From LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU Thu Jul 12 20:29:12 2001 Date: Mon, 9 Jul 2001 07:40:07 -0500 From: "L-Soft list server at UIC (1.8d)" To: Laura Quilter Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF-LIT LOG0012D" ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 01:15:47 -0800 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Joyce Jones Subject: BDG Wicked Maire Shanahan writes: Subject: Dawn - Wild Seed, and further comment on Wicked "As I read the further comments on Wicked, it spurs me on to develop my own opinion of the book further. People have commented on it seeming rushed at the end, or that some e events ie Elphaba's operations on the monkeys, and losing her son etc are not in keeping with her character earlier in the book. To me, this was in keeping with the message of the book. Which to my mind, was to examine the motivation of a figure whose actions are clearly evil. I suppose it is a measure of Maguire's success, that the things we would have seen to be clearly evil in a book such as the original Oz book, ie sending her animals to kill Dorothy, sewing the wings on to the monkeys; we are able to some degree to excuse her in Wicked. I sort of think that Maguire put those bits in, ie Elphaba's operations on the monkeys, so that we would have to realise by the end of the book, that her actions were finally evil- just as her public persona is ie 'The Wicked Witch of the West'. He wasn't trying to show that Elphaba was not really bad, just misunderstood, he was trying to ask- if someone starts of good, but has terrible things happen to them, and finally, with the best of intentions, commits evil acts, are they themselves evil?" I never at any point thought that Maguire was trying to say that Elphaba had become evil. You go on to compare Elphaba with Hitler saying in effect he also had had a difficult childhood so should he be excused for the evil things he did. Talk about thinking way out of the box, my mind just hadn't stretched so far. Yes, bad things happened around Elphaba, but the book, I believe, was trying to show that the Wizard and Madame Morrible were engaged in evil acts which most of society just didn't see. Would it have been less evil just to let the evil politicians succeed in taking over all the land? I think there is less personal damage, perhaps, to political capitulation. If the citizenry just happily accepted the loss of freedom accorded to themselves then I guess no blood need be shed. People fight, it gets them and their sympathizers, and sometimes just innocent bystanders killed. So you're saying it's evil to fight evil because someone can be hurt? Hitler was evil. He purposefully dehumanized, enslaved and killed people in order to further his political aims. Elphaba made some strange choices. She ran around confused and alone knowing only that it was necessary to stem the tide of oppression from Oz, but not knowing how to do it. How do we stay sane if we know we must fight the inevitable? (Is this an existentialist book?) She knew Dorothy was sent from Oz to get the grimoire. She knew it would somehow aid the Wizard in his oppressive dominance over all. She identified with Dorothy, but knew she had to be stopped. How in the world can you equate her with Hitler? Joyce ------------------------------------------------------ This is the FEMINISTSF-LIT listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF-LIT Contact FEMINISTSF-LIT-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Wed, 27 Dec 2000 05:04:36 EST Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Maire Shanahan Subject: Re: BDG Wicked MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="US-ASCII" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Dear Joyce, I'm sorry, I don't recognise any of my comments in your arguments against them, perhaps you have misunderstood? For example- that I have 'equated' Elphaba with Hitler- I think that you can only have thought that was my intention if you were not only misunderstanding, but doing so deliberately. Maire ------------------------------------------------------ This is the FEMINISTSF-LIT listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF-LIT Contact FEMINISTSF-LIT-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 11:15:25 -0800 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Joyce Jones Subject: Re: BDG Wicked From: Maire Shanahan writes: "Dear Joyce, I'm sorry, I don't recognise any of my comments in your arguments against them, perhaps you have misunderstood? For example- that I have 'equated' Elphaba with Hitler- I think that you can only have thought that was my intention if you were not only misunderstanding, but doing so deliberately. Maire" Well, I may have misunderstood you, but not "deliberately" so. I was referring to the post quoted below. Joyce "Her obsession with Dorothy, attempts to kill her as Dorothy arrives, and careless throwing away of her animals lives in pursuit of Dorothy's death. But when you've been there from the start, through her childhood as a lonely green child with difficult parents, the blossoming at college, the idealism, the horror at the oppression and prejudice she sees about her, the crushing loss of her only real love- I suppose it is hard to condemn. But... does that mean you wouldn't condemn Hitler if he was your brother- or son? Is it fair to Elphaba's son to excuse her appalling neglect of him?" ------------------------------------------------------ This is the FEMINISTSF-LIT listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF-LIT Contact FEMINISTSF-LIT-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 14:50:16 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Jessie Stickgold-Sarah Subject: Re: BDG Wicked In-Reply-To: Your message of "Thu, 28 Dec 2000 11:15:25 PST." <002b01c07102$88627100$2aaaea18@lvcm.com> An interesting interpretation--I read Maire's comment to mean that we are always tempted to excuse inexcusable behavior in the face of horrible suffering (by the badly-behaved person); but that sometimes this compassion is too easy an out, some things really are unforgivable and evil, no matter what. We may disagree as to where that line is drawn, but I expect we all believe that at some point a quantitative difference becomes qualitative. In other words, being "a little worse" goes over some line and becomes inexcusable. For some people, striking another person in anger is too much. For some it's the scale that matters, for others the type of action. Imagine balancing the death of three soldiers against the beating of one child. Three deaths versus one beating? Killers versus an innocent? What if the soldiers are drafted and the child picked the fight? I'm extrapolating now from Maire's words, but this seems like one of the big philosophical questions of Wicked (which I liked for its playfulness, not its philosphy, oh well): how should we think about people who do things that are bad and wrong? Jessie Joyce wrote: >Well, I may have misunderstood you, but not "deliberately" so. I was >referring to the post quoted below. Maire: "Her obsession with Dorothy, attempts to kill her as Dorothy arrives, and careless throwing away of her animals lives in pursuit of Dorothy's death. But when you've been there from the start, through her childhood as a lonely green child with difficult parents, the blossoming at college, the idealism, the horror at the oppression and prejudice she sees about her, the crushing loss of her only real love- I suppose it is hard to condemn. But... does that mean you wouldn't condemn Hitler if he was your brother- or son? Is it fair to Elphaba's son to excuse her appalling neglect of him?" ------------------------------------------------------ This is the FEMINISTSF-LIT listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF-LIT Contact FEMINISTSF-LIT-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems. ========================================================================= Date: Thu, 28 Dec 2000 22:22:19 -0500 Reply-To: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC Sender: Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Literature ON TOPIC From: Rose Reith Subject: Fwd: Oz. vs Narnia Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" ; format="flowed" > > >FYI: an article on Oz vs Narnia in Salon, the online magazine. >http://salon.com/books/feature/2000/12/28/baum/index.html > > -- Information is not knowledge. ~Caleb Carr, KILLING TIME ------------------------------------------------------ This is the FEMINISTSF-LIT listserve, intended only for discussion of feminism and Speculative Fiction. To unsubscribe from this listserve, send a message to LISTSERV@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU and in the body of the message say: unsubscribe FEMINISTSF-LIT Contact FEMINISTSF-LIT-request@LISTSERV.UIC.EDU if there are problems.