Millennium Trillogy - Stieg Larsson
May. 5th, 2010 01:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
marshtideFirst! Tomorrow is election day back home; I can't vote, which is a long story of bureaucratic horrors; I'm furious about it. Let's not talk about that. If you're a UK citizen, though, please just vote. (Me, terrified of Tory government? Why would I be... oh wait! Yes! Because they're biggoted bastards! Now I remember.)
Now for something... still kind of about Sweden, actually. I was going to talk about Virginia Woolf but that topic has too high a brain-requirement for this week. I'm going to talk about Stieg Larsson instead.
Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy (about sexism, murder, financial scandals, government corruption, right-wing extremism and investigative journalism, if you can imagine), is far from perfect. I do mean far. It's pretty heavy-handed in its message and the pacing is way off and the shopping-lists littered throughout need shooting. Much of the plot is utterly ridiculous, although in certain subsets of detective/thriller stories that might be considered a plus. It feels very journalistic sometimes, which is because it was written by a journalist, though whether this is a plus or a minus is entirely down to taste. But here is what I do like about it:
1. The actual main character of the series is pretty much Lisbeth Salander. Mikael Blomkvist seems like it at first, but over the course of the three books it becomes clear that this is basically Lisbeth's story. Also, without Lisbeth, I think you would have a much less successful series, and a much less interesting one. What's cool about this is that people do buy into it: there actually is a market for characters like Lisbeth out there and they don't have to be made into a trophy for a dude. I will talk more about this in a moment. Basically what I want to say here is: popular series in genre which is usually sausage fest is about a woman! World doesn't end! All sorts of people are seen to enjoy it! I think we can learn from this, guys. No market for stuff about girls, my arse.
Basically Lisbeth is an incredibly skilled hacker with no interest in playing nicely with others, a mysterious & fucked up past, etc. I have heard of or read about many characters to some degree like her in this genre but few who are women and fewer still who were written in a way I found interesting and non-patronising.
Also, she refuses to be a victim in a world that persists in trying to cast her as one. She's an uncomfortable character sometimes because of the lengths she'll go to on that front. But also an interesting one.
2. Sexuality! OK. Right. Well. While we're in this general area, let's clear this one up. These books have some really difficult content to do with sexual assault (and the murder) of women. Parts I found extremely difficult to read, because they were so uncomfortable (I will say that this felt entirely deliberate, that I understand what it was there for and that I do think it would have failed if it had been in any way a comfortable read, but at the same time I can't say I'd blame anyone for not wanting to go there). The books deal with rape, and child abuse and all sorts. Lisbeth is raped by someone in a position of authority over her, in a way which is very explicitly written as being about power, and takes extremely violent revenge to reassert herself (which is another really uncomfortable scene). There are people who are basically pretty monstrously evil and who do terrible, terrible things to others. This is not actually what I'm on about in this particular instance, though, because rape is not about sex and sexuality. It is about power. Right? Right. Let's talk about sexuality now.
There are people in these books who:
- have sex because it just so happens that they want to have sex
- have sex without being in love
- have sex while in love
- don't believe in love
- are bisexual
- are gay
- are straight
- have sex with or are sexually interested in all sorts of people but don't necessarily have a neat little name for their sexuality
- like threesomes
- are in open relationships
- are in committed relationships
- aren't in relationships at all and are cool with that
- are or have been involved in some kind of BDSM subculture
- have a fair amount of sex while not looking like movie stars. no, really. this can happen. I know hollywood forgot to mention it, but it is true.
(List non-comprehensive and based on my having read these books eight months ago, so uhm.)
And none of this is made a big deal out of, except in a few cases by media sensationalists looking to take a cheap shot. (And given that it's a series a lot about media, well, sure, of course that'll happen sometimes because a substantial segment of the media is inhabited by bastards. We knew this.) Basically, people have sex in all sorts of ways and for all sorts of reasons and it's pretty awesome that we are apparently saying so now.
I hear this aspect has drawn comment of various sorts from a number of American reviewers, and I know it's also drawn comment (largely of the "oh, look at those crazy Swedes having sex with everything again" variety, predictably enough) in the UK, but no-one I've talked to here in Sweden really thought this stuff was a big deal, because, well, people have sex! Normal people! A lot! No, really! That's just what happens. (Possibly more significantly the household librarian, who actually interacts with more people than I do and talks to them about books on a daily basis, can only think of one person who thought the range of sexuality on display was odd - "and he's a dick anyway.") Human sexuality is pretty much more complicated than many of us are owning up to and it's neat that sometimes we can just run with that. Also, characters are more than their sexuality. Yay.
