Race as a metaphor for race: Part One

[sqbr]

The word "race" means many things in sff: real life ethnic groups (europeans, africans etc), fictional ethnic groups (Numenorans, Darthacans etc), and (possibly non-human) sentient species (vulcans, elves etc)

Often these fictional "races" are used as a metaphor for, or draw upon, real life ethnic or cultural issues. This can be done well, part of the long tradition of sff using metaphor to make broad and powerful statements about the human condition. But often these stories are warped by the authors unexamined prejudices, as well as the problems inherent in equating the arbitrary divisions of race and culture to the objective biological divisions between species.

In Part One of this essay I go through some of the issues involved with using non-human species as a metaphor for race. In Part Two (if I write it) I'll go through some of the issues with using made-up ethnic groups and cultures as a metaphor for real ones.

EDIT: I never wrote Part 2, but here are the notes for a panel I took part in on the subject.

Disclaimer: I'm feeling sleepy and stupid but need to get this out of my head (I've been putting off posting it for like a year while it gets longer and longer in my head) I know I'm prone to over-generalisations and am not all that good at expressing myself, but please don't point out my minor errors without also thinking about my actual point. Though really, if anyone read the whole thing at all I'll be grateful :)

I don't really have a point as such (beyond pointing out how dodgy it all can be), just disconnected thoughts. It's not something I've seen explored beyond discussions of individual stories, and I'd like to get the ideas out of my head and hear other people's POV. I'm considering a Swancon panel on a topic like this, and also may do a redraft and post to a relevant community, so any and all suggestions, corrections or thoughts would be VERY appreciated.

Oh, and if the length of the disclaimer didn't tip you off: it's LONG.

Part 1: Different Species

First let us consider fiction set in a world with multiple sentient species playing a large part in the story (Not those where non-humans just have cameos and 99% of the story involves humans)

Now in some stories the non-humans quite clearly are not meant as a metaphor for human ethnic groups. They're beings of pure destructive evil, or deus-ex-machina demigods etc (e.g. StarGate). I am not talking about those sorts of stories. That said, sometimes these stories decide the race metaphor is just too perfect and use it anyway, which can lead to incredibly dodgy implications like "other ethnic groups=pure evil" (as I go into in the penultimate section "Having your cake and eating it too")

I am also not talking about stories involving just races of humans, no matter how distinct their cultures or distant their home planets (e.g. StarGate again, the Belgariad, etc) That's for Part 2.

About the most perfect example of science fiction using species as a metaphor for race is Star Trek, and since I just watched a whole bunch of Deep Space Nine that's where a lot of this is coming from. But even in Star Trek the metaphor is often complicated by actual science fiction ideas about genuinely non-human lifeforms, and this is even more true in most other sff using species as somewhat of a metaphor. Still, the metaphor is pretty inherent to the story, and I'll try to deal with the subtleties of it's depiction in the section "Having your cake and eating it too".

Some examples: Harry Potter, Babylon 5,...(*draws mental blank*)

Not so alien after all

Non-human species usually come across as a single ethnic group/nation, having fairly uniform colouring (or having variation which is either random or depicts something like caste, not region of birth), with a fairly monolithic and uniform culture, government, language and religion. (Unless it suits the plot for this to be otherwise, and even so this generally doesn't go beyond the sort of heterogeneity one expects from a single country) Apart from a few quirks, the aliens are generally pretty human-like in appearance, behavior and physiology (The human-like appearance is understandable in movies and tv where characters are played by real humans, but it's also true in books and animation)

Humans are often similar, especially in science fiction. There is a single world government, standard language, and few if any religions. There is talk of "the human way of thinking" etc, and subcultures are fairly superficial.

Now sometimes writers are not deliberately using species as a metaphor to explore ethnicity, but are using ethnicity as a metaphor to help them write different species. This is understandable, given that there are no actual non-human sentient beings to use as inspiration(*). And completely unhumanlike non-humans are too hard to empathise with anyway. But in such cases how the species are written often transparently reflects the authors unconscious biases towards other ethnic groups, and the underlying real life template is so obvious that the story is difficult not to take as a commentary on real life, even if it's not meant that way.

So, we can consider these stories a metaphor or commentary on real life ethnic groups. But what does this metaphor say?

(*)One could argue for gorillas etc but most people don't think of them that way. Personally I think the mindsets of these non-human intelligences are a great starting point for sff, but it's not one many writers use very well.

I am not an animal!

First off, the very idea of equating other ethnic groups with other species is problematic. There is a long history of racists painting the ethnic groups they didn't like as animalistic and unhuman, biologically incapable of being civilised or decent.

When non-human species are used as a metaphor for ethnic groups, it's almost impossible not to send the same sort of message. They really are inherently different to us, there really is no point expecting them not to 'follow their nature', and it really is pointless expecting our cultures to ever truly blend and blur. Interracial relationships really are a hugely big deal, and bi-racial people are genuinely distinct from regular people, with no place they can ever truly belong or fit in.

