Guest Post: David Schmidt, author of "Pirates of the Danube"

Rape in the Congo

Love in the 21^st Century

-by David J. Schmidt

I open up my e-mail inbox one morning to find that the first message on the list bears the following title:

“THIS MONDAY—RAPE IN THE CONGO!”

Of course, after I open the e-mail, I realize that it comes from an activist group that is inviting me to a special event where they will screen a documentary about some humanitarian crisis in Africa.

But the first thought that came to my head, when I saw that email, was this:

Who can afford a plane ticket to the Congo in this economy? Much less stomach all the raping?

I blame “Fifty Shades of Grey” for this.

In part, I hold the “Fifty Shades” phenomenon responsible because, in this day and age, violent sex is on everybody’s minds. It’s all the vogue. It seems that no matter where we turn lately, bruises are the coolest new thing to wear. Bella wakes up after her wedding night with Edward Cullen to find her body bruised and sore, and she is filled with love for her new husband. Anastasia meets a man who tells her he wants to put metal projectiles inside of her, and she instantly falls for him. “You had me at ‘projectiles’,” she says.

It used to be, the violence was at least kept subtle and implicit in films and books. You watch one of these old black and white movies from the 1940’s, and sure, the men do a lot of tough talking, but they keep it classy for the most part. I recently watched “Double Indemnity”, a film noir from 1944. Sure, the main character is always pulling women around by the upper arm to get them to go along with him, as if they had no sense of agency of their own, or were incapable of responding to a simple, verbal “hey, come over here please”. Sure, the lead male has a habit of fiercely shaking his love interest by the shoulders as a prelude to kissing her.

But at least nobody is waking up with bruises in the morning, or having metal balls put inside their nether-regions.

In the 21^st Century, on the other hand, we have Twilight and Fifty Shades.

We have Edward Cullen, a husband who is “special” and “magical” and sparkles in the sunlight—and, because he is special and magical and sparkly, his wife is forced to cut off all contact with her friends and family once she marries him. Because nothing says “loving relationship” like a man who won’t let you call your dad on the phone.

We have Christian Grey, who makes you sign a contract regulating when you can touch yourself, who monitors what you eat meticulously.

All that’s missing is for Christian Grey and Edward Cullen to sex their respective lovers to the tune of Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” like Julia Roberts’ evil husband in “Sleeping with the Enemy”.

But this isn’t the only problem I blame on the “Fifty Shades” phenomenon.

I also hold “Fifty Shades” and its kin responsible for my confusion. My misunderstanding of the aforementioned email—and the vagueness of the email’s title itself—are the direct result of these books, as they have normalized imprecise language. More than the bizarre sexual practices, the poor syntax is, perhaps, the most disturbing thing about the whole “Fifty Shades” series.

The Congo isn’t the only thing being raped these days—the entire English language takes a beating when something like “Fifty Shades” becomes popularized.

Every time Christian Grey says a phrase like “thank fuck”—as if Fuck were some commonly accepted deity to whom we offer thanks and praise—I feel as if King Leopold of Belgium is marching his troops into the pristine wilderness of the English language, rampaging through the countryside and mining the soil of our language for blood diamonds.

Every time E. L. James carpet bombs her narrative with ubiquitous ellipses, raining down a maelstrom of fire on the punctuation, I feel the English language shrivel up and die inside.

Every time her main character says “oh my”; with every non sequitur in the plot development, with every nonsensical metaphor and simile, the defenseless English language is ravaged like a nation being colonized.

In the face of such devastation, I did the only thing any sensible person would do—I launched a counterattack, via parody. My novella, “Pirates of the Danube”, is a work of comic farce which satirizes the entire lot of barely-legible erotic and romance stories which have taken us by storm. It is humanity’s last stand, in the face of almost certain literary demise.

And it will be free this weekend.

David J. Schmidt is the author of the satirical romance novel, “Pirates of the Danube”, as well as its sequel, “The Baron Rides Again”. The former, “Pirates of the Danube”, will be available on the Kindle store for free this Passover / Palm Sunday weekend, March 23 and 24.

Schmidt has received various recognitions for his charitable contributions toward the preservation of Peyronie’s Disease. In 2004, he was granted knighthood by the Basque Republic, becoming Sir David J. Schmidt for the following three years. The title was stripped from him by the United Nations Council on Fallacious Royal Families in 2007. Schmidt lives with his beloved ex-wife of 14 years, his two cats, and his indentured servant. He can be reached via his blog, www.donguero.blogspot.com or via email at thebaroninsideyou@gmail.com

See this link to find the book on Kindle:

http://www.amazon.com/Pirates-of-the-Danube-ebook/dp/B009479CH2/ref=sr_1_1?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1363758058&sr=1-1&keywords=pirates+of+the+danube

Archer's book review: Fifty Shades of Grey

As much as I adore Archer, we don't always agree on things (gasp! I know, right?!).

