Good writing doesn't solve all problems

[sqbr]

Off metafandom, a very good post : I Didn’t Dream of Dragons. An indian fan (and possibly writer?), deepad, talks about her experience reading sff in english about european people in an european world, and how a lot of the arguments white american etc authors make about "Writing the Other" are flawed. EDIT: She responds to some common criticisms here.

EDIT: Disclaimer 4a applies *sighs at self*

Something she said which touches on a topic I've been thinking about for a while is "I have spent a lifetime reading well-written books with nuanced characters that hurt me by erasing or misrepresenting me".

One of the axioms a lot of creative types seem to work from is that their only priority should be The Art. Great Art broadens the soul and civilises society etc, so an Artist should not let themselves be swayed by worries about social responsibility/hurting people's feelings etc. Any times questions like this come up they are either dismissed as making false assumptions (which is often true: playing violent video games does not in fact make you a murderer, and it is very hard to predict what effect if any a work will have on the population as a whole etc) or it's argued that these consequences only happen as a result of bad art, and the solution is to work even harder at making True Art. Which is what the artists were doing anyway, how convenient.

But this simply isn't true. For a start, no work is perfect, and unless you particularly concentrate on an individual flaw, making your work better may just result in improving other aspects. Something can be Fine Art while still being deeply flawed. As in the examples deepad gives, pretty much every single "Classic Novel" that mentions POC at all does so in a racist stereotyped way. Most Great Works don't do much better on class, gender, sexuality etc. And of course as any slasher will tell you a lot of the time these voices are erased completely.

Given that all works are flawed, not all flaws are equal. Plot holes may be annoying, but they are not equivalent to racism or other prejudice, and implying that they are, and that there's no reason to specifically try to avoid them beyond generally improving the quality of your work, is insulting to the people who suffer as a result.

You might argue "Ah but writers like Dickens were writing in an unenlightened time and laboured under all those racist/sexist etc misconceptions". Well guess what, so do we. And unless we make a concerted effort to rise above those misconceptions and prejudices it will be reflected in our writing.

You can write a genuinely complicated, subtle character who you see as a Real Person who is still offensive and reflective of prejudiced attitudes. The most obvious example is having them act just like "you" (white/male/american/christian etc) when in context they should have very different attitudes and behaviours. And if you're starting from flawed assumptions this can counteract your characterisation: if you were to write an australian Aboriginal character as a cannibal who rode around on the back of a kangaroo then no matter how well written they were it would still be hurtful to australian aboriginal readers.

Another obvious issue is that "good" is a relative term. If you deep down believe that women are irrational and get angry about random things for no good reason all the time then you won't have a problem with stories where this is the case. But I will find it unbelievably annoying.

EDIT: Since I don't think I made it clear: like I said, every story is flawed, and that's ok. And that means even if you specifically try not to use racist stereotypes or what-have-you you might (in fact probably will) end up doing it anyway. I'm not saying give up and don't write, or that perfection is required! Do your best and hope you're doing more good than harm, that's all we can ever do. I'm just saying that certain flaws are more important than other flaws, and should be focussed on in particular, and not just because they make the book less artistically valid. That's all.

Also: some sorts of stories actually rely on stereotypes etc. Traditional high fantasy, for example, is built on a lot of pretty sexist and classist tropes. Writing such stories "better" from an artistic POV may actually mean making them worse from a feminist etc POV.

That doesn't mean they shouldn't be written, though as I discuss here nor does it let the writers off the hook.

Comments

Part four

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

Tom grumpy! Smash stuff! Sorry about the ranting.

[fallimar.livejournal.com]

Playing Devil's Advocate for the sake of poderousness:

How does one write perfect characterisations of people who aren't within your own circle of experience? Research does a lot, and any author who doesn't research the backgrounds of characters outside of their own... 'type' (can't think of a better word there) will almost certainly make some assumptions that are going to annoy people.

On the flipside though, are readers just asking too much of writers when all the writers are doing is attempting to create a character who's not from within their own cultural spectrum? I couldn't write a believable Balinese character, for instance. I could try, and I could go to Bali, talk to Balinese people and experience as much of the culture as I could. That'd improve the writing no end, but in the end the writing itself is still coming from a white middle class female me, and would be coloured by that. Such research is also costly and to expect everyone to do it is... frankly, ridiculous.

I guess what I'm getting at here is that it's a little presumptuous to expect that work coming from a particular cultural avenue is going to be able to represent culturally different characters as they should be represented.

Sheesh... my brain's a little mangled here. Also drawing a lot of parallels with artwork - I keep wanting to draw creatures from Asian mythologies, but I keep telling myself that if they're not 'authentic' somehow I'll post them and piss off everyone from those backgrounds who'll tell me I got them all wrong and call me a wannabe.
I still haven't tried drawing them.

