Culture Study Podcast - The ACOTAR Chokehold

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00:00:53.460 How would you describe A Court of Thorns and Roses to someone who has never heard of it?

00:01:00.460 Okay, it's a series of romanticy books, which means that they are big fantasy world books, but they have a lot of romance stuff happening in them.

00:01:12.440 And it's about a young, initially human woman who falls in love with a super sexy old fairy daddy and he can shapeshift into a lion beast thing.

00:01:30.060 And the first book is sort of Beauty and the Beast inflected.

00:01:35.120 But after that, everything goes off the rails in a good way.

00:01:42.440 this is the culture study podcast and i'm ann helen peterson and i'm katherine van arendonk and

00:01:49.640 i'm a critic at vulture then i am like positioning myself right now at the beginning as someone who

00:01:55.460 loves romance but does not consume a ton of it and it i think we can maybe unpack some of those

00:02:02.000 reasons why as we go through but i have been enthralled by various uh franchises over the

00:02:08.240 course of the last however many years of my adult life but then we should backtrack just a slight

00:02:14.700 amount and say that today's episode is all about specifically the romance fantasy series a court

00:02:20.440 of thrones and roses which we're going to call i call it acotar how do you pronounce it acotar

00:02:25.120 yes acotar by sarah j mass and part of the reason we're doing this is that every time i post uh

00:02:31.920 what are you reading thread for subscribers on my newsletter there's always this really interesting

00:02:37.040 and I think very familiar to both you and I conversation about why do I love this series?

00:02:43.420 Why do I feel certain ways about this series? Just complicated feelings about this series. I

00:02:49.720 think a lot of affection for it, a lot of defensiveness, which makes sense, and a lot

00:02:56.180 of ambivalence. And I think that leads me to how I have been describing it, which I think undersells

00:03:02.040 it but leads to interesting conversations which when people say what are you reading I say oh

00:03:07.840 this fairy porn book right which like that it is so so much more than that but I kind of like seeing

00:03:14.580 people's reactions when I say yeah yeah yeah the tiktok preferred term that I see a lot is fairy

00:03:21.640 smut and you know I'm sure we could we could spend a lot of time breaking down the difference

00:03:27.160 between smut and porn as like a concept but they kind of are pointing at the same idea right yeah

00:03:32.720 and there is in both this pre-defensiveness about like I know what you're thinking and what that

00:03:42.720 could mean a bunch of different things right like I know you think that this is like dirty and

00:03:47.860 shameful I know that you think that this is silly and sort of frivolous and empty I know that you

00:03:54.320 think that it's mostly about sex scenes and whatever that implies about me I know that you

00:04:00.400 think that it's for girls only and is mostly about like there's just like a lot of different stuff

00:04:05.980 but regardless calling it that up front is this way of being like okay I know it's dumb but yeah

00:04:13.380 right or to be like I know maybe you think it's dumb but I don't think it's dumb yes yes so I

00:04:20.680 should also say just for listeners to the pod we are going to do our very best in this first part

00:04:26.160 of the episode to be spoiler free first of all and also to try to root our discussion in a way

00:04:33.460 that makes it accessible to people who have not read the books because we want this to be a

00:04:37.200 conversation that is more than just about like the very specifics of these books and then in the

00:04:43.020 second half of the show we're going to get down and dirty and talk about the details and have a

00:04:49.360 mini book club discussion that's going to be just for paid subscribers so if you're listening to

00:04:53.840 this and already know you want to hear that part head to culturestudypod.substack.com

00:04:59.480 and join the ranks of paid subscribers so i kind of want to talk like first where you are coming

00:05:08.000 from yeah with these series yeah and root yourself just in terms of literary criticism like we both

00:05:14.060 have pretty interesting backgrounds when it comes to this stuff. Yeah. Yeah. So my background is kind

00:05:20.180 of bifurcated. One half of me is I'm a critic at Vulture. I spend a lot of time thinking about

00:05:27.600 like texts with that word meant pretty broadly. I spend a lot of time thinking about TV in

00:05:31.660 particular and actually comedy I write about a bit as well. I have a PhD in English lit from

00:05:37.820 a fancy place and my dissertation was about serial fiction. So I spent like a lot of time

00:05:43.640 thinking about like very high-minded approaches to like literature and you know golden age

00:05:50.340 prestige television or whatever and also I read a lot of essentially precursor fairy smut as like

00:06:00.200 a 14 year old yeah it was not fairies it was dragons I read obsessively every Anne McCaffrey

00:06:06.760 novel I could get my hands on not all of those are dragons some of the smuts are more like

