines and wrote for a British readership. What they told their readers about Australia at a time of high interest in migration was therefore of considerable significance. (Flesch 2004: 276)Nowadays Harlequin has a specifically American line, targeted at the American market, Harlequin American Romance, with guidelines which specify that 'it's important that these stories have a sense of adventure, optimism and a lively spirit—they're all the best of what it means to be American!' Yet there are also many differences within America, and some authors prefer to celebrate their particular region. BelleBooks, for example 'specializes in upbeat, sentimental, traditional fiction about life in the South. [...] we are primarily interested in gentle, wholesome stories about contemporary Southern life from the 1930s onward'. Here's a short, romantic story, Sweet Hope, by one of their authors, Deborah Smith, which has an extremely strong sense of place and of local traditions and characteristics.
Going back down under, but to New Zealand this time, Cheryl Sawyer's short story From Whence The Music Came was written 'partly in tribute to the love story of Hinemoa and Tutanekei'. The last sentence is: 'he knew what it meant to her to place her hands on each side of his face, kiss his eyelids and say his name, and press her lips to the mouth from whence the music came'. While it's easy to appreciate the romance, a reader can't fully understand the significance of the heroine's actions without knowing the story of Hinemoa and Tutanekei. Parts of it are referred to in 'From Whence The Music Came' but it's related in full here.
So, do romances often reflect the nationalities of their authors? And if, as in the case of the Australian authors writing for editors in America, Canada and the UK, the novels are edited and widely read abroad, does this affect the writing? Does writing for an international audience make authors tone down national differences because different nationalities of readers have different preferences?
- Flesch, Juliet, 2004. From Australia with Love: A History of Modern Australian Popular Romance Novels (Fremantle, Western Australia: Curtin University Press).
The first photo is a panorama of Uluru (Australia) at sunset, from Wikipedia. The second is another panorama, this time of 'Sydney Opera House viewed from the water with the city skyline behind', again from Wikipedia. I chose them to demonstrate visually the variety to be found in the Australian landscape, and, in this case, between rural and urban, as well as between the outback and the coast. The photos of locations in the UK aren't panoramas, so I had to include them in a slightly larger size so that the details would be visible. This is no reflection on the relative size or merits of the UK and Australia. The first UK photo is of the village green in Comberton, Cambridgeshire, also from Wikipedia. It's in marked contrast to the Norman Foster design of London's City Hall, from Wikipedia.
Details of the Creative Commons licenses for all the photos can be found on Wikipedia, on the pages I've linked to for each photo.
I tend to think the differences are smaller between readers, or authors, of different nationality than between publishing industries and marketing trends.
ReplyDeleteNowadays Harlequin has a specifically American line, targeted at the American market, Harlequin American Romance, with guidelines which specify that 'it's important that these stories have a sense of adventure, optimism and a lively spirit—they're all the best of what it means to be American!'
That's an interesting change, as in the past almost all Harlequin/M&B novels in the US were British or Australian. Those were the bulk of what I knew as "romance" in the 1980s-90s. The ones I read tended to feature British doctors and tycoons, and Australian doctors, ranchers, or tycoons (even some cowboy-or-soldier-like "troubleshooters"). In short, I think many of those British & Aussie M&Bs were probably similar to what you're describing in the American Harlequins today. (I haven't read category romance in a number of years, so I'm guessing based on your description.)
If books that get published were entirely consumer-driven, one could draw some fascinating comparisons between the Harlequin lines. However, given that Harlequin has explicitly defined the style they want in their American Romance line, they've predetermined a lot of differences between the lines. (Note: that's Harlequin's definition of a romance line, not necessarily closely related to the reality of being American, nor to a consistent national mythos).
It's interesting that the older British/Aussie M&Bs coexisted for so long in the US alongside the American-set categories, e.g. Silhouette and Loveswept. I wouldn't be surprised if Harlequin created the "American" line specifically to compete more directly with those other publishers. (I thought many of the Loveswepts were extremely well written and edited, so I imagine Harlequin felt some pressure.)
That said, there certainly are different national mythologies, both about one's home country and about other nations (e.g. your comment that "I am prepared to accept... that the way masculinity is constructed in US society differs from that in the UK. It's not that long since you had a Wild West"). I read an interesting article last year on the British love of films set in the American West, and American TV shows such as The Dukes of Hazzard. I have a feeling that a Wild West cowboy is equally exotic to many American readers as to a British reader. But as you noted, regional culture varies enormously in the US.
