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Romance Writers of America
Librarians' Day Keynote
Address, July 29th, 2008
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The
following is a transcript of the Keynote Address Stephanie delivered
at the Librarians' Day Luncheon at In her non-author persona, Stephanie has a BSc(Hons) in Immunology and a Ph.D in Biochemistry, and in earlier times spent two decades engaged in biological research in institutes in Australia and the UK. Should you feel so inclined, feel free to direct others to this site, or to extract and quote from the following with attribution to Stephanie Laurens.
READ
ROMANCE OR PERISH: A BIOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE ON ROMANCE NOVELS. As
some of you may know, I'm a biological scientist, and so
I tend think of things from a biological perspective. Today
I'd thought I'd share with you a biological perspective
on romance novels - which in large part underscores the
importance of the work you, as librarians, do day to day. Many
societies, especially technologically advanced societies,
have a habit of forgetting that humans are a biological
species - we prefer to think that we are masters of our
destinies, and not subject to a slew of biologically imposed,
Mother Nature-dictated rules and regulations that we can't
break. We forgot that, as a biological species, we are critically
dependent on our environment, so now we're facing catastrophe
on that front. When
talking about a biological species, generalizations are
what counts - there is no value in citing exceptions to
a rule. What counts is how the group as a whole - a tribe,
society or nation - acts. It doesn't matter what, or even
if, they think. The only relevant aspect is how the group
overall moves. Now,
biological species have learned behaviors, ancestral memories,
instinct, inherited adaptive behaviors, call it what you
will. In humans this is particularly strong - it's one of
our species' survival strengths. If a threat to our survival
that was frequent in our ancestral past recurs, then we
recognize it, know what do, and act - often entirely unconsciously.
In survival terms, we never waste time reinventing the wheel.
Neuroscience is currently uncovering just how many of our
"decisions" we first make instinctively, and then
justify later, if at all. We
negotiate a lot of species survival threats without being
consciously aware of it. It's important to grasp that biologically
we do a lot of things without consciously knowing. In
terms of unconsciously dealing with survival threats, Entertainment
- of which Genre Fiction is a large part, and Romance is
a large part of that - is one of humankind's oldest and
most remarkable achievements. We've
been working on Entertainment for more than 40,000 years,
possibly more than 90,000 years. Constantly and consistently.
No society has ever thrived without Entertainment. As a
species we have sunk untold time, effort and capital into
constantly evolving Entertainment to suit our needs. Today,
Entertainment comprises a rich, vibrant, dynamic, ever-evolving
range of products - including Genre Fiction - and each of
us spend a significant part of every day with some form
of Entertainment. Biologically
speaking, there is no such motivation as "just for
fun." Anything a species spends dozens of millennia
perfecting, and consistently uses every single day, has
to be something that is doing something vital for the survival
of the species. Biologically
speaking, Entertainment is an incredibly well-honed, amazingly
powerful and wonderfully responsive species survival support
system. So
how does it work? The
obvious, and usually only, benefit most people ascribe to
Entertainment is escape. And it's true that all forms of
Entertainment provide escape, and that escape is critical
for those living stressful lives-as we all do today-and
by providing escape Entertainment contributes to overall
mental health and therefore survival, but…that doesn't
explain the immense importance we've always attached to
Entertainment, even when our lives were a lot less stressful.
People
turn more to Entertainment in times of stress and threat,
but they don't stop using it in good times. Escape is more
an incidental benefit than a principal biological purpose. Some
might say that one Entertainment product, Genre Fiction,
contributes to our survival capabilities by underpinning
our creativity through exercising our imaginations. And
that's true, too - Genre Fiction is the only product we
have capable of exercising and expanding our imagination
to the extent, breadth and depth that it does - because
it works like no other product of any sort does. With
Genre Fiction, for a reader to gain the experience they
want and expect, they must engage and exercise their imagination.
