Importance of white representation in fiction

[Akka]

You could try saying why you think this is valuable, instead of just bluntly repeating that it is valuable.

You could try to bother to read answers already given, instead of constantly playing dumb.

 

[Quintillus]

Stop right there. If you do believe it's outdated, then it's the same as thinking it's on the waning side of history. The rest is just semantics and somewhat irrelevant family genealogy.

Incorrect again. Circumstances of history can change. What is less effective today than it was in the 1930s and 1940s might become effective again. If the U.S. and China go to war, stoicism probably will become more relevant. It's probably already somewhat more relevant than it was two years ago due to the pandemic.

You seem to like to engage in straw man tactics. Saying that "if you believe X, you're on the waning side of history", while not trying to counter what I'd mentioned earlier about how I don't believe there is an arc to history, or an inevitable "end point" of history. All the while, not really providing supporting arguments for what you've said.

It's still been an interesting thread, and both the question of stoicism and ethnic representation in fiction are interesting ones. But there has to be a willingness to explore the nuances of a question, the gray areas, for it to be worth my continued engagement in a debate. Family history and life experience helps inform one's views on the world, and learning other's perspectives is part of what broadens one's views, and can make one realize that there often is a lot of nuance. Semantics are often the crux of the issue, not "just" semantics. Sure, there can be over-fixation on particular details of semantics. But if you're going to debate "is stoicism outdated?", the semantics of what is stoicism are crucially important.

I'm probably going to exit the thread, unless someone else has another more thoughtful insight that's worth my commenting on.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I never got into "Little Women" or "Nancy Drew" as a kid. I wonder why?

You mean you never got into these Great Works of Literature?











I read Little Women and have seen at least part of one of the numerous TV adaptations. It's an okay story for young girls, but it's hard for modern audiences to relate to unless their favorite character is Jo. Jo March is very much an independent-minded young woman who is determined to live her life as she wants, not just sit around and wait for some man to marry her.

And decades later, I still wonder WTH the author was thinking, having the lead male character's name be "Laurie." Different times, different naming conventions with nicknames, but still... it sounds weird.


As for Nancy Drew... yikes. Like most North American girls of my generation, I read most of the series, if not all that were published until my mid-teen years. By the time I was into science fiction, I looked at Nancy Drew as a juvenile type of mental junk food that I continued to read once the Hardy Boys/Nancy Drew TV show came along. There's a reason why the Nancy Drew part of that was dropped and the Hardy Boys carried on for the last season. They were interesting, with appealing characters (and since Shaun Cassidy was trying to get his singing career going, a couple of episodes featured Joe singing). Nancy Drew was... utterly boring. I can't remember a single episode she was in that the Hardy Boys weren't also in, as they crossed over once or twice.

As for the Nancy Drew novels, some of the early ones are truly cringe-worthy to an older person decades later. The racial/ethnic stereotypes aren't as bad as in The Bobbsey Twins, but they're there. Eventually I packed up all my Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys books and sold them. I debated over my Bobbsey Twins and Donna Parker books, whether to give them away on Freecycle or just toss them into the garbage so some impressionable kid from a new generation of tween-age readers wouldn't be influenced by the horribly negative parts of those books. I think the Donna Parker books were offered on Freecycle, while the Bobbsey Twins books went into the landfill (at least the really early ones did).

I didn't get rid of all my juvenile literature, though. I've still got enough to fill one of my mid-sized bookshelves with mysteries and adventure stories (just finished re-reading one of them).

It is time for Chinese girls to want to be Arwen Evenstar.

For decades, young Japanese girls have been ardent fans of Anne of Green Gables, and there are quite a number of young Japanese couples who have gone to Prince Edward Island where they sometimes outnumber the Canadian or other international tourists there. Some of them go there to be married.

I honestly don't understand why. Yes, Anne of Green Gables is a Canadian literary classic, and the movies starring Megan Follows are wonderful, feel-good mental comfort food. But for people halfway around the world to love it that much that they want their wedding to be held at Green Gables?

I suppose it's akin to North American couples who get married on tropical islands or at some castle in the UK. But those instances don't tend to be about one specific work of literature.

You are telling me that you don't see how throwing in people whose appearance give vibes of completely different places has no bearing on the feeling of the settings ?
That's exactly like telling me "I don't see the problem with putting people in Nikes and blue jeans has any bearing on the settings being medieval". It doesn't fit the setting, and it gives it a different atmosphere.

