"She spreads herself wide open to let the insects in
She leaves a trail of honey to show me where she's been
She has the blood of reptile just underneath her skin!
Seeds from a thousand others drip down from within"
NIN - Reptile
Err, before you get past the first line below, I'm going to spoil a few chapters of the fantasy book The Wise Man's Fear. Nothing too major but y'know, fair warning.
So, like many, I'm patiently awaiting the final installment of The Kingkiller Chronicle. Though weak on the world-building side of fantasizing which I normally place before other concerns, Rothfuss' characters are nonetheless for the most part pleasingly three-dimensional and his rationalization of magic makes for unusually tense, balanced fantasy conflicts. Unfortunately, the books are also filled with a rather tiresome suite of politically correct babble. The hero's of a thinly-veiled real-world ethnic minority and bemoans the prejudice against his people everywhere he goes. The token martial artists are matriarchal warrior women and of course it wouldn't have been enough for them to be merely competent, worthy adversaries but must be portrayed as vastly superior to male combatants. Furthermore, several chapters of the first book were dedicated to a ridiculous drug war dramatization of cocaine addiction.
And then there's Felurian. Felurian's a succubus / siren / etc. The book classifies her a fairy, but really she's just a standard mythological temptress inflicting death by snu-snu on unwary men. Now, you might be saying that's anything but politically correct but bear with me. The hero, Kvothe, manages to fuck Felurian all he wants and nonetheless escape death by properly flattering and seducing her to her every whim until she can take no more and condescends to teach this lowly hapless male the arts of love.
First off, let's just acknowledge that above all she's just a bad character. Shameless, cheap and trite fan service at its basest. If for no other reason, Rothfuss should have been inundated with hate mail from fans insulted by his assumption of their simple-mindedness. Of course she's also social commentary, and in context also an instant classic example of pandering feminist idiocy.
Much later, after leaving her and then spending a good deal of time being ridiculed for his male-ness by the aforementioned warrior women, Kvothe runs into a caravan which has kidnapped a couple of village girls for use as sex slaves. He murders each and every one of the slavers, saving the damsels and inflicting undeniable righteous retribution on these, the vilest, sickening men ever to walk the earth. All well and good except for Felurian.
What was the fairy doing so different from those slavers, except that the girls they kidnap might stand some chance at survival?
See, this is the sort of mental disconnect which has made swear words of terms like "politically correct" or "social justice warrior." Felurian is presented as an almost angelic being. By the end of her chapter, the hero leaves with a sense of longing for her beauty, transcendent wisdom and immortally gracious presence. The fairy will then presumably resume trapping and murdering men for her own uses. Endlessly. Immortally. Here's a character spoken of in reverential terms throughout the books.
Compare her to the slovenly, bestial men keeping poor weak village girls as sex slaves. Where exactly is the difference? She's certainly portrayed as powerful enough that no mortal man (Princes Charming excepted, natch) could hope to fight her or even resist her, any more than a child could resist a trained soldier. Where is the moral high ground here?
It's easy to find criticism of Felurian. First page of a Google search, several hits... all of them from brainwashed feminist dimwits complaining that Felurian negatively portrays female sexuality. Fucking bullshit. She's a justification of women's power over men, a hero's mentor on his journey, a multi-millennial serial killer exculpated for giving the hero a magic cape, a domineering, condescending condemnation of male sexuality. Felurian is no better than a thousands-year-old serial child molester and murderer painted in a positive light as a symbol of empowered female sexuality and a cheap slam against men unable to please a woman.
What's supposed to mitigate her crimes in our eyes, her endless murders of those far weaker than herself?
Well, her victims are men, of course. Men are evil. Men are pigs. We know it. We've grown up knowing it. We have grown up knowing the feminist gospel truth: men deserve whatever abuse women care to hurl at them. What is worse, these men are guilty of the grand deadly sin of our feminist-dominated public discourse.
Felurian's victims, these lowly, evil, evil men, are guilty of desiring sex. Bbuuuurrrnn theeemmm !
You want a definition of anti-feminism?
It's the anger of a gentle man.
______________________________________
edited 2019/01/17
No content changes, just clarified punctuation and a couple of pronouns.
No comments:
Post a Comment