Posts Tagged 'Anime'
TV Roulette: Claymore E2 & E3
Posted: September 1, 2015 in TV Roulette
Tags: Anime, Claymore, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex, Patreon, Review, TV, TV Roulette
What is TV Roulette?: Once a month, the people who back me at a particular Patreon tier get to pick a show, and I'll either watch the first episode (if I haven't seen it before) or an episode of their choosing (if I have) and write about it in my best flamboyant, ranty, squee-filled style. Reality TV by negotiation only, because it erodes my soul; otherwise, anything goes. If I like the show, I'll keep it up for the next month; if I don't, they can pick something else next time around.
Who's the backer?: This instalment comes courtesy of Margy, who picked Claymore for me to watch. My response to Episode 1 is here.
Note: As I'd already put up two blog posts yesterday, I decided to fold my August review of E2 over to today and combine it with my September review of E3, hence the double feature.
CLAYMORE: EPISODES 2 & 3
First impressions: Flying swords and edible lizards and spontaneous prostitution allusions, oh my!
No, but seriously: Oh, anime. I will never not love your emphasis on female characters, but I'm still going to headdesk forever over all the weird sex stuff. I have no idea how old Raki is meant to be, but he's called a boy in the show, which makes it kind of super creepy and weird when he and Clare have this exchange in E3:
Raki: It's just weird to see you change personalities instantly like that.
Clare: Claymores are trained for this. One second I can act like a noble lady and the next a flirtatious prostitute.
Raki: A prostitute?
Clare: Would you like me to demonstrate?
What's weirder, though, is that this information makes no contextual sense. The Claymores are known everywhere for their distinctive appearance, and when Random Mysterious Dude shows up and gives Clare the pills that let her appear human, it comes across like a) she's never done so before and b) that using the pills is quite rare. Which, given that they suppress her ability to sense yoma – her key advantage in fighting them – would make sense. So the idea that she's been trained to impersonate different kinds of people when she never really has to do so feels borked and incongruous, like the writers just wanted an excuse to shoehorn in the prostitution line and didn't bother to think through the implications.
Also, the whole bit is strangely reminiscent of that time in Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex when Motoko Kusanagi randomly tried to seduce a kid, sort of. I mean, I love SAC, but that was still a weirdass scene? Why was it there? Twelve years later and I'm STILL confused. (And skeeved out. SO SKEEVED OUT, YOU GUYS.)
That moment aside, though, these were actually two pretty solid episodes. Despite the repetitive dialogue in E2, the main plot, which deals with Clare having to track down and kill her only friend to stop her turning into a yoma, does a good job of explaining what the Claymores are and where they come from, while E3 expands on the worldbuilding, telling us more about the setting itself as well as the Claymores and yoma. It also ends on a cliffhanger – specifically, with Clare impaled on a yoma's claws – and when that happens early on in anime, it's usually a sign that the main arc is about to pick up.
Also: as tired as I get at times of the Stoic Inhuman Warrior Being Hounded By A Bouncy Friendly Human Who Is Basically Just An Inquisitive Puppy trope, I appreciate the fact that Claymore represents a genderflip on the usual permutation, with Clare as the stoic and Raki as the puppy. Even so, I'm hoping Raki develops an actual personality at some point in the near future, instead of just bounding along behind her like a naive sunshine machine.
Verdict: I was lukewarm on E1, but there's a nice slow reveal going on in E2 and E3, and I'm curious to see where it's going. Will continue to watch!
TV Roulette: Claymore, E1
Posted: July 25, 2015 in TV Roulette
Tags: Anime, Claymore, Patreon, Review, TV, TV Roulette
As some of you may know, I'm currently running a Patreon to support my blogging here, and one of the reward levels involves me introducing a TV Roulette feature here. Here's how it works for those who backed me at that tier:
Once a month, you get to pick the show, and I'll either watch the first episode (if I haven't seen it before) or an episode of your choosing (if I have) and write about it in my best flamboyant, ranty, squee-filled style. Reality TV by negotiation only, because it erodes my soul; otherwise, anything goes. If I like the show, I'll keep it up for the next month; if I don't, you can pick something else next time around.
