342 replies to this topic

[Kim87]

Well, if he was going to show us an example of a more enlighten part of Europa in the Dark Age. I really would have picked a better example than Moorish Spain at least. That would certainly fall under the better for some, worse for other category.

But I am a bit confused; humans are by nature pretty bad at times. And the further back you go in time, the worse it gets, or at least most of the time. And this is normally reflected in books that deal with those eras. And I am sure we could find exceptions, but those would be the exceptions. Not that I am in any way any expert in these things. So to a certain degree it would still be true, and it would not be completely wrong to say that it hold certain elements of historical accuracy, right?

And arguments about it being too male focused and too white are also kind of silly, they are for the most part writing for a white male audience, and the writers themselves are for the most case white males.

It kind of reminds me of the Italian vogue debate, where Italian vogue was criticized for using more or less only white models, something that might not all that confusing considering Italy is a European country where the waste majority of the readers where Italian/European. And it was not that they did not use other models, it was just that they were not used often.

[Sci-2]

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Not that I am in any way any expert in these things. So to a certain degree it would still be true, and it would not be completely wrong to say that it hold certain elements of historical accuracy, right?

His point is lazy writing can't be excused by appeals to history. Even a work in a misogynistic setting can cue the reader that, hey, this way of things is bad.

It's not perfect and some find it deeply flawed, but look at Song. Arya clearly could be a good warrior, and the courtly roles end up a prison Sansa begins to see through.

Contrast this with, say, a book where the women cream themselves for the protagonist.

ETA: And where everything fills traditional roles just because, with little commentary on the matter.

Regarding race, probably Song's weakest part, not everything foreign needs to be exotic or barbaric.

As to catering to the majority, just because people belong to it doesn't mean they shouldn't see what else is out there. Surely there are white women that wouldn't mind seeing that other cultures find voluptuous, larger women incredibly sexy?

I'm straight male from a family that transitioned over my life from middle class to upper middle class. I still want to read about gays, women, people of different backgrounds.

Edited by sciborg2, 24 April 2012 - 09:34 AM.

[Qhorin Halfhand and Yoren]

1.The historical authenticity argument is a one of the many good arguments that can be used if one is wrongly whining about a series showing cruelty, classicism, sexism and is overreacting or  they can only accept settings that lack oppression as valid and might even insult the author instead of accepting that they might just not like certain settings.

2.It is a bad argument if the series indeed has bad female characters or only bad female characters or is sexist. Historical authenticity is no excuse. Also even works that send positive messages, handle these issues in a mostly good manner can have problems and even those might deserve some criticism and again historical authenticity might not be a good excuse.

And sometimes it might be hard to conclude what is 1 and what is 2 regarding books that do a decent job about these subjects but are not perfect. It isn't always easy to tell. In some books it is easy to tell but there are books that do a much better job than those that are harder to judge.

I am just going to link to this: http://thinkprogress...iece/?mobile=nc as one of the examples I am talking about. It is a good counterargument against 1.

Edited by Qhorin Halfhand and Yoren, 24 April 2012 - 10:08 AM.

[mormont]

Kim87, on 24 April 2012 - 09:17 AM, said:

But I am a bit confused; humans are by nature pretty bad at times. And the further back you go in time, the worse it gets, or at least most of the time. And this is normally reflected in books that deal with those eras.

But fantasy books don't deal with those eras. Fantasy fiction is not historical fiction: this was one of the main points Dan was making.

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So to a certain degree it would still be true, and it would not be completely wrong to say that it hold certain elements of historical accuracy, right?

The question would remain: why defend 'historical accuracy' in a book that isn't about history, and that in any case cheerfully ignores historical accuracy in several other areas? Most fantasy books set in imagined pseudo-'historical' settings take numerous liberties with political structures, religion, technology, clothing, weapons and armour, flora and fauna, the economy, even other aspects of the social structure. Yet nobody generally complains.

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And arguments about it being too male focused and too white are also kind of silly, they are for the most part writing for a white male audience, and the writers themselves are for the most case white males.

