Did GRRM miss an opportunity to send a subtle message about race in ASIOAF

[RoamingRonin]

1 hour ago, the trees have eyes said:

You pick one author and claim that is a history of racism for a genre.  That's...........a pretty big claim.  Anyone can apply that to absolutely any field of literature or aspect of life.  It's meaningless.  That's the problem with that kind of blanket statement.  It also completely devalues the real issues of racism that are worth speaking out about and instead labels a whole field of literature as somehow racist which in turn puts an obligation or at least an expectation on authors to "do better" with meeting whatever criteria you feel books about dragons and magicians need to meet to not be racist works.  There is no original sin of Lovecraftianism (whom i've never read to be clear) who contemporary writers have to atone for.  GRRM or any other author for that matter is their own person wrote their work the way they wanted not because racist ideas in other works somehow made them less likely to make their own writing "non-racist", by which you seem to mean inclusive of certain ethnic groups.

As predicted you think your claim is somehow an established orthodoxy and anyone who takes issue with it is in denial.

When you say racist I guess you don't really mean that you mean adequately representative of one particular country's demographic and ethnic mix.  Which is a different argument altogether and one that isn't and shouldn't be a requirement for fantasy literature.

What's embarrassing here is that you're telling me not to level allegations of racism yet you admit to not having read the author's work.  What devalues the conversation is people wading into voice their opinions on a topic they know nothing about.

I used Lovecraft as one example and used several terms related to issues that plague the genre. I said the genre had a history of it (not that it was entirely racist) and presented evidence to that fact yet you chose to ignore them.

Quote

Is it really surprising that fantasy writers might write for a certain audience.i.e. young males predominantly?  It's what other genres of writing or film-makers or sit-coms do.  This doesn't make any of them racist or sexist. 

This is a gem.

There's no point in arguing further. I said as much as I can say on the issue.

[Trigger Warning]

8 hours ago, RoamingRonin said:

Or perhaps you'll recall GRRM being praised for how he writers female characters. Why would someone have to praise him for that if there was no overall problem with the genre?

Or male and female characters are often badly written in the genre but no one cares about the former because it doesn't fit the narrative. 

 

[The Marquis de Leech]

2 hours ago, the trees have eyes said:

You pick one author and claim that is a history of racism for a genre.  That's...........a pretty big claim.

Fair enough.

Let's try other authors...

• Robert E. Howard. Has Conan rescuing a woman solely because she's white. Has black cannibals with sharpened teeth. 
• Robert Heinlein. The fascist overtones in Starship Troopers are such that the film adaptation plays them up for the laughs.
• C.S. Lewis. Having an allegorical depiction of Christianity is one thing. Having all your brown people worship Satan is quite another.

Tolkien gets accused of it, of course, generally unfairly (I could go into some detail here, but that would sidetrack the thread). Suffice to say that the Standard Fantasy Template - which Martin adheres to in many ways - carries with it the default assumption that "white" is normal. 

[Wall Flower]

10 hours ago, the trees have eyes said:

Fantasy in general, and Tolkien in particular, do not have a history of racism.  It's escapist fictional and magical writing.  There is absolutely no need or reason to being in allegations of racism.  You are simply inventing a problem here where there isn't one.  What I find disturbing about the whole debate about portrayal / representation of race in fantasy literature - or lack of it - is the cavalier way people allege racism (or sexism) against others and assume that's a fact rather than a contentious and rather ugly accusation.  And anyone protesting against those allegations or defending those accused of it risk being swept up by the same all-encompassing slur.

Is it really surprising that fantasy writers might write for a certain audience.i.e. young males predominantly?  It's what other genres of writing or film-makers or sit-coms do.  This doesn't make any of them racist or sexist.  And is it really surprising that a tradition of fantasy writing that evolved in Anglo-American culture and focuses on pseudo-medieval settings with dragons, magic and swordsmanship would present the society and heroes that the reader would most easily project into that setting?  Write something with an African and Oriental theme and people will expect the characters to fit into that imaginary universe.

It's only when you put a condition on the author to fulfill some obligation to reflect your own particular views in this brief instant of time or reflect a real world social goal you want to achieve that you project this stuff into the story.