While we're on this topic, Blomkvist. Let's talk about him a moment. He's a straight, white, middle-aged guy who has a mid-life crisis and also quite a bit of sex. He's maybe a bit dull to actually read about, because he really is, you know, exactly the kind of guy you meet around here (though possibly with stronger political views and more idealism than is average). But in his defense he consistently comes off as a nice guy rather than a Nice Guy. He's basically a pretty decent human being and has respect for the people around him. Some of whom are women. He has sex with quite a few of them but it didn't seem weird to me that this should be the case and it didn't feel at all skeevy. I can't explain better than that, largely because it's been a while since I read the books. It just felt kind of normal. Also! He had sex with Lisbeth a few times and they both had fun and what exactly was going on did get a bit complicated but neither of them was actually out for a relationship and then they stopped having sex and moved on. This was in the first book. No re-establishment of the arrangement at any later point. Actually Lisbeth doesn't "end up" in a relationship with anyone and doesn't want a relationship either. Does this make me kind of just a little gleeful? Does it ever.
3. Also, female characters in general! They are all sorts of people! They are conventional and unconventional and they are lawyers and police officers and editors and one of them possibly sells fetish gear for a living and they are in bands and they are students and they are cattle ranchers (...not in Sweden) and they people, even when they're only in bit parts, and they can be any degree of feminine or unfeminine by those dreaded Traditional Standards and that is cool! And did I mention how they are people? Who have worries and fears and beliefs and who make mistakes and who are good at things and who are sometimes not very nice and... yeah, so they're people.
4. Yes, OK, it has been commented that the message of the books is basically "rape is bad, OK?" and that everyone knows it anyway (hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm). But it's not actually that simple, of course, broad as the strokes Larsson paints in can be. It's about social attitudes to women and the ways in which women's positions can be undermined short of those sorts of extremes too. I think it's easy to lose that and focus on the really really extreme bits of the story, which probably is a failing of the books in terms of being balanced, but I really do think there's a whole bunch of interesting hanging around in there. In Swedish the first book is titled Män som hatar kvinnor, of course. Men who hate women. This is, um. This is descriptive. From the extreme through to the more insidious. The whole thing is really overblown in several respects but I don't believe that means it isn't making a valid point; it means it's also being a crime novel at the same time.
But the thing is, anyway, if we're going to have pulpy ridiculous literature, which we totally are going to, I'm all for it containing such radical messages as rape is bad and women are people. I mean, seriously. Plenty of it doesn't seem to think so!
But overall these books are a really fine balance for me. I really enjoy them, though they're ridiculous, but I can see how a fairly small shift in how they were put together would have rendered them unreadable and fury-inducing.
I'm not sure the Swedish film managed to get that right, entirely, and I don't even know what to expect from a hollywood remake, but I'm sort of quietly suspicious. Maybe they'll pull off something really interesting. Maybe! But uh...
Now for something... still kind of about Sweden, actually. I was going to talk about Virginia Woolf but that topic has too high a brain-requirement for this week. I'm going to talk about Stieg Larsson instead.
Stieg Larsson's Millennium trilogy (about sexism, murder, financial scandals, government corruption, right-wing extremism and investigative journalism, if you can imagine), is far from perfect. I do mean far. It's pretty heavy-handed in its message and the pacing is way off and the shopping-lists littered throughout need shooting. Much of the plot is utterly ridiculous, although in certain subsets of detective/thriller stories that might be considered a plus. It feels very journalistic sometimes, which is because it was written by a journalist, though whether this is a plus or a minus is entirely down to taste. But here is what I do like about it:
1. The actual main character of the series is pretty much Lisbeth Salander. Mikael Blomkvist seems like it at first, but over the course of the three books it becomes clear that this is basically Lisbeth's story. Also, without Lisbeth, I think you would have a much less successful series, and a much less interesting one. What's cool about this is that people do buy into it: there actually is a market for characters like Lisbeth out there and they don't have to be made into a trophy for a dude. I will talk more about this in a moment. Basically what I want to say here is: popular series in genre which is usually sausage fest is about a woman! World doesn't end! All sorts of people are seen to enjoy it! I think we can learn from this, guys. No market for stuff about girls, my arse.
