For My Next Racefail...
Jan. 17th, 2010 10:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
labingiThis article on white guilt in heroic fantasy narratives is interesting. In a nutshell, it criticizes the trope of the white person "going native" in order to help the oppressed POC and then rocketing to success as leader of the POC from the inside. There is, indeed, much to criticize about that trope.
So I feel myself walking into it, and if I can, I want to preempt that (or at least seek an outside opinion). I have a plan (in early development stage) for a web show set in my science fiction universe but using a Buck Rogers/Farscape tactic to send a 21st century Everywoman to the distant future. As it stands, my Everywoman is white, she is one of the only white people in the cast, and she does get the big revelation that is a substantial part of saving the day. Ergo, conspicuously white "relatable" character becomes hero who figures out salvation for POC.
Thing is, I'm not sure what to do about it. Here are some considerations that led to this racial state of affairs.
1) Because this is the distant future and a white phenotype is really pretty recessive and already pretty rare now, most of the future people would look non-white. In fact, the main civilization in which this story is set has always looked (in our terms) primarily "black." This, I think, is appropriate, and it's a conscious decision made in response to, well, everything from Buck Rogers to Farscape to BSG where most of the future/alien/whatever people are inexplicably white. (Possibly explicable in Farscape if the ancestors of the Sebaceans were taken from Europe.)
2) I want to show race as a factor, though not a huge one, within future society. To do this, I need to show different races and, anticipating no budget to speak of, using "real" races (vs. give a bunch of people red contact lenses) seems reasonable. Hence, the two racial "others" within the main cast of the future people are "Asians" within a "black" society.
3) My white character, as I said, is a 21st century Everywoman. Why does she have to be white?
Well, one consideration is that I'm a white person from a white family who's lived all her life in areas numerically dominated by whites. And if I tried to write her as an "authentic" example of African American/Latina/Asian American/Native American/etc. experience, I would screw it up. This is a case where "write what you know" seems prudent.
Why couldn't a non-white write her? That's a possibility but would entail finding a non-white writing partner (in this very white neighborhood), utterly devoted to this story, with whom I have a great artistic rapport, and with whom I can flawlessly co-write a longish series. This is a tall order and, to be honest, I'm not sure I personally find it a quest worth undertaking for the sake of making Everywoman not white.
Because making her white was a conscious decision for another reason, and it's cliched, yes, but bear with me: to make her relatable--no... hang on a minute; I'm not quite finished. The future people are non-white because that is representative of the future. This gal is a Northwestern American (that's what I know), which means it's statistically quite probable she'd be white. I also suspect that most of my audience will be white because I am culturally white and my sci fi interests and influences tend to skew culturally white, and thus those drawn to my story because they see echoes of other stories we both like are likely to be white. So this type of cultural experience is likely representative of the majority of viewers, which is the point of having an Everyperson.
I feel that all the pieces of this reasoning are more or less valid. Yet the end result does uncomfortably echo the old "white hero saving POC" trope. I'm not sure how best to mitigate this. I don't want my Everywoman to be the obvious "protagonist," the John Crichton who goes around being the loud (yet amazingly not immediately shot dead) American with the great ideas (for all that people keep bizarrely joking that they're bad).* I don't intend to top-bill her, though I fear this will confuse people. The fact remains, she has the crucial revelation.
Give this revelation to someone else? Then, what will Everywoman do? What is her plot function? Everyone else belongs in the future and his skills to contribute, but Everywoman has only her instincts, which end up filling in the new and different perspective that's needed to fix things. It makes a kind of sense: she's culturally alien; she contributes new thought patterns. (They are not intended to be Western, BTW; they are intended to be Taoist.)
Why do I need an Everywoman? Why not have the story just be future folk? Folks, that describes everything else I've ever written in that universe. And I'll write more, but I'll tell you one thing about that solution: you can't tell 97% of your jokes because jokes are culturally valenced. Imagine Farscape without John's sci fi references. Imagine Buffy without the endless stream of meta. I want this show to be quirky. I want it to be a shout-out to sci fi fans, and I can't do that well without a 21st-century person to make comments in cultural context.