When I read the Fifty Shades trilogy, I came away with a slightly different opinion of it than he did - though that difference was mostly in the nuances and degrees.

As a work of fiction, I found it intrinsically without value. However, it has extrinsic value as a statement on our (American) popular culture. I don't believe that's a particularly kind statement, by the way. I can't speak for the trilogy's reception in other countries.

That said, I actually enjoyed the read. It's superficial, but enjoyable until you look at it in an analytic light - even if some of that enjoyment comes at the author's expense, or is rooted in a sardonic view of the culture which produced and consumes this drivel.

My primary concern by which I evaluate a work of fiction is in the character development. In these books, I found the characters to be charicaturized versions of the popular views of stereotypical women - and men - which too many suburban wives (to make use of another stereotype) idealize but can't possibly attain - they're just too human, and that gets in the way (thank goodness!). I do see the value in utilizing those popularized versions of people, though, especially in the romance genre. After all, the point of romance novels is not to imitate reality. I think the author actually knew her target audience quite well, and developed her characters in the best possible way for them to be palatable for that audience. So, while I personally didn't find the characters particularly well-developed in their own right, they were perfectly developed for the author's purpose, which was to sell books.

... This post started off as a short little introduction to Archer's review of the "Fifty Shades" trilogy, so I guess I better get back to that.

After reading the trilogy, I begged asked Archer to read the books too, so that we could discuss my ideas about them and the social commentary which inevitably followed their popularity.

The following was his response. I laughed out loud, literally.

~

Fifty Tons of Utter Shit

I slog through this abomination of words, the fifty shades trilogy, and despair. Never have I met so doltish and annoying a protagonist as she.  She trivializes all womanhood with every syllable of her non-existence.  

Her boyfriend is elevated to genius by her moronic perception of his logical deductions as "magical".  At one point Anastasia interprets Grey's moody, multi-tasking, and generally active intellect as possibly afflicted with "multiple personality disorder," and this in a vastly successful businessman.  MPD is a devastating mental condition, crippling in fact, insupportable in any life requiring high function, memory, control, and structured task mastery.  She is supposed to be an "educated" girl.  This little idiot wanders around as a modern day Tartuffe, looking at all in the world as though for the very first time.  The naïveté, portrayed to the point of ridiculousness.  This Grey fellow, far from mysterious, merely appears to be a passably intelligent dude, horny, melodramatic, and somewhat kinky, in a pretty vanilla kind of way as millionaires go.  

The sex scenes in this book are banal to the point of anti-tumescence, the plot is utterly predictable, the premise is profoundly unimportant, the attempted moral rationalization of its hero (all this charity bullshit throughout his busy plutocrats life) is entirely corrupt at its base.  This is a book about banal decadence, about a stupid girl who gets a rich boyfriend, who wraps her arms around opulence, grousing and bitching the whole way, so no one will think her a whore for hitting the jackpot by yanking on the one armed bandit with her uninteresting little cunt.

These "works" are the opposite of literature; they do not ennoble, they debase us.  They make all who read them more stupid by allowing such trashy sentences into their brains.  They are an insult to womankind; they turn sex into a car commercial; they contort love into a horrible game of self-deluding sexist hypocrisy where women crave domination physically, all the while conspiring to crack the masterful spirit of their chosen man, to the point where the mystery and power that initially drew them is revealed, neutered and suborned by the mystical influence of their nasty little holes.

While this little trio of dime novels is quite a dollop of shit to be sure, the inevitable series of movies will drive all art to a new nadir.   While love and sex have been well fucked into whoredom for centuries by commerce and the churches, we will now toss kink, and the works of poor Thomas Hardy into the chemical stink of pop culture.

I predict that those movies will be the rottenest things in human culture.

I predict that their rottenness will drive, by comparison, the Twilight series, up into realms of near-tolerability, feat once thought impossible by all scientists and film critics.

The only benefits of this plague will be the sharp screams and luridly publicized emergency room visits of kink inept suburbanites maiming themselves in hilarious attempts to slavishly ape this latest trend in "sexy". That, laid at the feet of its author, once society turns its fickle, hypocritical back on this dirty little fad, will be her god damned comeuppance.  She will shrink, Shatner-like into a minor self parody, an impossibly wealthy pariah, devoid of talent, to be shoveled onto the reality show dung heap of ex-celebrity. 

-Archer

~

A bit later in the conversation, with more information gathered, Archer had this to add:

Not surprisingly, the Grey trio began its odious life as a fan-fiction afterbirth from the actual Twilight series itself. Ana and Chris actually began their papier-mâché lives as amateur copies of the ridiculous Twilight couple.  Leonard cannot even be credited with originating this monstrosity, she just copied stupid and penned idiocy in the process. Trash begat garbage.

~

Did I mention that Archer can be quite scathing when provoked?