When the token feature stops being one... for no reason at all

Calliea said:

I think I have an example for you here - I didn't watch it, but from what I know, one of the American movie adaptation of Sherlock Holmes that came out lately (there were 2, no? I'm unsure, apologies), featured... female Watson. So Sherlock had someone to pursue romantically. Or whatever

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But isn't Sherlock Holmes so well established as a piece of our cultural background, one that's been presented so many times over the years, that it's completely normal and expected to recast it in various ways? I don't think a female Watson is necessarily about evening up gender ratios so much as about tossing something unexpected into a very familiar trope (one that might even be boring to many people). Sort of like doing a production of Anthony and Cleopatra in Napoleonic period costumes (yes, I've seen such a production).

I'm assuming that the post was more about making a movie or TV show out of something more recent and recasting characters who are "canon white" as female, PoC, or gay. I really haven't seen that done with televised or movie versions of recent novels, though whitewashing is pretty common. Like, ahem, the Wizard of Earthsea TV show casting a white actor as Ged.

Calliea said:

Thinking of that, I kinda wonder about when it comes to homosexual relationships in stories that don't focus on coming-out stories or circulate around a character's orientation, but have slow-developing romances. Whenever it's a heterosexual couple, so many people pick up on all the hints (even those that don't exist I do it too by the way, just cause I like romances and I tend to look for them in things I read) and know that there's something bound to happen between the characters. From the experience with those that read my novel, I see that they totally miss all of the similar level hints when it comes to the same sex romances. Subtlety seems to have absolutely no effect Which makes it an exercise in frustration to draft the possibility of a romance/romance conflict with other character/s without being obnoxious about it and shoving it in the reader's face when it's just not the time in the story to put more focus on it.

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I hear you. And some of the readers who say they don't like "knowing" that a character is gay or lesbian also insist they don't like "knowing" that someone is straight if it's not relevant to the plot. They often say, "I don't care what your characters do in the sack, I don't want to see it if it's not a relevant to the plot."

But that ignores that story and characterization is more than plot, and it ignores that orientation is not just about what people do in bed. It's also about who you notice and think about romatically, it's about who you love and want to spend your life with, it's about the relationships you've had in the past, even if you remain single for an entire book. I think if a writer has a straight character who idly notices an attractive person of the opposite sex, or one who is coming home to his or her spouse and kids after a day at work, or even a soldier who is just thinking the girl or boy who is waiting at home for them, for instance, most readers will pick up that the person is straight without saying you "shoved their bedroom habits in their faces."

Neverwhere said:

Supposed to? To whom? When? If I read a story featuring an Asian female in the lead role I don't need a reason for that either.

BTW very few stories I've read recently have actually specified race. I could be making all the protagonists purple martians if I wanted.

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But colorblindness is problematic too. because colorblind descriptions default to white in most peoples' minds, at least in the US.

White, westerners will tend to imagine people as white (and male in the absence of any gender cues) if race is not specified. Even stick figures are assumed to be white males if some "otherizing" marker is not present, like a dress, or "African" hair or narrow eyes or whatever. Even people who are not white tend to default to imagining characters (even in the stories they write themselves) as white. This starts in childhood. Colbert had some fun with this.

This little piece is illustrative, if silly (and kind of icky-cauliflower skin. Ew).

http://www.buzzfeed.com/hnigatu/if-white-characters-were-described-like-people-of-color-in-l#2crq9r0

I would love to see more characters who do not even show a trace of romantic or sexual inclination, but I'm probably the only one.

Roxxsmom said:

I'm assuming that the post was more about making a movie or TV show out of something more recent and recasting characters who are "canon white" as female, PoC, or gay. I really haven't seen that done with televised or movie versions of recent novels, though whitewashing is pretty common. Like, ahem, the Wizard of Earthsea TV show casting a white actor as Ged.http://www.buzzfeed.com/hnigatu/if-white-characters-were-described-like-people-of-color-in-l#2crq9r0

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Like I said, HHGTTG. Okay, there isn't much race in the radio series, beyond telling us that Ford and Zaphod are from a planet somewhere in the region of Betelgeuse, and I don't remember the book well enough to know if it's in there. But I do know that in the tv series, both Ford and Zaphod were cast white. In the film, Ford is black. Yet Zaphod is white. This is confusing to me considering they're supposed to be closely related, but maybe alien genetics work differently.

Buffysquirrel said:

Like I said, HHGTTG. Okay, there isn't much race in the radio series, beyond telling us that Ford and Zaphod are from a planet somewhere in the region of Betelgeuse, and I don't remember the book well enough to know if it's in there. But I do know that in the tv series, both Ford and Zaphod were cast white. In the film, Ford is black. Yet Zaphod is white. This is confusing to me considering they're supposed to be closely related, but maybe alien genetics work differently.

