In re Margaret Atwood, one of the things I do is run a creative writing group for survivors of torture (unique in the world, going for over 20 years). We used to send our work to the Edinburgh Festival to be read in the Amnesty Sessions, and in those days could sometimes afford to bring the writers to hear their work read, in public, to hundreds of people, by distinguished authors. A big, maybe once in a lifetime deal for people who'd been tortured and told, over and over again, that they were worthless. One year Margaret Atwood was there, to read one of our writers' pieces. Instead of going straight in, she spent fifteen minutes talking about Margaret Atwood and Amnesty, and how much she'd done for Amnesty, and what a big supporter she was of Amnesty. The result; another of our writers - also there, specially to witness this moment - had to experience her piece just being cut, because otherwise the session would have overrun. I'm afraid I have never forgiven this.
There’s been unrealistic prosperity in UK TV dramas for a good while too - everyone young and single - even teachers or coppers who aren’t that well off - lives in a nice flat (never a share), couples and families have gardens. The exception was a (very good) show from a few years’ ago about two young coppers, one lived in a horrible flatshare, the other was fed up to be still with his family. Think it was called New Blood - I think it’s stuck in my mind partly for the actually credible living circumstances.
Listening to Helen on Radio Atlantic this week got me thinking how much I wish she'd profile Gwynne Shotwell. In every practical way, Gwynne is the one who actually runs SpaceX and has almost since the beginning. Really reinforces the geniuses need a "wife" perspective.
I misread 'fratriarchy' as friararchy - and I was just going to look for places where religious orders were in charge, just so I could use it. (Actually, I still might...)
That Sophie Gilbert piece is terrific - thanks for sharing.
It’s something I’ve also noted in fiction.
I recently realised that a lot of my new-book choices (Caledonian Road, Long Island Compromise *and* Fleishman is in Trouble, The Bee Sting, How to Sleep at Night, all of which I loved) you could fit in a genre called: rich people making terrible life choices.
It’s great. Not to lower the tone but I thought of it when I watched the new Peppa Pig film which is mainly about the pigs buying expensive things like massive house extensions and new cars to accommodate the new baby pig. Can’t believe I’ve posted this on the internet
I was thinking about watching the Four Seasons show, it’s supposed to be “relatable” because of the age of the protagonists, but when I saw the trailer I was immediately put off because of the wealth. No longer relatable. Turns everything into a soap opera, fantasy.
As a counter-point to the Gilbert piece, natasha joukovsky has written very interestingly about messy rich people stories, and what she calls 'the choice plot' :
I read that New Yorker piece on Curtis Yarvin too. I'd written an essay about my first contact with his "ideas" a year ago (below). He's just so incredibly thin, unimpressive and attention-seeking. If that's Vice-President Vance's idea of an intellectual, he needs to get out more (or stay in more, whatever works).
That piece about Atwood tells us a lot about the Substack writer and very little little about Margaret Atwood. Successful female writers who grew up in the 1950s have egos? Knock me down with a feather.
I really dislike the way some people criticise the concept intimacy coordinators - like it’s encouraging prudishness or anti-art. (Not saying this is you - just that article).
To me it’s like people complaining about “Health and Safety gone mad” - yes sometimes it can go too far and there are always individual examples of craziness but ultimately much fewer people are being maimed or killed at work due to these laws.
There are so many examples in Hollywood of both male and female actors being assaulted and forced to go further than they want. I’m sure one of the studios goals is to make it harder for people to sue or complain but by doing that they’re also trying to prevent another Last Tango in Paris and what happened to Olivia Hussey.
I am an actor. Quite a new one. After being a professional for four months, I was asked to do a role with three sex scenes, with two different people.
The director/producer asked me if I wanted an intimacy coordinator, and I said I was ambivalent on the matter, never having experienced it one way or the other before, and having heard some scepticism previously, in fact from one of my female acting coaches and very experienced actor. As she said, the role of intimacy coordinator didn't exist just a few years ago, and 'Who are these people? [Maybe] I don't want you coordinating my intimacy'. This wasn't a blanket opposition on her part, but as she pointed out, it's another person in the room, plus you have no idea who they are or what qualifies them.