While the author's imagination created the story, and the
author's voice carries it to the reader, it's the reader's
imagination that recreates the story in the reader's mind,
for the reader to experience. No
other type of fiction demands, or is so dependent on, the
reader's imaginative input to anything like the same degree. Genre
Fiction is the only truly effective means we have of exercising
imaginations - and best of all, users exercise willingly. And
creativity is 100% dependent on imagination. You cannot
figure out a better way to do something without being able
to imagine that better way. If we can't imagine, we can't
create, we can't develop, we can't innovate-we can't evolve. We
will not be able to deal with new threats to our species
- such as human-generated global warming - without a massive
exercise in creativity. So
Genre Fiction exercises imagination, which increases creativity,
which is essential for species survival. Consider
this: the US, now the primary home of Genre Fiction, reads
10 - 100 times more Genre Fiction than any other society.
And the US is globally recognized as the most entrepreneurially
successful, most innovative and effectively creative, society
on the planet. Coincidence? I don't think so. As a group,
you read Genre Fiction, you exercise your imaginations and
you reap the creative rewards. However,
while having well-exercised imaginations is critical for
dealing with new, not previously experienced threats, it's
more a value-added in terms of the biological purpose of
Entertainment. The
primary purpose of Entertainment resides in, or more properly
within, story. Shamans are widely credited with inventing
story - the Entertainment form of story: a collection of
invented incidents expressly designed to entertain - way
back when the first tribes formed. I
use the word shaman in the widest sense - medicine men,
wise women - they were the second most important person
in a tribe, and entrusted with the health of the tribe in
the broadest terms-they were often healers, but their role
was much wider. They quickly became repositories of tribal
history-essentially the survival lessons already learned.
A
major part of a shaman's role was to pass on those lessons,
which meant repeating them again and again, because that's
how humans learn. Advertisers know this. But you can't repeat
something as dry as a lesson and expect people to pay attention,
let alone remember. So the shamen added a sugar coating,
one that would attract listeners, and could be readily changed
to make the same lesson repeated look different. That
sugar-coating was story - our collection of invented incidents
designed to entertain - and that's what story is to this
day. A sugar-coated capsule around the active ingredient
of a biological survival lesson. Fables are one example
of this, but tend to carry less crucial lessons. Story -
especially Genre Fiction today - is what carries the most
powerful and important biological survival lessons we -
as the audience - have determined we need today. Genre
Fiction is the most potent form of Entertainment because
it interacts with the audience over the longest time and
at an emotional depth other forms - films, TV for instance
- cannot match. I
want you to picture your Genre Fiction section in your library
- now think of it as a biological survival lesson pharmacy.
Those things on the shelves may look like books, but you
know they're really capsules. Let's make the crime capsules
brown, the fantasy green, and the romance - well, cherry
red. Different
authors in one genre are just different brands of capsules
- among the red capsules you'll find the brands of Stephanie
Laurens, Jayne Ann Krentz, Jayne Castle, Amanda Quick, Nora
Roberts, Victoria Alexander, Julia Quinn, Linda Howard and
many, many more - all with the same single critical active
ingredient, but with slightly different mixes of other ingredients,
and with different tasting coatings, too-meaning different
story types. Romantic suspense, historicals, comedies -
but all have that one critical active ingredient. So,
you're now a survival pharmacist - if a reader comes in
wanting to be reassured that Justice always triumphs, you
might steer him to a brown crime capsule, say of the Grisham
brand. If
someone comes in worried about how they're going to cope
with possible redundancy, perhaps you'd give him a green
capsule, from the Tolkien brand. After he's seen what Frodo
goes through, he might feel that perhaps he might survive
what life sends him, too. And
what if a woman comes in, with two toddlers hanging on her
skirts, worn to the bone - and wanting reassurance that
all she's going through is worthwhile, is valued, is to
be lauded - you'd hand her a cherry red capsule because
that's what romance delivers. Today,
Genre Fiction especially delivers reassurance, reaffirmation,
illustration and demonstration that the things our audience
thinks are important in their lives - are. Entertainment
- and Genre Fiction - are never propaganda. They work the
other way around. They are reaffirmation of how we think
our world should be. Entertainment
and Genre Fiction are responsive to the audience's needs.