However, the accuracy of those national and international mythologies is shaky. National character or taste is tricky to assess, in part because the media often used for the assessment can be both determinants and reflections of taste. (e.g. the Harlequin guidelines above.) National character was an enormous debate during the 18th C, and again after WW II--most of those studies look very naive and over-general with hindsight, but they're the root of many of our national stereotypes today. New methods in psychology and anthropology have led to a new generation of studies, e.g. this article in Science:
A. Terracciano et al. 7 Oct 2005. "National Character Does Not Reflect Mean Personality Trait Levels in 49 Cultures". Science, Vol 310, Issue 5745, p.96-100.
Abstract:
Most people hold beliefs about personality characteristics typical of members of their own and others' cultures. These perceptions of national character may be generalizations from personal experience, stereotypes with a "kernel of truth," or inaccurate stereotypes. We obtained national character ratings of 3989 people from 49 cultures and compared them with the average personality scores of culture members assessed by observer ratings and self-reports. National character ratings were reliable but did not converge with assessed traits. Perceptions of national character thus appear to be unfounded stereotypes that may serve the function of maintaining a national identity. (emphasis mine)
A couple paragraphs on what they assessed:
Beliefs about distinctive personality characteristics common to members of a culture are referred to as national character (1) or national stereotypes (2–4). National stereotypes include beliefs about social, physical, and mental characteristics, but the present article focuses on personality traits. Several factors are thought to influence these beliefs. They may be generalizations based on observations of the personality traits of individual culture members. They may be inferences based on the national ethos, as revealed in socioeconomic conditions, history, customs, myths, legends, and values. They may be shaped by comparisons or contrasts with geographically close or competing cultures. Stereotypes are oversimplified judgments, but if they have some "kernel of truth" (5), national character should reflect the average emotional, interpersonal, experiential, attitudinal, and motivational styles of members of the culture. . .
The primary question this study was designed to address is whether... perceptions of national character accurately reflect aggregate judgments of individual personality traits. A first examination of the data shows one respect in which they are clearly different: There is a much greater range of variation across cultures in perceived traits than in assessed traits. For example, the typical German-speaking Swiss is thought to score 28 T score points higher on conscientiousness than the typical Indonesian, but the largest difference on observer-rated conscientiousness between any two cultures was only 8 T score points. Thus, if national stereotypes are accurate at all, they clearly exaggerate real differences.
There are some interesting questions in this, Laura.
ReplyDeleteWhile I do think there are, in general terms, some differences between the markets which are likely to be influenced by cultural perspectives, there are probably some layers to be 'unpacked' as well. For example, to what extent were some of the earlier Australian authors, such as Joyce Dingwall and Lucy Walker, crafting their image of 'Australia' for a British market, rather than an Australian one? In the period of the 1960s/early 1970s, so many of the heroines were 'English roses' transplanted to a harsher Australian environment, (or a rugged, isolated New Zealand one) there could well be an argument that the books are at least as, if not more so, influenced by a 'British' sense of identity as an 'Australian' one.
Those romances were the ones I grew up reading, along with many British-set Mills and Boons. I'm not as familiar (yet) with the evolution of Australian-set romance during the 1980s and 1990s - but as these were predominantly still targetted to the British market, that influence has to be taken into account. HMB Australia has only in the past few months appointed an acquiring editor in Sydney, (they've never had one here before, as far as I'm aware), and Australian publishers have (until very recently) shown no interest in romance, so it must be borne in mind that Australian romance writers have always been writing for overseas publishers and markets - initially the UK, and in the past decade also the US market, particularly for single title.
What this means is that, unlike the mainstream Australian literary tradition, the Australian romance genre tradition is not located uniquely within an Australian market, but rather has to straddle across cultures - and has always done so.
To what extent that impacts on the ways in which authors write, and how they choose to represent Australia and Australians, is a question that perhaps only individual authors can answer. (I'll mention this discussion to others and invite their thoughts.)
