High School as Narrative Structure (Including Digressions on Mysteries and Romances)

I'm a huge Agatha Christie fan. But I have to admit, I rarely try to figure out her mysteries. I'm too invested in the idea of human uncertainty and randomness. Since a large number of Christie's mysteries rely on split-section timing (during which every single person on the entire planet sticks to a carefully laid out time table), I never see the plan coming.

Take Death on the Nile--nobody saw the murderers running all over the boat? Really? Nobody stepped into the lounge at the wrong moment? Or Evil Under the Sun--nobody else is wandering around on the beach? The "right" person just happens to stay with the body?

Agatha Christie was well-aware that a well-planned murder can be instantly toppled by human vagaries, and she uses this truth to her advantage--often, the second murder victim in one of her books is the unintentional witness: that poor slob who just happened to be wandering around in the wrong place at the wrong time. She also has Miss Marple point out that the best "unprovable" murder is the "accident" (though don't get me started on how easily Christie characters die from eating a few leaves of foxglove or falling down a few steps) rather than the carefully planned murder.

Yet despite their illusory nature, Christie's carefully planned murders work as stories. The murder plan is the structure upon which each narrative is organized. That structure keeps the narrative from running off into digressive pointlessness; it gives the narrative a sense of "reality" even when it isn't much. Narratives without structure are not only boring and difficult to read but oddly enough, often fail to deliver that sense of "this really happened to someone."

How does the need for structure relate to high school?

A good cozy mystery, like a good fantasy or a good romance, has an underlying structure which delivers the product (the narrative). For example, Regency romances use a society containing specific rules and requirements, making it possible to deliver a narrative in which the hero and heroine are kept apart by social pressure, an occurrence that would provoke a "huh?" response if it showed up in a modern setting (it can be done in a modern setting; it is just more difficult).

Likewise, the high school provides a structure that explains, among other things, why certain people keep hanging out together. It also creates specific restrictions and expectations upon which a narrative can lie.

In Buffy, for instance, high school explains why the scooby gang gets together and, also, why they see each other so often. It explains why Buffy wants to be "normal" and also why she needs to be "good." It restricts her movements--she can't be out fighting monsters all day everyday. It poses challenges and growth moments.

The show faltered once the gang graduated. Nobody left town. Nobody got new friends. Nobody, until Xander, took a step into the whole job/bills/apartment stage of life. The suspension of disbelief became harder to maintain.

High school creates an assumption of settlement and order that doesn't have to be explained. This is both its use and its weakness. I imagine one reason Meyer (Twilight) put her vampires in a high school in a small town was to create structure, but the utter silliness of 20-year-olds "hiding" this way pushed my particular suspension-of-disbelief thermometer (which goes fairly high!) into too-hot-to-handle territory. It is much easier to "hide in plain sight" in even a community college than the average high school.

On the other hand, Rowlings' school years inevitably meander on too long, but at least there is a school year--a reason for Harry to stay in one place for so long--that doesn't have to be explained.

I would argue that any fiction book or series that has to sell a long-term idea needs an underlying culture/structure of rules and assumptions. Although any underlying culture/structure will bring along some narrative holes (wouldn't she have been kicked out of school by now?), the benefits outweigh the flaws.

Just look how long Star Trek (U.S.S. Enterprise as Regency culture/murder plan/high school) has lasted!

Of course, the real trick is to create the best culture/structure--one with lots of potential and few long-term problems. And if I could do that, I'd be writing these posts as a wealthy dilettante rather than in my spare time!

Buffy & Riley, Buffy & Spike

For those of you who check this site on any kind of regular basis: Yup, you've seen this before. I'm moving it up because I recently got some more comments!! Out of all my posts, this post gets the most comments, no contest. I don't want to start a range war, but I'll say it anyway: Twilight is not going to be the lasting phenomenon; Buffy is.

I'm currently watching Buffy: Season 5 (just finished disc 5). Based on the travesties of Seasons 6 & 7, I'd forgotten that Season 5 is actually, well, pretty good.

