A Question for the 25 and under crowd - What have you read?

[Hussar]

On Burroughs, and all caught up in that nexus here: There are complex subjects not really done justice in the context of treating them as mere rhetorical ammunition for propaganda in furtherance of one thesis or another.

So, basically, we should just ignore it and move on?

Look, the point I'm making here is hardly an obscure one. The criticism of Burroughs and many other authors of the time is not new, nor is it unsupported. It's pretty much taken as a given by and large. Heck, the current RaceFail debate on LiveJournal right now pretty much shows that while we may have made some progress, our chosen genre isn't exactly showering itself in glory.

Howzabout I put it more plainly?

The only white man on the planet is a superhuman, smarter, stronger and more civilized than everyone else. He arrives, bests the savages, and then proceeds to show everyone how to do society right.

But this isn't racist at all? There are no racist overtones here? Ariosto, you can try to brush this off as simple posturing, but, come on. Let's be honest here. A great deal of the fiction that we base our game on is extremely bigotted, misogynistic, and about as culturally sensitive as a brick.

Ignoring that, or whitewashing it, doesn't make it go away.

 

[Ariosto]

No, I do not suggest ignoring the hard questions. I suggest knowing whereof one speaks or writes before offering a pat theory.

 

[Mercutio01]

The only white man on the planet is a superhuman, smarter, stronger and more civilized than everyone else. He arrives, bests the savages, and then proceeds to show everyone how to do society right.

1. He is NOT the only white man on the planet.

2. He comes from Earth which has a different gravity ratio, hence the "superhuman."

3. He is not smarter or more civilized than anyone else. Indeed, he's nowhere near the smartest guy on the planet, and his makes numerous remarks about the civilization of Mars being no different from that on earth, which is also continuously mired in warfare.

4. He doesn't change how the society of the red Martians works at all. He changes so little, in fact, that he becomes the Warlord and princess cohort, not the leader, not even the associate leader. Just a general.

Let's be honest here. A great deal of the fiction that we base our game on is extremely bigotted, misogynistic, and about as culturally sensitive as a brick.

Ignoring that, or whitewashing it, doesn't make it go away.

A great deal of EVERYTHING ever written is extremely bigotted, misogynistic, and about as culturally sensitive as all heck. I will say it again, if you attempted to ban, burn, or otherwise limit anything that was written that had an objectionable element that you named above, you would read, watch, or otherwise consume nothing at all. You would sit in your cave and stare at the wall.

This is not to say that some things are not objectionable, but taking them in context is the key to reading them. Reading Joel Chandler Harris' "Tales from the South" can be taken either as a racist stereotype unworthy of reading and be burned in a pile with "Uncle Tom's Cabin" and "Huck Finn" or else seen for the expert capturing of dialogue, the struggle for black slaves to keep a sense of African identity amidst the horrors of slavery, and the exceptional story-telling of said African influenced tales. You seem to be firmly in the former camp, and to my great dismay, most of academia follows the same thought process.

Once again, Shakespeare is as racist, sexist, misogynistic, and/or otherwise objectionable as anyone else writing during his time period. We teach him because of his "great skill" which is up for debate amongst highest level academics (did he really write all those plays?). But we still teach him even so. Why? Because it captures a historical time point, tells a good set of stories, and is still generally considered literature. Meanwhile, he was considered a hack at the time, no one ever read his poems (which were considered abject failures) and he was most definitely on the same level of "pulp" as the pulp writers of the 1920 and the studio writers in the TV industry today.

It is context that drives meaning and story that drives entertainment. As a story-writer, Burroughs was near the top at the time (and has lasted an extraordinarily long time). As a "learning" environment he does a lot of things well, and a lot of things not-so-well, as does even Shakespeare. In context, Burroughs is as worthy of study as anyone else in the time period. And he so much less misogynistic than Hemingway that to compare them is to note that Burroughs has more in common with Gertrude Stein than the crotchety old woman hater of the Florida Keys.

 

[Ariosto]

If one is inclined to seek social commentary in the two-part novel that begins the Barsoom series (as with the Tarzan series) on a relatively literary note, then what stands front and center is the depiction of organized religion as an evil con game.

A four-armed Green Martian, yea even a gorilla, is held up as nobler than the aristocrats of Western Civilization regardless of complexion.

I don't know about you, but I would much rather have Dejah Thoris or Thuvia -- or the Red Lensman, or any one of countless competent females of "pulp fiction" -- at my six than one of today's hothouse flowers preoccupied with sex and frail as a clothes-hanger.

 

[mmadsen]

I will say it again, if you attempted to ban, burn, or otherwise limit anything that was written that had an objectionable element that you named above, you would read, watch, or otherwise consume nothing at all.

