Bidisha on UF
Aug. 7th, 2008 09:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sawylThanks to Bidisha's comment piece in today's Guardian, this wonderful cartoon [via Charlie Stross] finally makes a whole lot more sense!
Although the article makes some valid points about the tendency towards cliche in some urban fantasy novels — and the fury-fang-whatever love triangle is definitely one of the worst because, as others have noted, it usually lacks the courage of its convictions by allowing one of the male characters to die off thus sparing the heroine any need to make a choice — it also seems to miss a trick.
The books being criticised, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight novels, are, I believe, aimed at a teen audience and a US teen audience at that. Given the frequency with with Judy Blume's books are challenged, it's not entirely unsurprising that some authors targeting the young adult market might choose to strike a course for Mills and Boone territory and exploit all the unresolved sexual tension for all that it's worth, rather than going for something more genuine and, inevitably, more controversial. So it may be that the lack of convincing gender roles in certain types of YA novel is more to do with exploiting a slightly prudish audience demographic — or, at least, the parents thereof — by giving a safe, chaste romance with which the audience can identify, than any desire to infuse the fantasy genre with the spirit of Barbara Cartland.
Although the article makes some valid points about the tendency towards cliche in some urban fantasy novels — and the fury-fang-whatever love triangle is definitely one of the worst because, as others have noted, it usually lacks the courage of its convictions by allowing one of the male characters to die off thus sparing the heroine any need to make a choice — it also seems to miss a trick.
The books being criticised, Stephanie Meyer's Twilight novels, are, I believe, aimed at a teen audience and a US teen audience at that. Given the frequency with with Judy Blume's books are challenged, it's not entirely unsurprising that some authors targeting the young adult market might choose to strike a course for Mills and Boone territory and exploit all the unresolved sexual tension for all that it's worth, rather than going for something more genuine and, inevitably, more controversial. So it may be that the lack of convincing gender roles in certain types of YA novel is more to do with exploiting a slightly prudish audience demographic — or, at least, the parents thereof — by giving a safe, chaste romance with which the audience can identify, than any desire to infuse the fantasy genre with the spirit of Barbara Cartland.