Honest question here, since I'm not sure: Did the original legend of Robin Hood include a Middle Eastern man? I'm thinking of the character of Nasir, who was part of the outlaw band in the Robin of Sherwood TV series, or Morgan Freeman's character in Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves. I know there was no such character in the Richard Greene series in the '50s, or even in the Rocket Robin Hood cartoon. When Star Trek: The Next Generation did their Robin Hood episode, Geordi's character was Alan-a-Dale and Worf's character was Will Scarlet. Data was Friar Tuck. Nobody represented a character who was foreign to England.

Hm. Putting people in Nikes and blue jeans in a medieval setting is precisely what would be expected if anyone ever makes a movie of Mary Monica Pulver's novel Murder at the War. It's about a murder that happens at Pennsic War - an annual war that takes place between the Kingdom of the East and the Kingdom of the Middle, in the Society for Creative Anachronism. Pulver created a story that blended the SCA with a murder mystery so well (she was an active member at the time), that our own branch took turns taking her book out of the library and telling everyone else to STFU about spoilers as nobody wanted to know who the murderer was before it was our turn to read it. Pulver went on to write several more books about the main character, who in his mundane life was a detective and in his SCA life was a fighter.

Otherwise, though, I get what you mean and agree with it. If there are anachronistic elements in any adaptation, they need to be explained in a better way than "director's whim" or "director's social agenda."

Incorrect. That's one definition of being manly, but far from the only one, and saying that to be manly requires being stoic is an outdated notion.

But I can also see where the correlation between stoicism and manliness comes from. Mainly because, like Valka, I had a stoic grandfather. In his case, I'm sure you could attribute a fair amount of it to the culture of the times, but I suspect it also was a means of coping with growing up poor in the Great Depression and serving in WWII (both the experience and the culture in the armed forces). Those were both tough situations with real risks of harm, and without a realistic way to get out of them other than to make it through to the other side, whenever that would be. I can see how that would encourage becoming more stoic, and how being stoic would help one make it through such times.

At the same time, stoic doesn't mean not having emotions - more so it's a means of coping with significant negative events without outwardly showing emotion. If you'd met my grandfather in 1946, from all the stories I've heard, you'd probably never guess he was stoic. Those were the good years after the war, and "party animal" would be a more likely trait you'd ascribe to him. Meet him after his family tragedy in the early '50s, though, and you'd probably describe him as stoic, whereas someone with a different background may not have been.

In today's less difficult times, there are fewer advantages to being stoic, and that's a good thing. We have more options for effective coping that someone on warship that's taken casualties in combat.

Exactly. Except my grandfather was a generation older than that. I'm grateful that he was too young for WWI and too old for WWII. But I heard plenty of stories of the family struggles through the Depression and what my grandmother told me of her childhood (her mother died of Spanish flu, leaving her and her brother to be raised by their 13-year-old sister while their father tried to keep the farm going). My dad was a young child in the Depression, and so by the time he was old enough to really notice life and be concerned with the future, it was already post-WWII. He didn't have to be the decision-maker during the Depression years.

To these people, purity is prima facie desirable. Explains why they have issues with multi-culturalism and such, I suppose.

WOW!

Just because I like my Dune adaptations to be faithful to the source material, you're claiming I'm racist? That's quite an accusation to level against anyone here, who has expressed a preference for faithful adaptations rather than "director's BS" versions.

Stop right there. If you do believe it's outdated, then it's the same as thinking it's on the waning side of history. The rest is just semantics and somewhat irrelevant family genealogy.

Many things are outdated. It doesn't mean they're going away as fast as we'd want them to. And consider this: Younger generations learn from older generations, or at least from what they leave behind, whether it's stories, records, artifacts, and so on. That's why there are younger generations of certain political groups that we had hoped were gone at the end of WWII. The attitudes are considered outdated by - dare I say, NORMAL people - but obviously they still exist.

BTW, guess which popular TV/movie/literary character is the very model of stoicism, yet millions of people love him?

Spock, from Star Trek - Original Series, I mean, not from the Abrams movies or however he might be shown in DiscoTrek (gave up on that show, so I have no idea how he might be shown in that one).