Further, whatever literature passed your progressive-morals test in the 1960s would fail in the '70s. Whatever passed in the '70s would fail in the '80s. Whatever passed in the '80s would fail in the '90s. And so on. It's an intentionally moving target.

 

[Hussar]

Wow. Just... wow.

We've gone from "be aware of the social climate of these stories" to outright banning and book burning.

This is why these conversations are virtually impossible to have. The second, the millisecond anyone says that maybe, just maybe, we should look at a work with a critical eye and maybe, just maybe, we should not simply ignore and whitewash the message in these stories, it's all about censorship and book burning.

I'm sure there's some funky latin phrase for people taking an argument to an extreme, and then trying to claim that's the point, but, meh, I can't be asked to remember it to be honest.

My entire, sole, solitary, singular, lone point is that pulp fiction of the early 20th century is frequently bigoted and mysogynistic and that perhaps we should base our game on works that aren't that.

I guess that's just censorship and I should just ignore it.

Me? Me, I'd rather have characters who aren't based in cultural imperialism and all the joys that come with that era. I guess I'd rather think that modern women aren't just "hot-house flowers preoccupied with sex and frail as a clothes-hanger" but are people in their own right, pretty much equal to everyone else.

Y'all have fun now. This conversation's pretty much done. Once it's hit the point where people can't argue the topic without resorting to blowing it way over the top, it's just not worth it.

 

[Ariosto]

Hussar, the thing is that you're starting a priori with a stereotype, then slinging it with a broad brush heedless of whether it applies. That women (and men, and people of all sorts of colors, and even of non-mammalian biology) might be treated in some old works more as people in their own right than in some modern works does not occur to you. Both of Sturgeon's Laws are perennial, I am afraid.

There's plenty of "cultural imperialism" by Hollywood and academia, colonizing and closing minds. Don't actually read the books; don't look into the man's life and deeds and relationships.

"Most people would rather die than think; in fact, they do so." - Bertrand Russell

 

[Mercutio01]

Wow. Just... wow.

We've gone from "be aware of the social climate of these stories" to outright banning and book burning.

This is why these conversations are virtually impossible to have. The second, the millisecond anyone says that maybe, just maybe, we should look at a work with a critical eye and maybe, just maybe, we should not simply ignore and whitewash the message in these stories, it's all about censorship and book burning.

I'm sure there's some funky latin phrase for people taking an argument to an extreme, and then trying to claim that's the point, but, meh, I can't be asked to remember it to be honest.

My entire, sole, solitary, singular, lone point is that pulp fiction of the early 20th century is frequently bigoted and mysogynistic and that perhaps we should base our game on works that aren't that.

That was NOT your point. Your point was that Edgar Rice Burroughs in particular was one of the worst examples of said bigotry. Which is both patently false and shows that you don't know what you're talking about. You also tried to narrowly interpret it to be a fact of pulp fiction alone, which is ALSO false. Literary "masters" of the same time period are far, far worse than ERB.

Me? Me, I'd rather have characters who aren't based in cultural imperialism and all the joys that come with that era. I guess I'd rather think that modern women aren't just "hot-house flowers preoccupied with sex and frail as a clothes-hanger" but are people in their own right, pretty much equal to everyone else.

What books WOULD you use? What books even in the modern age, dealing with feudal pseudo-european fantasy, have characters not based in cultural imperialism? Even D&D stalwarts like Drizzt are explicitly about this.

Also, your point that you made was not that maybe we should be aware of the cultural issue, as you asserted above, but that we should avoid ever mentioning, using, or otherwise even sideways referring to books that had those issues--the only difference being a self-imposed censorship rather than one imposed by an authority.

You are running on false pretenses (John Carter is the only white man who comes and steals the weak woman and tames the savages--which if you had read the book, which I seriously doubt based on that interpretation, would be easily demonstrated as a misunderstanding, at best, or an outright twisting to fit your agenda, at worst) which points out that you simply don't know what you're talking about. You then go on to say we should avoid any mention of books you classified based on those falsehoods.

You brought up the idea of censorship (a self-imposed one) even if you didn't explicitly label it as such. Then when it gets pointed out that your grasp of the work is shaky at best and that your self-imposed censorship is ridiculously selective (only applying to pulp fiction from the 1920s, which is hardly the era or niche of the most sexist/racist works in literature), you resort to attempting to use a "Godwin" argument and excuse yourself by claiming some sort of moral superiority.

 

[Storm Raven]

Look, the point I'm making here is hardly an obscure one. The criticism of Burroughs and many other authors of the time is not new, nor is it unsupported. It's pretty much taken as a given by and large.

