Linkage

[salinea]

Thought inducing post linked from my flist by a few people, if you've missed it: I didn't dream of dragons by deepad

It is causing me quite a bit of discomfort because it is hitting some right spot.

Also I've been wondering if my username was perhaps horribly presumptuous and if I should change it >_>;

ETA: actually I should just rec this list of links collected by rydra_wong

Comments

[werthead.livejournal.com]

Very interesting post, quite thought-provoking.

From one of the other links, when I heard about the AVATAR movie cast I got quite annoyed at how predictably white-centric it was. I would have expected an Indian director to have at least stood up to the studio on this point but evidently not.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'm pretty upset about the whitewashing of Avatar too. I don't know if Shyamalan had the power to make the casting decision, but I certainly wish he had had opposed it. Although I think so, it's perhaps unfair to hold a PoC director to a higher standard about that sorts of things than I would a white one, so I don't think we should blame him more on that account...

[werthead.livejournal.com]

Usually the director has a lot of say in casting. However, in this case the studio were doing the movie regardless and bought Shyamalan on board, so I suspect he has a lot less power than directors normally wield on films. Plus his own career has been nosediving for a while now, so he may have thought it better to shut up and do what the studio says.

Disappointing :-(

[shiinabambi.livejournal.com]

I don't blame him more, but I blame him plenty. Although, it's, uh, a different kind of blame? If a white director let that go by, I'd say he was privileged at best, and racist at worst. As a POC, I feel like he's just selling out, buying into the stereotypes that POC don't sell in Hollywood. Either one's a damned shame, and either case is unforgivable in my book.

Making the Asian characters white was bad enough, but if you were really blind you could argue that it's the same basic skin tone, and it's hard to definitively make out facial features. If you just showed someone who had never seen Avatar a picture of Aang in culturally-neutral clothes and asked them his race, they might not be able to say for sure if he was white or Asian, because the art is so stylized. (I see him as Asian because I'm used to the anime style, but still.) But Katara and Sokka? How do you miss BROWN?

Regarding cultural appropriation, I understand it's an issue and needs talking about and awareness of, but I also think that many writers deliberately choose "the other" to write about in order to better understand it. They say "write what you know," but that's boring. By writing about other cultures, you live a little through their eyes, at least, to the ability of your imagination. While I'm sure they get things wrong and it might be weird to read it from the perspective of someone from that culture, isn't trying to understand a step in the right direction?

The problem, IMO, is when the author /doesn't/ try to understand, s/he just writes the two-dimensional stereotype and leaves it at that. But say, something like Avatar, where Mike and Bryan, two totally white dudes, write this whole Asian fantasy world, while avoiding any specific culture so as to avoid appropriating too much, that was pretty cool, yes? (I do have a problem with how some of the philosophy and attitudes are just so /Western/, but then it'll do something really Eastern and cool and I'll just think of it as a platypus-bear, a mix of two things that makes an even cooler thing.)

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Although, it's, uh, a different kind of blame?
Hmm. That makes sense.

If you just showed someone who had never seen Avatar a picture of Aang in culturally-neutral clothes and asked them his race, they might not be able to say for sure if he was white or Asian, because the art is so stylized.
But Aang is never in culturally-neutral clothes! (actually, what are culturally-neutral clothes? Nakedness?)

But Katara and Sokka? How do you miss BROWN?
Yeah, I think both kinds of whitewashing are disturbing, and highlight disturbing things about societies. This one is more flagrant though.

While I'm sure they get things wrong and it might be weird to read it from the perspective of someone from that culture, isn't trying to understand a step in the right direction?
No, mostly I agree with you. But because there's a long story of cultural and artistic appropriation that was exploitative, people need to be careful and critical.

I agree with you, I think Avatar was really well done and a good example about how to write about different cultures than your own without being exploitative.

[peadarog.livejournal.com]

That was a great post by your friend. I don't necessarily agree with every word, but coming from an ex-colony, I certainly feel a lot of the confusion.

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Sadly, not one of my friend :)

I'm not sure I agree with everything either, but I found it very compelling.

I think we are still overall trying to learn how to deal with the scars of colonialism and imperialism. It's a very tough process, and I always felt, regarding the part of my origins that are related to it, that there were a lot of unspeakable things and unsaid things; and things which are too difficult or painful to articulate. There's a feeling of being exiled, but also that I can never again claim this part of culture as mine, and that feels painful to me.

[peadarog.livejournal.com]

Yup, right with you there.

