So, a few days ago, I stumbled across this link about a woman who was being relentlessly harassed about her Kickstarter campaign to create a series of videos about sexism in video games, and was (naturally, I should hope) appalled. That’s not what this post is about, though. (but seriously, she didn’t deserve that, and it just illustrates that there is a problem with sexism in gaming) After finding that, I browsed some of her Youtube videos, just to make sure her views were reasonable, and for the most part they are, though I didn’t watch ALL of them. But there was one video that triggered a pet peeve of mine, and though a relatively minor thing, it’s been eating at my brain and I need to get this all out. The video in question is reasonable enough for the most part, talking about the mystical pregnancy trope you see in a lot of fiction. But it loses it when she says that writers should stop using this trope ENTIRELY because women really are losing control of their reproductive organs in real life, with the abortion and birth control debates, and all. Wait, what? Look, the problem here isn’t the trope, it’s the CONTEXT. Just because it CAN be used poorly and/or to promote a bad message doesn’t mean it always will be. One of the wonderful things about speculative fiction is it’s ability to take real-world issues and frame them in a different way in order to offer a new perspective. Isn’t it entirely possible that’s exactly what at least some of the writers using this trope are doing? I can’t think of many examples where a sudden mystical/alien pregnancy was met with anything but fear, unless they are going for a Jesus parallel. If handled in the right way, it can help illustrate how frightening it would be for a woman to lose control of her reproductive organs. Yes, it has been used in other ways, but that doesn’t mean we put an end to the trope as a whole.
It reminded me of another thing that bugged me. When they were making the Avatar: The Last Airbender movie, and the news about the whitewashing of the cast broke, I was upset, and began following the site Racebending. On the Avatar subject, I fully supported them; it was wrong to not cast Asian and Inuit actors in those roles. However, they then moved on to critiquing practices in some other movies and such, and they would simply go too far, completely forgetting about the context. In particular, there were times when they would criticize the inclusion of a racist character. Not racist practices behind the scenes, a fictional character who was racist. Wait, what? Again, context matters here. A racist character does not automatically make the film/book/whatever racist, though it can. On two ends of the scale, In Birth of a Nation, the KKK were portrayed as heroes, and while it was to an extent the product of it’s times, and is an extremely important movie in terms of film techniques, it portraying a bunch or racists as heroes was, even at the time, morally questionable, to put it mildly. Using a racist character in that way? bad. But then look at Schindler’s List, which is full of Nazis, and Schinlder himself is a Nazi. But those characters are used as villains, and fighting against their racist views being the central themes of the movie, and Schindler renounced the Nazi’s racist practices. Use of racist characters there? good. A bigoted character can be used in a work of fiction (though the two examples are at least somewhat based on history) to paint the character as a villain, or be used to show that character learning that their initial views were wrong. It’s only problematic when that character is shown in a positive light. The movies Racebending was upset about were NOT portraying these characters positively, even if they were technically protagonists, it was made clear that these characters were behaving inappropriately, which makes their inclusion OK in my book.
And finally, rape. On CBR a while ago, I got into a debate with some posters who wanted all depictions of rape to be banned from from comics. I was on the pro-rape side of the argument. Which sounds horrible, I know, but here’s the thing; While rape has sometimes been used in fiction in a way that’s demeaning to the victim, (and by extension to victims of rape in general) or used for shock value or (the worst) as a type of porn, it can be used positively. It can be used to show the victim dealing with what happened to them, seeking help, and (with time) rising above what happened to them. A story like that can be HELPFUL to rape victims, by showing them they are not alone, it’s not their fault, that seeking help is a good thing, and that they can move on with their lives. Context. But if we ban all depictions of rape, that story can’t be told.
Basically, I don’t like painting a subject in broad strokes as good or bad in fiction. any subject can be handled in a positive or negative way, and each use of a trope must be judged individually.
ok. I’m done now.
Imported from Tumblr: http://rayegunn.tumblr.com/post/25753772136
