Women, Race, and Agency in Narratives: or why i stopped reading vertigo's fables.
meta written for eid_ka_chand, exploring how race and gender play a part in fictional hierarchy and analyzing cultural/narrative appropriation.
Vertigo's Fables comics were, in many ways, my reentry into comics and my first foray outside of the X-men stuff and likely the reason that I ever left the X-men bits to pursue reading any other comics. Because they were insanely awesome and combined many of my literary and fictional kinks into a wonderfully complex story about fairy tale characters, exiled from their homelands, living in modern day New York City.
The concept lent itself wonderfully to deconstructing some of the fairy tales, and one of the things I loved the most about it is that it did this by giving the damsels in distress like Cinderella, Snow White, and Briar Rose more agency than they ever had in their traditional stories. Snow White is the deputy mayor of Fabletown, a city within NYC ran and operated by fairy tale characters, but the actual mayor is just there in name and she's clearly in charge of running the entire city. We find out that she took on this role pretty much right off the boat when she arrived in NYC back in the 17th century. Similarly, Cinderella started working as a covert spy for Fabletown as soon as she arrived, and she is one of Fabletown’s greatest assets. And somehow a character trope that has always disturbed me in fiction (because it encourages taking abuse and passively waiting for things to happen because the universe will reward you for being a doormat!) became my favorite character because of how much ass she kicked in Fables-verse. We need this kind of deconstructing of our cultural stories that take passive women and give them agency, while pointing out the flaws in the original narratives. Because the original narratives are deeply flawed.
Naturally, I spent the whole year obsessing and recommending and forcing Fables on to everyone I could influence into reading it. Somewhere close to issue fifty, however, things started to change, and I realized that Fables allowed this sort of gender deconstructive agency only to Western women, all of whom are portrayed as being white in Fablesverse. Because somewhere around then, Fables started introducing the Arabian fairy tale character (called fables) from the epic "One Thousand and One Nights" (Arabian Nights) into its world. There’s the predictable fail where the Arabian fables can’t communicate well in English (but Snow White had no issues communicating with the Arab fables when she went as an envoy two centuries ago!), keep slaves, and run with swords after women not dressing modestly, making it impossible for enlightened Western Fables to give them jobs. Because, you know, Arab people totally lack any ability to adapt even when they have no choice but to do so for their own survival.
Apparently, the Arabian Fables coming to our world in this day and age are so stupidly sexist that they just can't deal with the Western world, whereas, the Western Fables, who came here centuries ago (when the Western world was also very sexist) were already enlightened enough that they put Snow White in charge of a lot of things. Never mind the fact that Scheherazade from "One Thousand and One Nights" is one of the most awesomely cunning and self-sufficient fairy tale characters ever (male or female) and years ahead of most popular characters of her type being featured in contemporary stories.
The frame story of the “One Thousand and One Nights” features a King Shahryar who, after being betrayed by his wife, vows to punish all the women of his kingdom by marrying a virgin each night and then killing her in the morning, thus saving himself from the betrayal that apparently all women bring. He does this for a long period of time until Scheherazade volunteers to be his wife of the night with a plan to stop his killing ways. On their wedding night, Scheherazade asks to see her sister one last time, and the sister (as they had planned ahead of time) asks Scheherazade, who is a storyteller, for one of her stories one last time. Scheherazade begins to tell a story with her sister and the king making up her audience, and when the morning comes, she isn’t done. So the king allows her to live for an additional day so she can finish the story. But she tells complicated tales that weave in and out of each other, stretching over years, taking care that when morning comes, she’s always at the climax of one or another tale. This goes on for three years until the king has forgotten his anger and is happy to have Scheherazade as his wife. Contrary to most popular retellings, Scheherazade doesn’t do this because she’s in love with the king. She goes into it with the very clear intent of saving other women of the kingdom, of saving her sister. And the story clearly sees her as the protagonist and doesn’t see traditional romantic love as her salvation. Rather, her words and her brain save her (and countless women) from doom.
