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

[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 :/

[jeshyr]

You're right, it's not pro gay rights in any way but in terms of the majority's perception of "we're doing the best thing for the gay person" I was thinking it may qualify. Ditto with the disability version. Might not - probably depends on which bit of the majority we're discussing and how widely you define "good thing" etc. It just struck me as tropically similar.

r

[sqbr]

*nods*

I think there's a lot of very similar tropes that all blur together.