Wiscon 31: What These People Need Is a Honky
Description: Tom Cruise is the Last Samurai. Kevin Costner wins the heart of American Indians with his wolf dancing. Orlando Bloom, in Kingdom of Heaven, goes from medieval England to Jerusalem to teach the Arabs how to sink wells and transport water. Is there anything that can be done about this plague of Orientalist white-guy Mary Sue-ism?
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I haven't read the Empire books, but I remember rilina's comment on The Blue Sword, and my gut reaction of, "But! But! Harry kicks ass! Nooo!" Yet, she's right, that book is very problematic with regards to race.
There actually are stories that feature a POC protagonist as a Fish Out of Water in white culture. Unfortunately, they're usually of the Noble Tragic Savage variety. Not encouraging.
I do have to wonder if the way The Matrix movies ended up puts them in the White Savior category. Yes, Will Smith was the first choice for Neo, but he's not who ended up on the screen. Yes, Keanu Reeves is mixed-race, but the character was significantly lighter than most of the denizens of Zion, and the casting of his friends/co-workers within the frame of the Matrix was predominantly white (as was his love interest, which could have been very interesting if Neo had been played as a POC, but only seemed to reinforce his whiteness in the final result). I could be way off, but it's something I wondered about when we first got a glimpse of Zion, as I wondered why the Wachowski Brothers didn't approach, say, Keith Hamilton Cobb or Malcolm Jamal Warner or Cuba Gooding Jr. to play Neo when Will Smith turned them down. These are familiar names to sf fans, not to mention handsome, physically fit actors who would have done admirably as humanity's saviors. Or heck, cast Dustin Nguyen, though he certainly blows the idea of the non-sexual Asian male out of the water. Granted, all four actors I've mentioned don't have the clout of Will Smith or Keanu Reeves, and I did like the Bill & Ted jokes that made it into the movies because of the casting of Keanu Reeves. Still, I could cope with the lack of jokes for any of those four on the big screen, and for the movies that could have resulted from such "daring" casting (both because the actors are relative unknowns in Hollywood at large and because they're POC).
But possibly all of that's an aside.
I so wanted to attend Wiscon this year. Maybe next year.
Oh! Thunderheart might count in the way Bury My Heart does. Val Kilmer plays a mixed-race federal agent in that one, investigating a murder on a reservation. I'm trying to remember if the final showdown was his idea or not.
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At least she also wrote The Hero and the Crown within that society AND with a world-saving heroine who shows the patriarchy what's what AND has TWO true loves. Not too shabby, I think.
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In 'The Blue Sword', the situation is a thinly camoflagued version of the British Raj. The racism of the British in the situation is acknowledged to at least some degree, and the 'Afghans' in the hills are allowed to be educated and intelligent, as well as being exotic to the British-born heroine.
And the mystical powers that the heroine develops turn out to be because she's part-Afghan, not because she's a foreigner. Furthermore, it's 'white woman and mixed group of native tribes and white men save white and native kingdoms from evil demons'. It's not as though the Afghans have no agency.
In 'The Hero and the Crown', the mystical powers seem to correlate worryingly closely with how white one's skin is. Aerin's family originally came from the North, and they have some power. Aerin's mother came from the North more recently, so she's a white-skinned red-head and she and her family members have much more power. The wizard, Luthe, has much more power than her family again, and he's even whiter than her, and blond.
Aerin and Luthe save Damar without Damar even being aware of the fact.
I was surprised, reading this thread, to find people who'd read Aerin's family as 'coded white', when there is explicit discussion of the skin colours in the book, although I suppose if one read it before 'The Blue Sword' and one skipped over a few passages, one might very well miss it.
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I was surprised, reading this thread, to find people who'd read Aerin's family as 'coded white', when there is explicit discussion of the skin colours in the book, although I suppose if one read it before 'The Blue Sword' and one skipped over a few passages, one might very well miss it.
I think I ended up reading Aerin as coded white because of her hair and her eyes, and because I think I read "Hero and Crown" before "Blue Sword." The other part may also be because the culture feels very Eurofantasy-esque.
On the other hand, I think I need to reread to make more notes about skin color and dynamics and whatnot in the books; it's been so long that I'm really doubting my memory.
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After all, in her country, she's one of a minority ethnic group that the majority see as 'savage' (uncivilised Northerners) and possibly mystical. Her dragon-killing is definitely interpreted as an expression of this by the courtiers. She's certainly discriminated against for not being of the majority ethnicity (and I did read her final acceptance of not being monarch in her own right as being a race issue, not a sex-role issue, mainly).
One could argue that this is intended to work like 'A Wizard of Earthsea', which uses brown=normal and white=savage to make a point about the overwhelming 'whiteness' of fantasy while also providing a good fantasy novel with a hero of colour.
The difference is in the viewpoint character, of course. Aerin is definitely white-skinned.
I didn't read the culture as Eurofantasy-esque, but I don't know how much of that is because I read 'The Blue Sword' first, so I saw it as very much set somewhere like Afghanistan. I'll have to read it again to see what's there.
(Are you seeing Aerin and her family as the same ethnicity? That definitely confuses me. So much of her situation hinges on her obvious physical differences from her family -- most of which are to do with colour, although height is also an issue. So if the culture is Eurofantasy, her mother can't be, but if the culture isn't, her mother, by implication, must be.)
I do think 'The Blue Sword' has a lot of very clear rejection of colonialism in it. It's easy to find bits of colonialism in it, because it is set against a colonial background, but it's got a lot of explicit statements that the colonial attitude towards other countries is demeaning for all parties, as well as the implicit anti-colonial messages that attach to having the indigenous culture succeed in preserving its independence. It is also unusual for a racist work to end in a set of mixed marriages and the establishment of formal diplomatic relations between countries.
Some of McKinley's other work suggests that one can also view the colonialism of the England-equivalent (the one that Harry thinks of only as 'Home') as normal behaviour for any country at a certain stage. Certainly, Damar used to be a great land that filled most of the continent south of the hill country -- but other stories set in different bits of this fantasy world's history ('Deerskin', 'The Healer', and 'The Stagman'), as well as bits of 'The Blue Sword', make it clear that the continent in question has been divided into many kingdoms on many occasions, and so Damar's claim to have owned all of it seems likely to have been through conquest and colonisation too.
Thanks for this discussion, incidentally. It's been really good for making me think about aspects of these books that I'd noticed, but never really focused on.
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The difference is in the viewpoint character, of course. Aerin is definitely white-skinned.
Well, the last sentence is basically my problem with the book and why I think it falls into the category of "white savior." It's great that the background people are POC, but it means that once again, we don't have a POC protagonist and a white main character that saves the day.
That's also my problem with Blue Sword. I think McKinley (and most people) are anti-imperialist, but the problem still remains that many narratives about anti-imperialism or whatnot still have white protagonists.
I think you could make the argument that many fantasy books are about colonialism and imperialism and countries conquering others. But the problem with those is that they take race out of the picture, while in our world, race was a very huge part in colonialism. So it really bugs me when most stories either don't address race at all by having the entire world be white or when they do address race, but only through the means of having a white main character.
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And I think this is it, here.
Harry's mixed blood does mix things up there, a bit, but really not much.
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Yes! OMG I hate those romances in which the heroine is a feminist and a Marxist and always fights for the poor oppressed people, even if she's a born noble and whatnot. It makes no sense.
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