It doesn't have as many classic episodes as the other seasons. Despite its weaknesses, Season 4 has at least three classics: "Pangs," "Something Blue," and "Hush" (oh, and "Superstar"). Season 5 really only has one: "The Body." I like "Intervention" personally, but I don't think it has that quality, the quality that makes one remember an episode for itself, rather than the story arc it belonged to.

Having said that, I do think Season 5 is well-written. It has a consistency about it that Season 4 lacks (and I'm not even going to get into Seasons 6 & 7!). If I remember correctly, there was a strong chance Buffy would be cancelled after Season 5, and the writers made a real effort to create a big, Buffy-worthy send-off.

Which brings us to the handling of Buffy & Riley. I was very impressed by the break-up writing for Buffy & Riley. Compared to the break-up writing for Anya and Xander--okay, I said I wouldn't get into the last two seasons. In any case, Buffy & Riley are handled extremely well. I found their break-up entirely believable and, even, inevitable.

To be clear, I am not one who loathed Riley. I am also not one who takes sides on the Buffy & Angel v. Buffy & Spike debate (except to say, I think Buffy & Spike were handled very badly in . . . OKAY, I WON'T mention the last two seasons). I actually quite like Riley. But he and Buffy would never have worked and even though Buffy went running after him, I think it's just as well Riley missed her.

Riley needs to be needed. Now, to an extent, we all need to be needed re: Xander's "comfortadore." But Riley doesn't just need to be needed in a Maslow's heirarchy kind of way, Riley needs to be needed in a "define me" way.

That is, Riley needs someone to tell him how to be needed; for another type of gal, that would work fine, but Buffy, for all her self-reliance, is not into managing her relationships. And her relationship with Spike points the distinction.

Spike is the ultimate romantic; even when he was William, his relationships with all women (including, we later learn, his mother) are founded on emotional highs. This isn't the same thing as chivalry by the way--that's Angel's gig. But Spike defines moments around him in terms of desire, lustful, affectionate, and fanciful. This makes Spike easier to control than Angelus (bad Angel) since Spike is willing to sacrific dreams of revenge for good onion rings. This also makes Spike (and I quote him), "Love's bitch," but, and herein lies the lesson, this is Spike's nature.

Spike isn't waiting for someone to define him. He's already defined. When he decides to love Buffy or rather when he decides that loving Buffy is inevitable, he goes at loving her (or stalking her) with all of himself. He doesn't wait around for Buffy's signals. He doesn't even wait around to see if she approves, and her lack of approval doesn't alter Spike's fundamental personality in the slightest.

Riley, however, needs the signals. He needs to be given definitions after which he is fine. This is one reason Riley becomes much more interesting once he re-enters the military. The military gives him definition. Now, there's an "every authoritarian institution is bad" theme going on in the last three seasons of Buffy which, other than being rather adolescent, also crippled a number of possible plot lines; I don't think the military MADE Riley want definitions; I think Riley is attracted to institutions that give him definition. There's nothing bad about that, and I respect Riley for recognizing it and going off to a life that will ultimately give him more comfort than Buffy can.

This brings us to why I think the Buffy-Spike relationship had much greater potential than, ultimately, it was given. In the last two seasons, the writers gave rather facile excuses for not promoting the Buffy-Spike relationship such as, "But Spike is evil." Yeah, sure, but the show had a regrettable tendency (repeated at the end of Angel) to pick and choose when exactly to remember characters' evil sides. I maintain that Spike's quest for morality gives rise to much more difficult questions of free-will, goodness and evil than, perhaps, even Buffy writers could handle.

In any case, I don't rest my defense of Buffy-Spike on the quality of Spike's evil. I rest it on the level of comfort Buffy feels around Spike. I think this is the key to the relationship; I think, to an extent, it is the key to every workable relationship (on television and off it). From the beginning, Buffy has no problem talking to Spike, and Spike has little difficulty comprehending Buffy. They speak the same language. To an extent, they even think the same. Until Spike starts stalking Buffy, she keeps her home open to him. She yells at him and then asks him to watch her family. She stops by his crypt at every opportunity.

