Howdee all. I wanted to answer MyAmericanFriend's comments from the last post, but it's a bit long to comment in the comments. And if I only email her my comments, then it looks like I'm
hiding
something.
So here are MAF's comments, and my replies. Don't worry... I won't be offended if you don't read it! But do scroll down for the videos!
***
Eh, not wanting to be language police, but just pointing out... No one has said "Afro-American" since the 1970's. Last I remember is Michael Richards in that TV apology. I think "Afro-European" has a different connotation, but "Afro-American" is borderline racial slur, very dated at minimum. Just wanted to make a note. ... Or, in other words, calling someone "Afro-American" is kind of like using "negro" down here. It's not *that* n-word, but it's old and kind of offensive. Maybe the equivalent of calling an Asian person "Oriental" or something.
* I was just writing fast. In Canada I guess it was still in use in the 80s (by my Barbados-Canadian music teacher for course on "Afro-American" music.) But thanks. Usually when I'm feeling lazy I just write Af-Am. Which sounds like a charity.
Erm... Also, please tread carefully in representing US ethnicities... Since this is the one you're shopping around, especially. I guess that's why I'm taking the time to point this out.
* As I wrote at length sometime last year... (mostly here, here and here) I started this whole thing off by reading reams and reams of "race fails 09" which was all about how non-people-of-color can/should write about POC. (And POC in other countries of course, unless you're writing fantasy.) The conclusion I took away was that yes, white people SHOULD make the effort to write about POC (and I would apply this to other differences, like sexual orientation); do as much research as you can (though without expecting POC, or your buddies who are POC to do all the work for you, or to speak for all POC); and yes you ARE going to fuck up; and when you do just apologize and do better the next time. The general consensus seemed to be that this was the better course of action than only writing about white people; or being all "well if you guys are going to jump on me every time I make a mistake, I can't win can I! So I won't even try! (wounded wounded)" --> I have given this enormous amounts of thought, and the research is ongoing.
...and disability too.
* Sorry, the word, or how I write about it? I never write about anything without thinking it through as best I can. I have too much of the academic in me to just "wing it" (except when I'm Nanowrimo-ing.) When you're a writer, you're almost always writing about people who aren't like you--and the ones who are the most unlike you, you just have to put more work into. --> I just read a really popular book which takes place in WW2 Guernsey, and a lot of inhabitants are pretty sad about how poor the research was.
* I don't even name characters without some research, and I take things like state differences into account. (Okay no, I didn't when I made those girls from Tennessee. But that was another nanowrimo story!)
Sons of Anarchy, the FX (cable network) show about a motorcycle gang in California, is based on Hamlet. It's also one of the best TV dramas that I've ever seen--and Season 1 is on DVD now. I'd recommend checking that out for examples on how people do this modern day huge cast of Shakespearean characters. If you're looking for examples. Particularly when the show gets into the second season, the characters are beautifully developed. ... But honestly they do a lovely job in Season 1 as well... I fell in love with the show in Season 2 and went back to Season 1 once I'd become a hardcore fan.
* I've seen 2-hour movie adaptations, but never a series. Interesting! It's easier to tell people apart on tv, though, cause you see them. You can have absolutely HUGE casts on screen. In a book, just naming two people with the same first letter is problematic. (Most epic fail of all time: Sauron and Saruman. What was Tolkien thinking??) But I'll have to watch that series one day, sounds good.
* And the problem with the history plays isn't just the casts themselves but I've got three casts in one book (Hen Iv.1, 2 and Hen V). And worse, this is all real history he's dealing with, so he could assume his audience knew a lot of it. They would have known what the French King was saying in this scene:
Think we King Harry strong...
And he is bred out of that bloody strain
That haunted us in our familiar paths:
Witness our too much memorable shame
When Cressy battle fatally was struck,
And all our princes captiv'd by the hand
Of that black name, Edward, Black Prince of Wales
Whereas I have to invent Edward, create the equivalent of the Battle of Cressy, and then explain it. Mehhhhh. Whine whine whine.
