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Writing interview articles

Posted in Bruce Byfield, interviewing, journalism, Personal, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , on October 16, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Unlike most articles, an interview does not require multiple sources for legitimacy. By implication, the subject of an interview is either famous enough or interesting enough that readers will want to hear about them in detail. As the writer, your task is to present your subject’s opinions as accurately as possible, with a minimum of comment from you. Your ability to reach this goal will depend on how you conduct the interview, and how you structure it for publication.

This goal does not mean that you simply present your questions and the interviewee’s answers. That’s a transcript – and after you’ve made a few, you will understand why experienced writers say that the worst thing you can do to a person is quote them word for word. Even the most articulate are likely to have ums and ers and other hesitations, and to repeat themselves and forget to finish sentences. For this reason, very few people cannot be made to sound like rambling drunks when quoted verbatim.

Also, many readers react with dread to a long passage presented as a quote, and are likely to skip. Give them too many long passages of one person talking, and these readers are likely to stop reading your interview.

Instead, it is understood that your interview is an edited version of the transcript. As the writer you are expected not only to correct grammar and spelling, but to condense and reorganize to make the interviewee’s statements clearer. Similarly, you might edit your questions so that the context of what is being discussed is clearer.

What you must never do, however (assuming you want to be taken seriously), is edit the interviewee’s words so that they say something they would not to say, or edit your words so that you look clever at the interviewee’s expense. Both these practices are an abuse of your power as the writer.

Conducting the interview

To help you reach these basic goals, learn as much as possible about the interviewee and the topic of the interview before it takes place. Not only is preparation likely to give you better results, but you will be able to know if the interviewee is wrong or avoiding a topic and be able to ask more thorough questions.

Whenever possible, conduct your interview in person. At the very least, conduct it over the phone or video chat like Google+’s circles. These venues will help you to ask follow-up questions more easily.

They will also make the interviewee’s comments more natural-sounding. You want to do an email interview only as a last resource. Even chat gives more natural-sounding results than email. Some experienced interviewees may prefer email because they want to think about what they say, but you may be able to make them change their minds if you tell them that a live interview requires less of their time – which is generally true.

When you do a live interview, remember that it is about the subject, not you. While you should have some questions prepared, try to make sure, especially in the early stages, that your subject talks more than you. Start them out slow by asking easy, non-controversial questions such what their background is, then steer them gradually towards more detailed questions.

Try and talk yourself only when you need to focus the interview, or to ask for clarification. You’ll be surprised how often the interviewee will mention the points you wanted to cover without any prompting if you only wait a while. Cultivate the skills of a listener, including using body language to show your interest.

Occasionally, you may interview two or three people together. When you do, have each interviewee introduce themselves at the start, so you can identify their voices as you transcribe the interview. Ideally, you could have them name themselves each time they speak, but that can be awkward and is easily forgotten as the interview continues.

If you do have to do an email interview, see if your subject will consider several rounds of questions. The second and subsequent rounds will be shorter, but you may need them to get clarifications or details. These details may include the proper spelling of names, although you can sometimes use a web search instead.

Writing the interview

As you prepare to write, you will probably notice that the interviewee has some pet phrases and sentence structures. Use these quirks as a way of representing character, but not so much that the interviewee sound ridiculous or limited.

If you are preparing a transcript, you may also have to decide how to write down your interviewee’s favorite structures. For example, you may decide after a few examples to omit throwaway phrases like “I think.” Similarly, you may have to decide whether a dash or a semi-colon best represents how the interviewee joins two thoughts together

When you come to write your interview, resist the temptation to present it in simple question and answer form. The more interesting – and more difficult – choice is to use regular paragraphs, weaving the quotes into the grammar of your own sentences. Readers find this structure easier to read, and it has the advantage of making summaries and explanations easier.

But, regardless of this format, try to find a quote that will serve as a conclusion, even if you have to pick it out of an earlier point in the interview. Often, I find that ending an interview by talking about future plans, finishing with, “Is there anything we haven’t covered that you want to make sure gets said?” will provide that conclusion.

You will find that some editors dislike ending with a quote. If you ever write for someone with this preference, restating the last quote in different words will often be enough. Otherwise, a modest conclusion will usually do.

All these practices make an interview very different from the typical article. In a typical article, you may quote, but usually not at such length, and the effect on the structure is minimal. By contrast, in an interview, the content becomes the structure. Your goal is to discover the structure implicit in the content.

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When the shoe fits

Posted in Bruce Byfield, chronic discomfort, effects of running, exercise, Personal, SAS Comfort Shoes, shoes, sports gout, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 13, 2012| Leave a Comment »

If chronic aches last long enough, they can become part of your daily background. They can even worsen without you noticing, because you are living with them daily. Only when something relieves them do you realize exactly what you have been enduring.