Seriously? Even if this were true - and it's not, we had a thread discussing the topic recently - are you going to suggest that it's 'silly' to say that a white male can easily enjoy reading about (or writing) a character who has a totally different upbringing, totally different goals in life, might be of a totally different race, might even be able to wield magic or foretell the future, just so long as he's got the same genitalia as he has: but can't do the same with a female character, who is somehow more foreign and unknowable to him than any of these other factors could account for? That's just silly. Apart from anything else, female readers and ethnic minority readers have been proving that very point wrong for decades. They have no trouble enjoying the adventures of, say, Frodo Baggins - why should I experience any problem with the adventures of Jirel of Joiry?

Edited by mormont, 24 April 2012 - 10:01 AM.

[Instupituous]

Basically just a, "well it's fantasy guize you can do anything you want so stop making women and minorities suffer plox" which I hate.

Since when did people start pretending that historical authenticity is not a large reason why some people like fantasy? GRRM is renowned for portraying Westeros in a similar fashion to how a group of middle aged states (at some time in that mutli-century span) would have existed. And yes, people do complain when an under-researched writer makes a huge, ridiculous anachronism in his/her book. It's not like they just complain about women and races being oppressed.

Seriously, just because it's fantasy fiction doesn't mean that we can't have any interest in accurately portraying a real world society that once existed. I think some of us are a little level-headed enough to accept the fact that dragons and magic obviously didn't exist back then and enjoy them for their fantastical elements, while at the same time, both enjoying a semi-accurate depiction of civilization along with an author's creative twist on it.

I really do hate that medieval fantasy set in Europe that features a wealth of non-European characters sort of reeks of modern sensibilities shoved down history's throat for the sake of not hurting my people's feelings; it ruins my suspension of disbelief. I am all for more non-euro based societies in fantasy, but there's a right way to do it without annoying some of those people who feel that pre-Industrial societies being inherently racist and sexist is a universal truth, and that portraying it otherwise is just for the sake of pc'ness is jarring. I get tired of reading about 21st century Americans wearing Conan clothes.

And if I, as a minority, get tired of reading books that depict sexist societies because of historical authenticity, then I just....you know, try to find something set in a society that is more likely not to be rife with prejudice.

I'm too used to seeing white people randomly insert minorities in places that don't make any sense, even if it is fantasy, just to show how tolerant they are, when if they really cared to write about non-euro stuff (which you no means are under any obligation to do--write what the fuck you want). they'd put more thought into it and come up with some interesting ways to include minorities in a largely non-minority society.

But, I also do agree it is also a terrible excuse for lazy, non-imaginative writing. Even in the most dystopian misogynist secondary world, you can have some interesting female characters who do more than just suck dick and fuck and cry all day. There's so much shit that can be done in fantasy, but people are still literally stuck in the middle ages when it comes to creativity.

Edited by Instupituous, 24 April 2012 - 10:50 AM.

[Marcus Cicero]

One of the annoying things about Abraham's article is that it enforces a sharp divide between epic fantasy and historical fiction. Writers like Martin, however, seem to be deliberately trying to blur the distinction. He says that epic fantasy isn't in conversation with history. Um, why can't it be?

[Aoife]

Because (as far as we know) there were not actually wizards and dragons in history?

[Mlle. Zabzie]

There's actually a somewhat related set of points being made in the most recent Outlander thread.  Every writer creates its own world, but good writers should be aware of their world and make consistent choices within that world.  A very good writer is aware of the effect that those choices will have on a modern reader.  I think that rather than fantasy and science fiction being a conversation with history, they are rather a conversation with the present and, in a certain respect, our own mythology of our history.

Better examples of "fantasy" writers that blur the distinction between historical fiction and fantasy to my mind are Guy Gavriel Kaye and KJ Parker.  Their worlds are "almost" Europes.  Heck, Parker's Folding Knife could have been set in many ways in[Florence] in the late 15th or early 16th C by changing a couple of words.  But [she] used that setting to make a series of broader points and because it was billed as "fantasy" [she] didn't have to put herself in that century entirely in determining the motivations of her characters.  Rather, she was free to build her world every so differently.