In my own writing, I have been conscious of writing primarily for a North American audience, although I am also committed to portraying a reality (as I experience and know it) of regional Australia rather than a stereotypical, tourist-style view. However, that portrayal of 'reality' IS influenced both by the knowledge of the audience (potentially) reading it, and also by the expectations of the sub-genre which is predominantly a North American cultural form. I've definitely broken rules and done many things 'my' way, and I'm certainly influenced by Australian literary and cultural traditions (and specific 'literary' authors), but I confess that when an Australian publisher very recently asked to see the manuscript, my first panicked thought was that I hadn't written an Australian novel. My second thought was a more reasoned 'Yes, I have - they just don't publish ones like this here', but it brought home to me the extent of the exile of the romance genre from the Australian publishing world. Change is now starting to happen, quite probably due to the success of Australian single-title authors overseas, such as Anne Gracie, Stephanie Laurens, Keri Arthur, and Anna Campbell. How that evolves, and how that impacts on the ways in which Australian romance authors write the genre, will be fascinating to watch.
I really should reread the original post before commenting! I read it, then went off and did other things for a while, then commented, and only afterwards realised you'd actually said many of those things, anyway.
ReplyDeleteOops :-) Sorry, Laura.
In the period of the 1960s/early 1970s, so many of the heroines were 'English roses' transplanted to a harsher Australian environment
ReplyDeleteThat's very interesting, as I read some Australian Harlequins in the... early '90s? that seemed to be reacting against that. Not that I was aware of the 1960s/70s history, but I noticed that a number of books featured a first wife, or rival, or some type of spoilsport, from England. In the end she always proved too fragile or too "big city" to survive the Outback, or was a bitch, or simply didn't understand the Australian hero the way the local girl did.
in the past almost all Harlequin/M&B novels in the US were British or Australian.
ReplyDeleteYes, you're right. In her introduction to North American Romance Writers (1999), Kay Mussell writes that:
In 1981, when Simon & Schuster launched Silhouette Books to challenge Harlequin’s domination of the market for short, sweet romance novels (often called “category romances”), most forms of the romance genre derived from British models and most writers hailed from Great Britain or the Commonwealth. Harlequin, a Canadian firm based in Toronto, did not at that time publish its own books at all. Instead, its entire list of paperback romances consisted of reprints of novels that were originally acquired, edited, and published by the British firm of Mills and Boon. As for the other romance subgenres, the lone exceptions to British dominance were the adventurous, sexy novels sometimes called erotic romances or “bodice rippers”, which had come to prominence in the previous decade. (1)
the firm’s limitation of authors to those from Britain and the Commonwealth was apparently deliberate. According to American writers who tried to break into the market in the late 1970s, the firm showed little interest in recruiting writers from North America or in expanding the typical settings of their books into North American locales. (2-3)
When Silhouette was established in the early 1980s, that led to greater competition in the US market and "Harlequin entered the contest with its own series of Harlequin American Romances, with American authors and settings, to compete directly with Silhouette." (5)
the accuracy of those national and international mythologies is shaky. National character or taste is tricky to assess, in part because the media often used for the assessment can be both determinants and reflections of taste.
Yes, but I wasn't thinking about personality traits/"national character" because I don't really think it exists and is more about stereotyping than an accurate reflection of real difference. I was thinking about factors which affect the way a particular cultural group/state/nation will tend to view particular social issues. For example, in the UK we have a National Health Service which has very broad support from people in all the political parties. The idea of universal health care, free at the point of delivery, is one that isn't contested much (though there have been some changes round the edges, e.g. in dental care). That will affect plots set in the UK, and it also has a knock-on effect with regards to the tax system and perhaps has other, less tangible/measurable consequences.
Another obvious difference is our political system, in which there are more than 2 main parties, and in which, despite New Labour, you can still find a few elected politicians who'd describe themselves as "socialists."
Then there are the differences over gun control. Again, that has a big impact on storylines, and I think it affects attitudes too.
I'll stop there, but there are lots of other differences like the ones I've mentioned and they can affect plots in an obvious way (e.g. the hero in a UK romance is highly unlikely to carry a gun) and in more subtle ones.
HMB Australia has only in the past few months appointed an acquiring editor in Sydney
That's a really exciting development, Bron. Thanks for sharing that information.