Right now, I've got two TV Roulette backers – the first of whom, Margy, picked Claymore for me to watch.
So: let the inaugural TV Roulette blog begin!
CLAYMORE: EPISODE 1
First impressions: This is probably not a show I should be watching with a toddler peering excitedly over my shoulder. And yet.
Also, why the swordmaster wearing sensible heels?
Practical combat footwear is practical.
No, but seriously: God, I love anime (except when I don't, but that's another story). It's a medium that has exactly zero fucks to give about explaining shit in the first episode, you know? I mean, let's be brutally honest: first episodes are pretty much always weird and forced and familiar, because they have to be. They're blatantly trying to sell you on emotionally investing in a bunch of strangers and concepts you can't realistically get to know in such a short space of time, so what ends up making them work is never the obvious stuff (Protagonist Meets Protagonist, Tension, Some Kind Of Bonding Thing, Minor Catharsis Plus Hook To Bigger Problem), but the answers to two questions: could this go somewhere interesting? and if it does, will I have Feelings about the first episode when I rewatch it later, knowing how the characters end up?. And whereas most Western shows tend to get super invested in the idea that their formulaic first episode is going to break the mould and go all-out to try and impress you – Look, It's An Awesome Dude Being Kickass And Sad Because Reasons! Let's Hint Heavily At His Tortured Past – anime, by and large… doesn't. Instead, you get first episodes that are either unapologetically slow and simple, or which are labelled part one of two or three or four, because the writers aren't pretending they need a discreet standalone prologue before they fling you right into the main arc.
Claymore's first episode is the former kind. We're introduced to Clare, who fights yoma (demons) while staring dramatically at things, and Raki, who spends his time either chatterboxing or being tearfully menaced. Clare rescues Raki, Raki is grateful, the two end up travelling together, and that's really it: oh, and there's wastelands in this world, and yoma can only be killed by people like Clare, who are half-human, half-yoma and always female for some reason. It's bare bones, but that's okay, because it's meant to be, and if I know anime, I guarantee some weird shit is about to go down in the next couple of episodes. Also, Clare has eyes that change colour from silver to gold when she sees yoma! Because unusual and significant eye colours, man – don't even pretend that's something only fanfiction has a Thing about, as though beardy old George R. R. Martin didn't write a series of bestselling novels where a tweenage girl with a magical connection to dragons is distinguished by her silver-white hair and fucking purple eyes, the legacy of her Super Special Bloodline. We're all suckers for it, okay? Eyes that change colour are goddamn cool, and you know it.
Verdict: As starting points go, it's a sold 5/10. Will happily watch again next month!
ETA: Apparently I misheard Clare's name as Clay. This has now been fixed.
Normative Sexism: Geek Edition
Posted: April 1, 2012 in Political Wrangling
Tags: Abuse, Anime, Bias, Booth Babes, Characterisation, Characters, Comics, Community, Exploitation, Fanservice, Fantasy, Female, Female Characters, Feminism, Geek, Geekdom, Gender, Intentionality, Male, Manga, Men, Misogyny, Privilege, Sex, Sexism, Sexuality, Video Games, Women
Responding to my post on default narrative sexism, commenter Kevin Veale reported the following incident:
It also reminds me, sadly, of a thread yesterday where an RPG author posted a question about how to shift cultural dynamics about gender in an RPG setting. The thread then proceeded to implode with a bunch of bullshit where people were citing other examples where authors had tried that as "bullshit" because "They're doing unrealistic stuff purely to create a bizarro world where it'd be cool if women were cavalry," rather than the listed intent of said author to create a different gender dynamic.
Being both a geek and a ladyperson, this phenomenon is one I've encountered many times before, and always felt frustrated by – so much so that I've decided to upgrade my response from comment to post.