00:06:11.040 telepathy smut yeah there's something super sexy about telepathy like because it's at the heart of

00:06:16.860 some lois duncan that i really loved as a kid too so yeah good and so like i i i have always been

00:06:23.640 really a fantasy person but like if i actually go back now as an adult and think about the ones

00:06:29.260 that i liked the most they usually also had romance elements to them um a lot of them were

00:06:35.060 the stuff that Sarah J. Maas points to as the things that were that she was reading at the

00:06:41.280 same point, books like Garth Nix's Sabriel, Robin McKinley books, which I loved deeply,

00:06:46.520 deeply, deeply. She was watching Buffy like that, that kind of a thing. And then I have been a

00:06:51.940 romance reader, you know, certainly not with the kind of incredibly lovely attention that like the

00:06:59.460 really intense romance people are but like on and off you know I have gone through periods of my

00:07:05.620 life where like the only thing my brain can really read is romance and like what grad school I

00:07:09.380 remember sitting and reading all of Outlander and being like I should be reading Dickens right now

00:07:13.780 nope you know that's where I am Outlander has been a point of uh conversation with

00:07:20.520 my friend group in terms of how the series has kind of gripped us some of the more mature and

00:07:28.140 female focused emphasis on pleasure that sort of thing my background I have a PhD in media studies

00:07:36.040 I did part of that in English like it was my master's was in English and I really loved Star

00:07:43.540 Trek novels as a young person and I think that that's where a lot of Star Wars person personally

00:07:50.880 that was my brother that was my brother and like if I think about it my favorite of all of the

00:07:56.920 Star Trek novels was Imzadi, which is about that mated connection, essentially, to use an ACOTAR

00:08:04.120 term between Riker and Deanna Troy, who's the counselor. And so it's all about like, that

00:08:11.900 romance that gripped me. And then I have periodically, and I think importantly, also

00:08:16.640 during grad school, come to different romance texts as like a real way of rediscovering my love

00:08:24.420 for reading rediscovering that love of reading the way that i did when i was a teen like i and

00:08:30.880 i did a lot of exploration of like what was going on with my fascination with twilight i wrote what

00:08:36.380 what eventually became like an academic article in feminist media studies about feminist negotiation

00:08:43.100 of that text specifically so i've thought about this a lot but like you i am not like a the deep

00:08:52.300 deep reader of romances and fantasy that I think if I had more time I absolutely would be and I

00:08:59.100 think I actually am in a moment where I'm thinking about it more for me like during the pandemic when

00:09:03.460 I struggled to read I turned to a lot of thrillers which served like a different purpose in some ways

00:09:08.780 yeah but I am I'm having so much fun right now I'm nearly done with book five and it's so hot

00:09:17.100 so I am in a really great place right now that is I think going to be a jumping off point for

00:09:22.280 more things. So that situates us. That's our positionality, as we would say, as former

00:09:28.340 academics. Okay, so let's go to our first question to help us out a little bit more here. So this is

00:09:35.400 about the general landscape of book fandom right now. This is from Elise.

00:09:39.360 Why does everyone seem to collectively lose their minds over book series and authors these days in

00:09:43.880 a way I can't remember from the past? Harry Potter notwithstanding. Whether it's Allie Hazelwood,

00:09:48.500 colleen hoover are a bunch of people telling me the writing isn't very good but you just need to

00:09:52.880 read them regarding akatar why are we so cultish about books now life is so short i really don't

00:09:58.860 think fairies fucking would interest me why am i crazy for not wanting to read it yeah uh so what

00:10:05.120 do you think is this all just tiktok what's going on here well there's definitely a tiktok element

00:10:10.140 And I do think that TikTok is really good at creating this sense of community where it's like you need to read the thing everyone's talking about in order to participate in what that community, like any other community building thing.

00:10:26.300 You have to have some kind of shared texts so that you all are speaking the same language and using the same reference points.

00:10:32.820 And because TikTok is so good at just creating that, like, we're all in this place together, we're all responding to each other. And so you do feel this, this omnipresent sense of like, this is the things everyone is reading.

00:10:49.080 But I do think, actually, that although social media makes us more aware of and gives us more of a more of a heavy sense of that feeling that authors that like people are cultish about authors, that this is this is a tale as old as time.

00:11:05.380 Right. Like, I mean, I hate to get all 19th century on this shit.

00:11:09.120 Please do. Please do.

