Psst! It’s not real!
I received an email from a friend. Partly due to cutbacks, she’s retiring as a professor of English literature at a midwestern university. My response was to say, “Oh, no! My God, more than ever, the world needs people teaching how to read and critically evaluate literature,”
Her email came shortly after the first negative review I’d received for my books, either my literary novel Under Water or my entirely different, decidedly not literary Grab the Groom.
When I self-published—with the help of ace website guru Karma Bennett—Grab the Groom, I counted on at least a few terrible reviews, for if I got none, if all I got was praise, I’d have missed the mark. After all, the book is a parody of a beloved venue: reality dating shows, especially the best known one: The Bachelor.
par·o·dy
- an imitation of a particular genre with deliberate humorous exaggeration for comic effect. A satire, burlesque, lampoon, caricature, mockery, spoof, or sendup.
The negative reviews I expected, nay, anticipated, were ones saying how horrid a lot of the deaths/joke scenes in the book were or how I’d spoofed a cherished popcorn-party guilty pleasure.
Instead, I received nothing but positivity until one negative review came from someone who stated that they’d read about two chapters. The review contents were unanticipated, obviously coming from a young, seemingly female reader, upset at the descriptions of one of the main characters: my stalwart little Hortensia, an overweight child, adrift in the beauty culture of Southern California, unloved by her glamorous parents, one a narcissist, the other a womanizer. Her chubbiness is the source of friction with her parents.
(Another criticism was Hortensia’s father sexualizing a Barbie doll. I’m old enough to remember that the criticism of those beloved dolls, when they first came out, was that they WERE sexy: high pointy breasts, flat tummies, long legs with feet unchangeable from high heel position. So unlike the baby dolls of the previous generations.)
Anyway, Hortensia is entirely fictional.
Even in a parody, fictional characters are, well, fictional, made up, created by the author for a purpose—at least in literature that’s half-way decent—and that purpose may just be to have a story arc or it may be to illustrate a problem in society. In this case, there was an agenda: highlighting the issue that children like Hortensia ARE often treated badly. That the ideal image of women in our society is hard on those who don’t fit the mold. A classic underdog story.
An endless description of chubbiness, of slights against a child’s appearance, would not be a story. But, had the reviewer kept reading, they just might have taken heart at the concept that strength of character and smarts triumph in the end.
Plus, they might have learned what a parody is.
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