Race and Stereotypes in Fantasy/Sci-Fi

shakes fist at X
Your kind isn’t wanted here, OUTLANDER.

In Tad William’s ‘Otherworld’ series, the central characters are African, and one of them is even a bushman. That’s a science fiction novel, for anyone who has yet to encounter it :slight_smile:

As for pure fantasy . . . I think Pratchett mentioned in one of his City Watch novels that there were too many racial issues between the numerous different races, without the people involved giving a damn about these races’ skin colour. But obviously, he said it in a much funnier way :hahaha;

I think Raymond E. Feist books have been known to include other people of diffrent color. i.e. The Keshian are dark skinned. But mostly other types of creatures are shown, so there is no need for a diversity in races.

I’ve wondered about this myself sometimes when I’ve read fantasy, but then I think about the backgrounds and cultural influences of some of the writers and it makes more sense.

I thought it was funny that you brought up the Wheel of Time series, since I enjoy the story but absolutely despise the portrayals of women, men, and the interactions between them. There’s sort of racial diversity in that series, just among the humans (since the only other intelligent natural species that I can recall at this time is Ogier) - some of the nations have defining “racial” characteristics (like the people in Cairhein are short and pale for example), but for others (especially Seanchan) the people come in all colors, shapes, and sizes. There isn’t really prejudice by race in the series either… what prejudice there is seems to be found in either sex or in socioeconomic status.

Random note - I know someone mentioned Le Guin and Earthsea earlier… I haven’t read that series, but I did read Tehanu, a sort of sequel to the series, in my fantasy lit class in college. We got all into gender relations and the concept of power there… whew.

I don’t see why everything has to be politically correct… So, a book genre doesn’t properlly show skin colour variety, big deal. Go write a book that does.

I see your point Zeppelin, and while for the most part I agree with you I think you missed the point on a few things, especially concerning Wheel of Time, but I’ll get to that later.

Before I begin I just want to make clear that why references to different ethnic is purely for the sake of example or comparison. I in no way believe that one culture or group is better, smarter or more educated than any other, I simply make reference to what might be considered common knowledge in that culture.

But in no other novel can I think of where there is even a hint of a black, Latino, Asian, Indian, Arab, islander, or any other group. Humans are white.

While I agree that very few books make reference to the ethnic background or skin color of their characters I don’t really see a problem with this, in fact I tend to look at it as an advantage. You say that because there is no reference to other skin colors humans are automatically assumed to be white, but you’re looking at that from a white European perspective, you assume that since no information to the contrary is given then humans mush be white. However look at it from a different perspective, wouldn’t an African American of Asian reader who is reading the same book as you simply assume that characters are black or Asian unless otherwise stated? When we read books our minds automatically try to form parallels between what we’re reading and real life, that’s what makes the story believable. If I were to tell you a story about these 9-armed creatures from the planet such and such that just float around all day and move these strange pyramids on a triangular board you would have a hard time getting a clear picture of the scene. That’s because the entire setting feels very alien (no pun intended) and surreal, what are they doing? Are they working? Or maybe playing a game? You simply don’t know and even then think of a minute about the questions you’re asking yourself, “Are they working?” “Are they playing a game?” you’re trying to apply familiar concepts to explain an unfamiliar situation.

If you look at it in terms of association, then a given character will always seem to pick up traits and characteristics that are familiar to the reader.

The problem here is, how long can such a genre’s popularity last if it continues to escape pressing issues of the day? How long before people give up, saying every fantasy world is just the same old boring, old-Europe recreation (just look at the map of wheel of time. it’s Europe). Why is it such a stigma to bring in some diversity into these worlds?

Fantasy literature, like all literature, use familiar themes are situations to help get the meaning across. Like I mentioned above your mind automatically tries to form parallels between what you’re reading and you’re life and heritage, this is a good and a bad this. For one it means that there are certain things that the write can assume, if I were to say that our heroes are armed with swords then I think just about every reader would image a fairly long knife-like object, sharp on at least one side with a pointed tip, a sword is something humans universally recognize. So far there’s no problem, as long as we stick to general concepts then everyone can understand it, but say we fall into specifics, say one of our heroes isn’t armed with a swords, but with shuriken, its still a fairly well known weapon and virtually any Asian reader would understand right away we’re taking about a small many-bladed throwing weapon, but would the average African reader know? What about if another of our heroes was carrying a “Flyssa,” which is a traditional Moroccan sword info, while this might be considered common knowledge in Morocco it is doubtful most readers would be able to imagine one if they suddenly came across the word like you just did.

