#but he's objectively one of the least complex and deep characters of the entire saga | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

rgmonzon-folio · 5 years

Text

From Glass Slippers to Lightsabers

At the tender age of three, I have usurped my parents and became Supreme Lord of the Television set. Under my command, the T.V. blared the Disney Channel 24/7. From what I can pluck from my foggy memories, I would sit at the lowest step of our staircase, swivel the big, black box that was our T.V. to face me, and watch as it blared to a fantastical life with a press of a button.

I hummed along to the music my favorite Disney princesses would sing. I clasped my hands to my mouth at jaw-dropping twists and turns reminiscent to Aladdin’s carpet rides. My heart would pound along with the drum beats as Mulan fought China’s foes. I was completely enthralled in worlds within the black box, which kept me from the lure of potential playmates in our neighborhood of back-to-back row houses. The rubbery clop-clop-clop of their slippers as they chased each other on the eskinita pavement and their shrill cries of taya! were drowned by the whimsical tunes I never grew tired of.

Within the confines of our white walls and beyond the fairy tale renditions of Disney, I learned to create worlds of my own. I learned I could fashion my pambahay garb into gowns as magical as Belle’s and Cinderella’s, I learned to will images and drawings from books to come to life and undertake adventures of their own - under my own terms.

I even learned, despite my still developing skill with my native tongue, to speak English. I pieced together the words Mickey Mouse and friends uttered with their animated actions, and built my vocabulary before I even started going to school. Growing up, my parents would remind me that in my pre-preschool age I would only occasionally ask them what certain words meant - and it wasn’t long before I could speak coherent English sentences on my own.

Language weaved itself into the fantastic world of moving images, and storytelling took to a whole new level. I knew what magic and adventure meant, and I loved it.

It wasn’t long before my parents updated my old, vandalized boxed set of Grimms’ fairy tales - which was gifted to me during my first birthday. You could see it in an old photograph, where I was in the living room in blue jumpers, huddled with a pile of dolls and toys, beside me was the boxed set which I now wish I had preserved better. Luckily my parents eventually gave me other storybooks to enjoy, which got me into drawing as soon as I got school notebooks and crayons with blank pages at the back. At five, despite my scratchy handwriting and drawing skills, I wrote my first story, about Hello Kitty who dug too deep into her garden and found relics of an old world.

Of course you’d think all of these would be an immense advantage once I stepped into school, but with my classmates speaking Tagalog, I only became acutely aware of how different I was. And with the fact that I didn’t interact as much with other children compared to my T.V. screen, social interaction made me want to duck my head into my blouse the way turtles hid in their shells.

But somehow my classmates’ parents knew I could speak English, and they found joy in making me translate phrases into the language, to my utmost embarrassment. They found me smart and gifted, despite never having been on top of the class. Apparently, speaking in English made you smart.

Whenever I was singled out, I would squirm and try to hide behind my mother’s legs, who would in turn coax me to entertain the people fascinated in me. But that made me speak less, in fear of making mistakes and seeming less brilliant than people set me out to be - a trait I still have traces of to this very day.

Going into grade one, I decided not to highlight my difference, much to my mother’s dismay. Everybody else spoke Tagalog, so why should I do otherwise? But for some reason I had been branded, and people could not forget.

I revealed myself in writing, even in my earliest essays. Perhaps this marks the start of my love of the craft and my dream to become a writer, my dream to make people feel what I felt when I read or watched a Disney classic.

I learned to watch more action-packed cartoons in grade school, which aired in the usual Disney Channel. I was then introduced to a new world of heroes. While I did not fully trade my princesses with caped superheroes and super spies, I learned to anticipate stories in sagas when I went home from my classes.

I got hooked on stories of boys and girls with magical powers who fought crime and the dark forces of evil. There’s an allure in the charming protagonists, like Jake Long - the American Dragon, who went to school like me, but would switch to their secret lives through a magical transformation sequence.

American Dragon is one of the most beloved cartoons of my childhood, one that made me faithfully await new episodes as they aired. Its story was more complex than my preschool line-up of shows, as Jake came from a lineage that could transform themselves into dragons, with the task of protecting the magical world from evil, whilst maintaining daily lives as mortals. Plus, Jake still had to go to school. He had a sweat deal.