But this is not the picture of the Arabian/Muslim women that Fables wants you to see. In a graphic novel entitled, “1001 Nights of Snowfall,” we find Snow White traveling to the Arab lands as an envoy, where King Shahryar chooses her to be his bride of the night, and she begins telling him Western fairy tales as a way to keep him engaged and to keep him from killing her. (Scheherazade's sister, along with her, has been written out, so Snow's only audience consists of a man.) One would think that Scheherazade is being written out of her own story because now Snow White has taken over her role. But Fables is not content with writing her out and leaving her at that because when King Shahryar gives Snow White permission to leave, Scheherazade visits her.
Scheherazade is, predictably, filled with eternal gratitude for the woman who saved her from marrying King Shahryar and gave her three additional years of life. This Scheherazade is, as she was three years ago, ready to accept her lot, marry the king, and die like all the women without agency have before her. And Snow White tells her that King Shahryar is fond of stories, and Scheherazade should tell him some. And this is deeply problematic because in order to give Snow White a more prominent role, Scheherazade's story, agency, and even her personality is being taken away from her so we could have the only white person (who tells stories of only white people) in the story be the educator that all the people of color (and especially Scheherazade) learns from.
Islam was one of the first religions to give women rights to property, right to initiate divorce, contracts etc, etc, and historically, some of its literature reflects this? I'm not saying that "One Thousand and One Nights" is intentionally feminist, but the story does feature a woman with more agency than most popular stories of that day (or, even, most popular fairy tales of today, sadly) had. Instead of waiting for a prince to come to her rescue as princesses do, Scheherazade willingly offers to marry a tyrant king bent on killing all the women of the kingdom with the express plan to stop him from doing this. She has agency, she doesn't need (or want!) a guy to rescue her, she's willing to heroically step into a seemingly impossible mission to save other women, she has positive relationships with said women, and she's going to totally own the kingdom and its king not because she loves him but because she knows what's good for her, him, and the kingdom, and the women of the kingdom. And she's not going to do this by seducing him or making him fall in love with her (which is traditionally how women are given power in these stories), but instead with the power of her words and creativity.
So I really, really hate that Muslim women are portrayed as being so oppressed and meek in Fables. They're slaves, they cover their faces (but not their bodies because the male gaze must be appeased!), and they're oppressed by men who are going to kill them for wearing certain kinds of shoes. Fables took the liberty of giving the Western heroines (which are all presented as white women by Fables.) more agency than their mythic counterparts had, but it has to take agency away from Muslim women? Because the media painted picture of *all* Muslim women as oppressed little broken birds is apparently so much more interesting than the awesomeness of Scheherazade taking down a whole kingdom with her cunning, her creativeness, and her bravery. Of course, according to "Fables," not even Scheherazade is as enlightened as her mythic version because Snow White comes up with the plan for Scheherazade, and Scheherazade just follows in her footsteps. Yay for empowered White Victorian women (who had more agency/education back in the 17th century than the Muslim women do in contemporary times!) teaching Eastern women like Scheherazade how to do things.
Randomly, the comic is very happy to remind you of the racial differences, calling Snow White a “rising sun” as compared to Scheherazade's “somber twilight.” Now, the color analogies aside, we would all agree that one of them is supposed to be a much more positive image than the other, right? There’s also some visual fail, some of which I posted here.
This lack of agency for the Arabian women is also reflected in the Western women losing their agency bit by bit around the same time. Snow White becomes pregnant with non-human kids and has to go live on the farm, and Beauty, her replacement, never quite takes as prominent of a role in either the comics themselves or the running of "Fabletown." Snow White's husband, Bigby, still gets to contribute in major ways to the war effort, but Snow isn't much involved, which is a shame given that it was her efforts that turned back the original invasion early on. And while Snow White and Rose Red are pushed aside, previously unimportant male characters such as Ambrose and Boy Blue have taken over entire epic story arcs to such a degree that I got bored of all the manpain and just stopped reading. I had figured that I would go back to them after they were done telling the men's stories, but that just gave me more time to think of the race-fail, and I don't think I'll be returning to them. It's almost a good thing that they haven't gone back to writing about women because I might be tempted then.
