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Route 30 - N4A Chat Thread - September 2017


Youngster Joey

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20 hours ago, Young P said:

Sometimes characters' genders can be arbitrary, but a whole cast of characters being male strikes me as a clear sign of a specific commentary on male behavior. It could have easily been a co-ed school of boys and girls. He's still commenting on society at large, it's just specifically about patriarchal society.

I just told you the reasons the author gave for why they were all males and those reasons have nothing to do with a patriarchal society. If that's how you want to interpret it, okay, but don't expect me to agree with it. Might as well say Catcher In the Rye was about killing the phonies, I mean you can I guess (probably shouldn't though) but that's not what the writer intended.

I don't really get how it could be about patriarchy anyways. There's no girls for the boys to hold power over at all in the story so, that doesn't make any sense to me.

Edited by Yellow
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16 minutes ago, Yellow said:

I just told you the reasons the author gave for why they were all males and those reasons have nothing to do with a patriarchal society. If that's how you want to interpret it, okay, but don't expect me to agree with it. Might as well say Catcher In the Rye was about killing the phonies, I mean you can I guess (probably shouldn't though) but that's not what the writer intended.

I don't really get how it could be about patriarchy anyways. There's no girls for the boys to hold power over at all in the story so, that doesn't make any sense to me.

Read Golding's quote again. "A group of girls wouldn't do as a good representation of civilization or society." Why do you think that is?

 

There are probably a lot of ways in which it's not a direct analogue for society. But I don't see how you can read a story about male power struggles, filled with clear metaphors for the ways our society works, and not think of patriarchy.

 

I don't care if it was the writer's intention, nor do I care if you agree with my interpretation. Even though it's supported both by the text itself and the quote that you posted.

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18 minutes ago, Young P said:

Read Golding's quote again. "A group of girls wouldn't do as a good representation of civilization or society." Why do you think that is?

 

There are probably a lot of ways in which it's not a direct analogue for society. But I don't see how you can read a story about male power struggles, filled with clear metaphors for the ways our society works, and not think of patriarchy.

 

I don't care if it was the writer's intention, nor do I care if you agree with my interpretation. Even though it's supported both by the text itself and the quote that you posted.

I don't know, I suppose it depends on how he viewed girls personally. He also said he saw females as superior so perhaps he thought women would have acted differently in that situation. Perhaps he believed that the fails of society were of men's inventions, not of women. Then again maybe not, but I'm here to interpret a quote said by the author, I'm just reading what he literally said.

 

I don't think of patriarchy when I read this because I'm not programmed to see patriarchy when its not there. Like I said, patriarchy is men holding power of women, not men self-destructing and collapsing as a group. If there is a clear part where one of the boys holds women in contempt, let me know, I can't recall a passage myself where that happens.

If you don't care if I agree with your opinion then why do you keep replying back? What is the point of this? If there is none then this has just been pointless bickering.

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Going to be nice playing through G/S again and not have to worry about losing my save file to a dead cartridge battery. Been playing through my Crystal version and as long as I keep my SP charged I won't lose my data. I have enough money to cover the cost of both versions and possibly get Blue version, still have my old G/S game boxes and would love to have the ones being released in Japan and Europe.

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1 minute ago, Dancing Mog said:

Going to be nice playing through G/S again and not have to worry about losing my save file to a dead cartridge battery. Been playing through my Crystal version and as long as I keep my SP charged I won't lose my data. I have enough money to cover the cost of both versions and possibly get Blue version, still have my old G/S game boxes and would love to have the ones being released in Japan and Europe.

Definitely. I miss my old Silver file though. So many memories. Sweet.

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6 minutes ago, Yellow said:

I don't know, I suppose it depends on how he viewed girls personally. He also said he saw females as superior so perhaps he thought women would have acted differently in that situation. Perhaps he believed that the fails of society were of men's inventions, not of women. Then again maybe not, but I'm here to interpret a quote said by the author, I'm just reading what he literally said.

 

I don't think of patriarchy when I read this because I'm not programmed to see patriarchy when its not there. Like I said, patriarchy is men holding power of women, not men self-destructing and collapsing as a group. If there is a clear part where one of the boys holds women in contempt, let me know, I can't recall a passage myself where that happens.

If you don't care if I agree with your opinion then why do you keep replying back? What is the point of this? If there is none then this has just been pointless bickering.

If you're not interpreting the author's quote then why did you bring it up?

