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Accurate Representation of Ethnicity in Historical Fictions

Started by Funt Solo, 04 July, 2021, 05:10:44 PM

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Definitely Not Mister Pops

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 04 July, 2021, 09:03:00 PM
Also, if I see another story full of white male Judges where the only woman is a psi or a named character like Beeny, I'm going to scream.
I'm not arguing against diversity here, but a mostly white male Justice Department makes sense in universe. Just look at the current American police forces. These organisations have never been paragons of progressive values, just imagine what they'd be like if they were given the power of judges. Do you think they would share that level of authority with women and minorities? Maybe we never see women in the background in MC-1 because the fascist Judge regime severely curtailed their rights? Maybe minorities are too afraid to go out in public for fear of being shot for no reason*? Maybe Judges aren't allowed to persue romantic partners because the department would be too busy constantly dealing with domestic abuse scandals? Maybe the real issue is that the Judges aren't depicted as racist and misogynist as they should be?

Although...

1) I wouldn't actually want to read that kind of comic.

b. It would cause a shitstorm, with half the social media brains-trust thinking Tharg was actually a horrible bastard instead of just telling stories about horrible bastards, and the other half thinking "Hey! Finally! Some comic characters I can really relate to!".

(iii) It's a kids comic at heart. No (responsible) parent would be comfortable letting their kids read that sort of thing

This kind of shit is why you'll never find me darkening the prog's by-lines.

Seriously though, I think it's more a case of unconscious bias than active exclusion. I offer that not as an excuse for it, just an attempt to explain it. Or mansplain it if you prefer.

*I mean even more-so than today
You may quote me on that.

Hawkmumbler

I for one am very disappointed in the lack of alien representation in ancient civilizations. Haven't any of these woke film producers in Hollywood watched The History Chanel?

Apocalypto? More like Apocalypt-NO.

IndigoPrime

Quote from: Mister Pops on 05 July, 2021, 11:04:53 AMI'm not arguing against diversity here, but a mostly white male Justice Department makes sense in universe. Just look at the current American police forces. These organisations have never been paragons of progressive values, just imagine what they'd be like if they were given the power of judges.
Two problems there. 1. There is a trend—even if it's painfully slow—to more women and minorities in policing. So the assumption is that would have—for no reason explained in 45 years of the strip—been reversed. 2. Pure demographic shifts are going to radially change the nature of the USA 100 years from now. Of course, Judge Dredd isn't a lesson in 'futurism'. If it had any degree of accuracy, Mega City One's initial population wouldn't have been 800 million—it would have been north of 8 billion at least (or its area would have been much, much smaller). Still, we've again seen nothing in the strip so far to suggest such shifts were curtailed in any way.

But also: my point isn't just about Judge Dredd or even the judges—it's everything.

QuoteMaybe we never see women in the background in MC-1 because the fascist Judge regime severely curtailed their rights?
One might have thought that if that's the case, we might have seen at least one story about that over the past 45 years. We haven't. If anything, MC1 seems quite open about things like sexuality and race in the general population.

QuoteSeriously though, I think it's more a case of unconscious bias than active exclusion.
I agree entirely—white men are the people behind most of the comics we read, and they write about and depict themselves. But that's why everyone—Tharg; script droids; artists—needs to be aware of this and do something about it. (And, as I said, this isn't me having a go at 2000 AD. This issue is everywhere, even in The Phoenix.)

Tjm86

Quote from: Hawkmumbler on 05 July, 2021, 11:07:35 AM
I for one am very disappointed in the lack of alien representation in ancient civilizations.

It's not just aliens, think about predatory oceanic animals ... all the major roles go to Great White Sharks ...

dancornwell

I think it's easy to over think why there isn't more diversity in the prog but in all honesty it's nothing more than artist using themselves as reference. It could be called lazy but when drawing a strip you're worrying about so many other elements such as story telling, perspective, anatomy - just basic drawing skills, not to mention the time scale and scheduling to get it finished that generally you just draw people that come easy to you. I have been guilty of this and have made a point of adding more diverse characters. Only recently mind. It's basically that for me. I draw what I find easy to draw because I have to get the job done. I have to earn money to pay the bills. We're all on page rates and unfortunately comics don't pay what they probably used to so the quicker you get them done the better chance you have of making a living, and it becoming a career, not just a hobby. A lot of writers now state in scripts what gender or ethnicity some background characters are. Just as an artist when you're not poked in a certain direction you tend to revert to type. In my case its drawing fat, thin, short or tall versions of myself. Oh, and women are harder to draw correctly for some male artists as - again, we generally use ourselves for reference.

pauljholden

Quote from: dancornwell on 05 July, 2021, 05:06:44 PM
I think it's easy to over think why there isn't more diversity in the prog but in all honesty it's nothing more than artist using themselves as reference

Which leads to arguably the bigger problem, which is that most of the creators are white males (like me...)


dancornwell

Maybe because its that the average reader is a white middle age man? I know back in the 60's, 70's and probably before, girls comics were huge but for reasons I don't know (music magazines etc?) they seemed to die out. More diverse creators are emerging which is great so the future looks bright. I can only guess that if the vast majority of readers or fan base for the prog are white middle aged men its only natural that those fans who want to be creators are in the main white middle aged men? The more diverse the stories, the more the prog attracts other kinds of readers then maybe the creative teams in the future will be diverse too?