In that show, evil didn’t simply come from ugly monsters and beasts, as is the usual depiction in fairy tales. There was also evil among the dragons that supposedly protected humans and magical creatures alike, and evil among humans and magical creatures who were supposed to be protected.

These just made me love the story more - sprinkle in the classic subplot of Jake falling in love with Rose, who happened to be of a human tribe sworn to rid the world of dragons like himself, and I was hooked. For a cartoon written for the grade school demographic it was strangely complex (the fact that the main character is a Chinese-American in New York, with an African-American and Caucasian best friend also made it culturally diverse!)

This made me want to write my own novel and work for Disney all the more.

At eleven years old, we finally got access to the internet, which utterly changed the game for me. I was used to appreciating my animated media all by myself, my only companion the white walls of our living room, our Japanese-themed portraits behind the T.V., our wooden sofas, and the cold, green tiles with wispy patterns on the floor.

Internet showed me other people’s feedback on my beloved childhood classics - the shows which honed my hopes and dreams to this very day. People actually hated High School Musical, and I found that utterly heartbreaking.

I’m not the least bit joking - my anger surged like boiling water in a kettle when I read youTube comments from crude teenagers unabashedly declaring the HSM sucked. It was corny and unrealistic.

And I could not have it.

In turn I did some bashing of my own when High School Musical’s biggest rival came out - Camp Rock. I hated the Jonas Brothers with a passion on the sole grounds that they threatened the popularity of the High School Musical cast (which is ironic, because I later on learned to love the brothers’ sitcom Jonas L.A.)

Upon discovering fanfiction, I even learned that my writing ability was heaps and bounds behind other people my age, and becoming a famed author and a Disney employee became bigger and bigger of a stretch.

In a nutshell, the internet ruined my life.

I even made it a point to avoid movie reviews of the films my favorite Disney actors would star in, in fear of the jolting pain and anger I would feel at the critics’ responses. That is until I matured, if only by a fracture of a degree, to try not to let these words hit me personally. In the first place, it was strange, since they were never really addressed to me, but to my favorite films and shows, and yet I would feel like they attacked my family with bolos.

Looking back on my pre-teen self makes me laugh, knowing how truly childish I was. Thankfully as i went into my later teens, I learned to accept criticism for my beloved films, after all, it is a basic requirement for a subject in college called English 103, or Critical Writing.

College had went out of its way to shatter many of my previous beliefs and providing me with lenses with which to view the world. With several workshop classes, I received criticism for my own works, which in turned helped my to hone my future projects. However, the attachment I felt, and still feel, towards my favorite films and shows is natural, as I write this very moment and trudge through the BA Communication Arts program because of them. I guess I just learned to accept their flaws when putting them under a critical lense.

I learned that Disney made better and better films because they learned from their criticisms. Had they not, girls would still be passively waiting in the towers their stepmothers locked them in for their princes to save them. Now we have Rapunzel in Tangled, a girl with agency who chose to climb down her tower to free herself from Mother Gothel’s abuses. Rapunzel became not a subordinate to her male love interest but a partner. We’re also blessed with Moana, a Polynesian heroine that depicts non-Eurocentric beauty, with her thicker limbs, her rounder face and nose, and her curly, windswept hair. She didn’t need a man to complete her.

Now I could say with ease that Cinderella had been sexist with lines like “Leave the sowing to the women!” Ariel in the Little Mermaid had absurd motivations, as she was willing to sacrifice her entire life for a stranger she’d just met, whose only known quality was his good looks. I do admit I still need work accepting that Mulan is sexist due to its adherence to the gender binary, this film is an absolute favorite, but I recognize I still need to be objective, as what the academe didn’t pay me to say.

And yes, I came to realize that High School Musical is unrealistic. Also, my English proficiency didn’t make me a smart student or a better person, as college slapped in my face. And I’m okay with that.

