(Trigger warning: content contains brief mention of trauma, PTSD, suicide, and other psychological struggles) People seem to have already started mourning the imminent death of Literature, and sometimes one feels like joining the pallbearers. Literature, a collection of written works, has always been characterised by its quality, message, and exploration of different societies. In the post-contemporary era, there has been a steady flow of intellectual and thought-provoking material that has helped shape the "face" of literature. Books and poetry that have become household terms, such as A Tale of Two Cities, Animal Farm, The Great Gatsby, Emma, Things Fall Apart, and Don Quixote, have helped mould Literature into an area people associate with groundbreaking storytelling, character development, character arcs, and plot progression.
But could we in the future?
Mainstream media has been this generation’s self-perfected paradox, being both a bane and a boon for everyone that indulges in it. Born within this is Literature’s very own enigma dubbed as “BookTok”.
Introduction: What is BookTok?
BookTok is a sub community on the app Tiktok that “focuses on books and literature, maintained by literature enthusiasts" according to the Urban Dictionary. BookTok has been widely considered as the modern reader’s go-to place for book recommendations, and utilising the benefit of the influence social media has, books promoted on BookTok are now considered as the epitome of literature.
But why is that inherently bad?
The Curse of Commodificationalism:
After scrolling through seemingly endless BookTok videos, a singular pattern makes itself evident to the viewer. The books recommended on the platform circle around the same ten names, written for roughly the same demographic (teens and young adults), and though at surface level the individual plot seems unique, when it comes to anything that actually makes a book unique, you’ll find that the book equivalent of a “gene pool” is pretty shallow. The reason for this may also be the root of possibly all the other problems surrounding BookTok books, and that is the commercialisation of BookTok. Unlike the past, where widely acclaimed authors would write for the sake of writing (writing being a side-job), authors nowadays earn their bread and butter from the sale of their books. This incentivises them to write books that will bring in the money, and hence results in them commodifying certain popular book trends and writing their own books based on these trends, which results in the same generic content being pumped out via BookTok.
A popular trend on BookTok may be the “tropification” of love arcs, where the entire story-line is defined by the relationship dynamics such as “enemies to lovers” or “fake dating”. Writers, upon seeing the popularity of these tropes, incorporate them in and base the story around said arcs, leaving little room for growth in the plot elsewhere. When all the writers jump on this bandwagon, they leave little diversity behind on the platform. Books on BookTok then all have the same archetypal heroine or hero, dystopian setting and stakes, and focus on having romance centre-stage of the plot, which makes the readers feel that they are reading the same books over and over again, in slightly different fonts. Though this type of redundancy and lack of originality in itself is harmful to literature overall, more harmful are the trends being promoted.
The Happy Endings no one asked for:
We start off by addressing how booktok books romanticise toxic relationships, a narrative which is present in almost every romance novel on the platform, which has launched a popular genre of “Dark Romance” on the platform.The books depict a love interest, often a white male, engaging in abuse, manipulation, and violence. The female lead, Mary Sue, resolves issues when the man saves her, serving as the only redemption arc for the male lead. This portrays morally abhorrent behaviour as justified and resolved, not a happy ending. Conveniently, this save serves as the only redemption arc for the male lead, putting the relationship arc on a pedestal and presenting the idea to the readers that morally abhorrent behaviour from the significant other does nothing but add flavour to the relationship dynamics, and is always justified and resolved. Hardly a happy ending one should strive for.
Exploitation of Shock Value: Triggers
Another rather disturbing issue is the references of suicide, self-harm and other psychological trauma that are rarely dealt with satisfactorily. While positive awareness of mental struggles is one thing and should be promoted, using psychological troubles as nothing more than devices for shock value and to allow the book to fall under the guise of being “woke” is not only disrespectful to people going through this in real life, but the surface level engagement with such issues also poses a stereotypical and oftentimes, wrong impression of what these issues look like for the reader. Over 40-50% novellas showcased on TikTok deal with sensitive themes, namely drug abuse and self harm. Are hotlines and alternatives provided? No.
Discrimination in Publishing:
BIPOC While discussing the matter of pseudo-wokeism, one cannot disregard the lack of diversity in booktok authors (mainstream BookTok and BookTok books are dominated by white authors), which leads to either zero to no representation of BIPOC (or other) characters or a misrepresentation of cultures for the sake of attaining the stamp of being inclusive. Books that fall in the latter category are more often than not lauded for their representation which, if looked at beyond the surface, is nothing more than tokenism. Tales with middle eastern origin are retold with 75.6% plot divergence, while 70% of them are brutally westernised. Books make use of phrases in different languages said by a character to associate said character with a specific ethnicity. But not only is this the only tie to their specific culture (and other cultural aspects forgotten), the phrases or words used do not portray the culture for what it is. Sound familiar?
R.F Kuang has recently voiced her take on this matter. She provided legal statements on how her ethnicity and income was taken into consideration when her publishers looked over the pros and cons of funding her debut release. With over 75% of the American Publishing Association being of white descent, upcoming POC authors face major disadvantages. Over 53% of POC writers have reported to have faced workplace discrimination as well as manuscript plagiarization by senior employees. This results in a narrow way of getting put on the New York bestselling authors list, to give the industry what they want.
With this influx of repetitive, toxic and more importantly, superficial, literature works (that are widely consumed) one can do nothing but lament the direction literature is heading. These books are marketed and labelled as groundbreaking stories and sometimes even the pinnacles of modern literature, the true essence of literature gets pushed further back into the past. Booktok may then at best dilute literature and at worst change the face of literature and how it's perceived in the long run.
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