When the "open minded" human characters use the same language as real life advocates for tolerance, but then are proven wrong by the other "races" being irredeemably different and uncivilised...that's pretty much a direct attack on those advocates, even if it isn't meant that way.

There's also the unspoken assumption that ethnicity=culture=nationality. One of the points of this history podcast series I just finished is that this assumption is fairly modern and rarely reflected by actual ethnicities/cultures/nationstates. I must admit to defaulting to this assumption myself unless I think about it very hard, and decided not to make the distinction in this essay since it's not like the fiction I'm talking about does (well, Babylon 5 makes some effort)

Who counts as human?

We can assume that the reader is human and will identify with the humans. So who do the humans represent in this metaphor? Westerners, and in particular the denizens of the author's home country. In american stories they play baseball, speak with american accents, and believe in democracy and capitalism and freedom of the individual. There is often some effort to include other countries a little bit, but it's usually pretty token, or they get exoticised nearly as much as the non humans *glares at JK Rowling* Non-humans, when not based on any specific culture (*cough* Jehovah's Witness Babylon 5 episode *cough*) are usually generically "ethnic", with incense and strange rituals and foreign looking clothes.

Now already this is a bit exclusionary but is reflecting the writers and audience. The problem comes when we examine what the metaphor says about the humans=westerners=america. Namely, that we're the best. Even if we don't rule the universe (as in Star Trek and Harry Potter) then we're still absolutely central, with the story stopping every now and then to emphasise how we're unique (thanks to our ingenuity and feisty spirit or whatever), and how other species would be better off if they were just like us. We're smarter, kinder, tougher, wiser and all around better.

On the other hand, the non-humans are always deeply flawed. Star Trek, for example, makes a point of being about tolerance and acceptance of other cultures, then creates races who really are all inferior to humans, so that the "tolerance" is just politely putting up with other races crap until they realise the humans were right all along. In Next Gen and Deep Space 9, the moral is that you shouldn't be prejudiced towards apparently less civilised races (the warlike Klingons and mercenary Ferengi)...because some of them may learn to reject most of their culture, become more human-like and join our side. And you know, their culture isn't all bad...because deep down they share some of our values. There's never anything that we could stand to learn from them.

The only times I can think of where a non-human species was more like my own culture than than the "human" culture was in futuristic stories where future humans have progressed and the aliens are "savages" like us modern day humans. Nice.

And the only times non-humans are better than humans is in fairly blatant noble savage/mystical Other situations. (I'm not sure I'm up to explaining why this sort of thing is bad, but it it is)

Intersections with actual race

An unavoidable issue with live action sf is that whatever the metaphorical stuff going on with race in the story, in practice the characters are played by actual human beings, with real life ethnicity. Part of the humans=westerners thing is that most humans are played by white actors with a few token black characters thrown in for "balance", ignoring the fact that a very large of the proportion of the worlds population (and for that matter, the population of america) is asian or latino etc.

Non-humans are a real problem. If you have a given species played by a multi-ethnic cast then the single species=single ethnic group metaphor breaks down (also, given how subtle the differences between the appearance of each species it becomes harder to tell who is what). If every nonhuman is played by white people it gets a bit dodgy even by tv standards (unless you only have one or two). But if the members of a given species are all of the same non-white ethnicity then it looks like you're commenting on that ethnicity, and given all the bad things these stories are normally implying about the non-human species that's a bad idea too.

Unless you like being racist *glares at Star Gate, even though this essay isn't about them*

And don't get me started on black skinned evil elves and other reviled species which just happen to share traits with reviled ethnic groups (jews and roma are a favourite here, since the racist stereotypes run so deep they don't even feel like racism any more *mutters about long nosed xenophobic sneaky money grubbing jews goblins who run all the banks*)

Having your cake and eating it too

So, like I said at the beginning, some species aren't meant as a metaphor for ethnic groups, they're just meant to be antagonists, or demi-gods, or whatever. So it's ok to say that they're inherently evil and deserve to die etc.

But then, after their inhumanity has been well established....they are used as a metaphor for race. Which sends an even stronger and dodgier "other ethnic groups are inhuman and evil" message than the stuff I've been talking about.

Now this is kind of understandable in say, Star Trek, where each episode has it's own writer and is pretty much designed to stand alone, and it is in general a bad idea to search for a coherent or consistent narrative/moral over time. That species may usually be inherently evil, but right now we're thinking of them as just another culture.

Star Trek did this several times, with the Klingons and then the Ferengi going from irredeemable antagonists to just another wacky member of the federation from series to series, though the change was subtle and consistent enough that it's only really bad when you look at the portrayal over an extended period.

