Obviously this title could apply to a lot of things, but I’ve been stewing over a particular set of things it’s easier not to do/be.
It’s easier not to be political. See, once you start digging into ideas of feminism and anti-ableism and the like, you start seeing sexism and ableism and racism and sizeism and heterosexism and…fill-in-the-blankism everywhere. Ism ism ism ism ism! And when you see them, they sting more. They make you angry more. They frustrate you more. They make you wonder about other people more. They make you wonder if you can actually make a difference.
To give you a very basic idea, you see them in TV. My boyfriend and I have recently started watching the show Jeremiah though our netflix subscription. Jeremiah is a post-apocalyptic show, set 15 years after a virus that killed everyone in the world above the age of puberty. We’ve watched a grand total of 2 episodes at this point. So far, I’ve been seeing race fail and sex fail. The race fail: 1) the hero is white, the sidekick (who is also the more comic of the two) is black; 2) when they appear to pair off in the first episode, the white hero pairs off with a white woman while the black sidekick pairs off with a woman who appears to be multiracial; 3) the white hero is noble and self-sacrificing and has some higher goals; the black side-kick is clever but rather cowardly and selfish; 4) black characters are supposed to appear ‘ghetto’ but not white characters; 5) people of color have to be saved from white supremacist group by white hero (who is helped by black sidekick and other white dude, but the ideas on how to rescue them belong to white hero); 6) kidnapped woman has to be saved by white hero. The gender fail: 1) both hero and sidekick are male; 2) women-as-commodity; 3) women walking around half naked while men are fully clothed; 4) female sex-workers, but no male sex-workers; 5) (as mentioned in race fail) the woman who gets kidnapped and is going to be gang-raped by her kidnappers gets saved by hero; 6) the only surviving carrier of the virus from 15 years ago is female – she is trapped in an airtight room, a lab, and kept alive in the hopes that someone will learn to make vaccines from her blood and save the rest of the world if the virus comes again – so we have in this instance alone: woman must be taken care of (by a male character, of course), woman as passive vessel for the virus, woman as potential cure for the world, woman who lives only because she might save others.
I’m not even touching the ideas of ableism there, because we don’t meet people with disabilities in the world of Jeremiah thus far. Which is, of course, its own ableism – either the idea that people with disabilities couldn’t adapt to living in the post-apocalyptic world of Jeremiah OR the erasure of people with disabilities even though they make up circa 20% of the population.
It’s harder to just relax and enjoy things when you keep getting bitten by all these little fails and problems. When you keep noticing that advertising, shows, the conversation of people around you, is loaded with -isms. It’s hard to not have reservations about things, because there are so many little twingy things that keep poking out at you.
Life was a lot simpler when I wasn’t quite so political, when I wasn’t quite so aware. I don’t want to shut off that awareness, because I know it’s important for me to see these things and call them out. I just occasionally wish for the days when I didn’t see all of this. It gets downright depressing when you realize that nothing, NOTHING is without -isms and fail.
…even you. That may be the hardest part. When you notice patterns in your own thinking, in your own speech, that are full of -isms. That you have to continually be aware and be willing to change if you are trying to fully commit to the idea of a world without discrimination. It’s hard. It’s REALLY hard. When you notice that the language that you’ve used since you were a child is problematic, you can’t just say ‘okay, so I’ll stop’. It keeps creeping in. And so you call the driver lame, or a spaz, or stupid. And perhaps the worst part is, sometimes you don’t even catch that you’ve said it.
You’re absolutely right. It IS hard not to notice all those “-isms” once your mind has been opened to them. And voicing your beliefs and observations about people and culture can make it very difficult to interact pleasantly with others who have differing opinions. But your “politics” are valid, Kali, and we live in a world where people and our culture really are either insensitive or ignorant in regard to sexism, racism, ableism and the myriad other “-isms.” I’d like to think that most of us would prefer not to belittle or insult others, but I’m probably naive about that.
What to do, then? I admire your ferocity about the problem, and your dedication to changing it through education and enlightenment. I also understand your frustration. I hope you’ll keep fighting, though. You’ve taught me a lot and made me think with your blog posts; many of the problems you’ve written about are regarding things I’d never have noticed or known about otherwise. Real change takes a lot of time, though, and while I believe we’ve come a very long way in the last Century as it pertains to many of the “-isms,” we’ve still got a long way to go. It’s sensitive, caring, outspoken people like you who pave the way for change for the better. Thank you for what you do. Maybe you won’t change the world, but you’ve certainly planted the seeds of change in the minds of the people you communicate with — people like me. And we’ll remember.
-Wren
Oh, I’ll fight, alright. I’ll fight because to me, the only other option is to put the blinders back on. And I can’t imagine doing that.
To live aware of the problems and not fight is something I’m not really capable of. I am a spitfire, for better or for worse. I try to remember, though, that the most effective fighting is doing things like I do here – pulling the issues out into the open for people who are willing to change – not loud arguments with closed minds. I did a lot of the latter when I was younger, and managed to burn myself out for a year or two. I try to avoid burning myself out again.
~Kali
I agree that being aware can make it more difficult to just sit back and enjoy the entertainment that’s available. But, on the other hand, being so invested in these issues can also make situations with no bias seem biased.
I’ve never seen the show, but why is it a “fail” that the hero is white? Now, if the sidekick is stereotyped, that’s different (The Lone Ranger and Tanto come to mind). But I don’t see the hero being white and the sidekick being black as a fail in and of itself. That’s like saying that white people can’t be heros because they are white and that’s insensitive, which is just as bad as saying black people can’t be heros because they’re black and incapable of heroism. It’s racism either way.