Take, for example, my feet. I have been running for over eighty percent of my life. For much of that time, I did long, hard distances, averaging seventy-five to ninety miles a week. But although I always took care to wear running shoes with good support, like many young men, I was convinced that I’d never have to pay for all this wear and tear. I would magically continue the training regime I had followed most of my life, maybe slowing down a bit, but otherwise going on for decades much the same as I had in the past.

What I didn’t notice is that all that pounding on the pavement was gradually making my feet as broad and as awkward as a duck. I did notice that I could no longer wear Nike, but I put that down to a difference in manufacturers. I could wear Reebok and some Adidas models, and, not having any brand loyalty, that was good enough for me – especially since I disliked the rumors of Nike’s sweat-shop practices.

But the spreading of my feet was aggravated by an attack of what might be called sports gout. Heavy training in hot weather had left my body critically short of sodium, potassium, and trace minerals, causing the joints of my big toes to swell agonizingly. A few supplements took care of the gout, but not before the joint at the base of my left big toe had become permanently twisted sideways and semi-locked.

Between the normal spreading and this mild deformity, my shoe size gradually increased so I could rarely get a shoe with the necessary width. By last year, I needed a shoe three half-sizes larger than justified by the length of my foot. It didn’t help, either, that stores seemed increasingly inclined to carry only normal shoe widths.

To say the least, the result was uncomfortable. A foot moving inside a shoe gets little of whatever support the shoe around it offers. It is always strained and feeling sore, and more fallen arches and pinched tendons happen. But, as I said at the start, I didn’t especially notice, because the condition had crept up on me so slowly. So far as I thought of the problem at all, I imagined the constant discomfort was a consequence of growing older after a life-time of abusing my feet. What worried me, though, is that it was getting worse, so that I could hardly walk three miles before it felt like a bruise was breaking out all over both feet.

Then, last week, I noticed an ad for SAS Comfort Shoes‘ new store in the free local paper. I rarely notice ads in newspapers or online, but perhaps my growing worry made me notice this one. Not only did the store make its shoes in the United States, but it specialized in wide shoes and styles designed to fit well. Its models included a training shoe, so after my stint in the gym today, I hobbled out to the store. I didn’t expect much but I thought I had nothing to lose. If a store that claimed those sorts of wares couldn’t help me, I would have to consider custom-built shoes.

I explained my particular needs to the sales clerk, and tried on the trainer. Immediately, I felt my feet relaxing, and realized how sore they were from my normal workout. Walking the length of the store and back again, I also noticed that my foot was no longer sliding about. The shoes were actually supporting my feet. For the first in several years, I was wearing shoes that fit something like properly.

I had to try on a few different sizes and widths to find a perfect fit, but in ten minutes I’d found it. I quickly moved on to buy a pair of business casuals, which fitted differently, but were equally comfortable.

I wore the trainers on to the street, feeling so light on my feet that I thought I could dance – a big change from the way I’d dragged myself in. I settled for walking a little straighter and enjoying lighter spirits.

Unlike many running shoes I’ve bought in my life, this pair needed no breaking in. Four hours later, when I returned home from my other errands, my feet were still feeling relaxed.

It was a feeling that I’m sure I could get used to. In fact, as I write, I realize that I already have.
Eventually, I plan on returning to the store for other shoes. If the shoes are more expensive than those offered in most stores, I am willing to pay the difference for comfort.

However, the real moral is not just an unpaid endorsement of a business. For me, the moral is that stoicism has its limits as a virtue. In the future, I’ll try to remember that, just because I’m used to a discomfort doesn’t necessarily mean that I have to live with it.

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I am not a-mused

Posted in Bruce Byfield, comedy, humor, Personal, poetry, Romantics, Uncategorized, writing, tagged , , , , , , , , on October 10, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I never did care much for Wordsworth. But the rest of the Romantic poets – Shelley, Byron, Keats, and Coleridge, in that order – taught me the rudiments of poetic technique when I was a teenager. What’s more, I learned well enough to have a dozen or so published poems to my credit without trying too hard. But one aspect of Romanticism that I never managed to accept was having a muse.

That wasn’t through lack of trying. Having a muse is potentially convenient when you’re an adolescent boy and not sure how to approach girls. You can play out your infatuations in your attempts at poetry, and not risk actually talking with the object of your affection. Better yet, if – as happened to me – you are grief-stricken at the focus of your infatuation moving away, you can dramatize events until you feel better. I think of this as the Dante gambit, after the Italian writer of The Divine Comedy, who found a muse in a woman he had met only once, and was never around to casually disillusion him, as a real person might.

