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eumeliaI am still not a huge participant in Inception fandom, I comment little and read much, but I read practically everything there in my preferred characters (which honestly it's almost all of them, so I end up reading a lot).
But I lurk, it's easy to lurk and avoid the fail. Of which there is lots let me tell you, of the sexist kind, the hetero-normative kind, the constant use of Magical Healing Cock, dear god and... the racist kind.
However, there is a lot to chose from and as per usual I tend to skip stories I perceive as to be written when the characters are OOC - Out of Character - as in, do things I don' think they'd do or do things I'm particularly uncomfortable with.
Such a story exists and it is currently the topic of debate in this monster of a baby fandom.
The fic is Metaphores as mixed as you can make them by![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
halflinen, which is about, according to the Author's Note summery: Eames tries to incept Arthur. A story of forgiveness, family, fancy suits, and ~feelings.
I didn't read it, because I don't think or I am uncomfortable with the idea, that Eames would ever do something like that to Arthur.
My perception of Eames doesn't fit with his characterisation in this fic and so I didn't read it.
Another thing that apparently happened in this fic is that Eames is casually racist towards Yusuf - one of the only two non-white characters in the movie - and well, readers have said so to the author.
And have expanded upon what they said to the author
There's another example of a different fic (that I liked) that has begun to be discussed, but it's somewhat different as it isn't a character being racist towards Yusuf, but more a use of the stereotype in the narrative to make a joke about something else entirely, but because it is tied to Yusuf and his Desi heritage it can be construed as an unfortunate combination in the material of the text.
Sorry, I went literature student there, be thankful I did say an "unfortunate metonymy".
Any way, back to the point.
RaceFail in Inception Fandom.
Oh, boy and we just got started! /sarcasm.
I suppose it doesn't help that the movie itself is a big pile of white supremacist masculine-centric and heero-normative tropes and narratives.
What? A brown man living in a slum peddling drugs?! What?! No, never!!!
What? An Asian mogul intent on RULLING THE WORLD??? You never see that!!!
What? A dead woman haunts her partner is an utter, utter monster to him and his BFF, zeroes in on the only other woman in the entire movie and warns her about taking her man! WHAT?? No, I could never imagine that!?
Does it detract from the movie? As a piece of work that is about innovation and story telling, oh, yes it does. As a story about people? Yes it does.
Still, it's not just about the white men doing shit. To reduce it to that, makes fandom kind of pointless.
Also, it was done more cleverly than generally speaking, which is saying something.
But in fan-fiction, we are supposed to recognise the tropes and do them better right? Right?!
Well, I suppose. Issues of consent arise in the film and are handled with the ambiguity it deserves - there are consequences to toying with consent, where are lines crossed and where are the lines invisible etc. Once I have the movie in my possession I will gladly (and most probably) watch while writing notes.
So fan-fiction has the racism. It is being called out. This is good. Telling authors they should change their story and the way they perceive the characters... less good.
In fact, horrible and bad.
The story in which Eames is racist to Yusuf... It is Eames who racist to Yusuf! It is a piece of dialogue in which a white character is casually racist towards a non-white character.
This does not mean that the author would ever behave in this manner. Characters are not (or should not be) the mouth pieces of the author's ideas and ideals. They are their own selves and personally, I would not be surprised in the least to hear Eames say something horribly racist or sexist, because he knows he would get away with it.
It's the kind of person he is, in a certain reading.
Another reading makes Eames mister sensitive par excellence who hides behind charm and affectations in order to keep people from penetrating his armour and so he would snark, but never in a million years demean another person in that manner.
It's the kind of person he is, in a certain reading.
Not to mention the fact that Eames is intelligent, has the capacity to be other people of different sex, gender and race and is politically aware enough not be a privileged ass when he's in his own privileged skin.
It's the kind of person he is, in a certain reading.
The casual racism thrown in to a story can work in two ways - it can either be a realistic part of conversation and development of the characters in the narrative, in which case it depends on characterisation to pull it off or fall flat. But still, it would be realistic, because racism is a part of language, this isn't a good thing, but it is a real thing. In this case, I don't think it's a matter of perpetuating racism, but more a use of the way people interact - again, this can fall flat and be disastrous.
So, if you're going to write a better story, you have to take that into account.