I was listening to a podcast recently (What Went Wong - very good!) with the woman (name escapes me) who basically created the guidelines for this and seemingly the actual practice. She herself sounds sensitive, thoughtful, and capable. Having her around would probably be a blessing. The guidelines also seem pretty incontrovertible. But only a tiny, few seconds of this podcast touched on the qualifications and training of practitioners, and seemingly only in the context of a specific drama school in Finland. There was no pressing or scepticism at all from the hosts on the matter, which worried me.
Back to the film I was in. My co-star's agent insisted that there would indeed be an intimacy coordinator. The director/producer 'hired' his wife, who has no training, didn't speak English very well, and seemed only to care about the wellbeing of my (female) co-star, leaving me anxious and not knowing what was going to happen. This, plus her tense and loud way of communicating with the crew, only made me feel more uncomfortable for having her involved.
In short, the scepticism is warranted. I think in general it is or could/should be a good thing. But as with so much that has a political edge, not being able to criticise without being dismissed as insensitive or politically motivated only makes worse the problem that we're allegedly trying to solve.
I don’t think I disagree with anything you’ve said. They definitely shouldn’t just hire random people and they need to be qualified, have the right experience.
For me it should be like a stunt coordinator. You should absolutely be able to criticise how they do their job, if they’re qualified etc. but if someone questioned the need/concept of a stunt coordinator then they’d get some raised eyebrows.
Absolutely. And I think saying that someone needs to be qualified is itself pretty incontrovertible to most people, but I think it needs to be considered more. The role is dealing with at the very least a sensitive topic, and potentially touching on trauma, so anyone who's doing the job has to be both an excellent communicator and have close to, if not 100%, therapist-like skill. Such training would take years. Even though I've heard of courses and qualifications, again it doesn't seem to be talked about enough and/or enforced.
Worryingly, the woman who did this on my film can now, if she wants, say she was an intimacy coordinator once, so she has the experience. Anyone who jumped into the role when it first appeared, and there was presumably even less oversight, can do the same thing, for as long as they want. I'm sure there are solutions to these concerns (regulatory bodies and such).
Gah - that is the *opposite* of how an intimacy coordinator is meant to work. They should be there to facilitate communication and planning so *everyone* knows what is going to happen, what the boundaries are, and can be comfortable doing their job. Plus they should have an extensive selection of modesty garments so no-one has to feel unduly exposed - plus things like knee pads for to help with the physical discomfort of being in awkward positions.
Do you think any other countries might be on the cards eventually as part of your book tour? Wishful thinking that you'd make it to Australia i would imagine - but perhaps somewhere slightly nearer than the UK i'd be able to attend.
That article on the end of the Wii Spa case seems to indicate that there will be no need for separate male/female facilities for men and women in California at all. I’m glad somewhere is willing to be the Petri dish for that experiment, and that I don’t have to live there.
I'm afraid the Atwood piece is a rehash of the woke young'uns attacks during the Galloway case - who was by the way found not guilty after he was fired and publicly excoriated and after a former colleague who took part in his cancellation called the police on him because they expected he may harm himself. All the monstrous, narcissistic behaviour during that affair was from the Galloway cancellers, not from Atwood.
She is quite possibly a narcissist! I don't know. But I'd rather read more literary criticism of her work than this un-bylined bitching on why her politics are bad and why her early works have no indigenous people in it. Handmaid the TV series is terrible, but she wasn't involved in any way, as far as I can tell.
I loved "neurotic anime communists" - is that your term? I searched for it and it seems so. I've been blocked by lists created by them on BlueSky, so BlueSky for me is a serene, verging on boring experience.
Just follow Jesse Singal (if he hasn't been driven off BlueSky - I haven't opened it in a while) - the neurotic anime communists will block you en masse and you'll be in perfect filter-bubble peace ✌️
Almost certainly - she's a pariah to the lunatics there. I'm on a bunch of block lists because of what I read, not what I say, which only highlights the Stalin-Like attitudes over there.
Helen, I would sell one of my beloved children into indentured servitude for a profile of Yarvin by you. I know it’s a longshot. The New Yorker profile set a high bar, and you’ll have a hard time convincing either your editors to fund it or Yarvin to cooperate as a result.