I also categorically object to the assertion that if a writer read something written by a racist and sexist author he or she would slavishly copy that format or those ideas without being able to write their own story the way they wanted free of these leading strings imposed on them by the imaginary past villains of Heroic Fantasy.  But then it depends what you consider racist and sexist and it seems the more freely you bandy about those terms the bigger you make the imaginary problem out to be.

Is it really surprising that people who aren't young white males might get pissed off that fantasy and other genre fiction, movies, TV, sitcoms etc are written predominately for such a narrow demographic that excludes so many readers and viewers? Anglo-American writers today are living in multicultural and multiracial societies and globalisation has meant readership/viewership all over the world. A lot of people who don't reflect that demographic might still want the opportunity to project themselves into the stories without having to always reconfigure themselves as young white males.

The well-written women characters of ASOIAF definitely appeal to me as a female reader. Why can't I want more of that or why can't non-white readers want more well written POC?

[Illyrio Mo'Parties]

1 hour ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

• Robert Heinlein. The fascist overtones in Starship Troopers are such that the film adaptation plays them up for the laughs.

There's no racism in Starship Troopers. (There's not any fascism either - Veerhoeven didn't actually read the book - but that's another debate.)

1 hour ago, Wall Flower said:

The well-written women characters of ASOIAF definitely appeal to me as a female reader. Why can't I want more of that or why can't non-white readers want more well written POC?

You totally can. But you're not owed anything. If a story has badly-written female characters, or no female characters at all, it doesn't follow that the author is prejudiced against women. Ditto for any other group.

[Panos Targaryen]

For fuck's sake, so discussing rape and "sensitive" cultural issues is prohibited on this forum, but suddenly it's OK to make a 12 page thread full of people discussing the "white male" fantasy genre conspiracy, and accusing great writers of the past of racism and sexism. Lock this turd already. GRRM is a white American, he decided to write a story about predominantly white characters. He doesn't owe you anything. Seriously, I've never heard anyone complaim about anime and manga not having any white or black characters, so it's okay for them to not be inclusive I guess. I didn't come to a forum about ASOIAF to hear racial analyses and political discussions of a fucking fantasy series.

[Orphalesion]

Just to make clear, I agree that some early fantasy has racist undertones (She, Conan the barbarian etc.)

Tolkien however, was NOT a racist. The, sometimes. unfortunate situations in his work are not a song to the supremacy of any white or Nordic race, but more his desire to write stories as closely modeled after Germanic Sagas as possible. That's why the good guys are European and Nordic, that's why danger and evil comes from the East.

The most common Elven phenotype (dark hair, grey eyes, pale skin) is modeled after his wife Edith (along with the character of Luthien Tenuviel) not after some "Aryan" ideal (also on that, Tolkien actually knew that Aryan meant something vastly different from what the Nazis thought it meant, and it has nothing to do with White People) 

He disliked racism, and it's not his fault what decades of copy-cat authors have made of it.

[BricksAndSparrows]

Witness the death throes of an argument. Into the generalities we go...

I'm starting to see, that people can't really show error on GRRM;s on end,so now we will go looking for racism in other books. Of course there is going to be racism in other stories. It doesn't mean that GRRM dropped the ball with this series.

9 hours ago, Panos Targaryen said:

For fuck's sake, so discussing rape and "sensitive" cultural issues is prohibited on this forum, but suddenly it's OK to make a 12 page thread full of people discussing the "white male" fantasy genre conspiracy, and accusing great writers of the past of racism and sexism. Lock this turd already. GRRM is a white American, he decided to write a story about predominantly white characters. He doesn't owe you anything. Seriously, I've never heard anyone complaim about anime and manga not having any white or black characters, so it's okay for them to not be inclusive I guess. I didn't come to a forum about ASOIAF to hear racial analyses and political discussions of a fucking fantasy series.

You know , I hear where you're coming from. But I think it's better for the thread to stay. Participation isn't compulsory. Besides, " a case has not been refuted until it has been stated at its strongest."

[the trees have eyes]

19 hours ago, RoamingRonin said:

What's embarrassing here is that you're telling me not to level allegations of racism yet you admit to not having read the author's work.  What devalues the conversation is people wading into voice their opinions on a topic they know nothing about.