That was the trouble, really, with the whole idea of a muse. The closer you actually were to a girl or a woman, the less likely she was to act like a muse. She wouldn’t hang around inspiring you by looking soulful or sighing with bliss as you recited the poems you dedicated to her; she had school or a job and would insist on straying from your side on her own business.

I suppose the difficulty of reconciling the projection of a muse on to a woman’s life is part of what is behind Robert Graves’ White Goddess, and his attempt to cast the poet-muse relation in a myth — a myth that inevitably ends in the muse’s betrayal of the poet’s loyalty and aspirations, only to start again with the next woman he elevated in his mind. Graves was dramatizing the fact that any woman would eventually tire of being his inspiration, and find some other lover who wasn’t playing so many games.

It seemed to me a form of selfishness – especially when I learned from Graves’ biography that while he was enjoying the masochism of living his myth with a succession of muses, he also had a wife who raised their children and oversaw his household.

I thought much the same about Shelley, playing guitar with Jane Williams while Mary Shelley was nearing a nervous collapse, mourning the death of their child, and trying to run a villa in a foreign country without enough money. Having a muse sounded suspiciously like an excuse for flirting.

After a while, another point started to nag me. If poetry was the result of a literary-minded man’s (mostly) chaste infatuation for a woman, what was the explanation for Sylvia Plath? This was a matter of real concern for me as Plath became one of the first moderns from whom I learned.

Robert Graves did have a throwaway line about women’s poetry drawing on different sources than men’s. But he never explained what those sources were, being uninterested in anything outside his own personal mythology.

Obviously, though, women didn’t have muses in the way that men like Graves did. A new lover might inspire poetry – a lot of it in the early stages of a relationship – but no published woman that I could find seemed to view any man in her life as mystical or even temporarily mythological.

It was all very puzzling, especially since the idea of running off to some modern Missolongi  and dying prematurely had limited appeal. I was tolerably certain that dying of consumption wasn’t on the agenda, either.

Gradually, I came to realize that the idea of a muse was only possible in a culture where men knew few women, and had to fill in the blanks in their knowledge with their imaginations. It was a form of projection, really, not much different from pornography – just prettier. Neither was reconcilable with the real relationships I was starting to have.

Later, my readings in feminism would give me the concept of objectification, and encourage me to condemn the whole idea of a muse as something fundamentally unfair. But, even before then, I had abandoned muses as a concept that was not so much false as mentally exhausting. Trying to believe in muses, I found, only made me affected and self-conscious.

On the whole, fiction writers got along without muses. So, a few years after I discovered poetry, I decided that I could too, no matter what genre or style I wrote.

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Taking a photo

Posted in avatar, Bruce Byfield, comedy, humor, Personal, self-image, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , on October 9, 2012| 2 Comments »

A couple of weeks ago, I went to the Amanda Palmer concert with a neighbor. He kept worrying that he would be the oldest person there – a concern that never occurred to me, although I am several years older than him. The truth is, working in tech makes me more comfortable with younger people than those my own age, who often seem stodgily suspicious of anything new. However, changing my main online photo tonight forces me to confront the fact that I’m aging, just like everyone else.

Few people, I suspect, can look at their own picture without feeling uncomfortable. Part of the reason is that most people’s self-image is always several years behind their actual age. Another reason is that all of us are most familiar with our mirror images, which of course are reversed. For both these reasons, a picture never looks quite right. The most we can hope for is that any given picture doesn’t make us squirm too much. Personally, I prefer to play the coward, allowing pictures of myself at only long intervals.

Anyway (I always grumble), people take far too many pictures of themselves, thanks to digital cameras. Keep your life undocumented, and at least you can busy yourself with living it. Spending all your time recording is more meta – and more trouble – than I care to for.

Still, I’ve been aware for a couple of years now that my picture needed updating. One of my regular publishers offered to pay for an update, and even that wasn’t enough for me to brave the ordeal of picture-taking. Then I thought I’d wait until I recovered from last year’s knee injury and had some faint whimper of fitness. Eventually, I just put if off, putting off the moment of truth like Kipling’s Queen Elizabeth psyching herself to look into her looking glass.

But today I felt braver than usual. I finally had a neighbor snap a dozen shots against the nearest neutral background. It wasn’t the best time to do so: I’d been several hours out in the sum, so my face was red and blotched. My ears looked as though I had folded them up and used them as a makeshift pillow the previous night. My eyebrows were so pale that most of them were invisible, and the angle of my head makes me look like I have a double-chin and shows that I could do with a shave.

As for the wrinkled neck and piggy eyes, please don’t get me started. I could go on and on – but I see I already have.