I am thoroughly relieved I moved on from my pre-teen phase. Now I have discovered more groundbreaking shows and films, which defy the standards of a hero (with the emergence of an anti-hero,) the binary opposition between good and bad (with morally ambiguous characters,) the very idea of storytelling (with experimental forms of film and stories,) and so much more.

Eventually I picked up a lightsaber with the Star Wars saga, which is a whole new epic experience, given the classic original trilogy and the mess of a prequel trilogy. It was a new brand of fantasy for me, yet still equipped with the epic adventures and heroes of my childhood. I am less protective of this series however, as I was before my childhood faves. I may have a crush on Anakin Skywalker, if only for his brooding looks, but I could still recognize the acting for him was flat and robotic. And while the prequel storyline had great potential, the execution was poor, specially with the script’s dialogue.

But that only prompted the creators to redeem the saga with an epic seventh episode, with a fantastic heroine in the form of Rey, a complex villain in the form of Kylo Ren, and a possibly gay romantic subplot between Finn and Poe.

In my journey from glass slippers to light sabers, I learned that being told that you suck could help you not to suck in the future. Criticisms for films, books, T.V. shows for that matter, aren’t meant to put them down, likewise workshops in writing classes aren’t meant to have your work’s flaws pointed out so you would quit writing forever. Criticism was meant to make the future body of art better, serving as reminders for creators not to make the same mistakes.

Right now, I’m glad professors and peers have told me what needed fixing in my writing classes throughout college. Otherwise, I wonder if I’d ever make it to my senior year...

#nonfiction

0 notes

sincerelybluevase · 7 years

Text

What I dislike about romance in YA fiction

Last month, I made a post about some of my favourite and most hated literary things related to romance. It was supposed to be a quick, tag-like post, but whilst writing it I realised that I actually had a lot to say about several aspects of romance. Tags are not the appropriate place to do so, so I figured I might as well make it into a post of its own and give it some well-deserved space. I decided to write about the way romance is portrayed in YA fiction, because a) I read quite a lot of YA, b) some of the things that irk me are very noticeable in YA. Please note that it is more than possible to write entire books about this topic, meaning that what I’ll write down here is going to be pretty succinct and not always as nuanced as I might want it to be. Note that I am not blaming people or judging people if they read some of the books I’m going to talk about and point out as having problematic aspects and find them highly enjoyable. I must also point out that I am aware that probably all of these problems are not limited to YA. In fact, you can find plenty of them in adult fiction, too. However, I have found that YA books tend to have tropes that are extremely prevalent, so much, in fact, that they can almost be seen as characteristics of YA. Some of those relate to romance, which means that it is appropriate for me to talk about them here. Now, with those safety warnings out of the way, let’s start.

It happens quite a lot that relationships in YA are not based on mutual equality. In fact, some of them can be downright abusive (but more about that later).

Relationships can be unequal in multiple ways. One of them is based on not seeing women as equals. Now, putting women on a pedestal or looking down on them as sluts, both putting them on another level than yourself, is a trend that goes back centuries. Just looking at the tradition of the Petrarchan sonnet shows us this (and highlights another problematic aspect of the way we perceive women, namely that they are somehow responsible and to blame if a man can’t get them). Freud coined a term for it, calling it the Madonna-whore complex. Though most of what Freud wrote is no longer used today, the Madonna-whore complex remains relevant and, sadly, highly prevalent. It actually encompasses a huge amount of tropes and can be used to explain why Edward is obsessed with Bella remaining a virgin in the Twilight-saga, why Marcie in the Hush Hush series is continuously ridiculed because of her sexuality, why it is continuously stressed how fragile and pure Juliette is in Shatter me, why Mal doesn’t want Alina to kill people, etc. This type of thinking is incredibly dangerous, because it doesn’t leave any room for seeing women as people. The Madonna-whore complex states that a woman is either good or bad, a virgin or a slut, someone to wed or to bed. A girl has to behave almost prudishly (without being a real prude, because that would be plain boring) to deserve the guy at the end of the story, but the guy rarely has to live up to similar expectations to deserve the girl. It infantilises women by completely ignoring that real women cannot be put into one of these categories, that they actually incorporate a space that falls somewhere in between. Again, infantilising women is a trend that spans decades (one only has to read a basic Victorian novels in which it is stressed how small and girlish and innocent the ‘good’ female characters are).

