A Test Of Character
So I just got linked to this article about Firefly, and since I haven’t seen the show I can only start to piece together why this show is so divisive. Me, I never grew up with Whedon, I grew up with Osamu Tezuka manga reprints and whatever Discworld books Angus and Robertson had when it was still open. Make of that what you will:
http://allecto.wordpress.com/2008/10/15/objects-in-space-black-masculinity-through-the-paradigm-of-whitemale-lust/
In all the discussions I see online about how mainstream media depicts gender, race, sexual orientation, whatever… because so many commenters are focused on defending themselves for being white males or females or non white or non straight… the goal of achieving discussions of real change everybody involved can take away and apply to their lives and works is somewhat lost in an argument over who is even allowed to discuss these ideas at all. When you discount a human of any stripe of providing what may be a well articulated point about something due to their minority or majority status, something’s really lost here. So when we see characters in media, why are we so focused, as a human species about who is feminist, who is sexist and who is allowed to write narrative fiction at all… instead of wondering what it is about the writing of characters who are characters rather than politically charged insults to whatever demographic the character supposedly depicts or doesn’t depict? I spent about two years trying to read posts online and Internet reviewer videos trying to discern how to write effective characters of all genders, and I noticed that the commentators who didn’t yell at their audiences for the crime of being one gender or race or not their gender or race or whatever… made me think far more about how I wrote characters than the bloggers who made worthy points but seemed really hostile to anybody who wasn’t already familiar with the idea being presented.
I’m so glad that female Internet critics like Lindsay Ellis and Sofie Liv can get their ideas out there about what makes effective characters that appeal to everybody to wide demographics beyond a boy or girl core audience.
A common misunderstanding about men watching these kinds of women based media review programs is that they’re “male feminists” who are trying to co-opt the small areas of discussion women have to discuss real problems and “silence” women, when really a lot of the time when I watch these programs, both me and other fans of these female Internet reviewers start to think less of these women as just pretty faces and start to pay attention to genuinely interesting ideas presented by women that give everybody involved to watch their show and take ideas seriously even while they laugh at satirical snark at nostalgic material.
That’s what makes me sad about discussions of media online. The feminism was never the problem with men listening to these arguments, the problem may have been as simple as “Hey, I like listening to these ideas but I’d like it if I didn’t feel as if I’m being yelled at for having a penis even though I’ve never even kissed a girl yet let alone contemplated raping anyone”.
Characters in fiction should really start from trying to create a character versus a strawman or woman to exposit some kind of political filibuster. To explain my point in how vast this problem in figuring out how to depict Africans in your narrative, it’s true that Morgan Freeman and the hero of Hotel Rwanda are great examples of black heroes, you still have to deal with the fact that Idi Amin from The Last King Of Scotland really existed, however loosely adapted from reality he was in that.
For every noble Bruce Lee there’s a heinous Mao Zedong, for every Machete who’s fighting for Mexico there’s still drug cartels that aren’t really representative of what the Mexican character is capable of in terms of achievements. These are historical, rather than outright blanket facts. Also note that in Mao Zedong’s example there is only one of Mao Zedong and millions of other Chinese who share his cultural race but not his supposed genetic evil you see in a lot of Godwin’s Law style arguments.
You can see why there’s a bit of a divide between history’s greatest monsters and people like Morgan Freeman and Bruce Lee. It’s often not that simple either. Often you get people who are just people. And I think regarding your characters as people with specific upbringings and backgrounds, genders… that’s a better approach to writing your characters than just blanket portraying all of them as insane maniacs hell bent on raping everything. See the movie City Of Life And Death for an example of modern Chinese cinema’s most recent great achievements, a Chinese director managed to give humanity back to what many Chinese would normally see as a two dimensional political enemy. And that’s the kind of storytelling that heals old wounds rather than re-opening them. It also has the honour of having a not-white guy save everybody instead of having a white guy in there by default so white people will watch it.
That’s not to say not everyone in the movie has to be not white. Especially when you’re dealing with that one German Nazi guy who considered in his witnessing the Rape of Nanjing that maybe Auschwitz was watered down compared to what he was in the middle of. That’s what’s great about historical adaptations done right.
If there wasn’t a Nazi guy turned rogue who tried to save Chinese people there in real history, it would be Quentin Tarantino level hack job storytelling. But history has this weird way of outdoing Tarantino every now and then in terms of absurdity.
What I’m essentially saying is this: great white hope movies like Driving Miss Daisy are kind of annoying to persons of colour because it involves the idea that the white guy saves everyone. But what if you have a situation where instead of Morgan Freeman driving around this rich old white lady, he is tasked to drive around this white, yet disabled in a wheelchair dude who is rejected by the other rich white guys as weak and useless even if his company’s inventions are helping him survive? What if Morgan Freeman and Guy With Wheelchair suddenly join forces against an ogliarchy driven capitalist system that hates them both, especially in the time a film like Driving Miss Daisy is set? Now your originally great white hope movie becomes a “two guys disadvantaged in different ways stand up to a system that is a dick to both of them for completely different reasons” movie. And I’d watch the shit outta that.
The most perfect example of a movie that features a white guy desperately trying to get the other white guys who are being a dick to an indigenous culture movie I can think of is Cannibal Holocaust. I’m not even kidding. Robert Kerman’s anthropology professor character not only works as the greatest advertisement for ethical social science I’ve ever seen, but he’s an entertaining character who doesn’t have to stand up against a vaguely orthodox system like in a cheap arse Robin Williams cliche movie. Nope.
In Cannibal Holocaust, the white professor dude is respected by the natives not because he’s white, but because he’s the only one in the jungle with his skin colour who remotely tried to empathise with trading and respecting these Amazon tribesmen after these racist fucktard film students raped and pillaged everything they held dear before poor Robert Kerman realises what a shitstorm he’s been drafted into trying to find what’s left of those imperialist shockumentary makers. He has to earn the respect of the villagers every step of the way, and we see this process of cultural exchange visually through the whole movie. This film is infamous for its animal cruelty but I’m sad to admit I love this movie for how it’s the first real portrayal of a white guy professor in the jungle movie that doesn’t end up feeling forced or not true to how people would really react. It is also the gold standard of inspirational teacher trying to reach “these kids” films in my personal regard.
It also shows you an example of how even if you do the whole “white guy first contact with outside tribespeople” plot, you don’t have to fuck it up and make it Pocahontas. You don’t even have to make it within the structure the MPAA typically allows either. You just have to make a good movie, with good characters, no matter what colour or gender they are.