One of the central tenets of Buffy is that all demons are soulless and evil so it's ok to kill them, while it is never ok to kill humans. But after a while they introduced some nice (or at least not actively evil) demons, and on Angel there were lots of perfectly innocent demons around, showing every sign of having a conscience etc. Yet it was still 100% acceptable to kill bad demons, and 100% unacceptable to kill bad humans (admittedly Angel blurred this a little too) Why?

Also, there were storylines which clearly paralleled demons with immigrants from other cultures(*). I read this great essay about how overall these were pretty dodgy which somewhat inspired this essay(**), imo the worst is the episode where a woman is marrying a demon, and he keeps going on about how intolerant the main characters are for not understanding his people's perfectly valid customs...one of which turns out to involve murder. So the message is...it's ok to be intolerant, immigrants really are evil?

Now I understand that something can both be itself and a metaphor for something else, and there's no reason that a story about a nonhuman race can't both have them be genuinely inhuman and be a metaphor about human ethnic/cultural interaction. See my discussion of Pratchett in the next section, for example. I think the problem is when the author (or in many cases, authors) is inconsistent and doesn't think through the implications of their statements.

In my opinion J.K. Rowling simply couldn't decide what sort of story she was telling in Harry Potter, and so rather than (as she claims) not having a message, she has a message about tolerance and equality but then contradicts it, creating a very dodgy subtext. At various points she brings up the idea that maybe human wizards aren't the pinnacle of all sentience, and that there's something rotten about their attitudes towards muggles, house elves, goblins etc. But then we are shown that house elves like being servants, that goblins can't be trusted, and in the end things really are better with human wizards in charge, as long as they have the same "Be nice to the inferior races and they will eventually realise we're right" so-called "tolerance" of Star Trek. Which is of course exactly the attitude decent people had back when racism was the norm (rather than the over-the-top parody of racism that is presented as a straw-man for our heroes to triumph over).

Now I would say that Tolkein was not using species as a metaphor for race. But many of his imitators do (D&D for example), and then end up presenting orcs as an "Oppressed minority"...who is ugly and smelly and unlikeable.

(*)While having a complete absence of any actual latinos, afaict the main nonwhite/immigrant group in Los Angeles. *points up to previous section*

(**)I can't find it now, but did find some similar links, which I posted below

But it's not all bad..

Star Trek is continuously using the relationships between different species as a deliberate metaphor for conflicts between different races and cultures. This has allowed it to get across some very very powerful messages that probably would never have made it on to tv if they weren't couched in metaphor, especially back in the 60s.

And the great thing about metaphors is that they go from talking about one specific instance to talking about a more general phenomena, which can resonate more deeply and also make the audience look at things in a different way. It also makes us empathise with viewpoints that we would likely see as the "Other" in a regular narrative. The Centauri/Narn conflict on Babylon 5 is like Israel/Palestine, England/Ireland, Europe/Africa...and yet not quite like any of them, and has it's own interesting things to say. The Bajoran/Cardassian conflict in Star Trek Deep Space 9 is pretty interesting too.

On the whole JMS of Babylon 5 does a pretty good job, both of genuinely thinking about nonhuman species rather than just transplanting real-life issues higgledy piggledy, and of not being horribly racist. Humans are not just this uniform mass of liberal american values, and he actually makes the point of showing how many different religions and cultures earth has. He also makes the distinction between species, culture, and the individual: both the humans and the Minbari have different factions gaining more and less influence and heterogeneous shifts in public attitude from fairly benign to fascist and violent and back again, with likable characters on the wrong side and bad guys spread amongst all species. There are very few totally bad species (or totally good), while there is some self congratulatory "Yay humans" stuff it's also made clear that other cultures have attitudes and values we can admire and maybe learn from, and for a while the earth government is a major antagonist. I think some groups are rather demonised in a dodgy way (the Minbari warrior castes complaints about a religious caste conspiracy to gain power are actually true, but it's ok because, well, the religious caste are better) but on the whole it's pretty good and has some very effective messages and ideas.

Terry Pratchett is an interesting case, since his different species really are different (Trolls are dumb, dwarves really like gold etc) yet he is sometimes using them as a metaphor for ethnicity. While he has a general message that open-mindedness and change is good (which often means non-humans benefiting from particular parts of human culture) the humans have to learn to change as much as everyone else, and aren't exactly a beacon of goodness and light for everyone else to follow. Rather than simply using real-life racial issues wholesale without thought to context, he adapts and parodies them so as to both comment on real-life racism and genuinely explore what it would be like to have different, somewhat incompatible species living together. I think it helps that the humans are a very heterogeneous bunch who have culture clashes between themselves as much as with the non-humans. Also each non-human species is it's own self-contained society with it's own identity beyond "Like humans but more warlike" etc.