However, that portrayal of 'reality' IS influenced both by the knowledge of the audience (potentially) reading it, and also by the expectations of the sub-genre which is predominantly a North American cultural form
Thanks for explaining in some detail how very complex these influences/reactions to perceptions of what the intended audience wants can be.
Even before Mills & Boon were taken over by Harlequin, British authors had to take into account sensibilities in the Irish market, for example (I can't find a reference for this, but I'm reading McAleer's Passion's Fortune and I'm sure it's in there somewhere). And even nowadays in the US, American authors sometimes take into account the (perceived?) preferences of the audience So I think even for authors who think of themselves as writing mainly for readers from the same cultural background there's still some awareness of potential differences and/or some other markets.
The question of how much the texts influence the consumers, and how much the real and perceived wishes of the consumers influence the production of the texts is a fascinating one.
"The question of how much the texts influence the consumers, and how much the real and perTheceived wishes of the consumers influence the production of the texts is a fascinating one."
ReplyDeleteYes, and I wonder if this is the same process that could be otherwise described and analyzed in terms of the relationship between the text and the reader. In other words, do all the terms of critical analysis change when we talk about "consumers," etc. rather than "readers," etc. Is it a different experience to read a good book rather than to consume a produced text? Is the reader influenced more by the text or the text by the reader? Is that the same kind of question as the one you are asking?
Is it a different experience to read a good book rather than to consume a produced text?
ReplyDeleteI was using the term "consumers" in this context as synonymous with "readers." I maybe should have been a bit more careful, given the propensity critics of the genre have had to suggest that because romances, particularly Harlequin Mills & Boons, are "packaged" in particular ways and often sold in series, they're not "literature", just "products." Radway, for example, wrote that:
Harlequin operates on the assumption that a book can be marketed like a can of beans or a box of soap powder. Its extraordinary profit figures convincingly demonstrate that books do not necessarily have to be thought of and marketed as unique objects but can be sold regularly and repetitively to a permanent audience on the basis of brand-name identification alone. (39)
I think Radway's wrong that Harlequin Mills & Boon romances are sold just on the basis of recognition of the HM&B name, because readers have clear preferences regarding favourite authors, and favourite novels by particular authors.
Usually I write about "readers" but in this particular instance I was thinking of Glen Thomas's research, as reported by Sarah, who gave a brief description of the paper he presented at the PCA conference this year, and that affected my vocabulary. Here's a bit of Sarah's report:
Thomas discussed romance as an industry, rather than as literary practice. He examines the way in which romances are produced, published, marketed, and consumed. First, he discussed the stereotypes of the industry of romance: romance writing is easy work, romance publishers will publish almost anything, and romance readers are idiots. To counter these stereotypes, he employed a theory about the "citizen reader," in which consumers are empowered and make their own decisions in which consumption is action rather than behavior. [...] Thomas argues that production and consumption of romance is a bottom-up model where publishers and writers respond to the wants and desires of readers with a speed not replicated in other publishing fields. Rather than having something wrong with them, romance readers produce exactly the romances they want to read and reading and writing are inter-related products.
Not having been there, and not having read any of Glen's papers, I can't really comment on this except to say that I don't think of romances as products produced in response to consumer demand. Having read quite a lot of comments written by authors, I've seen far too many of them talking about "books of their hearts" and "bleeding onto the page" to believe that, and I think of romances as "texts", "novels" or "books" (I tend to use these interchangeably) but not "products" because that might suggest that they were mass-produced objects.
That said, authors do tend to want to earn some money, there are market trends, and writers are often aware of them and publishers certainly respond to them.
Radway, Janice. Reading the Romance: Women, Patriarchy, and Popular Literature. 1984. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1991.
What a fascintating post.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed reading it.
Thanks, Anne. I'm glad you enjoyed it.
ReplyDeleteI've been thinking about what you said here, RfP:
ReplyDeleteThat said, there certainly are different national mythologies, both about one's home country and about other nations (e.g. your comment that "I am prepared to accept... that the way masculinity is constructed in US society differs from that in the UK. It's not that long since you had a Wild West").
I've been wondering if maybe I needed to clarify what I meant by that. When I referred to the Wild West it wasn't because that's my image of what Americans are currently like (in fact, from what I can tell, the Wild West really wasn't the way it's been portrayed in most movies. There aren't enough black and hispanic cowboys, for example, in the movies: "According to the highest estimate, the trail drives north from Texas (1866 to 1895) employed about 63 percent white, 25 percent black, and 12 percent Mexican or Mexican-American cowboys." (Slatta).
