Alex Bell - fantasy author

Or: Elena versus Sam.

I love I Dream of Jeannie and Bewitched but there’s always a slight jarring element for me – particularly in Bewitched – with the way both female leads try so hard to please the male lead. Their lives revolve around making their men happy. The suggestion is that, as Darrin’s wife, it’s Sam’s duty to obey him and so if he doesn’t want her to use magic then she simply accepts this without question, and tries to live like a human for him, meaning that she’s cleaning floors on her hands and knees and pushing a hoover around by hand rather than simply snapping her fingers (or twitching her nose, as the case may be) and doing it all by magic. It’s a ludicrous premise and one that would surely make the hackles rise on any modern housewife. I don’t think such a show could be made today. In these post-Buffy years, people want strong heroines of the kick-ass variety rather than the housewife variety. Heroines have moved on and are now expected to be stronger, sexier and sassier than ever before.

Or, at least, that’s what I’ve always thought. But then I watched an episode of The Vampire Diaries soon after an episode of Bewitched and thought yikes, there’s no way that Elena is a better role model for women than Sam. I watch and enjoy Vampire Diaries but, Christ, Elena is one hell of a wet blanket. She doesn’t seem to really know what she wants, and she doesn’t appear to have any kind of life or personality beyond Stephen. If she has any career ambitions or plans for her future then the audience are left entirely unaware of them. There’s also a disturbing trend in YA heroines nowadays to drop friends, family and, indeed, their entire lives, in order to be with their boyfriends. It’s a single-minded devotion and obsession far beyond anything Sam or Jeannie ever displayed.

Plus, heroines of the likes of Elena and Bella are ordinary human girls constantly needing to be rescued by their powerful vampire boyfriends. In the 60s American sitcoms it was the other way around. Sam and Jeannie are both far more powerful than their men, and if anyone’s going to be doing any rescuing, it’s going to be the women. Sam and Jeannie both know what they want and go after it, whereas Bella and Elena spend most of their time dithering about trying to make up their minds and complaining about how ill used they are. Sam is strong and capable – cross her and you’ll be sorry for it. Darrin probably lost count of the number of times she turned him into an animal or an inanimate object of some kind. But cross Elena and what’s she going to do? Pout at you to death?

Of course, it should be acknowledged that these are two very different shows – one is a sitcom and one is a drama – so it’s not comparing like with like, but it’s still an interesting contrast between heroines considering the difference in decades, and how far women are supposed to have moved on since the 60s. Also, the Vampire Diaries is aimed predominantly at teenagers so maybe that partially explains the fact that Elena is a whiny teenager whereas Sam is a strong grown-up woman. The emphasis is on her being a smart and powerful witch who also happens to be classy and sexy, whereas with Bella and Elena the emphasis is very firmly on the fact that they’re pretty. Well, good for them, but what else have they really got going for them? They never seem to have any fun. They don’t study for exams. They don’t make plans for their future. They just moon over their boyfriends. Yuck, yuck, yuck! It makes me cringe.

So perhaps you don’t have to be some sort of kung-fu Buffy action hero to be a true heroine. Perhaps there is something to be said for the quiet strength, keen intelligence and no nonsense attitude of the housewife heroine who knows exactly what she wants and works hard to get it. Certainly that type of heroine has surely got to be infinitely preferable to a whining teenage girl who only gets by on her looks and whose main hobby – indeed, sole purpose in life – seems to be that of ‘being saved’ and/or ‘being ravished’.

Here’s a photo of my poor cat Mitsi after watching the Mary Bale video:

She hid under that blanket for hours, quaking with fear, even after I explained to her that Mary didn’t know where we lived. Moose even tried to talk her out but it was no good – she wasn’t to be moved:

As for Siamese Suki and fluffy pal, Chloe, they just looked understandably annoyed by the footage:

Ace and Cindy, the other two members of the Bell cat gang, were unavailable for comment.

This Mary Bale thing puzzles me for two different reasons. For starters – like most other sane people in the world – I don’t understand why Mary Bale took it upon herself, entirely unprovoked, to throw a friendly moggy into a bin. The simple explanation is that she’s a mean old bat, and a little bit bonkers (and bears more than a passing resemblance to the Bigoted Woman of election notoriety . . .) But that’s not the only thing that puzzles me about this whole affair. Indeed, what puzzles me the most is the general public’s reaction to it.

