On Prejudice in Fiction

 I have had a slow past couple of days, but I’m going to be out today for a bit. I wrote this beforehand, obviously (I always do), though Friday night was a bit more hectic than I’d like. I’m still reading Don Quixote–though I’m almost done–because it is really long. After that will be… heck, I don’t know. A library book, maybe? Or maybe another book I grabbed in the house.

Shogun is finished, and it was excellent, so right now I’m circling through Brooklyn 99, Warrior, and the Roku Spiderwick Chronicles, which I have thoughts about, though we’ll save that for another time. The movie was a better adaptation though.

Also apparently my writing music right now is the full soundtrack for Horizon Forbidden West?

On Prejudice in Fiction

This past week, headlines revealed that Brian Helgeland, writer on A Knight’s Tale, pitched ideas for a sequel movie; however, he was led to believe that Sony and Netflix tested it through their algorithms and declared it wasn’t going to be successful. How bone-headed. Mind you, we don’t know for a fact that’s what happened, that’s just what he thinks happened, though entertainment sites are reporting it this way anyway because that’s where journalism is right now.

Anyhoodle, one of the ideas pitches was to tell the story of the daughter of the original film’s protagonist (who was played by Heath Ledger, so he can’t come back), a girl who wants to joust but has to disguise herself as a man to do it. Because, y’know, sexism. Reactor Mag’s Molly Templeton had this in her article covering the story:

(Side note: If you are going to make historically anachronistic movies, you can leave out the sexism! Just saying!)

Hm.

Um.

Okay, let’s talk about this.

Increasingly, I’ve noticed a tendency by audiences and creators to decide that since prejudice is bad, it should not appear in fiction. And look, I’m very glad that we can agree that prejudice is bad! But! The author of the article is objecting to the depiction of sexism as part of the story of a hypothetical film in which it is presented as an obstacle for the protagonist to overcome. It’s not in the story because the writer thinks sexism is cool, or makes a neat storytelling device, it’s because it is the key part of the central conflict. The antagonistic part. We’re meant to root against it. In essence, the author of the article in question, Molly Templeton, is saying, “I don’t want any traces of sexism in a story about overcoming sexism.”

Do you see how stupid this is?

This throws me back to when Netflix was gearing up for the release of their Avatar: The Last Airbender remake, in which they revealed that they removed Sokka’s sexism from the story because they didn’t think it aged well. Everyone and their mothers pointed out that the point of Sokka’s sexism wasn’t, “Hey, this is cool!” It was, “This guy is wrong, and overcoming his own sexism is what makes him grow as a person!” And presumably the audience, many of whom are around the same age as Sokka, would examine themselves and, if they had that same attitude, would reflect on how dumb it was to devalue women’s contributions to society, and therefore become better people.

This isn’t rocket science. But apparently some critics and screenwriters don’t understand that.

Yes, sometimes, you can justify removing this material. The film adaptation of In the Heights cut out an arc about racism against Benny, so now everyone gets along perfectly, but in adaptation, you’re going to have to cut out some things and streamline. That’s not really that much of a problem. And sometimes, when you write something, you look back and say, “Hey, I don’t have the time to do this justice, or I don’t know how to handle the topic of prejudice in this story in a way that works, so I’ll drop it.” Okay, that’s fine. It’s a missed opportunity, but it’s fine.

But this? The entire conflict of the story is about overcoming prejudice. It’s not there for funzies! And this isn’t like Gone with the Wind, where almost all of the “heroic” characters are pining for the good old days when they had an entire race enslaved to do their work for them! This is about how prejudice is bad!

How did you miss this?

I’m not saying this is a widespread problem with writers and creators, because I haven’t noticed it that much–I’ve seen it more in critical conversations, especially about older works like Huckleberry Finn. It’s not like I think that there’s some widespread conspiracy by writers to wipe out bad things in society or history. But this article, along with the Avatar remake thing, both happening this year, made me think that maybe, just maybe, a lot of audiences are becoming a lot less discerning about what stories are trying to do? About why it’s there to begin with?

Imagine, if you will, the book The Goblin Emperor, which is about a half goblin becoming Emperor of Elfland. Part of the entire story revolves around him having to face racism from elven nobles because they look down on him for his goblin heritage. Now imagine that element taken out, because we don’t need racism in a fictional setting. The entire story loses its point, then! 

[In my head the first example I wanted to use was Hidden Figures, but that being based off of real people made this a bit trickier.]

Using prejudice, or other bad things in society, as antagonistic things for the heroes to overcome, isn’t a bad thing. It’s a good thing. And we should see more of it if we want our audiences to be better people.

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