One of the link 2 author's auxiliary objections to Margaret Atwood centres on her copyright maximalism; they're quite cross about it.
One of the particularly interesting comments below the link 4 post, about co-inventors, is from a patent lawyer [1]. The comment is interesting by itself, but also points to an article [2] about ‘The Myth of the Sole Inventor’ and the extent to which the current ‘theory’ of patent law makes sense. From the abstract to that paper:
“Prospect theory – under which we give patents early to one company so it can control research and development – makes little sense in a world in which ideas are in the air, likely to be happened upon by numerous inventors at about the same time. And commercialization theory, which hypothesizes that we grant patents in order to encourage not invention but product development, seems to founder on a related historical fact: most first inventors turn out to be lousy commercializers who end up delaying implementation of the invention by exercising their rights.”
That is, from one point of view the various types of near-simultaneous invention are routine enough to be an irritation for IP theorists.
Intellectual property is where the creative rubber hits the road (vulcanisation of rubber, by the way, was patented on both sides of the Atlantic, by different people, in 1843 and 1844), and the commercialisation of innovations, rather than any initial idea, is for me where the ‘inventor’ story starts to get interesting texture.
To complete the parallel, it's ‘am I going to get paid for this?’ where the writing, filming and singing industry gets interesting _as an industry_ (as distinct from the timeless ethereal products being grubbily commercialised, of course). How much did Watt delay the development of the steam engine? What was Shakespeare's company's actual annual turnover?
In re Margaret Atwood, one of the things I do is run a creative writing group for survivors of torture (unique in the world, going for over 20 years). We used to send our work to the Edinburgh Festival to be read in the Amnesty Sessions, and in those days could sometimes afford to bring the writers to hear their work read, in public, to hundreds of people, by distinguished authors. A big, maybe once in a lifetime deal for people who'd been tortured and told, over and over again, that they were worthless. One year Margaret Atwood was there, to read one of our writers' pieces. Instead of going straight in, she spent fifteen minutes talking about Margaret Atwood and Amnesty, and how much she'd done for Amnesty, and what a big supporter she was of Amnesty. The result; another of our writers - also there, specially to witness this moment - had to experience her piece just being cut, because otherwise the session would have overrun. I'm afraid I have never forgiven this.
Oh no. That is monstrous egotism.
QED...
There’s been unrealistic prosperity in UK TV dramas for a good while too - everyone young and single - even teachers or coppers who aren’t that well off - lives in a nice flat (never a share), couples and families have gardens. The exception was a (very good) show from a few years’ ago about two young coppers, one lived in a horrible flatshare, the other was fed up to be still with his family. Think it was called New Blood - I think it’s stuck in my mind partly for the actually credible living circumstances.
Bring back This Life and Spaced!
Listening to Helen on Radio Atlantic this week got me thinking how much I wish she'd profile Gwynne Shotwell. In every practical way, Gwynne is the one who actually runs SpaceX and has almost since the beginning. Really reinforces the geniuses need a "wife" perspective.
The vegetable art made my day!
I misread 'fratriarchy' as friararchy - and I was just going to look for places where religious orders were in charge, just so I could use it. (Actually, I still might...)
Fryarchy, where chips are in charge
Oh, Lord, you've started me off...
If the Princess Royal had ascended the throne, would we be living under Anarchy?
Sorry!
That Sophie Gilbert piece is terrific - thanks for sharing.
It’s something I’ve also noted in fiction.
I recently realised that a lot of my new-book choices (Caledonian Road, Long Island Compromise *and* Fleishman is in Trouble, The Bee Sting, How to Sleep at Night, all of which I loved) you could fit in a genre called: rich people making terrible life choices.
It’s great. Not to lower the tone but I thought of it when I watched the new Peppa Pig film which is mainly about the pigs buying expensive things like massive house extensions and new cars to accommodate the new baby pig. Can’t believe I’ve posted this on the internet
😊 I’m afraid I haven’t made time for Peppa Pig for some time…
I was thinking about watching the Four Seasons show, it’s supposed to be “relatable” because of the age of the protagonists, but when I saw the trailer I was immediately put off because of the wealth. No longer relatable. Turns everything into a soap opera, fantasy.
