According to the Telegraph and the Guardian, British author and Literary Review book critic Jessica Mann has announced her intention to stop reviewing crime fiction books.
Why? Ms. Mann cites the "sadistic misogyny" of modern crime fiction.
"Each psychopath is more sadistic than the last," she says, "and his victims' sufferings are described in detail that becomes ever more explicit, as young women are imprisoned, bound, gagged, strung up or tied down, raped, sliced, burned, blinded, beaten, eaten, starved, suffocated, stabbed, boiled, or buried alive." (She actually left one out: broken. See BoneMan's Daughter by Ted Dekker.)
Ms. Mann says, "Authors must be free to write and publishers to publish. But critics must be free to say when they've had enough." So she is refusing to review any more crime fiction books as long as modern crime fiction remains defiantly anti-women.
Ms. Mann is right about one thing -- modern crime fiction is bathed in sexism. She's just off on the gender. It's not women these books are sexist against -- it's men.
Men are the real victims of modern crime fiction. They have been demonized and stereotyped to the point that the entire genre is threatening to collapse into absurdity beneath the accumulated weight of its anti-male rhetoric.
Go to the mystery/thriller/suspense section of any bookstore, anywhere in the United States or the United Kingdom. Pick up a book at random. Any book. Without knowing the plot, the location of the story, the author, I can tell you with 98% accuracy that every male character in the book will fall into one of three categories:
1. The Useless, Shiftless, Gutless Male. This will be a secondary character who is either too weak to stand up for himself or excessively blustery and abusive because he is all too aware of his inferiority.
2. The Sensitive Inspector. This is reserved for detectives, detective inspectors, policemen, etc. I've ranted about this at length before. These lawmen are moody, broody, terribly sensitive, unlucky in love, deferential to women, and spend time reading the classics, listening to obscure music, and quoting Shakespeare over the autopsy table.
3. The Nasty Killer. He may occasionally indulge in a bit of murder that involves children, elderly people, or men, but his favorite target is women. Especially young women, whom he likes to mentally and physically torture in any number of weird and inexcusable ways.
This is how men are portrayed in modern crime fiction: as spineless wonders, docile lapdogs, or ravening monsters. There is no in-between for them, nothing even slightly approaching the mixture of good and bad, strength and vulnerability, intelligence and naiveté that characterizes real men. They don't come close to the complexity that female characters are allowed to display in a positive light in every single one of these books.
In modern crime fiction, women who are aggressive, forward, and yes, even bitchy, are portrayed as strong. They know their own mind, they do what they want, and the reader is encouraged to applaud them for it.
That is excellent. That is how things should be. But when men are portrayed the same way, what happens? They are cast as domineering, controlling, chauvinistic bastards, at best. At worst, killers.
Who is it then, really, that is being biased against when women are murdered in all of these extravagant ways by over-confident male lunatics? When the violence perpetrated by the male killers becomes increasingly explicit? Are the readers set up against the innocent women? Or against the lunatic male killers?
It's not the woman who is the evil character in these stories -- it's the MAN.
It's not the female victim who the audience is set up to loathe and despise -- it's the MAN.
KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE BALL, PEOPLE. Modern crime fiction isn't misogynist. How CAN it be when it is perpetually obsessed with portraying female characters as victims? The real loser here is the average man.
The over-the-top, explicitly graphic details of the female victims' torture isn't a commentary on how much we hate women -- it's a commentary on how much we are willing to allow men to be demonized. Apparently, we're willling to allow quite a lot.
It isn’t good for men. It isn’t good for women. And it isn’t good for a genre that has become so sick with its own stereotypes it is coding on the table even as we speak.
Comments
Glad you said it. Can't wait to see some of the hell you reap for saying it though...
Many people use different rules to judge different genders or people. When "trained professionals" do this, it's either blind bias or intentional misinformation.
To those that disagree with your views, let them reverse the story, use the same rules, then judge. What would they say if 98% of crime novels cast WOMEN as CRAZY, UNSTABLE, SADISTIC KILLERS who loved to brutalize men? They’d say authors were purposely portraying women as evil, always making them villains. They’d call it blatant sexism spawned by a “secret agenda.”
