{"id":14176,"date":"2013-12-05T07:00:52","date_gmt":"2013-12-05T07:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/?p=14176"},"modified":"2013-12-05T11:33:50","modified_gmt":"2013-12-05T11:33:50","slug":"hopeless-reimantic-presents-anita-blake-vampire-hunter-part-two","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2013\/12\/05\/hopeless-reimantic-presents-anita-blake-vampire-hunter-part-two\/","title":{"rendered":"Hopeless Reimantic Presents: Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter (Part Two)"},"content":{"rendered":"
The columnist after a long, hard day’s reading. Not pictured: my creeping sense of despair.<\/p><\/div>\n
CONTENT NOTE:<\/strong> Discussions herein of sexual assault, dubious
consent, mental health treated badly, homophobia, biphobia and slut-shaming.
Oh, and plenty of spoilers.<\/p>\n
Welcome back to
Hopeless Reimantic Presents<\/strong>! Last time we got our teeth into
Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter<\/strong><\/a>, and I found myself
actually saying some pretty positive things about the books.
(Honestly, I’m as surprised as you. My fourteen-year-old self is
throwing one hell of a sulk.) It’s not the full story, though,
and there’s still quite a lot about this series to
unpack.<\/p>\n
First of all, there’s something I need to make clear: as I
said in Part One<\/a>, I went into this review determined
not to talk about the series in relation to Laurell K. Hamilton
herself more than was necessary.<\/p>\n
I generally hold that unless an author has done something that I
can’t reconcile myself to morally, I don’t feel like
it’s my business to talk about their personal life when I am
supposed to be reviewing their books. And from what I’ve read
of Laurell K. Hamilton’s blog posts, she seems kind of
entitled and I find her annoying, but…well, let’s just
say that as far as I can tell she’s no Orson Scott Card. By
and large my problems with the ideas she puts across can easily be
expressed in criticism of her work rather than criticism of
her.<\/p>\n
I ran into some problems with this approach, to be sure; the
evidence for Anita Blake being the author’s avatar is pretty
compelling. But for the purposes of analysing the text, I’m
putting that debate to bed. From here on out, guys, they’re
just books, so if anyone is reading this expecting it to be a
catalogue of Ms Hamilton’s character flaws, well, it’s
not going to be. Hashtag sorry not sorry, or something.<\/p>\n
Oh, one more thing: I’m limiting myself to a maximum of one
book quotation per point here, because SEVENTEEN BOOKS LORD HAVE
MERCY.<\/p>\n
Okay! Let’s get started. Where were we? Was I wanting to tear
my eyes out? I think I was wanting to tear my eyes out.<\/p>\n
…I’m going to need to slip into a more concise format, I
think, or that’s just going to be the entire article. Here,
then, in no particular order, are My Main Problems with Anita Blake,
Vampire Hunter:<\/p>\n
She dates Richard, a werewolf, and then she gets engaged to
Richard, and\u00a0then<\/em> the vampire she’s been hanging out with
decides that he needs “equal time” to win her over,
or he’s got no choice but to duel Richard to the
death:<\/p>\n
“You have dated him for months, and I have said
little. Before you marry him, I want equal
time.”<\/p>\n
…<\/p>\n
“I’ve been trying to avoid you for months.
I’m not just going to give in now.”<\/p>\n
“Then I will start the music, and we will dance. Even
if I die, and you die. Richard will die first, I can promise
you that. Surely dating me is not a fate worse than
death.”<\/p>\n
– Laurell K. Hamilton,
The Lunatic Cafe<\/strong>, p.221.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
(I’m not so sure about that, dude.)<\/p>\n
There’s also the shapeshifter leopard who
basically just rapes her (it’s okay, she enjoys
it) and then is her mate and it’s all fine, and
the other shapeshifter leopard who is Terrifyingly
Submissive at her until she gives in (more on that
later). These are her four main men and, last I checked,
the various loves of her life.<\/p>\n
There are a couple of things at play here, and I can
intellectually grasp them both. One is that an easy way
to add darkness and tension to a story is to have your
main character interact with a world which doesn’t
recognise their morality, which is how we get all those
kind of racist “I was ravished by a
barbarian\/sheikh\/otherwise rich and dark-skinned
man” stories (remind me to talk to you about The Panther And The Pearl<\/strong><\/a> some time).