Yet, as uncomfortable as the picture makes me, I couldn’t mistake those escaped hairs dangling in the middle of my forehead. But at least my hairline was no higher than in my last picture, and I’ve finally aged enough that my face gives an illusion of character. To me, anyway, I look guarded, maybe politely skeptical. Either seems an improvement over the terminally gormless look of most of the pictures through my life.

I still have no idea how representative the picture is. But, all in all, I could do worse. Before I could change my mind, I updated all my online profiles. I now propose to forget what I look like for another few years, remaining blissfully ignorance of how I am changing and averting my eyes from even the vaguest possibility of a reflection that might confront me with the truth.

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In defense of introversion and unpleasant emotions

Posted in anger, anxiety, Bruce Byfield, Carl Jung, competence, creativity, depression, extroversion, flop sweat, Imposter Syndrome, introversion, learning, optimism, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on October 6, 2012| Leave a Comment »

In the last couple of generations, modern industrial culture has seriously reduced the range of acceptable emotions. Certain emotions are not only unpleasant, the conventional wisdom goes, but should be avoided at all costs. However, the older I grow, the more I become convinced that this attitude is not only wrong, but actively harmful.

One of the most obvious examples of this attitude is the insistence on extroversion. Today, the model of the well-adjusted person has become an outgoing optimist who lives and works in groups, and feels uncomfortable alone. Not only are projects in schools and businesses increasingly done in teams, but even yoga and meditation, originally intended for private reflection, is done primarily in groups. By contrast, anyone with a preference for occasional privacy is seen as maladjusted at best, and at worst a potential perpetrator of another campus shooting.

This either-or distinction is a distortion of Carl Jung’s original concept, which described two poles of behavior, and was never intended to label people. Nor did Jung intend to condemn either extreme. Equating introversion with maladjustment is as accurate as it would be to condemn extroverts for being irresponsible and unable to focus; both extremes might include such behaviors, but actually cover a far broader ranger of behavior.

More importantly, as Anthony Storr points out in Solitude, many forms of creativity and original thought seem to require extended periods of introverted behavior. For that matter, the most successful forms of collaboration tend to be like the one used in free software, in which people work alone in the initial stages of their works, then collaborate for peer review and tweaking. By devaluing introversion, we are probably also undermining creativity – which may explain why movies with three or more names on the script rarely produce anything memorable.

Similarly, certain states of mind, such as depression and anger, are seen not only to be unpleasant, but to be avoided and medicated as quickly as possible. More – any decisions or conclusions reached in these undesirable states are questioned, or excused as being the indication of an unsound mind.

In some cases, that might be so. But always? Probably not. Depression and anger are natural reactions to events like the death of someone close, or being treated unfairly.. While dwelling endlessly on such things is unhealthy, accepting them for a certain amount of time is probably necessary for coming to terms with them. Denying this need, or trying to shorten the time in which such emotions are indulged may be as mentally unhealthy as removing a cast before a bone has had time to knit back together is unhealthy physically.

As for these emotions offering a skewed version of reality, why do we assume that the optimism that we believe is typical of a well-adjusted person is any more accurate of a perception? Personally, I have seen more projects – and companies – spiral downward because of decisions made by an optimist who was unable to admit when something was going wrong. A depressed person might at least anticipate problems so they could be countered, or admit problems when actually faced with them. In the same way, an angry person might drive themselves harder for success. Instead of accepting only one attitude as realistic, I suspect that we need to accept a much wider range of emotions as sometimes offering useful perceptions.

Yet another example is the nervousness and anxiety typical of someone who moves into a new job or set of responsibilities. When you stop to think (and even when you don’t), there are valid reasons for feeling uneasy. There are many things you can’t know about your new position, and you want to prove yourself to colleagues and ultimately become a success.

Many athletes and performers recognize such feelings – actors call them “flop sweat.” But rather than pretending that these feelings don’t exist, they worry when that not having such feelings will lead to a flat and uninspired performance. The trick, they will tell you, is to control these feelings, to channel them into the performance. If you can do that, you will have the extra edge that leads to outstanding performance.

However, we don’t admit that flop sweat is natural, let alone teach people how to cope with it. Instead, we give it a name like Impostor Syndrome, elevating it to a psychiatric condition – which except in a small minority of cases, it usually is not – giving the sufferers one more thing to worry about and elevating the feelings into some vast, impersonal force. Instead of teaching them how to reduce the anxiety by practice or planning, we encourage the sufferers to give themselves affirmations, or seek the approval of others. We encourage them to look for placebos rather than solutions that are known to work, and, as we do so, we are probably both preventing the development of competence and encouraging mediocrity.