00:11:09.900 like people were absolutely losing their minds about charles dickens and if you were not up to

00:11:15.040 date on the old curiosity shop then you were streets behind and it was like he was the celebrity

00:11:21.340 of the day you know like we people have been like this about books since books existed and i think

00:11:27.100 although again in the same way that instagram makes us feel like everyone else's lives are

00:11:32.780 more aesthetically pleasing than our own book talk makes it feel like everyone's reading all

00:11:37.720 these books and we have to read them together it's just the perception that is that is harder

00:11:42.360 to deal with and not the actual cultishness of it yeah yeah i always tell people when they argue

00:11:48.580 that like we are more into celebrity now it's just that the ways that we are into celebrity are more

00:11:54.820 visible yeah it's not any different than the same sort of like fandoms that were around 20th century

00:12:02.300 like classic hollywood stars that sort of thing and then the other thing i would note though is

00:12:06.640 I think that books are coming out faster and some of that just has to do with like we have computers

00:12:12.780 so it takes less time to type right than like the speed of production that someone like dickens was

00:12:19.560 going through in order to get although that man could produce but um but yeah no but I mean the

00:12:24.360 other thing about that is like marketing right our marketing cycles are much much faster so it's not

00:12:28.500 just that you can write books faster but that the industry because also writers get paid very little

00:12:33.820 And like, you can't make a living unless you're actually writing many books in a fairly short

00:12:38.440 period of time. So I do think that there's like a lot of different forces here that are kind of

00:12:41.900 all colliding. Yeah. And I do think too, like all social media does a very good job at making us

00:12:47.880 feel bad if something doesn't seem interesting to us. And like, I would say that I also avoided

00:12:54.500 this series, like Melody, our producer told me about it a long time ago. And I saw various posts

00:13:00.720 that were like oh i saw someone reading in the coffee shop like what i would give to be reading

00:13:05.440 it for the first time and because i had never like read fairy stuff before that was something

00:13:12.160 just about the idea of fairies that like was weird to me as this person says fairies fucking

00:13:17.680 and it's okay to to not think that something might be your thing i also think it's worthwhile

00:13:23.320 to try something out and that's i i came into the series thinking i don't know what i'm gonna think

00:13:28.180 right I'm very open to what I'm gonna think about this and if I hate it after the first book then

00:13:32.840 that's enough but I did not so you wrote this great piece for Vulture about Sarah J Maas in

00:13:41.060 particular so can you say a little bit about your theory about why people are specifically

00:13:47.120 so into her books because it's not just this series she has two other series and why there

00:13:53.800 is this like i don't this perceived pressure maybe for someone like elise to read them even

00:13:58.640 if she doesn't want to yeah i mean i think there's there's i mean as with everything there's like

00:14:03.180 there's like several things going on here one of them is there have been waves of romanticcy

00:14:09.880 authors that whether or not they have been marketed as such which they really have not

00:14:15.320 been until this point but like there are precursors and everyone just kind of quietly

00:14:19.940 reads them and everyone goes like that's my smut and nobody pays attention to it but yeah um but

00:14:24.900 she was really uh just at a early but well positioned point in this current wave of interest

00:14:33.860 in them and because she was writing so early and so much she's very prolific yeah um that like if

00:14:41.760 you were kind of going to be into these books like she was one of the people who would she would just

00:14:46.160 be who you turn to but i do think there are other things specific to her writing that actually makes

00:14:52.660 them why they have soared to the level of popularity that they do one of them is she she

00:14:59.860 writes from particularly akatar but the other series a little bit as well this reconstructed

00:15:06.900 fairy tale kind of space which is very much from robin mckinley who she cites um where you're

00:15:13.120 taking what feel very very very familiar fairy tale kinds of tropes but the relationship shapes

00:15:20.240 that she's dealing with the kinds of female characters in particular what they want what

00:15:24.820 they care about are are more like contemporary yes women yes so you're with this fairy tale thing

00:15:32.840 you're in you get the magic of that world but then also you get the person saying like wow it's

00:15:38.140 really fucked up that you won't let me leave this castle right and so that the the immediate kind

00:15:45.340 of accessibility of that to contemporary readers I think is important one of the other things that

00:15:50.420 I think is really going on here is we are a generation of readers and sort of culture

00:15:56.880 consumers who have become very very familiar with the idea of trauma plots and the and the sense

00:16:03.320 that the things that happened to us shape us.

00:16:07.520 And until we can fully integrate themselves

00:16:09.500 into our understanding, our stories of ourselves,

00:16:12.500 we really can't move forward.

00:16:14.860 And Sarah J. Maas, just some of the most canny,

00:16:19.760 I don't know, I think she is a very intuitive writer.

