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The Oppressor as hero
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.
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.
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.
no subject
(Anonymous) 2009-12-26 08:24 am (UTC)(link)How about
"Have the white character lend aid, but don't make them the hero that is better than all POC, gets women shoved at him because he's so great, fights better, and is at the end their natural leader because they're too dumb to lead themselves"?
Seriously. If you ask me to help you out on something, you won't expect me to stay, and become your overlord, do you?
Just look at the gazillion movies where it's a white culture needing saving. The saviour comes from WITHIN the society, and often doesn't end up with every female fawning over him (Avatar: "Oh, and you can marry any of these women, just pick one!") while turning into the one true ruler without whom everyone else is utterly helpless.