Genre fiction in general gets looked down upon by fiction of no specific category. For some reason, “Western” or “romance” tends to be taken to mean a particular work is basically Cheese Doodles For the Soul. (Not that I have anything against entertaining cheese; Og knows I’ve read enough of it myself). As a die-hard fantasy fan I take this personally. Even though I’ve been known to unfairly make fun of romance (right across the isle from fantasy/sci-fi at my local B&N).
But honestly, fantasy doesn’t get the worst of it. Just the other day I found myself recommending The Ridge (which was recommended to me by the NYT Book Review) to someone with the following pitch: “Um, so it’s a horror story, but it’s not trashy like most horror, it’s actually pretty intelligent…”
Once my brain caught up with what my mouth was saying, I started thinking about which genres are sometimes taken seriously, and which are truly under the patronage of St. Rodney of Dangerfield. Science fiction (space opera excepted) often plays with the sort of mind-bending ideas that the literary fiction set adores. Romance is either the greatest inspiration and the heart of many masterpieces, or trashy fiction for silly desperate women (depending on whether the publisher is Penguin Classics or Harlequin). Mystery in general in nearly mainstream. Thrillers in specific, on the other hand, have probably a worst reputation than horror.
Anyway, I think I’m starting ramble, so I’m going to say “Discuss”, and then go have a lie-down, or have a snack to raise my blood sugar to functionable levels.
Urban fantasy (at least 99% of the time). Though I think a lot of the scorn is directed towards the sub-sub-genre of paranormal romance, with its sexy vampires around every corner. So yeah, once again, romance.
Fantasy gets very little respect, and sexy vampires are certainly a newer trend that isn’t very respected. It’s hard to imagine anything getting less respect than Romance however. Romance novels are largely viewed as verbal porn for women.
Koxinga wins. Furry fiction is, to use an extremely unfortunately metaphor, the bottom of the food chain. Tentacle porn gets more respect.
Anything that’s shooting for Porn With Plot gets little to no respect outside of it’s target audience. Once a genere is judged to be all porn with plot, everyone can feel superior to it.
I’d argue, historically, in rough order of respect:
Mystery>Adventure>Crime>Western>SF>Fantasy>Romance>Superheroes>Anything in a video game>Kevin J. Anderson
Romance’s status has been droping steadily since the 90s having passed the porn threshold, it used to be above SF. Video games have been gaining steadily. Superheroes passed the porn threshold long ago, but seem to have struggled through it and come out the other end. Western’s death as a TV genre actually improved it’s standing, I would have put it below SF in the 60s.
There does always seem to a popular, bottom of the barrel franchise that everyone hates, and everyone loves to tell you how much they hate. And how terrible the people are who like it. Twilight at the moment, clearly. But the heat directed at it wasn’t much worse than, say, Pokemon back in the early 90s. Or maybe the Drizz’t books . . .
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I admit it. I had a huge collection of D&D novels at one point. I’m not ashamed!
While this is true, it’s not uncommon for really excellent science fiction books to get reviews that say (sometimes literally) “It’s so good that you’ll forget it’s science fiction.” Good SF books can be really creative and thoughtful, but there’s a sense in many circles that if an author wants to be taken seriously, they should stop writing SF and start writing real books, that the fact of the book being SF is a detriment.
Of the more mainstream stuff away from the aisle at Barnes and Noble where the doughy virgins hang out, I’d go with Chick Lit. What Harlequin romances are to the boones, chick lit is to women from the big city. Romance novels have “soft-focus paperback covers of hunky heroes” according to the Mail article, while Chick Lit has its signature pink and pastel covers with Shag-style illustrations. Chick Lit even has subgenres, such as Single City Girl Lit and Hen Lit.
Excerpts I’ve seen from the self-published fantasy romance genre are universally awful.
I’d completely disagree. Romance used to be the bottom. (Of real genres: most of the odder things mentioned so far are too small to qualify.) It was in the 90s that romance started to take off and fantasy and science fiction started to drop.
Chick lit is what made romance respectable. It started out as actual mainstream fiction, i.e. books that were published in hardback and not marketed as romance or as part of publishers’ genre lines. There’s been a huge battle going on in the field over acknowledging these books. They’ve won. There is now an award category called “novel with strong romance elements.”
And sales give respect. Romance is now more than half of all mass-market paperbacks. I’d bet that more paranormal romances are published than fantasy and sf books combined.
Off-hand, I would say that “film noir” is the genre that has taken the most steep decline in respect.
Once upon a time, film noirs were considered dirty movies - filled with cynicism, lurid, disreputable characters & situations. They pushed boundaries in taste and acceptability in the era of the Hayes code, even as the best of them showcased brilliant film-making techniques.
Nowadays, the whole film noir set-up is a cartoon. Every hackneyed sitcom has had a “dream / fantasy” scene showing watered-down verisons of the “hardboiled detective” in his office and “the femme fatale” coming in - with voiceover narration from the detective saying something “right away, I knew she was trouble!”
It’s hard to remember what was so captivating about the genre now that it’s been reduced to being a comic cliche.
Film noir has next to nothing to do with the hardboiled private eye. There were at most a handful of films that overlapped. Private eyes appeared first and last to this day, with great acclaim, such as the Robert Parker Spencer novels. Film noir was a style that appeared as a reaction to WWII and lasted a blink of an eye. Most noirs were about the corruption inherent in power and didn’t even have a private eye in the cast.
Excerpts I’ve seen from the self-published fantasy romance genre are universally awful.
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This author’s website shows she’s published by small press publishers not only self-published. Have you read any of the books on the website? Was it something about this author in general you don’t like or was this just a random “slam”?