like clockwork.

[amonitrate]

So, a SPN Big Bang author, gatorgrrrl, thought it would be "the best idea ever" to write a RPS story that takes place in present-day Haiti, in the aftermath of the earthquake. From the summary and the excerpts I've read, it fits into a long history of such fiction, especially in film, as gabby_silang points out.

[ETA 6/16/10: The author has locked her story and

Comments

[vikki]

I was kind of =/ at the summary, but the moment I saw excerpts I just could barely look at them, which is, for me, coming a long long way myself. I still have to be somewhat primed, my phasers set to stun, before I'll pick up on the full extent of a fail!fic like this.

I didn't talk about it on my journal. This isn't because I feel like I have no right to and more because I couldn't look at it, and it's my policy that I must understand both sides of a wank situation before I post about it. Just because I am white and American doesn't mean I can't go, 'wow, I think this is just fail', though; however, I can see why it might come across as the white man championing the cause of Justice for the Poor Brown People. It's ... difficult subject material, and the best of intentions can lead you so far down the wrong roads. I honestly do believe that the author of this BB fell into this exact trap.

Re: ficcing about real places/things: I think that finding the balance is extremely difficult, and personal experience in the area/culture/etc. is invaluble. I'm not sure that SPN in particular is the venue for any sort of 'set in other countries with heavy interaction with something other than scenery' fic unless you are VERY skilled because the source material is already so problematically white and entitled.

I honestly kneejerked to India because in my limited knowledge of the country, I find it very interesting. I have a fandom friend that lives there, and I do know that my motivation was to write about India with SPN as a vehicle, not the other way around. But - authorial intent means nothing (or, sometimes, everything) if I can't execute, and in the end I know that I still struggle far too much with racial biases within myself, and Hollywood stereotypes, and white cultural conditioning to do this sort of story even the remotest justice.

[amonitrate]

I do understand how the author could think the premise was a good idea (though the fact that it is a very current event effecting living people complicates that); I have less sympathy for how she executed it, but I get that part too. Many of us grew up with this kind of thing in the movie theatres and in the children's books we read and on television, and if you're like me and grew up in an area that was probably at least 90% white, these kinds of discussions just don't happen around you. The contrary: stories like the one in this fic are held up as heroic, as classics, as something to aspire to even.

So yeah, I get it.

[vikki]

I don't mean to excuse her. Just because the media and life I live excuses this form of racism doesn't mean it's 'okay' that I am racist, or that she is racist. I'm just saying that I think she, like me, did not recognize the biases within herself that are unconscious, and somehow was surrounded by people who shared similar biases.

In the end I am bettered for this fail, for one. Self-examination ftw.

(sorry, I will stop vomiting all over your thoughtful post, now.)

[amonitrate]

Yeah. No excuses, just recognizing cause and effect. Those blockbuster hollywood films have no excuse either, but I get how they get made.

The effects of well-meaning stupidity

[deiseach]

I don't know if you're aware of this, and judging by the author's lack of anything approaching awareness she definitely wasn't, but remember the story about the church group arrested for trying to take children out of Haiti?

Now, those people genuinely intended to help, they went over with all the best intentions, they thought they had contacts on the ground to steer them through things, they thought they had permission - and they messed it up bigtime.

For me, the very idea of "we're going to take these kids away because it's going to be a chance to get out of this poverty-stricken country" was offensive, not because they wanted to give the kids opportunity, but because the idea was so easily accepted that naturally they'd be better off in America than Haiti. I'm sure that if the parents had been able to send the kids to relatives living in the U.S. they would have done so, but there is a difference between sending your child to live with relations and foreigners coming in to take them away.

That is why this kind of attitude, the attitude displayed in the story, needs to be squashed and squashed hard. No, there's nothing wrong in coming into a country to help after a disaster. Going over there for some kind of poverty tourism, on the other hand...

Re: The effects of well-meaning stupidity

[amonitrate]

Yeah, I'm familiar. And I do think this type of fictional work completely feeds into the thinking that allows that kind of real world event, and it could be argued that it feeds into the US foreign policy, too. Which is why I don't think "it's just fiction!" is a valid thing to say. Or the author's original arguments in comments (now not visible) that this story happens all the time in hollywood (I'm paraphrasing). Yeah, it does happen all of the time in movies and books, and yeah, it has an effect in the world. It's not only entertainment.

*curls into ball dying of embarrassment*

[deiseach]

No, please tell me that's wrong. She didn't actually try to excuse herself along the lines of "But this kind of story is being done all the time!" and use Hollywood movies as a defence of the kind of template she used?

*flails* *points* *gibbers*

Okay, I got nothing more to say here.