The other kind of casual racism is characterisation; Yusuf is Desi and very likely to be Muslim and in the world of the movie is already marginalised due to having barely any lines, being motivated by greed (which if we were honest, they all were to a degree, "for the challenge" my ass) and being the driver... well, you see where I'm going with this. Despite the fact that fan-fiction and fandom is built upon taking the sub-text and expanding, extrapolating and teasing the hell out of it, if Yusuf is already marginal and you're into the other white men there (as majority if fandom is) you're going to throw in casual and unconscious racism and think you've done a spot on job. Good writers, can perpetuate this, while still making Yusuf a round three dimensional character.
And so my unpopular opinion is thus: exchanges, characterisations and textual proximities may be written in a casually racist way, but they too can be interpreted in a manner in which it actually suits the characters, narrative and don't necessarily mean that the author's ass is showing.
Critique of fic is necessary, good and should be a bigger part of fandom. The writing of issues race, gender relations, gender identity, sexuality, physical, mental and cognitive abilities is also necessary, good and should be done with more thought, rather than regurgitate the old stereotypes, however, things tend to be interpreted differently depending on one's standpoint and that also needs to be taken into account.
Now, after all that, I'm going to read some fic.
Edited to Add: I just found an older post of mine that discusses this topic (during the terrible incident of the Haiti SPN story) and I have found that I've contradicted myself in this manner.
So I'll add that I think there's a difference between writing a story framed in a manner that serves as nothing more than a convenient background for the written fandom at hand and thus appropriates and disenfranchises other characters (and the people reading) which are marginalised (holocaut fail comes to mind) and an incident of characterisation and narrative in a particular story.
Again, the line is fine and this isn't a pass/fail thing, none of the criticisms I linked above do that, but is can easily turn into one and that's my fear when critiques begin to deconstruct fics in this manner - not because the critics are being over sensitive or because I'm "all about the art", but because I sometimes feel there is no space left for ambiguity.
But I lurk, it's easy to lurk and avoid the fail. Of which there is lots let me tell you, of the sexist kind, the hetero-normative kind, the constant use of Magical Healing Cock, dear god and... the racist kind.
However, there is a lot to chose from and as per usual I tend to skip stories I perceive as to be written when the characters are OOC - Out of Character - as in, do things I don' think they'd do or do things I'm particularly uncomfortable with.
Such a story exists and it is currently the topic of debate in this monster of a baby fandom.
The fic is Metaphores as mixed as you can make them by
halflinen, which is about, according to the Author's Note summery: Eames tries to incept Arthur. A story of forgiveness, family, fancy suits, and ~feelings.I didn't read it, because I don't think or I am uncomfortable with the idea, that Eames would ever do something like that to Arthur.
My perception of Eames doesn't fit with his characterisation in this fic and so I didn't read it.
Another thing that apparently happened in this fic is that Eames is casually racist towards Yusuf - one of the only two non-white characters in the movie - and well, readers have said so to the author.
And have expanded upon what they said to the author
There's another example of a different fic (that I liked) that has begun to be discussed, but it's somewhat different as it isn't a character being racist towards Yusuf, but more a use of the stereotype in the narrative to make a joke about something else entirely, but because it is tied to Yusuf and his Desi heritage it can be construed as an unfortunate combination in the material of the text.
Sorry, I went literature student there, be thankful I did say an "unfortunate metonymy".
Any way, back to the point.
RaceFail in Inception Fandom.
Oh, boy and we just got started! /sarcasm.
I suppose it doesn't help that the movie itself is a big pile of white supremacist masculine-centric and heero-normative tropes and narratives.
What? A brown man living in a slum peddling drugs?! What?! No, never!!!
What? An Asian mogul intent on RULLING THE WORLD??? You never see that!!!
What? A dead woman haunts her partner is an utter, utter monster to him and his BFF, zeroes in on the only other woman in the entire movie and warns her about taking her man! WHAT?? No, I could never imagine that!?
Does it detract from the movie? As a piece of work that is about innovation and story telling, oh, yes it does. As a story about people? Yes it does.
Still, it's not just about the white men doing shit. To reduce it to that, makes fandom kind of pointless.
Also, it was done more cleverly than generally speaking, which is saying something.
But in fan-fiction, we are supposed to recognise the tropes and do them better right? Right?!