What I’m trying to prove is that all literature needs to be able to communicate its ideas across to the reader, if it can’t then its just words on a page. It does this by seeking common treads and ideas that speak to its readers. Most of us, living in North America and Europe, are familiar with European ideas and concepts, these are ingrained in our shared cultural heritage and many of these ideas have found their ways into other cultures. I’m not talking about ideas such as democracy or free speech; while I think that those concepts have indeed found their way into other cultures I’m referring to much simpler, more basic concepts. I think that almost all readers would be able to form an idea of some kind when they come across the word knight, this image might not be the same with every reader, but the idea itself is what’s important. While each culture has their own individual quirks and intricacies there’s a common global set of ideas and concepts that are universal to all cultures. Many of the concepts that we think as European were in fact imported at some point in the distant past, gunpowder, spices, even our current number system; at the same time we’ve exported ideas an concepts. While it might seem that Europeans have exported more ideas that any culture that’s not really something to be proud of, most of these exportations date back to when Europe had colonies all over the world and tried to subjugate local cultures. However, I’m going off topic, the point that you need to remember is that many of the concepts used in fantasy literature are European simply because most readers would recognize and relate to these concepts.

If you don’t agree with my nicely worded and logical explanation then here’s another way of looking at it (although much less valid if you ask me): White European males read this stuff so lets give them something they can relate to and the rest be damned. While this assessment might technically be true in the case of certain writers I feel it doesn’t give the situation justice, and I find the explanation I gave in the previous section to be most plausible.

Hell, why does every fantasy story have to use the same cliché of light vs. dark, as if it were impossible to conceive that, in another universe, darkness was good and light was evil?

The answer to this is two folds, first, why does most fantasy literature use the classic light vs. dark format? The answer to this is actually very simple if you think about it, try this little exercise: What do you hate most about your life? Say for example you say you hate your job; then ask yourself, “Why do I hate my job?” Maybe the work give to you is too hard or your boss is always on your case, so ask yourself “Why is my boss always on my case?” There could be dozens of reasons to this, but the point I’m trying to make is that life is complicated, every problem is cause by dozens of small problems and in turn causes dozens of other problems. There’s always a doubt, am I doing the right thing, what will happen if I’m wrong? There’s so much complexity, so many gray areas in life that sometimes it’s hard to know where you stand. That’s why the concept of light vs. dark is so appealing, its simple, easy to understand, no doubt, no gray areas, it’s just the good guys against the bad. It works because we can relate to it, we all wish that our lives could be that simple and so we tend to grab hold of the story that much more intensely.

Second, you asked why it wasn’t possible for a universe to exist where good is evil and evil is good. Again I come back to my earlier nothing of association, a universe like that doesn’t work because its too alien to us, we can’t grasp the concept, it doesn’t make sense. Say for example I have a world were every day for breakfast our heroes eat a small child and to make them even more evil lets say to cast a spell that keeps her conscious while they cut off her limbs and eat them in front of her and finally toss her in the corner, still alive of course, until they decide to finish eating her some other time. To any reader this scene shows how evil our heroes are, but that’s just the thing, the reader imagines that as being evil, there’s just no way you can relate to that and say “Oh I see, they did the right thing in eating that little girl in the most sadistic way possible.” (Or at least I hope no one thinks like that, and if you do stay far away from me.) Here’s another insane example from your upside down world: An old woman drops her purse, one of our heroes picks it up and hands it back to her, he is promptly executed. To most readers that wouldn’t make sense, it would seem like some cheap way to get rid of a character, one simply can’t imagine the world as working that way.

Its often been said that truly evil men and women don’t see themselves as being evil, somehow I doubt that Adolph Hitler, one of the most evil men of our times, got up every morning and told himself “What kind of evil dead will I do today.” People simply don’t think that way; even in most of the truly sadistic individuals in our society the concept of evil remains taboo. One doesn’t want to think of oneself as evil, it’s the wrong, which is wrong and they’re just doing what’s right. Now that being said, if you mean that it would be nice if in a book the “good guys” were only slightly better than the bad guys, and in any other situation these so called “heroes” would be considered villains, then there are books like that. One series I’m reading right now is called the “War of the Spider Queen” (volumes 1 to 3 of 6 are currently out), it’s set in the forgotten realms world of D&D and revolves around the Drow (Dark Elves, very evil) as they try to find out why their goddess Lloth, the Spider Queen, has suddenly stopped granting them her magic. Of course the Drow have made many enemies over the centuries and now that they’ve been weakened everyone wants to get a piece of them. If that wasn’t bad enough, the Drow being the Drow, they’re constantly trying to kill each other; about a third of the first book is Gromph, the archmage of the city, trying to kill his sister Quenthel, the mistress of Arch’Tirith, the school of Drow clerics. It’s an excellent series and everyone I’ve lent it too has enjoyed it, you could give it a try to see if you like rooting for the bad guys.

