…even when it might not look like it. From the Hindustan Times:
In a world where all fundamental laws can be rewritten, it is also illuminating which of them aren’t. The author’s priorities are more openly on display when a culture of non-humans is still patriarchal, there are no queer people in a far-future society, or in an alternate universe the heroes and saviours are still white. Is the villain in the story a repulsively depicted fat person? Is a disabled or disfigured character the monster? Are darker-skinned, non-Western characters either absent or irrelevant, or worse, portrayed with condescension? It’s not sufficient to say that these stereotypes still exist in the real world. In a speculative world, where it is possible to rewrite them, leaving them unchanged is also political.
Applies not just to fiction but to movies as well!
h/t reader Bluejay
Certainly the usual cry that “but in the historical period in which my story is set, women|PoC|etc. really weren’t in positions of power” tends to fall rather flat when there are also dragons. (Quite apart from whether it’s actually true, which often it isn’t.) This has been a problem in role-playing games too, though it’s getting better.
How timely. I’m doing a developmental edit on a sci-fi novel with no important female characters and (I think) no characters of color. There’s no guarantee that my client will heed my suggestions concerning realistic representation, but it’s nice to be able to call authors out on these things before the book is published.
Similar thoughts struck me recently watching the Classic Doctor Who story The Talons of Weng-Chiang, the racism of which has long been defended or ignored by Who fans, sometimes by citing writer Robert Holmes claim that he was consciously writing a genre-pastiche 19th century London that never existed, and that everyone in the story is a stereotype. If that’s the case, couldn’t they have gone a bit further and invented an unrealistic 19th century London that didn’t have blatant racist stereotypes? It actually makes me glad that Classic Who was so ethnically parochial, as it spared us from enduring a lot more stories that would have been full of racism.
The article is also cited in this analysis of the worldbuilding choices in Dune (both the book and the film adaptations). Worth a read.
https://www.tor.com/2019/03/06/why-its-important-to-consider-whether-dune-is-a-white-savior-narrative/