I'm not saying that Buffy is secretly in love with Spike. She isn't in Season 5; I'm not sure she ever is. But she feels comfortable around Spike. Spike is sure enough of his own personality to take Buffy as she is. In Season 1, Buffy says to Giles (concerning one-episode-boyfriend-Owen), "Five minutes in my world, and he would get himself killed." Buffy finds no comfort in people who need her for what she can give them, whether the "what" is excitement or definition. Instead, Buffy finds comfort in people who love her but don't need her and go on being themselves (Giles, Willow, Angel, Xander, and Spike: interestingly enough, this means that Buffy finds comfort in people who may, ultimately, leave. If she had told Riley she needed him, he would have stayed; she told Angel she needed him, and he still left--thus the risks of loving people who have their own definitions and agendas).

I believe this desire for comfort outweighs all other types of love. Lust comes and goes. Affection is a long-term investment. Comfort is what people truly seek: to feel comfortable, feel like one can relax. In some Maslow's heirarchy way, this is the kind of love everyone is seeking: this person gets me, this person talks my language, understands what I'm trying to say. And really, what Buffy needs isn't someone who needs her to need him but someone who gets her and doesn't fall to pieces as a result.

TELEVISION

Folklore: Puritans, Magic, and Witches

Puritans brought over from the Old World a belief in magic. The difference between magic and religion is that magic is about controlling the supernatural (for gain), and religion is about supplicating the supernatural. Naturally, Puritan theologians preached against magic and so did some believers, but just as many believers switched between and combined the two ideologies--kind of like a fundamentalist Christian who also adopts New Age health practices.

Of course, New Age health practices don't get you hung for being a witch, but then, neither did a belief in magic all that much. Many more people practiced magic, including counter-magic (against witches) than were ever considered threats to their communities.

Basically, there were two types of magic: "like produces/cures like" (a leaf shaped like a kidney will fix that organ) and "part of the whole effects the whole" (think of the Buffy episode "The Witch" where Willow tests a piece of Amy's hair to find out if Amy is, in fact, a witch). Like in Buffy, counter-magic involved identifying the witch and then practicing one of the two types of magic against the witch.

However, the theological stance was that magic was the result of a contract with the devil and should be avoided. (In fact, some preachers opposed the practice of counter-magic, stating that all negative effects should be endured, even effects brought on, supposedly, by an evil agent; since the devil, not the witch, was the real culprit, it was God's will that the sufferer be afflicted, and the sufferer should just grin-and-bear-it.) The contract is what jeopardized the witch's soul, not necessarily what the witch did.

This motif (devil and human sign a contract which then must be honored or somehow voided, sometimes through a contest) has produced some real literary/music classics: "The Devil and Daniel Webster" by Stephen Vincent Benet, "Young Goodman Brown" by Nathaniel Hawthorne, and don't forget "The Devil Went Down to Georgia."

But what about those witches?

A lot of scorn has been poured on, well, everyone in Puritan times from the victimized witches (who are always portrayed as feminists) to the evil paranoid ministers. The scorn ignores some important points:

1. The Puritans, including many accused witches, truly believed in magic. Think about it: how would you feel if your neighbor could actually control the weather, crops, and livestock? Oh, wait, the environmentalists do believe that! (Sorry, I would never bring up environmentalists in the classroom: I would say something like, "Why would the belief that others could control nature be both frightening and comforting?")

2. Although most accused witches were female, witchcraft was also practiced by men, and some male witches were accused, and some were hung (but yes, women were the bulk of the accused and executed).

3. Witches (male and female) tended to be accused in batches (this was true in Europe as well). Arthur Miller was right: you really did have to have a zealous McCarthy type on hand to get witch trials started at all. Kramer, author of the big witch book that supposedly paints the entire Middle Ages as prejudiced and anti-fun-loving-witches--Malleus Maleficarum--was a real zealot, who just about everybody in power thought was nuts (I agree with scholars who claim Sprenger's name was added by Kramer to add gravitas to the work.) Of course, it doesn't say much for the Middle Ages that this crazyman ended up giving public lectures, but he was one guy, not everybody in Europe at the time.

