You can love a thing that's problematic.
Jun. 3rd, 2019 08:48 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
bladesparkI'm re-reading Zelazy's Amber series, and good god the guy was a sexist pig. I mean really. Literally 100% of his female characters in those books are either poisonous, manipulative schemers who try to use the men around them for their benefit, (in one case *literally* venomous) or damsels in distress. Every now and then, just for fun, somebody is both!
There are only two occasions where we meet a woman who doesn't immediately show one of those two traits. One is Dara, who *seems* physically capable and is just looking out for herself, but then it's later revealed that everything she did then was manipulative and scheming, and Coral, who seems capable and self-actualized, but this characterization turns out to be part of a fake-out in which Zelazny is trying to make you think she's actually a particular inhuman character. The instant it's revealed that she's a human woman after all she immediately becomes a damsel in distress and spends every single on-page moment after that being aided, tended to, fought over, and rescued by the male characters. She only seemed able to take care of herself as part of a giant fake-out, and actually NOPE, she can't!
It's gross.
It's really gross.
I still love Zelazny as an author, and the Amber sitting is amazing, but...gross.
There are only two occasions where we meet a woman who doesn't immediately show one of those two traits. One is Dara, who *seems* physically capable and is just looking out for herself, but then it's later revealed that everything she did then was manipulative and scheming, and Coral, who seems capable and self-actualized, but this characterization turns out to be part of a fake-out in which Zelazny is trying to make you think she's actually a particular inhuman character. The instant it's revealed that she's a human woman after all she immediately becomes a damsel in distress and spends every single on-page moment after that being aided, tended to, fought over, and rescued by the male characters. She only seemed able to take care of herself as part of a giant fake-out, and actually NOPE, she can't!
It's gross.
It's really gross.
I still love Zelazny as an author, and the Amber sitting is amazing, but...gross.