Nowhere@All

In Regards to Chapter 2 of

Nicola Griffith's The Blue Place



briankessler@nowhereatall.net

http://www.nowhereatall.net



13 April 1999



In the second chapter of Blue Place it seems that all the trainees are incompetant. Granted, it should be expected that trainees would have less competence, but the incompetence just seems so overdone. In fact, as the book goes on, it seems that in Griffith's world, all men are incompetant scumb, only females can be heros. But it's not even the every day woman she elevates -- it's the Nordic superwoman who is masculine in all but her physical gender. What does this say about Griffith who so readily condemns men and yet has her hero be an emulation of one? This seems to be such a confused feminism -- while it ostentatiously condemns the man and elevates the woman, it seems to subtly undermine itself and do just the opposite. The female hero is a big strong warrior who loves women; how much more masculine and unfeminine can she get without giving her a penis?

I don't know much about 1930 film Noir cinema, but this does seem to be somewhat of a dark detective movie with a role reversal as Aud fills in for the traditional male detective. But changing the physical gender of the hero seems totally arbitrary. She is still the big strong warrior, attracted and attractive to beautiful women. Does she denegrate females so much that she can't see a feminine female as being a detective?

The encouragement of police brutality did not suprise me. I've long known that the police are paid bullies. While the public message may be that the police exist to protect and serve, the police are privately trained to control and subdue.

There has always been a rather thick line between the way things are supposed to be and the way things are... I would even add a third catagory: the way things seem to be. I don't think this book really raised much about these issues for me... I've long noticed that few things seem to be the way cultural expectations would have us believe they are supposed to be. And then few things are what they seem to be when you start digging into them. This book is a prime example. It is supposed to be a science fiction work, as indicated because this is a science fiction class. Instead, this seems to be a detective novel by a male hating feminist. But it really is a book that validates male virtues and denegrates that which is female.

I don't know much about 1930 film Noir cinema, but this does seem to be somewhat of a dark detective movie with a role reversal as Aud fills in for the traditional male detective. But changing the physical gender of the hero seems totally arbitrary. She is still the big strong warrior, attracted and attractive to beautiful women. Does she denegrate females so much that she can't see a feminine female as being a detective?

Is Aud a lesbian? Well, reading the back cover I knew she would be by page one even though nothing explicit comes till chapter 3. But a lesbian is a woman who likes females. Aud doesn't strike me so much a lesbian as an invert: a man trapped in (what is barely) a woman's body.

As for the mental mechanism, murder being "ho, hum", I didn't really think much of it. People kill with that attitude every day for either abortions or food. People die every day. Why not have people kill people "ho, hum" every day? As Sade points out, it's the first kill that's the hardest. It's like stealing cookies. The first time you feel guilty, after that it becomes routine and you don't think about it. Or you learn to take a child's pleasure in guilt. It's not so much inhuman as unfeminine since females are traditionally life givers and nurtures. Aud's attitude doesn't invalidate her humanity as just merely further invalidate her femininity.





This page was prepared by Brian Matthew Kessler of Nowhere@All
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