00:16:22.660 So I'm not saying this like she sits down

00:16:24.420 and then carefully says like,

00:16:25.600 this was how I will own culture.

00:16:27.500 But she is able to use that trauma plot

00:16:30.940 to stitch together this big high fantasy structure which is very challenging on its own

00:16:36.420 and a romance structure which is also people think is easy and is really hard to do well

00:16:42.000 and she is able to use these particularly the heroine's sense of trauma plot to say that like

00:16:49.340 the the keys to this fantasy world are not going to be unlocked until you are able to deal with

00:16:56.160 this trauma that you have which is also then going to enable you to connect in a romantic

00:17:01.560 relationship like they are structurally tied together and so there it is just so effectively

00:17:08.360 built into the way those books work that your brain just goes like ding ding ding ding ding like

00:17:12.900 it is they're very well crafted you you use this term I'm trying to remember the exact sentence

00:17:19.100 but you said that basically like the romantic processing and also the the trauma processing

00:17:24.440 culminate similarly and it turns into what you call a simultaneous orgasm of structural devices

00:17:31.160 and I mean that's great for many reasons uh how did did you write that the first draft or did your

00:17:37.900 editor help you come up with that oh no I wrote it very early and then I texted it to like three

00:17:43.720 people and I was like this is the only line I care about actually making it into the final version

00:17:47.860 of this piece but I think you're totally right right like it's very much in line with the you

00:17:55.380 have to deal with your shit which is similar to like you have to love yourself right you have to

00:18:00.380 figure out how to love yourself and see yourself clearly before you can deal with this other stuff

00:18:05.320 and I think that a complaint that I have heard about the books and about her writing and again

00:18:11.680 And I haven't read the other two series, but is that her pacing is off or that it's it's weird.

00:18:17.980 Right. And I think maybe when people say that, that's what they're talking about, is that these characters actually it's not just, oh, I process an act one.

00:18:28.160 It's like I process an act one. I process an act two. I process like almost all the way through act three.

00:18:33.880 And then an act like four and five, we get a little bit of that culmination. And it's orgasmic.

00:18:40.900 Like it is hot in terms of like the sex of it, but it's also, I think, very gripping and propulsive in terms of the other plots that are happening in terms of the larger fairy world.

00:18:54.420 Yes. Yeah. And it is it is a part of all of her series, but it is distinct in ACOTAR because those books are so the first three ACOTAR books are have first person narrators.

00:19:11.040 And this is, I think, a huge deal, a huge deal.

00:19:16.700 She started writing Throne of Glass when she was 16, which is her first series.

00:19:21.540 And she was really publishing it on an out sort of out spurt of a fan fiction website.

00:19:28.440 And she was really coming from much more of a big high fantasy structure at that place where she was like multiple character groups spread across a big map.

00:19:36.400 There is that single protagonist and there is absolutely that trauma thing.

00:19:41.040 But I think there is something about the first-person narrators of the first three books of ACOTAR that are better fit to the kinds of processing trauma plot structure that she has in those books.

00:19:55.700 They feel more rooted in her experience.

00:19:59.000 And then by the time you get to books – well, I'm going to be honest.

00:20:03.200 I don't think Four is actually a real book.

00:20:04.660 That's my biggest Sarah J. Maas.

00:20:06.680 I think it's a piece of fan fiction.

00:20:09.280 Maas, that's a book.

00:20:10.140 It's a it's a Christmas AU. Yes. Yes. But book five, which there is a lot of feelings about book

00:20:17.680 five, which maybe we can talk about in the second half of this. But like that one's now you have a

00:20:23.140 third person narrator, but you are already so rooted in this world from this like very bodily

00:20:27.340 first person experience. Yes. And so that I think is also a big part of why I think ACOTAR actually

00:20:33.660 works better structurally than her other two series, which have these third person narrators.

00:20:38.540 That's such a good point.

00:20:39.620 Okay, let's talk a little bit about this new word that people are using for this genre,

00:20:45.060 romanticy.

00:20:46.260 This question comes from Jen.

00:20:48.180 What is the deal with fantasy romance as a genre?

00:20:51.740 I'm thinking of A Court of Thorns and Roses and Fourth Wing.

00:20:57.660 Where did it come from?

00:20:58.660 Are these Harry Potter fans grown up and wanting erotica?

