primeideal (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
primeideal) wrote2023-02-12 08:07 pm
primeideal) wrote2023-02-12 08:07 pm
Entry tags:
Narratives
From "Madhouse at the End of the Earth," emphasis mine:
On the one hand, this is more evidence for the "neurotypicals, why are they like this" manifesto. Like, very often I am not bloodthirsty, I want to read about people setting new records and doing science and having adventures and not dying!
But. The imagery of "stories as a natural resource ripe for exploiting." I don't want to push this too far, but--there are lots of parts of the world, such as the Arctic, that are not the most pleasant weather-wise but are certainly inhabitable and life-supporting for humans, the evidence for this being that...humans live there and have done so for hundreds of years! Stories about "wide-eyed outsiders coming in and trying to set new records and earn honor and glory" quickly turn into "evil colonialists erasing the actual competent people who actually live here." And that's a DNW for me, which is one of the main reasons I've never gotten into the Terror. (See: this post frommelannen a year ago and comments. GOOD NEWS I found out about Vihjalmur Stefansson and he was every bit as shambolic as promised! This happened totally by accident and not because I remembered his name from the discussion!)
So the "fun" thing about the Antarctic is that there's literally nobody there but us penguins. Yes, there's always the climate change/imperialist motivations/certain dudes being actual creeps angles to problematize things. But IDK, the whole "there's nothing here to sustain us except our stories, there's nothing we can earn here except a good story" aspect sure...has me feeling some kind of way.
It was customary for expedition leaders to publish memoirs upon their return. This was in large part how they made their money, how they paid off creditors, and how they financed future expeditions. In the absence of easily accessible natural resources to exploit, stories were what polar explorers extracted from these barren icescapes. And the best stories weren't the ones in which everything went well. [Footnote continues] Publishers of adventure narratives were bloodthirsty types. They tended to be more interested in expeditions that went awry than ones in which nobody suffered extensively...
On the one hand, this is more evidence for the "neurotypicals, why are they like this" manifesto. Like, very often I am not bloodthirsty, I want to read about people setting new records and doing science and having adventures and not dying!
But. The imagery of "stories as a natural resource ripe for exploiting." I don't want to push this too far, but--there are lots of parts of the world, such as the Arctic, that are not the most pleasant weather-wise but are certainly inhabitable and life-supporting for humans, the evidence for this being that...humans live there and have done so for hundreds of years! Stories about "wide-eyed outsiders coming in and trying to set new records and earn honor and glory" quickly turn into "evil colonialists erasing the actual competent people who actually live here." And that's a DNW for me, which is one of the main reasons I've never gotten into the Terror. (See: this post from
melannen a year ago and comments. GOOD NEWS I found out about Vihjalmur Stefansson and he was every bit as shambolic as promised! This happened totally by accident and not because I remembered his name from the discussion!)So the "fun" thing about the Antarctic is that there's literally nobody there but us penguins. Yes, there's always the climate change/imperialist motivations/certain dudes being actual creeps angles to problematize things. But IDK, the whole "there's nothing here to sustain us except our stories, there's nothing we can earn here except a good story" aspect sure...has me feeling some kind of way.