Let’s go one step further. Imagine that crime novels constantly cast BLACK MEN as VICIOUS KILLERS who preyed on women. What would their conclusion be? Would they say the novels’ “female victims” represented an attack on all women? Or would they call it RACIST to always portray black men as villains? If they tell the truth ("if"), then they’d say that the black men were under attack and that, by proxy, all black people were under attacked.
Who commits the majority of crime in this country - women or men?
@Roestel: Hey! How is little you-know-who? Re: the hell I shall reap, I say bring it, baby. I know this genre up, down, and bass ackwards. They shall attack at their peril.
@Keith: You CLEARLY do not fall within the spineless wonder, docile lapdog or ravening monster categories. Atta boy.
@Susan: It doesn't matter who is committing the most crimes. That's not the point. The point is that Ms. Mann says the increase in violence in crime novels is due to hatred of women. I say it's due to hatred of men.
Susan, you miss the main points...
Miss Mann says modern novels are "biased" against women. That's untrue. The readers are set up to sympathize with who? The women. And who are they set up to despise? The men.
Secondly, read old murder mysteries. Did they constantly attack the men, vilify men? Did they always make men sadistic sexual predators? Don’t modern crime novels prey on women’s fear of men, and also hype the ultra feminist’s anti-men message? “They’re all dogs!” “They’re animals!” “They want to dominate women!” And these biased views are untrue. I’m a man, and I adore my mother, my wife, and my three little girls. And my son isn’t a miniature monster, in training, of course.
Also, read the Times of London Susan. Or other papers. Women increasingly perpetrate violent crime, including sexual crimes involving women!
Lastly, Susan, some women can be cruel, catty witches. Ask any teenage girl or business woman. But MOST women aren’t that way. But if books constantly portrayed women as cruel cats, you’d say it was an overblown depiction and an unfair bias. You just don’t equitably apply the same sympathy to men, Susan.
Hmmm... Even though men are being stereotyped as "docile dogs, broody losers, or ravenous killers", I think it's telling that no matter how positively women are portrayed, or how much readers are encouraged to applaud their achievements and their I-know-my-own-mind-and-will-go-after-what-I-want-ness, at the end of the day, it's still women that are brutally murdered in the books.
So, it doesn't matter if a woman is good, evil, irritating, accomplished or any of the above. For modern crime writers, women are still disposable. The men, regardless of where they fall in the 3 categories, will continue to live on, whereas female characters' lives are cut short.
That's partially why I find myself unable to read modern crime fiction. It's still always a man's man's world in there. I'd rather read about a woman who does something and actually gets to live.
*shrugs*
Hey Sukhi,
The fact that women are almost always the ones murdered/brutalized/whatever is partly my point: it's always the MAN that is doing it to them. And because of that, the man is always the one who ends up looking bad, especially as the violence gets more extreme. To say that the increasing violence shows how much crime fiction writers or readers hate women or think they are disposable seems completely backwards to me. What I see happening is that the men -- who were already stereotypically portrayed in these books to begin with -- just seem more evil.
I like reading crime fiction (especially the British stuff) but this obsession with cookie-cutter, all men are bad, spineless, or governed by their penises approach the genre has fallen into drives me freaking insane.
Your article says it all Michelle. And the comments below go into most of the other aspects. I can only say the extreme violence is very troubling to me. It gets worse and worse and worse and I really hate it. I think your points are valid. Don't get me wrong. But all this violence has to have an impact on how some people think and what they do. My point has nothing to do with the other writer's views or your critiqe of those views. But I think this is why people have trouble thinking of it any other way.
Isn't it interesting that the female victim is usually erased from the text? She's just a body upon which crimes are committed. And I do agree that men are portrayed as inhuman. If it were up to me, I would say these books are guilty of crimes against humanity. Plus, they usually suck.