I think that what Mr. Abraham is saying is that excusing sexism/racism/violence in epic fantasy "because that's the way it was" is too simplistic a world view and does not (1) give credit for actually the way things were (but that's ok, because in the arguments constructed to defend the writing, it's only fantasy) and (2) hold the writer accountable for the choices.  It's one thing to write women without agency or women operating in a man's world, but the writer, particularly in fantasy, should know what he or she is doing.  See Joe Abercrombie.  Yes, his world is nasty and brutish.  Yes, many (though not all - note the important differences between his world and the actual past) of his female characters lack agency and have horrible things happen to them.  But you know, same with his male characters.  It's kind of the point.

Just because the setting is "medieval" doesn't mean that (and I'll use one example) women have to be portrayed a certain way.  See Elizabeth Moon's Paksennarion saga - there are all kinds of things I can criticize about the books, but this is not one of them.  In her imagined world, women join the army, run businesses, and run countries.  And why shouldn't an author make those choices in a world that the author has, in fact imagined?

Does this make at least some sense?

[DanielAbraham]

Luisa Aoiftrazzini, on 24 April 2012 - 12:11 PM, said:

Because (as far as we know) there were not actually wizards and dragons in history?

That and because authors don't get to choose the context in which their work is read, and I would wager that the number of readers (and viewers) who are familiar with The Lord of the Rings is an order of magnitude larger than the ones familiar with the War of the Roses.

[DanielAbraham]

Mlle. Zabzie, on 24 April 2012 - 12:12 PM, said:

And why shouldn't an author make those choices in a world that the author has, in fact imagined?

There are some reasons why someone might or might not, depending on the project.  I hope I haven't said that all fantasy worlds should have to cleave to a utopian gender standard.  I've included sexism and racism in my work, just not because the middle ages were sexist and racist.  I've also chosen to tread very lightly around sexual violence.  I think there are perfectly legitimate reasons to incorporate problematic material in fantasy projects.  "Accuracy" doesn't hold water, though.

[Marcus Cicero]

Luisa Aoiftrazzini, on 24 April 2012 - 12:11 PM, said:

Because (as far as we know) there were not actually wizards and dragons in history?

That's what makes the genre-blurring interesting. Martin wants to take a (somewhat) authentic medieval setting and then apply the thought experiment: what if you added magic? He can examine the sociological forces of such a time period while also reveling in the impossible.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

Oh - I completely agree (I was trying to get that accross with my other examples).  I was rather trying to say that the author has the freedom to make those choices (Abercrombie, Martin, etc. etc.), but should be AWARE of those choices and the effect of those choices on a modern reader.  The choice shouldn't be made merely because it is "authentic" but rather because it drives something in the work.  Make sense?

[Lummel]

Marcus Cicero, on 24 April 2012 - 09:06 AM, said:

...My argument has to do with the factors which allow humanity to supercede its tribal inclinations to dominate and differentiate. If a society takes as a given that some people's blood should elevate them to higher status, then there's no ideological framework for accepting that all people should be equal (i.e., not being sexist and/or racist). You claim that my first post didn't make the link, but it did. Human nature is the answer. It's just an unfortunate fact that human males have historically had some disposition towards sexism. This can't really be disputed; culture after culture, rising independently of each other, has demonstrated this by incorporating some kind of institutional sexism...

Yes and no simply because discrimination is never applied in a simple and equal manner.  One type of discrimation is always going to trump another, therefore it's not enough to say because one type of inequality exists that others will do so in a certain way that we are familar with.   That is why you need something else to explain why the imagined society works in one way and not another.  For example a Georgian nobleman could be accepted as a social equal by a Russian nobleman while a Polish nobleman wouldn't because the latter would be Catholic, or the wife of a Senator from Africa would be considered superior to a Plebeian Roman even if the woman had been Punic in origin.