00:21:03.060 So I think it's interesting that she comes out of the Harry Potter fan fiction world

00:21:07.660 right where there is a lot of erotic fiction happening uh but then i also and you point this

00:21:14.860 out very definitely in your piece like this is not the first time that romance and sci-fi or

00:21:21.620 fantasy elements have intermingled there's a great line in the piece where you're like

00:21:25.180 there's a difference between sci-fi and fantasy but we could go there but it involves talking

00:21:30.700 about spaceships so we don't need to and i'm willing i was like this is the one part i would

00:21:37.980 love to fight with people about nobody came for me on how we define these terms you did a great

00:21:45.000 job of like talking that through uh so what do you think about the current popularity of this

00:21:52.980 particular genre yeah i i mean as i mentioned before i do really believe that there have been

00:22:00.240 waves of some expression of this desire in like for decades and women have been figuring out how

00:22:07.960 to get whatever the closest version of very smut is since we had mass market paperback like

00:22:14.600 publishing right yeah it is really striking how mainstream it is right now how fully target and

00:22:22.420 cap we are with these books that like if you were to actually flip through them you would be like

00:22:27.160 oh well okay there's a lot going on in here and i think it's i think it's a lot of different

00:22:31.980 things i think there is something about the fact that people can read books on their kindles that

00:22:38.360 has allowed people to feel comfortable reading the kinds of books that they might not otherwise

00:22:42.820 be seen reading i think which was a sort of part of the harry potter thing oh and 50 shades too

00:22:49.660 right and 50 shades absolutely yep and but also just generally that sense of like it's okay to

00:22:55.040 read YA fiction if you're older and like YA books with more adult looking covers on them.

00:23:00.720 So people weren't like ashamed of reading them. I think there's that. I think there is

00:23:06.080 a kind of the book talk element that we've been talking about, this pandemic element that I know

00:23:12.280 a lot of us are kind of coming. Suddenly we felt like I can't read anything, but I'm stuck at home

00:23:18.080 and the only thing that can absorb me is something that fully takes me away. And so there's something

00:23:22.800 about that as well. I have this other probably wrong theory, but I'm kind of fascinated by it,

00:23:29.100 which is that nerd culture and the sort of mainstreaming of Marvel as the only shared

00:23:36.400 text in pop culture happened about a decade ago. And it made the male version of like the thing

00:23:45.240 you wanted to read when you were 14 into the most mainstream possible text. And so it is not

00:23:52.740 shocking to me that it has taken a decade but that now the version of this that appeals to women is

00:23:58.200 suddenly marketed and everywhere yeah and there's some old school you know like why do we seek out

00:24:04.620 romance and fantasy because our world is broken and where do you want to play out some of your

00:24:12.180 ideals or experiments and what a different world could look like like this gives us a tapestry

00:24:20.800 to play in that space right like I can be like oh everything everything about our world feels like

00:24:29.100 just really really intractable in this moment in particular I think like politically right both

00:24:35.580 domestically and internationally and so where can you imagine a different world a world that has

00:24:42.120 problems but that like there is some sort of catharsis there is possibility for change there

00:24:49.340 are good men that's i think a big part of this and then also there are men who and this is like

00:24:55.560 the fantasy of one of our protagonists there are very powerful men who also think a lot about

00:25:02.400 structural changes that empower women yeah these books are so much more about overthrowing

00:25:09.740 authoritarian regimes than tends to get coverage but they really are yeah authoritarian masculine

00:25:16.400 like patriarchal regimes right like and some of this I think can sometimes feel slightly

00:25:23.320 obvious right like yeah oh yeah our female protagonist is the first high lady but then

00:25:29.720 there's also the fact that like some of our protagonists have been through sexual trauma

00:25:33.780 like they are dealing with vulnerabilities that are often not allowed to other male protagonists

00:25:41.620 so I think that's part of it for sure

00:25:44.120 and then once you get one of these books

00:25:46.180 right and if you read through the entire

00:25:48.100 series then you want more

00:25:49.920 so people say oh if you liked ACOTAR

00:25:52.080 like try a fourth wing

00:25:53.200 which might be where I go next

00:25:56.100 I mean we are at the place I say like target

00:25:57.980 end cap which is true but the reality

00:25:59.980 is we're past that like we are

00:26:01.920 in a place where it's her but

00:26:03.920 then it is also seven other authors

00:26:05.840 who are there only because of

00:26:07.980 the groove the marketing groove

00:26:09.840 that these books carved first

00:26:11.540 Yes, absolutely. How much do you think is that like, people want to take joy in reading? Like that I sometimes I think that that's just like under discussed.

00:26:20.360 It's a huge part of it. It's a huge, huge, huge part of it. They are completely absorbing. And at the end of my piece, these books work when they are able to make you feel like you are a teenager again as you were reading them.