Hi Nicole,
In my opinion, the best stuff crime fiction has to offer is still Agatha Christie, Georgette Heyer, and Dorothy L. Sayers. Ruth Dudley Edwards and Jonathan Gash, too. All very witty and fun. No one writing now comes close. Though I make an exception for Martha Grimes' Richard Jury/Melrose Plant series, only because I adore Melrose Plant.
Kerns - Little Charlie Jean Roestel is doing really, really good. That is when I'm not too weak and shiftless to feed her. Or I'm not torturing her or her mother out of pure meaness and spite. She's usually doing good when I apply my sensitive side - but not when it turns all moody and broody.
This article is almost as good as your 4 food groups!
Boiled? Really? Yike, must've missed that one. :) Seriously, though, you're right on target, Michelle. And you're a Dorothy Sayers fan, too. Yay - Long Live Lord Peter Wimsey!
Patricia Cornwell's books do have at least one uber-vicious female villian, so she's bucked the trend to an extent. As for the rest, I agree it would be nice to see some balance, maybe more women as evil-incarnate, and more men like Pete Marino.
Michelle, this is a thought provoking article. But when I read the other comments, I wonder why the women readers either focus on off-topic aspects or remain pretty mute.
@Roestel - I cannot imagine you as weak and shiftless. Or mean, broody, torture-y, or moody. I guess you're just underrepresented in crime fiction. Miss Charlie is a lucky lassie. (Congrats, by the way!)
@R.J. Huneke - Long live the four food groups! Red wine, white wine, Guinness, and gin!
@Jim D. - You know, Lord Peter was my literary love until I discovered Melrose Plant. He went to second place but he's still completely awesome. Ever see Ian Carmichael as him? He was the best. And you are so right about Pete Marino -- he is excellent. Frankly, I wish HE were the lead character in that series. Have you seen The Scarpetta Factor yet, Patricia Cornwell's latest? It was one of the books I read in this latest review marathon of mine. The review will be up here in Friday's review roundup. It was so-so.
@Rob - Yeah, I was wondering where all the ladies are, too....Come on, gals, let's hear from you.
This is a wonderfully astute and thought-provoking article. I stumbled upon it completely by accident. I have to agree with you Michelle. The only medium worse in its portrayal of men in modern times is most sitcom television. Men are most of the time know nothing, weak drones that their wives have to shoulder to make their families work. I've never experienced anything else that castrates us so bluntly. Cases in point: Everybody Loves Raymond, Alan on Two and Half Men, Home Improvement, Malcolm in the Middle (which is a travesty considering how wonderful and powerful of an actor Bryan Cranston is in actuality), and The Bill Engvall Show.
I really do like Melrose Plant, but Richard Jury is such a typical British crime hero - he's so DEPRESSING. I swear, you read that stuff and you start to wonder if the sun ever shines in the British Isles!
Sadly, I finally had to give up on Patricia Cornwell. After a few marvelous novels, I think she started believing her own liner notes, and the quality of her work really suffered. I highly recommend her/Scarpetta's cookbook, "Food to Die For", though. The recipes are amazing.
Jim D.
I think you have to look at society. Most serial killers and crimes in general are committed by men against women and young girls. Writers are just portraying what we see in the media everyday. We always think that men are overbearing towards women because of their physical prowess. So we don't see many women committing crimes against men. It just doesn't seem feasible but not impossible. I'm not sure I'd like to see more crime fiction where the woman is the villian although it would be interesting. I do agree with your article. It is the man who suffers the fate of the villian and the woman at his yielding hand.
Excellent review Michelle.
Susan, I wanted to let you know that my wife is pregnant, but finds herself fearing not men so much as women these days. This fear is based on the fact that women have been attacking other pregnant women in an attempt to still the unborn fetus. How many novels are written on this subject? And why or why not?
Michelle, you argue your case well. And looking at the comments, it's clear you ignited lots of intelligent ideas from your readers. Though some were clearly focusing on other issues, and others just arrived from Mars. ;)
Excellent review Michelle.
Susan, I wanted to let you know that my wife is pregnant, but finds herself fearing not men so much as women these days. This fear is based on the fact that women have been attacking other pregnant women in an attempt to still the unborn fetus. How many novels are written on this subject? And why or why not?
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