Regarding the Drow...
So there were a number of responses to my last post, and I wanted to try to summarize and address some of the points brought up. The controversy as such seemed centered on the drow -- which indeed seem to be a sticky point in many similar discussions, presumably because of their popularity.
( Long post with pictures below )
( Long post with pictures below )
Not quite. My suggestion was that Gary Gygax (et al) seemed to go out of his way to separate the drow from any suggestion of being African-like, but that this wasn't retained by successors. This is a response to a possible charge of unconscious racism or any racist intent. You certainly can't have the latter in the face of indications that he seems to have intentionally avoided it.
I think I should include some general statements here about race relations in general. Part of the controversy that seems to surround the race discussions seems to be different reactions. So, for example, I said that having a fictional people where the black-skinned ones are evil and the light-skinned ones are good has "racial connotations" -- this in turn was interpreted as a charge of blatant racism and a call for "blanket censorship" -- which in turn I misinterpreted.
Well, I still wonder. Saying, "Feel free to do X -- I encourage it! -- but if you do everyone ought look at you as if snakes are crawling out of your eye sockets," is part of how people form communities around specific positions. This is naturally something that excludes certain kinds of speech.
Basically John, if you're saying "I encourage you to write about drow but think there are troubling racial connotations no matter what, as far as I can tell," you really *are* engaged in that process. I do not object to that process. What I do think is that in this particular case, you've overstated the centrality of skin colour. Not only do I think that this is a bit picky, but it creates problems as well. It ignores the experience of a given identity. Hell, there's an instance of it over at the RPG Site, where Nisarg levelled an incredibly racist invective at Amado Guzman solely because he could "pass." If you make skin colour predominant it suggests condoning racism based on "passing," which is a complex problem of its own.
The problem is that while everyone agrees that the term "racism" is a bad thing, there is strong disagreement on the specifics of that. For example, eyebeams suggested that an important test regarding racism is whether the thing in question does identifiable harm as a concept. The problem is the question of what identifies harm.
I think it is important, but not the main thing. I was essentially repeating a point that came out of discussion with my wife (who's a person of colour and has a perspective I don't).
Reply
Again, the orcs thing is my wife's observation -- one she made without any prompting on my part to specifically describe a fantasy cliche she *did* thing had racist connotations, contrasted with dark elves, which she didn't think did.
As I said above, I think making skin too central has its own problems, and that yes, orcs are a bigger problem because their portrayals are more relevant, to the point where The Orcs of Thar specifically used orcs and goblin types as excuses to use multiple racial stereotypes, because they've been rendered down to a colonial ur-stereotype so effectively.
A hypothetical series which has blacks always as non-stereotypical villains seems equally problematic.
That's certainly true, but I think this is where drow were designed to be not-ethnic black to prevent this. You raise an excellent point, however, by pointing out that a lack of diversity on the part of the good guys contributes to this problem. If you had drow fighting African-looking good guys, would the problem still be there? I don't think so.
Reply
Sure there are racial connotations. I mean, you have two different groups with different physical features. You can't not have it. But "connotations" are not prescriptive; you have to be more specific. Can it be interpreted as racist? Yes. Can it be interpreted as racist by a reasonable, informed audience? I'm not so sure about that, but maybe yes, since creatives actually let the concept degenerate. Do creators have an obligation to people outside of the informed audience? Maybe. Sort of.
eyebeams draws a more subtle distinction that the original drow (as seen in the first set of pictures) had no real-world racial associations, but that some later reworkings were problematic. As I mentioned earlier, he notes in particular later illustrations of the drow which had a real ethnic skin tone (as opposed to jet black) or gave them racist associations.
I'm inclined to see it as a change of degree rather than a sudden change in kind. Obviously, I do not feel that the drow inherently convey a message that real-world Africans are evil. However, it does add to a trend of dark skin being a signifier of evil. While they aren't always stereotypes of jungle savages, they were from the start the exotic Other lurking in the shadows behind the brutish giants, wielding unique weapons and lead by "strangely attractive" dark-skinned priestesses.
I think this is a bit of a stretch. Drow priestesses are attractive because of sexism first and foremost. Secondly, it's in the nature of obective evil in fantasy to be an Other -- if it's a problem for drow, it's a problem way bigger than drow.
Dark *skin* a signifier of evil? Maybe. But the point of drow was to turn fear of the dark (as in lack of illumination) into an bad guy in a game. There was a previously extant mythology that fit the bill, that predates our contemporary concept of race entirely.
So from that perspective, I think it's not accurate or fair to characterize this as a point on a continuum or a "matter of degree" that ends in the most offensive images and has stereotypical orcs somewhere in the middle. Their origins are easily traceable to somewhere outside of it in terms of intent, and there is some (weak) evidence that they are not perceived as part of this continuum.
But the point is -- of this combined construction evokes racial connotations despite its considered origins, how far does the author's responsibility extend? The answer isn't "nowhere," but it doesn't extend to every possible interpretation, either. Authors are only *so* responsible. They aren't responsible for every deconstruction but they do bear responsibility for some of them. So don't put me in the camp of authors who want to be free from examining the connotations of their work.
Reply
I didn't use "censorship" in the sense of something interfering with the rights given you by your nation-state or anything. I'm talking about Millsian forms of discourse where just because we accept that anybody can say anything, doesn't mean we also accept than anything and everything is a good idea. And I urge you not to further milk this business for sentiment when I have made it clear what I meant when I used that word.
If, say, I were running the D&D line at this point, I would not try to excise the drow from the product line -- but I would try to consciously introduce more dark-skinned, non-exoticized good characters and creatures. I was impressed by what I read about Jeff Grubb's "Guild Wars: Nightfall", for example.
