On Tue, 10 Jun 1997, DAVID CHRISTENSON wrote:
> -- [ From: David Christenson * EMC.Ver #2.5.3 ] --
>
> To help alleviate the quiet, I thought I'd quit lurking and shotgun-
> blast-out a batch of potential topics for the more learned members of
> this list (just about any member is more learned than I). This is all
> stuff I've been wondering about anyway.
>
You pulled me out of lurkdom as well :)
> - Recommended summer reading. (BTW, if summer reading must be "light,"
> is there such a thing as "light" feminist SF?)
>
I've been having a lot of fun with Laurell Hamilton's "Anita Blake,
Vampire Hunter" series lately. Probably no Big Messages contained within,
but one of the best take-no-prisoners female characters in print these
days. Hamilton's got a great way of writing, but it might not be the best
thing to read if you're squeamish. She describes things pretty
graphically, and the body count tends to be pretty high. (LH has said that
one of the reasons why she created Anita was because female detectives in
stories never got to kill as many people as their male counterparts did.)
> - Media: though there's plenty enough Trek talk around, I wouldn't mind
> a good long discussion of Trek feminism (or lack of it), if anybody's
> interested.
Honestly, I haven't watched the seri (serieses? what's the plural,
anyways?) since they killed off Tasha Yar, and the character I could most
closely relate to was Wesley Crusher. (Yeah, I know. I was in high school
at the time) Deanna Troi and the female doctors were just never allowed to
do anything interesting, in my view.
On a related rant, why aren't the strong female characters ever allowed to
live? Tasha Yar was written out early in the series, and other characters
in other popular movies that were seen as strong are all dead by the end
credits. (Thelma and Louise and Catwoman come to mind) It's like there's a
message that strong women are fated to face a very high cost for daring to
be who they wanted to be.)
Jill Gillham
jilkey@grfn.org jillmari@aol.com http://members.aol.com/ferndock2
-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----
Version: 3.1 GG d s+ a-- C+++ U P+ L E--- W++ N+++ K+ w--- O M+ V PS++ PE
Y+ PGP t+ 5+++ X R tv+ b++++ DI+++ D--- G e+++ h--- r+++ x+++
------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu May 25 2000 - 19:06:17 PDT