What I meant was that I think the image, or "mythology" as you put it, of the cowboy hero exists and it links manliness to the use of guns: "most historians see the cowboy of the Old West as THE defining hero of 20th-century America. He's used to sell everything from soap to hats. He is apparently also an ideal American for anti-gun control groups; gun shows and gun advertising promote guns using a distinctively Old West flavor." (Collins).
I think I understood you.
ReplyDeleteWhat I meant was that I think the image... of the cowboy hero exists and it links manliness to the use of guns.... "He is apparently also an ideal American for anti-gun control groups"
Hmm. I don't want to derail your topic here, but I think this relates to your next post on the Krahn novel as well.
I agree that the cowboy hero is linked to manliness. But I would say the cowboy is as emblematic of an independent, frontiersman attitude and wide-open spaces as of guns. There are still cowboys in the US; in fact they're still quite romanticized. But they're primarily known to the public for rodeos, livestock, and miles of fencing--rather than guns. (Granted, some kids still like to dress up in boots and, if the parents allow it, toy gun belt :)
I'm not arguing that there's no Wild West shoot-em-up mythos. But I don't think an association with six-guns blazing at high noon is the only message in a cowboy ad. Sometimes it is, of course. But there's also a rhetorical value. Even the more dramatic Wild West figures are idealized not only as gunslingers but as Robin Hoods, Moriartys, honest sheriffs, daredevils, vigilantes, stoics.... As much a cult of personality as one of violence. (The hero in Patricia Gaffney's Outlaw in Paradise epitomizes this: he's not a gunslinger but he emulates one by cultivating a scary/cool demeanor.)
In many cases where that cowboy "type" is evoked, I'd interpret the message as a more direct instruction about masculinity: Be tough, independent, outwardly unemotional, fair, physical, and hold on to what's yours. It's through that last that I think the gun message comes in, by trying to link "property rights" with the "right to bear arms" via the idea of a man defending his home. (The two ideas are hot-button Constitutional issues that sometimes dovetail but sometimes are at odds.)
This may be a case where a national mythology can be slightly undifferentiable from the outside. I wonder whether Australia has a similarly dichotomous view of the cowboy. Though as I said above, regional attitudes vary enormously in the US, so my views on these two aspects of the cowboy may simply reflect a particular slice of Americana.
But I would say the cowboy is as emblematic of an independent, frontiersman attitude and wide-open spaces as of guns. [...] But I don't think an association with six-guns blazing at high noon is the only message in a cowboy ad
ReplyDeleteI wasn't really thinking of "six-guns blazing at high noon", I was thinking more of the way in which the cowboy's gun can in some ways be seen as a symbol of his independence, freedom and ability to live on the frontier. He isn't necessarily dependent on others to administer justice, and particularly not dependent on others to protect him.
Here's a quotation which suggests how the gun, and the use of the gun are tied in with other values, and with the representation of masculinity:
In classical Hollywood cinema, the cowboy was a fearless man of character, the rugged exemplar of manly virtue (but always courtly toward women), laconic and spare, reluctant to draw his gun but deadly once aroused, wielding force in a morally climactic act of (minimal) violence to do justice and save the community from the chaos and barbarism of the outside wilderness. The Western also depicted and mythologized the march of hardy pioneers, conquering mighty obstacles (rivers, mountains, storms, Indians) to plant free communities across a vast continent of majestic beauty that symbolized God’s providence for the young nation. (Warren 2003)
According to the description of Abigail A. Kohn's Shooters: Myths and Realities of America's Gun Cultures, "values such as individualism, toughness, and liberty are intricately linked with the gun".
And here's another quotation:
The heroic ideal of the cowboy, the freedom his position allowed him, has been celebrated in film after film, yet such freedom and heroism are obviously not literally available to most urban Americans. The cowboy myth propounds an ideal of justice based upon moral, rather than legal, truth, a kind of six-gun (or shot-gun) justice which, when perverted, can become intolerant
and oppressively authoritarian. (Sullivan 849)
And yet another, this time with more focus on masculinity and guns:
author, teacher and radio host Michael Dyson says, “When you think about American society, the notion of violent masculinity is at the heart of American identity.” From the outlaw cowboy in American history to the hypermasculine thug of gangster rap, violent masculinity is an enduring symbol of American manhood itself. (PBS)
Sorry to stick in so many quotations, but I think they're expressing the nexus of ideas which lie behind why I think of American heroes in romance as being linked to the gun, which, as suggested in the quotations, symbolises ideals about American manhood.