Other thing is... People don't so much distinguish "black-Chinese" in the States. At least not in popular culture. Obama is a Black President, not a Caucasian/Asian/African-American. I mean, we *know* he's all those things, but he's read as a Black person. That's why people understood the SC senator's "You lie!" heckling as meaning something like, "You lie, boy!" It's more "mixed," or people get pressured to identify primarily as one side of their heritage. Sometimes it's because of how they're "read" in life (One of my grad school friends is always read as black, while her brother is always read as white.). Basically, I'm saying... If you're writing a book using mixed characters, I hope you'll read some stuff about biracial identities in the US. Because there are a lot of tensions around biracial identities (and light skinned people tend to be socially privileged over darker skinned people), and all I'm saying is... I hope you're doing your reading on this stuff. I think it's very specific to the US (and totally different from the all-mixed culture of, say, Brazil or the multiculturalism of Canada).
* Ya I get that. It's pretty much the basis for this Chappelle skit (the second skit in this clip):
Racial Draft
Tim | MySpace Video
[Mos Def loved playing this character so much, he walked off with the suit. Don't miss the end to see who the Asians pick. "Konnichiwa bitches."]
* I only identified all these identities in this post because when I'm looking for actors/singers etc. to "picture" my characters, I start by trying to find people who actually *are* biracial, so I can get a realistic idea of how they might look. (How dark skinned they might be, their hair etc.) In fact, for the Chinese-African combination, I ended up looking at the Caribbean where it's much more common.
Also, it's true, there aren't a ton of African-Americans in California... Any chance you could relocate to N'awlins or something?
* I actually looked up the demographics for San Fran, and am somewhat following, as silly as that is. I'd actually have the right "mix" if it weren't for my heroine's group of friends who are all... ex Somali pirates. Yes, you read that right. Don't ask how they managed to immigrate to the US... this is a comedy after all. Everything is possible, including too many African-Americans.
*Anyway, a lot of the characters are all related to each other, so really it's like you're looking at one family.
* You begin to see why I'm saying I'm screwed. It's not just complex in terms of introducing all these characters in a way that the reader can keep straight; and telling all the back story in a way that the reader can keep straight; but I've got to do a certain amount of research on each "community" so that they read right. So that a letter written by a Guernsey farmer doesn't read like a letter written by an Alabamian, so to speak.
* ... ... I complain a lot, but of course it's vair vair interessant.
* I can't change the location at this point, I've already done waaaay to much research. I originally picked California because the initial kernel idea all centered on Paris Hilton, so it was West Coast. And then I had to choose where in California, and decided I'd much rather travel to San Francisco than LA, so the final city of choice was vair vair selfish. (Plus there are a lot of musicians in San Fran, and this whole thing is music industry based.) ...But I'd love to visit New Orleans. That'll have to be the next book! (Tourism based fiction writing.)
Basically, I guess... Remember what Harry Reid (the House majority leader) said? Something about Barack Obama being a viable candidate because he was a "light skinned man without a Negro dialect"? Even though he was ignorant to use "negro," he was kind of making a statement about something that has long been a pattern here. Light-skinned Blacks *are* socially privileged above darker-skinned Blacks in this country. (A lot, a lot of that plays into, for instance, the rebuilding of New Orleans. Mayor Ray Nagin was/is seen by many Black Americans as a corrupt official who upheld a system of light-skinned racial privilege in the city.)
* The light-skinned thing is one of the few things I understood before researching, and it's constantly coming up on the blogs I read. Though I'm only JUST getting to the point where I automatically notice women's hair, and the darkness of skin, when I'm watching tv or something. It's kind of a weird thing to make yourself sensitive to.