So in conclusion: using nonhuman species as a way of talking about real-life ethnic groups (either deliberately or as an unconscious subtext) is problematic and often done very badly. But done thoughtfully and intelligently it can be very powerful and interesting.

Essays and posts etc on similar topics:

• Ranting about Rhetorics about Race
  
• A tangent about race in sci-fi: the Ferengi and Highly Offensive Ferengi: Racial Issues and Star Trek's Multicultural Deep Space Nine in Film
  
• Discussion of the "Demon Nazis" episode "Hero" on Angel
  
• Imaginary Para-Sites of the Soul: Vampires and Representations of ‘Blackness’ and ‘Jewishness’ in the Buffy/Angelverse
  
• Brownskirts: Fascism, Christianity, and the Eternal Demon (in Buffy)
  

Comments

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

I don't know why people just don't bake two cakes.

[oliverm.livejournal.com]

I suspect you mean Bajoran/Cardassian, assuming you aren't referring to some bizarre B5/Star Trek crossover.

I think one of the major problems with the portrayal of aliens in most science fiction is that it is very difficult to come up with truly original aliens.

In B5, which is the show I've thought about this kind of stuff the most, while the show is human-centric, I don't think that the humans, as a whole, are shown to be significantly better than the other races. Even the main protagonists have Issues. Of course having said that the aliens are fairly humanlike in most respects.

One other point is that truly alien aliens are very difficult if not impossible to empathise with. Consider the ascended ancients in Stargate, or the early season vorlons, or random powerful energy creatures they meet with startling regularity in trek. If you can't empathise with the characters it makes it much harder to tell a good story, that character becomes simply a force of nature, and not a genuine character. This applies especially to villains.

Anyway, I'm not being particularly coherent right now, I look forward to hearing more of your thoughts on this matter :)

[alias_sqbr]

Mm, point about non-human-like species being both hard to imagine and to empathise with. Though that doesn't excuse the "any given species has only one uniform culture, government, language, religion etc" thing, or all the dodgy exoticisation, making humans the Best Species Evar etc

*adds paragraph on how using ethnicity as a metaphor to help write other species brings in this whole subtext about real life whether the author means it to or not*

*adds paragraph singing the praises of Babylon 5 :)*

[nephron.livejournal.com]

I actually like the portrayal of other races in the Katherine Kerr novels, for all their faultts.

At first glance, it really seems like the elves and dwarves are inherently different from the humans- but then you look at their culture, and there are distinct cultures within tthe elves and dwarves, characters and cultures change based on their experiences, and suddenly the whole thing is a lot more fluid.

[alias_sqbr]

I haven't read much Katherine Kerr, but that sounds interesting.

[nephron.livejournal.com]

It's very much romantic fantasy, but some of the background politics and culture can be quite interesting.

Also, how all men can be "well above the average height, with raven hair and cornflower blue eyes"...

[elaran.livejournal.com]

that goblins can't be trusted, and in the end things really are better with human wizards in charge
argh yes! That freakin' pissed me off so badly. =/

V.interesting. :)

[alias_sqbr]

I know! I would have rather she didn't bring up the injustice at all than mention it and then go "Ah, but it doesn't matter. Look! Babies, yay!"

[gyges-ring.livejournal.com]

One of the distinctions I really like is the difference between humans (i.e. people) and homo sapiens. It's a difference that gets introduced in things like abortion, or disability (e.g. they're members of the species homo sapiens but they aren't people). What's interesting is that it extends outwards, so that it's entirely possible that a completely different species can still be a person, because they possess all the necessary traits. So I don't mind different species being used to represent racial differences that much, because often racial differences are predicated on the claim that race is a valid way to deny an individual personhood. And if different species can be people too, then the analogy seems to hold. (Functionalism is the dominant idea in Philosophy of Mind at present that also lends creedence to the idea that different species can possess the same amount of personhood.)

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, if it's done well it can be great, yes. My problem is when they make all these nice noises about other species being "people" but then subtextually define people as "just like us", and either the other species proves itself to not really be "people" after all, or it learns the error of it's ways and becomes more "people"-like.

Quote from "The Carpet People" by Terry Practchett:

They called themselves the Munrungs. It meant The People, or The True Human Beings.

It's what most people call themselves, to begin with. And then one day the tribe meets some other People or, if it's not been a good day, The Enemy. If only they'd think up a name like Some More True Human Beings, it'd save a lot of trouble later on.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

What annoys me is that SFF rarely gets further than either naive racism or "look at me, I'm not being naively racist!".

And when it gets beyond the ugliest naive racism, it often only gets as far as naive racism cloaked in self-congratulatory benign colonialism - "evil orcs" vs. "Ghan-buri-ghan".

I think it might be a characteristic flaw of world-creating fiction in general. Considered world creation is terribly difficult and often those elements of setting and character interaction that are tangential to the main narrative thrust are cartoonish.