As an animal rights activist and ardent cat lover, I understand why I dislike Mary Bale but, as for the rest of society, I’m not entirely sure. I would like to think it’s because, when an act of cruelty towards animals is brought to peoples’ attention in this way, they, quite rightly, condemn it. And yet it seems incongruous for anyone who eats meat, or who buys Fairy Liquid or Head and Shoulders or Pringles or any other product manufactured by an animal testing company such as Proctor and Gamble, to claim to be outraged by Mary Bale’s act – and I strongly suspect that the vast majority of people who joined the Facebook hate groups fall into both those categories.

I read an article (http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/aug/28/cat-litter-pets-protected-and-persecuted) yesterday by Guardian journalist, Michele Hanson, commenting on the Mary Bale/wheelie bin incident, in which she states, quite correctly, that we are a confused nation when it comes to animal rights. We claim to be a nation of animal lovers but, sadly, many people seem wholly incapable of putting their money where their mouths are. Naomi Campbell, for example, was quite happy to pose naked for a Peta anti-fur advert – presumably because she got to take her clothes off and look all sexy and sultry and stuff – but then, fifteen years later she’s photographed pouting alluringly in a fur coat (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/tvshowbiz/article-1210423/Naomi-Campbell-models-sable-coat-15-years-Peta-anti-fur-advert.html). Many, many people only identify themselves as animal rights activists, or animal lovers, when it is fashionable – or easy – to do so. When it simply involves condemning another person, for example, and not inconveniencing their own lives in any way by giving up something they love or changing the way they behave.

There seems to be a disturbing tendency amongst the British public (and probably any other country’s public) to cherry-pick which causes to be excessively outraged about, and which to merely shrug shoulders over and say: ‘It’s only an animal.’ I do not expect other people to feel the way I do about animal rights issues but, for God’s sake, can’t there at least be a little bit more consistency and a little less hypocrisy?

For example, I read an article a while back about a man who killed his neighbour’s little border terrier, Wurzel, after it got into his garden (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1209475/Company-boss-battered-neighbours-barking-pet-dog-death-hoe.html). The dog was hit over the head with a shovel. The RSPCA chose not to prosecute because, they said, Wurzel did not experience “undue pain” (a requisite for prosecution under the Animal Welfare Act 2006). Let’s be clear about this – Wurzel did not die instantly. He was tossed over the wall back into his own garden, where his owner later found him lying on the porch shaking and covered in blood. He had to be put down later that same day. If that’s not “undue pain” then what is? Since the RSPCA declined to press charges, the dog’s owner was forced to spend her own money bringing a private action for the only charge available to her – that of criminal damage to private property (since, legally, that’s all a pet is – property). She lost. Animals are woefully under-protected by the law, and charities like the RSPCA can only do so much when they are continually fighting an uphill battle with limited funds.

I’ve seen several commentators over the last few days suggesting that people get more worked up about cruelty to animals than cruelty to people. This is utter nonsense. As Wurzel’s case so aptly proves - people don’t get more outraged about cruelty to animals than cruelty to people - they get more outraged over cruelty they can actually see. Wurzel’s case infuriated me when I read about it and, although it was covered in the news, it certainly was not highlighted the way that Lola’s case has been. The explanation, I suspect, is that Mary Bale was caught on tape, whereas Neville Hill’s monstrous act of hitting a little dog on the head with a shovel was not. If his cowardly attack upon the dog had been filmed then I have to assume people would be even more incensed over this than they were over Lola. Surely that’s the only sensible explanation, isn’t it? I mean, surely everyone agrees that killing a dog with a spade is worse than putting a cat in a bin? So it would seem that, sadly, people are only able to feel outrage over the injustices they can actually see. I don’t understand this. Obviously, as a writer of fantasy fiction, imagination is supposed to be my forte and all that, but I wouldn’t have thought it beyond the realms of possibility for ordinary people to imagine a scenario such as the one reported with Wurzel.