The sort of incident mentioned above is sadly common in geek culture – a blind and subtle species of sexism-as-normative wherein any attempt to reverse established gender dynamics is written off as a nothing more than cheap attempt at novelty by virtue of the fact that the audience either didn't expect it or doesn't see the utility of it. Back when I first started playing D&D in highschool, I remember the pleasant feeling of shock and surprise when, on opening the handbook, I found that all the pronouns used to describe the hypothetical players and characters were female ones. When, seconds later, I remarked on this fact out loud, my then-boyfriend instantly expressed his irritation at it, saying something along the lines of, 'They're only doing it to seem cool and politically correct.' And being sixteen, I instantly found myself agreeing with him: partly because he was my boyfriend (alas!) but mostly because it genuinely did look weird – by which I mean, of course, that I'd never seen it done before. And because I had no grounding in feminism at that point, and even though it had made me feel validated and welcomed as a girl geek just moments earlier, I took up his stance both then and for quite a while afterwards: that switching up the gender pronouns was just an arbitrary, pointless thing people sometimes did to look hip. Whereas, of course, the point was right there in my initial reaction: to make girls like me feel happier playing D&D, and – though it failed with my group of friends – perhaps to make male players more thoughtful and less judgmental when it came to women in general.
As far as I can tell, straight male geeks in particular tend to adopt this position – that is, Random Girls = Bad – for any of three main reasons:
1. Geek culture is so overwhelmingly dominated by images of hyper-sexualised women (anime, maquettes, comics, video games) that even though female characters are frequently shown to excel in traditionally masculine roles across all such media – as mechanics, hackers, warriors, engineers, gunsmiths, leaders and pilots, for instance – their visual, physical sexiness (and, frequently, costuming) is designed to signal that these attributes, rather than being markers of competence and equality, are instead intended as, essentially, masturbatory aids on par with their physical assets: the fantasy of hot women made even hotter by their (to the audience) unrealistic-yet-droolworthy possession of masculine skills. This is why fanservice, unrealistic bodies, ridiculous costuming and wildly impossible poses are so very, very frustrating to female geeks and feminists: because ninety-nine times out of a hundred, their sole utility and relevance is on the level of sexual exploitation. And though most straight male fans are self-aware enough to realise such bodies are meant as unrealistic fantasies, many still have a disturbing tendency to take the logic further, concluding that if women with ridiculous bodies and costumes are unrealistic – and if, given this fact, it's similarly improbable that women who look, dress and act like that would actually go about their jobs that way in the real world – then logically, real women must not belong in those professions, because the idea that they might do is itself part of the fantasy.
2. Having realised that the depiction of women in games, comics, collectibles and anime is meant as part of a tailor-made fantasy, many straight male geeks, somewhat unsurprisingly, have become aware of something else: that as said fantasy has been explicitly created for and subsequently targeted, marketed and sold to them, there must be someone out there whose goal is to exploit – and subsequently profit from – their sexual desires. Rather than undertake an intellectual exploration of the relationship between sex, gender and advertising in a capitalist system, however, a disappointing number of these geeks make a different and altogether more prejudicial leap: that the presence of women in an otherwise male-dominated environment can be directly correlated with the efforts of corporations to take their money. Their willingness to pay for the product in this equation, whether pre-existing or not, is immaterial: women, and particularly sexy women, have become a red-flag event. Any attempt to insert women into a setting previously devoid of them must therefore come under immediate suspicion. Women are a cash-gathering exercise, the go-to weapon in some cynical marketeer's arsenal to help Company A more readily collect the hard-earned monies of geeks everywhere; booth babes being a case in point. After all, straight male geeks are very aware of their own negative sexual stereotyping: the fact that they may conform to it at times doesn't make it any less offensive when it's being used to exploit them – and the fact that it is used exploitatively is why the sexy female character problem exists to begin with.
But that doesn't excuse their knee-jerk reaction to and blaming of women themselves: sexism and the system are at fault, not women as entities. And yet, the niggling suspicion of straight male geeks that girls are just there to take their money ends up tarnishing not only legitimate, unsexualised instances of female characterisation, but the efforts of actual geek girls to be taken seriously. All girl gamer group? Yeah, they're just a novelty act – we're only meant to like them 'coz they're pretty. Girls reading comics or playing video games? Hot, but they're probably just doing it so boys will like them. Girl geeks in costumes? Total attention whores – they just want men to throw money at them. The same thing happens in music circles, too, among other places. All girl rock band? Fuckable pop-moppet posers – they only got signed 'coz they look good on a poster. And on, and on, and on.