But when a naive, unexamined caricature becomes a genre convention you're pretty much fucked in terms of any forthcoming political analysis.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

And of course by "self-congratulatory benign colonialism" I'm referring to basically the same thing as you are in your comments on Star Trek's Federation and on HP.

[alias_sqbr]

I know, it's like "Lets fight racism by speaking out against pointless genocide against entirely harmless ethnic groups!" which, you know, is a form of racism I'd like to think your average sff fan (and even your more racist fan) is already opposed to. Oooh. Brave.

What I find odd about this is that I've seen lots of fannish discussions of the various dodgy undercurents in sff (the sexism in particular) yet despite looking for quite a while, and the fact that this whole species-as-race thing is a pretty common dodginess, afaict this is the only general essay on this subject I've ever seen. (this annoys me, since I'm not very good at essays and would much rather someone more coherent wrote it for me :))

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Race was one of the things that Miéville specifically talked about when he wrote a short manifesto of his intentions as a writer of weird fiction, along with working against the prevailing lack of interest in economic relations in fantasy. Should be online somewhere ... was interesting if a tad rantish.

[alias_sqbr]

Mmm, I must admit I've found Mieville hard to get into but he seems like a pretty cool and socially conscious guy.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

I'm not a slavering fanboy (especially not anymore) myself, but I have really enjoyed his stuff. He's a huge breath of fresh air if you've been reading the more typical quasi-mediaeval fantasy.

But then he's definitely catering to a primarily male audience, and he isn't quite as much of an iconoclast when it comes to genre convention as he might like to think. The hero-worshipping of Moorcock and M. John Harrison in his writings about SFF are a pretty strong indication I think.

Perhaps he's just one of those writers that doesn't "speak to women" (ugh at the concept really, but they do seem to exist).

[alias_sqbr]

I don't know that it's a gender thing, I've come across a number of female fans of his and there's plenty of dense fantasy by (and to some extent for) women I also find impenetrable. And as with GRR Martin the thing that really put me off was a strong sense that Very Bad Things were going to happen, because I am a sook. (I suppose you could argue that being a sook about sad endings is girly, but I'm not sure it is)

If I had trouble reading sff with dodgy gender stereotypes or written by and for men I'd be pretty much stuck with Lois McMaster Bujold and Ursula K LeGuin :)

Very brief shallow analysis: From what I can see the authors that really "don't speak to women" rely on things women tend not to like (action or mysoginistic sexiness) without having the things we do (fleshed out characters on emotional journeys, girly romance) And this of course is a huge generalisation, I say as a girl who is willing to read books with no charcaterisation to speak of at all as long as they have enough cool maths ideas.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd agree Miéville's not as unfavoured by women readers as someone like Moorcock (I still haven't met a woman who think Moorcock's good, though I'm sure there are one or two).

Re your "very brief shallow analysis": I estimate the main reason Moorcock's books appeal less to women is because (a) they have male protagonists (b) the male protagonists are generally self-obsessed arseholes (c) the male protagonists are generally male wish fulfilment fantasies.

(IME self-obsessed arseholes as male role models tend to annoy women ;-).

None of these really hold true for Miéville's fiction, I guess, so I was probably out of line attributing the same traits to his writing.

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

I'm a woman.

I like Moorcock.

I don't know why.

[alias_sqbr]

It's ok, at least it isn't Heinlein :)

[ataniell93.livejournal.com]

Actually I love Heinlein and most of the really intense Heinlein fans I know are female...sorry! I think Heinlein is one women either love or hate. For me as a kid, it was Heinlein juveniles and James Schmitz all the way, because they were books where girls got to go to space and do interesting things.

I understand why many people think Heinlein is sexist; I don't particularly but there are good arguments to be made on both sides. Like the original Star Trek which I also love, Heinlein is a product of his times.

[alias_sqbr]

You know, I think the lesson ataxi and I need to take from this conversation is not to make generalisations :)

[alias_sqbr]

I don't know, self obsessed prats are pretty popular with women if they're angsty and pretty enough :)

[emma-in-oz.livejournal.com]

Bajoran/Cardassian? Garak was by far and away my favourite character in DS( (followed by Quark) simply because they were slightly more complex than the Federation stooges. However, as you say, most of the complexity came from them wanting to be bad but gradually adapting Federation morality.

Part of the problem is that completely non-human entities are so hard to identify with. Have you seen the movie of *Starship Troopers*? The opening scenes feature both humans and bugs fighting animalistically. Their behaviour is identical and you identify with the humans only because they have faces.

Swancon panel?

[alias_sqbr]

Bajoran/Cardassian

*cough* Yes, oops :)

I do like the way we see things from Quark's point of view, I think they do a god job of making us empathise with him while not excusing his terrible sexism and intolerance.

oliverm pointed out the difficulty of empathising with non-human-like species, it's a good point *edits post*. I guess my problem is that they may be somewhat human-like, but we're still not really expected to empathise with them, just to see them as the Other with the humans as Us.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, and after the programming meeting yesterday it looks very plausible that Part 2 will be a panel with Glenda Larke.