00:26:38.420 Yeah. And the pleasure of them is absolutely the only reason that like everyone around us TV works this way, too. We would not all be watching millions and millions and millions of people would not be watching Young Sheldon if there wasn't something about Young Sheldon that was like, but it feels good in my brain.

00:26:57.300 right right it's not like these these shows like have like i don't know like inject us with drugs

00:27:03.100 that make us like them no no you're just like oh it's like sexy and also it like makes me want to

00:27:10.740 read and makes me want to stay up and like that is exciting right i i love i love that feeling like

00:27:17.120 i'm not even looking at my phone right that is great to have that sort of absorptive experience

00:27:22.620 and it's very seldom that we have it in this moment.

00:27:25.920 Absolutely, yeah, yeah, yeah.

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00:28:52.760 and you can get new episodes every Thursday wherever you get your podcasts.

00:29:00.300 Our next question comes from Jennifer, and it's about the framing of ACOTAR, broadly speaking.

00:29:06.040 Is ACOTAR feminist?

00:29:08.280 I am a voracious reader but new to the fairy smut genre.

00:29:11.660 I just devoured the series in a week.

00:29:14.600 It was recommended by my college students from around the world, and while reading it everywhere,

00:29:19.500 I found that everyone else was also reading it, including all the dental texts at my son's

00:29:25.040 orthodontist appointment. I've never read romance that puts female pleasure in the foreground so

00:29:30.580 unabashedly and focuses on egalitarian relationships. I keep telling my husband

00:29:36.400 that I want the next book, the one where they're married and have kids and life gets boring and

00:29:41.800 complicated, but still incredibly sexy. So are the books feminist, or are they just incredibly

00:29:48.620 for me, a white, cis, hetero, middle-class woman? I will say I was at the hairdresser

00:29:55.320 earlier this week and I was reading it on my Kindle, when usually I just scroll my phone and

00:30:00.460 I'm like, no, I'm bringing my Kindle. And my hairdresser asked what I'm reading. She's like,

00:30:04.760 oh, I'm halfway through book two. So I had one of those experiences. And she said too,

00:30:09.520 Like I'm not usually much of a reader, but I, you know, me and another hairdresser are super into these.

00:30:15.880 I think it brings us back to this moment that both you and I remember from like, I don't know, 2008, 2009, when like the most popular thing that you could ask a female celebrity was, are you a feminist?

00:30:27.400 Right. Like, does it on another level, like, does it pass the Bechdel test, like, which is a test to see if like two women talk to one another about something that isn't a man?

00:30:36.840 is that the wrong question is that an interesting question what are your thoughts here i mean i am

00:30:43.540 a believer in feminism so i think it's a useful question to ask in the same way it's a useful

00:30:50.120 question to ask like just the way the kinds of messages that we get from books are always

00:30:56.260 worth probing right yeah and i think there are elements actually of it that are starkly

00:31:02.660 unfeminist, particularly in book five, which I am ready to fight about as soon as we possibly can.

00:31:08.680 But I also think that in the same way that we turn to fiction, especially to create these

00:31:15.700 playgrounds, as you were talking about, these kind of escapist places, where what's happening

00:31:20.860 is not necessarily that we are reading some kind of tract about how we should be living our lives,

00:31:28.880 But instead, we're playing out various fantasies of who we are, what we like, what we don't like.

00:31:37.100 I mean, the internet is chock-a-block with people calling these books problematic.

00:31:43.680 And they are.

00:31:44.580 Like, there are so many places you can point to if what you're interested in is thinking about problematic elements of these texts.

00:31:51.200 People point to race things.

00:31:52.600 People point to feminist things.

00:31:54.620 People point to gender trope.

00:31:56.340 There's just endless.

00:31:57.200 also people find it like age gap things she's 20 he's 300 right and like yeah that's very

00:32:08.200 problematic and also very sexy and also a lot of the things that people find sexy and interesting

00:32:13.060 to think about are like not great from a from a feminist perspective and like maybe that's worth

00:32:19.740 thinking about for ourselves and also the things that we know are taboo are also things we're

00:32:23.640 interested in like it is so much more complicated than um a sort of check mark yes or no situation

00:32:32.820 for for these but also any fiction yeah to me it seems like something that is going to be

00:32:38.100 fascinating to look back on by scholars at some point in the future as a means of studying

00:32:45.600 a particular understanding of what feminism looks like yeah in this moment right for sure