Our conceptions of ideas like 'race' are modern so reading modern racism backwards to an imagined past is inherently anachronistic, but then like I said historically accurate fantasy is oxymoronic anyhow.

[Lummel]

Mlle. Zabzie, on 24 April 2012 - 12:28 PM, said:

Oh - I completely agree (I was trying to get that accross with my other examples).  I was rather trying to say that the author has the freedom to make those choices (Abercrombie, Martin, etc. etc.), but should be AWARE of those choices and the effect of those choices on a modern reader.  The choice shouldn't be made merely because it is "authentic" but rather because it drives something in the work.  Make sense?

yes, it should serve a purpose (hopefully the author's) and be meaningful in the context of the story.

[Prince Alexander]

I think there are 2 different issues which blur a little here:

1. Whether authors are responsible for defending their choices to portray races/gender/associated violence.

2. Whether authors are responsible for consequences of portraying races/gender/associated violence.

To me, these are very different. One has any merit only among readers, who basically care about the worldbuilding and the "why"s of sexism/racism being consistent. The other has social implications beyond the book. In the vein of: do violent games cause real-life violence? Does sexism portrayed in media cause/sustain sexism in real life?

Am I off here?

[Marcus Cicero]

Mlle. Zabzie, on 24 April 2012 - 12:28 PM, said:

Oh - I completely agree (I was trying to get that accross with my other examples).  I was rather trying to say that the author has the freedom to make those choices (Abercrombie, Martin, etc. etc.), but should be AWARE of those choices and the effect of those choices on a modern reader.  The choice shouldn't be made merely because it is "authentic" but rather because it drives something in the work.  Make sense?

You're right. Plenty of fantasy authors handle their female characters and the situations they put them in very poorly. I was just responding to Luisa.

Lummel, on 24 April 2012 - 12:32 PM, said:

Yes and no simply because discrimination is never applied in a simple and equal manner.  One type of discrimation is always going to trump another, therefore it's not enough to say because one type of inequality exists that others will do so in a certain way that we are familar with.   That is why you need something else to explain why the imagined society works in one way and not another.  For example a Georgian nobleman could be accepted as a social equal by a Russian nobleman while a Polish nobleman wouldn't because the latter would be Catholic, or the wife of a Senator from Africa would be considered superior to a Plebeian Roman even if the woman had been Punic in origin.

Our conceptions of ideas like 'race' are modern so reading modern racism backwards to an imagined past is inherently anachronistic, but then like I said historically accurate fantasy is oxymoronic anyhow.

I never said there would be blanket, indiscriminate discrimination. It's obviously, as you point out, far more complex and varied than that. The point is that your Russian noble isn't accepting the Gregorian because they reject racism outright, but because their particular prejudices don't villify that particular group of people. The framework for rejecting ALL racial or gender prejudice won't exist in a society which incorporates a concept of natural superiority. Sexism is likely to ensue just because it's an unforunate aspect of human nature, and there's no dominant egalitarian ideology to reject it. Racism as well, but that's harder to predict, as some societies will be more racist then others and some will just direct it towards different groups.

Edited by Marcus Cicero, 25 April 2012 - 02:32 PM.

[sologdin]

Human nature is the answer. It's just an unfortunate fact that human males have historically had some disposition towards sexism. This can't really be disputed

it can be disputed.  it is in fact disputed by the quoted language, wherein a proposition regarding so-called human nature cites to mere historical evidence, historical evidence that has been superseded by the presence of emancipatory politics in the modern era.

[Kim87]

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But fantasy books don't deal with those eras. Fantasy fiction is not historical fiction: this was one of the main points Dan was making.

Well that is true, but they do emulate those eras. And build worlds based on European history or European myths, although in a fantasy setting. So the point would still stand, should they only use the acceptable parts, seeing how racism and sexism offends the modern reader? But you do have excellent points about the other stuff, why use only the one and not the other stuff. I do not have any answers; I am not a fantasy writer.  