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Well, no, that's possible with humans.

Hapax Legomenon said:

Well, no, that's possible with humans.

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True. I forget the narrowness of my own experience .

The Sherlock fans were Very Upset that there was a female, PoC, American Watson. The jury's out on whether this was because she was a WoC or because she's American.

ssbittner said:

There are definitely readers who demand justification for each non-male non-straight non-white character. However,

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However those people are not my audience, so ..so write the book you gotta write

Roxxsmom said:

But colorblindness is problematic too. because colorblind descriptions default to white in most peoples' minds, at least in the US.

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While I'm not up on the political climate in the US, I must admit that policing other people's minds has never been a goal of mine in writing. The idea that I should make my entire fantasy realm lets say....black and then justify it to the reader so they can learn to think about black people, seems pretty silly to me.

My primary goal is and probably always will be to tell a story to the best of my ability and to make my characters believable. But for interests sake and because it's relevant to the discussion here, the male lead in my novel is....in my head at least...Asian. Because I live in a country where a vast number of the population is from Asia, even though I'm white.

So not all people in my head are white. And I won't be upset if a reader makes my male lead in their head caucasian or black. What I care about is that my character lives in their head at all, because then I know I've done my job.

Neverwhere said:

While I'm not up on the political climate in the US, I must admit that policing other people's minds has never been a goal of mine in writing. The idea that I should make my entire fantasy realm lets say....black and then justify it to the reader so they can learn to think about black people, seems pretty silly to me.

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It's not so much policing what they think as it is accurately expressing the story. My main characters are African-American and Chinese, and I'd be upset if people thought of them as white, because they're not.

Calliea said:

I think I have an example for you here - I didn't watch it, but from what I know, one of the American movie adaptation of Sherlock Holmes that came out lately (there were 2, no? I'm unsure, apologies), featured... female Watson. So Sherlock had someone to pursue romantically. Or whatever

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Watson is an Asian woman in Elementary (but not so they can have a romance... the creators have specifically said they don't want that). Another example is the Dresden Files TV series. Morgan was a black man and Murphy a Latina woman. They're both white in the books. And a very recent one, Annie and guy who adopts her are black in the latest Annie adaptation (which originally came from a comic).

The thing is, these examples aren't like whitewashing or turning women into men, because men and white people are already the majority. It's like the people who complained about a black Spider-Man in the comics, because who would white boys look up to now? Probably the vast majority of other superheroes, because more superheroes are white men than any other demographic. In reverse, when you change a black character to white, that was likely the only black character in the whole thing, in a genre where hardly any characters at all were black.

Take the Disney princesses for example. If I want to change Tiana to white, that would mean there are no black princesses. If I change Belle to black, there are still lots of white princesses, and proportionally more white princesses than white people in the world. One princess per race is seen as representation for all races except white. This isn't just a Disney thing. It's how it usually goes down.

So I'm not going to complain if someone reimagines a book with more diversity. The Elementary one is especially silly as an argument, as it's a modern reimagining set in America, with cars, mobile phones, the internet and a bunch of original characters. But Watson as an Asian woman? Clearly one step too far.

Hapax Legomenon said:

I would love to see more characters who do not even show a trace of romantic or sexual inclination, but I'm probably the only one.

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No, you're not.

I enjoy a well-done romance, but love and sex get shoe-horned into every show, every movie, and every book, even when they're superfluous to the plot, and I'm tired of it. I recognize that desire is a potent and exciting human experience, but I wish more stories would celebrate the other potent human experiences that are common. There's so much else to write about, so why don't we? Friendship, fraternity, community -- these are experiences that could resonate with the audience just as powerfully as a love story, yet the emphasis is always on the starry-eyed-woo-woo and the resulting boinky-boinky.

When I was a young adult, I discovered the band Rush, and one of the things that really drew me to them was the fact they had such damned interesting lyrics -- which were pretty much never about love or desire. And likewise, part of the appeal of the X-Files for me was seeing that believable professional relationship. These two characters worked together closely and well, and there was no hint of sexual chemistry (at least during the seasons I watched.) It was both refreshing and believable.

I don't think it's a problem per we. After all, I don't think people think of white males as the default because they hate other ethnicities or women. It's just cultural norm due to that's the majority and usually easiest to relate to. In other countries, I bet their race is seen as the default. A story in India wouldn't say their characters are Indian, it would be assumed. As for women, very few fighting groups have been composed entirely of women.

Having said that, i like ethnic characters. I made the main character of webcomic ethnic for no other reason than I just envisioned him that way. And to play against norms.

I agree that it's unintentional, but it's still something we have to work against. Particularly if we're writing minority characters.

Hapax Legomenon said:

I would love to see more characters who do not even show a trace of romantic or sexual inclination, but I'm probably the only one.

