The Social Media Mob vs. the Novel
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Posted Jul 7, 2022, 1:34 PM UTC
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One interesting detsil is they seem to be saying the book was about a black ex-con and they were worried about it getting stuff wrong so got a black sensitivity reader. But not an ex-con one (and I assume their complete lack or knowing authors background means they hadn't checked he was an ex-con).
If you accept for sake of argument that groups are sufficiently homogenous in how they experience and think about the world that one individual from a group can say that a portrayal of another individual from that group is 'unrealistic' rather than just different to them or unusual, I'd have thought an author would be more likely to do badly at portraying a rare group where members can't usually be identified and have little media exposure rather than a group making up over 12% of their countrymen.
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Oh wow that's really racist on the part of the publishing house. Guess they think all blacks are ex-cons huh
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Removed. Posts with links to images or videos need to have enough outside of the link to start the conversation. For example, what is the book about? What are your thoughts? Any questions you have for others to respond to (that can’t be answered yes/no)? If you edit your post to add more you can send a mod mail or reply to this comment for review.
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ok
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I generally think writers should write about whatever they want, and that we naturally open ourselves up to whatever praise and criticisms come, fair or unfair, by publishing our writing/art.
But I don’t think it’s ‘race essentialism’ for a publisher to be concerned that a Filipino writer might miss some things about the black experience, and that those blind spots, if they’re apparent on the page, might make the book unattractive to potential readers. I think the narrator’s claim that these sensitivity readers are only brought in to make the book digestible for ‘oversensitive Twitter mobs’ is purposely inflammatory and misses the mark.
I’m not discounting every point this video makes or even the premise of the discussion. I think there have been a lot of interesting discussions about whether and how you can write about characters of a different background than you. I just don’t think this video adds anything meaningful to our understanding, and it’s clear they have a bone to pick with some vague idea of ‘woke mobs’—which apparently now includes multimillion dollar publishing houses?
I thibk the argument is more that said publishing houses do things to appease such mobs (pre-emptively or reactively). I'm not close to it but my guess is that publishing houses aren't very ideological on this but they're responding to PR.
I guess the question is - if the book was going to be anonymous and nobody would know the race of the author would the publishers still take this route because they genuinely think its needed to make it a book that will be successful on its own merits (including the plausibility of its characters)?
Or is it about risk of bad PR (yes largely on twitter) often from people who haven't read it and certainly from people who wouldn't be loudly complaining about the plausibility or characters if the writer was the 'right' race but just unusual or bad at portraying characters?
Or is it neither and because the publishers see this ad a sort of moral duty around authenticity in itself (which I'd guess is a good chunk of more junior staff but not yet the decision makers for most part)
Do you think a butchered portrayal of a character, particularly one dealing with a story as potentially emotional as the one in question (black ex-con going to predominately white uni), is more sympathetic or acceptable from someone who shares some level of background with the character? I’m genuinely asking, I don’t totally know how I feel about it. My gut instinct is that the more a writer has in common with their characters (race, being an ex con, or any other similarities), the more likely I am to chalk up the bad portrayal to, as you said, the writer just being bad at portraying characters.
To reply to your comment as a whole, I think it’s likely that a publishing agent isn’t worried about appeasing the reading sensibilities of people on Twitter who wouldn’t buy the book anyway, but the agent does, like you say, take into account what a negative Twitter reaction might do to sales from a PR perspective.
Still, I wonder how often a completely fair and reasonable criticism of a book gains some popularity on Twitter and is unfairly spun into a story of a woke mob going after an author’s artistic freedom. Like, I know a lot of Twitter isn’t that (fair and reasonable), but I’ve seen some genuinely great art criticism in long or short Twitter threads get completely misrepresented as being an attack mob just because it gets some retweets and a few people jumping in to say ‘Totally agree!’
So from a publisher’s perspective, I’d think the sensitivity readers would be to avoid all forms of bad PR or negative reactions, whether that’s from people who are sending inflammatory tweets who haven’t read the book, or whether it’s to avoid legitimate social media criticism that would affect sales.
Sure so am I. But thats not a quality of book issue it'd a PR issue. By the time you're judging whether they're 'just' bad at portraying characters or ignorant (arguably former a bigger deal for an author) you don't like the book either way. Only difference is if you e.g. tweet loads of outrage.
On the rest - while I think social media criticism of this kind is very frequently deeply uninformed I meant to include in 'managing PR'both informed and uninformed, yes. Point is that it's not because the publishers are deeply bought into the principles that campaigners are or that this is part of normal editing which aims at quality, its an optics thing.