For a long time I liked The Huffington Post. They ran interesting stories, and lots of them. It was never a particularly edgy source, but I was drawn in by Arianna's charm and heavy Greek accent. I have since stopped. I like the idea behind HuffPo, but I feel like everything coming out of there is trash. Only very rarely do I come across a piece from HuffPo that I like. Amanda Nelson's "Top 10 Made-Up Literary Couples" is not one of those pieces.
To begin, this article isn't news-related, but it was written for another blog so I can forgive it of that. Plus, it's about books and has an intriguing title. How can you go wrong there? Well, it turns out, you can.
My main problem with this list is that it is so Eurocentric and heteronormative. I understand that ten doesn't leave a lot of room for variety, but you would think there would be some. But no, in nearly every pair Nelson imagines both partners are white and European or American, except for the final pair. And every coupling is also heterosexual. Some critics would even point out that all of these pairs are also monogamous.
It's 2012, haven't we seen more variety in literature? Can't we also appreciate non-European literature or gay literature? Beyond just a literary argument, can't we appreciate differing ethnicities, nationalities, sexualities, and relationships? I'm not saying that Nelson is using her article to purposefully discriminate, I'm just saying that it unknowingly demonstrates a very narrow world view.
Can we claim to be post-colonial if we refuse to recognize and value the literatures of worlds outside of Europe and the United States? Can we claim to live in a non-heteronormative society if we can't acknowledge sexualities beyond heterosexuality? I hope that it is clear that in both cases the answer is "no."
I am interested what sort of pairings others would make. Personally, I think Othello from the Shakespeare play of the same name and Mustafa Sa'eed from Tayeb Salih's Season of Migration to the North would be a good (albeit scary) match, considering how startlingly similar these two are. Feel free to share any pairs you think of in comments; I promise to be less critical!
Plenty of people think Holmes and Watson are a pair!
ReplyDeleteReading your post, I immediately thought that the world of 'fanfiction' is much more diverse than the world of 'professional' fiction. Fan writers will 'slash' any couple that they feel has chemistry. I wonder how that genre of writing will eventually influence more 'literary' endeavors.
Also, I have noticed that British TV shows are much more upfront about showing gay partnerships (without making them the 'joke' of the series) than American shows are. Their science fictions shows (like DOCTOR WO and TORCHWOOD) take it for granted that in the future coupling will be dictated by attraction, not by any kind of social mores.