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I have an asexual and aromantic character in my book, but I suspect many readers will probably assume she's simply heterosexual and too old or busy to be interested in men, since she's in her (gasp) forties and has a demanding profession to which she is devoted.

Asexual and aromantic people really tend to be invisible or to be misinterpreted.

Buffysquirrel said:

Like I said, HHGTTG. Okay, there isn't much race in the radio series, beyond telling us that Ford and Zaphod are from a planet somewhere in the region of Betelgeuse, and I don't remember the book well enough to know if it's in there.

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I honestly don't remember whether Ford Prefect was described as being any race, or described at all, actually, in the novel. I imagined him as a redhead for some reason, but that might be because 1. I tend to default to assuming characters are white when there's not a clear cue that makes me think they're something else, and 2. There was a guy named Ford in my high school who was a redhead.

But if no real description was ever provided for him, the fact that people would be annoyed by his being cast as not white is a case in point. The default assumption most people make for characters is white, even when the person in question is from Betelgeuse.

Hapax Legomenon said:

Well, no, that's possible with humans.

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True.

This is a fairly famous example (fraternal twins born to the same parents), but the genes that control the superficial qualities that we attribute to race actually are just a relatively small number of the ways people within families can differ. In spite of the wording in the article, there is probably greater than a one in a million chance of happening when both parents are a mixture of African and European heritage. The number of genes that determine skin color are not that great.

And once you get into extended families, it becomes even more likely that this can happen. Since the taboos about marrying between races (which are really more about culture than biological differences) are breaking down, this will become more common.

So maybe people on Betelgeuse just don't care about skin color as a difference any more they have about hair and eye color in Europe.

Neverwhere said:

While I'm not up on the political climate in the US, I must admit that policing other people's minds has never been a goal of mine in writing. The idea that I should make my entire fantasy realm lets say....black and then justify it to the reader so they can learn to think about black people, seems pretty silly to me.

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Who said anything about policing people's minds or making your entire fantasy realm black so they can learn to think about black people?

But is there any reason not to have a realistic mixes of phenotypes in a fantasy world, just like there are in ours?

Jacob_Wallace said:

I don't think it's a problem per we. After all, I don't think people think of white males as the default because they hate other ethnicities or women. It's just cultural norm due to that's the majority and usually easiest to relate to. In other countries, I bet their race is seen as the default. A story in India wouldn't say their characters are Indian, it would be assumed. As for women, very few fighting groups have been composed entirely of women.

Having said that, i like ethnic characters. I made the main character of webcomic ethnic for no other reason than I just envisioned him that way. And to play against norms.

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It's a problem for the kids, who are just as American as I am, who grow up rarely seeing anyone like them in books, TV, and movies, and so end up also default imagining to and relating to white people as the norm. Kids of color are more likely to see people who look like them as being ugly or undesirable too and to be biased towards people with lighter skin.

And sadly enough, plastic surgery to make features look more European is popular in Asian countries, and skin bleaching creams and so on are popular in India. It's not just about which skin color or features are most common in a part of the world, but about which skin colors and features are associated with the cultures that are seen as dominant, or simply "better."

Buffysquirrel said:

Like I said, HHGTTG. Okay, there isn't much race in the radio series, beyond telling us that Ford and Zaphod are from a planet somewhere in the region of Betelgeuse, and I don't remember the book well enough to know if it's in there. But I do know that in the tv series, both Ford and Zaphod were cast white. In the film, Ford is black. Yet Zaphod is white. This is confusing to me considering they're supposed to be closely related, but maybe alien genetics work differently.

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It is also stated that they share three of the same mothers...

I always pictured Ford as white, but only because my first exposure to the Guide was the TV series. It was only years later (shameful, I know) that I actually read the books.

EMaree said:

I'll always mention skin colour if a character is non-white. There's enough white characters in fiction, I don't want the reader to whitewash mine.

Nobody does it maliciously, but white is the subconscious default for most white people.

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This. For me itt isn't about bringing attention to their being non-white as some random detail, but that my characters come to me as they are and I don't want people to whitewash them. Same thing with their orientation or gender identity, I don't want people claiming the character is straight when they're not. The world is a diverse place and there's no reason not to include that diversity in a way that isn't ignorable.

Roxxsmom said:

I have an asexual and aromantic character in my book, but I suspect many readers will probably assume she's simply heterosexual and too old or busy to be interested in men, since she's in her (gasp) forties and has a demanding profession to which she is devoted.

Asexual and aromantic people really tend to be invisible or to be misinterpreted.

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I'd love to see more A and grey-A characters in fiction.




True.

This is a fairly famous example (fraternal twins born to the same parents), but the genes that control the superficial qualities that we attribute to race actually are just a relatively small number of the ways people within families can differ. In spite of the wording in the article, there is probably greater than a one in a million chance of happening when both parents are a mixture of African and European heritage. The number of genes that determine skin color are not that great.