So to all those people getting their knickers in a twist over Mary Bale, rushing to join online hate groups and so on, I would remind them that there are many, many injustices to animals that we do not see but that exist nonetheless. If you eat meat, if you buy Fairy Liquid (or any other product that has been used to torture rabbits), or barn eggs from caged hens, then you actively perpetuate those injustices. There is no softer way of putting it. Perhaps such people might reflect for a moment on the wise words of Albert Schweitzer: ‘Think occasionally of the suffering of which you spare yourself the sight.’ And let’s cease indulging in this fiction that Mary Bale is significantly worse than the average British citizen out there. She isn’t really. The difference is that she got caught.

Having said that, I would be much more shocked to see a CCTV video of an acquaintance of mine throwing a cat in a bin than I would to see a video of them eating a burger. Since I believe that eating meat is ethically worse than what Mary Bale did (because slaughtering an animal – whether you do it yourself, or pay someone else to do it for you – is worse than putting an animal in a bin), I’m not really sure why this should be. It’s a strange cultural by-product, I suppose, of the society we live in. Eating meat is considered socially acceptable – binning random moggies is not. And it seems that I can’t help but be affected by this social norm, even when I don’t want to be. I suppose, in addition, even though Lola was not seriously hurt, Mary Bale’s act was deliberately and maliciously cruel, whereas most meat eaters and Fairy Liquid users – I hope – are not. People know animals have to be slaughtered in order to end up a slab of meat on their plate, but they try not to think about it. Or perhaps they are incapable of properly imagining it.

Sir Paul McCartney said that ‘if slaughterhouses had glass walls, everyone would be a vegetarian.” I hope this is true. I dearly hope that it is. Because it if isn’t, it means that people don’t ignore the many injustices to animals that are so prevalent in our world because of the fact that they fool themselves into thinking they don’t exist, it means they ignore the injustices because they simply don’t care. And I would like to hope that deep, deep down, people are better than that.

In conclusion, then, logically I don’t think Mary Bale is any worse than the average meat-eating Briton but, emotionally, I can’t help but condemn her more than I condemn them. Nevertheless, there is a moral inconsistency here, and one that should be recognised in amidst all the hysterical outrage and excessive condemnation.

On that note, here’s one last snap of Suki, my tiny Siamese:

She knows I live to serve her. And if anyone ever attempted to grab Suki by the scruff of her neck and throw her into a bin, I’m afraid that I would lose my rag rather spectacularly. She may be wonky, she may be bent, she may be ever so very neurotic, but that cat is the absolute apple of my eye and I won’t pretend to be anything less than completely and utterly besotted with her, and her big blue eyes, and her teeny, tiny feet.

I have been thinking recently about the question of age when it comes to writing. This is partly because of the podcasts I did at Alt Fiction which touched on the issue. Links below:

New Writers and Breaking in with Alex Bell, Kate Griffin and M D Lachlan: http://unboundblogzine.podbean.com/altfiction-new-writers-and-breaking-in/

Fantasy - The New Generation with Alex Bell, Kate Griffin and Mark C Newton: http://unboundblogzine.podbean.com/altfiction-fantasy-the-new-generation/

There’s also the fact that people increasingly ask me for advice about how to get published, which always makes me remember one spectacularly ludicrous piece of advice I once got. When I was fifteen I was really enjoying the work of a particular author (who shall remain nameless) and so I decided to write her a gushing email, telling her that I wanted to be an author one day as well. She sent me a very nice reply, which I was very chuffed to get, but in it she said that her advice about writing (I do not recall actually asking for any) was that I shouldn’t even try to write a book until I was at least forty. ‘I know that sounds hard,’ she said, ‘but you have to have stuff to write about.’

Eh? Stuff to write about? What nonsense is this? I remember being quite miffed by the suggestion that my age meant I was not qualified to write a novel, especially since the author knew nothing about me or what I had done, or where I had been, or what I had lived through.