3. Genuine incomprehension. This is the kindest blindness – a benevolent sexism found in straight male geeks who have nothing against women, per se; it's just that, all unaware of their own privilege, they've never had to think about sexism or exploitation or anything like that, so if the issue comes up offhand, they're unlikely to see the utility in trying to make women more visible, or to change the way they're depicted – and if there's no utility, why do it? After all, women have the vote now, right? And equal opportunities and laws and stuff? And it's not like anyone's forcing them to play video games or read comics or watch anime or whatever, so why is it our problem if they don't like how it works?
Depending on the personality of the geek in question, any conversation after this point can go one of several ways. The most positive, assuming both that you have the time and inclination to explain sexism in geek culture from first principles and that your interlocutor is willing to listen, is that they realise the problem exists and see the utility of female inclusion. The most negative will devolve into angry defenses of the status quo along the lines of the points raised above, with (if you're very unlucky) a side-order of genuine misogyny thrown in. I mention this because, while the first two points follow fairly specific trains of thought, the reasons for ignorance are wide-ranging; as are potential reactions to the prospect of enlightenment. Nobody likes to be told they've been complicit in something they might otherwise hold in contempt, and particularly not when you tie that complicity to the things they love most, no matter how significant the connection is.
And this, really, is the crux of the problem. Thanks to several decades' worth of abuse and mockery from the mainstream, geeks as a culture are used to seeing themselves – ourselves – as underdogs. This creates a false sense of certainty that, being outcasts together, we can't possibly be discounting, belittling or abusing anyone, let alone other outcasts, in the way that we ourselves have been discounted, belittled, abused. Which premise rests squarely on the demonstrably false assurance that people never become what is done to them; that no victims ever become perpetrators. And as I have said again and again, intentionality only takes you so far, and it isn't very. Intend all you want to be a responsible driver – but if you run someone over by accident, they'll still be just as dead.
The Problem With Fanservice
Tags: Anime, Bechdel Test, Characterisation, Cowboy Bebop, Fan Service, Fanservice, Female, Female Characters, Feminism, Fruits Basket, Geek, Ghost in the Shell, Harem, Lucky Star, Manga, Rant, Samurai Girls, Sexism, Shojo, Shonen, Women, Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge
Is that it exists.
I am a fan of anime, and have been since I was about twelve. The earliest stuff I remember seeing was Ghost in the Shell, Akira and Vampire Hunter D, with some snippets of Rurouni Kenshin and Gunsmith Cats thrown in for good measure. The first series I ever properly watched were Evangelion, Bubblegum Crisis: Tokyo 2040, Cowboy Bebop and Noir, with the Lain soundtrack providing background music to many a high school party. Later, at the start of university, I was introduced simultaneously to Ninja Scroll, Love Hina, Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex and the works of Hayao Miyazaki, which is a surprisingly thorough gamut for the range of anime narratives. Since then, I've been watching pretty much anything that gets recommended to me or which catches my eye, the most recent examples being Last Exile, Fruits Basket, Bamboo Blade and Yamato Nadeshiko Shichi Henge. All of which is a way of saying: I love anime. It's been part of my life for thirteen years, and at no point during that time has my interest for it been passive or half-hearted. Which is perhaps why it's taken me so long to come to realise that there is, in fact, a caveat on those affections. Because when you love something deeply – and particularly when it's a thing you've loved since the cusp of adolescence – it can be very, very hard to pull back and deal with that thing in a critical manner.
I hate fanservice so fucking much.
Anyone who's ever watched anime knows what I'm talking about. For anyone who hasn't, allow me to demonstrate the scope of the problem as follows:
Yeah. About that.