I am not the sort of Puritan who believes that suffering is necessary for success, or needs to be sought out. But I do believe that it must be confronted directly, not avoided. Too often, in our panic to avoid the least unpleasantness, we limit ourselves and short-circuit the processes that are necessary for accomplishment and competence. We mean well, but in enforcing extroversion and pleasantness, we may also be suppressing necessary and useful emotions.

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Hunting for work space

Posted in Bruce Byfield, journalism, office space, Personal, Uncategorized, work, working, writing, tagged , , , , , , on October 2, 2012| 1 Comment »

The last time I worked in an office, I couldn’t wait to work from home. I had lost what little tolerance I ever had for endless meetings, and HR managers dragging everyone from their keyboards to play morale-building games of charades. Yet no sooner had I started working from home that I started looking for other places where I could sometimes work. The search continues, eight years later.

The trouble with working from home, especially when you live alone, is that you can easily spend days with no human contact. Yet finding the right work space elsewhere is difficult, too, since I would prefer to walk or cycle, and, although I want people around me, I don’t want so much noise that work becomes impossible.

Less than twenty meters from my door is a gazebo surrounded by flowers. Unfortunately, it’s in a courtyard where children are playing at most times of the day. Their parents are usually in the courtyard, too, idly chatting, and while I’m glad enough to talk to them when we meet at other times, I have been unable to convince them that when I’m carrying my laptop I prefer not to talk.

The same problem exists with the pool in my townhouse complex. I’d love to sit by the water on a deck chair, and dive in to do a few lengths while I’m working out how to word something, but, when I try, neighbors persist in asking what I’m doing.

Less than a kilometer away, there’s a rec center. It has an open area full of tables, which is often used by ESL tutors to meet their students. Unfortunately, it’s right beside the gym, where troops of adults and children are constantly passing. Also, every now and again, the staff decides to discourage people using the tables, so I can never be sure that the tables are available.

Not much further on are coffee shops. Unfortunately, one is too quiet to bother with. Another is wedged into a corner of the supermarket. A third has glass down one side, and by early afternoon feels as comfortable as a greenhouse, even on cloudy days.

Besides, I feel like a dilettante working at a coffee shop – and more of a bit of a freeloader, even if I buy something every couple of hours.

The best solution I’ve found is to sit in the shade under a tree in the local park, where I can hear the nearby stream and watch people pass on the sidewalk. However, when I do that, I usually drowse, leaving my work half-done.

Usually, the off-chance that I might get work done in any of these locations seems to small to gamble on. Instead, I stay by my work station, half-convinced that I am missing something somewhere, being productive, but convinced that by staying I’m one day closer to a curmudgeonly and lonely old age. Yet even that seems a brighter prospect than returning to an office job.

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Straw feminists and Veronica Mars

Posted in Anita Sarkeesian, Bruce Byfield, Feminist Frequency, media, Personal, pop culture, popular culture, straw feminists, Uncategorized, Veronica Mars, tagged , , , , , , , , , on September 26, 2012| Leave a Comment »

Over the last few months, I’ve been enjoying Anita Sarkeesian’s Feminist Frequency videos on YouTube. This series of short videos identifies female stereotypes, explaining why they are offensive, in general with intelligence, insight, and clear language. On the whole, I find myself agreeing with Sarkeesian, but her “Straw Feminists” episode is an exception. In fact, the episode seems a cautionary tale about how even experienced critics can sometimes have an off day when they take a critical stance at the expense of what is actually happening.

Much of “Straw Feminists” is to the point, with examples from Powerpuff Girls, Rugrats, and other popular shows. However, when she added a mystery on the third season of the cult TV show Veronica Mars to her examples, I began to have some doubts. I hadn’t watched the series for a while, but Sarkeesian’s analysis didn’t match my memories except in the broadest outlines.

Sarkeesian was talking about the first nine episodes of the season, in which the title character hunts a rapist at large on her college campus. The episodes’ cast includes the women of Lilith House, feminists who are using the rapes in their efforts to shut down the misogynistic fraternity houses. During the course of the mystery, the Lilith House members are founded to be less than scrupulous in their campaign, faking a rape and egging the dean’s car and office when he overturns a motion to eliminate fraternities on campus.

According to Sarkeesian, this portrayal shows the college feminists as villains and militant revolutionaries – as “irrational, pig-headed man-haters.” She also implies that the series is careful to separate feminism from the strong female lead, and considers the faked rape as taking the portrayal to an “obscene level.”

All this sounds irretrievably damning. The only problem is, when I watched the story arc over several nights to refresh my memory, for the most part that wasn’t what was happening at all.

To start with, the story does a much better job of portraying genuine feminist concerns than the summary implies. As Sarkeesian herself admits, the feminists’ demands, such as a safe ride program and a campus code of conduct are all reasonable ones. Moreover, while the feminists have a grudge against the fraternity, they never voice any of the anti-male sentiments that are characteristic of true straw feminists.