To put it another way, I’m working on a novel. The main character is a white, able-bodied girl (with superhuman abilities). No bias or prejudice is intended. By having my character be white I’m not saying she’s a hero so she has to be white. It’s just how this character came into my mind. Another character will have a mixed ethnicity that gives her an “exotic” beauty. She’s also a “bad guy.” She’s not an antagonist because she’s mixed. If there’s any social commentary laid into that vision it’s that her beauty allows her to hide her true nature from another character who doesn’t realize she is an antagonist.
My point is that, as a writer, I select the ethnicities of my characters based on what feels right for that character and for me. The deeper involved I will be in the character’s psyche the more likely it is that the character is going to be both white and female and somewhat odd, because that is what I know best, being white and female and somewhat odd myself.
At the same time, one of my favorite series (which reminds me I need a new copy of the first book) is written by a black woman. The feel of the book is strongly affected by the author’s race and her personal experiences. It’s a feel I cannot duplicate. And I think it would be more presumptuous and insulting if I were to try, rather than acknowledge I understand white, middle class characters better.
Don’t get me wrong. I share your frustration that diversity is done so poorly in popular fiction. But I think that frustration also gives rise to risks to see more -ism than is actually there.
One of the things that I find upsetting in fiction (especially television that targets my children) is the token diversity. The character who is the one racially or ethnically diverse individual amongst an otherwise all-white cast and for whom his or her race/ethnicity is never a factor offends me a lot more than if the writers just acknowledged they didn’t know how to do a racially/ethnically diverse character justice and left them out. (Infinitely better, of course, is the writers and shows that make a point to do justice to diverse characters.)
I’ve had a lot of friends from a lot of backgrounds. Rich, middle-class or poor, I’ve never met a non-white person who was not shaped in some manner by their racial/ethnic heritage. Sometimes it’s prejudice that shapes them, sometimes it’s differences in traditions, and sometimes it’s the problems they face that I don’t–something as simple as living in a predominantly white area and thus having a poor selection of makeup in appropriate shades. But to have that element of who the character is not reflected in how that character is written seems a lot more disrespectful and racist to me than to leave the character out. Honestly, I’m not sure which is worse, a stereotyped “diverse” character or a token “diverse” character who is stereotypically white in every other way.
Improvement is needed, but we also need to be sure our “improvement” doesn’t make things worse in a different way.
It’s fail that the hero is white because the hero is almost always white in Hollywood productions. Almost always assumed to be white in fiction narratives. The problem is that it’s contributing to a cultural base that says that heroes are white.
There are certainly worse things that can be done, like white-washing the entire cast or making the people of color incredibly stereotyped. However, the fact that those are worse does NOT mean that the problems I talked about aren’t bad. We don’t have to choose between bad options, we CAN acknowledge that they’re both bad.
Writing a character who is of mixed race or non-white ethnicity as an ‘exotic’ beauty is also problematic. See http://www.racialicious.com/2010/02/04/why-date-or-marry-asian-women/ for example.
~Kali
I would agree that having so much fiction have heros who are white is bad, but that doesn’t make the individual story a fail on that point. When it is perceived that way it just leads to the white writers writing unauthentic characters that are only different on the surface while retaining their white feel. Instead, I would say that demonstrates the fail of diversity in the industries, which is a distinct problem with a different solution.
We need more diversity in our entertainment industries–writers, directors, ect.–and we need them to have “permission” to make books, movies, and television shows that reflect their own heritage, experiences, and ideas (I don’t particularly like the idea that “permission” should be necessary, but at the same time producers and publishers are not known for receiving these works well). And we need those books, movies, and television shows to be marketed to the general public, not just to sub-sets of the population.
“Raisin in the Sun” proved, in a way, that a general audience could appreciate a non-white perspective, other stories have as well since that story first made it to Broadway; and yet the standard white perspective is still very dominant–and that’s the fail that I see.
As per the “exotic” beauty: The story is sci-fi involving a hostile alien race genetically manipulating people to be terrorists. The exotic factor comes from her beauty being heightened by that manipulation, not from her being racially mixed. (I was trying not to get into all of that, but I can see why my statement was misleading.)
One of the problems I have with our current society and the degradation of people with racial or ethnic differences, is that so much of our commercial culture emphasizes looking “white”. People with the curly, black hair go to great lengths to “tame” their hair to be more “acceptable.” Some of the products used are dangerous. One of the things I am exploring with this character is how, as part of the transformation process, she’s made to be both more exotic and more “acceptable”, but she’s also warped by it in a way that’s particular to her. (All the characters are warped by the forced change, and that’s part of the theme of the book.)
In short, I know how loaded the “exotic” beauty statement is and I’m trying to use it in the story to make a point. The whole theme of the book is to use sci-fi as an exaggeration tool to illustrate how we respond to our perceived differences. At the same time, I’m trying to write a plot-driven book, because it’s more likely to be read as such.
Thank-you for this. I really related to it, especially the bit about failing in my own language and thought. As I said elsewhere in response to your post, I think paying attention to this stuff makes me *a better person*, albeit a crappy small-talk conversationalist.
Om Mani Padma Hum
I did not read most of this thread. There was too much anger. I am a disabled person and I need as much serenity as I can muster just to function.
Thank you.
My biggest pet peeve right now is laundry commercials. I hate them. It’s always the woman, a mother, doing the laundry and it’s usually a male, her husband or son, making huge messes that she is delighted to clean with her horribly scented detergent.
Don’t men do laundry? IF they are ever shown cleaning in mass media, it’s badly, and a woman will come in and show them how to do it right. Because it’s ingrained in us, or something.
The worst part is, in my house, I do all the laundry and my boyfriend makes all the stains. I hate fitting the stereotype. At least I don’t have any impishly cute soccer playing boy children getting stubborn grass stains on their white uniforms. I might just get TOO fulfilled.
/ laundry rant