I would expect anyone to become a better writer as they get older and more experienced – both at writing and at life – but I don’t think it’s as black and white as there being a fixed minimum age – not when everyone’s experience of life is so vastly different. Besides which, a lot of the authors I know got their first book deal before they were forty. But there is this idea that if you’re very young, you won’t be able to write a novel of any worth. I’ve realised that I’m even guilty of this prejudice myself. If I find out that a book was written by a teenager (Eragon, for example) I am instantly dubious about reading it, despite the fact that I was a teenager when I wrote my first published book. Hypocritical of me, I know but there it is - I ain’t perfect. It seems to be a sort of sliding scale, where everyone has their own idea of how old a writer has to be in order to write well.

But what is it that we think a writer should have experienced before they can start? Love seems to come up a lot. Does someone have to know what it’s like to fall in love before they can write a book? Do they have to know what it’s like to get their heart broken? Should they have had a near death experience? Should they have travelled all over the world? The travel requirement is often mentioned in The Waltons (yes, I do watch it, and I love it too). John-Boy wants to be a writer, but he believes he can’t be one whilst he’s living in the mountains. He thinks he has to move to a city and see more of the world. Is this true? I have been very lucky with how much I’ve travelled, and there is no doubt that those experiences have influenced my writing. But is it a necessity? I’m not sure. Imagination, after all, is the key part of writing a book. You can be a recluse sitting in a mountain hut and still have a fantastic imagination.

And that leads on to the other point that your characters are not you. Your experience of being in love, or travelling to remote places, or whatever, will not be the same as theirs. My characters do not react to things the same way that I do. Still, there can be no doubt that experiencing something yourself is going to aid the process of describing it. But that’s all it does – it helps. It is not essential. You do not need to cut off your own hand before you can imagine how it would hurt. And you know you’re taking the writing thing just a bit too seriously when you find yourself bemoaning the fact that you never broke any bones as a child (as a result of being the careful, bookish type) and so don’t know what it feels like for the character you’re writing. I was quite shocked to find myself looking at my hand and thinking: ‘Wouldn’t it be great if I could break a finger or something?’ – just so that I would have direct, first-hand experience of what it was like, and so could write about it better. Where did I put that hammer anyway . . . ?

I think my conclusion at the end of all this is that as you get older and experience different things, your writing should improve. But as for when it is legitimate to start, I would suggest that so long as you have experienced some form of happiness and some form of misery then you are qualified to write a book. The rest can be fleshed out using your imagination. We are writing works of fiction, after all, not the world’s dullest autobiography.

I love politics. I love the questions and the debates and the search for a better way of doing things. I even wanted to be a politician once, and still toy with the idea even now. But I hate all the cynicism that goes with it. I really do not understand why, but people seem to take an almost hysterical glee in hating politicians. Quite frankly, I find this absurd. The vast majority of people who go into politics do so because of a desire to do some good. They are amazingly hard working people who have to work exceedingly long hours. And yet people just love to hate ‘em.

Last night, I watched Frost/Nixon:

Loved it. It’s a superb film that I would recommend to anyone with an interest in politics. Or, indeed, anyone with an interest in entertaining, thoughtful, intelligent, perceptive, films. I even forgot to drink my Heineken – that’s how gripped I was. So, this film has prompted me to write a post I’ve been meaning to do for a while – one that was originally to be titled ‘I Love Iain Duncan Smith.’ I have decided to rename the title because the above film reminded me of the fact that this modern day witch hunt against politicians is no modern thing. It did not all begin with President Bush and Prime Minister Blair (both of whom – although it is astonishingly unfashionable of me to admit – I have a great deal of respect for) – these witch hunts were going on back in Nixon’s day and, no doubt, before that as well.

What I loved so much about the film was its refusal to demonize President Nixon. It approached the Watergate issue in a balanced way that, I felt, made allowances for human failings because of the fact that Nixon was human and, therefore, imperfect, rather than suggesting Nixon was a villain and, therefore, evil. People love to look at it in black and white, but surely there is only a great big mess of grey in politics – and especially in Presidential politics.

