fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #2534 ]

[ SECRET POST #2534 ]

⌈ Secret Post #2534 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

01.

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02.

[Doctor Who]

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03.

[Guild Wars 2]

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04.

[Perry Mason]

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05.

[Sleepy Hollow]

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06.

[My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic; gorefic]

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07.

[Marco Mengoni/Max Pezzali (883)]

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08.

[Hetalia]

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09.

[Once Upon a Time and Uncanny X-Men]

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10.

[Borderlands 2]

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11.

[Elementary]

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12.

[Rise of the Guardians. Art by Rufftoon.]

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13.

[Mabinogi]

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14.

[minecraft/C418]

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15.

[The Big Bang Theory]

Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 038 secrets from Secret Submission Post #362.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

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I get really fragging sick of people who bitch about how white LotR is. The series is set in a prehistoric analogue of Europe. Far less likely to have racial mixing.

And yes, I don't care that it's a sausage fest either.

Ok, I think we have to start at square 1.

You know that Middle Earth isn't real, right?

And that this is a fantasy series?

And therefore you can do whatever the fuck you want in a fantasy setting without disturbing historical accuracy?

Maybe it's because I have read a fair bit of the background stuff, about how it was originally based on the idea of writing a mythology for England that was truly English instead of imported from France. That sort of background makes me fail at seeing POCs, just like I fail at seeing POCs in Authurian legends.

Then what do you think of a black Heimdall? Similar rationalisation and yes - plenty of offence has been taken.

The bulk of the Norse myths were only written down because the Christian author was pissed that English stories/myths were infiltrating Iceland, Tolkien wanted to put a very English spin on the Norse myths... Let's put aside the verrry outdated nationalist and intrinsically racial guff and cast whoever the fuck we want in yet another adaptation of old themes. Skin colour shouldn't matter in telling a good fantasy story, or indeed most stories, in this era.

Marvelverse is Marvelverse.

The thing it all comes down to is that when I read Tolkien, it sounds to me like he's speaking about white people. Could the movies have a few more Maoris in the background without orc costumes? Sure! They probably could!

OT, but actually there was the occasional Moorish Knight in Arthurian Legend.

Yeah, but even with the occasional Moorish knight, that knight is not someone like Lancelot or Gawain, or a good many of the other big name knights.

nayrt

If Tolkien specifically set it in a European inspired world - which he did - there's no reason to criticize the actors being white. European fantasy, like it or not, is a thing. If they want to randomly stick POC in unexplained, hey, that's cool, but it's not an obligation. Having a white cast is not automatically a bad and racist thing, and in medieval inspired worlds where society wasn't racially diverse isn't being picky, it's being realistic. Is realism often cherrypicked in fantasy? Absolutely. But Tolkien was very detailed in his world building, society and culture both. And having magic/dragons/elves doesn't mean your world doesn't have to follow any rules at all.

If you're saying in general, POC are underrepresented in media, particularly in fantasy, I agree. But if you're saying that LOTR is bad/racist/whatever because it's all white, that's pretty ridiculous.

I find it so interesting where the "realism" argument begins and ends.

Which part, where I forgive the setting for being very white, or forgive it for not having many feature women?

I'm speaking in general, not just about your particular comment, just like I assume you were speaking about a general trend of complaints and not just fauxkaren's comment.

I just find it interesting to see where people draw the line when it comes to realism. Things that are extremely fantastical are generally okay. Dragons, elves, orcs. Things that seem to go against common sense aren't, even when that "common sense" is based on a flawed understanding of history. Which on some level makes sense to me. Change the setting, don't change human nature. I can go along with that to a point, but there's often much more room for argument in these things than some people are willing to allow.

da

To be fair, I kind of resent the argument of "because there is magic, why can't we also be (insert social issue)" because fantasy doesn't have to... not be realistic. I mean, fantasy should be in the mindset of, if magic and dragons exist, how does that change the world? How will realistic people act? It's one altered premise. I kind of hate the strawman "social justice" (sorry for scare quotes, not sure how to categorize) argument that because there is magic, how dare people insist that a European-inspired fantasy have all white people. The cherrypicking argument of "look, they don't have rotten teeth and shit in the streets, why aren't they as racially diverse as New York City or women's equality" just seems silly to me. Not that those concepts are bad or inappropriate for fantasy at all, but I'm not sure why it's a decidedly bad thing if a fantasy world has sexism or racism (or is just all white, assuming it's set in a European-inspired world).

tl;dr - having fantasy with racial diversity and strong female characters is awesome. but not having those things doesn't have to be inherently not awesome, and arguing "well, there's magic, so..." is kinda weak.

I find it weak too but I find the argument it's trying to counter equally silly. Basically I spend a lot of time tilting my head quizzically in these discussions.