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Seriously? Even if this were true - and it's not, we had a thread discussing the topic recently - are you going to suggest that it's 'silly' to say that a white male can easily enjoy reading about (or writing) a character who has a totally different upbringing, totally different goals in life, might be of a totally different race, might even be able to wield magic or foretell the future, just so long as he's got the same genitalia as he has: but can't do the same with a female character, who is somehow more foreign and unknowable to him than any of these other factors could account for? That's just silly. Apart from anything else, female readers and ethnic minority readers have been proving that very point wrong for decades. They have no trouble enjoying the adventures of, say, Frodo Baggins - why should I experience any problem with the adventures of Jirel of Joiry?

Well I am not going to argue against any of your points, they are all good.  And I do enjoy reading about other characters then just white macho men, and reading about just white macho men would become dreadfully boring. Even though I do like the Conan stories.

But I mentioned the model example to illustrate a point, they used models that most closely resembled the consumer they wanted to sell things to, not because that they felt that other types of models where worth less or anything like that. But because they wanted to consumer to relate to the models, or at least aspire to become them. I was not trying to argue that all other kinds of stories are lesser or anything like that. It just makes sense to use a certain setting and a certain type of characters. Or at least to me.

[Qhorin Halfhand and Yoren]

DanielAbraham, on 24 April 2012 - 12:20 PM, said:

There are some reasons why someone might or might not, depending on the project.  I hope I haven't said that all fantasy worlds should have to cleave to a utopian gender standard.  I've included sexism and racism in my work, just not because the middle ages were sexist and racist.  I've also chosen to tread very lightly around sexual violence.  I think there are perfectly legitimate reasons to incorporate problematic material in fantasy projects.  "Accuracy" doesn't hold water, though.

Why not? A story appearing more authentic/accurate can be an advantage in certain stories. Maybe not the only reason to include that material in your story but I don't see what is wrong with including it, also due to the advantage of having a more historically authentic story. That can in return result in readers appreciating the fact that the characters reactions to each other seems realistic, that the world seems realistic and more relatable as it seems rather similar to our medieval history, and so on. Having a setting that is similar in some ways to our own medieval world can potentially serve a meaningful purpose. And having characters be similarly classist/sexist/racist as real life ones might even serve their character development, serve the fact that this book tells us something about us and societies and so on and has interesting themes. More authenticity can be something that some readers might prefer.

Also historical authenticity can be a matter of decrees. You can have both dragons and wizards and try to have a story that is somewhat more historically authentic than other ones. The objective in that kind of story is not absolute historical authenticity, it just tries to some extend to be that, with all the advantages and disadvantages it might have. If that kind of story is to some not epic fantasy because it is too close to historical fiction, or epic fantasy should not try to be authentic, then that doesn't matter to me since if it is a story worth telling, labels are not significant.

Is the some historical authenticity incorporated in ASOIAF detrimental to it or not? I believe it is not detrimental to the quality of the books but rather an aspect of what makes them rather good. Similarly other books with less 'accuracy' are also good and the different choices their authors have made, can also be successful.  My point in this post is that certain authors can use authenticity to the benefit of their books and it is an element that can serve a meaningful purpose. Other authors who don't want to tell that kind of story can also succeed obviously.

Edited by Qhorin Halfhand and Yoren, 24 April 2012 - 01:00 PM.

[Mlle. Zabzie]

Kim87, on 24 April 2012 - 12:51 PM, said:

Well that is true, but they do emulate those eras. And build worlds based on European history or European myths, although in a fantasy setting. So the point would still stand, should they only use the acceptable parts, seeing how racism and sexism offends the modern reader? But you do have excellent points about the other stuff, why use only the one and not the other stuff. I do not have any answers; I am not a fantasy writer.  

No, the point doesn't stand.  The author could make that choice, if the writer wanted to, but the writer isn't bound by whatever the popular culture perception of middle ages culture is in creating his or her world.  The answer is, the author made the choice - the author can defend that choice, or not, but that choice isn't a requirement of the setting or the world.  Lots of choices that the author makes won't be consistent with medieval Europe.  Therefore, this choice isn't a requirement either.