Oh, all right. This really isn’t about what SHE said about what HE said. It’s my own twisted brain going on about something else.
Okay, here’s the thing: I don’t generally read things where the female characters are always going on about men. Or babies. Or eyeshadow. I’m not good with “traditional” romances, I generally have to fling books around, and librarians DO tend to get testy about those bent spines. But I tend to read a lot of YA and fantasy lit. because I want to write it, and much of it is making a VALIANT attempt to be multicultural. A friend’s general observations on those “attempts” to include people outside the dominant culture has got me thinking — namely that “valiant” isn’t cutting it, and the attempts aren’t going well. Like Alison Bechdel asks a few pertinent questions before seeing a film, p’raps we also shall query a few points the books we’ll read as well:
- Are the minority characters in this novel or series ever allowed any other dimension? Are they all uniformly evil, or good, wise and kind? Do you notice myriad sagacious Asians appearing in this role?
- Are external clues such as ethnicity used to signal characterization? (Hello, raven-haired temptresses and evil icy cool blondes, I’m looking at you.) Are all female blondes desirable, and all male blonds evil? (And Germanic? Think Indiana Jones.) Are all redheads quirky and perky, and all Latinas zesty and mouthy, and complaining about their butts? (You must be reading that dreadful SISTERHOOD OF THE TRAVELING PANTS tripe, then. Put it down at once.)
- On the cover of the book, do the minorities look more-ethnic-than-thou? Tribal paint/tatts? Kenté cloth? Trail of Lion Dancers snaking around behind them? Is this designed to help the book sell?
- Is a character from the dominant culture messianic, and, like Mighty Mouse, there to save the day? Or, is there a magical/mystical brown person to arrive as a stranger, have nothing better to do than to help the character from the dominant culture, be older/wiser/poorer/and therefore more closely tied with Gaia/Mother Earth/mystical earth magic, and then, after offering up some great sacrifice, conveniently vanish or die? (A WIZARED OF EARTHSEA, whitewash edition, I’m looking at YOU.)
Oh, just wait. There are more…
If we recognize them as tropes then we can begin to play with them, to twist them and break them. By twisting the archetype, we can accomplish some interesting things.
But this ignores the fact that people believe in the archetypes. Barbie wedding, anybody?
If we recognize them as tropes then we can begin to play with them, to twist them and break them. By twisting the archetype, we can accomplish some interesting things.But this ignores the fact that people believe in the archetypes. Barbie wedding, anybody?
If we recognize them as tropes then we can begin to play with them, to twist them and break them. By twisting the archetype, we can accomplish some interesting things.
But this ignores the fact that people believe in the archetypes. Barbie wedding, anybody?
There is indeed, to my mind, a “standard” frame of reference; it’s a dominant culture assumption, and if one doesn’t identify one’s characters as ethnic in some fashion, the dominant frame of reference defaults to Caucasian. What’s weird is that statistically it’s the same for ANY reader — English-reading ethnic minorities default the same way. Apparently we’re all in the young white male frame of reference with you…
It’s getting crowded in there.
The attempts to shift out of that are at best off-handed, and at worst, lazy. Almost as bad as the eternal brown voodoo god/dess are the characters the color of mocha, chocolate, cinnamon, coffee… The Edible Brown People.
Gingerbread Men…
There is indeed, to my mind, a “standard” frame of reference; it’s a dominant culture assumption, and if one doesn’t identify one’s characters as ethnic in some fashion, the dominant frame of reference defaults to Caucasian. What’s weird is that statistically it’s the same for ANY reader — English-reading ethnic minorities default the same way. Apparently we’re all in the young white male frame of reference with you…It’s getting crowded in there.The attempts to shift out of that are at best off-handed, and at worst, lazy. Almost as bad as the eternal brown voodoo god/dess are the characters the color of mocha, chocolate, cinnamon, coffee… The Edible Brown People. Gingerbread Men…
There is indeed, to my mind, a “standard” frame of reference; it’s a dominant culture assumption, and if one doesn’t identify one’s characters as ethnic in some fashion, the dominant frame of reference defaults to Caucasian. What’s weird is that statistically it’s the same for ANY reader — English-reading ethnic minorities default the same way. Apparently we’re all in the young white male frame of reference with you…
It’s getting crowded in there.
The attempts to shift out of that are at best off-handed, and at worst, lazy. Almost as bad as the eternal brown voodoo god/dess are the characters the color of mocha, chocolate, cinnamon, coffee… The Edible Brown People.
Gingerbread Men…
I think the problem is that using the expressed phenotype of characters as a commonly-understood symbolic language has been with us for a long, long time. But then syphilis has been with us for a long, long time.
Could it be that these characters are created relative to the sexual/racial reference-frame of a ‘standard’ young white male? Does that imply a belief in such a ‘standard’ somewhere in the collective unconscious? As a young white male myself I can’t pretend to view the world through any reference-frame but my own so it’s hard to judge if that’s really the case. I imagine it might be a powerful, jarring thing to have to slip into a young white male’s reference-frame just to appreciate common (cliche) symbolic language. Enough to discourage literacy among English-reading ethnic minorities?
You’ve highlighted something that annoys me, particularly in writing for games–
“This is Uhm’ghum, excessively muscular black guy covered in white finger-paint. This is his time ship. Of course he is a skull-rattling shaman, even though he’s from the the year 3422.”
–at that point I just want to chew my fists to stumps. It’s awful lazy and insulting to the reader/viewer/player.
I think the problem is that using the expressed phenotype of characters as a commonly-understood symbolic language has been with us for a long, long time. But then syphilis has been with us for a long, long time.Could it be that these characters are created relative to the sexual/racial reference-frame of a ‘standard’ young white male? Does that imply a belief in such a ‘standard’ somewhere in the collective unconscious? As a young white male myself I can’t pretend to view the world through any reference-frame but my own so it’s hard to judge if that’s really the case. I imagine it might be a powerful, jarring thing to have to slip into a young white male’s reference-frame just to appreciate common (cliche) symbolic language. Enough to discourage literacy among English-reading ethnic minorities? You’ve highlighted something that annoys me, particularly in writing for games–“This is Uhm’ghum, excessively muscular black guy covered in white finger-paint. This is his time ship. Of course he is a skull-rattling shaman, even though he’s from the the year 3422.”–at that point I just want to chew my fists to stumps. It’s awful lazy and insulting to the reader/viewer/player.
I think the problem is that using the expressed phenotype of characters as a commonly-understood symbolic language has been with us for a long, long time. But then syphilis has been with us for a long, long time.
Could it be that these characters are created relative to the sexual/racial reference-frame of a ‘standard’ young white male? Does that imply a belief in such a ‘standard’ somewhere in the collective unconscious? As a young white male myself I can’t pretend to view the world through any reference-frame but my own so it’s hard to judge if that’s really the case. I imagine it might be a powerful, jarring thing to have to slip into a young white male’s reference-frame just to appreciate common (cliche) symbolic language. Enough to discourage literacy among English-reading ethnic minorities?
You’ve highlighted something that annoys me, particularly in writing for games–
“This is Uhm’ghum, excessively muscular black guy covered in white finger-paint. This is his time ship. Of course he is a skull-rattling shaman, even though he’s from the the year 3422.”
–at that point I just want to chew my fists to stumps. It’s awful lazy and insulting to the reader/viewer/player.