And once you get into extended families, it becomes even more likely that this can happen. Since the taboos about marrying between races (which are really more about culture than biological differences) are breaking down, this will become more common.[/QUOTE]



Using "twins" in that article is a bit misleading. Fraternal twins are basically just sisters/brothers.

Liosse de Velishaf said:

Using "twins" in that article is a bit misleading. Fraternal twins are basically just sisters/brothers.

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Twins is the correct term for two babies gestated and born at the same time to the same mom.

Fraternal twins (the overwhelming majority of twins) are dizygotic, which means they're no more related than two ordinary siblings (in rare cases, they can even have different dads). They share 50% of their gene alleles. They come from two separate eggs fertilized by two separate sperm, and both implanted. Identical twins are monozygotic, meaning they started out as a single fertilized egg that split into two embryos during the cleavage stage and both implanted.

But the point is, two people can be very close relatives (full siblings, whether or not they're also fraternal twins) and have physical appearances that would cause most people to identify them as members of different races. So Zaphod and Ford could have been related in the Hitchhiker's movie, even if the aliens were just like humans in terms of their heredity.

Of course, aliens that look just like humans isn't far fetched at all

Roxxsmom said:

Twins is the correct term for two babies gestated and born at the same time to the same mom.

Fraternal twins (the overwhelming majority of twins) are dizygotic, which means they're no more related than two ordinary siblings (in rare cases, they can even have different dads). They share 50% of their gene alleles. They come from two separate eggs fertilized by two separate sperm, and both implanted. Identical twins are monozygotic, meaning they started out as a single fertilized egg that split into two embryos during the cleavage stage and both implanted.

But the point is, two people can be very close relatives (full siblings, whether or not they're also fraternal twins) and have physical appearances that would cause most people to identify them as members of different races. So Zaphod and Ford could have been related in the Hitchhiker's movie, even if the aliens were just like humans in terms of their heredity.

Of course, aliens that look just like humans isn't far fetched at all

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I know what twins are, but the title doesn't actually specify fraternal/sororal, which is what I meant by misleading. In fact, there's only a tiny, poorly formatted sentence noting it, as far as I can tell.



I totally agree with your point about the Hitchhiker's movie, though.

I linked that blog more for the pictures than the quality of that particular account. Yes, the person who wrote it was confused about the different kinds of twins. There was another one somewhere where they were even mislabeled as identical twins.

I can't find the original article about those little girls that I ran across a few years back. It was a better article written about race by someone with more background in biology. May have been in Scientific American or some such publication.

But my main point was that we tend to think of race as some kind of set, biological thing, when in fact those physical traits are like any other--they can mix and match within a family.

It's not unrealistic to imagine a futuristic society, or even one that evolved in a world that didn't place such important on things like skin color, as not having the same concept of race as we do. In such a world, there may often be people with features we associate with with different "races" within the same culture or family, and other qualities might be used to join or divide people.

Jacob_Wallace said:

I don't think it's a problem per we. After all, I don't think people think of white males as the default because they hate other ethnicities or women. It's just cultural norm due to that's the majority and usually easiest to relate to.

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The majority where? Han Chinese are the majority in the world at 18%. The USA has more females than males.

And "easiest to relate to" is a gross assumption, imo.

Jacob_Wallace said:

After all, I don't think people think of white males as the default because they hate other ethnicities or women. It's just cultural norm due to that's the majority and usually easiest to relate to.

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I will agree with the supposition that the majority of people who imagine characters as white aren't doing it from malice. (Though that gets tested every time people throw a fit if the character is not, in fact, as they imagined due to them overlooking or ignoring descriptions.)

However, might you not have the cart before the horse on that latter? Assuming you're right and most people have an easier time relating to white men (not sure I agree), are you sure we use straight white men so often because they're easiest to relate to, and it's not that white men are easiest to relate to because they're so overwhelmingly often the ones we've been given, so we were forced to learn to relate to them?

Jacob_Wallace said:

In other countries, I bet their race is seen as the default. A story in India wouldn't say their characters are Indian, it would be assumed.

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Probably. But would Indian readers of a story set in India assume the characters are light skinned vs dark skinned? From what I understand (and granted I could definitely be wrong) that's the better analog to American racial discussions and attitudes in literature.

Polenth said:

The Elementary one is especially silly as an argument, as it's a modern reimagining set in America, with cars, mobile phones, the internet and a bunch of original characters. But Watson as an Asian woman? Clearly one step too far.

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What irked me about that was that they made Watson female, not Holmes. Watson in the stories is the one who writes up Holmes's adventures and talks about how intelligent Holmes is, and is himself sort of generally in the background in terms of personality. Making Watson female is hardly subversive casting.