00:32:51.320 yeah because there's a lot I mean it's not a pure reflection by any means but it's a

00:32:55.660 refraction both in terms of like the way that the sex unrolls the way that desire unrolls the way

00:33:02.280 that like power is accumulated and distributed all of those things are really interesting and

00:33:08.540 so for me I think like that's why I said is this the right question like I think Sarah J Maas is

00:33:14.840 a feminist like that yeah that is not like a question for me the way that she is writing

00:33:20.160 these books it's on like it's woven through all of the fabric is this something that like to me

00:33:27.260 it underlines that feminism is constantly under negotiation and i don't think it's just for

00:33:31.380 middle-class white ladies what do you think i i mean the fact of feminism being under negotiation

00:33:37.560 is i think true for everyone and for men as well and for everybody yeah yeah whether these books

00:33:42.640 are just for middle-class white ladies is i think a different question i don't think they're for

00:33:47.860 just middle-class white ladies, but I do think they are produced almost entirely by middle-class

00:33:54.980 white ladies, which is not, it can't be dismissed. Now that's not complete, like there are absolutely

00:34:01.960 black women who write romanticcy. There are all kinds of people who write romanticcy and read

00:34:06.740 romanticcy, but absolutely like the levers of capitalism have only raised up the white ladies.

00:34:12.820 So there is a bit of an echo chamber that probably is happening between author and reader there. But as far as whether the thing that the actual text is, is only for middle class white ladies. I mean, first of all, I know so many gay people who read these books. So like, right, this is not just straight cis people. Yeah, right, right. Totally. Yeah. I think sometimes if you are reading it, and maybe your friend group is reading it, it's easy to think that you are the only people reading it.

00:34:40.880 But like, I think that the appeal goes much, much broader.

00:34:44.580 Yeah.

00:34:44.720 All right.

00:34:45.000 So next question.

00:34:46.260 And this is where the comments get heated in the newsletter.

00:34:48.920 Let's hear from Molly.

00:34:50.600 Why is there so much judgment about reading Romanticy like ACOTAR or Fourth Wing?

00:34:54.980 Shouldn't the definition of a good book be based on what brings a reader joy and captivates

00:34:59.600 their attention and imagination?

00:35:02.000 I mean, this is a long, old conversation, right?

00:35:05.560 And we should say just by definition, Fourth Wing is another popular Romanticy series by

00:35:10.380 an author named rebecca yaros so i think so much of this has to do with like feminization of the

00:35:17.800 genre like association with mass market paperbacks like all of those things and some discomfort

00:35:25.460 as you mentioned that now these books are being more openly consumed yeah and part of the discourse

00:35:35.440 And it's also, I think, it's not cool to shame people about reading them anymore.

00:35:39.980 And so some people who still have those internalized shame mechanisms are grappling with those feelings.

00:35:46.040 So what do you think?

00:35:47.820 Yeah, I mean, all of that is happening here.

00:35:49.820 It also reminds me of like a TV academic conference that I was at.

00:35:55.500 This was, I think, in 2010, where it was truly like, why are we all talking about mad men when we should be talking about the thing?

00:36:04.160 Everyone's watching, which is Big Bang Theory, but nobody wants to talk about Big Bang Theory, do they?

00:36:08.920 And just the way that we as a species are obsessed with creating these hierarchies of taste and class in the media and the culture that we produce.

00:36:19.600 And the only way that we are able to have any kind of sense of who we are is by saying we're not them.

00:36:24.740 And there's like just all of that is happening here.

00:36:28.240 And the shame comes out of all of the things that you are talking about, the sexiness of them, the sense that only women read them, the genre fiction forever has always had this sort of lesser than status than fiction that is realist, that sort of purports to represent the world as we live in it, which is supposed to have a better and more valuable way of reflecting who we are as people.

00:36:55.040 and it is also seen as harder to do which is bullshit and uh and so yeah like this is this

00:37:04.260 is unfortunately just the newest iteration of the fact that tv was shameful and novels were shameful

00:37:11.560 and fiction as a concept was shameful and plays were shame like just go all roll it all the way

00:37:17.160 back movies pulp magazines like gossip celebrity gossip in general like we're just it's fascinating

00:37:26.220 to me that I think some in some ways we have moved towards a cultural understanding that like

00:37:33.240 it's okay to consume these things but we still say like oh this is my trashy thing that I consume

00:37:40.120 Like we still, there is still that desire to label it or to like push it away or to put it, put your ACOTAR in a stack with a literary book to show like, oh, I also am capable.

00:37:55.120 Of course you're capable of reading those other novels you can read, right?