I used Lovecraft as one example and used several terms related to issues that plague the genre. I said the genre had a history of it (not that it was entirely racist) and presented evidence to that fact yet you chose to ignore them.

This is a gem.

There's no point in arguing further. I said as much as I can say on the issue.

Your gem was too say the fantasy genre had a history of racism.  You can find what you like when you go looking for it so you may well have read Lovecraft and have some issues with his work but that's neither here nor there with your sweeping statements about a genre.  I've read fantasy for over 30 years and I've encountered nothing that I consider racist.  It's clear from your argument that you consider the lack of representation of certain ethnic groups to be the issue and that's an argument that might be close to your heart but its not racism.  I hope you get the difference.

[the trees have eyes]

18 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Fair enough.

Let's try other authors...

• Robert E. Howard. Has Conan rescuing a woman solely because she's white. Has black cannibals with sharpened teeth. 
• Robert Heinlein. The fascist overtones in Starship Troopers are such that the film adaptation plays them up for the laughs.
• C.S. Lewis. Having an allegorical depiction of Christianity is one thing. Having all your brown people worship Satan is quite another.

Tolkien gets accused of it, of course, generally unfairly (I could go into some detail here, but that would sidetrack the thread). Suffice to say that the Standard Fantasy Template - which Martin adheres to in many ways - carries with it the default assumption that "white" is normal. 

May be it does.  Is that surprising?  Particularly for works written in societies 50 or closer to 100 years ago.  You might as well accuse Emily Bronte or Charles Dickens of racism while you're at it.

As for CS Lewis.  Well, he's primarily remembered for The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe and the heavily Christian parable involving Aslan.  Remind me about all the brown people worshipping Satan will you.

Isn't the point of fantasy to give us something scary - cannibals with filed teeth - or a futuristic dystopian society with military and authoritarian characteristics.  How do these works fail in your opinion?  And I have to ask how many white cannibals with filed teeth you give a free pass to until you take note of the black cannibals with filed teeth and protest it.

[John Doe]

19 hours ago, Roose Boltons Pet Leech said:

Fair enough.

Let's try other authors...

• Robert E. Howard. Has Conan rescuing a woman solely because she's white. Has black cannibals with sharpened teeth. 
• Robert Heinlein. The fascist overtones in Starship Troopers are such that the film adaptation plays them up for the laughs.
• C.S. Lewis. Having an allegorical depiction of Christianity is one thing. Having all your brown people worship Satan is quite another.

Tolkien gets accused of it, of course, generally unfairly (I could go into some detail here, but that would sidetrack the thread). Suffice to say that the Standard Fantasy Template - which Martin adheres to in many ways - carries with it the default assumption that "white" is normal. 

This thread is already off-topic since pretty much everyone agreed it wouldn't be a problem for them personally if GRRM had made the Valyrians black. So talking about whether the genre has a history of racism or not is already sidetracking it. 

18 hours ago, Wall Flower said:

Is it really surprising that people who aren't young white males might get pissed off that fantasy and other genre fiction, movies, TV, sitcoms etc are written predominately for such a narrow demographic that excludes so many readers and viewers? Anglo-American writers today are living in multicultural and multiracial societies and globalisation has meant readership/viewership all over the world. A lot of people who don't reflect that demographic might still want the opportunity to project themselves into the stories without having to always reconfigure themselves as young white males.

The well-written women characters of ASOIAF definitely appeal to me as a female reader. Why can't I want more of that or why can't non-white readers want more well written POC?

You accusation is pretty vague, so I can't really argue against it. Multiculturalism can make fantasy stories a lot more interesting and closer to real life, but it's not something you can demand from an author. And nobody can or should conclude that the absence of people of different skin color than the author is racist. That comes off as whiney more than anything else, and it's not hard to see why. And if you can't identify with someone who isn't from your particular group, chances are the problem isn't with the author in the first place.

17 hours ago, Illyrio Mo'Parties said:

There's no racism in Starship Troopers. (There's not any fascism either - Veerhoeven didn't actually read the book - but that's another debate.)

You totally can. But you're not owed anything. If a story has badly-written female characters, or no female characters at all, it doesn't follow that the author is prejudiced against women. Ditto for any other group.