And that’s not necessarily a bad thing in a
fantasy world where you are dealing with beings that
might have witnessed the greater part of human
history. I do take the point that you might well not
care so much about pesky human morals when
you’ve been living off blood or sex or male
tears or whatever for about a thousand years.<\/p>\n
And, credit where it’s due, Laurell K.
Hamilton does make some effort to deal with the
effect this is having on Anita; she agonises, at
least initially, over the detachment she feels from
her humanity as she gets drawn deeper into the
preternatural world. Hamilton doesn’t really
take that conflict anywhere, which is a shame
because it makes the whole thing feel a bit too
insta-conflict for my liking, but she tries.<\/p>\n
The considerably more disturbing thing is the second
point, which is that this is supposed to be
hot<\/em>. We’ve touched on this before in
the column on alpha males<\/a>,
but one thing that I think I missed there is
actually what I find grossest about this
particular fantasy – that being threatened
or coerced, either physically or by other means,
into being with someone is supposed to be evidence
of part of a woman’s power and mystique.
It’s not that these guys are proto-rapists,
no – it’s that women are so damned
irresistible that they overwhelm men’s
judgement and common sense. Basically, they are
the full moon to every man’s boner werewolf<\/a> (link
NSFW).<\/p>\n
There is an element of pick-up artistry that
states that when you overcome LMR (last minute
resistance, usually to sex) you’re
actually doing the woman a favour, because
you’re taking the responsibility out of
her hands. She can’t be a slut, because
she’s not in control; you’re
preserving her purity while still giving her the
sex she wants. That is gross and messed-up and a
terrible bit of rape apologia, but it’s
the same kind of logic that I’m seeing
here; it’s a way to skirt around having
Anita own her own sexuality. She can’t
help it! She’s just got this
energy<\/em>!<\/p>\n
And on that note…<\/p>\n
It took me a while to realise this. I
started out with
Danse Macabre<\/strong>, but the more
of these books I read, the more I became
convinced that having lots of sex was
only okay for Anita Blake, and by
extension her harem of men, because
Anita Blake has sex because she somehow
has<\/em> to – which is a
pretty icky sentence to begin with, by
the way. <\/p>\n
Anita starts out the series not
believing in pre-marital sex. She
ends up having quite a lot of it,
but there’s never a sense that
she revises that belief, which would
be really interesting if it
didn’t have such weird
implications for the other women in
the books. Anita has sex because of
deep love, a deep sense of
obligation (erk) and\/or because she
is a succubus. Metaphysical events
or very strong emotion compel her to
bone, and the fact that she ends up
enjoying it immensely is somehow a
coincidence, which is possibly the
strangest permutation of the forced
seduction trope I’ve ever
seen. <\/p>\n
And even that would be okay, were it
not for the fact that every single
other woman in the books who has sex
for such a frivolous reason as the
fact she just enjoys it is painted
as either a) shallow and heinous, b)
mentally unstable, or c)
both.<\/p>\n
Which brings me neatly to:<\/p>\n
Basically every villain is crazy.
And there’s Nathaniel, her
second shapeshifter love interest,
who is super-submissive and
utterly traumatised by his past
and hey, did we mention he’s
kinky too and can take more pain
than anybody else? Because
he’s damaged?<\/p>\n
Urgh. If I had to hazard,
I’d say this follows a lot
of the same logic that we see in
point 1), but let’s just be
honest here; this isn’t just
offensive, it’s lazy
writing, in the same way that
blaming serious criminal offences
or terrorism on mental illness is
lazy journalism. It’s a way
to avoid grappling seriously with
what could actually be some pretty
compelling issues and it’s
depressing me. So let’s move
on to our final point:<\/p>\n
Hoo boy.<\/p>\n
This is a pretty interesting
one, actually, because the
characters around Anita Blake
actually call her on some of it,
and it doesn’t work. I
skipped a quotation for mental
illness and point 2, so we can
have two in here because
it’s my column and I make
the rules.<\/p>\n
1) Anita only has one dating experience that I would describe as
fully consensual.<\/h3>\n
2) There’s hella slut-shaming.<\/h3>\n
3) There is gratuitous use of mental
illness as a plot device.<\/h3>\n
4) Gender essentialism and
homophobia.<\/h3>\n