pulp fiction – My Life, or Something Like It

How I usually feel about group work:

This slideshow requires JavaScript.

However, this round has been rather spectacular. From the very beginning our group was quick to make decisions, to work together, and to adjust to each other’s strengths and weaknesses, including varying availability. Never did I feel like I was doing more work than my share, nor did I feel as though people weren’t available. But ultimately, it was quite a good experience. Most importantly, we learned from each other.

In preparing for our presentation, I was not only engaged with our magazine because of my own interests and foci, but also inspired by what my colleagues uncovered. I’m not sure if it helped that our magazine had a lot to go with it, or because I love Sci Fi so much, but it really helped me understand the magazine better too.

Equally, I found myself engaged with the other group’s presentations. It was clear to see where everyone’s passions lay, showcased by this project. Surprisingly, no one group or individual quite did the same thing, nor did anyone take the same angle on their pulp magazine, which was rather spectacular. It highlighted just how many ways that pulp magazines can be understood and interpreted from an academic perspective.

Best of all, the presentations left me inspired for my final paper for this course, which was an unexpected result.

Each group gave me a new reflection for my analysis of preservation practices in pulp magazines. Each one demonstrated the different ways in which approaching digitization holistically is crucially important.

While it’s a little early to go too in-depth (not to mention the idea is still forming), I was particularly inspired by the exploration of Snappy Stories and All Story Love Tales, for two very different reasons. All Story Love Tales because of how rare its digital issues are (or any issues at all for that matter), and Snappy Stories for its important and varying use of image accompaniment–and how those things change how one could read the magazine. Interesting stuff to be sure, and something I’ll be very eager to explore when I get down to writing more content for the paper.

One of my favourite things to hear, no matter how frequently, in my academic courses is the importance of taking in multiple perspectives on a given topic–something that rings very true when considering analyzing artifacts. I think my first exposure academically in a formal capacity was when we discussed “situated knowledges,” something I touched on back here. It’s a concept that also comes up through Kenneth Burke’s “terministic screens.” We each see a different perspective on the world, on our studies. It is ever more apparent the need for academia to take this on in their approach to research — something which is exemplified by our group projects as well. Each group was given the same basic guidelines, and each of us came up with very different versions of what that meant to uncover.

For me, it seems that this is even more important for the study of pulp magazines within English departments. As an outsider to the discipline, it’s hard to see the magazines, so fruitful in their potential cultural relevance, interpretations, etc. be dismissed as trivial “low culture” objects. While we’ve discussed the changes taking place in this regard, coming from my own academic background, it doesn’t make sense that they have been dismissed as such. While it doesn’t always require deep reading to get to the messages within, it doesn’t mean that there isn’t any less content to discover. If anything, I think pulp magazines are more interesting to discuss, not only because there are so few academic angles currently being explored, but also because of how close they were to everyday people. It’s the same reason I find Greco-Roman graffiti so entertaining. Somewhat perplexing however, is the fact that greco-roman graffiti has been treated with such high significance as compared to their pop-cousins in pulp magazines. Perhaps this is due to their age, but everything starts getting old somewhere. Perhaps it was only after the classicists ran out of other things to talk about that they finally turned to the “common man” remnants. No matter what the cause, it is interesting to consider that someday down the line a great many people will turn to a desire to study pulp magazines, and it will only be because of classes like ours, and other enthusiasts, that archives like the PMP will provide them content. It pains me to consider how many pulp magazines were lost, like so many cultural artifacts, because they were deemed useless or “not cultural enough.”

If we, as individuals, and as groups, can uncover so much to talk about, what have we missed discussing over the past century they’ve been around?

Sadly, even fidget spinners someday will be a cultural artifact. I wonder what future academics will say about their phenomenon? I just wish I could hear what “ritualized” purpose fidget spinners served when uncovered by some archaeologist a thousand years from now. Food for thought I suppose.

If you’ve even dabbled into the discussion of gender and history, you’ve more than likely stumbled by a mention of a lack of female representation in the documented past. It’s something that’s come up in pretty much every course that deals with the past throughout university. Documentaion of women’s affect and even their presence in history is lacking because they just weren’t the ones who were writing it down.