 

15 hours ago, Panos Targaryen said:

For fuck's sake, so discussing rape and "sensitive" cultural issues is prohibited on this forum, but suddenly it's OK to make a 12 page thread full of people discussing the "white male" fantasy genre conspiracy, and accusing great writers of the past of racism and sexism. Lock this turd already. GRRM is a white American, he decided to write a story about predominantly white characters. He doesn't owe you anything. Seriously, I've never heard anyone complaim about anime and manga not having any white or black characters, so it's okay for them to not be inclusive I guess. I didn't come to a forum about ASOIAF to hear racial analyses and political discussions of a fucking fantasy series.

 

7 hours ago, Orphalesion said:

Just to make clear, I agree that some early fantasy has racist undertones (She, Conan the barbarian etc.)

Tolkien however, was NOT a racist. The, sometimes. unfortunate situations in his work are not a song to the supremacy of any white or Nordic race, but more his desire to write stories as closely modeled after Germanic Sagas as possible. That's why the good guys are European and Nordic, that's why danger and evil comes from the East.

The most common Elven phenotype (dark hair, grey eyes, pale skin) is modeled after his wife Edith (along with the character of Luthien Tenuviel) not after some "Aryan" ideal (also on that, Tolkien actually knew that Aryan meant something vastly different from what the Nazis thought it meant, and it has nothing to do with White People) 

He disliked racism, and it's not his fault what decades of copy-cat authors have made of it.

 

5 hours ago, BricksAndSparrows said:

Witness the death throes of an argument. Into the generalities we go...

I'm starting to see, that people can't really show error on GRRM;s on end,so now we will go looking for racism in other books. Of course there is going to be racism in other stories. It doesn't mean that GRRM dropped the ball with this series.

You know , I hear where you're coming from. But I think it's better for the thread to stay. Participation isn't compulsory. Besides, " a case has not been refuted until it has been stated at its strongest."

[the trees have eyes]

18 hours ago, Wall Flower said:

Is it really surprising that people who aren't young white males might get pissed off that fantasy and other genre fiction, movies, TV, sitcoms etc are written predominately for such a narrow demographic that excludes so many readers and viewers? Anglo-American writers today are living in multicultural and multiracial societies and globalisation has meant readership/viewership all over the world. A lot of people who don't reflect that demographic might still want the opportunity to project themselves into the stories without having to always reconfigure themselves as young white males.

The well-written women characters of ASOIAF definitely appeal to me as a female reader. Why can't I want more of that or why can't non-white readers want more well written POC?

Well, does it genuinely exclude you?  And I have to assume as a forum member that you love the story we are all reading here as much as anyone.  The larger issue which seems to be getting confused with racism is representation.  At which point you have a tension between an author portraying a particular world and fictional society how he imagines it as part of his creative work and elements of the readership / literary press who expect to be able to relate to or even see themselves as characters in the work and aren't shy to say so.  So which ethnic groups should be represented and which is it ok to leave out?

The female chacracters are particularly strong in ASOIAF and I think GRRM's stregth is his characterisation whether adults - Ned & Catelyn - teenagers - Dany & Jon - or children - Bran, Arya and Sansa [add in whoever your personal favourites are].  The point is who they are and what they believe not their skin colour but regardless you are perfectly free to wish for certain characters to represent certain groups.  What I would take issue with is if the lack of such was portrayed as a failure or somehow part of "a history of racism" in the genre as opposed to a creative choice by the author that you would have enjoyed more if it had been different.

[John Doe]

9 minutes ago, the trees have eyes said:

Well, does it genuinely exclude you?  And I have to assume as a forum member that you love the story we are all reading here as much as anyone.  The larger issue which seems to be getting confused with racism is representation.  At which point you have a tension between an author portraying a particular world and fictional society how he imagines it as part of his creative work and elements of the readership / literary press who expect to be able to relate to or even see themselves as characters in the work and aren't shy to say so.  So which ethnic groups should be represented and which is it ok to leave out?

The female chacracters are particularly strong in ASOIAF and I think GRRM's stregth is his characterisation whether adults - Ned & Catelyn - teenagers - Dany & Jon - or children - Bran, Arya and Sansa [add in whoever your personal favourites are].  The point is who they are and what they believe not their skin colour but regardless you are perfectly free to wish for certain characters to represent certain groups.  What I would take issue with is if the lack of such was portrayed as a failure or somehow part of "a history of racism" in the genre as opposed to a creative choice by the author that you would have enjoyed more if it had been different.

