Importance of white representation in fiction

[lymond]

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

I highly suggest looking her up

 

[Birdjaguar]

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!").

Who, what demographic, would do the ridiculing?

 

[Birdjaguar]

I highly suggest looking her up

The House of Niccolò is just superb.

 

[lymond]

The House of Niccolò is just superb.

Chronicles of Lymond even better!

 

[RobAnybody]

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!").

Who, what demographic, would do the ridiculing?

The bolded. Twitter, Jimmy Kimmel, Happy Hour, Fox News, Thanksgiving dinner, TikTok, CFC, group texts, etc. The whole spectrum of demographics.

Do you disagree that some guy who melted down & cried in the middle of Target would become a viral sensation? And not in a good way? It wouldn't be everyone saying "leave Target Guy alone! he doesn't have to be stoic!"

 

[Farm Boy]

Nah. It's not a matter of simply not being a dick and drawing attention to it. It's the space that just clears around somebody that's clearly upset. There's a lot out there on the stigma of grief, which seems to apply to both genders. Since the debate was regarding the masculinity of the trait. The question is if the treatment past that differs in the case of emotionally distraught individuals. Anger counts here too.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

I'll consider it (just looked up the author's name and it looks like it's quite an investment of time and research.

 

[Hygro]

“Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.”

As such, sometimes over telling a story, or over building a world, takes us out of the story. For example, midichlorians. Maybe, maybe all the Elves being one color makes sense for an Elven Purity kind of aesthetic, to show how narrow the Elves are. But nowhere in the quest to end the Ring of Power do the humans need to be white to wear armor, wield swords, speak in poetic English, and engage in feats of bravery and camaraderie. Having all white people is not unlike, for me, taking scene to explain the physics of the force magic. I'm not "color blind" but while clothes are important to tell you about the different people in Middle Earth, skin isn't.

When I was a child, I was the dungeon master of a game, and my friend was playing a human. He wanted his human to be dark skinned. I forbade it because it hurt my fragile white medieval aesthetic. So childish. I used to feel like you, Akka, but now when I consume fantasy today, I also am awake to the context. I don't need my fantasy to scratch an itch of whiteness. And when I see fantasy scratching that itch for others, I ask why? And in asking why, I'm no longer looking in through the story, but looking at the story, and the author, and our society.

@RobAnybody makes a cool case that these people are so isolated that homogenizing any given faction makes some sense. But that can be displayed, and is, through fashion. Rohan has the viking helmets, Gondor has something newer. And they aren't really selling it when the similarity is "white" instead of only casting from one inbred village in remote Europe for each tribe.

edit: finished incomplete sentence.

 

[emzie]

@Hygro I love you dude

Edit: but no hetero

 

[RobAnybody]

Nah. It's not a matter of simply not being a dick and drawing attention to it. It's the space that just clears around somebody that's clearly upset. There's a lot out there on the stigma of grief, which seems to apply to both genders. Since the debate was regarding the masculinity of the trait. The question is if the treatment past that differs in the case of emotionally distraught individuals. Anger counts here too.

I'm not saying you're wrong in how it *should be* perceived. But, regardless of *why* said hypothetical man broke down & cried in the middle of Target, do you doubt that it would initially be shared as "OMG! Watch: Dude Cries in Lane 14 of Target!!" ?

Certainly it may come out later that he had just received some heart-breaking news, & some people might modify their opinion later, but upon initial viewing, I contend the vast majority of the population who viewed his viral meltdown would laugh at him. Whole point here is not to denigrate this hypothetical person, but to point out how a man overtly, publicly not being stoic is still, in this day & age (always wanted to use that phrase), viewed as something to ridicule?

 

[RobAnybody]

I don't need my fantasy to scratch an itch of whiteness. And when I see fantasy scratching that itch for others, I ask why? And in asking why, I'm no longer looking in through the story, but looking at the story, and the author, and our society.

I think this can be turned around, though: If a character in the original story is presented as white, why must the itch for diversity be scratched to change them in the adaptation? And in asking why, I'm no longer looking in through the story, but looking at the story, and the author, and our society.

If the answer is "because diversity", then it's not to further the story, clearly, but to further a concept outside the story itself.

 

[Hygro]

I think this can be turned around, though: If a character in the original story is presented as white, why must the itch for diversity be scratched to change them in the adaptation? And in asking why, I'm no longer looking in through the story, but looking at the story, and the author, and our society.

If the answer is "because diversity", then it's not to further the story, clearly, but to further a concept outside the story itself.

The extra work is saying "whites only" in the casting call. No one has to be pushing diversity for hollywood to give you a rainbow. They filmed LOTR in New Zealand so that can be pretty white, but it looked deliberately exclusive, seeing it in 2021.

 

[Angst]

Was trying to spot when it went from a general discussion to focusing on Tolkien, and found it as a side-y quip by Hygro that got picked up on, because of course that's what happened. Here goes.

