So, I've arrived at the conclusion that before I write any more articles, I'll need to establish a few centers for reference so that whoever reads stuff on my blog(assuming there are such beings) can know a bit of the context in which I say what I say. So, in this article, I'd like to discuss one of the latest of a problem we are faced with in a long line of such problems.
So first, let's try and understand the historical basis so we can better understand the problem we are faced with.
Narratives always contain the opinions and thereby the prejudices of its authors. As such, it's only natural that an author living in a conservative society such as 16th century England will have some of these conservative ideas reflected in his work as well. So, if his society believes that a woman's primary role in society is to look pretty and provide a means of passing on the man's legacy (child- bearing machines), then it's quite likely that an author who belongs to this society will hold this or other such prejudicial views(Of course, there will always be artists who challenge the existing notion of what is considered proper by society).
And so, throughout time, we see these ideas get transformed into deep- rooted prejudices, and these are passed on from narrative to narrative. The interesting factor here is that even when the society abandons (overtly at least) its old ideas as having been too conservative, the narratives still continue using them in a case I like to call 'narrative prejudice'. A part of this at least can be explained by the fact that artists are always influenced by older artists and their older art that came before them. This does not mean that they always follow in their footsteps. On the contrary, artistic movements are constantly rejected and are replaced by newer ones that the artists connected to them feel are more relevant.It may even be cyclical in the way that ideas related to older movements may be later seen to be more important than the existing ones. And yet, certain elements which we now know as 'tropes' continue to be used for reasons such as their convenience(this being that someone's already done it before, so not much thought needs to be spent on it) and familiarity. So, even if society as a whole now believes it is wrong for women to be discriminated against, narratives continued to use the old tropes that portray women as anything but.
But of course, it's not long before society catches up with narratives that use such 'regressive' tropes and demands for a reformation in the world of sexist, racist and otherist narratives. And so, all of a sudden, the writers and filmmakers are faced with a problem of having lost a trope they relied on all these years to pass their work off as art, and they turn around and find- what they think- is the only possible solution to the problem: to do the opposite. Before you think that the opposite of sexism is no- sexism or equality of the sexes, think again because experience has taught us that the opposite is simply a different kind of sexism.
So, suddenly, the old damsels in distress are replaced by gun- wielding, ass- kicking, superwomen which is still as sexist as the 'damsel' trope or maybe even more so. Because what this says is that women need to do 'masculine' stuff to be accorded respect. And all the while, if such a strong female character is still incapable of exercising her agency, then we are faced with a problem as is seen in The Hunger Games.
So, now that society has recognized the limitations and implications of the old tropes where women were helpless and all black guys were aggressive or short- tempered, writers are quickly abandoning them only to replace them with just as bad tropes such as the trope of the black best friend.
I find it disturbing to simply throw in a butt-kicking shallow female character, or a couple of African- Americans(as if they're ingredients: a kilo of Mexicans, a couple of Chinese dudes, etc and done!) to justify the moral sense of the work itself. But then again, things always tend to work this way. Reactionary ideas can be as problematic as the ideas they reject, as evidenced by the problem of a work like Game of Thrones rejecting the moral premise of The Lord of the Rings.
In part at least, I think such developments are the result of the kinds of criticisms that were levied against works that used the old tropes. I'm sure these criticisms were well- meaning, but good intentions are not enough to make other people make well- realized art. And honestly, I think the writers themselves largely miss the point since they just jump from one kind of racism and sexism to another kind each time the one kind is criticized.
And then, in time, I started noticing a curious shift in the way texts were dealing with these problems, and one of the first places I noticed it was in video games, especially role- playing ones such as Dragon Age or Mass Effect where regardless of what race or sex you choose for your character, the narrative treats you the same. The implications of this is that regardless of what kind of character you choose to play, it is your actions that define your character. Now this kind of works in such a scenario because of the fact that it's an RPG and such games are all about showing you the effects or consequences of the decisions you've made along your quest/journey/etc. There's also an element of convenience involved where the developers don't have to write different scripts or lines of dialogue based on racial or sex differences. Also, no one can accuse these narratives of displaying racist or sexist prejudices since well, they do not have anything overtly racist or sexist in them. Now, critique of such works praised these elements of 'equality' present in these narratives.
