The Oppressor as hero

[sqbr]

When Will White People Stop Making Movies Like "Avatar"? does a good job of going through why the "White person helps lead Oppressed Native People to freedom" plot is at it's heart all about white supremacy. (But don't read the comments)

But I've been thinking about how a lot of ostensibly anti-oppression narratives take this form.

• You have the aristocrat who leads the working classes to freedom, as in the stories described in the beginning of "Historical AUs and race" (which inspired this one a bit)
  
• The able-bodied person who saves the poor disabled people eg "Children of a Lesser God".
  
• The man who saves the poor victimised women eg a lot of Dollhouse.
  
• I'm having trouble thinking of any to do with sexuality but I'm sure they exist. EDIT: "I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry"?
  

And not all of these stories are bad individually. After all, history does have a lot of people who did good works helping those they had privilege over, and their stories are as worth telling as anyone else's.

But what's a problem is
a) that this is seen as the only sort of story worth telling
b) The way this story is generally told

If your intention is to fight an oppression, surely you should act contrary to that oppression, not to reinforce it's biases. The Kyriarchy says that white straight able-bodied upper/middle class men are natural leaders and better than everyone at everything. So having a story where such a character joins a group of non-white/GLBT/disabled/lower class etc characters and immediately proves himself better than them all at everything and their natural leader, not to mention having their POV the only one worth seeing the story through..is not so anti-oppressive a message in my book.

See also why Glee only seems anti-racist if you only identify with the white charcaters.

EDIT: Please note that comments to this post are screened, though so far at worst I've delayed unscreening a comment until I can come up with a good explanation of why I think it's problematic.

Comments

[aris_tgd]

Maybe for the sexuality one, yenta fic? Where the self-insert female character gets the two gay guys to understand their love for each other?

[sqbr]

I don't know that anyone sees those fics as particularly progressive in terms of gay rights though. And slash as a genre, whatever it's other flaws, does usually make gay men way more central than any of the straight characters. Also the gender dynamic makes it more complicated.

Is there fic with a straight male POV character who waltzes into the lives of the gay characters and fixes everything? I can see the OMG gay cooties fear stopping that being a popular trope in mainstream fiction.

[jesse_the_k]

You definitely have a handle on the pattern.

Re: disability issues another common plot is: non-disabled person is so well-adjusted, only they can help suffering, insecure, in-denial disabled person to find new outlook and move forward.

[sqbr]

Blarg. Yes.

[lauredhel]

Or, for a tweak, non-well-adjusted non-disabled person helps PWD, thereby undergoing character development and becoming a Better Person in the process.

[sami]

I was reading this post as I started playing Demon's Souls, and I had one of those weird moments that gaming sometimes gives a person: the twinned thoughts of "This seems really appropriative" with "wait, this was made by the Japanese".

Because it's got this strong monotheistic theme combined with some visual design motifs that are very Western European (including some that's almost-but-not-quite Celtic), and so on, so it pings on the whole "Christian mythology as default" conceptual space that in RPG-type games usually means it's European or American, with a scattering of elements that draw strongly on Eastern religion and tradition, including some quasi-ninja monsters.

And the thing is, it's nearly, but not quite, balanced enough that to be a perfect fusion if it were made by Western game developers.

It's almost a perfect case study of why context matters. Because this game is not disrespectful of the thematic elements borrowed from Western tradition, but the sketch elements of Eastern tradition are completely recontextualised by the fact that the people who made this are being cavalier with their own cultural iconography.

Which leads off to this whole other thing, which may result in a post of my own, about that being the difference some people seem to miss with the "well they do it why can't I" thing. The rules are different when you're playing with your own toys than if you're playing with someone else's.

[sqbr]

Oh yes, context is really important. I had a similar moment watching "Vexille", where the white American comes and saves the poor Japanese people (though in a much more nuanced, interesting and non-racist way than if it had have been an American film)

Not that context is everything, I get a bit annoyed at the "It can't be misogynistic because a woman wrote it" argument, for example.

[jeshyr]

Thanks for this post, I hadn't thought about the particular trope on a conscious level and now I am and this is a Good Thing.

(I also haven't had any access to see Avatar, nor have a read a full plot summary so I'm not really sure what goes on in that. But as a general post it still works totally.)

For the sexuality ones, because we're still mired in "gay/trans/non-standard-sexuality-is-wrong" stuff, would the same niché possibly be filled by "straight person makes non-straight person realise they're "straight" after all" instead? The "lesbians just need to find the right man" type of stereotype seems to be what would fill the niché if you let the majority define "freedom" - in the case of sexuality/gender the majority thinks "freedom" is being straight/cisgendered. I stay away from any fiction that might be like that so I can't quote you any titles, if they even exist.