And one more thing... I'm not meaning to lecture, but... Racial politics is very, very different in every single region of this country (I keep meaning to write a post about Southern racism and Northern racism). It gets over-simplified in almost every representation that comes out of media in this country. Certainly, it's...usually problematic when it's written by white people. And often problematic even when it isn't. Note how in "Precious," Lee Daniels cast all light-skinned Blacks--Mariah Carey and Lenny Kravitz--as the "good characters" who could inspire Precious to rise above her life situation. Or the ridiculous stereotypes perpetuated by the awful Tyler Perry franchise (about which I very much agree with Spike Lee). Basically, I'm thinking... If you're updating a Shakespearean tragedy with a bunch of minorities, you will undoubtedly touch on US racial politics. Which are *really really really* fraught. Which I realize that you know, but... Please give as much thought to historical and sociological research about this stuff as to plot. Especially to contemporary stuff about racial relations and racial solidarity and biracial identity. Because it's almost always rendered in a *really* offensive way in fiction. Is what I'm getting at. And... Oy. Sorry, I'll shut up now.
* Thanks. I'll just make you make it when it's done. ;-) The good thing is that the chances of me ever being published are about the same (or worse) than the chance of me winning the lottery. Literally.
* It's still a comedy. The plot itself is not supposed to be realistic, the actions people take are ridiculous, the situations they're in , the way they respond, etc etc all has to be un-realistic in order to be funny (to do the sort of humour I like.) It's not realistic-social-commentary humour. It's not a Spike Lee comedy. And it's not Chappelle either, where it's very silly, but the race-stuff is still at the heart of all the comedy. I just want the details to be accurate enough so that you don't notice them.
* I've thought somewhat about the state differences. California has had more Hispanic and Chinese people lynched than African-Americans, for example. The group they considered ethnically cleansing from San Fran after the 1906 earthquake was the Chinese. The Native American communities are really small. The history with Mexico is very unique. And there are now less Af-Americans than ever before. Etc etc... Because I started with the historical research (for my back story), it's given me an ok idea of California's particular racial history. Doesn't mean I would fully understand how that plays out today, but one thing at a time...
* I've never seen any of Perry's movies, only the ads. Chappelle has criticized the fact that almost every Af-Am male actor is, at some point, expected to dress as a woman. (Perhaps homophobic or sexist, but still an interesting observation.)
* But I have a nice Perry story. I just read about this pool in 2009, in Philadelphia, that kicked out the mostly children-of-color who were signed up to come swim there once per week that summer as part of summer camp. And Perry was so angry, he paid for them all to go to Disney.
* What I also wrote about last year on one of my blogs, is the challenges of writing about POC, or gay characters etc., and not immediately fucking up. When I wrote the first rushed draft in 2008, it was of the back story -- I did it for nanowrimo (50 000 words in one month.) I had two Chinese characters--an abrupt, sort of rude woman, and this laid-back butler guy. At one point they get together to try to figure out how to get the heroine and her old friend together, and though it's meant as a nice thing, after writing it I thought: "Hmm. I now have two Scheming Asians on my hands." Doh!
* And when I wrote this year's nanowrimo, which was the first draft of my present-day story, I suddenly introduced a Mexican character, and she gets into one of the fight scenes, and she's really fierce. And afterwards I'm like... she's a Fiery Latina. Fuck! I'd still like her in the fight scene, because the bad guys need her, but she can't be all crazy. She'll have to be a cool fighter instead. Maybe I'll give her some martial arts skills, or maybe she does boxing.
* Or I'm plotting out all this back story, and if I mirror the actual history this is all based on, it means lots of people have to die. So I'll have a Muwekma character, and she's based on the Black Prince. Well the BP was killed in battle in real life. But if I kill of MY character, it means the one Native American in my story has to die. ...I don't want to kill off anyone gay or Native, because it's happened so much in Hollywood. It's the old "the gay cannot be happy and must die." So I have to find other endings for them. Which is fine really, because the whole point of "comedy" in the Shakespeare sense is that everyone lives, baddies are transformed, everyone falls in love, and the chaotic world is brought into harmony. So I have to turn what is basically a lot of tragic history, and turn it into harmony. Sort of artistically interesting.
