Is crime fiction socially aware?

By Steve Weddle

Dave White likes for us to wait a week before we weigh in on the latest internet kerfuffle.

But, as Cheech said, Dave's not here.

The HUGO award nominees were announced and some people weren't happy with the list of names. Too mainstream. Too white. Too manny.

Then there was the April Fool's post from LOCUS, which said that participants at some sci-fi convention would have to wear burqas in order to be politically correct.

LOCUS Magazine came under fire and pulled the post.

An Apology— posted Monday 1 April 2013  We would like to offer our apology for the offensive April Fool’s post that was published on the site today. The April Fool’s pieces were not seen by the Locus HQ staff before being posted — it was an ugly moment this morning when we saw the post already online, and we immediately took steps to remove it. Of course, being after the fact, it was too late, and the offense had already happened.

...

The author of that post, Lawrence Person, posted the original with some commentary at his own blog.

Folks got to commenting about free speech and being offended.

Others mentioned how this post last year questioning whether Game of Thrones is "too white" was also offensive. And this response. And this.

Which brought us to this post about whether the Hunger Games movie is too not-white.

Which reminded me of posts we've had here about Patrick Rothfuss's calendar being sexist  Also that he hugged a fan.

The sci-fi and fantasy communities (or community, with overlap) seem to have these discussions/kerfuffles rather often.

I mean, I notice them and I tend to not pay too much attention to things that aren't about me.

The crime fiction community has not had the same discussions -- or so it seems.

Of course, we've had our sock puppets and our talks about dirty words in novels. We've had some discussions here and there and sexism and racism and violence.

And while this isn't a competition with the nerds over in that other genre, I wonder if the nerds in the crime fiction community are embracing the conflicts in the same way other genres do.

Occasionally, of course, you'll see an isolated blog post about why crime fiction is so focused on alcoholic men saving kidnapped strippers. In much crime fiction, these women do seem to get into trouble that only a man with a dark secret can solve.

But is the crime fiction community tackling race and misogyny -- and other social problems -- with as much effort as our cousins in the sci-fi and fantasy world?

Has anyone complained that the Edgars or the Anthonys or the Dashiells or the Agathas or the Hitchcocks are too white? Too manny?

Are the swords and lasers crew fighting this for all of us?

The Heart of It

by John McFetridge

 Every once in a while I get into conversations about 70s movies – there were a lot of great ones. At the time I mostly liked the disaster movies. Oh, and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. And Jaws was my favourite for quite a while.

But usually these 70s movie discussions are about the more, let’s say ‘noirish,’ of the decade. Now that I’m so (so, so, so) much older and looking back on those movies I have a different perspective. One movie that I first saw in the 70s when I was a teenager I thought was very funny and somewhat disposable, I have now realized is the one that really had the most to say and said it best.

And that movie is...

Slapshot.

Yes, that Paul Newman hockey movie. The one with the Hanson Brothers and that kind of disco song, “Get back to where you started from,” and Michael Ontkean and the striptease.

Slapshot was slapstick in the best possible way.

But it was also about what was really at the heart of the 70s, that weird decade when the world went from the possibility of revolutions and social change in the 60s to the go-go, I-got-mine 80s. There was a power shift in the 70s and Slapshot got to the heart of it. And that heart is what makes it a great movie.

 “The world promised in the 1950s, a world apparently on the verge of realization in 1965 seemed like a cruel joke by 1975. Panic set in... so did the urge to seek revenge.” Greil Marcus, Lipstick Traces.

And that’s Slapshot. (though I think Greil is talking about punk music.)

Released in 1977 Slapshot it tells the story of a small-town pro hockey team and its player-coach, Reggie Dunlop played by Paul Newman.

It gets an 87% rating at Rotten Tomatoes, Deadspin says it’s, “The Only Honest Sports Movie,” Bleacher Report has written its, “Five Reasons Why Slapshot is the Greatest Sports Film of All Time,” and ESPN named it the #5 Best Sports Movie of All Time. And yet, from what I can see, the thing that happens in Slapshot that makes it so great, the thing that sets everything in motion and makes it all possible (necessary, really), almost never gets mentioned.

The plant closes down. Thousands of workers are laid off.

It happens in the background – literally. Reggie Dunlop and Ned Braydon are walking by and Ned says, “What’s going to happen to all these guys when the plant shuts down,” and Reggie says, “Aw, they’re not gonna shut it down, they’re just jerking them around, negotiating.” But they’re not negotiating, of course, they don’t negotiate with the workers, it’s as if the citizens of the town have somehow become terrorists.

From there the team is going to fold.