To be clear: I still watch anime that contains fanservice. Partly because, in the case of shows I knew and loved prior to the revelation of my hatred, it doesn't taint my appreciation of them; partly because fanservice does not, by itself, make the rest of a show terrible; but mostly because there isn't an alternative. While there's certainly anime out there that lacks fanservice, it's a definite minority and can be tricky to find, particularly if you're wanting to watch a show with multiple female characters. Fruits Basket and Nadeshiko, for instance, while both awesome and non-fanservicey, are also examples of male harem shojo, meaning that the female protagonists – respectively Tohru and Sunako – are effectively lone women surrounded by gorgeous men, the extent of whose Regularly Demonstrable Sexiness tends to hinge on bishie sparkle, cross-dressing and occasional shirtlessness. Which is, of itself, noteworthy, because I can't think of a comparable genre/form that regularly creates male harems or caters to female sexual fantasies that way. What strikes me in the comparison, though, is that moments of male sexiness are almost never built into costume design in the way that female fanservice is. The practical upshot of this is that while Fruits Basket looks like this:
and Nadeshiko looks like this:
Motoko Kusanagi of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex still has to spend a season like this:
while Cowboy Bebop's Faye Valentine gets to wear this:
To highlight the disparity further: both Fruits Basket and Nadeshiko are romantic shojo, meaning that they are specifically aimed at women and actively concerned with relationships – in other words, the type of show you'd most expect to get fanservicey if it were written for men. But Ghost in the Shell is a cyberpunk political thriller with existential undertones, while Cowboy Bebop is a hard SF drama about bounty hunters in space. Which begs the question: if that's the base level of fanservice in shows that aren't aimed purely at men and which don't have any inherent investment in sex, romance or relationships, then how bad does it get when those elements are also in play?
Internets, allow me to introduce you to Hyakka Ryoran Samurai Girls. It looks like this:
It's shows like this which make me love Boobs Don't Work That Way so very much. And that is the only good thing I will ever say about Samurai Girls.
The strongest attraction anime has for me is the profusion of female characters doing every conceivable type of awesome thing. They are hackers, warriors, starship pilots, psychics, mages, priestesses, ambassadors, thieves, bounty hunters, police officers, mothers, students, friends, sisters, daughters, alchemists, mechanics, cooks, wives, dress-makers, geeks, villains, heroes, anti-heroes, athletes, goddesses, demons, chosen ones and unchosen ones, carpenters, cleaners, queens, doctors, psychologists, nurses, witches, waitresses, writers, gunsmiths, swords-fighters, shapeshifters, teachers, confidantes and lovers. They are everything, and what's more, they are everything equally, as though there were never any question that a top-level military submarine might have a female captain or an experimental space station be populated by as many women as men. I cannot describe the thrill of elation that went through me as a teenager when, after channel surfing one night, I landed on SBS and caught the last ten minutes of what I only later learned was an episode of Gunsmith Cats. Still new to anime, I was amazed by a cartoon that depicted violence, but flat-out hooked by the idea of one where the gun-toting, badass protagonists were women. I didn't notice the fanservice, and even if I had, I wouldn't have known what to call it. What mattered was the ladies themselves: the fact that I was watching, not just a show where women did awesome things, but where their ability to do so went unquestioned.
Here's what saddens me about anime: that shows like Samurai Girls pass the Bechdel test at the same time as their visuals undermine everything that it stands for. So do Full Metal Panic, Azumanga Daioh, Lucky Star, Love Hina and just about any other shonen-oriented, slice of life or female harem story you care to name – but all while upskirting, side-boobing, cleavage-enlarging, skintight-wearing, fetish–enabling, proportion-warping artwork creates a visual dissonance with characters whose dialogue, friendships and personalities would otherwise stand on their own merits. Even in shows which don't pass, like Ghost in the Shell: SAC and Cowboy Bebop, lone female characters who are tough, multifaceted, intelligent, complex, competent and believable still end up drawn like Playboy bunnies for reasons that have nothing to do with plot and everything to do with pandering to a horny male fanbase. This isn't just an argument about unrealistic portrayals of women (though that's certainly a parallel concern), but of what happens when you draw beautiful girls for the sole purpose of sexually objectifying them – and worse, when doing so is deemed to be such an integral part of a given culture that you not only start to expect it, but make allowances for it. Because anime is just like that, and how can I say I like anime if I'm going to criticise it? Isn't that like saying I like fruit, then bitching about strawberries?
