In Which Pico Rants About Eurocentric Fantasy
I don't know if I've ranted on this before, but here goes.
The "Literature" in my major is ethnocentric. The stuff I'm getting taught as an english major is written mostly by Old White Men. I say this not with disrespect to the people who did said writing, but to the people who decided This Is It.
I've been thinking about it since I started learning Chinese, and, simultaneously, getting involved in writing. I noticed that fantasy writers - and who can't notice this? - write about European culture a hella lot. There's the Tolkien-imatatees, of course, but there's the people who decide, "Hel! Norse mythos is the way to go!" (pun intended.) or "yeah, I think I'll write another fair folk book!" or "oh, those crazy Romans!" Pop over to fictionpress and you see the same thing (though you're getting Japanese in there of late, courtesy anime/manga culture bleeding into american).
(SF, you're not excluded. How damn many SF books call earth "Terra"?" And don't even get me started on litfic: you look at Da Vinci Code and it says "OMG WORLDWIDE CONSPIRACY" and uh. Yeah right. Worldwide, except for all those people who aren't Christian-backgrounded. Dan Brown, tits or gtfo.
I center on fantasy because that's what I'm concentrated in. And I center on english-writing people because that's my primary language.)
And much as those are lovely things to write, there's more. Chinese was an eye-opener that way: I was never an "it's all about us" person, luckily, but I notice people making stereotypes of fantasy, and people mocking stereotypes of fantasy, and people shying away from fantasy because "it's all stuff like Lord of the Rings," and people writing fantasy that's basically what they grew up reading. I'm not faulting amateurs, I'm faulting people for not looking at cultures outside their own and bringing in what they're not familiar with.
I'm faulting people for stereotyping their foreign cultures - the North = berserker barbarians, the South = sun-burned tribes, the East = enigmatic wise unwarlike people, the West = where the elves fuck off to once they start Waning.
I'm faulting people for not looking outside Europe and the US for ideas. I love Europe, yes, but the world's hella bigger than that. We Americans've got more than enough mythos just south of us, and just north of us - in one case it's centuries old, and in the other it's still around; and speaking of, we've got it left among our people, too. Europe you've got the south and the east to work with. But there's more than just the Northern hemisphere, too. And, as writers are basically ravens for any shiny ideas, we need to fly wider circles.
I'm faulting people for being repeptitive, when they - we - don't need to be.
And I understand my own faults, in this matter. I know that I've got a hell of a lot of things that I need to know. I'm learning about China, now, but I've only scratched the tarnish off, and there's still - hell, there's Indian mythos, and African mythos and Oceanic mythos and it's not just mythos, either, but cultures that're around today, and speak and behave in reaction to what they've learned, and in reaction to this new instant world, where you'll sit down in one day and send writing to someone in tomorrow.
I know there's people writing other places. Nancy Farmer. Octavia Butler. Lian Hearn. And go further back: Ursula Le Guin. Frank Herbert. Cordwainer Smith. And go further back. Rudyard Kipling.
Yes, they're all arguable. And yes, I can argue every one.
I'm saying that I love reading new things. And I'm not the only one: people have been excited by novelty since they've been people. That goes double for back when people couldn't travel: the Silk Road, eg, wasn't just goods, it was tales and culture and "man, you'll never believe this place!" When most of the transportation was confined to coast and roads, people who did longer travels to unknown places get grilled for what goes on in said places: the people back home are curious.
And I'm comparing that to today, yeah. There's fantasy from European myth, yeah. But I want to see fantasy from everyone else's myth, too. I want to see what magic works like in Mozambique. I want to see the Chinese - and it all depends where in China you are - version of elves, or whatevs you want to call them. I want to see Bangladeshi superstitions, and Peruvian quests. I want to see these things on a big scale all over the world, not simply in a faux-medieval temperate-climate setting.
I'm working to improve my own self, and writing, but I would love to see others who write outside what they see.
The "Literature" in my major is ethnocentric. The stuff I'm getting taught as an english major is written mostly by Old White Men. I say this not with disrespect to the people who did said writing, but to the people who decided This Is It.
I've been thinking about it since I started learning Chinese, and, simultaneously, getting involved in writing. I noticed that fantasy writers - and who can't notice this? - write about European culture a hella lot. There's the Tolkien-imatatees, of course, but there's the people who decide, "Hel! Norse mythos is the way to go!" (pun intended.) or "yeah, I think I'll write another fair folk book!" or "oh, those crazy Romans!" Pop over to fictionpress and you see the same thing (though you're getting Japanese in there of late, courtesy anime/manga culture bleeding into american).
(SF, you're not excluded. How damn many SF books call earth "Terra"?" And don't even get me started on litfic: you look at Da Vinci Code and it says "OMG WORLDWIDE CONSPIRACY" and uh. Yeah right. Worldwide, except for all those people who aren't Christian-backgrounded. Dan Brown, tits or gtfo.
I center on fantasy because that's what I'm concentrated in. And I center on english-writing people because that's my primary language.)
And much as those are lovely things to write, there's more. Chinese was an eye-opener that way: I was never an "it's all about us" person, luckily, but I notice people making stereotypes of fantasy, and people mocking stereotypes of fantasy, and people shying away from fantasy because "it's all stuff like Lord of the Rings," and people writing fantasy that's basically what they grew up reading. I'm not faulting amateurs, I'm faulting people for not looking at cultures outside their own and bringing in what they're not familiar with.
I'm faulting people for stereotyping their foreign cultures - the North = berserker barbarians, the South = sun-burned tribes, the East = enigmatic wise unwarlike people, the West = where the elves fuck off to once they start Waning.
I'm faulting people for not looking outside Europe and the US for ideas. I love Europe, yes, but the world's hella bigger than that. We Americans've got more than enough mythos just south of us, and just north of us - in one case it's centuries old, and in the other it's still around; and speaking of, we've got it left among our people, too. Europe you've got the south and the east to work with. But there's more than just the Northern hemisphere, too. And, as writers are basically ravens for any shiny ideas, we need to fly wider circles.
I'm faulting people for being repeptitive, when they - we - don't need to be.
And I understand my own faults, in this matter. I know that I've got a hell of a lot of things that I need to know. I'm learning about China, now, but I've only scratched the tarnish off, and there's still - hell, there's Indian mythos, and African mythos and Oceanic mythos and it's not just mythos, either, but cultures that're around today, and speak and behave in reaction to what they've learned, and in reaction to this new instant world, where you'll sit down in one day and send writing to someone in tomorrow.
I know there's people writing other places. Nancy Farmer. Octavia Butler. Lian Hearn. And go further back: Ursula Le Guin. Frank Herbert. Cordwainer Smith. And go further back. Rudyard Kipling.
Yes, they're all arguable. And yes, I can argue every one.
I'm saying that I love reading new things. And I'm not the only one: people have been excited by novelty since they've been people. That goes double for back when people couldn't travel: the Silk Road, eg, wasn't just goods, it was tales and culture and "man, you'll never believe this place!" When most of the transportation was confined to coast and roads, people who did longer travels to unknown places get grilled for what goes on in said places: the people back home are curious.
And I'm comparing that to today, yeah. There's fantasy from European myth, yeah. But I want to see fantasy from everyone else's myth, too. I want to see what magic works like in Mozambique. I want to see the Chinese - and it all depends where in China you are - version of elves, or whatevs you want to call them. I want to see Bangladeshi superstitions, and Peruvian quests. I want to see these things on a big scale all over the world, not simply in a faux-medieval temperate-climate setting.
I'm working to improve my own self, and writing, but I would love to see others who write outside what they see.