Basically Lisbeth is an incredibly skilled hacker with no interest in playing nicely with others, a mysterious & fucked up past, etc. I have heard of or read about many characters to some degree like her in this genre but few who are women and fewer still who were written in a way I found interesting and non-patronising.
Also, she refuses to be a victim in a world that persists in trying to cast her as one. She's an uncomfortable character sometimes because of the lengths she'll go to on that front. But also an interesting one.
2. Sexuality! OK. Right. Well. While we're in this general area, let's clear this one up. These books have some really difficult content to do with sexual assault (and the murder) of women. Parts I found extremely difficult to read, because they were so uncomfortable (I will say that this felt entirely deliberate, that I understand what it was there for and that I do think it would have failed if it had been in any way a comfortable read, but at the same time I can't say I'd blame anyone for not wanting to go there). The books deal with rape, and child abuse and all sorts. Lisbeth is raped by someone in a position of authority over her, in a way which is very explicitly written as being about power, and takes extremely violent revenge to reassert herself (which is another really uncomfortable scene). There are people who are basically pretty monstrously evil and who do terrible, terrible things to others. This is not actually what I'm on about in this particular instance, though, because rape is not about sex and sexuality. It is about power. Right? Right. Let's talk about sexuality now.
There are people in these books who:
- have sex because it just so happens that they want to have sex
- have sex without being in love
- have sex while in love
- don't believe in love
- are bisexual
- are gay
- are straight
- have sex with or are sexually interested in all sorts of people but don't necessarily have a neat little name for their sexuality
- like threesomes
- are in open relationships
- are in committed relationships
- aren't in relationships at all and are cool with that
- are or have been involved in some kind of BDSM subculture
- have a fair amount of sex while not looking like movie stars. no, really. this can happen. I know hollywood forgot to mention it, but it is true.
(List non-comprehensive and based on my having read these books eight months ago, so uhm.)
And none of this is made a big deal out of, except in a few cases by media sensationalists looking to take a cheap shot. (And given that it's a series a lot about media, well, sure, of course that'll happen sometimes because a substantial segment of the media is inhabited by bastards. We knew this.) Basically, people have sex in all sorts of ways and for all sorts of reasons and it's pretty awesome that we are apparently saying so now.
I hear this aspect has drawn comment of various sorts from a number of American reviewers, and I know it's also drawn comment (largely of the "oh, look at those crazy Swedes having sex with everything again" variety, predictably enough) in the UK, but no-one I've talked to here in Sweden really thought this stuff was a big deal, because, well, people have sex! Normal people! A lot! No, really! That's just what happens. (Possibly more significantly the household librarian, who actually interacts with more people than I do and talks to them about books on a daily basis, can only think of one person who thought the range of sexuality on display was odd - "and he's a dick anyway.") Human sexuality is pretty much more complicated than many of us are owning up to and it's neat that sometimes we can just run with that. Also, characters are more than their sexuality. Yay.
While we're on this topic, Blomkvist. Let's talk about him a moment. He's a straight, white, middle-aged guy who has a mid-life crisis and also quite a bit of sex. He's maybe a bit dull to actually read about, because he really is, you know, exactly the kind of guy you meet around here (though possibly with stronger political views and more idealism than is average). But in his defense he consistently comes off as a nice guy rather than a Nice Guy. He's basically a pretty decent human being and has respect for the people around him. Some of whom are women. He has sex with quite a few of them but it didn't seem weird to me that this should be the case and it didn't feel at all skeevy. I can't explain better than that, largely because it's been a while since I read the books. It just felt kind of normal. Also! He had sex with Lisbeth a few times and they both had fun and what exactly was going on did get a bit complicated but neither of them was actually out for a relationship and then they stopped having sex and moved on. This was in the first book. No re-establishment of the arrangement at any later point. Actually Lisbeth doesn't "end up" in a relationship with anyone and doesn't want a relationship either. Does this make me kind of just a little gleeful? Does it ever.
3. Also, female characters in general! They are all sorts of people! They are conventional and unconventional and they are lawyers and police officers and editors and one of them possibly sells fetish gear for a living and they are in bands and they are students and they are cattle ranchers (...not in Sweden) and they people, even when they're only in bit parts, and they can be any degree of feminine or unfeminine by those dreaded Traditional Standards and that is cool! And did I mention how they are people? Who have worries and fears and beliefs and who make mistakes and who are good at things and who are sometimes not very nice and... yeah, so they're people.