No, actually. It's like saying I enjoy sex, then bitching about rape.
Some of the shows I've listed are ones I love; others I'm ambivalent towards, or actively dislike. But in almost every instance where I've ever stopped watching an anime, the reason has nothing to do with a dislike of the plot, premise or characterisation, and everything to do with how the women are treated. Samurai Girls and Full Metal Panic both have plots and settings that appeal to me; in both cases, I've turned away, furious, because I can't stand to watch another upskirt shot or listen to another hatefully forced conversation about women's boobs or underwear. And then I see something like this:
and end up angry all over again. Because, look: I know that poster's meant as a joke. And I have a sense of humour! But for female viewers, fanservice is not gravy. Fanservice is sexism's way of making us accept our own objectification for the sake of a good story, even where the story would be just as good – if not considerably better – without it. Because ultimately, the logic behind all fanservice can be boiled down to the following sentiment: that female characters, no matter how powerful, awesome and complex, are at their most interesting and relevant when drawn to look fuckable.
And to that I say: FUCK NO.
Colour Blinds
Posted: February 27, 2011 in Political Wrangling
Tags: Anime, Books, Capitan Planet, Cartoons, Characters, Colour, Culture, Dissimilarity, Diversity, Dragonlance, Dungeons & Dragons, Ethnicity, Fantasy, Middle Grade, Multiculturalism, Narrative, POC, Power Rangers, Quest, Race, Racial Diversity, Serials, SF/F, Shanara, Star Trek, Tokenism, Tropes, TV, Visual Diversity, YA
Consider the following thought process:
1. People who look different are easier to tell apart than people who look the same.
2. Audiences are better able to distinguish between characters who are described or shown to be physically dissimilar to one another.
3. Physical dissimilarity in such instances is often established through differences in hair, skin and eye colour.
4. People of Caucasian descent have a wider range of natural hair and eye colours than people of other races.
5. Narrative tokenism is a natural consequence of physical dissimilarity being used to create visually distinct characters.
6. Creating a visually diverse cast of characters is not the same thing as creating a racially diverse cast of characters.
All stories exist within a tradition of storytelling. Unavoidably, that tradition is both connected to and influenced by external culture. We live now – and have done for some time – in a multicultural society, a fact which is in absolutely no danger of changing. I don't know what first sparked the notion that diversity was best expressed by the image of one male and one female of every ethnicity all standing together like the denizens of a transnational Noah's Ark, unless it's Walt Disney's fault, but for whatever reason, and while I acknowledge that there's an undeniable egalitarianism to this approach, the symmetry of it seems to have become an unquestioned narrative trope.
This is not a good thing, for two main reasons. Firstly, as described above, it leads to tokenism. An important clarification, before we go any further: this is neither the only cause of tokenism, nor is it the most common. But particularly in visual media, it is easy to conflate visual dissimilarity among characters with racial diversity, and in a context of Caucasian dominance, this cannot help but lead to instances of the human hair colour quartet – blonde, brunette, red and black – being used to represent diversity, with non-white characters frequently fulfilling the black-haired quotient. Secondly, and as a direct result of this, it leads to a situation where casts are considered to be diverse if they contain one or two non-white characters, and where an equal distribution of different ethnicities therefore becomes seen as the moral ideal.
On the surface, this latter consequence might not seem particularly problematic – certainly, there are worse ideals to have – and yet it is still polluted by the dual contaminants of aesthetic balance and white privilege. After all, ensuring that a range of ethnicities be represented in roughly the same ratios is not the same thing as ensuring that the main characters are drawn randomly from that pool, and despite the best intentions of such diversity, there's still an underlying assumption in our society that at least two such characters must always be white. This creates an extremely problematic working model of racial diversity within narrative: one where the only constant is the presence of white characters who, despite an equal opportunities orbit of POC colleagues, are still more likely to be the protagonists than not.