IMO the milk world of Tolkien works pretty well, but it does have a myriad of isses that take it far from the complexity of the real world, race is not the only thing here. It doesn't even represent medieval Western Europe that well, it's more of an idea of what it was as an incarnation of worldbuilding, deliberately glorifying it, which is why I get Hygro's discomfort with it. While I adore a lot of Tolkien's worldbuilding, the general structure of the world is quite simplistic. There's a lot of detail in it, but the world isn't structurally complex in a broad sense. Like, making subdivisions of angels under God adds detail, but it's still Catholicism vs Evil. Tolkien was more interested in emulating mythology, creating languages and inferring that history is one big arrow downwards than creating societes with actual complexity. This doesn't mean they're not good books, it's more that it's not the world to look for if one wants complex society portrayed. It's something to look for if you like mythology, swords and Romantic notions of medieval knighthood, ethnicity and monarchy. There's a charm to having an ascended extra showing up out of nowhere killing Smaug, even if it's kind of ridiculous when you're writing a story, because stuff like that happens a lot in old stories, it's neat to recognize. Later fantasy generally abandoned the simplicity of Beowulf and went more into grays.

For OP, I believe all representation has value, but white representation is so saturated it's not really needed at this point. White people have an abundance of mainstream material to engage with easily. There's so much being produced that they'll never even get to experience all of it, no matter how hard they try. So I don't have much sympathy with angry white men feeling robbed over stuff like this. Let's say they remake the Lord of the Rings and insert more nonwhite characters on the side of Good. There's still one of the largest Hollywood productions in the world, a good production even, where they get to see European cavalry murdering monsters of the Orient heroically.

Still, great world. Just not something you should look for much complexity in, racial or otherwise.

I know Tolkien nerds will punch me over this, and I understand. It's a great setting, and I understand how one gets attached to it. I am attached too. It's just that even slightly more complexity has been shown to be easily possible in most other fantasy settings I've engaged with.

I suspect the same general cause and effect applies here. People are satisfied when characters fit with how they have previously imagined them, but feel anger and disappointment when their expectations are made to fail.

I believe personally it's how aesthetics work in general, and it goes beyond music and even art. There's psychological support for it, but there's some really approachable literature on the matter. I suggest reading John Frow's Genre, the introductionary chapter outlines how this can be approached on a humanities level (ie understandable for people with a general sense of academic literature can probably pick up on it). Frow believes that all communication is precluded by genre; where here genre isn't like the industrial market segmentation, but a more foundational question of framing. We engage with material through frameworks that presuppose certain material are to be present with a certain quality, and that this quality should be engaged with through the framework - something that aligns a surprising amount with the concept of genre, except genres aren't umbrellas materials sit under, but rather multiple frameworks (material never has one genre, rather it uses many). The idea that things should be divided in genres in the sense of Spotify or bookstores is an industrial practice and mostly a shorthand, not really reflecting how material actually works. There are also a multitude of genres that are not part of the industrial environment, such as conversation, which is further subdivided into stuff like family conversations, forum posts, Instagram DMs. Genres this way don't just presuppose aesthetic effect, but construction of meaning.

Basically, whether material is succesful depends on whether it is properly framed and engaged with through your understanding of how the material works. If I listen to a rock song, I know its structures somewhat, and the material engages with my understanding of it. I can also engage with a material deliberately by misappropriating a genre the material creator didn't intend, and sometimes it works. Frow does a thought experiment early on, reframing a crap newspaper clickbait-esque headline, and trying to read it as a poem (although he does a mistake of praxis by adding a line durnig the experiment), noting that it also works well as a poem, and that basically everything in it changes inference and meaning.

Man, I went on longer there than I should have. There's more detail in the book. Better phrased than me, too, as always, I'm rambling.

 

[Farm Boy]

I'm not saying you're wrong in how it *should be* perceived. But, regardless of *why* said hypothetical man broke down & cried in the middle of Target, do you doubt that it would initially be shared as "OMG! Watch: Dude Cries in Lane 14 of Target!!" ?

Certainly it may come out later that he had just received some heart-breaking news, & some people might modify their opinion later, but upon initial viewing, I contend the vast majority of the population who viewed his viral meltdown would laugh at him. Whole point here is not to denigrate this hypothetical person, but to point out how a man overtly, publicly not being stoic is still, in this day & age (always wanted to use that phrase), viewed as something to ridicule?

I'm not really talking *should* in that sense either. I don't think most people would laugh. Certainly not in person. Most people are not that much of a jerk and they're simply not that invested. There is a stigma, they'll move away. Sure, some few people are enormous douchebags, and they're cruel. Also, some people are unusually kind. Some of the cruel may share something like that once filmed online, and safe behind screen "better men" will then laugh safely at the cruelty. And that's not unintentional, I don't think, in this regard. Even if they're kind and just uneasy, nobody wants to see your ****. While that's true across men and women, I'm guessing it's more true for men? Almost, if not, everywhere?

 

[RobAnybody]

Oh, you're talking in person when it happens. You're right there, no doubt. I'm talking about when one random person films it & it goes viral & a few seconds of the incident shows up on the internet & that's all most of the country sees.

 

[emzie]

The bolded. Twitter, Jimmy Kimmel, Happy Hour, Fox News, Thanksgiving dinner, TikTok, CFC, group texts, etc. The whole spectrum of demographics.