Nor is the title character distanced from the feminists. The first time she talks to one, she is open and friendly, and just as eager to topple the Greek system as they are. Later, although disillusionment with Lilith House provokes a few comments at their expense, she herself voices feminist sentiments, mentioning in voice overs “the male gaze” and commenting when the local sheriff refuses to take the situation seriously, “rape humor – it never gets old.”

In addition, although Lilith House’s inhabitants may be “hypocrites,” Veronica is quick to help promote their distribution of coasters to detect date-rape drugs in drinks. She is more skeptical about the effectiveness of distributing rape whistles – yet it is a whistle that leads to her rescue when she is held drugged and captive by the rapists. You might even say that, if not for feminism, the rapists would never have been discovered.

True, the feminists on the show are not presented as ideals. Yet they compare favorably with the rival fraternity. Fraternity members are shown mooning passers-by, acting out mock-rapes, engaging in sexual contests and deliberately undercutting anti-rape measures. Veronica describes one of them as “repugnant,” and, in the last episode of the mystery, asks the fraternity leader in tones of disgust, “How do you live with yourself?”

The fraternity’s behavior is never explored, although it is implied that one of them is suffering from the death of his brother and the tax-evasion of his father at the end of the previous season. For the most part, though, the fraternity members are presented simply as spoiled rich boys, and no other motivation is thought necessary. By contrast, the behavior of the feminists is attributed directly to the tensions on campus left by the string of rapes.

Even the faked rape, while suggestive of misogynist’s claims, is given a motivation. We don’t know how many of the 2-8% of rape claims that prove to be false are deliberate rather than mistaken, and no clear idea of what the motivations for deliberate false claims might be. However, from a fictional viewpoint, watching a friend commit suicide after being harassed is surely enough motivation for just about anything. The weakness in the story is that this motivation is not discovered until two episodes after the false rape is.

Admittedly, there is one plot element that proves stereotypical – but that is the anal rape and assault of the fraternity’s leader. In contrast to the sympathy given female rapes in the storyline, his rape is treated as a joke by both the fraternity and the title character. It forms the basis of a single episode, and no attempt is ever made to punish the rapists. By the next episode, the only reminder is the frat leader’s shaved head, and otherwise even he seems to have forgot about it.

The feminists shown in Veronica Mars are deeply flawed characters. However, considering the noir world of the series, in which even Veronica’s lovers and friends are occasionally suspect or dishonest, expecting anything else amounts to an exporting of foreign expectations. Their portrayal needs to be seen in the context of the series, not in the abstract, and it is worth pointing out that, later in the season, one of the feminists becomes Veronica’s allies in publicizing the secrets of a Skull and Bones-like male club on campus. All things considered, far from being straw feminists, the feminists in the series might even be judged one of the better portrayals of feminists in television drama (which wouldn’t be difficult, considering how bad most portrayals of feminists actually are).

In pointing out this alternative viewpoint, I do not mean to condemn Sarkeesian. Sarkeesian produces a surprisingly large number of videos in a short space of time, and almost all of them are high-enough quality that I intend to make an overdue donation to Feminist Frequency when I finish this entry.

However, I have made my point at some length because it seems to me worth making: anyone’s analysis, no matter how experience or skilled, is only as good as the extent to which it considers context. When expectations overwhelm context, the best analyst can slip – and, in this particular case, that includes Sarkeesian.

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The snake, the pirate and the power of imagination

Posted in Bruce Byfield, childhood, imagination, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on September 24, 2012| Leave a Comment »

If I ever have to make a statement of my deepest beliefs, I’m going to quote John Le Carré and say,”A good writer can watch a cat pad across the street and know what it is to be pounced upon by a Bengal tiger.”

Despite my flippancy and cynicism, I really believe that, you know. With imagination, a man can know what a woman feels like when she hears a catcall about the size of her breasts. A pacifist can know why for some soldiers a war is addictive, or an athlete what being twice their ideal weight is like. All it takes is courage and effort, which is why most people have all the empathy of a rock.

And if you tell me that such exercises are self-deceit? Then I’d say that you probably have a point, but that empathy is the best that we can manage, and that it is considerably better than nothing. Even a failure of the imagination is better than no imagination at all.

To many people, such statements are heretical. Today, we like to believe that each person’s experience is so unique that nothing can bridge it. But I come by these beliefs naturally, thanks to a couple of events that happened before my fifth birthday (if not my fourth).

The first happened on the front lawn of my parents’ house. The lawn is divided into two parts, with a low stone wall separating the upper from the lower. Waiting to go somewhere, I ran out to play in the yard. Like I usually did, I ran down the upper part of the lawn, prepared to leap from the wall on to the grass below, when I noticed something coiled at the bottom of the wall.

