fantasy | dr. p.l. (paul) thomas

[Header Photo by Museums of History New South Wales on Unsplash]

I am currently reading Haruki Murakami’s newest novel, The City and Its Uncertain Walls. In some ways, the story is not as typical of his other novels (I have read all of his work and co-edited a volume on him).

However, this novel maintains a recurring aspect of his works—men who have lost or been left by women (directly expressed in his short story collection Men Without Women).

Reading this novel comes after I recently submitted a chapter on Murakami expanded from a blog post about his 2017 story collection; in that, I address concerns about whether Murakami’s fiction slips too often into sexism and objectifying women.

While the questions about how Murakami deals with women in his fiction creates tension in me as a reader and scholar, I am more disturbed and struggle much more with the men writers and creators who persist in proving that they mistreat, abuse, and assault women in their (sometimes mostly) secret lives.

My reading and fandom life is littered with men writers I once admired but now find it hard to appreciate their work because of their failings as men, as humans—Woody Allen, J.D. Salinger, e.e. cummings, Cormac McCarthy, and Neil Gaiman (see several posts below addressing these men).

The debate about where the line is between a person’s creative work and their personal lives has a long history—and many people disagree about being able to respect that work while acknowledging or even rejecting the personal flaws (and much worse).

For example, Ryunosuke Hashimoto frets about Murakami: “The negative image that has been associated with Murakami is so frequently spotted on social media as a consequence of the new generational standard that one wrong cancels out all of the good that is contained in a work.”

The recent revelations about McCarthy and Gaiman seem to rise far above “one wrong” into predatory patterns and abhorrent abuse.

Concurrent with reading the seemingly late mainstream coverage of Gaiman in Vulture, I have been watching the series House for the first time (while my partner is re-watching one of her favorite series).

House is challenging us in similar ways, considering how much the problems with the episodes weigh against the compelling aspects of the show.

To me, House tries to be topical but can fall cartoonishly flat, such as Spin (S2E6) about a professional cyclist. The cycling and discussions around cheating (EPO and blood doping) are wildly bad, especially the scene of actual bicycle racing.

But we also had just watch Skin Deep (S2E13) a day before the Gaiman article dropped in Vulture.

Skin Deep, for me, has many of the flaws found in the Spin episode, likely from trying to hard to address then-current controversies.

The episode covers a great deal of controversial topics—sexualizing and objectifying young women (the main character is a 15-year-old supermodel), sexual abuse (the father admits sex with his daughter), and then the disturbing big reveal (the young woman is discovered to be intersex with cancerous testes).

Dr. House’s behavior is glib, offensive, and disturbing, including misinformation and not-so-subtle bigotry.

Re-watching Friends, Seinfeld, and The Office has left us cringing as well.

So from what to do about Gaiman’s work to navigating Murakami and series such as House, I remain troubled about where the line is between the creative works and the flawed to despicable humans, those men.

I also must stress that we are in a political moment where the consequences for being a sexual predator or committing sexual assault are being lessened, even erased. The rights of women are being eroded; yes, it is more and more a man’s world, a world hostile and calloused to the lives of girls and women.

The Gaiman moment is an(other) opportunity to say there is a line, it has been crossed, and there must be consequences.

There are thousands of wonderful creative works by people who do not have these transgressions, these failures to respect the humanity of others, hanging over them and their works.

I’ll keep watching House, and I am pretty comfortable with how I understand and appreciate Murakami (and I could be wrong). But Gaiman deserves consequences of a magnitude from which he will not recover as an artist—and others will (maybe) learn as well.