IndigoPrime

There's also inherent cultural bias. Look at how many women write children's books for example. Now look how many of those are also very heavily biased towards make protagonists and male supporting characters. Why? Loads of reasons, from what people grew up with to what they assume the audience will read. (I so often hear "but boys won't read about girls, whereas girls will read about boys" to the point that I may well go postal one of these days due to that excuse. Even Julia Donaldson got really pissy about this, disappointingly, wrecking my respect for her Gruffalo follow-up.)

This is why it needs everyone to just take a step back and question why they've made their entire cast white/male for a story and—when relevant and necessary (which, let's face it, will be most of the time) make changes accordingly.

CalHab

Quote from: IndigoPrime on 05 July, 2021, 08:54:31 PM
There's also inherent cultural bias. Look at how many women write children's books for example.

My daughter reads the Harry Potter books constantly, or is listening to the audiobooks. The way Hermione is treated and described as a character would, rightly, be absolutely slaughtered if JK Rowling were a man.

IndigoPrime

Harry Potter is deeply problematic when it comes to sexism and also—as per part of this title's heading—"accurate representation of ethnicity". It seems to treat British magical myth as a default. White is the default. Specifically, white English is the default. The depiction of Irish, Asian, etc, is horrible. But I'm not sure she's be slaughtered if she were a man. People laud David Walliams as a children's author and his books are horrendous.

CalHab

Possibly. I have seen people pull JK Rowling up for the reasons you list, but I haven't seen her being criticised for the sexist portrayal/description of characters.

I've yet to meet a parent who lauds David Walliams! He seems to be widely reviled for producing cynical, mean-hearted and poorly-written books as far as I can tell. Can't fault his publisher's distribution and marketing, though!

IndigoPrime

We know a few parents who are fans. Our kid did a book swap with a friend and it was a Walliams one. We... weren't thrilled. But hey-ho (and the kid didn't like it enough to want more).

As for a general representation thing, our kid got a free-reading thing from school. It contains a jigsaw, and they colour in a piece for every matching book they read. Excellent. Except there are six authors listed, five of which are men and the sole woman is Enid Blyton. Suffice to say, I told my kid to ignore this and read what she wants and rattled off an email to the school about that.

As for JK, it's a good point about the sexism. If nothing else, that (horribly) in part suggests such tropes are just broadly accepted these days. This is in part why I'm dog/bone with this stuff with everything my kid comes into contact with, but also wider media, whatever the reasons for such imbalance existing.

GoGilesGo

Quote from: Mister Pops on 05 July, 2021, 11:04:53 AM

I'm not arguing against diversity here, but a mostly white male Justice Department makes sense in universe. Just look at the current American police forces. These organisations have never been paragons of progressive values

Interesting police representation numbers here, albeit from seven years ago:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/09/03/us/the-race-gap-in-americas-police-departments.html


Extrapolating from 2015 and presuming a slowly improving make up of the police force (by which I mean moving towards an ethnic make up more similar to the communities their stations are resident in) you get a much more representative department or even certain sectors where the local sector house is overwhelmingly minority by the time MC1 becomes a reality.

Today's Baltimore, which is MC1's sector 35 (I'm using this for reference https://forums.2000ad.com/index.php?topic=40120.90) could/should be majority black.

But then again Judges move around, or are reassigned all the time so the numbers would even themselves out in aggregate.

Either way, definitely more minority judges needed on the pages. 


Proudhuff

Quote from: dancornwell on 05 July, 2021, 05:06:44 PM
. Oh, and women are harder to draw correctly for some male artists as - again, we generally use ourselves for reference.

And don't forget that pile of magazines under the bed, reference material Shirley?
DDT did a job on me

paddykafka

Quote from: Proudhuff on 06 July, 2021, 02:48:49 PM
Quote from: dancornwell on 05 July, 2021, 05:06:44 PM
. Oh, and women are harder to draw correctly for some male artists as - again, we generally use ourselves for reference.

And don't forget that pile of magazines under the bed, reference material Shirley?

Undoubtedly - and in keeping with the wholesome nature of this forum - this is the kind of material to which Proudhuff is referring?  ;)

https://c8.alamy.com/comp/EXRB4H/1940s-uk-wife-and-home-magazine-cover-EXRB4H.jpg