And that’s why the GM (another great performance in a Paul Newman movie by Strother Martin) brings in the Hanson Brothers – they’re cheap. That’s the first thing Paul Newman says when he confronts Martin, “You cheap bastard.” Martin says, “I got a good deal on those boys.” And then he sets out to sell the bus, the massage table and whatever else isn’t nailed down.

The movie is funny, of course, the Hansons hit the ice and it’s hilarious. But underneath all the slapstick and one-liners there’s a very real heart. Being ripped out of the town.

Sure, Reggie Dunlop tries to save the team somehow, maybe someone will buy it and move it to Florida, but the team owner tells him her accountant has advised her that it’s better for her if the team just folds.

Which is probably what the accountants have told the plant’s shareholders. It’s not that they aren’t making money, but they could make even more if...

Another funny part of Slapshot is the French Canadian goalie. His explanation of penalties in the opening scene is one of my all-time favourite movie moments, especially when he says that if you get a penlaty for doing something, “only a stupid English pig with no brain,” would do, you have to, “go to the box, feel shame for two minute and then you go free.” That’s just funny.

But the best scene with the French goalie is when Reggie sends him to try and find out who owns the team. The joke is he doesn’t pronounce the ‘s’ on ‘owns,’ but the real issue in that scene is that the players don’t know who own ("owns, owns") the team. As Reggie Dunlop says, “The corporation owns, the team. What do you care, you get your cheque.”

Likely the guys working in the plant don’t know who owns it, either. The era of the local owner is gone by the 70s, now it’s just, “the corporation.”

In his desperate attempt to save the team, save what he sees as the heart of the city, Reggie sells it out. It stops being about hockey, about honest competition or sport or teamwork and it becomes a circus – no, a sideshow. The players become the classic sideshow freaks, the depression era geek-show (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geek_show). It’s player-against-player, cheered on by the screaming fans.

“Dave’s a killer.”

“Dave’s a mess.”

Dunlop, of course, fails and the team will fold. Oh, he succeeds personally, he gets a job with a team at a higher level and promises to, “bring up all my guys,” when he gets there. But we know he won’t be able to bring up many guys and we know he’ll fail on the bigger stage. Deep down, Reggie is too nice a guy, not selfish enough. Oh sure, he’s desperate, but that won’t be enough – and that’s what Slapshot is really about and why it’s so good.

The 1970s were the end for guys like Reggie Dunlop and for all the guys who worked in plants like the one in the movie. They lost.

Guys like that always lose.

Oh sure, they won a few battles in the 30s and then they won WWII (I’ve seen Band of Brothers) and they strutted around for a while in the 50s – but it didn’t last.

We can sure see it in the movies – Taxi Driver, Blue Collar, Rocky (I’m told there were more Rocky movies in the 80s but I refuse to believe that), The Conversation, Dog Day Afternoon, Five Easy Pieces, Vanishing Point, Saturday Night Fever  -- not a single It’s a Wonderful Life in the decade. Until Star Wars. The good guys win in Star Wars. Of course, it’s a fantasy that takes place a long, long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... (and it reinstates a monarchy, doesn’t it?)

It looks to me like the 70s was when ‘divide and conquer’ became the main theme. All those great 70s movies are about loners who lose. All institutions (especially ones in which people have a vote like government and unions) are bad and need to be made small and have as little influence as possible.

Is this what we’re still seeing in so much crime fiction these days? Loners who lose?

The Secret (and still unwritten) History of Rural Noir...

...or, some rambling thoughts on rural noir.

[But first, some business. Yesterday the Spinetingler Awards nominees were announced and today the polls are open. Check out the nominees (Cover, Short Story on the Web, Anthology/Short Story Collection, Novella/Short Novel, Rising Star/Legends, New Voice) and go vote.]

There was a telling moment early on in the first season of The Voice, NBC's singing talent show. It happened fast, was likely missed by most viewers, and was so small that I can't even find it on Youtube. Blake Shelton, who hadn't fully developed his papa bear persona yet, was trying to persuade a contestant that HE was the county guy and because of what she wanted to do she should pick him. Cee-Lo interjected by saying something to the effect of "Now, wait a minute, I'm country too". The entire exchange played out as a light hearted moment, that Cee-Lo of all people could mentor a country singer. But I saw that Blake Shelton, in that moment, had a very narrow view of his chosen genre of music, the themes it might entail, who can perform it, and where they must be from.

That brief exchange represented a few facets of an ongoing struggle in America that involves race. One of my favorite Bill Withers quotes embodies this struggle for recognition and standing in a culture and geography that either doesn't want it or would rather turn a blind eye.

