I recently became aware of a criticism of the book Graceling
by Kristen Cashore (if you haven’t read Graceling and plan to you may want to
skip the following paragraph. I will try
to be vague, but there will be SPOILERS).
In Graceling a character becomes disabled, but he has a
special power called a grace that eventually allows him to compensate for the
disability. It was brought to Kristen’s
attention that the magical cure for disabilities often seen in fantasy novels
is hurtful to the disabled because it promotes the idea that in order to be whole,
someone must be cured of the disability.
And clearly someone who is disabled and can’t be magically cured and has
been able to live a fulfilling life as a whole person, may be insulted by this
insinuation. Kristen addresses this in
her blog found here
and is very open and honest about it.
On the writing site Absolute Write (a great site, very useful
with lots of smart, nice aspiring and published writers), every once and a
while someone starts a thread asking for advice on how to write a character of
different race or of a different sexual orientation or with a disability, and
I’ve seen some of these threads end in frustration on the part of the OP
because there are so many pitfalls to avoid, some of which are contradictory.
No one (that I know) wants to make anyone feel lesser or
railroaded into a stereotype or marginalized.
But there seems to be no way to write a minority character that won’t
offend someone. A lot of times writers
who really wanted to include a minority, end up choosing not to. It is safer and easier not to include a
minority character, which also leads to criticism of white washing or straight
washing, etc.
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| It's a cute movie, but is it a little sexist? |
But besides writing minorities, there are other issues that frequently
come up on the forum. Every once and a
while, there are criticisms about books or movies being sexist, either subtly
or overtly. There is the Madonna-whore
complex (where every female character is either virginal or a prostitute), slut
shaming (where any female character who is sexually active is bad), and
feeding into rape
culture. Female characters are
criticized for being too passive or too domineering or too manipulative; and
male characters for being too controlling or too violent or too stupid, needing the
women to solve all their problems because men can’t seem to function properly
without a woman’s guidance. And
honestly if you look hard enough, you can see issues like these in almost every
book, movie, and TV series. I saw Brave
last weekend (a great show about a mother-daughter relationship), and there are
already criticism about subtle
sexism in that movie.
All of this fear of unintentionally being offensive or
propagating hurtful stereotypes or promoting harmful ideas can be
stifling. I’m not saying that writers
shouldn’t try to be sensitive and consider what might be hurtful, but honestly
if every character and situation was written to ensure that every aspect of the
story fit political correctness, the story and characters could feel
forced. Over-thinking in any way can
make a story unauthentic.
I don’t know about you, but I know that I have flaws. I try really hard to be open and fair, but
I’m sure I have prejudices that I can’t see.
I am a product of this imperfect world, raised by wonderful but imperfect
parents. No matter how hard I try not to
offend someone, my stories will reflect my imperfect world view, and I’m sure
if I ever get readers, some of them will be savvy enough to point out those
flaws.
So what do you do as a writer? Do you stress about unintended messages that
might leak into your story? Do you go over your MS with a fine-toothed comb
nixing any phrase, characterization, or plot turn that could possibly be interpreted as politically incorrect? Or do you write from your heart and don’t
worry about it?
Honestly, I’m not sure what the answer is.
~MaryAnn