I think this is excellent, and really, a big part of the problem with what happened to drow over time.
However, there are also some authors who want to be "safe" from charges of racism. As soon as they hear there is discussion of the racial connotations of their work, they feel that they have failed, and try to deny any real-world connotations. If you genuinely feel this way, and don't want to engage or think about racial connotations -- then I would indeed recommend that you don't create a race where the distinguishing characteristic of the evil kind are their black skin.
I'm going to ignore the backhanded comment implicit here and move on to the other parts. First of all, while an author is responsible for some racial connotations, deconstruction works both ways -- it also says something about the audience. If a writer makes her intentions known through the work, but the cultural context seems to interfere with that so such an extent that this obscures what she was trying to say, this really starts being about the audience and culture, with the work as an exemplary locus. And indeed, it looks like this is what happened to the drow. It looks like contemporary American issues with race were powerful enough to trump what it looks like Gary Gygax was going for, even when it appears that he took at least some precautions.
And the fact is that dark elves *work*. They're one of gaming's compelling additions to mass market fantasy and as a signifier, their skin tone is a very large part of it. Perhaps they work because they're suggestive of racism, but I doubt it. I think it's more likely that they work as a construction of the Other that stands apart from the stereotyped continuum of race.
What you have to ask yourself is whether or not your suggestion, if followed back in the 70s, would have been followed in such a way as to create anything as compelling, and if not, whether this loss of expression was a reasonable price to pay in order to avoid being embarrassed by cosplayers and assorted idiots 30 years down the road. Maybe, maybe not -- but the stakes are so marginal that I can't see your guideline is a reasonable one, especially when there are more nuanced suggestions to be made.
Reply
As for your ending question, I've posted separately about that as a new LJ entry, "What I Would Do With the Drow".
Reply
People have wanted to be them for ages too -- long before Drizz't -- and not in the comic relief form of early D&D orcs.
Part of it, John, is that I get the feeling you're doing this 85% vague thing to avoid being pinned down. You're not defining what "connotation" is, exactly. Sure there are racial connotations. But a prescription for action requires more than a vague mental association, and I'd like you to assert that association instead of merely alluding to it.
In part, the drow *are* a design that's playing with something dangerous, but that's not enough to say anything one way or another. Basically, I think we agree on an ethos, but not necessarily on this *specific* case.
Reply
However, I don't believe that a prescription is needed in order to comment. Any reviewer can be attacked by saying something like "You didn't like X? Well, what would you write?" -- with the implication that any negative criticism amounts to censoring the whole and replacing it with nothing. As a reviewer of the drow, I think it would be reasonable to point out racial connotations of them even if I didn't provide a prescription for exactly what should be done.
I am not a reductionist -- meaning here that I do not think that a fantasy can be reduced to a simple X=Y, like "Orcs=Africans". I have made a number of comments on the connotations of the drow, but you seem to be dismissing anything except for either "drow=Africans" or "drow are abstract symbols of darkness". While you acknowledge that in principle there can be racial connotations other than simple substitution, in response to anything I say, you point out some visible differences between drow and African stereotypes as if that denies what I said.
Reply
However, I don't believe that a prescription is needed in order to comment. Any reviewer can be attacked by saying something like "You didn't like X? Well, what would you write?" -- with the implication that any negative criticism amounts to censoring the whole and replacing it with nothing. As a reviewer of the drow, I think it would be reasonable to point out racial connotations of them even if I didn't provide a prescription for exactly what should be done.
I'm talking about how strong the justification is. A general "connotation" isn't as good a reason as a specific case. I'm asking you what you feel the process is which leads to problems and whether that process -- or those problems -- justify solutions like your example.
I am not a reductionist -- meaning here that I do not think that a fantasy can be reduced to a simple X=Y, like "Orcs=Africans". I have made a number of comments on the connotations of the drow, but you seem to be dismissing anything except for either "drow=Africans" or "drow are abstract symbols of darkness". While you acknowledge that in principle there can be racial connotations other than simple substitution, in response to anything I say, you point out some visible differences between drow and African stereotypes as if that denies what I said
The problem is that this "reductionism" actually matters, John. It's not a trivial factoid, and the actual details about drow are not trivial factoids either. In the case of orcs, there's a clear process that moves from representation to discrimination and easily defined reasons why. There is a substantial body of discussion about how orcs are a problem that leads from source texts.
This is not trivial details in the service of denial. In each case, it's the substance of the text. You do me a disservice by suggesting I'm appealing to the idea of "simple substitution" or wholly denying the existence of an issue -- but neither are you willing to present cases and argue for them being representative to a trend. I think those cases exist and certainly, there's a trend at least in game development that's problematic, but I'm not sure that it's a *strong* trend that isn't already answered by some of the material.
My concern is that this has become so intellectual and theoretical vis a vis its subject matter that it's being divorced from what you call "simple substitution" -- and I call noncontroversial problems that need to be addressed.
Denial? Hardly.
Reply
I am not dismissing possible problem of orcs, and I'd be glad to talk about the problems of them as well. The reason why I posted more about drow was not because I felt that they were a prime example, but rather in response to people's comments about my April 2nd post (where I only mentioned them in passing).
In turn, I would ask: can you say more about the problems with orcs? For example, you claim that they match stereotypes of Africans, but from what I have read, they were loosely based on the Mongols as Eastern invaders of Europe. Given this, what harm do you feel they do? Are they a part of any trend(s)?
Reply
Leave a comment