People create lots of settings where the characters that make sense within that setting play to predictable types, which often have a racial component. There are certain kinds of characters that--not coincidentally--tend to come with a color.
I mean, there are a lot of narratives where a wise black person adopts a hapless white person and dispenses wisdom to them because obviously their purpose in life is to make a white person's life better, and there is generally at least some thin justification for why this white person gets a magical negro, but that doesn't make it less of a trope, and that doesn't mean we can't ask, "Why does this keep happening? What is this pervasive idea rooted in?"
Ditto for a dangerous but sexy Asian woman who uses her dangerous exotic sexy sexiness to get along by ensnaring white men. Ditto for the stoic dark-skinned warrior sidekick. Ditto for the white man who makes a better native warrior without training than the natives. Ditto for the big maternal black woman who adopts a white person and takes care of them and centers her life around theirs. Ditto for any female character's gay best friend.
Dany plays to a type. That type says something. She can be a good character and still play to a type, just like I can name characters who play to one of the types I just listed who are not merely reasonably consistent with the world they live in, but actually pretty great characters. But they are types. Those types are not actually a coincidence.
So I don't think that pointing out that Dany's doing a thing white people are commonly cast to do in fiction is anti-white. I think it's an observation of a trend that takes too much cognitive dissonance to pretend is a coincidence every time it happens.
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chiming
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Date: 2012-12-12 07:30 pm (UTC)From:People create lots of settings where the characters that make sense within that setting play to predictable types, which often have a racial component. There are certain kinds of characters that--not coincidentally--tend to come with a color.
I mean, there are a lot of narratives where a wise black person adopts a hapless white person and dispenses wisdom to them because obviously their purpose in life is to make a white person's life better, and there is generally at least some thin justification for why this white person gets a magical negro, but that doesn't make it less of a trope, and that doesn't mean we can't ask, "Why does this keep happening? What is this pervasive idea rooted in?"
Ditto for a dangerous but sexy Asian woman who uses her dangerous exotic sexy sexiness to get along by ensnaring white men. Ditto for the stoic dark-skinned warrior sidekick. Ditto for the white man who makes a better native warrior without training than the natives. Ditto for the big maternal black woman who adopts a white person and takes care of them and centers her life around theirs. Ditto for any female character's gay best friend.
Dany plays to a type. That type says something. She can be a good character and still play to a type, just like I can name characters who play to one of the types I just listed who are not merely reasonably consistent with the world they live in, but actually pretty great characters. But they are types. Those types are not actually a coincidence.
So I don't think that pointing out that Dany's doing a thing white people are commonly cast to do in fiction is anti-white. I think it's an observation of a trend that takes too much cognitive dissonance to pretend is a coincidence every time it happens.