Elizabeth Barrette (ysabetwordsmith) wrote,
Elizabeth Barrette
ysabetwordsmith
  • Mood: busy

About Whitewashing

Tags: ethnic studies, networking, reading, writing
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  • 22 comments
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lb_lee

Re: Thoughts

lb_lee

April 3 2012, 13:26:46 UTC 9 years ago

Enh, I feel it's more... all-encompassing? Declaring something arbitrary the norm and then shoehorning characters to fit in the box, due to the assumption that audiences are too complacent to stand anything else.

Haven't seen any "The Last Airbender," but we know about the movie hooplah. I'd be curious about the fic, if you've got links!

--Rogan
ysabetwordsmith

Re: Thoughts

ysabetwordsmith

April 3 2012, 17:58:31 UTC 9 years ago

>>Enh, I feel it's more... all-encompassing? Declaring something arbitrary the norm and then shoehorning characters to fit in the box, due to the assumption that audiences are too complacent to stand anything else.<<

I think one of the biggest differences between me and ordinary people is that I have an "indeterminate" setting in my mind and they usually don't. They have a "default" setting, and will assume that information applies unless specified that it does not. If you give them a character description with no details in it, and ask "Is this person male/female, black/white," etc. they will make shit up. I'll look at the idiot asking the question and say, "Did you READ this paragraph? That information is not in it. How could I possibly know the character's sex or skin tone when it is NOT SPECIFIED?"

And I write that way too, which sometimes baffles the crap out of some readers, because every so often a character will pop out with some trait that wasn't specified. If I don't say, it doesn't mean default. It means the trait hasn't been important to the plot and/or the character hasn't mentioned it. Sometimes when I get more seriously into a given topic -- most recently asexuality -- I'll noticed that I had a few characters with it already specified but then a bunch more will go, "Oh yeah, that's me too." "Well you never said." "Well you never asked before." Which is kind of funny when it's not driving me nuts.

>>Haven't seen any "The Last Airbender," but we know about the movie hooplah. I'd be curious about the fic, if you've got links!<<

A description of the racebending ruckus is here:
http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/events/racebending-the-last-airbender-casting-controversy

A masterlist of the fanfic is here, although other examples are scattered all across the net:
http://dark-agenda.dreamwidth.org/21052.html#cutid1

There's a reference in my Schrodinger's Heroes material about an Asian Batman asking Ash (a Navaho/Wichita woman) about the IT guy, to which she replies, "I am the IT guy."