Vertigo's Fables comics were, in many ways, my reentry into comics and my first foray outside of the X-men stuff and likely the reason that I ever left the X-men bits to pursue reading any other comics. Because they were insanely awesome and combined many of my literary and fictional kinks into a wonderfully complex story about fairy tale characters, exiled from their homelands, living in modern day New York City.
The concept lent itself wonderfully to deconstructing some of the fairy tales, and one of the things I loved the most about it is that it did this by giving the damsels in distress like Cinderella, Snow White, and Briar Rose more agency than they ever had in their traditional stories. Snow White is the deputy mayor of Fabletown, a city within NYC ran and operated by fairy tale characters, but the actual mayor is just there in name and she's clearly in charge of running the entire city. We find out that she took on this role pretty much right off the boat when she arrived in NYC back in the 17th century. Similarly, Cinderella started working as a covert spy for Fabletown as soon as she arrived, and she is one of Fabletown’s greatest assets. And somehow a character trope that has always disturbed me in fiction (because it encourages taking abuse and passively waiting for things to happen because the universe will reward you for being a doormat!) became my favorite character because of how much ass she kicked in Fables-verse. We need this kind of deconstructing of our cultural stories that take passive women and give them agency, while pointing out the flaws in the original narratives. Because the original narratives are deeply flawed.
Naturally, I spent the whole year obsessing and recommending and forcing Fables on to everyone I could influence into reading it. Somewhere close to issue fifty, however, things started to change, and I realized that Fables allowed this sort of gender deconstructive agency only to Western women, all of whom are portrayed as being white in Fablesverse. Because somewhere around then, Fables started introducing the Arabian fairy tale character (called fables) from the epic "One Thousand and One Nights" (Arabian Nights) into its world. There’s the predictable fail where the Arabian fables can’t communicate well in English (but Snow White had no issues communicating with the Arab fables when she went as an envoy two centuries ago!), keep slaves, and run with swords after women not dressing modestly, making it impossible for enlightened Western Fables to give them jobs. Because, you know, Arab people totally lack any ability to adapt even when they have no choice but to do so for their own survival.
Apparently, the Arabian Fables coming to our world in this day and age are so stupidly sexist that they just can't deal with the Western world, whereas, the Western Fables, who came here centuries ago (when the Western world was also very sexist) were already enlightened enough that they put Snow White in charge of a lot of things. Never mind the fact that Scheherazade from "One Thousand and One Nights" is one of the most awesomely cunning and self-sufficient fairy tale characters ever (male or female) and years ahead of most popular characters of her type being featured in contemporary stories.
The frame story of the “One Thousand and One Nights” features a King Shahryar who, after being betrayed by his wife, vows to punish all the women of his kingdom by marrying a virgin each night and then killing her in the morning, thus saving himself from the betrayal that apparently all women bring. He does this for a long period of time until Scheherazade volunteers to be his wife of the night with a plan to stop his killing ways. On their wedding night, Scheherazade asks to see her sister one last time, and the sister (as they had planned ahead of time) asks Scheherazade, who is a storyteller, for one of her stories one last time. Scheherazade begins to tell a story with her sister and the king making up her audience, and when the morning comes, she isn’t done. So the king allows her to live for an additional day so she can finish the story. But she tells complicated tales that weave in and out of each other, stretching over years, taking care that when morning comes, she’s always at the climax of one or another tale. This goes on for three years until the king has forgotten his anger and is happy to have Scheherazade as his wife. Contrary to most popular retellings, Scheherazade doesn’t do this because she’s in love with the king. She goes into it with the very clear intent of saving other women of the kingdom, of saving her sister. And the story clearly sees her as the protagonist and doesn’t see traditional romantic love as her salvation. Rather, her words and her brain save her (and countless women) from doom.