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

Yes, it was interesting. Agreed with some of it and was either puzzled or in disagreement about other things (one of which I commented about), but it illustrates a particular kind of experience well.

Why would your username be presumptuous?

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Why would your username be presumptuous?
I've been thinking about the way I relate with the category of Other, largely and for various reasons I identify with it, for various reasons. I think many geeks do. And it's a large part of why I chose this username.
Then I was thinking about that exchange between deepad and Elizabeth Bear at her journal, where Bear talks about all the ways she does not fit in with the White Anglo-Saxon American culture, comes to it as an Other, and deepad was pointing that it was "flattening" different kinds of others category. I wonder if I do the same thing, if, by virtue of for personal and cultural reasons I identify as Other doesn't mean I know what being a PoC feel like; I'm still a white middle class girl belonging to Western European culture. So am I, for example in discussions like this one, co-opting different experiences of feeling like the other for myself, in that making it all about me, me, me ways.

[violaswamp.livejournal.com]

I see. For what it's worth, I don't think so. Comparing your username to Elizabeth Bear talking about her sense of being a misfit doesn't work, because it seems that Bear was talking about her misfitness-despite-being-white-middle-class in the context of a discussion about people of color. So it may have had a "threadjacking," change-the-subject kind of effect. But you're not doing that.

The existence of other, more socially powerful types of "Othering" doesn't negate the "Othering" you might feel, and I don't see why it means you shouldn't express that feeling. It would just be impolite and unhelpful to bring up that feeling in the middle of a discussion about some other type of "Othering."

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

It would just be impolite and unhelpful to bring up that feeling in the middle of a discussion about some other type of "Othering."
Aah. Good point. Thank you for your thoughtful answer.

[solesakuma]

Sharing thinky thoughts here because I haven't read enough and I don't want to annoy people over there saying how it's all about me.
REading many of those posts raise so many questions about how to define me and how to define the many things that annoy me about my fandom experience.
Because, on one hand, I'm a white middle-class Christian, with a college education even and that's a lot of privilege. On the other hand, I live in a Third World Country, whose cultural identity has been completely fucked-up because, as I was telling you the other day, it's not like we're anything other than a bunch of wannabe Parisians. Well, there's this huge area of Argentinian culture that's not European, but that's not mine and I'd be appropriating quite a bit if I were to, say, use Guaraní mythology in a story. So I relate to many of the things they say, but I don't feel comfortable identifying either.
But, still, my position isn't quite the same as an American or a Western European. It's like I can't be French or British, but I can't be anything else either.
/ends self-involved thoughts

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I think it's also important to talk about the experience like yours, or even like mine as a white Jew, of various people who are in the situation where they don't belong to the dominant Western Christian culture fully, yet don't belong either to the space of the PoC who've been so heavily colonized. I think our stories and our experiences has a place somewhere, too.

[solesakuma]

Yes, exactly. But at the same time, we can't invade their place because I might speak Spanish but hey, I really doubt I'd get delayed at airports.
and now I'm thinking why I feel so uncomfortable in both spaces and I think it's because, in Argentinian context, I'm not the Other. TV is about me and books are about me and politics are about me and newspaper talk to me. There's this... huge side of Argentina I'm not a part of, well, maybe a little but not as much as many other Argentinians who are the Other to me. Their experience is not part of what we think is 'Argentina'.
But when I get into a... global space, like the Internet, and suddenly TV and newspaper are not about me anymore and I start to feel like the Other.
And sorry about blabbering. :S

[after-nightfall.livejournal.com]

I am feeling utterly overwhelmed and out of my depth when I read posts like that because I realise what a huge part of human experience I will never even hear of, much less understand, never mind the writing part. And I feel so fenced-in in my little Central European garden.

As for the situation that sparked this essay, Sarah Monette (the author of Mélusine) also has a post on her LJ with some insights - here.

Also, I don't think your username is presumptuous. You don't need an outside blessing for how you feel (if that's the reason you chose it).

[etrangere.livejournal.com]

I am feeling utterly overwhelmed and out of my depth when I read posts like that because I realise what a huge part of human experience I will never even hear of, much less understand, never mind the writing part.
Yeah! I feel like that too, and like I want to find those stories too, learn about them even if I can't ever quite understand them, because they're usually so much drowned out by the more dominant stories.

Thanks for the other links!

You don't need an outside blessing for how you feel (if that's the reason you chose it).
That's a good point. Thank you ^^