Romance novels, Spike and Angel... and quiz

[oyceter]

Which tarot card are you?

Hee! Go fig... I get her in so many readings. I can just hear Sarah saying something about the importance of intuition. Am envying people who got the Fool, the Hanged Man and the Star, as those are some of my favorite cards.

And here are some ramblings on romance novels, inspired by a thread going on in ATPO here and the article on Alpha, Beta and Gamma heroes linked within. Thanks to superplin (who I am now stalking, aka friending) for the links!

I've almost gotten to the point where I'm not embarrassed to admit that I voraciously read romance novels, but am not there yet. Anyway, the links above got me thinking about archetypes and cliches in romance novels. Basically, the article says that most romance readers and writers categorize romance novels heroes in three categories. Alpha males are pretty easy to explain -- they're the heroes of all the old, extremely non-PC bodice rippers, the ones who are usually older than the heroine, extremely masculine, and often, very chauvanistic. Just like the name implies. Prime examples are probably in every single Elizabeth Lowell book, Kathleen Woodiwiss, who pretty much revived the romance and started the category of bodice ripper with (I think) The Flame and the Flower. Generally, the heroines in those books are young, innocent, sexually naive, blah blah blah. Betas are the nice guys, the ones who possess what we think are typically feminine traits... I can't think of many good romance novel examples right off hand. And then the author of the article states there are Gammas, who are a blend of alphas and betas.

I read Dangerous Men and Adventurous Women: Romance Writers on the Appeal of Romance edited by Jayne Ann Krentz a few years ago, and I think a piece in that book summarizes these hero types and gives a historical overview of how they arose, how the alpha male was eventually decried as un-PC and un-feminist, which gave rise to the ultra-feminist and feminine beta male, who was then thought of as not sexy enough. Ergo the gamma male, who is gruff and sexy and all those alpha traits on the outside, but eventually reveals an inner self that is feminine, head over heels in love, etc.

Anyway, to get to the point: I was wondering why so many romance readers (me included) felt as though the beta wasn't enough or good enough. Why is there that persisting archetype of the strong, scary bad boy tamed by the innocent girl? The Beauty and the Beast story? And politically I know it is bad and un-PC and not feminist, the idea of being able to reform the bad boy. I've read the articles on the romance novel writer beaten to death by her (too) alpha husband. And in RL, my boy is very beta, very nice and cute and happy, and I like him that way. Bad boys scare me in real life, and there's really no way I would date one. But in novels and TV shows, I adore them. And why in particular is it so attractive (to me at least) to have the bad boy shell covering someone with a weak mushy heart, to have the bad boy turn out to want nothing but to be loved?

I think in a way it relates to why romance novels work for me. I know many of the ones I read are horribly written, and in fact, the romance novels that attempt to be too arty, to be too PC, to be something MORE than their wonderfully trashy selves tend to turn me off. It relates a bit to why I like fairy tales and myths as well. I like the tropes, I like the set structure: boy and girl have a meet cute, fall in lust, fall in love, bad things happen, someone (usually boy) must grovel to get the other back. The language itself seems to be a part of this -- there is a rhythm and shape to romance novel language just as there is a rhythm and shape to the language of fairy tales and myths. And I think both work for the same reason, both romances and myths strike a part of me that aren't politically bound, that aren't shaped by society or PC-ness. And generally, the way I respond to certain romances and fairy tales are in no way bound by the way they are written, because for many of them, the language is highly formulaic. Rather, I respond when they hit on a certain archetype that I really grok.

For example, almost anything with the hero pining silently for a distant, seemingly cold and unattainable heroine will probably get to me. And here, though I generally like alphas and gammas more than betas, the betas work wonderfully for me. Throw in an unrequited childhood crush or a pining thing that's been going on for a very long time, and I'm in, hook, line and sinker. Add in a heroine who doesn't really know how to love or is afraid of love and the hero who gets past that, and I'm a goner. Which I think goes very far in explaining why I'm such a big fan of the Spike/Buffy relationship in seasons 5 and 6.

