Race in Fantasy

[deoridhe]

So I was reading a favorite series again last night when once again, like a bolt of lightning to my brain, I was struck by how pale all of the characters were. There were many "races," but all of them were described as looking similar, with perhaps olive skin as the darkest skin could get

Comments

[bibliotech]

You're kinda awesome, you know that? I haven't read much fantasy (hell, I'm still fairly new to sci-fi), but I've heard the complaint before about whitewashing. I tend to have a 'wait and see for myself' attitude about it, because everyone told me that science fiction is totally, totally racist, but most of the current shows I've seen are doing a better job at casting women and minorities (without screaming "HERE IS THE TOKEN CHICK! HERE SHE IS! RIGHT HERE!") than non-sci-fi television.

[deoridhe]

It was really weird because I keep comparing my races and theirs and thinking, "But they stopped before a bunch of the pretty colors..."

I think a lot of the books ar emore than the tv shows, and even there you'll find exceptions. Wizard of Earthsea, et al, was a quite deliberate addressing of this; the only light skinned people are viewed as evil and even they have brown hair. There are no blonds at all. She tried to do the same thing with women in her most recent book, but it really fell flat for me personally.

[bibliotech]

It's kinda sad that sci-fi's taking all these leaps into, you know, showing the universe as not just one kind of people versus bobble-headed aliens, and everyday television and books aren't keeping up. Shouldn't it be the other way around?

[kutsuwamushi]

study their skin color for a bit and see what it says about you.You should go further. Do your dark-skinned characters still have typically caucasian facial features? Is there a "reason" for their dark skin (such as them being evil)? And does their skin color set them apart, or is it normal

[kutsuwamushi]

(Wouldn't the group that settled in the caves likely turn out to be
lighter than the group above ground? I'm thinking of all the albino cave
species, here. Maybe I'm misreading you, though.

The melanin on this planet is different than the melanin on Earth; it's light. You tan by staying out of the sun; in the sun you are burnt pale.

[tamerterra]

*nods* If you want much darker skintones in a Ye Olde landlocked Europe setting, you need to explain how they got there and... there's not many authors that want to deal with that.

[intheyear2004]

I think that you tend to people your stories with the kind of people you know in RL, i.e. if you're caucasian and have no friends/acquaintances/colleagues who are not, it's very likely that this will show in your writing.

I personally have a problem with alien races all looking vaguely humanoid in SciFi. Wouldn't it be likelier that life on other planets had developed totally differently and people would look like nothing we know on earth at all?

[intheyear2004]

Sorry, I just wanted to mention that I'm here via MF.

[intheyear2004]

Well, they wouldn't have to CGI *every* alien race. I would be content if not everyone looked like they were wearing weird make up - and just a little CGI here and there would be in the budget, I hope? I remember a German TV series from the early seventies (?) made with a tiny budget where the aliens were, I think, gas or radiation creatures and looked believable with what means they had at that time.

[zooey_glass04]

This is so true - I can hardly think of any fantasy series which feature black people. In general I think a lot of fantasy stories fall into the trap of racial stereotyping, for example having the exotic Arabic empire. I think it is very hard for people to get away from some of the stock images of fantasy and adventure which originate in old narratives. The one writer who does address this issue is Ursula le Guin; I love the way she presents race in the Earthsea books because she reverses that trend without making it very heavy handed. I don't think I even noticed that there were few white characters until 'The Tombs of Atuan', when we get to see the white culture. It's a shame that this was utterly igonored when the series was adapted for TV (although from what I hear the finished product bore almost no resemblance to her text).

[were_lemur]

I refuse to acknowledge the resistance of that series. If I did, I would have to go on a rant about how it completely missed the point, by turning it into an utterly generic hollywood sword and sorcery adventure, with teh pretteh people, plotlines that seemed to have been ganked from some producer's butt, and an utter disregard for what made the original series unique.

[were_lemur]

here via metafandom, btw