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| Have to judge it by something, and the cover is all we got. |
Long story short for those
of you not interested in clicking that clickbait, the cover art on Uncanny
Magazine is a long series of the editor firing up the Virtue Signal and shining
it into the clouds. The technical quality
of the art they choose is generally very high, but the art direction is sadly
lacking. The purpose of a magazine cover
is to sell potential readers on the contents, and for a collection of stories
you might think that the cover should sell potential readers on the
stories. If so, it should present the
sort of conflict and drama that one might expect from the stories within. Here’s an example of a piece of art that does
just that:
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| Action! Conflict! Drama! You know, the sorts of things you find in...stories? |
What’s on the tin tells you what’s in the tin.
The artwork used for
Uncanny Magazine on the other hand is a long list of cool looking strong and
independent women…just kind of standing around.
You know, looking cool. As with
Crisova, what’s on the tin tells you
what’s in the tin. Don’t expect stories with action, drama, or
conflict. Instead, expect to be shown
really cool women who spend their time just being cool.
You can’t directly
translate the writing maxim, “Show, don’t tell,” over to art, because art is a
visual medium where “showing” is literally the only thing the artist can do;
however, the underlying principle still applies. An artist can’t just show the audience a
character and expect the audience to understand that the character is a badass
unless you show that character actually doing badass things. The guys who make the moving pictures
understand this intuitively – in our first introduction to Indiana Jones he
disarms a man with a gun using a bullwhip.
We are shown that Indy is a badass before we even see his face. Spielberg doesn’t tell us Indy is a badass by
having him stand against a tree with a jaunty look in his eye, he shows us Indy
is a badass by having him bitch slap a backstabbing coward in a badass way.
While the art used on the
covers of Uncanny tends towards the “pretty cool”, it doesn’t tell a story and so it doesn’t sell a story.
That might seem like a mistake, but it’s
only a mistake if you think the people producing Uncanny are trying to sell
stories to people who like stories.
It’s not.
Uncanny is trying to sell an image to
people who like images.
The image they are trying to sell is
clear from the patter on art they use on the cover. They are trying to sell the image of strong, cocky,
and badass women who don’t need no stinking men around mansplaining things and
manspreading all over the place. The
stories are just one of the mediums by which they seek to transfer that image to
the buyer. The cover, and presumably
interior, artwork is another.
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| You stand there, girl. You stand there so HARD. |
Note that this is not to say that
strong, cocky, and badass women are impossible.
It’s just pointing out that Uncanny Magazine isn’t interested in the
substance of women who are strong, cocky, and badass so much as they are
interested in the image of women as such.
If they wanted substance the art wouldn’t tell us women are strong, it
would show us women doing things that require strength. The art wouldn’t tell us women are badass, it
would show us women doing something badass.
As above, so below.
It’s a safe bet that the stories inside
Uncanny reflect that same inability of the magazine’s producers to understand
the concept. It’s a safe bet to assume
that the stories, such as they are, inside the magazine feature surficial women
who we are reliably informed are strong, cocky, and badass who never quite get
around to doing things that require strength, whose attitude of cockiness is
not backed up by ability (and so comes off as sneering), and whose badass exploits
fall far short of the mark.
That’s not to say that this is bad art. It’s just to say that the art doesn’t sell the
stories, it sells an image. It sells the
same sort of wish fulfillment to women that Playboy covers sell to men. And that’s fine, so long as you understand
what they are doing, and what they are selling.
If you want stories, look elsewhere.
If you want female wish fulfillment wrapped in a fantasy/sci-fi veneer,
this is the magazine for you.
The obvious objection, that all
stories are wish fulfillment and that Tarzan or Indy are just wish fulfillment
for men and I sure am hungry got any more of those doughnuts, is stupid to the
point that it’s aggravating just having to casually dismiss it. For the benefit of those who don’t get the
difference…the men wish they could do
things, the women wish they could be
things. Stories are, by definition, about
people who do things. Uncanny is, by
design, about people who are things. Looked at that way…holy cow, Uncanny is
literally objectifying women. How’s that
for a twist?
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| You can fulfill my wish any time, baby. |
That little digression aside, and at
risk of this essay meandering further astray, it’s worth pointing out that some
of these are very well done works of art.
This piece of art in particular does a great job of selling women on the
idea of being this character. If the
depth beneath the surface of this cover were about how to be this character, it
would be a perfect piece of art to use.
Teaser alert! It just so happens that there is a whole
category of books for which this artwork is perfect, and we’ll delve into those
in my next post.
It may be extremely unfair to spend a
thousand words beating up on Uncanny Magazine over this issue, but Uncanny isn’t
a lone actor here. It’s just a current
and recurrent data point within a much larger trend. For at least the last decade the cover art
for fiction in general has been moving this direction, and unfortunately the
stories have followed the same trend.
Here’s a random sampling of magic girl covers. It’s a nasty trend for those who enjoy
stories, and those who enjoy stories need to be made aware of the trend, so
that they don’t fall victim to the bait-and-switch tactic used by those who
would use the wonderful medium of the written word to force deep stories out of
the marketplace in favor of superficial character descriptions.