As a counter-point to the Gilbert piece, natasha joukovsky has written very interestingly about messy rich people stories, and what she calls 'the choice plot' :
https://joukovsky.substack.com/p/why-we-love-stories-about-messy-rich
https://joukovsky.substack.com/p/high-low
Ah brilliant. Thanks Lou
I read that New Yorker piece on Curtis Yarvin too. I'd written an essay about my first contact with his "ideas" a year ago (below). He's just so incredibly thin, unimpressive and attention-seeking. If that's Vice-President Vance's idea of an intellectual, he needs to get out more (or stay in more, whatever works).
https://theideaslab.substack.com/p/curtis-yarvin-pseudo-intellectualism
That piece about Atwood tells us a lot about the Substack writer and very little little about Margaret Atwood. Successful female writers who grew up in the 1950s have egos? Knock me down with a feather.
I really dislike the way some people criticise the concept intimacy coordinators - like it’s encouraging prudishness or anti-art. (Not saying this is you - just that article).
To me it’s like people complaining about “Health and Safety gone mad” - yes sometimes it can go too far and there are always individual examples of craziness but ultimately much fewer people are being maimed or killed at work due to these laws.
There are so many examples in Hollywood of both male and female actors being assaulted and forced to go further than they want. I’m sure one of the studios goals is to make it harder for people to sue or complain but by doing that they’re also trying to prevent another Last Tango in Paris and what happened to Olivia Hussey.
I am an actor. Quite a new one. After being a professional for four months, I was asked to do a role with three sex scenes, with two different people.
The director/producer asked me if I wanted an intimacy coordinator, and I said I was ambivalent on the matter, never having experienced it one way or the other before, and having heard some scepticism previously, in fact from one of my female acting coaches and very experienced actor. As she said, the role of intimacy coordinator didn't exist just a few years ago, and 'Who are these people? [Maybe] I don't want you coordinating my intimacy'. This wasn't a blanket opposition on her part, but as she pointed out, it's another person in the room, plus you have no idea who they are or what qualifies them.
I was listening to a podcast recently (What Went Wong - very good!) with the woman (name escapes me) who basically created the guidelines for this and seemingly the actual practice. She herself sounds sensitive, thoughtful, and capable. Having her around would probably be a blessing. The guidelines also seem pretty incontrovertible. But only a tiny, few seconds of this podcast touched on the qualifications and training of practitioners, and seemingly only in the context of a specific drama school in Finland. There was no pressing or scepticism at all from the hosts on the matter, which worried me.
Back to the film I was in. My co-star's agent insisted that there would indeed be an intimacy coordinator. The director/producer 'hired' his wife, who has no training, didn't speak English very well, and seemed only to care about the wellbeing of my (female) co-star, leaving me anxious and not knowing what was going to happen. This, plus her tense and loud way of communicating with the crew, only made me feel more uncomfortable for having her involved.
In short, the scepticism is warranted. I think in general it is or could/should be a good thing. But as with so much that has a political edge, not being able to criticise without being dismissed as insensitive or politically motivated only makes worse the problem that we're allegedly trying to solve.
Thanks for sharing - that’s all v interesting.
I don’t think I disagree with anything you’ve said. They definitely shouldn’t just hire random people and they need to be qualified, have the right experience.
For me it should be like a stunt coordinator. You should absolutely be able to criticise how they do their job, if they’re qualified etc. but if someone questioned the need/concept of a stunt coordinator then they’d get some raised eyebrows.
Absolutely. And I think saying that someone needs to be qualified is itself pretty incontrovertible to most people, but I think it needs to be considered more. The role is dealing with at the very least a sensitive topic, and potentially touching on trauma, so anyone who's doing the job has to be both an excellent communicator and have close to, if not 100%, therapist-like skill. Such training would take years. Even though I've heard of courses and qualifications, again it doesn't seem to be talked about enough and/or enforced.