I also think that in terms of disability, the non-disabled often think death is "freedom" - eg Million Dollar Baby. Ugh.

Thank you for making me think.
r

[sqbr]

"straight person makes non-straight person realise they're "straight" after all" instead?

Well, again I don't think anyone would classify that as pro gay rights. I think? *ponders*

I also think that in terms of disability, the non-disabled often think death is "freedom" - eg Million Dollar Baby. Ugh.

The problem with making posts like this is people remind me of all the angry-making examples I forgot :/

[eurasian-sensation.blogspot.com]

Because everyone knows that the struggle of the coloured/gay/disabled person is not really worthy or interesting until a "normal" person comes on board to validate it.

[sqbr]

Exactly!

[lady_ganesh]

Here from Metafandom:

Another variant is the 'friendship with an X person leads white person to become a leader/realize or speak out against oppression,' like Cry Freedom and The Killing Fields. While I think the story of someone who remains oblivious until a human relationship makes the crisis 'real' is a good one, it's still problematic in these contexts-- the problem doesn't exist unless the white person notices/witnesses.

[sqbr]

*nods*

Someone on my reading list (trouble? I can't find the post again) was talking about how this is often true of non-fiction books about disability: the author makes a point of saying how they never really thought about it until they or their family member etc got disabled. I must admit it's true of myself to some extent :/

[catecumen]

Is it generally thought that the only reason "Avatar" could get away with having the female lead save the male lead's rear, twice, is because the male lead character is a person with a disability?

[sqbr]

I have no idea. But it's an unpleasant thought: misogyny overcome by ableism, huzzah! :/

here from metafandom

[valentinite]

They're also seen as "educational" because they're a white/male/hetero/able-bodied/[insert-privileged-class-here] telling another such that they are a Better Person TM for helping the less fortunate.

Which, on its own, is not a bad narrative for explaining to your similarly-privileged four year old why they shouldn't whine when you drag them along with you on a feed-the-homeless charity walk or something. But it being the only narrative, and assuming that the only audience is privileged folks, is a problem.

Re: here from metafandom

[sqbr]

Yes! Exactly! And not only are they a better person, they'll be rewarded with fame and leadership and the Chief's Daughter etc.

And so of course people who buy into that narrative and then are not rewarded with fame and leadership and cookies get all entitled and angry and "Don't you WANT allies? I used be anti racist/sexist/ableist etc but you guys are so ungrateful I'm taking my toys and going home!"

[(Anonymous)]

(over from LJ - don't mean to anon. search vasever if you're looking to respond.)

just a question: what does non-racist media look like? would it be the reverse of this kind of story - if a person of color infiltrated a white group and became their leader?

[sqbr]

Well, there's as many forms of non-racist media as there are racist ones(*). But one example is a story with no white people in it all in any major capacity (or at least not as leaders), with the POC fighting their own battles.

I'm white, so I'm not the best judge of this sort of thing, and post-christmas blah is messing with my ability to think of examples, but this is my attempt to counteract the "Yay the white Americans saving the poor Egyptian peasants plot of Stargate.

*makes a mental note to come back to this question, because it's interesting*

(*)EDIT: thinking about it some more, most media is a mix of racist and anti-racist and not-related-to-race aspects. But there are non-racist plots :)

Here from Metafandom

[rotaryphones.livejournal.com]

Very well and succinctly put.

As far as sexuality, maybe the "gay culture as seen through the eyes of the straight female best friend" trope? A la Will and Grace?

Re: Here from Metafandom

[sqbr]

Well, that's not quite the trope I'm looking at , but it's definitely part of the same overall problem.

[(Anonymous)]

I agree with you on many of your points, and you raise an interesting problem with Avatar: however, there is something to be said for socially created power constructs. As frustrating as it is, audiences are trained to identify with the white male protagonist, so the trope of the white male protagonist learning about something he was previously extremely ignorant of (and therefore by association, the audience) and experiencing empathy for them acts as a kindergarden vehicle for the audiences; before directly identifying with them. Yeah, we should be over this by now, I agree, but I'm not surprised that the character used to establish empathy with the audience and then through which the audience encounters the new idea then develops into the actualizing character (rather than switching to one of the members of the new idea, be that culture/nation/philosophy/whatever) since all that work narratively on the other character would have gone to waste, so the actualizing character (our white male intro connection character) has to be the most active character narratively, which usually means him being the best at everything. That format is problematic.

