Listened to a talk today by James Roy, actually sounded somewhat interesting but something was bugging me after the talk and the more I thought about it and discussed it with B , the more it bugged me.
He’s gross exaggeration of teenagers is what got me. He spent a fair amount of time mocking both genders and the way we communicate, it’s hard to verbalise but you get the gist …
For girls , his depiction was the “omg like, yeah omg like, like like” and the boys didn’t get off easy either
“*grunt* she’s hot” and he said they have an “on/off switch” and only really show emotion if an attractive girl is involved. None of this is true from either sexes really. Apparently though this guy’s an expert *sarcasm* having noted this from his many tours of schools. I don’t know what sort of schools this bloke has been visiting to give him this sort of impression, but it’s highly stereotyped and his general manner did not impress me one bit.
He went on about his skill and he was just so arrogant. It’s a shame because initially what he had to say about writing was interesting but I got distracted when he started mocking people.
It frustrated me when I tried to explain to some of the girls in the younger levels why I was annoyed by his remarks, and why it was wrong. I don’t think they really understood and laughed along, finding his behaviour. But I guess that’s just the society we have created, where we’ve become oblivious to discrimination and where we promote stereotype rather than understanding.
Edit: this was also the guy whose greatest achievement seemed to be getting the word "fuck" published in his book in 1996 and went on and on about how the word has appeared many more times in his works after this Yes, well done buddy, you're my literary hero ! The lady interviewing him remarked that he had this incredible skill to write in the view of others (ie, teenagers, mothers etc, characters in his books) if his basing them all on these stereotypes, I'm sorry but that's not empathy, that's not "writing in character", it's not creative at all