October Review Challenge, #2 - Best use of reference

[breakinglight11]

October Review Challenge, #2 - "What is the best use of a reference in your work to another work?"

Reference as a narrative tool, as I teach in my literature classes, is when you mention specific concepts, stories, or cultural touchstones in order to evoke ideas in your audience, specifically by harnessing the memetic baggage they attach to those concepts or stories. I will make you think or feel certain things by connecting my story to references you already hold in your head that give you similar thoughts and feelings to the ones I’m aiming for.

While all work exists in the context of its influences and predecessors, I feel like a lot of mine is in direct response to the tropes characterizing particular genres, and often earlier works in specific. Hood is a modern reinterpretation of Robin Hood. Adonis is a spin on ancient epics and gladiator movies. Dream Machine is what I would do if I were allowed to make my own 30 Rock. And Mrs. Hawking is a clear response to Sherlock Holmes and Batman when issues of gender, imperialism, and classism are considered. (This is particularly interesting to me that Cari Keebaugh, the actress who plays Mrs. Hawking, is actually an English professor with expertise in intertextuality.) And that’s not even considering any of the direct adaptations I’ve done, like Pearls Mean Tears and Murders in the Rue Morgue with Jeremy Holstein, or my various works of fan fiction.

All this is to say I use reference a LOT, both direct and indirect. Direct is when you mention or all but mention the thing by name, like in Fallen Women, when Nathaniel and Mrs. H actually talk about the newly-released first Sherlock Holmes novel, with Nathaniel enjoying it and Mrs. H expressing disbelief that one person could know so much about so many subjects. Indirect is when you incorporate aspects of the reference more obliquely, like in Vivat Regina, when the client in disguise's entrance is structured like the entrance of the client in disguise in the Sherlock Holmes story A Scandal in Bohemia to echo the circumstances.



But I think the one I'm going to pick is the title of Adonis. I like it particularly because it's a reference that has layers of meaning to it, deeper the better you know it. The most obvious surface allusion is the common meme when people mention that name, a very beautiful young man— which, of course, the story is centered around. But if you look at the legend from which the name comes, it's about a beautiful young man who is pursued by Venus, a female goddess figure with much greater power than he has, and he's won as a prize. Again, directly relevant to our story. But if you look at the legend critically, and see the power imbalance and how Venus has to coerce a reluctant young man, the idea dawns that Adonis is actually a victim in a way that we seldom acknowledge men can be. And this, of course, is the heart of the matter. My very original inspiration for the work, all the way back in high school when I read Shakespeare's version, was thinking to myself "How is this not depicting a rape?" I love all those layers of significance that make more sense the better you understand the story.