That covers most of the point I wanted to make, but there’s a few comments I want to make about Wheel of Time, its perfectly acceptable for you not to like it, but I’m a big fan so I want to try and clear up a few misconceptions you might have.

You said that in fantasy you never read anyone mentioning Arabs or Asians, or any other groups, and on one level that’s true. If you’re trying to create a fantastic world then you’re not going to call people with dark skin Africans, what’s Africa? It doesn’t make sense in the context you’re putting it in; so obviously you’re not going to get people defined as belonging to such and such ethnic group, it doesn’t work. You need to read between the lines. Take WoT for example, if you read it carefully you can pick out your generic white Europeans, but there’s also Asians (the Seanchans), Blacks or Latinos (Tearans and Illianers), Islanders (the Seafolk), and people of Middle Eastern decent (Aiel). Remember that these are never clearly mentioned, but if you read the descriptions the Seanchan armors looks eerily like classic Samurai armor, the Aiel are dressed like classical Arabs, people who live in the south, near Tear and Illian are described as having dark skin. The diversity is there, you just need to pay attention to it.

As for your comment about Jordan portraying women poorly, well that depends on how you look at it. Sure, almost all of Jordan’s female characters have a very imposing personality, many are described as the kind of people who would walk into walls and be outraged that the wall hadn’t moved out of their way. It maybe seem like a stereotypical way to portray women, but in the context of the story, and of the characters it seems appropriate. On the other hand Jordan has very important female characters, heck later on Rand almost becomes a secondary character as the story focuses much more on Elayne, Aviendha, and Min than on him. Several countries are ruled by Queens instead of kings (and by design, not just by default), the Aes Sedai are all women, Aiel women are excellent warriors. I personally don’t see where your statement about Robert Jordan portraying women in a negative light.

Anyway, that’s my 2 cents, home you didn’t fall asleep reading it.

Wow, for the first time ever, I think my IQ was raised a point by reading a thread at this board.

lol ur iq go dwn now plzzzzzzzzzz kthx

Pretty nice. And to say something from above, The Elder Scroll series have a lot of racial interaction.

DIE, FETCHERS~!

he didnt say that he portrayed them negatively, he said he doesnt know how to portray them.

<i>Originally posted by Dark Sand</i>

I personally don’t see where your statement about Robert Jordan portraying women in a negative light.

I didn’t mean he was necessarily portraying them in a negative light, I just meant that his portrayl was pretty wildly inaccurate. There is a difference. Read what Vicki said - I think she summed it up pretty well.

Edit: Didn’t notice Sil already pointed this out :thud:

Then it would appear I miss interpreted the meaning of that quote. I retract that sentence.

I’m going to keep my paragraphs short. You can thank me later.

Much really good scifi is like an essay, dramatizing the way that our lives might change in the future and how we might cope. Scifi cannot focus on problems of racial interaction unless they are works of social science fiction, such as Ray Bradbury wrote. Furthermore, A. E. Van Vogt’s Slan is about racial issues in the context of human evolution, and C.J. Cherryh’s Foreigner, Invader and Inheritor are all about interracial relations.

Hey, and remember Star Trek?

Fantasy, I find, is a good way to examine religion and values, as much as it shares science fictions capacity for great yarns and grand scales of narration.

Some Sci-Fi, I think, is actually Fantasy; Star Wars throws concepts at you and demands suspension of disbelief. Star Trek throws quantum mechanics and astrophysics at you and then seeks the suspension of your disbelief, once it has made a good run at creating it.

If you don’t like it, tough. N’wahs. ^___^

Zeppelin, I actually had to go back and reread what I said when you said I summed something up - I never reread my posts, and someone noting what I said made me sort of antsy, lol.

I felt a little smarter after reading some of the posts here too. I liked this topic a lot since we discussed it and others a lot like it frequently in my fantasy class.