* The most difficult challenge is this: It's normal in comedy that the main characters are well-drawn and somewhat complex. They might be silly, but they're not Just Silly, because you need to know what motivates them, what they're fighting for, a bit of their past etc. And the side characters are often caricatures. Which is normally a great thing--that's how you get all these AWEsome sidekicks and best friends and bad-guy's-patsies etc. They don't need to be complex, and complex is just less funny. Simplistic is where a lot of the great humour comes in.
* But I have to be very careful of buffoonish black side characters. Spike Lee's Bamboozled is a perfect example--the "Mau Maus" are funnier than almost everyone else, because they're side characters.
"How do you fucking pronounce that shit?"
But to have funny black side characters, when your heroine is white and blonde... is potentially problematic.
Oh who was it that said--dying is easy, comedy is hard!
12 comments:
Just wanted to say... Wasn't trying to be all lecture-y, and I did know that you read all that Racefail '09 stuff. I know you're a very thoughtful person, and I also know you've probably thought these things through far better than most writers out there. The list of all those ethnicities did strike me as a kind of bean counter-ish rundown, but I also get that you were primarily describing issues having to do with the writing process.
I agree that it's better to write the characters, fuck up, and apologize, than to ignore entire communities. But, yeah, I agree that it's important not to fall into tired tropes(See the nameless Black and Asian thugs that populate the underworld in The Dark Knight's Gotham City).
Oh, I wasn't saying anything about the word "disability." Just meant in terms of taking care, caution, etc. I'm reading a book called Aesthetic Nervousness right now--it talks about how disabled characters are often positioned in literature as instruments to deliver an uncomfortable response from the main character (and that was on my brain.). In terms of language use... I certainly prefer "disabled" to "differently abled" or (god help me) "special." I think that latter phrase is fine in describing the world population at large (as in, "Okay, yeah, we're all 'differently abled.'"). But it's a cruel euphemism when used wrt disability (We are not "different." We're non-normate. We are defined by various bodily and mental "incapacities." All that we seem to have in common is that our "incapacities" render us...less productive than the "ideal" in globalized capitalist society. Anyway, um... Yeah, "disability" is better, certainly, than any other word I've heard (Of course, there is disagreement on this point.).
"They don't need to be complex, and complex is just less funny. Simplistic is where a lot of the great humour comes in."
I completely disagree with this, though. I think the best comedy is character-driven. I think I heard Ricky Gervais say this in an interview recently, and I thought, "Well, yeah, okay, that's kind of what made The Office different and innovative and sparked all these new trends in comedy." The new show, Modern Family, is also a good example of this, I think. (See Modern Family, also, for many characters and a huge, extended multi-racial family with gay characters. All of whom are well-developed almost from the start. It's pretty astounding for a new comedy.)
"But if I kill of MY character, it means the one Native American in my story has to die. ...I don't want to kill off anyone gay or Native, because it's happened so much in Hollywood. It's the old "the gay cannot be happy and must die.""
Battlestar Galactica was *really* bad about this stuff. And it's one gay POC with a disability, Felix Gaeta, was put through the fucking wringer. (I didn't even realize he was supposed to be gay until someone told me that this was included in the webisodes, where he had a fucked up relationship on New Caprica with one of the resistance fighters who was never even a real character on the main show.)
*just checking out the posts you linked* Sorry, I hadn't realized you had kept up that blog, so I never read those posts.
"So that a letter written by a Guernsey farmer doesn't read like a letter written by an Alabamian, so to speak."
Yeah, okay, but I'm pretty sure it's almost always a mistake to try to write dialect. You're not gonna do that, I assume?
"The group they considered ethnically cleansing from San Fran after the 1906 earthquake was the Chinese."
Right, and of course, California was also the site of Japanese-American internment.
"Doesn't mean I would fully understand how that plays out today, but one thing at a time..."