[alias_sqbr]

Oh, I wasn't clear: perfection is not required, or even possible. How good is good enough is a very tricky question with no easy answer, but it's somewhere between "Really bad" and "perfect" :)

I was just arguing against someone who would tell you, for example, that "As long as your picture is pretty that's all that matters".

[fallimar.livejournal.com]

So it's the addition of visible effort NOT to indulge in stereotypes, etc?

On that point I can agree, but sometimes art is just art... It's a reflection of what's in someone's brain. If what's in their brain is flawed in some way, such as them being racist/whateverist/having offensive views, that'll come through. It doesn't make it right, and it certainly has all right to be criticised, but it also shouldn't be quashed and left beuried in the ol' noggin, I think.

I decided to re-express myself less vehemently

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

In retrospect, I was initially harsh.

My reaction to the linked article was decidedly unfavourable, because to my mind (and without having read any of the person's fiction), the gist of it was thus:

"My relative lack of success as a writer, and the difficulties I have faced producing economically viable work, are the result of systematic factors that tend to exonerate me personally, and simultaneously damn many other writers and more or less the entire publishing industry."

In short, it was a giant, self-absorbed whine that included such distasteful features as

• traducing the huge disadvantage faced by India's vast population relative to people in wealthier countries in terms of health, education and employment, into a whinge about the small size and influence of the Indian publishing industry and how beholden therefore, she must be to the norms of Anglosphere publishing
• marginalising the cultural difference of people from "hyphenated manifestations" of Indian culture
• completely ignoring cultural differences within "the West"

So, in short, reaction not good.

My reaction to your post was similarly unfavourable, because I'm really not keen on the idea that the possibility for fictional portrayals giving someone, or some group offence is a good, or complete grounds for canning entire works, or even necessarily worth thinking about beyond the requirement that an artist take some moral responsibility for the social impact of a work of art.

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

(This is why I stick to fantasy. Less worry!)

[bunny-m.livejournal.com]

Huh. This is twice in the same day that the essay by deepad has come up. I suspect I should read it. The 400+ comment thread in the other mention is just a tad daunting, though.

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

I find your examples deeply flawed. Characterisation is based around background and motivation; a woman who 'gets angry about random things for no good reason' is an example of a terrible character, simply because her motivations are inexplicable beyond 'she's a woman'. Similarly, an Australian aboriginal who is a cannibal but has no particular reason to be so is a terrible character, in exactly the same way that a white character who was a cannibal 'just because' would be terrible. Neither of these is an example of 'good writing with racist/sexist misconceptions', they're just examples of bad writing that also happen to betray prejudiced views.

One thing a lot more stories need is contrast in their minority characters. Male fantasy authors in particular have a tendency to write all their female characters as indistinguishable clones. Other races and cultures are usually given even worse treatment in popular fiction. Again, this isn't good writing with flaws, it's just bad writing, and not because of any sexist or racist element. The writing is bad because having a group of characters that all think and act the same way because of a single shared characteristic is ridiculous, lazy and unconvincing.

[sanguinity]

Assuming the 400-plus comment thread is the one I waded through when it was a mere 333 comments, almost none of the comments are about deepad's post.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

I don't know, I kinda like the odd unrationalised cannibal character. Hannibal Lecter, probably fiction's most famous cannibal, is supposed to have been ruined by Harris providing him with a backstory in "Hannibal Rising", not that I've read it. We just assume "something bad" happened to him at some point rather than needing it overdetermined* by the author. Crock example though, as Lecter is a famously vivid character, so sorry about that.

The Aboriginal cannibal thing is real actually. I recall there's some cannibalism in Patrick White's A Fringe of Leaves although I very much don't recall how it's put across. That book, I think, was based on the historical counterpart of the female protagonist's dubious and widely doubted account of her capture by, and survival with, an Aboriginal group.

* I like this word -- but perhaps more ironically, the WP page for overdetermination is a "disambiguation page".

[penchaft.livejournal.com]

character who was a cannibal 'just because' would be terrible

I think you mean "AWESOME".

[kadeton.livejournal.com]

The idea that 'something bad' happening to an otherwise well-adjusted person can turn them into a psychopath has never been convincing for me; psychopaths are born, not made. However, the path from psychopath to cannibal seems fairly straightforward and reasonable to me.

Were Patrick White's cannibal characters equally convincing?

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

I don't know about psychopaths -- I guess the propensity to recognised insanity is probably inborn, but I reckon there are a few latent maniacs out there just waiting to be triggered by an extreme situation.