I never really had any issues with diversity in science fiction or fantasy. When there wasn’t a theme of racism or nationalism to be dealt with in the book, most of the things I’ve read that did mention race felt very forced. My mental voice always saw out-of-place mentions as the author saying “Uwee-hee-hee! Look-it! I have A minority in my book! I’m modern and correct!” The ones that did manage to avoid sounding like that did so because they didn’t go all out to make themselves shout “INCLUSIVE!”

It is possible that I’m over-simplifying it because I think people read into these things too much, though.

I don’t usually post on message boards, mainly because over the years, I’ve lost confidence in the capacity of some people to argue about a subject in a civilized manner. Fortunately, this thread gave me back a bit of confidence : up to now, most replies (and especially Dark Sand’s post) have been smart and carefully pondered upon. Allow me to start by commenting some of Dark Sand’s affirmations and finish by adding a few facts which might have been omitted.

First of all, the paragraph about “evil” heroes made me laugh a great deal. I found it truly delightful. And I totally agree with Dark Sand : before reading such novels, we arbitrarely establish how the “hero” of the story should behave. If he strays from the path we have set for him, then we often prefer not to consider him as the “hero” anymore. Let’s not forget that the mental acquisition of a litterary text is a fundamentally subjective process. Therefore, every person reading a novel will “paste to it” his own set of values and also try to adjust the story and characters to his personal mental imagery.

In other words, Dark Sand’s thread made me realize that even in litterature, perception is always influenced by the choice of referential (in physics, it is the same: Einstein managed to prove it). The preemptive judgements we make about the plot and character types cannot be ommitted when we try to account for our perception of the work of litterature itself.

Nevertheless, I believe he omitted a certain fact in his explanation. Most of today’s fantastic litterature was heavily influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings”. The link became so strong in fact that most people separated fantasy from science fiction. Originally, science fiction was considered a ramification of fantasy. That said, it is widely known that Tolkien was inspired by Norse (Beowulf and the Kalevala, for example), Irish and Scottish mythology (and no matter how one looks at it, the elves remain Scandinavians, at least in my book). He tried to recreate in his work the world he had envisioned in his numerous readings. Do you think you could find much multiethnicity in those stories? Certainly not. The concept itself dates back from the 20th century. These myths were created in tightly-knit rural communities that would probably not receive many visitors from foreign countries.

What else? The elves might be Scandinavians in my book, but their civilization reminds me of the Chinese or Japanese traditional ideal. The Chinese or Japanese have never been renowned for their scientists, but rather for their taste in different fields of art such as architecture, painting, “orfèvrerie”, clothing, music, etc. . Please note that the Buddhists have always been close to nature too… (And let’s not forget that shintoism, the most important religion in Japan, was deeply influenced by Zen Buddhism.) The link I make here might seem far-fetched (and I am almost sure Tolkien didn’t make it either), but I believe it is relevant to mention it. An Asian might see in works of fantasy a certain depiction of their ideal traditional society. (All that’s left to do is to add the little houses with pointy rooftops and voilà :slight_smile: ). In other words, a person which stems from a different ethnic group might find in the fantastic universe, despite the occidentalized setting, certain manifestations of his own culture.

I don’t think I can add much more to what Dark Sand already stated very eloquently… I would like nevertheless to make two corrections to previous posts. First of all, the elves, originally, according to the Norse mythology, were small mischievous creatures living in caves. Tolkien changed that (see how far his influence reaches). That in mind, it doesn’t come as a surprise that J.K. Rowling decided to use “the original template”. Second of all, someone mentioned that Europe was not a very multicultural continent. That is not true. European countries have received millions of immigrants during the last few decades, mainly coming from ancient colonies (Algeria, Morocco, Tunisia, India, Pakistan to name only a few), from Eastern Europe (republics that were formerly part of the Varsovy pact and also Turkey) and, naturally, from China. Please do not consider these remarks as personal criticism. My text might also contain certain weaknesses (and far too many spelling mistakes) and I will always respond positively to people pointing them out in a polite manner.

That’s it.

I’m not sure how much sci-fi “spawned” from fantasy. Science Fiction is generally considered a much older genre than fantasy. Science fiction generally dates back to the time of the mid 1850’s, with Jules Verne being the first widely recognized figure. I can’t think of too much fantasy literature that was written prior to the 1900’s, or even up until the pre world war II period. Science Fiction has also generally garnered more “literary” praise from the intelligentsia than fantasy, which still has an (I think) undeserved reputation as mere escapism.