Exactly. Fantasy does not need to be an accurate representation of the demographic of the modern anglo-saxon world. And I really liked the comparison from a user above, do those people complain about things like anime too? Or is it again just a western thing?

[John Doe]

Also, I can' think of a sitcom that has no women or minorities in leading roles, at least none I'm watching. Movies and fiction really are too broad terms, but I guess Wall Flower knows such a vague accusation is irrefutable. I could say movies and fiction are tailored exclusively for indian people as long as I'm including enough Bollywood movies. 

[Wall Flower]

7 hours ago, the trees have eyes said:

Well, does it genuinely exclude you?  And I have to assume as a forum member that you love the story we are all reading here as much as anyone.  The larger issue which seems to be getting confused with racism is representation.  At which point you have a tension between an author portraying a particular world and fictional society how he imagines it as part of his creative work and elements of the readership / literary press who expect to be able to relate to or even see themselves as characters in the work and aren't shy to say so.  So which ethnic groups should be represented and which is it ok to leave out?

The female chacracters are particularly strong in ASOIAF and I think GRRM's stregth is his characterisation whether adults - Ned & Catelyn - teenagers - Dany & Jon - or children - Bran, Arya and Sansa [add in whoever your personal favourites are].  The point is who they are and what they believe not their skin colour but regardless you are perfectly free to wish for certain characters to represent certain groups.  What I would take issue with is if the lack of such was portrayed as a failure or somehow part of "a history of racism" in the genre as opposed to a creative choice by the author that you would have enjoyed more if it had been different.

 

7 hours ago, John Doe said:

Also, I can' think of a sitcom that has no women or minorities in leading roles, at least none I'm watching. Movies and fiction really are too broad terms, but I guess Wall Flower knows such a vague accusation is irrefutable. I could say movies and fiction are tailored exclusively for indian people as long as I'm including enough Bollywood movies. 

Actually, I was just responding to The Trees Have Eyes' suggestion that it wasn't surprising that fantasy writers would write specifically for young (predominately white) males, as that's what writers do in other genres, movies, sitcoms, etc. To me that's simply a disappointingly narrow demographic to aim for and one excludes a lot of potential readers/audience. As far as I was aware, I wasn't expressing an undue sense of entitlement or making any accusation.

I tend to think people in Japan and India make their own movies because otherwise they wouldn't see anything that didn't come out of Hollywood. 

Anyway, this thread seems to be well above my pay grade, so I'll leave it to others to continue.

[Joy Hill]

4 hours ago, Wall Flower said:

 

I tend to think people in Japan and India make their own movies because otherwise they wouldn't see anything that didn't come out of Hollywood. 

 

 

I think most Japanese filmmakers made movies because they had stories to tell, not because they felt underrepresented by Hollywood.

[Orphalesion]

4 hours ago, Wall Flower said:

 

I tend to think people in Japan and India make their own movies because otherwise they wouldn't see anything that didn't come out of Hollywood. 

 

So why do Western Europeans, Canadians and Australians make movies?

Lots of people want to be actors, screen writers and directors and not all of them can or even want to be crammed into Los Angeles.

[John Doe]

58 minutes ago, Joy Hill said:

I think most Japanese filmmakers made movies because they had stories to tell, not because they felt underrepresented by Hollywood.

Makes a bit more sense.

[Wall Flower]

34 minutes ago, Joy Hill said:

 

I think most Japanese filmmakers made movies because they had stories to tell, not because they felt underrepresented by Hollywood.

 

14 minutes ago, Orphalesion said:

So why do Western Europeans, Canadians and Australians make movies?

Lots of people want to be actors, screen writers and directors and not all of them can or even want to be crammed into Los Angeles.

I seem to be completely incapable of expressing myself adequately in this thread. I don't disagree with either of you.  However, I'm old enough to remember when the Australian film industry was re-started in the 70's and it was precisely to allow Australians to tell their own stories, in their own way, in their own accent and not always to get their film culture from overseas - to represent themselves, I guess, in ways that Hollywood couldn't or didn't.

Anyway this conversation has veered off the original topic and seems to be going in circles at this point.