4. Yes, OK, it has been commented that the message of the books is basically "rape is bad, OK?" and that everyone knows it anyway (hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm). But it's not actually that simple, of course, broad as the strokes Larsson paints in can be. It's about social attitudes to women and the ways in which women's positions can be undermined short of those sorts of extremes too. I think it's easy to lose that and focus on the really really extreme bits of the story, which probably is a failing of the books in terms of being balanced, but I really do think there's a whole bunch of interesting hanging around in there. In Swedish the first book is titled Män som hatar kvinnor, of course. Men who hate women. This is, um. This is descriptive. From the extreme through to the more insidious. The whole thing is really overblown in several respects but I don't believe that means it isn't making a valid point; it means it's also being a crime novel at the same time.
But the thing is, anyway, if we're going to have pulpy ridiculous literature, which we totally are going to, I'm all for it containing such radical messages as rape is bad and women are people. I mean, seriously. Plenty of it doesn't seem to think so!
But overall these books are a really fine balance for me. I really enjoy them, though they're ridiculous, but I can see how a fairly small shift in how they were put together would have rendered them unreadable and fury-inducing.
I'm not sure the Swedish film managed to get that right, entirely, and I don't even know what to expect from a hollywood remake, but I'm sort of quietly suspicious. Maybe they'll pull off something really interesting. Maybe! But uh...
no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 10:25 am (UTC)First off, I've only read the first book. I kinda like the way women are described there - they're "people", like you said - and that a woman being middle-aged doesn't prevent her from being written interestingly (yayz). Salander's revenge on her guardian might be an uncomfortable application of the don't-get-mad-get-even principle, but it's definitely better than her doing nothing, not to mention IC. The descriptions of the violent acts against women, more than coming across like a writer indulging a fetish, indicates that he doesn't approve of those. But yes, on the whole it can be a disturbing story.
I haven't read the other two books because some people say they're more boring than the first, but later I might just give them a chance.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 12:11 pm (UTC)The later books are more about Lisbeth. Basically. I'm all for Lisbeth, so it worked for me. The pacing problems continue but I wouldn't say it's worse than, you know, the beginning of the first book where it takes actually forever before anything happens.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 10:32 am (UTC)I agree with you, though, that Larsson's message is very much "rape is bad and women are people", and I don't think you can get enough of that in popular culture.
I do find it interesting that the Swedish title, "Men who hate women" was changed to something much less confrontational in the English version.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 12:22 pm (UTC)I'm a bit baffled by the idea that it's somehow a point that people have got now & that doesn't need repeating at every damn opportunity. I mean, really?
Yes... I mean they changed the title of the third book too, in some kind of attempt to create a pattern or something, but hmm.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 04:55 pm (UTC)You just said everything that I tried to say after I finished the first book, only you did it much more coherently. I'm maybe a quarter of the way into the second book and still waiting for something to happen, so it's making it a bit of a slow read right now.
But yeah, I love how the writing can be really decent at one minute and then completely ridiculous the next, and yet it never gets irritating. And yay for women getting to be people! I'm pretty much in fannish love with all of the women in the first book.
I have no hope at all that the hollywood remake will get anything other than the grisliness right.
no subject
Date: 2010-05-10 05:29 pm (UTC)Oh, right, the start of the second book is really slow as well, isn't it. I'd kind of forgotten, but now you mention it I can recall some conversations with the person who originally told me I had to read the books about when was anything going to actually happen no really. But I also read all three books in the space of about a week, despite work and some kind of alleged need for sleep, so it clearly wasn't that big a problem for me...
On the writing, I did get a bit annoyed by the lists of things people bought or had in their living rooms or whatever, but that was the main bit that actually made me pull faces a bit and I stopped caring much once I got more into bits where things happened. I actually actively enjoyed the info-dumps about the state of Swedish society. I don't really know why. I just did.
I'm really wary of the idea, to be honest. I'm sure they'll have fun with the Horrible Murders aspect but... well.
(And this is utterly off topic but oh wow, apparently you hosted a thing for fic about crossdressing women! I shall stare in starry-eyed admiration even though I don't really fic now, because that idea is just so many kinds of right anyway.)