Worryingly, the woman who did this on my film can now, if she wants, say she was an intimacy coordinator once, so she has the experience. Anyone who jumped into the role when it first appeared, and there was presumably even less oversight, can do the same thing, for as long as they want. I'm sure there are solutions to these concerns (regulatory bodies and such).
Gah - that is the *opposite* of how an intimacy coordinator is meant to work. They should be there to facilitate communication and planning so *everyone* knows what is going to happen, what the boundaries are, and can be comfortable doing their job. Plus they should have an extensive selection of modesty garments so no-one has to feel unduly exposed - plus things like knee pads for to help with the physical discomfort of being in awkward positions.
Do you think any other countries might be on the cards eventually as part of your book tour? Wishful thinking that you'd make it to Australia i would imagine - but perhaps somewhere slightly nearer than the UK i'd be able to attend.
Thanks : )
That article on the end of the Wii Spa case seems to indicate that there will be no need for separate male/female facilities for men and women in California at all. I’m glad somewhere is willing to be the Petri dish for that experiment, and that I don’t have to live there.
I'm afraid the Atwood piece is a rehash of the woke young'uns attacks during the Galloway case - who was by the way found not guilty after he was fired and publicly excoriated and after a former colleague who took part in his cancellation called the police on him because they expected he may harm himself. All the monstrous, narcissistic behaviour during that affair was from the Galloway cancellers, not from Atwood.
She is quite possibly a narcissist! I don't know. But I'd rather read more literary criticism of her work than this un-bylined bitching on why her politics are bad and why her early works have no indigenous people in it. Handmaid the TV series is terrible, but she wasn't involved in any way, as far as I can tell.
I loved "neurotic anime communists" - is that your term? I searched for it and it seems so. I've been blocked by lists created by them on BlueSky, so BlueSky for me is a serene, verging on boring experience.
Just follow Jesse Singal (if he hasn't been driven off BlueSky - I haven't opened it in a while) - the neurotic anime communists will block you en masse and you'll be in perfect filter-bubble peace ✌️
I think I might even be on a block list for following Helen!
Almost certainly - she's a pariah to the lunatics there. I'm on a bunch of block lists because of what I read, not what I say, which only highlights the Stalin-Like attitudes over there.
Yarvin is no 5th Ramone. He's a sloppy imitation of Michael Hutchence.
Helen, I would sell one of my beloved children into indentured servitude for a profile of Yarvin by you. I know it’s a longshot. The New Yorker profile set a high bar, and you’ll have a hard time convincing either your editors to fund it or Yarvin to cooperate as a result.
Nonetheless. May we hope?
Hidden parallels here...
One of the link 2 author's auxiliary objections to Margaret Atwood centres on her copyright maximalism; they're quite cross about it.
One of the particularly interesting comments below the link 4 post, about co-inventors, is from a patent lawyer [1]. The comment is interesting by itself, but also points to an article [2] about ‘The Myth of the Sole Inventor’ and the extent to which the current ‘theory’ of patent law makes sense. From the abstract to that paper:
“Prospect theory – under which we give patents early to one company so it can control research and development – makes little sense in a world in which ideas are in the air, likely to be happened upon by numerous inventors at about the same time. And commercialization theory, which hypothesizes that we grant patents in order to encourage not invention but product development, seems to founder on a related historical fact: most first inventors turn out to be lousy commercializers who end up delaying implementation of the invention by exercising their rights.”
That is, from one point of view the various types of near-simultaneous invention are routine enough to be an irritation for IP theorists.
Intellectual property is where the creative rubber hits the road (vulcanisation of rubber, by the way, was patented on both sides of the Atlantic, by different people, in 1843 and 1844), and the commercialisation of innovations, rather than any initial idea, is for me where the ‘inventor’ story starts to get interesting texture.
To complete the parallel, it's ‘am I going to get paid for this?’ where the writing, filming and singing industry gets interesting _as an industry_ (as distinct from the timeless ethereal products being grubbily commercialised, of course). How much did Watt delay the development of the steam engine? What was Shakespeare's company's actual annual turnover?
[1] https://open.substack.com/pub/constructionphysics/p/how-often-do-inventions-have-multiple?commentId=123655885
[2] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=1856610