 

[Joij21]

So would you argue that the Taliban's attitude towards women is not outdated because the Taliban and some others still hold on to it?

Yes, I would. Outdated means obsolete, as in nobody follows it anymore. If some people still follow it, especially a sizable group like the Taliban, then it is clearly not an obsolete viewpoint. Perhaps barbaric though but not obsolete.

Saying barbaric practices are outdated is basically assuming there is a predetermined arrow to time, society, and presupposing the idea that barbaric ideals are inevitable supplanted by more civilized ones as society "progresses". Society never progresses, it just moves towards a vector based on the endless screams and bickering of the masses until the most popular ideal becomes the new status quo. There is no base morality to what future morality shall become, but rather whatever one becomes the most fashionable due to emotional feelings of said masses.

One day tomorrow everyone in the West could choose to become like the Taliban if they so desired, nothing is stopping that from happening because there is no central moral authority to any society.

 

[aelf]

Incorrect again. Circumstances of history can change. What is less effective today than it was in the 1930s and 1940s might become effective again. If the U.S. and China go to war, stoicism probably will become more relevant. It's probably already somewhat more relevant than it was two years ago due to the pandemic.

You seem to like to engage in straw man tactics. Saying that "if you believe X, you're on the waning side of history", while not trying to counter what I'd mentioned earlier about how I don't believe there is an arc to history, or an inevitable "end point" of history. All the while, not really providing supporting arguments for what you've said.

It's still been an interesting thread, and both the question of stoicism and ethnic representation in fiction are interesting ones. But there has to be a willingness to explore the nuances of a question, the gray areas, for it to be worth my continued engagement in a debate. Family history and life experience helps inform one's views on the world, and learning other's perspectives is part of what broadens one's views, and can make one realize that there often is a lot of nuance. Semantics are often the crux of the issue, not "just" semantics. Sure, there can be over-fixation on particular details of semantics. But if you're going to debate "is stoicism outdated?", the semantics of what is stoicism are crucially important.

It is semantics. You think "waning side of history" implies an irreversible change. I don't think any extant understanding of history holds that any change is irreversible, so to speak, and it's certainly not what I mean.

In fact, that meaning of "waning" just doesn't hold up. When someone says the moon is waning, do you believe that means it's irreversible?

Yes, I would. Outdated means obsolete, as in nobody follows it anymore. If some people still follow it, especially a sizable group like the Taliban, then it is clearly not an obsolete viewpoint. Perhaps barbaric though but not obsolete.

That's a weird understanding of "outdated", but ok.

 

[Joij21]

It is semantics. You think "waning side of history" implies an irreversible change. I don't think any extant understanding of history holds that any change is irreversible, so to speak, and it's certainly not what I mean.

In fact, that meaning of "waning" just doesn't hold up. When someone says the moon is waning, do you believe that means it's irreversible?

Yeah, except your use of the term makes you look like you feel special and overly cocky by insisting being part of the "right side" of history.

 

[aelf]

Yeah, except your use of the term makes you look like you feel special and overly cocky by insisting being part of the "right side" of history.

And so? Is this turning into another 'elitist liberals' complaint? One that apparently gives people a pass to think and do whatever they want because of time-honoured traditions, eh?

 

[Senethro]

You could try to bother to read answers already given, instead of constantly playing dumb.

Its not "playing dumb" to ask you to show your working! I hope you're not upset to learn that I don't consider you a sufficiently trustworthy authority that I'll accept answers that you don't care to qualify!

 

[bernie14]

are some people assuming that fantasy races genetics are similar to human genetics? there would have to be some overlap in biology if we assume sex/procreation in fantasy is the same, based on some sort of DNA-like structure.

maybe there is some recessive or dominant elf (or gnome or whatever) gene that makes skin translucent or stripped or spotted, who cares.....

To these people, purity is prima facie desirable. Explains why they have issues with multi-culturalism and such, I suppose.



So would you argue that the Taliban's attitude towards women is not outdated because the Taliban and some others still hold on to it?



Stop right there. If you do believe it's outdated, then it's the same as thinking it's on the waning side of history. The rest is just semantics and somewhat irrelevant family genealogy.