I read something in anodyna's LJ on what we as readers bring to a text and how there is no objective reading of a text, and I think that applies even more to romance novels and to romances in general. Why else are shipper wars so inflammatory? And I think that's why the Spike versus Angel debates are so deeply felt by most participants, despite all desire for distance. I know in my head that the reformed rapist story is extremely bad because of real-life consequences, and I know that reforming the bad boy and the desire thereof is also much like that. But there's still something in the Spike story that I wholeheartedly enjoy, and something in the Angel and Buffy romance that doesn't quite hit my buttons. I don't know why it doesn't, because I'm attracted to the doomed love story in Moulin Rouge and Wes/Lilah, but I think a large part of it is because they're in love. There's no perceived resistance on the part of Buffy to be in love. I say this because I watched the series backwards... Buffy and Angel were a carved in stone couple, and I was not privy to the forbidden longingness in seasons 2 and 3 except in hindsight. Which only goes to further illustrate how much we bring to a text. If I had watched Buffy unspoiled, not knowing what happened, I may be the hugest B/A shipper ever. Instead, the first episode I really watched in the series was Fool for Love, with a bad boy Spike revealed as a poor, lovelorn poet, and in the end, rejected by the unattainable girl. Hit every single one of my buttons, one right after the other, and really, resistance was futile.

I really have no idea where this is going, because I'm much better at rambling than at writing coherent essays. But I think I wanted to say something about women's literature, and how isn't it something that romance novels and fairy tales and Buffy can all pluck at something deep inside people, emotions that aren't readily accessible to analysis because they are so deep and so heartfelt? And why do people laugh at that? Why were fairy tales scoffed at as old wives' tales and why are romance novels still disdained today? Yeah, maybe they aren't great literature, but I know lots of great literature that doesn't do that to me. Lots of it I admire and envy, but they don't always pull at emotions the same. To be honest, I like it best when my romances aren't straight romances, and are instead laced with mythic resonances (fairy tale retellings! Yay!). But makes me sometime wonder on why it always seems to be the literature/movies written by and for women that are generally denigrated.

Comments

Re: good questions

[oyceter]

I think, for myself at least, that it's not so much the bad boy bit that draws me in (although leather is cool) as the character's need for a defense mechanism.

Ooh, I think you've hit it on the head. I love FFL to death because I heart Spike so much in that ep. Yeah, he's completely kickass in the leather and with the swagger, but it's the fact that he gets rejected over and over again by the girl that gets me. Still annoyed at the whole "we had to show all you silly viewers why Spike is a Bad Evil Thing."

H/C... hrm, never really thought about it. Which probably means I don't grok it so much. Unless you're talking about extreme emotional angst, in which case, pile it on, baby!

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

I wonder if some of it doesn't have to do with just talking about emotions and also those things that are really important? Or at least modern culture thinks they are. I'm thinking of my family again and in particular my father's family, the stoics. Neither a grin nor a frown shall cross the features of any member... and the word hug shalt be anathema.

But in terms of the romance... what slays me everytime is not just the romance but the combination of romance and heriocs. I seem to have been imprinted very young and indeligibly by the hero story...

whoops!!!

[angeyja.livejournal.com]

Of course I'm thinking about something else to add after I hit send! Two more things actually but connected... I have dated some 'bad boys' but they weren't actually bad (not like your romance writer's husband) more like edgy. It just turned out that when all was said and done I like to play with edgy but I want to live with something else.

But what's on the outside and what's on the inside aren't always consistent. The biker with heart of gold, the suit who turns out to be a dead beat. And doesn't this feed into how we feel about ourselves? Don't most of us feel like at times we have a hero or an edgy anti-herione in there somewhere? To spin this the other direction I once ruined a perfectly lovely realtionship with an absolutely gorgeous guy because I treated him like a dumb blonde... when I was young, I was VERY young and I did all sorts of awful cliche things. But I think in retrospect, I was really putting up a defense mechanism because here was this guy who played rugby, looked like a greek god and got better grades than me too. He couldn't possibly really like me and since he was going to break my heart anyway I might as well just head things off at the pass and treat him really crappy... but it was all fear.

And that leads me to the next thing. It's the danger the frisson of fear the playing with fire without having to worry about being personally burned. the other. the dark. freedom. letting go. breaking all the rules.

There's a great essay by Margaret Carter on vamps, romance and culture that I'll have to try to find for you. She goes more into depth and says things a lot better. But she talks about how this character has morphed to include ( or emphasize) the empathetic Other...

Re: whoops!!!

[oyceter]

I think a big part of it could be the general non-talking about emotions. I read some statistic somewhere about how it only seems as though women have higher depression rates because men either don't admit to it or channel it into other self-destructive acts.

And I guess the dichotomy between inside and outside is a great deal of what makes people interested in characters -- Willow, the geek who has enormous powers inside her, Xander, who seems ordinary but can save the world through love, Angel/Angelus, Spike/William.

And I would continue this but I have to go now =(.