And all this seems fine until you look at it from another perspective. Up until a while ago, narratives used physical deformities or 'ugliness' to portray evil or morally reprehensible characters. Of course, these tropes have been subverted in various texts throughout the ages. And when it comes to films of the '90s and before, you were bound to come across the comic- relief character with some physical abnormality who is funny specifically because of this physical abnormality. But of course, criticism was levied on texts which simply used characters with physical deformities as something to be laughed at or made fun of. And it must have been around this time that the writers and filmmakers struck upon an ingenious idea: to remove the source of the criticism itself. In other words, they realized that a solution would be to simply 'remove' ugly characters from the work itself. So, whereas earlier we had villains be ugly, now the villains are sexy too. Hell, everyone's sexy now: from the protagonist to the antagonist to the comic relief characters. It's one bright world filled with rainbows!.... except it isn't. These texts still have no problem having violence and other 'ugly' themes in them, but they just want to have these while being politically correct. At least before, there *were* ugly characters (though not in enviable places). Now the ugly characters don't even get to have a place in a narrative. They are ignored.
And now, you see that with the example of the video games I mentioned earlier, the same is being done with the sexes and races. The narratives of women or men, and racial minorities who are discriminated against are simply ignored. It's a subtle kind of racism to have no racism at all in the text, since you're refusing to address the real problems of someone who is discriminated against in favor of pretending these people are not faced with any problems at all. In part, at least the perspective of audiences are to blame since we seem to think that since the author is fully in control of his work (especially when it comes to fantasy genres), he can remove all the unpleasant stuff that exist in the real world from his fictional world.
But what's the point of any fictional world if it does not deal with the concerns we're daily faced with in the real one?
And this is what I mean by the problem of a perfect world. Narratives that use such a 'Perfect World' setting are nothing but imperfect. Writing a female character just like you would a male one is well- meaning I'm sure, but this does lead to the disappearance of a large variety of narratives. Pretending like ugly characters don't exist is more offensive than portraying them in a negative light(at least they exist), I think. Besides, it's not as if the perfect world is really perfect, it's simply more politically correct. Comic- relief characters now tend to be intellectually lacking(though I'm sure it won't be long before we lose narratives involving stupid people as well) or something else if not that. What I mean is that when a criticism is levied saying that people who are not very intelligent shouldn't be made fun of, what's happening is that instead of writing meaningful stories involving these people, writers are finding it easier to simply get rid of them.
And so all in favor of badass women, and beautiful people, what's happened is that the narratives of the not-so-badass-women and ugly people who too have the right to have their stories told, have disappeared. And I know that I'd rather have an imperfect world narrative than a politically correct one any day of the week.
So first, let's try and understand the historical basis so we can better understand the problem we are faced with.
Narratives always contain the opinions and thereby the prejudices of its authors. As such, it's only natural that an author living in a conservative society such as 16th century England will have some of these conservative ideas reflected in his work as well. So, if his society believes that a woman's primary role in society is to look pretty and provide a means of passing on the man's legacy (child- bearing machines), then it's quite likely that an author who belongs to this society will hold this or other such prejudicial views(Of course, there will always be artists who challenge the existing notion of what is considered proper by society).
 |
| "This kind of art needs to be done....again" |
And so, throughout time, we see these ideas get transformed into deep- rooted prejudices, and these are passed on from narrative to narrative. The interesting factor here is that even when the society abandons (overtly at least) its old ideas as having been too conservative, the narratives still continue using them in a case I like to call 'narrative prejudice'. A part of this at least can be explained by the fact that artists are always influenced by older artists and their older art that came before them. This does not mean that they always follow in their footsteps. On the contrary, artistic movements are constantly rejected and are replaced by newer ones that the artists connected to them feel are more relevant.It may even be cyclical in the way that ideas related to older movements may be later seen to be more important than the existing ones. And yet, certain elements which we now know as 'tropes' continue to be used for reasons such as their convenience(this being that someone's already done it before, so not much thought needs to be spent on it) and familiarity. So, even if society as a whole now believes it is wrong for women to be discriminated against, narratives continued to use the old tropes that portray women as anything but.
 |
| Because women need to be badass |
So, suddenly, the old damsels in distress are replaced by gun- wielding, ass- kicking, superwomen which is still as sexist as the 'damsel' trope or maybe even more so. Because what this says is that women need to do 'masculine' stuff to be accorded respect. And all the while, if such a strong female character is still incapable of exercising her agency, then we are faced with a problem as is seen in The Hunger Games.
