13. Clown World, by Jamie Tahsin and Matt Shea
Owned: No, library Page count: 259 My summary: Andrew Tate is a dangerous man, spurred to fame by his campaign to win the minds of younger men against women, who try to control men. Two journalists from Vice were investigating him when his history of sex trafficking and abuse began to rear its head. Now, they're piecing together the story of Andrew Tate, warts and all. My rating: 3/5 My commentary:
Ah, Andrew Tate. Something of old news at this point, sure. Tate is known for his activities within the 'manosphere'. He's a misogynist who thinks that men need to be physically strong and domineering, and also coerce women into working as webcam models for them so that men can rake in the money they earn, and fuck the women's thoughts and feelings about it. He is being investigated for rape, sex trafficking, abuse, and other such things. He's a nasty person, and the ideal of toxic masculinity. This book, from Vice journalists Jamie Tahsin and Matt Shea, chronicles their experiences with Tate, filming and participating in an activity that Tate dubbed 'The Test' given to his inner circle, creating a documentary about him and his work, and investigating the allegations against him. And on the whole, it's an interesting documentation of that time. But there's a but, and that's what I'm going to talk about.
First of all, the narrative focus of the prose here is weird. Shea and Tahsin are presumably writing this between themselves, but neither narrates necessarily - the narrator is third person omniscient, with occasional breaks into first person written by one or the other. The result is a narrative that is weirdly detached, removed from its narrators and just sort of hanging there in the air, which makes it a weird read. The other thing I had an issue with was that there's not a lot of reflection in this book. It's not really about why Tate's ideology is bad, it just sort of takes that as read and moves on assuming that the reader knows why Tate is wrong about everything. The result is that the authors sometimes come across as if they're just pointing to Tate and their experiences and going LOOK, WE HUNG OUT WITH ANDREW TATE, ISN'T THAT CRAZY as opposed to applying any kind of critical analysis to Tate. There's almost a thread of Shea being suckered into Tate's way of thinking, but then that just gets sort of dropped when Shea and Tahsin get back from Romania. It's pointing at Tate and saying LOOK, WE TALKED TO HIM, and that's it, that's all you get. I had expected more analysis. So I'm disappointed with the end result of this book.
Next, a bus full of children is taken for ransom.
