Ursula Le Guin and Earthsea... and Buffy

[katekat]

Wow.  A friend of mine sent me links tonight to the youtube trailer for the Japanese version of Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea books called Gedo Senki.  We were bemoaning the fact that it's not going to show up in the US until 2009 because the SciFi channel (that made one of the CRAPPIEST book to TV adaptations I've ever seen) holds the rights to the U.S. market.  And he sent me links to LeGuin's negative view of both the SciFi Channel miniseries and the Japanese movie (although she hated the Japanese movie less).

At her site I came across an essay titled Shame, by Pam Noles.  Written by a highly intelligent woman of color, it talks about the continued and often seemingly ignored trend in sci-fi and fantasy to write from the white perspective.  It was prompted by the Sci Fi channel's magnificent ability to cast what was a book filled with people of color as all white.  LeGuin actually talked about their "whitewashing" on Slate when the miniseries came out.

I followed other links to find this freaky and sad gem written by Douglas Blaine... and before you go agreeing with his viewpoint (not that I think you will), read Tobias S. Buckell's refutation because every word he says is worth reading, and worth practicing.

Pam mentions Buffy in Shame, and again in her response to the responses.

She says, in the original essay:

Am I the only FoP [Fans of Pigment] forced to develop a veneer of denial in order to function at the gaming tournaments, at the conventions other than the comic book fest in San Diego, or while watching "Buffy" and wondering if The Hollywood People who had ever actually been to Sunnyvale? Because, you know, if they had, there'd be five Asian/Pacific Islanders and at least three Latinos in the background. Am I the only FoP who was reduced to searching the people in the background because the people in the foreground were always a given? Am I the only one to wonder why the Los Angeles of "Angel" looked a lot like the New York City of Woody Allen's films?

There's a fic of tabaqui and reremouse's where Gunn asks where the hell all the people of color are (it's called SNAFU and is Spander if you're so inclined) in Sunnydale, but most of the time I think people in the Buffy 'verse stick within the boundaries set out by Joss.  And maybe that's too bad.

Comments

[katekat]

it is a silly phrase isn't it? I like hers - FoP or Fan of Pigment. Seriously, she knew what she was doing when she made the acronym - making fun of the whole business.

I agree that it's a problem to talk about race - heck it makes most people pretty damn uncomfortable, and i've often felt that way even while i was talking. I had (and will probably have more) moments of fear posting this thing. But better to talk about it than to not talk about it.

And Austin, TX is split, I think, about 40% white, 40% hispanic, 20% other, and I do have a bunch of people in my classes who are different colors. But what they were talking about above is having non-white people show up in fantasy/sci-fi genres as main characters, as points of identification... which you have to admit, are predominately white dominated even at times when other writing isn't as homogeneous as it used to be. Heck, things still haven't changed that much in lit. studies. You look at my comparative lit department and they're still studying the dead white guys - maybe in interesting ways, but still, dead white guys. it's why I'm in asian studies instead of literature - because at least in asian studies they place an emphasis on the lit of other countries and there's a lot more cross discipline work being done.

and unfortunately i know that i don't think of it because i'm the majority, because when i've had these convos with friends who aren't white, they say they think about it all the time - that it's part of what it means to be non-white.

And for me the whole cross linked discussion was really to kind of ask why not? Why not have less white characters? Just because I'm a white woman who used to live in a small town in Cali that had 9 black students in our school doesn't mean the only literature i should have been exposed to in highschool should have been written by white women. Just because you live in a city where you predominately see white people every day doesn't mean that has to define your reading materials.

And the problem with many of the Btvs characters that weren't white is that they were often evil or fucked up: Trick (from S3 I think) is the evil black vampire who helps the Mayor, and yep, there's the solder boy who helps Riley, and he turns into the first or second henchman of Adam (heck, the Initiative is a pretty big bad on the whole and he's part of that). Kendra the Caribbean slayer is killed by Darla because she's not flexible enough to keep up with Buffy. And she's right about So.Cal (which is ostensibly where Sunnydale is) - there should be an entirely different social makeup than the all white kid school if they were talking about So.Cal schools. My friend who grew up in Riverside, which is basically as So.Cal as you can get, was part of the white minority at his school.