Absent a zealot McCarthy-type, witch accusations tended to occur in small communities against a particular individual (gives you a whole new respect for civil lawsuits!).

4. Throughout the Middle Ages, it was more likely for a woman to die in childbirth than to be accused of being a witch. (Check out Magic, Mystery, and Science: The Occult in Western Civilization by Dan Burton and David Grandy.)

5. Witches were NOT, collectively, sweet, wise, herb-collecting midwifes. In her excellent book The Witch Throughout History, Diane Purkiss tackles the New Age image of the sweet, wise, herb-collecting midwife witch. Purkiss, by the way, represents the commendable side of Women's Studies: women scholars who refuse to accept comfortable, self-gratifying images at the expense of true history or at the expense of the real women who struggled and believed and endured those times.

Many witches in Europe and Puritan New England believed they were witches. Many midwifes were not only not witches but helped to identify witches. And whatever anyone likes to tell you, the environmental/Wiccan stuff is a late development.

6. The push to stop witchcraft trials came from Puritan ministers (who were bothered by the lack of tangible evidence), not from "enlightened" outsiders. Prolific blatherers like Increase Mather expended great energy trying to focus attention on the theological principle rather than on the accused: "It is then evidence that the devil himself did that mischief [not the self-accusing woman]. It must, moreover, be sadly confessed, that many innocent persons have been put to death under the notion of witchcraft, whereby much innocent blood hath been shed." Of course, Mather then goes on to paint Catholics as more likely to burn witches than Protestants. This is incorrect. Inquisition or not, Protestant countries hung/burned as many if not more witches than Catholic countries. So, he's a two steps forward, three steps back politically correct kind of guy.

Now, none of my points make up for what we moderns consider innocent people being tried and convicted on what we consider false testimony. Just: any trial/accusation should be judged by the times in which it occurred.

In terms of folklore, despite my list of "true" facts, the popular image of the witch--female, crone, pointy hat, broom (think Wicked Witch of the West)--appeared very early on. And, whether I like it or not, the image of the witch as a sweet, peaceloving, herbal collector has gained sway in popular culture. The Wiccans are right about one thing: beliefs in witches and magic lasted long after the Puritans morphed into gentler (but just as noisy) religions. Stories about magic and witches were collected from the Schoharie Hills (New York) as late as the 1930s:

Mrs. Elisha Case used to be witched. She would sit in a chair with one knee uplifted, the foot off the floor, hours at a time. When her folks asked her why she sat like that, because of course it was "an awful hard position to keep," she said she couldn't help it. Her family sent a lock of hair, her name, and her age to Dr. Jake Brink, and he cured her.

There are literary and film references to the older folkloric image of the witch--The Wizard of Oz being an excellent example. However, contemporary thought is more in sympathy with the witch than with her accusers. One common literary motif (not necessarily a folktale) that I've encountered is "teenage girl accused of being a witch and then saved by providential (scientific) intervention": The Witch of Blackbird Pond by Elizabeth George Speare; Elizabeth in which Willo Davis Roberts basically stole Speare's entire book and rewrote it as a Sunfire romance; Gallow's Hill by Lois Duncan (nice twist at the end); Buffy episode "Gingerbread" (Season 3).

Buffy, Harris, and Lots of Thoughts about the Appearances of Good Guys and Bad Guys

In the book of essays Seven Seasons of Buffy (ed. by Glenn Yeffeth), Charlaine Harris (of True Blood fame) writes, "The monsters [in Buffy] are all evil. The good guys are all pretty" ("A Reflection on Ugliness"). Whedon, she argues, "uses physical attractiveness to signal moral decay."

I disagree; I also consider Harris contradicts her arguments in her own books. I'll deal with the first point, then the second.