[tevriel.livejournal.com]

It's an interesting point that Pratchett does it better than most. Even if you get to, say, Thud, where you really get into the trolls and the dwarves overcoming their ancestral prejudices, it's not that they're becoming more human - it's that trolls and dwarves are coming up with their own options, and the human role, if anything, is to be a political tool. Where trolls and dwarves can't deal directly they use Vimes. Not to save them from themselves, exactly, and where it is Vimes making a difference, it's not because he's human... it's because he's an ornery bastard. Other humans aren't exactly Superior Beings.

If anything, Pratchett is about the power of superior individuals, of any species. Cheery Littlebottom and Detritus and Angua are heroic in their own ways as much as Vimes is, and then you get Carrot's dwarfishness...

Also in the book category, it's rare to find truly alien aliens, but Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle did it well in The Mote In God's Eye. The book is flawed in a number of ways, but it's also a good exploration of an alien species. It's not that they're better or worse than humans - they're *different*, and a big part of it is biological differences that build up to a profoundly different world view.

Star Trek... well, I wrote an entire essay on Star Trek with some of this stuff, and yeah, it's got a very strong tendency to be problematic, but it depends quite a bit on the writer of the particular episode.

In its defence, though... Star Trek aims at inspirational enlightenment. The Federation, through most of Star Trek, is presented as Just Darn Better, but it's presented as better than any current human civilisation, too. And - for some reason they actually did this better in TOS - it's multi-species. Andorians and the like don't even show in later series for some reason, despite the fact that Andorians were one of the founding races of the Federation. (It's possibly tragic that I know that.)

I'm not pretending Star Trek doesn't fall terribly into American-centric and anthrocentric world views, but I'll give it this: It's trying.

[oliverm.livejournal.com]

I think that TOS really tried, and it did a pretty good job given the time period it was made and originally shown, but later series really didn't challenge anything, and never really made anything like the same effort (this is without a whole lot of research, so you probably have a better idea than I do).

Looking at TOS, you had 7 main characters (I'm including Chekov even though he joined later and not counting nurse Chapel because she just doesn't feature enough to make me feel that she's a major character), with an impressive ethnic variety. Of the 9 characters in TNG (counting Tasha) you had less variety at a time where you could have managed more. They also didn't treat Klingons very well as far as I'm concerned, Klingon culture was shown to be "inferior" on a regular basis. To be fair it's true that TOS didn't treat Klingons very well either.

I remember one TNG episode (in season 2 I think) where an alien was serving aboard the Enterprise in a cultural exchange, and was pilloried for doing things his way (solving a problem himself rather than invoking the hierarchical command structure).

One issue that comes to mind is one that David Gerrold discussed at Swancon. While TNG was being pitched there was discussion about having a major character who was gay. Roddenberry allegedly said that he was fully in support of this, but when network pressure came along he folded. In fact even a single episode with a fairly subtle gay reference was disallowed. (It has since been made as part of ST: New Voyages, which you can find here (http://www.startreknewvoyages.com/) if you're interested (episode is Blood & Fire)).

TOS had (as far as I know) the first interracial kiss on TV in the US, TNG never even attempted anything groundbreaking that I can think of.

To be honest I wasn't a massive fan of the aliens in TMIGE, more interesting than humans wearing silly hats, but for an epic SF novel I was a little disappointed in parts.

[tevriel.livejournal.com]

Later series did have *some* successes. DS9 had the first same-sex kiss on network television or some such, although the story was a complicated one and it wasn't about Teh Gay, exactly; the fact that they were both women wasn't part of the problem with the relationship.

You are right about the first interracial kiss. It was a curious thing. Roddenberry didn't see it should be a big deal. However, he was pretty much the only one: "... they were so concerned about how controversial it was that we played too hard against it. Bill fought it as if he didn't want to kiss me... I thought it lost all its impact the way we played it." - Nichelle Nichols. (Yes, I dug out my Star Trek essay for easy references.)

I'm not sure how much I agree with her. Kirk would have resisted because he was being forced, and dude don't play that, and because it didn't really suit his captainly dignity to be compelled to kiss his Communications Officer. Still.

TOS did, though, have a lot more to work with in some ways. The Civil Rights movement and the attendant upheaval was a big issue at the time, where there are fewer overwhelming issues these days to take on. And, too, I think the networks are *more* timid, not less.

TOS actually did make a difference to a lot of people, which is more than most science fictions can really say. One more quotation out of my essay for you: "Civil rights came of age in the sixties, and so did I - right here in the South. You can pretty well imagine my environment, so let's say that Spock and Star Trek did as much to change my views as my watching civil rights workers being hosed down and badgered with police dogs." - Leslie Thompson.