“You gonna tell me the history of the blues? I am the goddam blues. Look at me. Shit. I’m from West Virginia, I’m the first man in my family not to work in the coal mines, my mother scrubbed floors on her knees for a living, and you’re going to tell me about the goddam blues because you read some book written by John Hammond? Kiss my ass.” -- Bill Withers

Cee-Lo wasn't wrong. As a born and bred Georgia boy his southern experience equals Blake Shelton’s; even if his skin color is different.  There's a great line from the Killer Mike song "Untitled" that goes: 

“And I keep a blunt and a Bible and a gun on me/Why? Cause I'm country-bred/Actually, I'm south-er-ern/Something like my brethren/The legendary Andre 3K, Cee Lo, Goodie, and some other men”

The sentiment expressed here is right in line with some of the Redneck-pride anthems that get played on the radio all the time. So why the gulf? Given how intertwined the history of the blues and country music are (its own topic really: the banjo is an instrument of African origins, musically Hank Williams Sr and Muddy Waters are very similar, you take both genres back to a guy like Jimmie Rogers and things get real murky) there shouldn't really be a gulf but there is. Therein of course lies the rub and I don't have an easy answer because there isn't one. 

A lot of country music fans are painfully unaware of the full scope of the genre that they claim to love. Ask a Toby Keith fan about the Calgary country music scene and you'll get blank stares.  Play that same fan a song by The Carolina Chocolate Drops then show them a picture of the band if you really want to blow some minds.

The death of Tom Connors recently didn't even garner a mention on the local country stations top rated morning show. The idea of a New York City based country band, or other sub-genres, or even music from other countries (like the vibrant Australian Aboriginal country music scene) is anathema to the country radio machine and its adherents. But this post isn't really about music but what this lack of understanding and a lack of desire to be open to others represent.

So what does this have to do with rural noir? Maybe nothing. Maybe something.

One of the more popular current TV shows right now is Justified, a show, partially, about the rural white working class in Kentucky; the bread and butter characters of rural noir. In a show filled with great characters one of the fan favorites breaks this mold, Ellstin Limehouse.

Limehouse heads up a clan of black working class folks, with their own holler, trying to carve their own way.  The characters of Justified are largely ignored by a society who doesn't want to see stark Appalachian poverty and the sometimes illegal means to overcome it. But even among this motley crew of working class whites the black characters are even more invisible. In fact, their invisibility is like a shroud of protection because their main currency is information. Just because you forget about them doesn’t mean they aren’t there. And what you say around them when you forget they are there you say at your own peril.

Would it surprise you to learn that Noble's Holler (Limehouse's land) is based on a real place?

The Coe Ridge Colony was founded after The Civil War by freed slaves. After a bloody series of conflicts with surrounding white land owners the residents of Coe Ridge were feared and left the hell alone. Their fight to be left alone on their own land proved to be an ongoing struggle requiring constant vigil, and this is similarly expressed by Elstin Limehouse. Because hostile and armed white men were not welcome at Coe Ridge some white women used it as a refuge (sound familiar fans of Justified?). Coe Ridge would continue on until the mid 20th century, when, getting into the moonshine business would prove to scatter its residents far and wide.

There's a reason why Bill Withers is so upset in the above quote. There's something in his very being that an outsider can never understand.

There's actually a term for these forgotten hill folk, The Afrilachians.

After watching the movie Winter’s Bone my wife and I had a conversation about the thematic similarities between it and The Wire. And when we think of the people in stories being presented by a writer like Daniel Woodrell it is easy to conjure an image. Maybe one like this:

Kentucky in the 30’s and 40’s had a black Appalachian population in some counties as high as 25%. These folks were miners, mountaineers, and railroad workers. Look at these photographs from the 30's through the 50’s and our preconceived notions begin to change. Look at the young man in this first picture and tell me you can't imagine a young Limehouse taking his protection duties very seriously. 

I for one can't wait to read the great Afrilachian novel that encompasses the spirit of Harriett Tubman forcing runaway slaves forward at gunpoint (which actually did happen), to the bloody war for a freedom that never really came as promised, to all the lingering battles that came afterward, to the almost isolationistic clan mentality of wanting to be left alone at all costs, to the moonshine exploits, to the parallels between The Great Migration and The Hillbilly Highway, and everything in between and after.  It’s a damn shame it isn’t written yet.

I'm not advocating a token multiculturalism, sticking a black character in a story. But I am advocating keeping an open mind about narrative possibilities. The writers of Justified were able to use a historical settlement to create one of the more dynamic and complex TV characters in recent years.