It was a snake, dark-green with black diamond markings along its eyes and matching black eyes. It was maybe three meters long, and about as thick as my leg. Its yellow tongue was moving in and out, as though it could taste me on the air.

I froze. Utterly terrified, yet strangely calm, I began talking to the snake. Once, I told it to look behind it, and, when its head moved, I said, “Sucker” in a satisfied tone.

But it was no joke. I didn’t think that I could jump past it, and I was afraid that if I backed up to the house, it would simply wriggle after me.

I was still debating what to do when the rest of my family came out, heading for the car. My mother called my name, and I turned to look at her. When I looked back, the snake was gone, and not even the grass showed where it had been. For a while, I was convinced that it must have found a place to hide in the stone wall, which I avoided until the memory was less sharp.

The second experience probably happened a few months later. I can’t be sure, because my sense of time was undeveloped at the time. But I heard a sound in the night, and started down the hallway for a look. I was just thinking I must have imagined the sound as I came to the turn in the hallway.

And suddenly, Captain Hook from Peter Pan was there. He had never especially terrfied me on the television, but there he stood, tall in red velvet, with a black hat on his head, and black boots on his feet. His hook seemed impossibly long, and was swinging in my direction.

I shouted as loudly as I could. I could feel myself waking, and started to relax. Then I did wake, screaming, and I was standing at the turn in the hallway. Naturally, I was alone, although my parents soon rushed out. I couldn’t make them understand that I wanted to search the stairs and the basement to make sure that Captain Hook was gone, but I couldn’t express myself clearly.

Consequently, it was a long time before I fell asleep again. I was convinced that to fall asleep would be absolutely fatal.

Giant snakes and Captain Hook are both foreign to the Lower Mainland, of course. The logical explanation in both cases was that I was sleepwalking while dreaming with intense clarity and wonder. Yet for several years I had a morbid fascination with snakes, and would tuck the blankets under my feet at night to make sure that impossibly thin hook couldn’t reach up from under the bed and drag me on to the floor.

Even now, knowing what must have actually happened, I am still aware of a part of me that is utterly convinced, beyond all rational argument, that the snake and the pirate actually existed, and that I escaped them only by the most coincidental of luck. And, because of that part of me, I know all I’ve ever needed to know about the overwhelming potential of imagination.

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A wish for a redefinition of “chivalrous”

Posted in Bruce Byfield, chivalrous, feminism, male role models, masculine identity, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , on September 22, 2012| 3 Comments »

I don’t usually waste much time lamenting that the meanings of words change. It simply happens, and little I can do can change the results one way or the other. However, having grown up on stories of Sir Lancelot and Sir Gareth of Orkney, I do regret the loss of the original meaning of “chivalrous.”

Today, if a man is described as “chivalrous,” the speaker means that he has a condescending attitude to women. At best, he has an old-fashioned gallantry that a handful of women might find charming, but that most would quite rightly find irritating.

Either way, “chivalrous” is not an adjective that I would care to have applied to me. If it ever were, I would wince, and immediately ask the speaker what I had done to annoy them. Somewhere along the line, I would most likely apologize.

However, “chivalrous” used to have other meanings as well. The most basic one is derived from “cheval,” the French word for “horse,” and means a mounted warrior – by implication, a member of the medieval social elite.

But the meaning whose loss I regret means a sort of ethical activist. Influenced, interestingly enough, by the Moorish culture of the Iberian peninsula, this meaning was partly an effort to control the medieval warrior class when it wasn’t fighting.

By this definition, a chivalrous man was one who did not abuse his strength, but was self-effacing and used it on behalf of those unable to help themselves. In the courtly love tradition, this chivalry was especially extended towards women of the same social class – hence the modern meaning – but in medieval tales and ballads, the same obligations were supposed to extend to other men and other social classes. By this definition, a chivalrous man was an admirable one, doing his best not to abuse his privilege and act socially responsible.

So why does this lost meaning matter? Aside, I mean, from the fact that, if I had grown up to live my childhood dreams, I would be spending my days wandering the highways and back roads and looking for wrongs to right, preferably on horseback?

Simply this: it would still be useful to have a word that covered this original meaning. Specifically, it would refer to a man who was aware of male privilege and did his best to disavow it – or, failing that, turned male privilege around on itself, and used it to advance the equality and dignity of women, minorities, and the powerless. We need the word to describe what I believe is an important ideal, to answer those who say that social progress has nothing to offer men by offering an imaginative concept to live by that would promise to bring out the best in men.

Unfortunately, if such a word is ever coined, it is unlikely to be “chivalrous.” The current, debased meaning of the word is too entrenched, and is an important referent in its own right. But I think that having a name for such a desirable male role model would be no bad thing, even thought one of the most appropriate is already subsumed by another concept.

