Women Talking: A Missed Opportunity (Part 1)
This is Part 1 of a four-part series. Read Part 2. Read Part 3. Read Part 4.
The Gell-Mann Amnesia Effect describes the phenomenon of believing what is written about topics outside your expertise even after discovering that articles written within the scope of your expertise are filled with errors and inaccuracies. C. S. Lewis, for example, is said to have read a biography written of himself and, finding so many inaccuracies, he began to question the veracity of all other biographies.
I had a similar experience while reading Women Talking, a 2018 novel by award-winning Canadian author Miriam Toews. The film version of the book, with a screenplay adapted by Sarah Polley, is nominated for two Oscars: Best Picture and Best Adapted Screenplay. (UPDATE: It won the Oscar for Best Adapted Screenplay)
The novel at first appears to be a fictionalized re-telling of real-life events but because of personal knowledge and connections within the Old Colony Mennonite community and culture, this re-telling of events was thoroughly unsatisfying, often perplexing, and sometimes unintentionally funny. If you’ve read any of her other work, you know that Toews can write humorous scenes, but much of the humour in Women Talking was, I suspect, accidental.
I’d be willing to overlook some of the deficiencies more easily if there wasn’t a preface page in the book that is a statement of known events on the actual Manitoba Colony in Bolivia. If you’re not familiar with these real-life events, see this article before you continue reading.
“Based on a True Story”
When a book or film is “based on a true story” we all understand and accept that certain liberties are taken in order to better dramatize in fiction what actually happened in fact. We grant this licence while trusting we will still be presented with the core truth of the story. Often this trust is betrayed and authors get away with it because the Gell-Mann Amnesia effect is not taken seriously enough. In telling the story the way she does, Miriam Toews betrays our trust.
Including a page describing a real-life event is obviously meant to set a backdrop for the story that follows. On that same page, Toews attempts to purchase a license to take liberties with the sentence at the end of this precursory note that reads, “Women Talking is both a reaction through fiction to these true-life events, and an act of female imagination.” This same sentence appears onscreen at the beginning of the film.
In the end, the colour of true-life events covers only a small area of the canvas Toews uses to paint her story.
More Than Errors
While it is a bit of a sport in the modern Mennonite community to scour any work about Mennonites for the most minuscule mistakes (HT: Andrew Unger), there is more at stake here than mere trivial inaccuracies, because the actual true story involves real women who continue to need help.
The issues and resulting conversations the book depicts are of enormous importance! The criticisms that follow are not to minimize this importance. Rather, they flow out of my frustration and disappointment that while these abuses were raised into public consciousness, this was done in such a way that the real-life victims of these abuses were not honoured or benefitted. And this is a type of cultural appropriation that is clearly inappropriate.
This is Part 1 of a four-part series. Read Part 2. Read Part 3. Read Part 4.
In future instalments, I will address Mennonite naming conventions, character dialogue, pacifism, the Low German language, how the movie measurably improves on the book, and finally, an appeal to those who want to help the real-life victims of the true story.
