Class and speculative fiction

[sqbr]

I just read this post: Oops, she's dead". Once more with no feeling:

I'm fed up with stories (and Buffy S8 isn't the worst example of it out there, I can also point to Torchwood, many superhero comics, and, quite overwhelmingly, Heroes) with central characters who treat protecting other people's lives as self-expression, who make no attempt to practice and improve their skills or to truly form a team that works like a well-oiled system, who demand that they be given the respect due to those who protect society but who fuck up and fuck up and have hecatombs happen on their watch and then expect us to sympathise with them afterwards because it was just so horrible for them, even tough they're usually still alive and walking at the end of it, unlike hundreds of others who weren't in the opening credits.

...and was reminded that I had a locked brainstormy post about class in speculative fiction I never got around to tidying up. Thus, a summary of the main ideas and some links since I have a follow on post I'd like to make (eventually)

Some interesting fannish posts about class I found via metafandom etc:

• That class thing about a bunch of different TV shows.
  
• Class issues in U.S. television The lack of working class protagonists of serious shows.
  
• Masculinity and social class I think this makes a good point about the way lower class characters are fetishised in popular culture as more conservative and manly than the effete politically correct elite.
  
• Class and white masculinity in Supernatural
  
• Classism and Working-Class Characters in Fandom and this comment by heyiya in particular.
  
• Buffy S8, canon Sues, and the impossibility of socialism under Campbell: or Protagonist Privilege and
  Passive versus Active: DEATH MATCH, or possibly, just a cup of tea about how we only write about kings and leaders etc
  
• We do the work class in science fiction panel notes from Wiscon.
  The Chosen Jerk: Jam Session with N.K. Jemisin
  

Some other links:

• XKCD: Idiocracy On "only stupid people are breeding"
  
• 
  Why Can’t Those Working-Class Kids Value Education Like Our Middle-Class Kids?
  
• The New Socialism: Global Collectivist Society Is Coming Online
  
• The Not-So-Hidden Politics of Class Online
  
• Bogan Pride Me ranting about class in general, has some discussion of Australian specifics.
  
• Not the communist party manifesto set to music: A Dollhouse diptych Dollhouse vids using Marxist music :D
  

Further thoughts, with examples from stuff I've consumed recently:

In anything set in the past or psuedo-past the heroes are almost always upper class and/or (usually and) Chosen/special in some way, even when they start out seemingly working class and mundane. There is usually a very strong emphasis on the "natural order of things" which has gone out of balance, with a heavy emphasis on finding the True King (or possibly Queen). Anyone from a non-noble background who works to gain power is grasping and evil.

Dragon Age and FullMetal Alchemist both subvert this, by allowing hard working intelligent ambitious working class people to become leader. (Though in Dragon Age you also have the option of the sweet naive royal bastard who doesn't want the throne) The Chronicles of Prydain subvert this nicely: the main character thinks he might be the lost heir but eventually realises it doesn't matter, what matters is that he's the best person for the job. Avatar The Last Airbender plays it absolutely straight: Note that Azula and Ozai are not the Proper Heirs, and even Katara and Sokka are the children of the chief.

If there's no aristocracy you still often end up with a Chosen Leader (often still literally chosen by destiny) and even if they're part of a democracy they work best when Following Their Heart rather than in consultation and compromise with the leaders of subfactions etc. See Sheridan in Bablyon 5 and Buffy as described in the post I linked.

There are very few characters who become upwardly mobile and enjoy the money/power etc but still connect and identify with the culture, values, tastes etc of their upbringing, or see themselves as a working class person in a position to change the middle/upper class from the inside and work in solidarity with the working class.

(Despite my icon I am not talking about Homestuck, because I have non-class related Issues with Homestuck right now that would get in the way. I did like WV's love of democracy though)

Comments

[whatistigerbalm]

This is why I like BPRD - a proper team being a team, having team problems and team solutions.