It seems to me that politics suffers from something that I shall refer to as the Spiderman Effect. Everyone loves Spiderman at first – in the same way that people suddenly ‘love’ reality TV contestants (despite the fact that they don’t actually know them), and everyone loves a political party when it first comes to power because ‘everything will be different now’. But no matter how much Spiderman gives to the people, they will always turn against him sooner or later because even Spiderman cannot make peoples’ lives instantly perfect. That is why if any politician or political party is around for long enough, the public will always turn against him (or them) in the most vicious way imaginable, quite blind to any of their past achievements. It’s stupid nonsense, of course, like deciding you suddenly hate Spiderman, but it’s true just the same.

I often cringe to see the way the audience behaves on Question Time. I can practically see the pitchforks. When I was studying politics at college, I went to a Q and A thing in Westminster, with John Reid representing Labour, and Iain Duncan Smith (then the party leader) representing the Tories. Being 2003, Iraq was high on the agenda and, in fact, John Reid and Iain Duncan Smith were saying more or less the same thing on this issue. Imagine my astonishment, therefore, when John Reid was earnestly applauded by the audience, and Iain Duncan Smith was enthusiastically booed. Even though they were both saying the exact same thing! It was as if people were so set on disagreeing with Duncan Smith that they did not even hear what he was saying. They began to boo even before he had finished his first sentence. In fact, as soon as he came on the stage, people started jeering and holding up signs mocking the ‘quiet man’. I realised then that it didn’t actually matter what Iain Duncan Smith said to us, he was never going to receive applause. What a truly sorry state of affairs. I was ashamed to be part of such an audience. I must say, though, that he handled it all with extraordinary grace and eloquence, and even though I am a staunch Labour supporter, I was terribly impressed and wrote him an extremely gushing letter when I got home. I take my hat off to him for his patience, but I don’t think I could remain quite as cool in the presence of such dire stupidity, and would be very tempted to pull a John Prescott which, no doubt, would go down very badly indeed.

It seems that at least one out of every three ‘questions’ on Question Time is not a question at all but rather an audience member’s rant about all the things they think the government is doing wrong. And then – the cherry on top of this ridiculous cake – is that when the panellists actually debate a point of policy, they are very often maligned for ‘squabbling.’ Honestly, what an absurd choice of word. Disagreement is the entire point of a debate. It allows for the exploration of, and search for, new ideas. No matter how much people might wish it were otherwise, there are no pantomime villains in politics. If someone is after fame and riches then politics would be the very last route they would choose.

I particularly hate hearing people refer to a political leader as ‘stupid’. Take President Bush, for example. You can disagree with his policies all you like – indeed, I disagree with most of them myself, just as I would disagree with any other Republican – but to suggest that the man is stupid is nonsense. You don’t get to be the President of the United States unless you are an extremely intelligent man, and any suggestion to the contrary is an utter fantasy. Wild, emotive insults of this type only serve to give less credence to genuine criticisms.

If politicians or parties are instantly dismissed as a ‘waste of space’ then, no doubt, this makes the speaker feel very clever and superior but, let’s be honest, it is a cop out. To sneer at the efforts others make whilst making no effort yourself is a childish sort of strategy. As Charles Dickens remarks in A Christmas Carol: ‘it is always the person not in the predicament who knows what ought to have been done in it, and would unquestionably have done it too.’ I have no problem whatsoever with people disagreeing with my political views on any or all counts (indeed, I very much enjoy it if we can debate it intelligently). What I have no patience, or respect, for is this trend for politician-bashing. One that, as Frost/Nixon shows, is not a new craze, and is not likely to end any time soon. Vapid insults directed against politicians are boring to me. As Father Copleston once said: ‘If you refuse to sit down at the chess table, you cannot be checkmated.’ Genuine political debate has therefore got to be more than simply bleating in a whiny voice: ‘the politicians are doing it wrong’ – it’s got to involve some suggestion as to what would be doing it right. Repeatedly shrieking ‘burn the witch!’ will achieve nothing, and, if you’ve really got nothing more condemning to say than that, makes you look a bit of a fool. Criticise politicians by all means, but at least have the sense to do it intelligently if you want to be taken seriously.

