Mel Gibson Apologizes to the Elvish Community

At the risk of seeming prone to nepotism, Porno Kitsch is quickly becoming one of my favorite people to talk to on Twitter (the best of you better amp up your game a little).  Specifically, their insight on fantasy tropes is providing some excellent discussions, such as when we chatted about the use of racial analogues in fantasy as evidenced in their review of Brandon Sanderson's The Way of Kings.

Today, we're going to talk about fantasy races and we are briefly going to touch upon race in fantasy.  Mind, I'm more concerned with the former than the latter, but there is a nigh-inexhaustible source of insight on the latter subject in the form of N.K. Jemisin.  An avid fan of her discussions, I highly recommend checking her out.

So, anyway, I hear that J.R.R. Tolkien once severely regretted not making the races more ambiguous and complex in The Lord of the Rings. Probably wise of him, since his portrayal of elves, orcs, men and dwarves is generally held up as fodder for criticism of racial portrayals in fantasy.  It's true that a lot of readers are demanding our fantasy races to be a little more involved these days.  We dislike orcs that are out and out evil, we dislike elves that are perfect and benevolent.

The reason for this, of course, comes back to the heart of a story: conflict and how to invest our readers in it.

Clearly-painted races remove us from this.  If the orcs are evil and the elves are good, then…there isn't really a conflict, is there?  We don't know why the orcs are doing what they're doing or why the elves feel compelled to stop them.  And without motive, we don't really have a keen insight into the conflict and we're less invested in it.

Beyond that, it's just not realistic to portray a fantasy race that wants to kill everyone just for the sake of killing them.  There has to be a logic (not necessarily logic, as it doesn't have to make sense to us) that drives the motive.  Do the orcs need the elves' land?  Do the orcs want to avenge themselves?  Do the orcs view the elves as a threat to their way of life?

With the right logic, you certainly can have races with a clear moral distinction, but I tend to dislike them, as they tend to make the answers to them a little too obvious and thus they're not as explorable as a people with a little more complexity.

Really, though, this is kind of just regurgitating things that are largely known.  Where the real meat of the discussion comes from is the idea of using clear racial analogues in fantasy.

It's become a bit more common lately: a race in a fantasy world that's a bit too close to a race we already know in our daily lives, following their culture, using their traditions, portraying their world.  There may be different names, but we often end up with something resembling…

In the eras following the Great Warring States, we find that Bliro, a proud Blapanese man from Blapan and heir to the ancient Blirobito Blynasty is experiencing troubles with the distant land of Blina and the Blinese.

The above is something of a rather gross exaggeration, but it's also a pretty good indicator of why I dislike this sort of fantasy race-crafting.

I've heard arguments that the use of cultural analogues is a more genuine way of stating something in a book than inventing an entirely new one.  After all, presumably all books say something about society, whether we intend for them to or not.  And, indeed, having the cultures more relatable through clear analogues might be a better way of exploring them.

But the difficulty is, you often see these analogues used in conjunction with the former issue: a lack of moral ambiguity.  And that's kind of the issue: when the cultural analogue isn't explored fully and just portrayed as they are seen through the eyes of another race (frequently, their enemy), it can come off as grievously offensive.

I'm definitely not accusing anyone of putting a distinct racist agenda in their work.  But it's something that I feel is worth discussing and it's something I don't agree with.

But, as I've said, I've heard of authors who use it to great effect and authors who use it whose work is greatly praised.  I certainly liked The Way of Kings, anyway.  Maybe I'm just entirely full of shit.

What do you think?