So, now that society has recognized the limitations and implications of the old tropes where women were helpless and all black guys were aggressive or short- tempered, writers are quickly abandoning them only to replace them with just as bad tropes such as the trope of the black best friend.
I find it disturbing to simply throw in a butt-kicking shallow female character, or a couple of African- Americans(as if they're ingredients: a kilo of Mexicans, a couple of Chinese dudes, etc and done!) to justify the moral sense of the work itself. But then again, things always tend to work this way. Reactionary ideas can be as problematic as the ideas they reject, as evidenced by the problem of a work like Game of Thrones rejecting the moral premise of The Lord of the Rings.
In part at least, I think such developments are the result of the kinds of criticisms that were levied against works that used the old tropes. I'm sure these criticisms were well- meaning, but good intentions are not enough to make other people make well- realized art. And honestly, I think the writers themselves largely miss the point since they just jump from one kind of racism and sexism to another kind each time the one kind is criticized.
And then, in time, I started noticing a curious shift in the way texts were dealing with these problems, and one of the first places I noticed it was in video games, especially role- playing ones such as Dragon Age or Mass Effect where regardless of what race or sex you choose for your character, the narrative treats you the same. The implications of this is that regardless of what kind of character you choose to play, it is your actions that define your character. Now this kind of works in such a scenario because of the fact that it's an RPG and such games are all about showing you the effects or consequences of the decisions you've made along your quest/journey/etc. There's also an element of convenience involved where the developers don't have to write different scripts or lines of dialogue based on racial or sex differences. Also, no one can accuse these narratives of displaying racist or sexist prejudices since well, they do not have anything overtly racist or sexist in them. Now, critique of such works praised these elements of 'equality' present in these narratives.And all this seems fine until you look at it from another perspective. Up until a while ago, narratives used physical deformities or 'ugliness' to portray evil or morally reprehensible characters. Of course, these tropes have been subverted in various texts throughout the ages. And when it comes to films of the '90s and before, you were bound to come across the comic- relief character with some physical abnormality who is funny specifically because of this physical abnormality. But of course, criticism was levied on texts which simply used characters with physical deformities as something to be laughed at or made fun of. And it must have been around this time that the writers and filmmakers struck upon an ingenious idea: to remove the source of the criticism itself. In other words, they realized that a solution would be to simply 'remove' ugly characters from the work itself. So, whereas earlier we had villains be ugly, now the villains are sexy too. Hell, everyone's sexy now: from the protagonist to the antagonist to the comic relief characters. It's one bright world filled with rainbows!.... except it isn't. These texts still have no problem having violence and other 'ugly' themes in them, but they just want to have these while being politically correct. At least before, there *were* ugly characters (though not in enviable places). Now the ugly characters don't even get to have a place in a narrative. They are ignored.
And now, you see that with the example of the video games I mentioned earlier, the same is being done with the sexes and races. The narratives of women or men, and racial minorities who are discriminated against are simply ignored. It's a subtle kind of racism to have no racism at all in the text, since you're refusing to address the real problems of someone who is discriminated against in favor of pretending these people are not faced with any problems at all. In part, at least the perspective of audiences are to blame since we seem to think that since the author is fully in control of his work (especially when it comes to fantasy genres), he can remove all the unpleasant stuff that exist in the real world from his fictional world.
But what's the point of any fictional world if it does not deal with the concerns we're daily faced with in the real one?
And this is what I mean by the problem of a perfect world. Narratives that use such a 'Perfect World' setting are nothing but imperfect. Writing a female character just like you would a male one is well- meaning I'm sure, but this does lead to the disappearance of a large variety of narratives. Pretending like ugly characters don't exist is more offensive than portraying them in a negative light(at least they exist), I think. Besides, it's not as if the perfect world is really perfect, it's simply more politically correct. Comic- relief characters now tend to be intellectually lacking(though I'm sure it won't be long before we lose narratives involving stupid people as well) or something else if not that. What I mean is that when a criticism is levied saying that people who are not very intelligent shouldn't be made fun of, what's happening is that instead of writing meaningful stories involving these people, writers are finding it easier to simply get rid of them.
And so all in favor of badass women, and beautiful people, what's happened is that the narratives of the not-so-badass-women and ugly people who too have the right to have their stories told, have disappeared. And I know that I'd rather have an imperfect world narrative than a politically correct one any day of the week.
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