This is a subject manner that has spinning around my mind for a while now. I enjoy speculative fiction, both reading and writing, and I particulary love imaginative societies and civilizations but sometimes it can be troublesome. Writers will base this or that element on some real life characteristics and it can feel wrong, even if they do it showing respect for both the characters and the source.
Take for instance a show I love like Avatar: The Last Airbender. It develops a rather interesting mythology and society from several Asian and even Amerindian cultures (Inuit and Incan) and it's the first to pop out in my head while looking for references of fantasy worlds not based on Western Europe in the Middle Ages. Yet, I can't still overcome the fact it's a show made by two white guys taking tidbits from a wide array of civilizations they have nothing to with it and using it as they please, just like C.S. Lewis did with the Middle-Eastern people to do the Calormen! The outrage!
The Calormen in The Chronicles of Narnia was the first time I was uncomfortable how an author managed race. The Carlomen's only positive attribute was that they were good entrepeneurs which is also stereotypical of Middle-Eastern people and by the time he described their body odor as the stench of onions, I was rolling my eyes. That saddest bit is that I always considered them the most interesting bit of The Chronicles of Narnia.
Both are wildly radical and opposing examples of the same bit: people of one culture taking exotic elements of another culture for entertainment.
But then, what would be the alternative? Limiting people writing using just their respective cultures? Having, for example, just European people using European history and mythology is something we have seen as many times as it can be counted to the point is just tiresome. A consensus have to be made, I think.
I've been faced with this problem. I've a fictional culture that is somewhat based on the trappings of Judaism (especially the Ashkenazi and the Orthodox) and Orthodox Christianity (especially the Russian Old Believers) in varying degrees. I was worried it would appear as overt, but so far those who have read it were reminded more of Muslims and the Amish than anything, which made me wonder to perhaps open to scope for my sources and, in overall, pleased.
But then... another wall...
This religio-cultural group is divided in branches. And the branches are important since the protagonist happens to belong to one that is look down by the rest due to its nomadic nature. They conjure images of gamblers, swindlers, prostitutes and carnies who roam the woodlands with the only real bit is that they are traditionally nomadic and most were forced to survive on oddjobs due to the prejudice against them and before you wonder, yes, they are despectively called "gyspies" in the story by other characters.
I never had thought much about the word "Gypsy" in the past, you know, but having on AW a rather lovely Romani member made feel bad, really bad about using the word and the connotations it brings up. But, then you say, its just a classical staple of storytelling, but then, you say, also are hordes from the East or the dark-skinned savages and they aren't any better, either, yet, it feels somewhat integrated to the most primordial elements of storytelling and you can see it as the norm in speculative fiction.
In the case of epic fantasy, White and European are the "default" and the rest is just "exotic". And that's the problem, one falls into exoticism, a simplification not unlike the orientalism and the chinoiserie of the early modern era but then again, a writer needs inspiration and those can come from many, many places to craft a setting, but at the same time, it can't ignore the time, place and meaning of what one does. It's a dilemma.
What do you think about it?
Take for instance a show I love like Avatar: The Last Airbender. It develops a rather interesting mythology and society from several Asian and even Amerindian cultures (Inuit and Incan) and it's the first to pop out in my head while looking for references of fantasy worlds not based on Western Europe in the Middle Ages. Yet, I can't still overcome the fact it's a show made by two white guys taking tidbits from a wide array of civilizations they have nothing to with it and using it as they please, just like C.S. Lewis did with the Middle-Eastern people to do the Calormen! The outrage!
The Calormen in The Chronicles of Narnia was the first time I was uncomfortable how an author managed race. The Carlomen's only positive attribute was that they were good entrepeneurs which is also stereotypical of Middle-Eastern people and by the time he described their body odor as the stench of onions, I was rolling my eyes. That saddest bit is that I always considered them the most interesting bit of The Chronicles of Narnia.
Both are wildly radical and opposing examples of the same bit: people of one culture taking exotic elements of another culture for entertainment.
But then, what would be the alternative? Limiting people writing using just their respective cultures? Having, for example, just European people using European history and mythology is something we have seen as many times as it can be counted to the point is just tiresome. A consensus have to be made, I think.
I've been faced with this problem. I've a fictional culture that is somewhat based on the trappings of Judaism (especially the Ashkenazi and the Orthodox) and Orthodox Christianity (especially the Russian Old Believers) in varying degrees. I was worried it would appear as overt, but so far those who have read it were reminded more of Muslims and the Amish than anything, which made me wonder to perhaps open to scope for my sources and, in overall, pleased.
But then... another wall...
This religio-cultural group is divided in branches. And the branches are important since the protagonist happens to belong to one that is look down by the rest due to its nomadic nature. They conjure images of gamblers, swindlers, prostitutes and carnies who roam the woodlands with the only real bit is that they are traditionally nomadic and most were forced to survive on oddjobs due to the prejudice against them and before you wonder, yes, they are despectively called "gyspies" in the story by other characters.
I never had thought much about the word "Gypsy" in the past, you know, but having on AW a rather lovely Romani member made feel bad, really bad about using the word and the connotations it brings up. But, then you say, its just a classical staple of storytelling, but then, you say, also are hordes from the East or the dark-skinned savages and they aren't any better, either, yet, it feels somewhat integrated to the most primordial elements of storytelling and you can see it as the norm in speculative fiction.
In the case of epic fantasy, White and European are the "default" and the rest is just "exotic". And that's the problem, one falls into exoticism, a simplification not unlike the orientalism and the chinoiserie of the early modern era but then again, a writer needs inspiration and those can come from many, many places to craft a setting, but at the same time, it can't ignore the time, place and meaning of what one does. It's a dilemma.
What do you think about it?