(no subject)
Sep. 24th, 2013 02:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsThe Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks begins as so many YA novels begin: a geeky teenaged girl at boarding school blossoms over the summer and meets a cute, rebellious bad boy; when she gets back to school, his cute, charming best friend asks her out; she dates one! but is also drawn to the other! . . .
. . . and then, increasingly frustrated with how BOTH of them patronize her, and how impossible it is for her gain admission to their friend-group as anything other than a pretty girl in the girlfriend-box, she decides to launch a complex plan to BREAK THEIR SPIRITS AND PROVE HER ULTIMATE SUPERIORITY ONCE AND FOR ALL.
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks has gotten a lot of deserved praise for the way that it grapples with issues of gender and privilege. One of the things it does best is examine the ramifications of microaggressions, and of the stuff that looks, on the surface, fairly harmless. Nobody in this book is ever a particularly overt asshole. The boys of privilege, the kings of the elite private school -- the group that Frankie so wants to be a real part of, to be real friends with -- don't go around hassling lesser mortals, or engaging in any cruelty, racism or sexism; they simply take an amiable disinterest. So they have a dorky secret society -- so what? So nothing, except that those boys of privilege who hang out and have fun together in their secret societies are going to grow up to be people in high positions, and their loyalty will be to each other. They'll meet up for drinks, and they'll recommend each other for jobs, and they'll vote for each other on Boards of Directors. That's the way an old-boy's-club works.
Frankie doesn't want to be one of the girls, the other girlfriends that the boys dismiss. She wants to be one of the boys. They're smart, silly, open, unself-conscious. Willing to make fun of themselves. They can afford to be:
Those guys they were so sure of their places in life -- so deeply confident of their merit and of their future -- they didn't need any kind of front at all.
I love that line because of how true it is. Everyone does like confident people who are comfortable in their own skin. They're easy to be around! And it's easy to ignore that the ability to have that confidence and that comfort is a whole level of privilege in and of itself.
Anyway, because she's so focused on being one of them, on gaining value by that standard, Frankie can be really dismissive of other options. She wants to force herself into the system, to gain control of it -- not work outside of it. I think it's really telling that when she's orchestrating the pranks, and keeps hoping that Matthew will have the discussion with her about what they symbolize, it's not any of the boys who do the kind of analysis that she wants. It's Trish -- Trish who Frankie never manages to think of as a worthy friend or confidant, because Trish is more interested in doing girl things, and making her own space of comfort, then forcing herself into male spaces.
I love the moment when Trish remarks to Frankie that Alpha is pompous, and Frankie is just amazed that ANYONE could dislike Alpha. She's bought so much into Alpha and the boy's valuation of themselves that she doesn't even see how this is possible! And this is something that Frankie does not actually learn to get past over the course of the book, though she learns a lot of other things. But Frankie is Frankie, brilliant and deeply imperfect and often kind of an asshole, and she's still got a long way to go.
Anyway, really interesting book; also, just fun to read! WODEHOUSIAN WORDPLAY. (Frankie's constant Wodehousian wordplay is a quirk that WOULD be super annoying in real life, which is one of the reasons I love it.)
. . . and then, increasingly frustrated with how BOTH of them patronize her, and how impossible it is for her gain admission to their friend-group as anything other than a pretty girl in the girlfriend-box, she decides to launch a complex plan to BREAK THEIR SPIRITS AND PROVE HER ULTIMATE SUPERIORITY ONCE AND FOR ALL.
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks has gotten a lot of deserved praise for the way that it grapples with issues of gender and privilege. One of the things it does best is examine the ramifications of microaggressions, and of the stuff that looks, on the surface, fairly harmless. Nobody in this book is ever a particularly overt asshole. The boys of privilege, the kings of the elite private school -- the group that Frankie so wants to be a real part of, to be real friends with -- don't go around hassling lesser mortals, or engaging in any cruelty, racism or sexism; they simply take an amiable disinterest. So they have a dorky secret society -- so what? So nothing, except that those boys of privilege who hang out and have fun together in their secret societies are going to grow up to be people in high positions, and their loyalty will be to each other. They'll meet up for drinks, and they'll recommend each other for jobs, and they'll vote for each other on Boards of Directors. That's the way an old-boy's-club works.
Frankie doesn't want to be one of the girls, the other girlfriends that the boys dismiss. She wants to be one of the boys. They're smart, silly, open, unself-conscious. Willing to make fun of themselves. They can afford to be:
Those guys they were so sure of their places in life -- so deeply confident of their merit and of their future -- they didn't need any kind of front at all.
I love that line because of how true it is. Everyone does like confident people who are comfortable in their own skin. They're easy to be around! And it's easy to ignore that the ability to have that confidence and that comfort is a whole level of privilege in and of itself.
Anyway, because she's so focused on being one of them, on gaining value by that standard, Frankie can be really dismissive of other options. She wants to force herself into the system, to gain control of it -- not work outside of it. I think it's really telling that when she's orchestrating the pranks, and keeps hoping that Matthew will have the discussion with her about what they symbolize, it's not any of the boys who do the kind of analysis that she wants. It's Trish -- Trish who Frankie never manages to think of as a worthy friend or confidant, because Trish is more interested in doing girl things, and making her own space of comfort, then forcing herself into male spaces.
I love the moment when Trish remarks to Frankie that Alpha is pompous, and Frankie is just amazed that ANYONE could dislike Alpha. She's bought so much into Alpha and the boy's valuation of themselves that she doesn't even see how this is possible! And this is something that Frankie does not actually learn to get past over the course of the book, though she learns a lot of other things. But Frankie is Frankie, brilliant and deeply imperfect and often kind of an asshole, and she's still got a long way to go.
Anyway, really interesting book; also, just fun to read! WODEHOUSIAN WORDPLAY. (Frankie's constant Wodehousian wordplay is a quirk that WOULD be super annoying in real life, which is one of the reasons I love it.)