However, it does work on the level of grabbing the empathy/projection of the straight white cis ablebodied male more effectively because of that training, and therefore can introduce people to concepts that are foreign to them. I think this format for dealing with the Other is extremely elementary, but on one level it is useful as a tool. No easily-marketable alternatives that would have the same swoop of the demographic are coming to mind at the moment, though I am very tired of movies starring white dudes.

I disagree with your stance on Dollhouse; in individual episodes, it seemed more thematically about the main character (Echo) finding strength/memories/actualization in herself and then having that attempted to be removed by The Man (with less success every time). In the most recent episodes, she is carrying all of her personalities ever all at once, all with different skill sets, experiences, and thought processes, which with time would have given the writers the Superhero with All Powers problem. I'm not arguing that the show is not problematic, but while the "men who save women" is a theme for some (one) of the characters, I disagree that it is the show's main focus.

[sqbr]

Well, for a start I think there's a problem with thinking that all that matters about a would-be anti-racist film is it's effect on white audiences. What about being an inspiration to non-white/POC audience members? Or at the very least, entertaining without making them want to hit their head against a wall at the racism (cutting down the emotional energy wasted on being upset by racism would have a HUGE anti-racist effect, since it would give POC/non-white people more energy to do other things)

I agree that a white protagonist can help audiences identify, and as I said in my post there's nothing inherently wrong with telling stories about white anti-racists. But there are more and less racist ways of telling such stories, and I think they should be in the minority of anti-racist stories we tell (I mean: should feminist stories be mostly about men?). Something that struck me replying to someone above is that I've encountered white "anti-racists" who buy into the white-hero story, and their commitment to anti-racism ends the moment a POC/non-white person contradicts them, or they don't get cookies and gratitude every time they do the least anti-racist thing. Maybe if these people encountered the idea of POC/non-white people controlling their own destiny and taking charge of the anti-racist movement in fiction they wouldn't freak out so badly when they encountered it in person.

I admit my argument about Dollhouse is a little shaky (I don't take it back, but am not certain enough to defend it with much vigour) It was just the best example that came to mind.

[solitary-summer.livejournal.com]

[here via metafandom]

I'm having trouble thinking of any to do with sexuality but I'm sure they exist.

On a (sort of) meta level this happens every time a straight actor is applauded for playing a gay character in a mainstream movie...

[sundayscat]

Oh, yes, i was just thinking of this, it's really very noticeable (i think it might apply to cis-actors playing transgendered characters too).

[elspethdixon]

Also known as the Glory syndrome ("We are making a movie about a black regiment during the Civil War. Let us tell the story of the white officer who was in charge!").

I think the sexuality-based version might be something like "straight main character has gay friend who is tragically dying of aids," or "gay character is picked on by other students. Straight protagonist disapproves of this/defends him."

For the sexuality-based version, the straight person doesn't really have to do any fighting against oppression per se. Merely tolerating their non-straight friend is proof of how progressive and enlightened they are (sadly, this is actually true IRL for many people - just a lack of someone directly condemning you can feel gratitude-worthy).

[sqbr]

Yes, I heard about that, and my "I should watch Glory some day" plans died (I love Denzel Washington. Why would you focus on anyone but him?)

I think the sexuality-based version might be something like "straight main character has gay friend who is tragically dying of aids," or "gay character is picked on by other students. Straight protagonist disapproves of this/defends him."

Yes, that sounds about right.

Merely tolerating their non-straight friend is proof of how progressive and enlightened they are (sadly, this is actually true IRL for many people - just a lack of someone directly condemning you can feel gratitude-worthy).

*nods* And thinking about it, on a meta level a show/movie will applaud itself (and be applauded) for simply having a GLBT character on screen, regardless of how badly they may be portrayed.

[aquaeri]

I know you've moved on, and these aren't stories, but they're patterns I see in the mass media that I think fit: business men kindly explaining to women how to get promotions and pay rises (it's usually all the woman's fault for not being "assertive" enough, of course); Labor party politicians and union leaders with their university degrees in law etc "saving" the working class and/or people without access to higher education; and huge swathes of charity work, which seem more about making the people donating/volunteering feel grateful they're not homeless or poor or disabled or whatever.

Also, definitely story: the scene I found most offensive in Glee: Wheels is Finn's "This one's for you, Artie!" and reaction shot from Artie because Artie isn't able to talk about being a wheelchair user himself, apparently.

[sqbr]

Yes, those are I guess examples of people viewing themselves as the hero of this sort of narrative.

Also, definitely story: the scene I found most offensive in Glee: Wheels is Finn's "This one's for you, Artie!" and reaction shot from Artie because Artie isn't able to talk about being a wheelchair user himself, apparently.

Ohhhhh man. Eww.