A work of fiction is likely to be subject to certain flaws of unexamined assumptions and hereditary baggage of privilege it can't overcome, either because enlightenment is a process the creators may not have completed or because commercial success, or even the ability to produce the work, may require some forms be observed. (This was a big problem of the original Star Trek's.) The thing is... the effort is worth making, and if you're trying, you can still make a difference.

Which doesn't excuse, at all, people who should know better. I will give Star Trek a pass on a lot of stuff that, these days, is extremely problematic from a racial or feminist perspective. (Although the heavily negative portrayal of Klingons isn't really on that list. Klingons were bad guys, but still given some redeeming virtues in some episodes, and also, were played by white guys and were sufficiently human-like in appearance that one Klingon passes as human in "The Trouble With Tribbles". Nothing about them suggested black, really. Next Gen and later almost all Klingons were played by black guys and it gets iffier, BUT they were made more noble. DS9 undid a lot of this, but TNG played them as Different From Us But Kind Of Heroic And Awesome. Then again, Later DS9 sucked for a range of reasons.)

I haven't read to the end of Harry Potter but by the sounds of things Rowling is firmly in a People Who Should Know Better category.

As for TMIGE: yeah. I do think the book is very flawed. I just think they're one of the more interesting, and better-thought-out, alien setups out there. It kind of starts better than it ends, since the end of the book kind of falls in on itself, sadly.

[alias_sqbr]

Mm, I did like the way that the moties biological differences were extrapolated into a completely different society and history, and how they're very pro-active and intelligent in trying to deal with their doomedness rather than sitting around until the humans come and make it all better as would happen if it was a Star Trek episode.

Oh, I agree that Star Trek started off very well and continued to do good stories every now and then, afaict the more influence Gene Roddenberry had the better it was. DS9 wasn't fantastic race-wise (though the black captain and arabic doctor are two things you wouldn't see many places) but did some interesting things with gender. But at this point, with society becoming more progressive and the show becoming less so, I'm not sure it's trying much harder than your average sff tv show.

Heh. The Andorians are in Enterprise, bastion of canon compliance that it is :D

[dabear.livejournal.com]

When it comes to Buffy the reason they give for kill demons=good, kill people=bad, is simply that there is no human method of dealing with demonic bad guys but there is for people (police, jail etc). Presumably therefore kill=bad but sometimes necessary. I think the reason for the difference between Buffy and Angel is that Joss was raising the age level for his audience. Buffy has black and white morals because its target audience was younger and kids approve of justice and simplicity (whereas adults, being much more morally dubious themselves, prefer mercy). I think in Angel Joss tried very hard to say that there was bad and good in all peoples (under peoples read 'humans, demons, funny snake things etc'). Thus the epic bad guys for the series were human beings (Wolfram and Hart) and half the cast had at least one foot in the demonic camp.
In the episode "Bachelor Party" the message was a bit confused, but I don't think it is saying 'intolerance is okay'. I think it's saying, 'just because their culture is different from our doesn't mean they're bad people, and you should learn about their customs - in case one of them is eating your brains'. I am a strong believer in not just tolerance but embracing other cultures, on the other hand there's nothing you can say to me that would cause me to think the misogynistic laws about women in Saudi Arabia are something I should tolerate let alone accept. Its part of their culture, and a part I don't want anything to do with. But that doesn't mean I'm going to reject their entire culture because there's part of it I don't like, or that I'm going to reject say Eskimo culture because they're different from me too.

I'd also question your base Pratchett assumption "Trolls are dumb, dwarves really like gold". Trolls aren't dumb. Detritus, for example, is shown as a mathematical genius, it's just mostly his brain is too hot to work in the geographical region of Ankh-Morpork - read this as he is ethnically disadvantaged, like people who grow up in areas without access to good education. And yeah, dwarves like gold. So do an awful lot of humans, another point which Pratchett makes abundantly clear.
I think that all Pratchett's species are fairly clearly simple analogs of other races. Not specific ones like dwarves are Chinese or whatever, it's more clear when the analog is not direct and he can simply underline otherness and people's reactions to it.

