 Fantasy: August 28, 2013 Issue [#5855] |
  Fantasy
This week: Cultural Diversity Edited by: Robert Waltz  
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If we cannot now end our differences, at least we can help make the world safe for diversity.
-John F. Kennedy
Ultimately, America's answer to the intolerant man is diversity, the very diversity which our heritage of religious freedom has inspired.
-Robert Kennedy
Diversity in the world is a basic characteristic of human society, and also the key condition for a lively and dynamic world as we see today.
-Jinato Hu |
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Cultural Diversity
One trope that has long bugged me about science fiction such as Star Trek and Doctor Who is this: Often, Earth cultures are depicted as diverse and varied, with nuances of looks, dress, and habits; while other planets have (most of the time) one monolithic culture or (rarely) two peoples that are trying to destroy each other.
This makes sense, sort of, when you consider that one of the principal purposes of science fiction is to use alien races as a metaphor for human cultures and issues. But contrast this with worlds in the fantasy genre, which, taking a lead from Tolkien, often go even further in the diversity direction by including myriad sentient races on one planet - but then, they don't often travel through space visiting other planets.
It's also a product of necessity: you're producing a weekly TV show and it doesn't make a lot of sense to populate a world the way a fantasy author might. Still, to have a character say something like "The people of Krenn are peaceful and hard-working" implies that the one culture on Krenn values peace and hard work - whereas if you said that about Earth, you'd be neglecting all the cultures that have different values. Or, turn it around and imagine that an alien race made first contact with, I don't know, Canada, and then assumed everyone on Earth was just like Canadians? Boy, would they be in for a rude surprise.
What this mono-culture fiction does, though, is promote an ideal - useful, as I said, as metaphor, when you compare that world's one culture with another world's one culture, or any of the several on Earth.
Now, there are exceptions to this trope, of course. And all I'm getting at here is this: if you're writing science fiction, at least give a nod to the possibility that there's more than one nation, culture, race, etc. on a made-up world. Don't fall into the trap of "one world, one people."
Unless, of course, you're simply trying to shame Earthlings into being more accepting and tolerant of each other, in which case, go for it. |
Just a few flights of the fantastic this week:
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Last time, in "Fantasy Newsletter (July 31, 2013)" , I discussed the use of objects as characters in a story.
PuppyTales  : And of course each of these characters have different levels of sentience. For example, while the TARDIS is clearly sentient, the Enterprise is no more sentient than my car. But the Enterprise gains personality not just through its influence on the characters, but on how much personality the characters give her... which of course tells us about the characters and how they think. Kirk, for example, sees the Enterprise like a "demanding wife".
And my car is named Wind-Up and she's a bit moody, but otherwise lovely. 
The Enterprise is no more sentient than your car? Blasphemy! Majel Barrett* would SO kick your butt for that. But still, you bring up a good point about characterization in general, which is that one lens through which a reader sees *any* character in a story is that of the other characters in the story.
*For anyone who didn't know, she was the voice of the Enterprise computer through several different incarnations of the ship... among other Trek-related things.
And that's it for me for August! See you next month. Until then,
DREAM ON!!! |
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