Post by garyancheta on Aug 28, 2011 7:01:12 GMT -5
There are various reasons why we have these racial stereotypes in Fantasy. One of the main reasons is from early comic strips. Early comic strips had a variety of racial charactures from the beginning of the medium in 1919 when Yellow Kid (a very Irish characature) was invented by Hearst newspapers to sell papers.
When the boom happened in the 1920s, many illustrators learned their trade from anatomy books coming out of Germany, where many scientists were trying to "document the races." Many of these books exaggerated features of different races in order to show how "beautiful" the Aryan race was.
Illustrators created a variety of racial stereotypes in comic strips not to be racist, but to get different audiences. These characatures were giving representation to differerent races that were otherwise silent and invisible in society. It was something other ethnic groups could gather around and point out as "one of their own" and newspapers sold more when people recognized traits in characters that they had in their own family.
But as we progressed socially, the characters were copied by other media for their stories without understanding their cultural meaning. It became racist when people like George Lucas creates Jar Jar Binks, without the cutlural context. He's imitating a character in older science fiction, but without the realization that these characters were created as racial characatures. Lots of newer science fiction have imitated this trope of steailng from the past without understanding why these things were created in the first place.
It is also hard to look at the past with the understanding that many of these actors in film were representing their race and lauded for this representation because there was no other representation out there. When you're the first, you're probably going to be the stereotype. Gedde Watanabe was a horrible racial stereotype in Sixteen Candles (just like the sister's fiance is a horrible Italian stereotype), but he was one of the first asian person I remember seeing in movies and his follow-up in Gung Ho really talked about the pressure of living as an Asian American.
- gary
When the boom happened in the 1920s, many illustrators learned their trade from anatomy books coming out of Germany, where many scientists were trying to "document the races." Many of these books exaggerated features of different races in order to show how "beautiful" the Aryan race was.
Illustrators created a variety of racial stereotypes in comic strips not to be racist, but to get different audiences. These characatures were giving representation to differerent races that were otherwise silent and invisible in society. It was something other ethnic groups could gather around and point out as "one of their own" and newspapers sold more when people recognized traits in characters that they had in their own family.
But as we progressed socially, the characters were copied by other media for their stories without understanding their cultural meaning. It became racist when people like George Lucas creates Jar Jar Binks, without the cutlural context. He's imitating a character in older science fiction, but without the realization that these characters were created as racial characatures. Lots of newer science fiction have imitated this trope of steailng from the past without understanding why these things were created in the first place.
It is also hard to look at the past with the understanding that many of these actors in film were representing their race and lauded for this representation because there was no other representation out there. When you're the first, you're probably going to be the stereotype. Gedde Watanabe was a horrible racial stereotype in Sixteen Candles (just like the sister's fiance is a horrible Italian stereotype), but he was one of the first asian person I remember seeing in movies and his follow-up in Gung Ho really talked about the pressure of living as an Asian American.
- gary
