Carrie,
Re your comment below:
> . . .I just don't think it makes sense to
> judge a series based on
> the protagonist possessing a
"nontraditional
> gender."
I didn't say it made sense. The question that came up was
whether or not anyone had a *visceral* reaction against fmale
PIs, cops, secret agents, etc., in fiction.
I responded that, alhtough I like some of the woman PI
characters (I specifically mentioned both Kinsey Milhone and
Delilah West), I do have that visceral reaction to seeing
females in what seems to me to be essentially a male fantasy
role. I even referred to it as a prejudice, or at least a
pre-expectation, that I have to readjust before reading the
book. That's not judgment. It's not even allowing a prejudice
to keep me from enjoying a good read. It's just admitting
that the prejudice exists when I was specifically
asked.
Now as for whether or not the classic/cliche PI figure is a
"male fantasy," that still seems to me self-evident. It was
created almost exclusively by men for an almost exclusively
male audience. Leaving aside everything else I said, that I
think proves my point. It's a male fantasy, for males,
notwithstanding the fact that it might have an appeal for
many females. Just as the "classic/cliche" romance plot is a
"female fantasy," created almost exclusively by females for
an almost exclusively female audience. And the fact that
there are males to whom this essentioally female fantasy
might appeal
(like me, by the way; I've read romances for market research
and found I liked them, enjoying the soties and admiring the
craftsmanship) doesn't make them any less of a female
fantasy.
JIM DOHERTY
__________________________________________________ Do You
Yahoo!? Make international calls for as low as $.04/minute
with Yahoo! Messenger http://phonecard.yahoo.com/
-- # To unsubscribe from the regular list, say "unsubscribe rara-avis" to # majordomo@icomm.ca. This will not work for the digest version. # The web pages for the list are at http://www.miskatonic.org/rara-avis/ .
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : 22 Aug 2001 EDT