Genre Fiction trends are not started by authors, but are
audience driven. We might put a book on the shelves, but
we can't force anyone to want it and read it, much less
enjoy it. Consider
the recent upsurge of Paranormal romance. There was an earlier
brief surge in the early 90s, but it quickly died. Just
like the 1st Gulf War. Then at the end of the millennia,
things started to get militarily angsty - and paranormal
romance reappeared. Then came 9/11, Afghanistan, Iraq, and
more Afghanistan and so on-and paranormal romance soared. Look
at what's common in all the paranormal romance bestsellers:
a core couple within a community, an extended family of
sorts, all flying under the general radar because these
guys are really really scary. BUT these are the good guys,
and the reason they are really really scary is because there
are bad guys out there who are even more scary and who are
plotting to end the world as we know it. And wider society
is totally oblivious to all of this. For
bad guys, can we say terrorists? The really scary good guys
- special forces? And are Suzanne Brockman's Seals popular
reading these days? The
central message is the good guys always win in the end,
family is protected, and life goes on. The terrorists won't
win. What
you are seeing with Paranormal romance and superhero movies
is a biological support system in action. The audience demands
and Genre Fiction supplies. But
what about Romance in general? Romance today carries the
essential message that love, marriage - and by implication
children and family - are valuable and desirable goals.
To what threat would Romance respond? What threat does it
counter? Children?
Extinction is the ultimate threat to any species. So let's
look at birthrates and see if there was any threat in recent
times. For
a healthy, stable Western nation, with good health care,
you need a birthrate of 2.1. With 2.1, your society will
not grow, will not shrink, and most importantly will remain
age-stable - you won't face the problems of too many old
people, or too many young children. In
the 50s and 60s, in the aftermath of WWII, all western nations
had birthrates in the high 2s and 3s, replenishing after
the losses of the war. All well and good. But
at the end of the 60s, two independent changes occurred.
The contraceptive Pill became widely available, and modern
feminism was born. Those who were around at the time, and
yes, I was, will remember that early feminism had a very
clear message: that a woman didn't need a man, marriage
or children to be fulfilled. While no one would question
the value of either the Pill or feminism, together they
posed a potent biological threat if too many women followed
the strict feminist path and gave up having children altogether. Biologically,
societies would be doomed. The
Pill and feminism hit at the end of the 60s. By the middle
to late 70s, the birthrate of all western nations had fallen
to 1.7. Governments took serious notice, but 1.7 for a short
time isn't reason for panic - the birthrate had been much
higher in the previous decade - so most countries decided
it was a case of a biological pendulum - if left alone,
it would swing back. I'll
mention 7 western nations - Italy, France, Germany, Netherlands,
UK, Australia and the US-chosen purely because I know what
went on in those countries. Six of these countries decided
to sit back and let Nature take its course, including Italy,
which felt comfortable that its religion would save it. France,
however, being France, decided it wasn't going to risk reaching
2100 with no Frenchmen, so the government instituted a massive
program - both of propaganda and direct assistance - pushing
the message that getting married and having children was
important. That program came out of the 70s and is still
in place today. The
only other relevant happening was: in response to the upsurge
of feminism, 6 of those countries also suppressed romance
novels. Feminists,
of course, saw romance novels as an outrage, because the
message was diametrically opposed to theirs, so in Italy,
France, Germany, Netherlands, the UK and Australia, publishers
bowed to pressure from the intellectual elites and suppressed
romance. I
can explain how it was done, but the essential thing to
know was that it was done. In every country bar the US,
romance novels were - not banned, not eradicated, not outlawed
- but their availability was deliberately held down and
a massive taboo was attached to reading them. And I do mean
massive. Even if women wanted romance novels, they couldn't
find them, and even if they found one, they - as a group
- felt inhibited from reading them. The
only country that truly left the entire biological system
alone was the US. So
what happened? Current
birthrates are: Italy 1.3 and steadily sinking. Religion
doesn't work on birthrates. Germany 1.4, Netherlands 1.6,
UK 1.6, Australia 1.7. France
has inched and inched and clawed its way up to 1.98 - almost
2.0. Still not at 2.1 even with such a massive investment. What
about the US? The
US birthrate hit 1.7 in 1976. It then turned right around
and started climbing. All through the 80s it steadily climbed
and climbed. In the 90s it was close to, just below, 2.1
and hovered there for the whole decade, then in the new
millennia it started moving up again. In 2006, your birthrate
reached 2.1 again, and isn't expected to fall. In
December last year, when the 2006 figures came out, there
were newspaper articles papering the globe with experts
pointing to the remarkable achievement of the US in being
the only developed western nation to have a healthy and
stable birthrate. Every expert, every western government
wants to know: How? How
did you do this? How did you recover so easily from 1.7
to 2.1 when no one else can even shift their rate upward?