For me the only argument necessary for adding in more diversity is "people enjoy it". I remember the first time I read a story about a girl with a crush on another girl. I feel like it meant more to me than it should but it really did mean a lot to me. I'd like to see more people experience that because it's a nice feeling.

I don't think it's automatically bad when a story doesn't have all different kinds of people in it, but to me it's just kind of a "but why not?" thing. There is such an amazing variety of experiences out there and I want to write about people who go through all of them.

Yeah, I see what you mean.

One novel I got he the main character doing magic by knowing the language the creator god used when he made the world. However halfway into the story he had to do brain surgery - the sort of operation where a hole is drilled to let off pressure. It was done by magic, but it sounded like the author went and researched brain surgery before he wrote the scene.

I think what you're talking about here is the difference between "realism" and "verisimilitude." "Realism" is the degree to which a work of fiction accurately reflects reality - dragons and magic, for instance, are unrealistic. They are, however, part of the buy-in for the audience in many works of fantasy fiction. Fantasy often contains many unrealistic elements, but as long as the work maintains its verisimilitude - the degree to which the fantastic setting plays by its own rules and maintains internal consistency, and everything other than the obviously fantastic elements works the way one would expect it to - it doesn't strike the audience as unrealistic, notwithstanding the outlandish elements.

Through his language, description, and the specific mythologies from which he was drawing, Tolkien set out to evoke images of a particular location and era in his audience's minds, and that location and era was not particularly ethnically diverse. Deviating from that implied setting is not part of the audience's buy-in for their suspension of disbelief, in the way that the existence of dragons and magic swords is, so it registers as more out-of-place and "unrealistic" in context. Another story that equally involved dragons and magic swords, but wasn't so deliberately and explicitly tied to a particular time and place as its inspiration in the way that Middle-Earth is, would find it much easier to get an audience to accept a diverse cast.

I think that's a good way of labeling it. I'll have to remember that. I've always liked the word verisimilitude anyway. :p

I still think the era he was drawing from was more diverse than people think but that is a very complex discussion that I am not nearly as prepared to have as the medievalist friends I am parroting. Tolkien certainly succeeded in evoking the images that people pull up when thinking of this sort of time and place.

(no subject)

mimi-sardinia.livejournal.com - 2013-12-12 01:14 (UTC) - Expand

I'm presuming you don't actually mean "prehistoric". If you do, then you are talking about the first humans, who migrated up from Africa, and thus were not, in fact, white.

If you are talking more about medieval Europe, which people tend to do when talking about how all fantasy stories are okay being white, you should know that medieval Europe wasn't as lily white as most people seem to believe. Link: http://kellysue.tumblr.com/post/68195356646/but-despite-hollywoods-near-complete-refusal-to

I mean pre-history in a sense of set before known recorded history, not in the dinosaur sense. Besides, if we're talking about Tolkien in particular, it does not work with evolutionary concepts, as it includes it's own creation myth.

Tolkien also did make use of what I call "physical virtues" - the "Good" characters being tall, beautiful, nice voices, etc, and often his descriptions of "beautiful" tended more to lighter skin, with "Lesser Men" tending to be more dark.

Is that racist? It may be, by our standards, and in most fantasy I don't mind a bit more obvious diversity (and expect it a lot more in something like Forgotten Realms), but I don't know, maybe this is my one sticking point in Tolkien.

Tolkien is problematic as fuck unfortunately. Evoking the past romantically tends to get people's nostalgia going for a "simpler time" when you could tell if people were bad or good by their physical features, where kings were noble and kingly, the peasants were hard working and happy, and... yeah, it never existed.

I mean, I like to indulge in that occasionally, and Tolkien is a product of his time, but I don't necessarily want or expect modern adaptations of myths, legends or classics to be as old-fashioned, you know?

Well I do not disagree that the "physical virtues" are problematic. I like fics that take a look at the idealistic "hard-working and happy" peasants that the Shire seems to exemplify, and go looking for the underside.

Maybe the movies could have had a bit more of Maori actor in bared-faced roles as humans. But I have seen fan-castings of the main characters as POCs and... I can't see it. "Physical virtues" aside, Tolkien was describing white people when he described the likes of Aragorn, Boromir, the Hobbits, and any number of the Elves.

Nooo. 'Prehistoric' means 'before recorded history'. In the case of Europe, that includes the Bronze Age and earlier. I.e. there were prehistoric white europeans.

Of course, Bronze Age Europe was a hell of a lot more connected to the rest of the world than people tend to suppose - but that's neither here nor there cause I'm p sure Middle Earth is supposed to be even earlier than the Bronze Age.

medievalpoc.tumblr.com

european /= white

Aren't they the folks that said that Mozart was black and used a photoshopped image as proof?

Link? I love shitstorms like that?

Mozart, really? There's a convincing amount of evidence for Beethoven being black though.

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