Three years ago I wrote a blog post called You've been warned, a combination rant, promise, and manifesto. A couple of weeks ago, a commenter, KatieS, took exception to this part:
When I write, dear reader, I don't want to build a careful tale for you to discuss with a smile in a sunny place, I want to own you. I don't want to be The New TV Series, I want to be pornography: to thrill you so hard you're ashamed but can't help yourself crawling back for more.
The word pornography, she pointed out, had negative connotations for her and many others, just as lame has for me. She has a point. I've decided to rewrite a little.
The problem: I'm deep into Hild at the moment, so far down that other projects feel like alien dreams. In idle moments I've toyed with a few notions: changing pornography to the Forbidden, or X-rated or banned. But rants are blunt and brutal poetry. The rhythm of each word, its deep meaning, is vital. None of the alternative satisfy me. It's nagging at me, like a thistle in my shoe.
The solution: I need your help. I thought we might crowdsource a solution. So. How should I rewrite this sentence?
I don't want to be The New TV Series, I want to be pornography: to thrill you so hard you're ashamed but can't help yourself crawling back for more.
Give me a suggestion. (Give me a polite suggestion.)
Posts
Leave it alone.
ReplyDelete"The difference between the right word and the almost right word is the difference between lightning and a lightning bug." Mark Twain
Was true then, it is true now. Lightning doesn't ask your permission to strike it smashed down and if you are in the way you are hit.
onyxhawke, but it's a challenge! I like a challenge.
ReplyDeleteSubstitute 'addiction' or something along those lines?
ReplyDeleteNicola --
ReplyDeleteI think that the readers are taking "pornography" too literally, but OK. But how about this:
"I don't want to be The New TV Series, I want to be your secret longing, your innermost desire, your forbidden dream -- to thrill you so hard you're ashamed but can't help yourself crawling back for more."
thebeardedlady, 'addiction' is too unspecific, I think.
ReplyDeleteDianne, too many words! I need something as efficient as the simple 'pornography'.
I like challenges too, but recognizing when you've got it right sometimes IS the challenge.
ReplyDeleteThat said if it will make you feel better...
Passion or praxis might work.
onyxhawke, both those words have the wrong mouth feel to me; they're too liquid. I need something blunt.
ReplyDeleteHmm how about a switch to:
ReplyDelete"I don't want to be The New TV Series, I want to be the gravity that thrusts you down, inescapable and inside your skin -- to thrill you so hard you're ashamed but can't help yourself crawling back for more"
OTOH, there's a reason I am not a writer.
Fetish. Craving. Desire. Lure. Temptation. Siren song. Thrall.
ReplyDelete"I want to seduce you."
Dianne, vice! Vice, vice, vice! Yes!
ReplyDeleteperverse pleasure?
ReplyDeleteAh, le mot juste...
ReplyDeleteStacia, Dianne, I am thinking 'vice' but 'perversion' almost works. Hmmn. But I'd love something with an 'o' in it, something hard and round like 'porn'. But, hey, the beauty of online rants: I can use a different word every month til I get it right.
ReplyDeleteActually, someone above came very close.
ReplyDeleteI want to be narcotic...
However, I think pornography is more universal, and to defend it a bit, so what if it offends? That's part of the thrill you're describing. To some extent, this is exactly why we write the way we do, to say to those who take offense at certain ideas that their offense is precisely the point. But I think narcotic works just as well and has, or should have, some of the same connotations.
I'd swap out pornography in favor of transgressive.
ReplyDeleteMuch of what you write is transgressive; it's one of the reasons you make readers think.
"Transgressive," I think, is a buzzword, the victim of linguistic/semantic inflation, overused by academics who think that writing a doctoral dissertation on queer theory really breaks some serious rules. If you can get a Ph.D. doing it, it's not transgressive.
ReplyDeleteI have trouble with people who have trouble with the word "pornography." Can I demand that you change the post so as to reflect my needs? I think the word was the right word for what you were trying to say, especially since you said precisely what you were trying to convey by it.
I like the word "pornography". So essentially you are just searching for a euphemism which in my opinion is weaker writing.
ReplyDelete"I want to be your Horcrux, to splinter off a part of your soul and capture it in my words, leaving the rest of you forever unstable, and yet touched by immortality."
ReplyDeleteIf you don't mind borrowing JK Rowling's term. :-)
debauchery
ReplyDeleteIt's such fun to watch long-time readers trot out their favourite hobby horses. I'm smiling.
ReplyDeleteTop possibility for me right now: 'vice'. But keep 'em coming.
“I want to be pornography: to thrill you so hard you're ashamed but can't help yourself crawling back for more.”
ReplyDeleteI get what you are trying to say with this and I like it for that. I can also see the offensiveness of pornography, because, frankly, it is a very different experience from reading your writing. With porn, yeah, I might feel ashamed and I might crawl back. With your writing, I don’t feel ashamed. I might feel surprised—surprised at where you are taking me, and that is thrilling, and I do want more. But not from shame.
So with that, what’s a better word? With an “o” perhaps, you said. Hmm, well, yes I can think of one…
;)
Since you used 'The New TV Series' to describe predictable, formula, etc., why not just say "The Tabloids" to represent shocking, perverse,outrageous, etc.?
ReplyDeleteI want to be your ravager: ....
ReplyDeleteI think, even if the individual doesn't agree with the word, they know what you mean. At least it isn't attacking a group of people like 'gay' or other words. I think the main thing is, the reader knows what you mean, and you've already shocked them. Mission accomplished as you write it. :) :)
ReplyDeleteAnon, 'I want to ravage you' might work
ReplyDeleteLara, oh, yep :)
I may be out of my depth here, but it seems like the passage is based on a 'writing as transgressive sex' metaphor. If you mess with that too much, the metaphors get confused, everything falls apart. 'Ravage' is something my vanilla gf and I would use. Breaks the metaphor.
ReplyDeleteMuch as I dislike 'porno', I think it's right here. This is why you're the highly-paid author :)
Would "ravish" work better than "ravage"?
ReplyDeleteI liked Lara's comment, because her chosen example shows the problem involved.
"Gay" doesn't "attack a group of people," except when it does. I was really baffled when I began encountering gay people -- well, let's call them "homosexuals" -- who thought that "gay" was and always had been pejorative. But then I realized that less than a decade after the US gay movement had appropriated "gay" as the positive public word for same-sex loving people, homophobes had turned it into a negative one. Some of us thought that the movement had tried to reclaim "gay" in the same way that some had tried to reclaim "queer," but "gay" wasn't pejorative to begin with. Still, "gay" is on the fence right now; as a political identifier, it's still positive, even safe; even the New York Times uses it, though they refused to for a long time. It's also a putdown. Words are like that.
Which is why "pornography" is probably the right word. It's not like you were using it to refer to an unqualified good: you wrote that you want your readers to be so thrilled they're ashamed but come back for more. Of course, not everyone responds that way to pornography, though I'd bet that at least some people who objected to your using the word do (or would) respond that way and don't want to be reminded of it. (Sort of like closeted but sexually active antigay politicians.) Then there are people who don't feel ashamed about enjoying pornography; Susie Bright, for example, would probably object to your use of the word on just that basis.
Maybe "guilty pleasure" would be a workable substitute? But it looks to me from these comments as though there was a groundswell of support for "pornography."
Promiscuous, I just love to see people thinking so hard about words. Gives me great pleasure.
ReplyDelete