Yes, it is true that, as Harris writes, "when the completely transformed monster's true evil nature comes to the fore," the demons in Whedon's universe transform, gaining vamp faces or serpents' bodies, etc. However, Harris' reasoning that Whedon uses these transformations because he equates ugliness with evil (or wants to make evil obvious) is unreasonable.

Here's why:

1. Harris sees the Buffy demons as ugly; that doesn't mean everybody does. Granted, the vamp faces in early Buffy are a bit cheesy, but the make-up improves and, if anything, vampires in eat-mode achieve the same coolness level as the Wraith. Okay, I happen to think the Wraith are the coolest looking bad guys ever on television, so . . . maybe not. Still--Whedon's vampires have their own cache of wowness as do the other bad guys: I'm not too hip on bugs (Teacher's Pet), but I do think serpents are very awesome (Glory, Graduation Day: Part 2).

I also happen to be a big fan of Armin Shimmerman, who Harris cites as an example of an ugly bad guy. Really? He's about as adorable as a principal can get--and he has all the good lines. ("There are things I will not tolerate. Students loitering on campus after school. Horrible murders with hearts being removed. And also smoking.")

Harris attempts to use Count Dracula as a counter-argument--sure, he's cute, but he isn't THAT cute. Dracula, by the way, is Rudolf Martin who would look good if he were dying of plague--not much of a counter-argument.

I do agree with Harris that the worst of the bad guys is Warren who never transforms. Harris perceives this as a sign that "Whedon's view is growing more sophisticated" (Warren is the main bad guy for Season 6). She misses the fact that Warren isn't a demon. In Whedon's universe, the supernatural bad guys are demons who have robbed human souls. Sure, humans may regard them as ugly (though that's inconclusive), but that does not mean the demons do. To borrow an example from the first season (before Whedon became "sophisticated," Hollywood help him), the Master makes it clear that as far as he is concerned, humans are annoying and whining and just so darn pudding faced. He and his loyal Luke, of the lovely deep voice, never change.

I would agree that Oz's werewolf is disgusting, but I think that's more bad make-up and the inability to hire REAL wolves (which are probably more expensive than human actors) than any specific statement about ugliness and evil. In any case, nobody but Kane (Phases) considers Oz a bad guy in his monster state, and Willow doesn't seem to have much problem adjusting to his "other" self.

There are at least three other indications--one of which Harris brushes over, the others of which she misses--that the "good guys" on Buffy don't always find demons disgusting: when Buffy kisses Angel while in vamp face, and when Giles confronts Buffy's come-alive nightmare of being a vampire. Buffy is ashamed, NOT because she is ugly but because the vamp face reveals one of her deepest fears. With no revulsion whatsoever, Giles looks at her and says gently, "Why didn't you tell me?"

Additionally, when the swim team morphs in Go Fish, not one of our good guys judges the changed team members as intrinsically evil. Buffy is downright sanguine, putting their animalistic behavior down to their animalistic state. Harris appears to have made the leap from ugliness to evil when no such statement was intended by the writers, but Harris' faulty assumptions are hardly Whedon's fault.

I also must mention that I consider one of the truly good guys, Sid (The Puppet), to be thoroughly disturbing (not exactly a "pretty" good guy).

2. Harris argues that Whedon should have recognized that "evil is not so clearly denoted in the real world." She asks, "Wouldn't we learn a more graphic lesson if the monsters retained their more attractive aspects even as they showed their most monstrous behavior?" Yes, we would learn something, especially since that's exactly what Whedon did.

Now, I have my own problems with Whedon regarding Buffy (namely, Seasons 6 & 7), but I don't see the point in accusing him of something he hasn't done. The first episode of Buffy opens with sweet-faced, pretty Darla luring a teenage boy into the deserted high school. Eh hem, Harris, she certainly didn't do it in vamp mode. True, she changes to vamp mode when she is about to feed, but I'm afraid her victim doesn't have much time to react. The evil has been accomplished long before Darla changes.