But this is not the picture of the Arabian/Muslim women that Fables wants you to see. In a graphic novel entitled, “1001 Nights of Snowfall,” we find Snow White traveling to the Arab lands as an envoy, where King Shahryar chooses her to be his bride of the night, and she begins telling him Western fairy tales as a way to keep him engaged and to keep him from killing her. (Scheherazade's sister, along with her, has been written out, so Snow's only audience consists of a man.) One would think that Scheherazade is being written out of her own story because now Snow White has taken over her role. But Fables is not content with writing her out and leaving her at that because when King Shahryar gives Snow White permission to leave, Scheherazade visits her.
Scheherazade is, predictably, filled with eternal gratitude for the woman who saved her from marrying King Shahryar and gave her three additional years of life. This Scheherazade is, as she was three years ago, ready to accept her lot, marry the king, and die like all the women without agency have before her. And Snow White tells her that King Shahryar is fond of stories, and Scheherazade should tell him some. And this is deeply problematic because in order to give Snow White a more prominent role, Scheherazade's story, agency, and even her personality is being taken away from her so we could have the only white person (who tells stories of only white people) in the story be the educator that all the people of color (and especially Scheherazade) learns from.
Islam was one of the first religions to give women rights to property, right to initiate divorce, contracts etc, etc, and historically, some of its literature reflects this? I'm not saying that "One Thousand and One Nights" is intentionally feminist, but the story does feature a woman with more agency than most popular stories of that day (or, even, most popular fairy tales of today, sadly) had. Instead of waiting for a prince to come to her rescue as princesses do, Scheherazade willingly offers to marry a tyrant king bent on killing all the women of the kingdom with the express plan to stop him from doing this. She has agency, she doesn't need (or want!) a guy to rescue her, she's willing to heroically step into a seemingly impossible mission to save other women, she has positive relationships with said women, and she's going to totally own the kingdom and its king not because she loves him but because she knows what's good for her, him, and the kingdom, and the women of the kingdom. And she's not going to do this by seducing him or making him fall in love with her (which is traditionally how women are given power in these stories), but instead with the power of her words and creativity.
So I really, really hate that Muslim women are portrayed as being so oppressed and meek in Fables. They're slaves, they cover their faces (but not their bodies because the male gaze must be appeased!), and they're oppressed by men who are going to kill them for wearing certain kinds of shoes. Fables took the liberty of giving the Western heroines (which are all presented as white women by Fables.) more agency than their mythic counterparts had, but it has to take agency away from Muslim women? Because the media painted picture of *all* Muslim women as oppressed little broken birds is apparently so much more interesting than the awesomeness of Scheherazade taking down a whole kingdom with her cunning, her creativeness, and her bravery. Of course, according to "Fables," not even Scheherazade is as enlightened as her mythic version because Snow White comes up with the plan for Scheherazade, and Scheherazade just follows in her footsteps. Yay for empowered White Victorian women (who had more agency/education back in the 17th century than the Muslim women do in contemporary times!) teaching Eastern women like Scheherazade how to do things.
Randomly, the comic is very happy to remind you of the racial differences, calling Snow White a “rising sun” as compared to Scheherazade's “somber twilight.” Now, the color analogies aside, we would all agree that one of them is supposed to be a much more positive image than the other, right? There’s also some visual fail, some of which I posted here.
This lack of agency for the Arabian women is also reflected in the Western women losing their agency bit by bit around the same time. Snow White becomes pregnant with non-human kids and has to go live on the farm, and Beauty, her replacement, never quite takes as prominent of a role in either the comics themselves or the running of "Fabletown." Snow White's husband, Bigby, still gets to contribute in major ways to the war effort, but Snow isn't much involved, which is a shame given that it was her efforts that turned back the original invasion early on. And while Snow White and Rose Red are pushed aside, previously unimportant male characters such as Ambrose and Boy Blue have taken over entire epic story arcs to such a degree that I got bored of all the manpain and just stopped reading. I had figured that I would go back to them after they were done telling the men's stories, but that just gave me more time to think of the race-fail, and I don't think I'll be returning to them. It's almost a good thing that they haven't gone back to writing about women because I might be tempted then.