Well, that’s not entirely true. Women were writing, and they were participating in documentation, but not quite as much as their male colleagues. Additionally, it was only usually women of power or money who had any time or ability to write anything at all. We see this even as early as with Sappho, the ancient Greek poet. She was a wealthy citizen, and as a result, had the privilege to leisure time and thus was able to write. While there are very few documented female voices in history, there are even fewer of the average women who would have lived alongside their much more represented male counterparts. Even when women may have written their perspective, carved their story, or have been celebrated in their time, historians have traditionally washed away female participation from the record. Anything which presents women as vocal individuals in their own right, in their own lens, detracts from the male domination narrative you see.

It’s not all that cut and dry, however, as there are plenty of women’s studies and history classes to teach the messiness of such a subject. Where we can tackle however, is something that we discussed in class this week, namely the male-washing of the Western genre. While industrialization allowed for more and more women to gain access to reading and writing, the legacy of their participation in the literary market would go overlooked.

As we discussed in class, the Western genre in its earliest days, when looking at the pulp magazines themselves, had high female engagement. Not just in reading either. Women were writing stories too. While scholarship on Westerns focused on literary sources, skewed towards male authors, the truth remained that the Western genre developed through simultaneous and mutual involvement in the genre. It’s no surprise that in the 1950s and 60s, eras desperately trying to embolden gender roles against an influx of new thinking, that scholarship would erase the presence of female participation. Naturally, it would seem to them, women would have come to the genre only for the romance. Women didn’t want to see the guns or action stories, nay (or perhaps neigh), they only wanted to read about stories where subservient (or perhaps wild-then-tamed) women fall in love with dominent men and start a new life in the West. They couldn’t possibly be interested in the same “men” stuff *insert chest bump here*.

Does my sarcasm read strong enough? It’s so incredibly infurating as an academic to look back and be faced with misled and unfounded historical scholarship. We are now taught to look at the entire picture. To preserve all that we can about a text or an artifact, in hopes that even if we can’t analyze the whole picture, someone, someday, might. When faced with situations like this, one cannot help but be infurated by the scholarship of dominant male authorities, which changed official analysis of history to fit their own goals. Nevermind that the female-driven/written pulps lasted longer than their guns-blazing counterparts. Nevermind that the blended magazines came first. Nevermind that women had any active role whatsoever.

I regret that I’m getting fired up about this more than I intended to, but it strike a chord with me. I have, thanks to my training through a very forward-thinking parent, I’ve always grated against imposed gender roles. Why should boys get all the fun stuff? Women have always been interested in things beyond romance and beautification, but because gender roles (albiet ever shifting) shame them for it, they either train themselves not to be interested, or find an excuse for something societally acceptable within them to like. It makes me hurt, not only for contemporary audiences and issues, but also for the women in history who have had their voices silenced or ignored–or worse yet, attributed to a male counterpart. There is a place for everyone in this analysis, in this field, and it’s up to us to go back and return life to those who we can find within these pages. To give back credit where it is due, and to change scholarship on history to better represent the truth of gender (and race) participation.

I’ve visually referenced Westworld twice in this post–a brilliant TV show (which if you haven’t watched it, stop, drop, and binge it all right now), created by the joint efforts of a male and a female, produced by a female, and containing an amazing cast of strong-willed, well rounded, and well-written female characters. In the sci-fi/western/drama category, it’s everything an inclusive audience should want, and it’s no wonder it was critically recieved accordingly. It deals with complex issues of romance, action, drama, abuse, artificial intelligence, ethics, free will, and consumerism (alongside so much else), against a backdrop of stunning visuals, breathtaking sets, and a moving score. It’s a show, for me, which proves that Westerns can be for everyone (well, except maybe not kids in this case). I can only imagine, that in the age of pulp magazines, a well written Western would have the same effect on its audience as Westworld has today. A good story need a blend of a variety of elements, and the best way to accomplish that would have been to incorporate blended perspectives and angles into a magazine.

If for nothing else, the lesson of male-washed Western genre scholarship calls for us to use a critical eye when looking at other pulp magazine genres, as well as literature more broadly. Just because it’s not obvious, or its been overwritten, doesn’t mean female voices aren’t there–that female participation isn’t there. Sometimes you just need to dig a little deeper, find meaning in the blank spaces, and help to try and uncover what history has tried to erase. We cannot hope to move foward in our own scholarship, if we continue to accept ingrained and perpetuated biases about the people we study.

The cycle has to end somewhere, why not with us?

Tag: pulp fiction

Gendering History