Likewise, bad Angel stalks and seduces women with his "golly, gee, whillikers shucks" act multiple times and his friendliness on those occasions is terrifying precisely because the viewer knows that this is bad Angel but Angel's victims-to-be do not. Likewise, Ted's behavior (Ted) is far more terrifying before we--and Buffy--learn he is a robot (and, therefore, beatable). Granted, the wonderfully slimy mayor transforms at the end of Season 3, but there is such a thing as making a show exciting to watch. Besides, who can pass up a huge snake going, "Well, gosh" over a pile of dynamite?

Over and over again, the villains of Buffy use prettiness to obtain their ends; they also, I would argue, commit more vile acts in their pretty states than as demons (the mayor's seduction of Faith is far more vile than anything he does, briefly, as a snake). This is backed by the fact that Buffy can sense vampires long before they change (by their bad clothing in one case but intuitively in many other cases).The transformations, quite frankly, appear to be more for the sake of fun than for the sake of making moral declarations.

This brings me to the end of my problems with Harris' essay. I would still have disagreed with her essay if I hadn't known her name. As it is, I have read several of Harris' Sookie Stackhouse books. In fact, when I first opened Seven Seasons of Buffy, I wanted to read Harris' essay because I had read her novels.

I was somewhat surprised by her essay. It wasn't until I read the fifth book in the Sookie Stackhouse series that I realized Harris may have no idea how completely at variance her criticism of Buffy is with the messages of her own work.

To back up: I do understand where Harris is coming from psychologically. I happen to find discussions over appearance rather distasteful. I was one of those unfortunate weedy teens with bad acne, and it took me a long time to realize that although teens, and some adults, will make fun of bad acne, even teens will respond to the unfortunate's sense of personal authority. If you act coy and ashamed, people will pick up on it. If you don't, they tend to respond to your sense of confidence.

Still, I've never shaken my distaste for discussions about people's clothes or skin care or weight. I'm one of those lucky people with a good metabolism and great genes who has to practice exactly zero discipline to maintain a decent weight. I believe this makes me completely unqualified to pass judgment on any one who does have to practice discipline and self-restraint to meet their weight goals.

This is all to say that I understand where Harris is coming from in her essay. It is also to explain why I stopped reading her books: I found her obsession with appearance distasteful.

To return to Harris' Sookie Stackhouse series: Sookie is a nice, average looking (pretty but not glamorous), normally weighted young woman who encounters vampires in her neighborhood near New Orleans. She is telepathic but otherwise fulfills the respectable role of so many suspense/mystery heroines: the good girl next door who finds herself in extraordinary circumstances.

Extraordinary circumstances that involve her being ogled by a truly stunning number of men.

Before I continue, I should state that the books are great examples of modern fantasy writing; they combine an underground world of vampires and fairies, etc. with the everyday work-a-day world. One reason I stayed with the books as long as I did, other than the ebullient Eric, was the layered world created by Harris--something I find extremely difficult to do in my own writing and always admire in other people's work.

In book 5, however, Harris begins to head Sookie down a path that so many female suspense/mystery writers seemed compelled to take: the Road of Multiple Suitors. I can only surmise, based on the Twilight series' existence and success, that female writers and their readers enjoy fantasizing a princess-quest allotment of suitors for their heroines. Too many female-written mysteries contain if not several suitors, at least two who vie, unceasingly, for the heroine's attention. I have no very high opinion of the heroines and almost no opinion of the suitors (get a life already, people).

At least Buffy only had two obsessed suitors; they occurred at different times; and Whedon did not disguise his belief that both relationships were doomed. And during those relationships, Buffy had no problem assessing what she wanted and didn't want (however confused she was over Spike, and no matter how badly the writers handled the relationship, Buffy is very clear that she doesn't want to be in a permanent relationship with Spike).

However, Sookie belongs to that echelon of female heroines who don't believe in their own prettiness. When dealing with glamorous women, said heroines (1) befriend them, thus rendering the glamorous women clawless; (2) despise them because said glamorous women are also snotty; or (3) feel dowdy in comparison at which point a suitor's ogling will reassure our heroine that she is quite attractive.

My feminism rebels.