I don't want to derail your topic here, but I think this relates to your next post on the Krahn novel as well.
Please do go ahead and say more about how this relates to the discussion about Krahn's novel. I haven't mentioned it before, but there's gun-use in the Krahn too, and the way it happens seems to me to echo what we're discussing here.
At the beginning of the book the hero is identified as being very British and, as a servant who folds socks, not exactly the embodiment of masculinity. He, in fact, depends on the heroine to protect him with her gun:
" 'It so happens, I'm not carrying a gun.'
The news, delivered in his customary tight-jawed tones, rasped her last intact nerve. It was all she could do to keep from punching him.
'Then it's a good thing I am.' " (57)
"Under his widening eyes, she removed a small revolver from the holster strapped to her thigh and inspected the chambers. [...] 'You'd better stay behind me,' she ordered." (75)
Being with Cordelia, however "reminded him he was a man (61, italics in the original). Goodnight would seem to become more manly (since he's reminded that he's a "man", less British (he comes to reject the stereotype of Britishness with which he has been associated), and more willing to carry and use a gun as the novel progresses. In the final showdown with Castille there's a gun-battle, in which Goodnight makes repeated use of his gun, rescuing Cordelia who has been deprived of hers.
Sullivan, Tom R. "Easy Rider: Comic Epic Poem in Film." The Journal of Popular Culture 3.4 (1970): 843–850.
Pardon the long pause.
ReplyDeleteAmerican heroes in romance as being linked to the gun, which, as suggested in the quotations, symbolises ideals about American manhood.
I'm certain that's true--as I said above, sometimes the gun connection is very direct. I didn't mean to argue otherwise, and I think my 2nd-to-last paragraph echoes some of what you're saying. I do, however, think there's some additional nuance there that's a more political take on the cowboy, open range, "freedom" and the "good old days", property rights, etc.
I do, however, think there's some additional nuance there that's a more political take on the cowboy, open range, "freedom" and the "good old days", property rights, etc.
ReplyDeleteIs this a left/right, liberal/conservative sort of "political take" you're talking about?
I was wondering if there were any parallels with the way that "family values" got appropriated by the Tory party in the UK, for a while, and came across this Wikipedia entry, which I thought was funny: "Family values was a recurrent theme in the Conservative government of John Major. Predictably, it caused considerable embarrassment whenever a member of the Government was found to be having an affair." The Dick Cheney hunting incident also seems to have been a source of political humour, but I didn't get the impression that it had an equivalent effect on his party's attitude towards gun control.
Sorry I missed your reply, again--my comment tracker is balking at Blogger sites.
ReplyDeleteIs this a left/right, liberal/conservative sort of "political take" you're talking about?
In part, yes. Not always predictably in one direction or the other, but certainly evocative of such politics.
I was wondering if there were any parallels with the way that "family values" got appropriated by the Tory party in the UK, for a while
Yes, that's the thing--on the face of it these images may align tightly with a particular politics, but in reality it's hard to predict people's associations. E.g. gun laws, "open space", and "property rights" can cut across political divides, creating strange bedfellows. Sometimes the issues work against each other--numerous legislative debates and lawsuits involve guns vs property scenarios like:
A prizes his right to bear arms and defend his home; A invokes property rights to prevent B from bearing arms into A's home.
The debate is rarely that down-to-earth, though; it instantly escalates to issues of constitutionality. That's why I say these images evoke political rhetoric about freedom and rights, possibly even more than they evoke a particular stance.
(There's also some interesting dovetailing--e.g. hunters, farmers, and environmental lobbyists sometimes align on issues like property rights, or hunting rights, or ecosystem damage.)
BTW, today's Freakonomics blog talked a little about the variety of owners of, and attitudes toward owning, "Guns in America". One of the people mentioned bought a gun because he lost his larynx to cancer and can no longer yell for help! That's a motivation I'd never thought of.