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Committing parody

Posted in Bruce Byfield, filk, Personal, Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on September 17, 2012| Leave a Comment »

I don’t smoke. So far as I know, nothing is wrong with my breath, and I am fastidiously clean. Often, my worst anti-social tendency is the occasional outburst of self-righteousness. But I have to admit to one personal habit that is so socially unacceptable that it can send even close friends screaming from my vicinity. Without pre-meditation or warning, I have been known to produce parodies.

This is not a habit under my control – the lines just bubble up from the tar pits of my unconscious like the skeleton of a mammoth or a smilodon, and before I stop to think, I recite them.

As a child, I showed what I now recognize as early symptoms. In the last few years of high school, I developed a taste for lyrics-oriented music, often scribbling down the words to my favorite songs. In my final year, I taught myself poetry and meter, and sold my first poems.

However, the urge to parody did not emerge until I started attending Society for Creative Anachronism events during my second year at university. Shortly before Christmas, tired of the endless parodies of carols like “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” I started writing what I called pagan carols – songs whose humor was based partly on their lack of Christianity, but chiefly on the fact that they were full of an exaggeratedly violent references completely alien to the spirit of the originals:

A long time ago in Jotunheim,
So the Elder Edda say,
Loki’s girl-child, little Hel,
Was born to rule the day.

From Norroway and Danemark,
And places further west,
To seize your lands and dwell in them,
Oh, this is now our quest.
And if you won’t let us have them,
Your destiny’s manifest.

So much for Harry Belafonte’s “Mary’s Boy Child” and for “God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman,” and much the same for “Away in a Long Ship,” “Deck the Halls with Bowels of Christians,” and a dozen other equally forgettable tidbits. Once the basic idea was in my head, I could write one of these carols in about fifteen minutes, and I frequently did. I wince at many of these now, finding the cheery violence less funny that I did then – although remembering how Americans objected to the reference to Manifest Destiny, and produced an alternative verse still irks me.

However, by this point, the rot had set in. Stan Roger’s “Barrett’s Privateers” became “Stoat Coyle’s Privateers,” after the persona of a friend. Humorous songs from The Corries became the template for poking mild fun at local medievalists. When the White Tower Medieval Society defeated the SCA, I commemorated the event with “The Twenty Second War,” set to the “Wyndham Fight,” an account of the famous boxing match in 1811 between Tom Cribb and Tom Molineaux. My version began:

Come you mercenary swords,
All hungry for a meal,
When you’re quite drunk, come gather round,
And hear Lord Ettrick’s spiel:
For glory and for spoils of war
The White Tower’s to be fought,
And bring what ransom is at hand,
Just in case we’re caught.

Shy of my own accomplishments (as I saw them then), I usually urged my partner to sing them for me in public – in order, I said, to give myself a head start.

I committed my share of filking at science fiction conventions, too, although my sources were often obscure by most people’s standards, since I ignored with a sniff most of the popular music of the 1980s and 1990s.

But then parrots came into our lives – creatures who are fascinated by singing, especially when it is directed at them. None of the birds who shared our lives escaped. “England Swings” became a summary of the flock, while “The Popular Wobbly,” which I heard on a Utah Phillips recording, became the life history of our only hand-fed bird. Others were more generic:

The moment that you waddled through the room,
I could see you were a bird of distinction,
A real class parrot
(ba-dum-dum-dum)
Hey big squawker,
Preen a little while with me.

Birdy you’re a boy, make a big noise
Screaming on your cage gonna be head bird one day,
You got gunk on your face,
A big disgrace,
Regurgitating all over the place,
Singing we will, we will flock you.

I even managed six or seven verses of “The Parrot of Shallott,” ending with:

But what is this? And what is here?
What screaming phantom flappeth near?
Beneath the sounds of royal cheer,
They stick a finger in each ear,
All the knights of Camelot;
But Lancelot preened there a space,
Said, “Get your claws out of my face,”
So she sat and chewed on his collar of lace,
The parrot of Shallot.

Fortunately for those around me, imitating Tennyson is too much like hard work, and I doubt I will ever finish that effort. Fans of Tennyson and Loreena McKennitt can rest easy.

I do fewer parodies these days, having a blog and paid writing to do. But I doubt I’ll ever abandon parodies altogether. Just the other day, I found myself extending a version of “Chantilly Lace” called “Genteelly Bored” that described my last office job, and transforming “Mr. Tambourine Man” into a celebration of my parrot Beaudin. They come to me without effort, often when I wake in the morning, and then all that’s left to do is to call for mass evaculation and bring in the rescue workers.

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