00:37:58.720 yeah yeah yeah or just the sense of pleasure itself which i think we as americans have such a

00:38:07.140 have such a deeply ingrained puritanical issue with right yeah like part of the problem is that

00:38:13.080 the books they just feel so nice and we're just like well that can't be good that's that's that

00:38:18.220 can't be right you're like oh that sex scene was really fantastic like probably bad right

00:38:25.980 probably gotta be all sexy all sexy like this is what game of thrones posits games of game of

00:38:32.520 thrones and like other i don't know so many other quote-unquote prestige television prestige uh

00:38:38.700 novels all this sort of thing it's like oh it should always like the sex should always be bad

00:38:43.580 it should always be trauma and a lot of sex is bad and traumatic but a lot of sex is good

00:38:49.640 and hot and like that doesn't mean that it's shameful to read about a description of it in

00:38:55.120 that way yeah yeah i love your point too that like this is a real skill right building like a slow

00:39:02.640 build the way that mass does it i think is an incredible accomplishment and undervalued the the

00:39:11.660 one of the things that drives me the most absolutely bonkers are comments like i i really

00:39:18.260 think i could write one of those if i tried and it's like yeah okay please try and you know like

00:39:25.040 As I've been reading, I've been texting back and forth with Melody about some of like the language tropes that come up again and again, like the watery bowels, like whenever something's scary, her bowels turn watery, which sounds disgusting.

00:39:38.580 And, you know, I love that the beginning of your piece, you take a sex scene, you like put the sex scene at the beginning and you're like, you know what?

00:39:47.380 like every sex scene basically in any capacity but especially in one like this like it sounds

00:39:54.120 ridiculous yes like it seems so weird like there's talk about wings and like there's a weird innuendo

00:40:01.500 and all sorts of things and like they're growling at each other and and these books tend to get

00:40:07.240 reduced to the sort of out of context sense of like it's fairy smut and you're like yeah but

00:40:13.180 every any any romance novel even the hottest best written romance novels you take that sex scene out

00:40:21.160 and you're gonna be like that's a stupid word for penis you know or even like i think of something

00:40:26.620 like normal people which is a very quote unquote literary book by sally rooney that also i think

00:40:33.660 has hot sex in it um and also a lot of trauma but if you take out one of those sex scenes and just

00:40:40.340 put that on there it's gonna sound weird too because sex is weird like describing it you have

00:40:44.840 to have it contextualized within the like the romance itself i think yes in order for it to

00:40:51.220 like function yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah if you've read akatar you know that there is so much more

00:40:59.140 to talk about if you want to listen in on the mini book club discussion we've had about the

00:41:03.640 characters personalities about sarah j mass's writing style about female pleasure on the page

00:41:09.100 about what to read next.

00:41:10.420 That's the best part.

00:41:11.640 Head over to

00:41:12.320 culturestudypod.substack.com

00:41:14.480 and become a paid subscriber.

00:41:18.900 I cannot tell you how fantastic.

00:41:20.940 This like lived up

00:41:21.780 to all of my expectations.

00:41:22.900 Oh, I'm so glad.

00:41:23.520 It was fantastic.

00:41:25.120 Yay.

00:41:25.640 I really, you know,

00:41:26.740 I recommend people

00:41:27.500 go and read the piece

00:41:28.480 and also just read

00:41:30.920 all of Catherine's writing.

00:41:31.880 She's one of my favorite.

00:41:33.000 Oh, that's so nice.

00:41:33.180 You are one of my favorite

00:41:34.340 culture writers.

00:41:35.100 So it was just a real pleasure

00:41:36.900 to have you today.

00:41:38.000 If people want to find more of you on the internet, where can they find you?

00:41:41.300 I am on Blue Sky, I guess.

00:41:44.260 That's kind of where I've been hanging out recently.

00:41:46.960 I also have an Instagram, a work Instagram that I don't update all that much.

00:41:51.600 And you can find me at Vulture.com.

00:41:54.260 I had a piece about why Bluey makes grownups weep recently that you may enjoy.

00:42:00.600 Amazing.

00:42:01.280 Thank you so much.

00:42:02.660 It's my pleasure.

00:42:03.560 What a fun time.

00:42:04.360 thanks for listening to the culture study podcast be sure to subscribe wherever you get your

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00:43:16.540 on Instagram at Anne Helen Peterson, Melody at Melodias47, and the show at Culture Study Pod.

00:43:29.060 Thank you.

Culture Study Podcast - March 06, 2024

The ACOTAR Chokehold

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