Except for France, and even after decades of massive propaganda
and assistance, they aren't there yet. Why
is it that the US is biologically thriving, yet all these
other nations are sinking into extinction? No
expert could answer. They've analyzed everything-religion,
economics, racial groups-no factor they can see satisfies
even them as the explanation. But
you know what happened. You know that romance novels came
into the 70s at a relatively low level - because they weren't
needed. There was no threat to marriage and birthrate through
the 60s. But then came the Pill and feminism, and women
heard the feminist's message - but most of them thought,
well, yes, but that's not how I feel. I want love, marriage
and the whole nine yards - so they reached for reaffirmation.
It wasn't Kathleen Woodiwiss writing the Flame and the Flower
that sparked the modern growth of romance - it was women
wanting to hear the message that book contained. They grabbed
it, and started looking for more. The publishers saw all
those cherry red capsules disappearing off the shelves,
and promptly supplied more. And more brands. And… On
through the 80s, romance readership grew exponentially -
just like the US's birthrate. In the 90s, it hovered, just
like the US birthrate, but never really slid back - most
likely while women were subconsciously assessing whether
the threat was gone, but it wasn't. Over the last decade,
romance has gradually pushed up again. The
US sales of romance novels directly parallel the US improving
birthrate. The
romance readership is now at a level supporting a birthrate
of 2.1. As proved through the 90s, it can't drop - it will
need to stay at least at this level to counter the continuing
existing threats. Any more threats and it will need to expand
again. If
you want women to have children, you need to ensure they
view finding love and marriage as worthy goals. The US also
has a marriage rate more than 50% greater than any of those
other countries. Not
one so-called expert thought of romance novels - the one
thing - the one and only thing - that directly and effectively
reaffirms love, marriage and family as being desirable goals.
Just as we forgot about the environment, we've forgotten
what Entertainment, particularly Genre Fiction, and most
especially romance really is. Our
7 western nations have run a real time, real people, 35-year
long experiment on the value and power of romance novels.
The results are in. The
US did nothing, but allowed romance novels to respond to
women's need to hear the biologically, socially critical
lesson that love, marriage and family are worthy and desirable
goals. And the US thrives. Australia,
the UK, Germany, the Netherlands and Italy, facing the same
threats, also did nothing, but specifically removed romance
novels from the equation. These societies are facing social
extinction. France
replaced romance novels with government propaganda and assistance.
It might survive, but by the skin of its teeth and only
at great financial cost. Propaganda is never as effective
as reaffirmation. The
conclusion is obvious. It's read romance or perish. That's
an inconvenient truth a lot of people won't want to hear.
But as with that other inconvenient truth, perhaps it's
time we stopped closing our eyes to the incredibly potent,
survival support system we've spent the last 40-plus millennia
perfecting. As we've just seen, pretending that system doesn't
exist, and isn't important, can be socially fatal. As
the guardians of genre fiction in your communities, I hope
you take back with you a strengthened belief in the social
and biological importance of keeping a wide range of genre
fiction, and of romance in particular, on your shelves. Not
only will it improve mental health and enhance your communities'
creativity, but it will also insure that your country continues
as a biologically stable nation. So
the next time someone asks you why you have so much romance
on your acquisition list - look them in the eye and say:
Haven't you heard? It's read romance or perish. I'll
leave you with that thought. |
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