What got me thinking on all of this is the extent to which visual diversity as a means of distinguishing characters is a particularly common ploy in book serials and TV shows aimed at preadolescents. Back when I was nine or so – a burgeoning tween, at any rate – it seemed that everywhere I turned, characters in books and on TV were being set apart from each other on the basis of colour association. Some of these were more genuine attempts at diversity than others. The five main characters of Capitan Planet, for instance, were all from different parts of the world, belonging to entirely different cultures and ethnicities; additionally, each character was given command over a particular element, which was in turn associated with a specific colour. Thus, Kwame was African with earth magic (green); Wheeler was North American with fire magic (red); Linka was Eastern European with wind magic (purple); Gi was Asian with water magic (blue) and Ma-Ti was South American with heart magic (yellow). A much less tactful example is the Power Rangers franchise, where each Ranger was literally described in terms of colour. In the original series, this meant that the white male characters were the Red, Blue and Green Rangers, respectively; the white female character was Pink Ranger; the black male ranger was Black Ranger; and the Asian female character was Yellow Ranger, none of which is particularly encouraging.
Emily Rodda's Teen Power Inc series sat somewhere between these two examples, diversity-wise. Of the six main characters, four were white – mousy blonde Tom, light blonde Richelle, brunette Liz, and redhead Elmo – with two non-white characters then fulfilling the black-haired quotient: Nick was Greek and Sunny was Chinese. Insofar as every character narrated an equal number of books, it was an egalitarian system, but in terms of creating a visually diverse cast, it still felt as though the ratios were chosen on the basis of differing hair colour. Other series, such as the W.I.T.C.H comics and just about any fairy– or princess-based serial aimed at ten-year-old girls, will follow a similar pattern, though the latter examples are much more obsessed with Caucasian visual diversity than the former. Take a flip through the character sketches for just about any cartoon or anime, and you'll witness a similar phenomenon: regardless of the racial diversity of the casts, many shows will deliberately create a unique colour scheme for each character, the better to set them apart – and if the fantasy aspects of a given story can be subtly expressed with the help of such visual cues, then so much the better.
And speaking of SFF, take a moment to consider the racial makeup of successive Star Trek crews, or the desired character balance of a typical Dungeons & Dragons party. Perhaps I'm stretching the metaphor too far, but it nonetheless strikes me as a relevant that in both these instances, imaginary humanoid races – be they Vulcans, Cardassians and Klingons or orcs, gnomes and elves – are usually deployed on something of a 'one of each' basis. The starship Enterprise might well be a shining beacon of diversity, particularly given the era in which it was created, but in each successive franchise, the pattern was always for more human crew-members than alien, with the latter characters made special and distinctive by the fact that nobody else in the main cast shared their heritage. Similarly, the foundation of any successful D&D campaign is a balanced party, in terms of race as well as skill. You don't want everyone to play an orc anymore than you want everyone to play a halfling,and as those sentiments extend to novels, too, the typical makeup of myriad Tolkien-derivative quest fantasies, such as Terry Brooks's Shanara novels or the massive Dragonlance series, therefore depends on an even mix of character backgrounds: the archetypal motley crew.
So here, ultimately, is my question: why is the single most common expression of diversity in narrative contingent upon creating casts of characters whose individuality is defined by their collective difference? Why, unless those characters are white – or, in fantastic instances, human – is there an unspoken law against writing a cast where multiple characters share the same racial, ethnic or religious background? Why is it necessary that POC characters go constantly two by two, one male and one female, in narratives where the majority of characters are white? Does it have something to do with the fact that our childhood stories are saturated with the logic of colour association, or are those narratives a subconscious simplex of tokenism in the adult world? I am not saying that colour association in children's stories is an inherently vicious idea, nor am I arguing that 'one of each' narratives fail at genuine diversity. But it strikes me that if notions of visual dissimilarity, cultural symmetry and aesthetic balance are continuing to fuel the logic used to create casts of characters, then we might not be approaching the issue with as open a mind as we should be. Sadly, the real world is neither perfectly symmetrical nor innately egalitarian, and if our best efforts to display it as such still persist in conflating white privilege with realistic diversity, then the problem is more pervasive than we think.