[sqbr]

That's HellBoy right, or at least the same universe? I really should read more of it.

[whatistigerbalm]

Same universe, yes; it's the comic that starts after Hellboy leaves the BPRD to deal with private problems. I'll put up a detailed rec post soon, I can't recommend it enough.

[aris_tgd]

I occasionally try to puzzle out if DIY SOS, a UK TV show about a group of builders and designers who fix up someone's unfinished DIY improvement project (usually a room, sometimes slightly bigger, recently specials they've been doing most of a house) is more appreciative of working-class work or fetishizing working-class work. I mean, any time you put something on television there's a certain amount of fetishizing, but there's a certain amount of "Sure, we have lots of fun, but mostly we're just very good at our jobs."

The gender issues I won't go into. ;)

Also, I feel like it would make an interesting comparison with Extreme Makeover: Home Edition, but I don't feel like watching any of EM:HE to check.

[sqbr]

I haven't seen that show, but the dynamics and subtext of reality tv is fascinating, since on the one hand it's "reality" but on the other...it's really not.

[aris_tgd]

So really really not reality! (See, editing and that one episode of Dancing on Wheels... le sigh.)

[furikku]

I'm at first inclined to think that a lot of the Chosen Nobility Hero stuff comes from fairy tales, though when I think harder about half of the fairy tales feature a working-class protag who's often special by nature of being somewhat mentally deficient or something.

Of course, there's also the point that nobility can afford Hero Swag and also snazzy clothing. :V

As for the diplomacy thing, I expect that something involving compromise and all is just a lot harder to write, both because it's more complicated and also because there's not as much of a narrative tradition for it, so one really HAS to do a lot of work, as opposed to the easy path of "Follow Your Heart" Archetype.

[furikku]

Masculinity and social class I think this makes a good point about the way lower class characters are fetishised in popular culture as more conservative and manly than the effete politically correct elite.

I was sort of puzzled by this link. Not by the post itself, but by the attitude that Working Class = Misogynist. Possibly this is my regional bias talking, but my own experience (in the Southeastern US) has been that working class dudes tend to be polite and respectful toward women. Granted, I have not seen them in the sorts of situations I suppose come up in SPN, so perhaps there would be a different attitude, but the sort of misogyny around here seems more one of "Gotta protect the wimmens" than complete hatred of women.

[sqbr]

Oh yes, most assumptions about the working class are overgeneralisations at best and totally untrue at worst. Doesn't mean they're not used in fiction anyway :/

I was going to say that the working class boys I knew growing up weren't exactly respectful to us girls, but on further thought neither were the upper middle class boys I met in highschool, so I think the actual moral is that children are horrible :D

[whatistigerbalm]

Working Class = Misogynist

It's a UK stereotype but sadly pretty true.

[sqbr]

Well, yes, but fairy tales act like the aristocracy are Better (or at least that the best people to run things are kings, even if they're ex farmboy kings) because that's what people genuinely believed back then. It's quite different to replicate the dynamic as someone from a democratic, theoretically egalitarian culture. And you're right, I think modern fantasy is often more classist than the older stories, because the people writing it are choosing to romanticise a classist past. In the same way that regency romances are often in some ways more classist and sexist than say Austen, who didn't write about old fashioned upper class men because they're sexier than feminist working class men etc, but because they were literally the only kind of man she could imagine her protagonists marrying.

You can have compromise and consensus building as well as conflict: you don't have to (and probably can't) build consensus with everyone. Look at the civil rights movement, feminist movement etc. Plenty of conflict there! (Though stories about them still often focus on The One Person Who Changed Everything, regardless of whether or not this is a accurate reading of history) It is harder to write stories that don't fit the same old tropes, and certainly there's a place for old fashioned stories about princes finding their destiny etc, but it would be nice to have more variety!

[pseudo_tsuga]

Thank you for the links! I will read them when I have some spare time.

I did love the valorization of civil service in Homestuck even if it's just some tangential jokes.