[dabear.livejournal.com]

If you're interested in this stuff, I'd recommend:

Attebery, B. (2005). Aboriginality in science fiction. Science Fiction Studies #97, 32(3).
Backstein, K. (2004). Flexing those anthropological muscles: X-Files, cult TV, and the representation of race and ethnicity. In S. Gwinllian-Jones & R. Pearson (Eds.), Cult Television (pp. 115-145). Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.
Barrett, M., & Barrett, D. (2001). Star Trek : the human frontier. Cambridge: Polity Press.
Bernardi, D. L. (1994). 'Infinite diversity in infinite combinations' : Diegetic logics and racial articulations in the original Star Trek. Film and History, 24(1-2), 60-74.
Bernardi, D. L. (1994). Star Trek in the 1960s : Liberal-humanism and the production of race. Science Fiction Studies, 24(2), 209-225.
Bernardi, D. L. (1995). The wrath of whiteness: The meaning of race in the generation of "Star Trek". Unpublished Ph.D., University of California, Los Angeles, United States -- California.
Bernardi, D. L. (1998). Star Trek and History : Race-ing Toward a White Future. New Jersey: Rutgers University Press.
Braun, B. (2000). The X-Files and Buffy the Vampire Slayer : the ambiguity of evil in supernatural representations. Journal of Popular Film and Television, 28(2), 88-94.
Burmedi, C. (2000). Star Trek : multi-race, multi-species, multicultural. In D. F. Hornung & H. R. Hernandez (Eds.), Holding Their Own : Perspectives on the Multi-Ethnic Literatures of the United States (pp. 315-330). Germany: Stauffenburg.
Decherney, P. (2001). Race in space : a survey of new books on how Star Trek reflects racial attitudes in the U.S. Cineaste, 26(3), 38-43.
Hammond, M. (2004). Monsters and metaphors : Buffy the Vampire Slayer and the old world. In S. Gwinllian-Jones & R. Pearson (Eds.), Cult Television (pp. 147-164). Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.
Hark, I. R. (1979). Star Trek and television's moral universe. Extrapolation, 20(1), 20-37.
Harrison, T. (1996). Enterprise zones : critical positions on Star Trek. Boulder, Colo.: Westview Press.
James, E. (1990). Yellow, black, metal, and tentacled : the race question in American science fiction. In P. J. Davies (Ed.), Science Fiction, Social Conflict and War (pp. 26-49). Manchester: Manchester University Press.
James, E., & Mendlesohn, F. (1997). Stereotypes (Ferengi, 'Star Trek', and racism). Science-Fiction Studies, 24, 534-535.
Jensen, S. (2003). Was Tolkien Racist? Were His Works? [Electronic Version]. Tolkien Meta-FAW : Story External Questions, October 2003. Retrieved 28 October 2003 from http://tolkien.slimy.com/faw/External.html.
Kreitzer, L. (1996). The cultural veneer of Star Trek. Journal of Popular Culture, 30(2), 1-28.
Kuppers, P. (2004). Quality science fiction: Babylon 5's metatextual universe. In S. Gwinllian-Jones & R. Pearson (Eds.), Cult Television (pp. 45-59). Minneapolis: University of Minneapolis Press.
Leonard, E. A. (2003). Race and ethnicity in science fiction. In E. James & F. Mendlesohn (Eds.), The Cambridge Companion to Science Fiction (pp. 253-264). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
MCcarthy, A. (1992). Displacing difference: Species as race in science fiction television of the Bush Era. Society for Cinema Studies Conference, Pittsburgh, PA.
Monk, P. (2006). Alien Theory: The Alien as archetype in the science fiction short story. Lanham, Maryland: Scarecrow Press.
Ono, K. A. (2000). To be a vampire on Buffy the Vampire Slayer : Race and ("Other") socially marginalizing positions on horror TV. In E. R. Helford (Ed.), Fantasy Girls : Gender and the New Universe of Science Fiction and Fantasy Television (pp. 163-186). Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield.
Pareles, J. (1996, May 26, 1996). When aliens start to look a lot like us. The New York Times.
Pounds, M. C. (1999). Race in space : the representation of ethnicity in Star Trek and Star Trek, the Next Generation. London: Scarecrow Press.
Richardson, J. M., & Rabb, J. D. The Existential Joss Whedon: Evil and Human Freedom in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Firefly and Serenity: McFarland.
Wilcox, R. V., & Lavery, D. (2001). Fighting the forces : What's at stake in Buffy the Vampire Slayer ? Lanham, M.D.: Rowman and Littlefield.

[alias_sqbr]

Mm, I guess the issue is the way the morality shifts between Buffy and Angel and is dodgy if you try to make all of it true at once. I have this problem a lot with Buffyverse stuff, since it feels consistent over time but isn't quite. I have this whole rant about the inconsistent portrayal of the nature of the soul in vampires :)

The problem I have with the demons is that even on Angel, we so often see them proven to be gross/evil etc that it's pretty problematic to have them as stand-ins for immigrants etc. If there were any demonic races who were actually better than humans in some way, or at least not inferior, then it might not be so bad. There's a difference between "nothing to be ashamed of " and "something to be proud of".

Anyway, thanks for the super crazy long list of references! Where would be the best place to get them from? I think I may still have access to the UWA library...

[dabear.livejournal.com]

University libraries would probably be a good first bet to check... I know Curtin has a number of the Star Trek based ones... and Murdoch's not bad. Not sure on UWA's sci-fi cred :P

[alias_sqbr]

Thanks!