 

Here's what I was getting at with this part of the quote - "a group of girls wouldn't do as a good representation of civilization or society." Guess why this is the case? Because our society is patriarchal. Men have the power, therefore the broad strokes of civilization are largely defined by men. The absence of women in the story is part of the point. It's not a story about women being oppressed, it's a story about boys fucking things up, purely among themselves. The effect that has on the rest of society is implicit. (Also, having contempt for women is only half the story when it comes to patriarchy. It's also plain old apathy and disconnection, which you could read as part of the text via the fact that they go to an all boys school and don't really spend any time around girls.)

 

I'm more concerned with how our respective conclusions are reached than with whether they match up. Plus it's interesting to talk about Lord of the Flies in this context since we didn't exactly cover the patriarchy angle in 8th grade english.

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11 minutes ago, Young P said:

If you're not interpreting the author's quote then why did you bring it up?

 

Here's what I was getting at with this part of the quote - "a group of girls wouldn't do as a good representation of civilization or society." Guess why this is the case? Because our society is patriarchal. Men have the power, therefore the broad strokes of civilization are largely defined by men. The absence of women in the story is part of the point. It's not a story about women being oppressed, it's a story about boys fucking things up, purely among themselves. The effect that has on the rest of society is implicit. (Also, having contempt for women is only half the story when it comes to patriarchy. It's also plain old apathy and disconnection, which you could read as part of the text via the fact that they go to an all boys school and don't really spend any time around girls.)

 

I'm more concerned with how our respective conclusions are reached than with whether they match up. Plus it's interesting to talk about Lord of the Flies in this context since we didn't exactly cover the patriarchy angle in 8th grade english.

I didn't bring it up to interpret. I brought it up to read as is.

 

Oh, so you're using the definition of patriarchy as just "men are in charged"? If we're going by that definition, then I would say you're right, sort of. I still think it's more about human behaviour in general rather than male behaviour. You're right males, may be the best way to represent society in that regard, but the story was a lot about authority and individuality, and group think. Those are qualities that everybody has, so the story doesn't come off as a story about males more it's about the savageness; least that's what I got out of it.

 

I think the patriarchy angle wasn't approach before because, like you said,  most of civilization has been male defined. So any story about society would also instantly be about men by you're standards. I think it's kind of silly cause it's kind of like saying that a story about football is about the male domination in the sport, because it's mostly been a male dominated sport, but that may not be the point the story's actually trying to make.

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A major component of Lord of the Flies is surrounded by the dangers of order versus power in society and how that can run rampant, but an undercurrent that a lot of contemporary critics identified is how the book deals with concepts of toxic masculinity and its effect on society.  Because even the author of the book itself thinks the ugliness of society is better and more accurately portrayed by men because he thinks women are superior/more civilized and an all-girls version wouldn't properly represent a civilization or society since it's mostly dominated by men and every part of that permeates it in negative ways.  The problems with society and civilization would likely be very different from a female perspective than it would be from a man's because there's a whole other level of power struggle and prejudice present.

 

While that line of thinking perhaps might be a bit dated, it's the idea written in mind for the book.

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1 hour ago, Yellow said:

I didn't bring it up to interpret. I brought it up to read as is.

 

Oh, so you're using the definition of patriarchy as just "men are in charged"? If we're going by that definition, then I would say you're right, sort of. I still think it's more about human behaviour in general rather than male behaviour. You're right males, may be the best way to represent society in that regard, but the story was a lot about authority and individuality, and group think. Those are qualities that everybody has, so the story doesn't come off as a story about males more it's about the savageness; least that's what I got out of it.

 

I think the patriarchy angle wasn't approach before because, like you said,  most of civilization has been male defined. So any story about society would also instantly be about men by you're standards. I think it's kind of silly cause it's kind of like saying that a story about football is about the male domination in the sport, because it's mostly been a male dominated sport, but that may not be the point the story's actually trying to make.

I'm not sure what good it is to read a quote without trying to interpret its meaning. It's not like it was particularly cryptic, I was just reading into it on a basic level.

 

That's a fair way to read it, but I believe a story about human's capacity for savageness could have been accomplished with a cast of boy and girl characters. The pointed decision for the story to center on a group of boys says to me that Golding is singling out boy behavior - not just because he thinks girls are above that behavior by nature, but because it reflects our society more truthfully. You're right that it's about authority, individuality, and groupthink; I would just add that it's specifically implicating men with those qualities, being that they are more responsible for societal dysfunction than women.

 

The difference there is that any story about football would generally have to focus on men by default, whereas Lord of the Flies conspicuously centers on boys from an all boys school at the expense of involving girls. Like I said in an earlier post, it could have been a boys and girls school. An all male cast isn't the default for that kind of premise.

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