I’d like to start today’s post with an important clarity exercise. First, find a comfortable position and get settled. Then focus on your breath. Breathe in, breathe out. Keep doing that until you feel your body and mind relax. Then repeat the following phrase in sync with your breathing until the message sinks in:

There’s no such this as an unproblematic text.

There. Now, don’t you feel better? If not, repeated this exercise until you do.

In all seriousness, I think one of the hardest parts of participating in any fandom is recognizing that all stories GOTZ PROBLEMS. But that doesn’t mean you still can love and appreciate the narratives and spaces that speak to you (within reason—I seriously do not understand people who read and write Nazi-redemption romances, for example, and if that makes me a judge bruja, then so be it).

I say this with a deep and passionate love for genre fiction and media of all kinds. There are some truly powerful things about pop culture and the stories that inspire and are inspired by it—and also some truly terrible things. In all the genres I teach, read, and write about, primarily gothic and romance—I frame them as magical spaces that center social justice narratives. Traditionally silenced voices have space to sing in these genres. Oppression and injustice are brought into the light. Those of use with historically marginalized identities are placed front and center, and the protagonists that get to wrestle with conflict, be flawed human beings, but still, come out the other side as whole, complete, fulfilled individuals. We can even get our HEA.

BUT I also teach these same genres as spaces that reinforce toxic social norms. The gothic is rife with villains who are queered, racialized, or demonized for their class or ability. The romance genre, for as radical as it can be in promising HEAs for everyone, can also be a white-supremacist’s wonderland that strategically excludes people with marginalized identities from narratives of joy.

See what I’m getting at here? More often than not, one genre, one text, one type of media is doing both those things at once. Let’s take, for example, Cristina Rosetti’s Goblin Market. This luscious fairytale of a poem is at once an erotic ode to sapphic romance in its coded representation of sisterly love AND an antisemitic treatise in its depiction of evil goblin money hoarders bend on destroying two innocent girls. So it’s at once deeply progressive for its time and deeply conservative. Yet, I love the poem. I love reading it. I love teaching it. I love how it inspires me to write sexy fairytale imagery in my own creative work—and reminds me not to use goblins as a code for antisemitic rhetoric, like so many fantasy novels do (*cough cough* Harry Potter *cough cough*).

At the end of the day, it’s not about reading only the purest of texts—there’s no such thing and I’m leery of anyone who virtue signals their performatively “woke” reading lists. Those lists, themselves, are sites of problematic content rooted in racism, classism, ableism, & heteronormativity…and a whole bunch of other -isms I have likely forgotten to list. What matters is how we engage with and contextualize that material.

So…how do we engage with media? By joyfully problematizing it, of course! I like to situate a text within its historical, social, and cultural context to get emotional distance from it. I ask the following:

What cultural, historical, and/or social moment produced this text?
What is it saying about said cultural, historical, and/or cultural moment?
What biases do we have in our own consumption?
How are we products of our own cultural, historical, and/or social moment & how does that shape what/how we consume media?

As for the rest, I leave you in the capable hands of Andrea Martucci, the host of Shelf Love, a podcast and community dedicated to the joyful problematization of romantic stories in popular culture. She has kindly made us an infographic to guide us through our (joyful!) analysis of media.

Dr. Sam Hirst also offers a loving and critical examination of the complicated legacy of Georgette Heyer if you’re looking for an excellent example of joyful problematization (aside from every single episode of Shelf Love Podcast). Likewise, check out Adrienne’s epic exploration of Elizabeth Gaskell’s North & South in terms of class conflict, romance, and passionate fandoms.

In closing, I’d like to offer another phrase to the above breathing exercise, one I’d close out your meditation exercise with:

It’s okay to enjoy problematic content, as long as you don’t pretend it isn’t problematic.

It’s also okay to leave behind media that’s too problematic for personal consumption.

Guest Contributor Bio

Andrea Martucci is the host of Shelf Love, a podcast and community that critically examines the meaning and structure of romantic love stories in pop culture. Andrea's conversations with academics and genre lovers share pop culture criticism that is joyful and accessible. Shelf Love has released nearly 100 episodes since its launch in 2019. In 2021, Andrea presented a paper at the Popular Culture Association on her quantitative research exploring how Bridgerton on Netflix impacted popular perceptions of romance novel readers. Andrea is two-time alum of Emerson College in Boston who has worked in publishing and marketing for over a decade.

The Bruja Professor, a witchy take on literature, the occult & pop culture, is the scholarly sister to Enchantment Learning & Living, an inspirational blog celebrating life’s simple pleasures, everyday mysticism, and delectable recipes that are guaranteed to stir the kitchen witch in you.

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