Maybe - just maybe - the truth is that there are no easy answers in politics, no quick fix solutions, no secret money trees growing round the back of 10 Downing Street that the PM guards jealously because he doesn’t want to pay out on health care etc. This is why the debate is so fundamental - because it is the search for the least bad way of doing things. I have found few people able to rationally discuss politics - especially at university where everyone liked to think they were against ‘the establishment’ which, to hear them, you would think had been doing things wrong for years out of pure stubbornness - but it is a real pleasure to find the odd person who is willing to engage in genuine political debate rather than a playground-like exchange of insults.

My point in all this is that if only a few more people in the audience in Question Time would actually ask a question when they get the microphone (rather than shrieking: ‘burn the witch’), and then, once they get the response they requested, extend the politician the intellectual courtesy of accepting it as the best answer they are able to give at the time (being only human rather than Spiderman), then perhaps debate would be calmer, more rational and more productive. It never pays to hate Spiderman, after all.

This post has gone on long enough, although I’m sure I will blog about specific political issues in the future because I just find it all so interesting – like getting a little brain workout. But now, because every political rant should end on a light note, here is a snap of my Great Dane – the most beautiful dog in the entire world – getting into the Christmas spirit:

I’ll start off by saying that John and Edward Grimes are not my top favourite in the competition. That place is currently filled by Joe McElderry – I love his voice, and his demeanour, and I really hope that he wins. But I do like Jedward as performers, and I think the flak they have received in the press, and elsewhere on the internet is ridiculous and absurd. This is, after all, a TV show, and the nature of that show is that someone has to go out every week. It is therefore foolish in the extreme for people to be outraged simply because an act they preferred was voted off. Even more nonsensical is to direct that outrage towards the judges when it is, after all, the public who decides who ends up in the bottom two.

Whilst I was at university I worked in the customer complaints department of a travel agency, dealing with letters of complaint that clients wrote regarding their holidays. I read hundreds of these letters – many of which were written by the sort of person whose philosophy regarding grammar runs something along the lines of: ‘why use just one exclamation mark when you can use ten?!’ – and I came to realise that there are some people who should never, ever leave the UK, for business, pleasure, or anything else. They are simply not cut out for the trials and tribulations of travelling. Having seen some of the astonishingly vicious and emotive remarks floating round the internet regarding the X Factor, I would have to say that the same applies for talent show viewers – some people should never, ever watch any talent show of any type. If you cannot cope when your favourite act does not get through, then you should not tempt fate by watching the show. It is as simple as that.

I watch, and enjoy, the X Factor, but in the three years that I have been watching it, my favourite act has never won. This has never yet sent me into a cyber-rage, and I don’t believe it ever will, for the simple reason that, to me, the show is a pleasant diversion on a Saturday night, not the thing that consumes my entire life. It’s bad enough when people get unnecessarily upset because their favourite has not got through, but to descend into hysterics because your least favourite did get through is mean-spirited, petty and cruel. It is a real shame that people take such delight in singling out a particular act to hate in this manner. I could understand it if that act was, say, racist or sexist, or otherwise grossly bigoted in some way. I could understand it if they had committed some act of criminal violence or terrorism. But when their only offence is that their style of music is not to everyone’s tastes . . . I’ve just got to say it again: how patently absurd!

Personally, I actually preferred Lucie’s voice – in fact she was my second favourite, after Joe – but I really enjoy Jedward’s performances too, and I have a huge amount of respect for their cheerfulness and enthusiasm. To come on smiling week after week, even when the audience is booing them (and I think that behaviour is utterly outrageous) shows a tremendous amount of professionalism, and I take my hat off to them for it.

I suppose this nonsense is something that all celebrities have to put up with to some extent. When you get people attacking Steven Fry on Twitter, or hitting Leona Lewis at a book signing, you realise the sad truth of this. But I, for one, sincerely hope that the twins can rise above the blood-thirsty beast that is the Public, and go on to achieve some form of long lasting success.

END OF RANT

How great to have a blog where I can spout off about things like this. Join me next week (or whenever I get around to it) for my next cyber-rant on how much I respect Iain Duncan Smith, despite the fact that I am no Tory.

(And just in case anyone was thinking about leaving an excessively hateful comment about Jedward/their performance/their singing abilities/or whatever – don’t bother. Any such comment will very promptly be deleted by myself. This blog is to remain a malice-free cyber-zone at all times.)