Nope, you're not excused
Jun. 16th, 2010 04:10 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
matrilI've been thinking about this for a little while because I'm always reading too many essays about this or that issue in genre literature, and then over-analyzing my own work and worrying that I'm stumbling into every single pitfall. But anyway. This particular issue seems to be coming up a lot lately, perhaps because of the popularity of Avatar. I confess I haven't actually seen the film; I go to the movies about two or three times a year and can't go more regularly than that until they stop charging a fortune for a single movie ticket. I have to save up my quota so we can take the kids to see Toy Story 3. But that's another rant entirely.
This is about collective white guilt, as it were, and the things we do to try to expiate it. When I was younger I had no desire to see, for example, Pocahontas or Ferngully, because they seemed preachy and self-righteous and I wanted to be entertained, not sermonized to. Nowadays, they still seem preachy and self-righteous, but I've noticed something else about them that's more alarming. Namely, for all their touting of the value of indigenous cultures and the villainizing of those who don't appreciate those cultures, they still cast a member of the invading/dominant culture as the hero. Oh, he learns the error of his culture's ways and usually "goes native," but it still seems to be too much of a jump to just go ahead and make one of the indigenous culture the protagonist. It's worse than that, though. I can kind of sort of understand the justification that we need an entry point to this unfamiliar culture, and so this "white" culture character because an avatar (oops, punny) for our own journey into the Other. The trouble is that this hero, once he understands and embraces the new culture, proceeds to lead them to victory against their oppressors.
Really? Is that the best you can do? You can acknowledge that the other culture is of value, perhaps even morally superior to our own, but you can't quite make the stretch that they can accomplish great things without an enlightened white guy? Blah. It's a strange sort of subtle racism, and it bothers me. It gets worse. It all springs from collective white guilt, the feeling that our forebears did some pretty crummy things to a lot of different peoples, and the desire to somehow make up for that. That guilt in itself isn't necessarily bad. The problem is when it gives rise to this superficial sort of expiation that stories like this achieve, in basically creating a noble white guy to show "Look, that's like me. I wouldn't have been a jerk; I would have been nice to you guys."
But let's be realistic. Exploitative cultures had context; they had history and baggage and centuries of building up a particular mindset about the Other. It wasn't just a handful of bad guys; it was widespread. If you want to make up for what happened, you have to delve in and find out why; uncover those deep-seated assumptions and traditions that infused an entirely culture. When you just re-write history with the indigenous culture winning thanks to a superficial change of mindset, it's insulting, and it does nothing to really expiate the problem. It gets the adrenaline going, and it feels good on a simplistic level to see the jerky bigots get their comeuppance, but does it really change how we view the Other? That's not to mention the tendency to mysticize the natives, to paint them as all-knowing, superior - and hence not really like us, not really comprehensible. They're human too. Deserving of respectful treatment, and capable of making mistakes. It goes both ways.
I suppose I try to sidestep a lot of this in my own work by writing in imaginary worlds. ;) Of course, there's always metaphor. Pandora's imaginary, but that doesn't stop it from being a great big obvious metaphor for every exploited people on Earth. So I'm trying to be careful. If ever I do write something about exploited cultures, real or otherwise, I'll try to research the heck out of it, and give the natives something to do other than conveniently provide the protagonist with his enlightenment and follow him into battle when he becomes a better native than they are. :P
This is about collective white guilt, as it were, and the things we do to try to expiate it. When I was younger I had no desire to see, for example, Pocahontas or Ferngully, because they seemed preachy and self-righteous and I wanted to be entertained, not sermonized to. Nowadays, they still seem preachy and self-righteous, but I've noticed something else about them that's more alarming. Namely, for all their touting of the value of indigenous cultures and the villainizing of those who don't appreciate those cultures, they still cast a member of the invading/dominant culture as the hero. Oh, he learns the error of his culture's ways and usually "goes native," but it still seems to be too much of a jump to just go ahead and make one of the indigenous culture the protagonist. It's worse than that, though. I can kind of sort of understand the justification that we need an entry point to this unfamiliar culture, and so this "white" culture character because an avatar (oops, punny) for our own journey into the Other. The trouble is that this hero, once he understands and embraces the new culture, proceeds to lead them to victory against their oppressors.
Really? Is that the best you can do? You can acknowledge that the other culture is of value, perhaps even morally superior to our own, but you can't quite make the stretch that they can accomplish great things without an enlightened white guy? Blah. It's a strange sort of subtle racism, and it bothers me. It gets worse. It all springs from collective white guilt, the feeling that our forebears did some pretty crummy things to a lot of different peoples, and the desire to somehow make up for that. That guilt in itself isn't necessarily bad. The problem is when it gives rise to this superficial sort of expiation that stories like this achieve, in basically creating a noble white guy to show "Look, that's like me. I wouldn't have been a jerk; I would have been nice to you guys."
But let's be realistic. Exploitative cultures had context; they had history and baggage and centuries of building up a particular mindset about the Other. It wasn't just a handful of bad guys; it was widespread. If you want to make up for what happened, you have to delve in and find out why; uncover those deep-seated assumptions and traditions that infused an entirely culture. When you just re-write history with the indigenous culture winning thanks to a superficial change of mindset, it's insulting, and it does nothing to really expiate the problem. It gets the adrenaline going, and it feels good on a simplistic level to see the jerky bigots get their comeuppance, but does it really change how we view the Other? That's not to mention the tendency to mysticize the natives, to paint them as all-knowing, superior - and hence not really like us, not really comprehensible. They're human too. Deserving of respectful treatment, and capable of making mistakes. It goes both ways.
I suppose I try to sidestep a lot of this in my own work by writing in imaginary worlds. ;) Of course, there's always metaphor. Pandora's imaginary, but that doesn't stop it from being a great big obvious metaphor for every exploited people on Earth. So I'm trying to be careful. If ever I do write something about exploited cultures, real or otherwise, I'll try to research the heck out of it, and give the natives something to do other than conveniently provide the protagonist with his enlightenment and follow him into battle when he becomes a better native than they are. :P
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no subject
Date: 2010-06-19 06:38 am (UTC)Personally, I'd like one day to see a book which the hero holds views about race/culture that are pretty much typical of his time, and yet manages to get good things done anyway - think that would ever make it to publication? :) (The only example I can think of where that's been done is the Flashman books, and the protagonist's whole purpose in life is to avoid being a hero, so the author managed to pull it off there).
no subject
Date: 2010-06-19 01:46 pm (UTC)I would LOVE to see a non-anachronistic hero/ine working within the confines of his/her culture, but I highly doubt it's going to happen.