Give me an indifferent heroine or a heroine who knows her attractions and flaunts them over a heroine who isn't into her appearance but happens to be pretty anyway and whose writer never lets you forget the fact. Give me Samantha Carter or Seven of Nine or Teyla (all completely unapologetic gorgeous women). I'll take Captain Janeway, who is largely indifferent to her appearance (except her hair), or any of the doctors from House. Give me Scully, who is so wonderful to watch, being so fastidious in her dress and so consumed with her personal interests (and Mulder). Give me Buffy who worries about her appearance but doesn't try to tuck it away!

Spare me the heroine who will say she isn't pretty but has plenty of supporting cast characters to show/tell her exactly how sexy they think she is.

In Book 5, Dead as a Doornail, Sookie goes to clean out a dead relative's apartment. While there, we, the readers, are presented with 2,000 reasons why Sookie MUST, against her own inclinations, wear skin-tight lycra pants (those pants people wear to gyms). I don't remember all the reasons--something about the cousin being a smaller size and not owning any sweats and Sookie not having a car or, I can only assume, the wherewithall to call a cab (perhaps she doesn't have any money either; I forget) let alone time to go to Walmart and buy some sweatpants. We are presented with a trillion excuses--that any reasonable adult would be able to circumvent with reasonable ease--that force Sookie into wearing the lycra pants, which, we are assured, isn't typical of her. She doesn't usually go around showing off her body like that, not because she is old-fashioned and modest, you understand, but because it isn't how she sees herself.

But *oh, a woman's burden* she puts them on anyway and then proceeds to go out into the apartment's main living area where two of her current oglers, sorry, suitors are stationed and, presumably forgetting they are there, bends over to put her hair into a twist or a ponytail or something. And when she straightens up, well, wouldn't you know, they are staring at her. Obviously, those horny men were checking out her . . . wink wink nudge nudge.

But Sookie isn't the kind of girl to flaunt her stuff, because, you know, she doesn't think she's, like, all that gorgeous or stuff, and Harris certainly isn't totally, like, obsessed with people's appearances. (Sorry, the whole thing is just so . . . teenagerish.)

I finished the book; I've never picked up another (that's not true; I pick them up at the library and read the ends to see if anything has changed in Sookie's universe--does she have another suitor yet?).

Talk about pure Victorianism; the idea of the devouring gaze is, I believe, a Victorian concept. Well, maybe, it's a medieval one. But the linking of coy physicality and ogling men is pure Victorianism. The medievals, at least, didn't make it so creepy.

I considered the modern, female mystery/suspense version of the devouring gaze creepy. Not the lycra pants, you understand. I would have applauded a Sookie who put them on because she didn't want to run to Walmart and didn't care what she wore OR a Sookie who thought, "I've got a darn fine body. I'm gonna go flaunt it!"

What I find creepy is the way the reader in this and similar type mystery series is constantly reminded that the heroine, who maintains an ingenue innocence (she never actually engages with the impact of her appearance--it's all happening to somebody else), is desired by many somebodies and usually, moreover, many handsome somebodies.

Case in point: I recently picked up a Kerry Greenwood novel. Kerry Greenwood is an Australian writer who produced the Phryne Fisher mysteries, an interesting series although the writing varies from horrible to quite good.

Greenwood has currently come out with a new series with a heroine, Corinna Chapman, who is an unrepentantly size-large baker. She certainly isn't into all that model-type starving that her assistants practice. Nope, that's not her style. Take her as she is.

And I respect that. I like that attitude in people. Except Corinna has a handsome boyfriend with a washboard stomach about which the reader is reminded incessantly.

No reason why she shouldn't have a handsome boyfriend with a washboard stomach except it fits into my current beef with Harris and all female mystery writers who play this particular game. For instance, in the mysteries with two suitors, one suitor will sometimes be a bit homely (the best friend the heroine grew up with), but the other suitor will always be a hunk; neither suitor will be especially nerdy or especially plain or an especially bad kisser or especially plump.

So, the heroines of these series aren't obsessed with appearance, but can the writers truly claim they are not?

Doesn't look like it.

BOOKS