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

[mishloran.livejournal.com]

I don't know why, but I find the phrase 'people of colour' amusing in a "what the fuck are we really calling this concept that?!!" kind of way. Yet I do not know what other catchphrase should/could be used. As it were.

Also talking in your LJ about it weirds me out because apparently white people aren't allowed to talk about skin colour at the risk of sounding like horrific wipe-out-all-different-skin-tone type Nazis.

But I dunno. I don't know what it's like in Americaland, but I don't come across a lot of people who aren't white in my day to day existence. I live in the middle class type area of Bristol and my university course has one darker-than-white skinned person on it, and then at work I'm, again, about one in ten customers (and over half of all statistics are made up!) is black or Asian? I guess?

But then, maybe I do not think about it because I am the majority?

But isn't there that gun-toting dude in BTVS who is black? The one who is friends with Riley?

[mishloran.livejournal.com]

I also apologise for blithering in your LJ when I actually don't have a freakin' clue what I'm talking about or a leg to stand on. Haven't much thought about this before, and it is before nine in the morning...!

[gray-ghost.livejournal.com]

Well...Douglas Blaine is a fucking idiot:

I submit this is one of the underlying motives of authors for creating new races. We can invent elves and dwarves and the like and say they like fried chicken and watermelon without coming off as totally inept asses.

*bonks head onto keyboard*

Maybe I'll post that in his blog...

[psychoadept.livejournal.com]

Well, I don't agree with Douglas Blaine, but I'm definitely sympathetic to his viewpoint. Granted this is probably colored (er...) by my own experiences, but I think what he fails to acknowledge is that the reason it *matters* that he doesn't feel comfortable writing a character of another race is, at least in part, fear.

I don't buy his line that "I don’t (can’t) do this for the same reason I don’t write legal thrillers or romance or business books: I know nothing about the true subject." As he points out himself, he could do research on romance or the legal system or business, he simply chooses not to. With the subject of race, though, he seems to feel that the research required isn't possible. I'm not sure exactly what to make of his assertion that the only way to understand black people is to live among black people, except that I doubt he would say that the only way to understand the legal system is to go through law school.

What I can say, though, is that despite those who claim you should "write what you know", every fiction writer ever is forced to write *something* they don't personally have experience with, or they're not really writing fiction. The thing is, most of the time we're not afraid to *imagine* what it would be like. We can extrapolate from our own experience, and sometimes we just make stuff up.

Writers take on all kinds of personas that aren't their own, whether it's a man writing about a woman, or an able bodied person writing about a paraplegic, or someone who's never so much as touched a gun writing about a character in the military. Most of the time, no one thinks anything of it, and if the writer gets it all wrong it's not the end of the world. There are exceptions, of course. If a man writes a horribly sexist book about a woman, he's going to take flak for it. But that's not going to stop men from writing books about women.

For some reason, though, we seem to have a collective mental block over the issue of race, particularly the idea that if you're white you can't write about other races. Not everyone suffers it, obviously, but from what I've seen it's fairly pervasive. What makes it different from most other issues is the fact that writers, like Blaine (and myself, to be honest), are afraid of getting it wrong. Because it's such a sensitive social issue, it's perceived as worse to get this wrong than most things. Here I can only really speak from my own experience, but I think writers are afraid of opening themselves up to accusations of racism if their portray isn't "accurate". LeGuin's statement suggests that maybe it's not as much of a problem as people fear, but I think that's a large part of it.\

(ctd below)