Vox Vs Ready Player One
This piece makes me sad. Not because anything about it particularly wrong. But because hearing how a cultural phenomenon can 'cause' a work to go from innocuous fun to being a sinister reinstantiation of toxic ideas is terrifying to me as a person who likes to make innocuous fun.
I do think Constance is mostly correct about the book having the woman-as-a-trophy trope, but I also think that's a problem with 90% of fiction in this niche. I don't think it's a matter of an author consciously promoting an ideology as much as an author not innovating on ALL fronts. Very few writers can do that. Those that do, alienate most readers because every subversion usually requires overhead; on the part of the writer's time/energy, the story's infrastructure, and the reader's ability to roll with thinking/processing the story differently than expectations. So as a writer, we have an economy of energy we need to work with. Some tropes are worth the cost of subverting. Woman-as-a-trophy is certainly near the top of my list, but I don't feel right about slamming every work that leans on it. Especially when it's diffused as much as it is in Ready Player One.
I'm also wondering about this phrase: "how potentially toxic empty nostalgia can be" Anyone want to point me to any resources on this concept?
Granted, I am EXACTLY in the target demo for this book. (not so much the movie I'm guessing) So every cheap trick (except the woman-as-a-trophy) he used worked its magic on me. It's not one of my favorite books ever or anything. But I liked it enough to care about this kind of criticism, and makes me wonder about the larger culture of examining the problematic aspects of all media. I'm actually a big fan of examining the problematic aspects of all media. I was raised from a very early age to do just that. I think the current climate of polarization and politicization of everything just makes me sad that what I think is a healthy thing (examining implicit messages and worldviews in cultural artifacts) may be becoming an unhealthy obsession with categorizing said artifacts into evil/righteous buckets. I saw that happening in my far-right-evangelical culture of the 80's-90's (satanic panic, PBS is socialist propaganda, Teletubbies wants to make your kids gay) and now I'm seeing the same thing happening on the left.
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