Okay, I'm out of steam. Thoughts are welcome.
*I really do like John a lot of the time.
So I feel myself walking into it, and if I can, I want to preempt that (or at least seek an outside opinion). I have a plan (in early development stage) for a web show set in my science fiction universe but using a Buck Rogers/Farscape tactic to send a 21st century Everywoman to the distant future. As it stands, my Everywoman is white, she is one of the only white people in the cast, and she does get the big revelation that is a substantial part of saving the day. Ergo, conspicuously white "relatable" character becomes hero who figures out salvation for POC.
Thing is, I'm not sure what to do about it. Here are some considerations that led to this racial state of affairs.
1) Because this is the distant future and a white phenotype is really pretty recessive and already pretty rare now, most of the future people would look non-white. In fact, the main civilization in which this story is set has always looked (in our terms) primarily "black." This, I think, is appropriate, and it's a conscious decision made in response to, well, everything from Buck Rogers to Farscape to BSG where most of the future/alien/whatever people are inexplicably white. (Possibly explicable in Farscape if the ancestors of the Sebaceans were taken from Europe.)
2) I want to show race as a factor, though not a huge one, within future society. To do this, I need to show different races and, anticipating no budget to speak of, using "real" races (vs. give a bunch of people red contact lenses) seems reasonable. Hence, the two racial "others" within the main cast of the future people are "Asians" within a "black" society.
3) My white character, as I said, is a 21st century Everywoman. Why does she have to be white?
Well, one consideration is that I'm a white person from a white family who's lived all her life in areas numerically dominated by whites. And if I tried to write her as an "authentic" example of African American/Latina/Asian American/Native American/etc. experience, I would screw it up. This is a case where "write what you know" seems prudent.
Why couldn't a non-white write her? That's a possibility but would entail finding a non-white writing partner (in this very white neighborhood), utterly devoted to this story, with whom I have a great artistic rapport, and with whom I can flawlessly co-write a longish series. This is a tall order and, to be honest, I'm not sure I personally find it a quest worth undertaking for the sake of making Everywoman not white.
Because making her white was a conscious decision for another reason, and it's cliched, yes, but bear with me: to make her relatable--no... hang on a minute; I'm not quite finished. The future people are non-white because that is representative of the future. This gal is a Northwestern American (that's what I know), which means it's statistically quite probable she'd be white. I also suspect that most of my audience will be white because I am culturally white and my sci fi interests and influences tend to skew culturally white, and thus those drawn to my story because they see echoes of other stories we both like are likely to be white. So this type of cultural experience is likely representative of the majority of viewers, which is the point of having an Everyperson.
I feel that all the pieces of this reasoning are more or less valid. Yet the end result does uncomfortably echo the old "white hero saving POC" trope. I'm not sure how best to mitigate this. I don't want my Everywoman to be the obvious "protagonist," the John Crichton who goes around being the loud (yet amazingly not immediately shot dead) American with the great ideas (for all that people keep bizarrely joking that they're bad).* I don't intend to top-bill her, though I fear this will confuse people. The fact remains, she has the crucial revelation.
Give this revelation to someone else? Then, what will Everywoman do? What is her plot function? Everyone else belongs in the future and his skills to contribute, but Everywoman has only her instincts, which end up filling in the new and different perspective that's needed to fix things. It makes a kind of sense: she's culturally alien; she contributes new thought patterns. (They are not intended to be Western, BTW; they are intended to be Taoist.)
Why do I need an Everywoman? Why not have the story just be future folk? Folks, that describes everything else I've ever written in that universe. And I'll write more, but I'll tell you one thing about that solution: you can't tell 97% of your jokes because jokes are culturally valenced. Imagine Farscape without John's sci fi references. Imagine Buffy without the endless stream of meta. I want this show to be quirky. I want it to be a shout-out to sci fi fans, and I can't do that well without a 21st-century person to make comments in cultural context.
Okay, I'm out of steam. Thoughts are welcome.
*I really do like John a lot of the time.