Do you disagree that some guy who melted down & cried in the middle of Target would become a viral sensation? And not in a good way? It wouldn't be everyone saying "leave Target Guy alone! he doesn't have to be stoic!"

I think there would be at first a round of mocking, then a day or two later a much larger backlash including a gofundme for the guy's therapy that raises at least 5 figures.

 

[aelf]

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.

Bold of you to claim that being against multi-culturalism is racist. I mean, you might be right here, but that's something you'd have to hash out with the anti-multiculturalists. I'm sure they'd disagree and provide you with reasons why.

I'm not saying you're wrong in how it *should be* perceived. But, regardless of *why* said hypothetical man broke down & cried in the middle of Target, do you doubt that it would initially be shared as "OMG! Watch: Dude Cries in Lane 14 of Target!!" ?

Frow believes that all communication is precluded by genre; where here genre isn't like the industrial market segmentation, but a more foundational question of framing. We engage with material through frameworks that presuppose certain material are to be present with a certain quality, and that this quality should be engaged with through the framework - something that aligns a surprising amount with the concept of genre, except genres aren't umbrellas materials sit under, but rather multiple frameworks (material never has one genre, rather it uses many).

I'm lumping these quotes together because I realised something that seems to tie them together. We might necessarily understand the world through certain frameworks or lenses, but then we can go on to ask what specific frameworks we are using and whether we should continue to use them.

I realised that a common subtext in this thread is how frameworks created by dead old white men are still dominant in our pysche. I brought up earlier the fact that we're so used to the genre of fantasy taking place in a white European medieval setting, that we automatically assume people coming from a rural area in a fantasy world must be white or close to it (hence the default white hobbits or Two Rivers folk). Sure, city people might be mixed, but not the idllyic rural setting untouched by 'impure' influences.

And when we think about heroic male figures, we tend to assume they're stoic. Or, rather, we have a certain way of looking at stoicity - for example, not just being able to bear hardship without complaint but also refraining from mourning publicly (public mourning was the thing that made people think Lan is less manly in the show).

These assumptions can and should be questioned, but people tend to get testy when they're invited to do so. And this isn't just about aesthetics, art or communication. I saw how people like @Quintillus assume that any mention of history must be coming from a Whiggish view of historical progression. I suppose the grandfather stories are true - some things are culturally or socially ingrained in us. And our first reaction is to reject anything that runs counter to those. To rise above that takes some learning and getting used to it, which doesn't happen when people deflect or refuse to tackle the origins of their assumptions.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Bold of you to claim that being against multi-culturalism is racist. I mean, you might be right here, but that's something you'd have to hash out with the anti-multiculturalists. I'm sure they'd disagree and provide you with reasons why.

You're the one who linked "purists" with being against multiculturalism. I'm saying it sounds like you're accusing us of having racist attitudes. It's not an unreasonable conclusion, especially given your constant hostile tone in this and other threads.

 

[Akka]

When I was a child, I was the dungeon master of a game, and my friend was playing a human. He wanted his human to be dark skinned. I forbade it because it hurt my fragile white medieval aesthetic. So childish. I used to feel like you, Akka, but now when I consume fantasy today, I also am awake to the context. I don't need my fantasy to scratch an itch of whiteness. And when I see fantasy scratching that itch for others, I ask why? And in asking why, I'm no longer looking in through the story, but looking at the story, and the author, and our society.

You're taking it completely backward in an absolutely ridiculous way. You're not aware of the context, or you wouldn't be surprised to see white people in a story that is explicitely cast in a white-people locale. You're, on the contrary, blind to the story context and instead inserting your own newfound "enlightment" even when it's completely misplaced. You're twisting people's argument which are about "fitting the context of the story" into some sort of "white power" bullcrap that you made up in your mind.

Were you annoyed at the lack of racial diversity in "Hero" too ? Why aren't you protesting about the lack of white and black people in this story ?

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).

Well, the British Isles are both part of Western and Northern Europe, and Tolkien explicitely took a lot of inspiration from Viking myths. Not a really important point anyway.

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?

You can certainly add a few background character where they fit (not in the Shire or in Bree, which are explicitely remote locations wary of strangers where even someone from a few miles away is perceived as "queer", but certainly in Gondor for example). But the main cast is pretty well described, so you would just purposely miscast someone just for diversity sake ?

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.

Yeah, no, precisely. If you want to change the setting, don't make an adaptation, make a new story. Or make an adaptation where the twist is precisely that it's cast in a new setting.
No point in morphing the setting and losing the flavour just because some people have an obsession with inserting their current political pet peeve into works that existed without it.

 

[aelf]

You're not aware of the context, or you wouldn't be surprised to see white people in a story that is explicitely cast in a white-people locale.

Well, the British Isles are both part of Western and Northern Europe, and Tolkien explicitely took a lot of inspiration from Viking myths.

It's strange how the same argument doesn't apply when a universe is inspired by non-Western cultures and ideas. The Wheel of Time, for example. Yet people complain about 'woke' casting because few of the main characters are fully white.

Again, the assumption seems to be that just because it's fantasy or it's made in the West, the default race of the actors should be white.