The cannibalism in AFoL occurs in a relatively minor episode, when Fraser is living with Aboriginals in the deep country, with an escaped convict, after they've killed her husband and others with whom she's travelling. It seemed a bit out of place if I recall correctly. But interestingly, the historical story on which AFoL is one Eliza Fraser allegedly constructed herself after having quite a different experience, and laced with false events conforming to the stereotypes of the day.

[ataxi.livejournal.com]

"is based is", not "is"

[elaran.livejournal.com]

I quite like bits of that post.

[callistra.livejournal.com]

You mean we weren't talking about fantasy?
:-)

[callistra.livejournal.com]

I did a lot of reading today about racism and gender in writing. I find it all fascinating, but I'm just reading. I don't have anything interesting to say about it all.
:-/
I am amused at how often cookies come up though.

[grahame.livejournal.com]

A week or two ago I was talking with someone, and somehow we got onto the PETA advertising campaign that used naked (or scantily clad) celebrity women as a way to get attention.

I didn't find the campaign offensive (nude women don't bother me, equally nude men don't bother me) and it seemed likely to be in some ways effective – attractive people get attention, it's pretty well always going to be true). The other person in the conversation seemed to suggest that the campaign was offensive to women, and that as a result I should be offended.

It's this kind of offence by proxy that I find hard to grasp. I don't find the PETA campaign objectionable. I'm a whole range of reasons other people might be offended, but I don't see why that should worry me. I'm not conveying my point well here – I'm coming across as a selfish git – but what I'm trying to say is that it's silly to be overly considerate. If enough people are offended and complain, the negative effect would likely cause the cancellation of the advertising campaign. I simply don't see that I need to get involved.

Now, what was my segue way..

Ah, right. It seems to me that you're asking authors to value one aspect of their work (how considerate it is to a other cultures, minorities, ..) over other aspects of their work. Specifically, you're asking them not to do something not because it offends them, but because it might offend others.

It seems a strange ask to me. If an author writes a story that is prejudiced, that still seems to me to be an entirely legitimate form of artistic expression. They're saying something by being prejudiced, and that's open to all sorts of readings. In the case of historical works, there's a lot conveyed about the world view and prejudice of a particular time through its texts.

To you a recently authored, racist book is flawed, and as a result you're pretty unlikely to read it (except perhaps as research into your topic of interest.) I might be taking you the wrong way, but what you're saying seems dangerously close to a call for censorship of works that are not considerate according to various guidelines you've laid down, and that (to use a cliché I've always loved) is the thin end of the wedge.

(I'm not trying to say that all consideration is unjustified, I just think a form of self-censorship of ones views out of consideration for absolutely everyone else is a bad thing.)

[grahame.livejournal.com]

.. I say seems rather too much!

[zvi-likes-tv.livejournal.com]

You seem to be operating under the assumption that the author wants to convey a prejudiced message. I always have the hope that they do not want to be racist, sexist, etc and simply don't realize the message they're sending. And, I have to admit, 95% of the time, when I call someone out on racist behavior, the first words out of their mouths are, "I'm not racist!" so it seems pretty clear that they weren't trying to extend racial hegemony with their behavior, they just were doing so.

Re: I decided to re-express myself less vehemently

[alias_sqbr]

I'm not sure she actually is a writer, I think her point is much less the problems she personally would face getting published and more the fact that these problems act to stop there being many indian writers in general, which means that as reader her options are incredibly limited.

I'm really not keen on the idea that the possibility for fictional portrayals giving someone, or some group offence...(is) necessarily worth thinking about beyond the requirement that an artist take some moral responsibility for the social impact of a work of art

I think I must be misunderstanding your point or you mine, because the moral responsibility for the social impact of a work of art is exactly why I think people should worry about this sort of thing.

[alias_sqbr]

So it's the addition of visible effort NOT to indulge in stereotypes, etc?

Yes. And realising that unless you make this effort specifically you're probably going to fail on this count even if you are otherwise a good author. (And that this is bad :))

It doesn't make it right, and it certainly has all right to be criticised, but it also shouldn't be quashed and left beuried in the ol' noggin, I think.

I think sometimes you do have to let it out, but if you show it to anyone you have to be ready for them to react to those elements.

[alias_sqbr]

Seconded :)

[alias_sqbr]

I've been reading a bunch of posts and comments around this stuff in the last day or so, and it's amazing how repetitive they get. (To the extent that deepad wrote a follow up post which covers pretty much all of them)

[alias_sqbr]

EVERYONE likes cookies!

I've been writing and then not posting posts about this stuff for several years, this was just the catalyst for me giving in and posting one :)