Well, I suppose. Issues of consent arise in the film and are handled with the ambiguity it deserves - there are consequences to toying with consent, where are lines crossed and where are the lines invisible etc. Once I have the movie in my possession I will gladly (and most probably) watch while writing notes.
So fan-fiction has the racism. It is being called out. This is good. Telling authors they should change their story and the way they perceive the characters... less good.
In fact, horrible and bad.
The story in which Eames is racist to Yusuf... It is Eames who racist to Yusuf! It is a piece of dialogue in which a white character is casually racist towards a non-white character.
This does not mean that the author would ever behave in this manner. Characters are not (or should not be) the mouth pieces of the author's ideas and ideals. They are their own selves and personally, I would not be surprised in the least to hear Eames say something horribly racist or sexist, because he knows he would get away with it.
It's the kind of person he is, in a certain reading.
Another reading makes Eames mister sensitive par excellence who hides behind charm and affectations in order to keep people from penetrating his armour and so he would snark, but never in a million years demean another person in that manner.
It's the kind of person he is, in a certain reading.
Not to mention the fact that Eames is intelligent, has the capacity to be other people of different sex, gender and race and is politically aware enough not be a privileged ass when he's in his own privileged skin.
It's the kind of person he is, in a certain reading.
The casual racism thrown in to a story can work in two ways - it can either be a realistic part of conversation and development of the characters in the narrative, in which case it depends on characterisation to pull it off or fall flat. But still, it would be realistic, because racism is a part of language, this isn't a good thing, but it is a real thing. In this case, I don't think it's a matter of perpetuating racism, but more a use of the way people interact - again, this can fall flat and be disastrous.
So, if you're going to write a better story, you have to take that into account.
The other kind of casual racism is characterisation; Yusuf is Desi and very likely to be Muslim and in the world of the movie is already marginalised due to having barely any lines, being motivated by greed (which if we were honest, they all were to a degree, "for the challenge" my ass) and being the driver... well, you see where I'm going with this. Despite the fact that fan-fiction and fandom is built upon taking the sub-text and expanding, extrapolating and teasing the hell out of it, if Yusuf is already marginal and you're into the other white men there (as majority if fandom is) you're going to throw in casual and unconscious racism and think you've done a spot on job. Good writers, can perpetuate this, while still making Yusuf a round three dimensional character.
And so my unpopular opinion is thus: exchanges, characterisations and textual proximities may be written in a casually racist way, but they too can be interpreted in a manner in which it actually suits the characters, narrative and don't necessarily mean that the author's ass is showing.
Critique of fic is necessary, good and should be a bigger part of fandom. The writing of issues race, gender relations, gender identity, sexuality, physical, mental and cognitive abilities is also necessary, good and should be done with more thought, rather than regurgitate the old stereotypes, however, things tend to be interpreted differently depending on one's standpoint and that also needs to be taken into account.
Now, after all that, I'm going to read some fic.
Edited to Add: I just found an older post of mine that discusses this topic (during the terrible incident of the Haiti SPN story) and I have found that I've contradicted myself in this manner.
So I'll add that I think there's a difference between writing a story framed in a manner that serves as nothing more than a convenient background for the written fandom at hand and thus appropriates and disenfranchises other characters (and the people reading) which are marginalised (holocaut fail comes to mind) and an incident of characterisation and narrative in a particular story.
Again, the line is fine and this isn't a pass/fail thing, none of the criticisms I linked above do that, but is can easily turn into one and that's my fear when critiques begin to deconstruct fics in this manner - not because the critics are being over sensitive or because I'm "all about the art", but because I sometimes feel there is no space left for ambiguity.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-23 10:44 am (UTC)Why would an author want to slap their readers in the face with a throw-away remark? It's not just rude, it's totally changed the mood of the story and wasted the story's climax. I'm not speaking about this fic in particular - it always annoyed me in, say, Enid Blyton books when the characters would suddenly say "Oh, but *girls* can't do that."
no subject
Date: 2010-10-23 10:50 am (UTC)And a lot, not all by any means, can in the end be down to reader interpretation.
Most, is obliviousness no doubt and calling out authors for what amounts lazy writing is a good thing, but I think making it a pass/fail thing is erroneous.
Yeah, Enid Blyton... sheesh.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-23 10:57 am (UTC)