It isn't new, but it isn't very well supported. Anyone who actually reads the books would fined the assertions made about ERB laughable.

Howzabout I put it more plainly?

The only white man on the planet is a superhuman, smarter, stronger and more civilized than everyone else. He arrives, bests the savages, and then proceeds to show everyone how to do society right.

Laughable like these sorts of claims. As pointed out before, Carter is not the only white man on the planet. (For some of the stories, he's not even the only American on the planet). There is an entire race of white martians (the Therns), and they are ruthlessly evil. How is that an example of "white guys are good"? There are also black martians, yellow martians, red martians, and green martians (as well as stranger beings like the plant men of mars and the kaldanes). Oddly, the red martians are explictly described as being the result of millennia of intermixing between the various martian races (excepting the green, who are radically different than any other martian race) resulting in a reddish skin tone. How the mixing of black, yellow and white results in red is a mystery to me, but that's not the point. The point is that if there was an implied racism here, then this would be described by the pejorative term "miscegenation" and condemned. Contrary to that, however, the red martians are described as the most civilized of all martians.

When Carter settles into martian society, he fits in, not because he is somehow superior to them morally, but because he is incredibly violent and warlike, just as they are. He becomes warlord of Mars, not by changing martian society, but by becoming part of it. It is hard to see how this marks him as being superior to the martians in any way other than swordsmanship. Further, other than the green martians, none of the various races of martians could be termed uncivilized, and most are explicitly described as being much more civilized and with better technology than humans have. In point of fact, if there is any kind of idealization that ERB indulges in it is the "noble savage" being superior to the decadent civilized man. In many ways, Carter succeeds not because he is more civilized than the martians, but rather because he is more barbaric.

I find your assertion that the green martians are somehow supposed to be a stand in for communism fairly unconvincing. Yes, children are raised communally, and all property is shared. On the other hand, the green martians hold slaves, have a king for a leader, and advance in rank by killing their superiors. Hardly a socialist vision of society. If ERB was trying to parody communism with the green martians, he did a poor job of it, especially since the green martians (under Tars Tarkus) become stalwart and loyal allies to Carter throughout the books. If he wanted to parody communism, he also had ample opportunities in other books outside the Barsoom series that would have been much easier, but he failed to do so. In The Mad King, set in eastern Europe during WWI, it would have been easy to introduce a communist villain to the story of royal intrigue and nationalist warfare, but he didn't. In the Tarzan books, the villain Rokloff is a Russian spy, a perfect opportunity to introduce a communist sympathizer, but Rokloff is an out and out czarist instead. Given that he passed up these golden opportunities to include evil communists in stories much better suited to their presence, it strains credulity to think that he included them in such a subtle way in A Princess of Mars.

The green martians seem to me to be much more like Spartan culture, and given that they are presented as an idealized warrior race and ERB was clearly interested in classical studies, they are probably a more likely inspirations. Given their nomadic culture and warlike ways, the green martians are also probably inspired by the plains Indians or the Mongols (or both), although they are clearly idealized as noble savages. Note, however, that Carter doesn't change their culture at all. The green martians remain unrepentant savages throughout the entire series of books.

When I picked up the various ERB books, I had been told about their racist overtones, and to be perfectly honest, I was not surprised when people warned me, as I have read a fair amount of pulp fiction from that time period. But when I read the books, I found that the "racism" of the novels is only a factor if you sort of half read them. You can draw racist conclusions from some of the things that happen in the books, but only if you don't read the entire book, and only if you aren't paying attention. Having read many of the "ERB has racism" treatments, I can only conclude that the authors of those pieces decided that since ERB wrote "only" pulp novels, that they could merely skim through the books and draw conclusions from that rather than actually reading them, because the criticisms simply don't hold up under any kind of scrutiny.

 

[mmadsen]

In any case I was surprised. When I was a kid I liked the Elric stories, even based a high school derivative character on him, but back then he also struck me as very evil.

When I first read the Elric stories, back in elementary school, he didn't strike me as evil so much as tragic. He was born into a cruel society, with torturers and other overtly "evil" elements, and he was trained from birth to rule that society -- and then he got caught up with an evil magic sword that killed his loved ones.

Well, what surprised me about reading Elric this time was I realized that Moorcock hadn't created Elric as evil at all, but rather he was a facade of evil, or a skin or skein of evil if you will, over the soul of a man struggling to be good.

As an adult, I see Elric as the product of a left-anarchist growing up in post-war Britain, bitter about Empire, etc. The New Wave cultural elements were, of course, totally lost on me as a kid.

Anyway, Elric is definitely an iconic figure in swords & sorcery fiction.