Yeah, having never been to California or anywhere on the West Coast, I wouldn't understand it very well either. I could talk much more intelligently about the racial politics of the South, Middle Atlantic, and Eastern Seaboard. Seems like it is roughly similar to other parts of the US (like DC or Baltimore) when you get into places like Oakland and East LA (high levels of segregation, large populations of POC relegated to inner city slums). But, yeah, I would guess it's just important to read up on San Francisco. I would not take the racial politics of Sons of Anarchy as being particularly...um, accurate.
I'd also say... Beware of characters too Bill Cosby-esque. You don't want to rely on stereotypical tropes either way (i.e., making all Blacks "former gangbangers from the 'hood" as Tyler Perry tends to do or making all Blacks upstanding wealthy perfect citizens as in The Cosby Show. I mean, who has a family that consists of entirely Successful Upstanding Citizens? I certainly do not.). The Cosby critique has become even more important, I think, in recent years as Cosby has come under a lot of criticism for comments drastically out of touch with the Black community (victim-blaming wrt poverty, etc. Similar to Henry Louis Gates, Jr.'s shtick.). We do have a Black middle class, but that show also got a lot of criticism for ignoring racism and structural impediments to success in a capitalist society. (See also, for instance, the character of Bette Porter's father in the L-Word. I thought that was actually a pretty good, nuanced approach, though. For a show that was never big on nuance, especially. It shows some of the class tensions within the Black community in this country. Which are intertwined with the issue of light skinned/dark skinned politics, etc.)
Oh, btw, have you read Zadie Smith's book, On Beauty? It sounds very up your alley, though I haven't read it yet. Instead of Shakespeare, though, she's basing her story and style on some of E.M. Forster's work. I think she likely works with a sense of humor similar to what you're going for. Also, she's a mixed-race Brit who always incorporates mixed race characters--and issues and politics--into her works. I haven't read it yet, but I loved her other book, White Teeth (which also relies, if not quite as overtly, on similar literary mechanisms). But yeah, her stuff is much more, well, current, than most of your favorite writers (like Wilde and other people you quote on the blog--not meant as an insult, just an observation.). It's not my favorite style of humor, but she's brilliant at it. And her stuff comes across as very fresh--and really hilarious.
Yeah, honestly, thinking more about this... I think Zadie Smith should actually be one of your first points of reference. She always has tons of mixed-race characters of various sexual orientations. And her plotlines can be a little ludicrous sometimes. And she does this so well that even I like it (And my favorite types of fiction are, well, a lot darker...).
* Sons of Anarchy: Sounds interesting, one way or another.
* Disability: Ya I almost wrote something like "otherly abled" and then shook my head and took a chance on the more traditional term. Knew you would correct me if it was offensive. ;-)
* Humour / simplistic: I'll have to think about/write about that another time. There's different kinds of humour too, of course (it isn't, as the academics lurv to say, a monolith.)
* Killing gays: Did you ever watch the documentary "The Celluloid Closet"? It's so sad/interesting.
* My other blog: You're right, I don't write that blog anymore. :-)
* Farmer's letter: It was a letter, so it had to read like a letter written by this character. But something about the phrasing, the tone, was wrong right from the first few words. And at one point the guy writes: "And I said to her: Lookie here at that sunset!" And I thought, there is no way anyone across the Atlantic says "lookie" !! Oddly the author is from California, so I don't know what she was channelling.
Depends which aspect of dialect you mean. I don't write phonetically, but I have to take vocabulary into consideration, and the general rhythm of the speech. If I'm writing a Quebec francophone character, I won't write: "Turn hoff de light." But they might say "Close the light" instead of "turn off the light" which is a typical French-Canadian mistake when speaking English.
* California: I have two friends in San Diego. He's Canadian, and she's American and went to school or worked in Berkeley. So at some point I'll start bugging them.
:-)
* Cosby-esque: Indeed.
* I've always wanted to read Zadie Smith. ...And only 3 of my top fave authors are dead! ;-) I read every kind of book. I haven't read a Westerns yet, but I could! Anything could happen! I'm a rogue, you never know what I'm gonna read next!!
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