Your point about Europe being a varied continent in modern times is also good, but you have to remember that most fantasy involves pre-renaissance ideas of Europe, in which the only real diversity came through small groups of Muslims in Southern Spain and in the Romania area, parts of Europe generally deemed as “less important” than high Europe (Britain, France, Germany, etc). Not saying they are inferior or anything, but that’s just the common conception.

Originally posted by Gila-Monster
I don’t see why everything has to be politically correct… So, a book genre doesn’t properlly show skin colour variety, big deal. Go write a book that does.

I missed this on my first review of this thread. I think you’re missing the point. Nowhere did I say they should go for political correctness. Just because you’re bring up issues of race and gender does not AUTOMATICALLY imply it’s some debate about political correctness. I’m not saying these authors are using incorrect wording, or making inaccurate representations (which is what political correctness is all about, mind you). I’m simply saying that I think these genres could achieve a wider audience by appealing to a wider audience. These fantasy stories, it is true, might contain groups in the world whose cultures and customs are very similar to different groups on this planet, but they’re still all masked behind white faces. Just because you make a group of people dark-skinned, or olive-skinned, doesn’t imply the author has to go into some debate about racial issues. In a different world, people might not care about such things.

Anyway, the point isn’t that I think every fantasy author should be checking over their work to see if they’ve adaquately represent the many cultures of the globe. that would ultimately undermine the very effort. My point is that VERY FEW authors have even bothered to include a single different race. The point isn’t that every book should have every race - the point is that the lack of diversity cannot be more than just a coincidence.

I would have to disagree on fantasy being a recent literary trend. On the contrary, it seems to me like one of the oldest style in literature. Of course, it always depends on what you consider to be “fantasy”… If you mean story evolving in a world similar to the one portrayed in AD&D, then it is only normal that you couldn’t find it before the 60’s. After all, Tolkien hadn’t published his most relevent masterpiece yet. On the contrary, if by “fantasy”, you mean a smart mix of heroes, villains, magical powers and mythical creatures (+ the inevitable fight between light and darkness), then you can go back to the Antique period and already find “fantastic” texts.

Let’s think about it for a second. Would you consider Shaekspeare “A Midsummer’s Night Dream” a “fantastic” text? After all, it involves the King of Fairies… What about Goethe’s poem “Der Erlkönig” (The Elf-King (Erl-King), see what I wrote before about the elves)? It is an allegory, but still put in a fantastic setting. Let’s go back a few centuries to the Dark Ages… Chretien de Troyes wrote many epic fantasy tales centered around the Knights of the Round Table (“Yvain, Or, the Knight with the Lion”, “Lancelot, Or, the Knight of the Cart”). Even before that… Let us not forget the first printed text in history, the Bible itself (I mean no religious disrespect, keep in mind that here, I consider it stripped from its religious significance)… After all, this book does portray people with unorthodox powers (it’s not everyday that you see someone turning a staff into a snake, right?). The “storyline” (a storyline for the Bible, yeah…) also involves evil spirits and mythical creatures (such as the Leviathan which swallowed Jonas). Let’s go back a few centuries before Moses himself walked the Earth… The Sumerians themselves had their own fantastic tale about a very renowned King which sought immortality, Gilgamesh himself (he wouldn’t always flee from battle at that time though :slight_smile: ). In my opinion these are all texts that can be considered fantastic.

In another trend of thought, what you wrote about Europe is correct. I wasn’t refering to one of your posts though, but rather to the one about recent works of fantasy not being ethnically diversified because they were written by European authors who lived on a non-cosmopolitan continent.

I would like to propose this other idea to you. Does including a character from a racial minority complement a storyline if the author does not seek to ponder upon the relationships existing between the different ethnic communities? If we created such characters, wouldn’t we find ourselves in the absurd situation portrayed in Tristan and Isolde with King Mark of “Cornouailles” having the ears of a donkey (a useless, but rather amusing, detail added for God knows what purpose, a reference to King Midas or some other ancient text, maybe)? If the inclusion of a black, asian or semitic character does not contribute anything to the story itself (except maybe to remain politically correct), I don’t believe it justified. I think that most people from ethnic communities would see right through it. It would be interesting though to have a modern work of fantasy set in an oriental or semitic background. If that were the case, I don’t think the author would feel like he needs to include the token Caucasian… I believe that creating such a setting could help an author to build a world that seems even more alien to us, and therefore which could stimulate our curiosity and, to a greater extent, widen our horizons.

What about it, then?