And so? Is this turning into another 'elitist liberals' complaint? One that apparently gives people a pass to think and do whatever they want because of time-honoured traditions, eh?

your choices in response seem so polar opposites as to be laughable

 

[lymond]

I read some Nancy Drew ....and Little Women

 

[Sofista]

Jo March is very much an independent-minded young woman who is determined to live her life as she wants, not just sit around and wait for some man to marry her.

And decades later, I still wonder WTH the author was thinking, having the lead male character's name be "Laurie." Different times, different naming conventions with nicknames, but still... it sounds weird.

IIRC, Alcott's plan for Jo was exactly that: to be an independent, self-realized woman happy to run her own school. But then she was drowned by fan mail, all telling her that Jo and Laurie belonged together.

And, apparently, she was incensed enough that she concocted from thin air the middle-aged professor Bhaer, who would marry Jo...

 

[Farm Boy]

It's probably already somewhat more relevant than it was two years ago due to the pandemic.

It's importance waxes and wanes during individual lives. I mean, examples are easy to find even if they're not properly explained. Nobody in public wants to hear your ****. They don't even want to see your ****. A grown ass man crying in a Target while doing Christmas shopping is going to be invisible. Nobody that's an acquaintance wants to hear or see it either. They're kind, I'm sure, but there will quickly always be a reason not to be around. It even weighs on intimate relationships and families. Especially on kids, or people for whom you have responsibility. That we can think stoicism might be outdated as a society is that we tend to live more of our spans in relatively happier circumstances. Or at least predictably bad ones.

 

[lymond]

@Valka D'Ur It's likely a nick of Laurence. Laurie is a unisex name and nick. It's also a surname.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

are some people assuming that fantasy races genetics are similar to human genetics? there would have to be some overlap in biology if we assume sex/procreation in fantasy is the same, based on some sort of DNA-like structure.

There are stats in Dungeons & Dragons for half-elf characters, and certain traits are simply taken for guaranteed... and such characters tend to be fish out of water (figuratively) in both human and elven societies. Best example I can think of is the character Tanis Half-Elven in the Dragonlance series. He has an Elven name - Tanthalas - that he never uses, and he prefers not to spend any more time among the Qualinesti than he can, as they despise him because his father was human.

Or take the Harry Potter universe. Hagrid is half-giant. Remus is afraid to have children because he's worried that his lycanthropy could be passed to them (everyone keeps telling him he's wrong, but he still worries about it). Fleur Delacour is half-Veela. Professor Flitwick is half-Goblin. Hermione's cat, depending on which version of the source material you read, is sometimes described as half-cat, half-kneazle.

As long as a story's in-universe genetics is applied consistently (or has a damn good explanation for any inconsistencies), it should be okay. Just because Middle Earth elves have certain traits, you can't expect the elves in Harry Potter to share those traits. They're entirely different fantasy milieux.

I read some Nancy Drew ....and Little Women

I think I caught my grandfather reading a Nancy Drew book once. But his reading choices were varied, and he looked forward to whenever I got back from the library, as there was usually a variety of science fiction and mysteries there (as the years went by and I got more into SF, the mysteries tended to be for my grandmother).

Of course by that time I was building a rather extensive personal library of my own - something that's helped save my sanity during the pandemic as I don't need to be concerned that the public library is closed. I have my own library full of books, many of which I haven't read yet. My current night-time reading is a historical novel that takes place between the Plantagenets and Tudors. Henry VII is about to be crowned in another three chapters or so.

IIRC, Alcott's plan for Jo was exactly that: to be an independent, self-realized woman happy to run her own school. But then she was drowned by fan mail, all telling her that Jo and Laurie belonged together.

And, apparently, she was incensed enough that she concocted from thin air the middle-aged professor Bhaer, who would marry Jo...

Ghah. As I recall, Amy was the one who married Laurie, Beth died, and I don't remember who Meg married (I always considered Meg to be the most boring character in that novel).

@Valka D'Ur It's likely a nick of Laurence. Laurie is a unisex name and nick. It's also a surname.

"Laurie" is considered a feminine name in these parts. And yes, I know it's used as a surname.

 

[lymond]

...... historical novel that takes place between the Plantagenets and Tudors. ....
.

Have you read Dorothy Dunnett?

My backlog is now mostly on my Kindle...

 

[Joij21]

And so? Is this turning into another 'elitist liberals' complaint? One that apparently gives people a pass to think and do whatever they want because of time-honoured traditions, eh?