The next aspect that I want to discuss ties in with the entire concept of unequal relationships and shows a lack of respect, too: abusive behaviour. Not only are women often infantilized, they also have to put up with appalling behaviour that is often not described as such and, at times, even romanticized. Characters are touched or kissed or fondled without giving consent, often at inappropriate times, such as during a fight. It gets even worse when they are told that, deep down, they actually want this (The Twilight-saga is probably the most infamous example of this in YA. Actually, I think that everything problematic that I’ve discussed here+ some bonus content can be found in those books). This type of appalling behaviour does not end with touching; often, there is a psychological aspect to it, too. I think this is most often seen in love triangles, in which two male characters both manipulate their female object of desire by either telling her half-truths, lies, or withholding vital information, or treating her like she is too stupid to understand certain problems. The worst thing is that they often claim to give the girl time to make up her mind about who she wants to be with, though their actions state quite the opposite. The Masque of the Red Death duology provides a clear example of how these types of abusive behaviour can come together: Araby, the main character, struggles with her detachment from reality and her drug addiction. One of the two boys interested in her injects her with drugs against her explicit wish because he just knows so much better than she does that it will help her. Also, he withholds important intelligence, then blames his competitor when things go wrong. UGH.

Of course, not all romance in YA is this problematic. I would argue, though, that romance in YA can be rather unrealistic at times in several ways.

Firstly, a lot of books pretend that the relationship between the two main characters is based on destiny, the highest type of love there is, or plain old True LoveTM (Twilight, Fallen). Within the frame of the story, this may work. However, I find it problematic, because the main characters of YA tend to be around 16 years old and most relationships we have at that age tend not to survive into adulthood. That is OK; most of those relationships are a kind of trial, a test in which we learn to define what we want and don’t want in a relationship, what is acceptable and what is not, how much you have to take and how much you have to give. This is not to say that they are somehow less than relationships people have in later life (in fact, most people will remember their first relationship very vividly, as well as the strong emotions that went along with it). Of course, there are always people who end up staying with their childhood sweet-heart for the rest of their life. It must be noted, though, that this is rare. Portraying the relationships teenagers have as the highest kind of love there is 1)insulting to other kinds of love that are equally valid, 2)plain wrong, since many people will have more than one serious relationship in their lives, 3) as well as dangerous, because it implies that, as soon as your teenage relationship ends, your life’s purpose (or at least one of them) has somehow come to an end. This sounds highly dramatic, but I would like to point out that this is exactly how some books portray a break-up (New Moon is practically infamous because of it, but other books, such as the Trylle-trilogy, do it as well). It also implies that there is something wrong with you if you haven’t had a relationship before your teenage years end, even though there are plenty of people who haven’t really dated as teenagers, which is completely normal.

Secondly, there is the entire love-triangle aspect. It is dumb because it portrays women as objects to be bartered for, as well as highly unrealistic. Most people are happy when they find one guy or girl that is happy to have them. To have more than one fighting for your attention is almost the opposite of a problem (or would be, if it wasn’t so incredibly abusive).

So, why do we even have to care about all of this? Naturally, there is a point to my ranting, or I would not have written so much. Though YA is read by people from all types of age categories, it is a fact that a large part of the readership consists of young teenagers. Though I feel that a lot of teenagers are a lot more intelligent and perceptive than we as a society give them credit for, the fact remains that they are pretty impressionable. They are in a phase of their lives during which they become more and more self-aware as well as aware of the world around them, its conventions and norms and paradoxes. When abusive, unrealistic behaviour is presented as normal or even romanticized, they will not or only partly realize that this is not the way they themselves should behave. It becomes internalized, and once it becomes part of the way you think, it is very hard to get it out of your system.

Again, this is not a post to slander YA. There are books out there that subvert these tropes and do manage to paint a fairly positive picture of teenage romance. I just wish that there would be more.

#book tag #YA #I did not intend this to be so long

1 note · View note