People generally don't like overly pretentious people, they come off as *******s.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Have you read Dorothy Dunnett?

My backlog is now mostly on my Kindle...

Never heard of her. The book I'm currently reading is by Philippa Gregory.

 

[Yeekim]

What would making a few hobbits have different skin tones change?

If it does not change anything, is it an argument for casting black actors as hobbits, or against it?
What it does, is it subverts people's expectations. I think most people hate that (but @Sommerswerd said others might enjoy it). Myself, I am certainly in the first camp, although there are exceptions. For instance, Rivendell - reading the Hobbit as a kid, I imagined something very rustic, cozy, wooden... definitely not what we saw in LOTR movies. However, I eventually grew to accept the movie version, since it arguably represents an improvement over my own simplistic vision and is consistent with the concept of the elves as ancient, sophisticated race. It is hard to see any qualitative improvement in simply changing someone's skin color though.
It is also quite clear that these changes are not made because of in-story reasons, but for real-life reasons. Having an all-white cast in a major US production, even where source material demands this, would be "impractical" - i.e. it would likely invite trouble. Negative press, racism allegations, possibly trouble with unions or even lawsuits? Therefore, storytelling considerations are sacrificed to the real-world needs. Depending on which characters are changed, the sacrifice may be insignificant, and real-world social justice (used unironically) indeed should take precedence over something as frivolous as how enjoyable a movie or a TV show may be.
Then again, one may question whether there might be better ways for improving both.
For instance, we could start by making a proper adaptation of Earthsea series where Ged is played by someone brown, as he was originally written.

 

[Gorbles]

I'm stumped at how I can make it any clearer.
The settings in which the events take place is supposed to give a vibe of (mythical) northern Europe. You are telling me that you don't see how throwing in people whose appearance give vibes of completely different places has no bearing on the feeling of the settings ?
That's exactly like telling me "I don't see the problem with putting people in Nikes and blue jeans has any bearing on the settings being medieval". It doesn't fit the setting, and it gives it a different atmosphere.

Northern Europe? I'm pretty sure (though I don't have my copies to hand) that the Shire was literally an English, or British, parallel. That's pretty firmly, geographically, Western Europe. Over here "the North" typically means a specific half of England (and weirdly not often Scotland. Scotland is Scotland, the North is Yorkshire, Cumbria, etc. Anecdotally).

I don't know if I'm quibbling too much. We're focusing here on LotR and I'm fine with that. I'm sure I'm not alone in loving the Legendarium. My default is "detail", so feel free to stop me or nitpick in kind at any point.

What I'm struggling to understand is that I've mentioned I think twice now that minorities exist in Europe. And have done for centuries. Not just in the context of slavery. Sure, at times they'll have had to have been exceptional individuals, but that's the entire point of the characters in LotR. So I genuinely don't see the problem in making the cast diverse. Even if we assume absolute, ironclad adherence to historical norms, they can absolutely be justified. No?

(perhaps not black Numenoreans, but I used that to try to support a separate argument)

Also, again, Tolkien explicitely described how the people looked and their appearance was related to from where they came. It's downright contradicting the source material here.

So, personally, I don't care so long as the story is relevant and interesting. I mean, I care at some basic level, but I care more about the overall quality and coherence of the adaptation. That's why we call them adaptations, imo. We adapt them. And yes, this often means by the format (book to movie) but we also obviously mean by the social context in which the piece is adapted.

We explain away historical adaptations, at times, as being "products of their time". Why doesn't that apply to modern adaptations? They're products of the here and now. If you want to justify a historically-accurate re-enactment of a fantasy epic cast with modern actors and actresses - perhaps that needs to be your argument. You need to balance that adherence against the right, most-suited actors and actresses for the role. It's 2021. They're not all going to be white anymore, imo.

EDIT

If it does not change anything, is it an argument for casting black actors as hobbits, or against it?

If it doesn't change anything, it's a non-argument. I was responding to a claim that it would change something.

If it doesn't change anything for the worse, there's literally nothing to continue the tangent with.

 

[RobAnybody]

A grown ass man crying in a Target while doing Christmas shopping is going to be invisible.

I think it's kinda the opposite. That man is going to go viral & get laughed at across the internet. He's going to be ridiculed from social media, to talk shows, to personal gatherings ("Did you see Target Guy? OMG!").