When Fantasy Meets Africa

The roaring success of the recent Black Panther film is another sign that fantasy worlds are changing. The fictional African country of Wakanda as portrayed in Marvel comic books has been isolated and stagnant, a common problem with "Othering" of non-white cultures. The plot of the film addresses its isolationist past and in doing so, blazes a trail for other fantasy universes in how they portray African-like nations.

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[h=3]Marvel Deals With its "Other"[/h]Othering is a process in which other cultures are viewed through a biased lens of exoticism and isolationism. These cultures are not integrated into the world but are rather static, often amalgamating a region's various cultures into one homogeneous mass. The culture may be portrayed as never having advanced beyond what defines it as exotic.

Any world creation will likely be influence by the beliefs of the time, and many fantasy worlds -- Marvel's superhero universe included -- paint different cultures with broad strokes for white audiences as a form of shorthand. This is how we got Wakanda as a technologically-advanced culture that never fully engaged with the horrors of war that have rocked the world at large. As Nate Jones puts it:

It refuses to trade with other nations, though as one line in the movie makes clear, Wakandans are still able to consume American memes. As we see in a Western television broadcast in the movie, Wakanda is able to get away with this by masquerading as an impoverished third-world country, and since the country’s leadership refuses to take international aid, the rest of the world doesn’t ask too many questions.

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The plot of Black Panther addresses this isolationism -- a byproduct of "othering" Wakanda as a a fictional nation in Africa -- head on, and makes it clear that the Marvel Cinematic Universe plans to integrate Wakanda into its narrative like any other nation. It's a bold choice that will likely change the static nature of Wakanda forever. Role-playing games face a similar dilemma.
[h=3]RPGs and Africa[/h]There hasn't been a great track record in nuanced representation of African nations in tabletop role-playing games. G.A. Barber uses Rifts Africa by Palladium as an example:

...with a decided lack of POC in the art, and the entire continent serves as a place for non-Africans to adventure in. There are 67 interior pictures in Rifts Africa, of which 54 depict non-Africans or landscape, and 13 depict Africans. The first picture with Africans in it has them acting as porters for a white game hunter. Four of the pictures (just under 25% of the pictures depicting Africans) depict Africans as monsters. None of the pictures show Africans using modern or futuristic technology or weapons, none of them are of Africans fighting monsters or “looking cool”. In a single book, ostensibly about Africa, only 19% of the pictures show Africans (omission), and the few depictions of them make it clear they are there as set dressing and nothing more (stereotypes and limited roles).

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Dungeons & Dragons has slowly, steadily, been addressing this issue. Fifth Edition has made efforts to be more inclusive, and that reflects in the diversity of character art. The lead image for the human race in the Player's Handbook is of a black woman. And yet, D&D still struggles with its broad strokes representation of African nations, as the controversy over the depiction of Chult demonstrates in Tomb of Annihilation:

Its point of inspiration is a campaign setting that, for years, has been written off as tone-deaf. The new adventure draws on D&D co-creator Gary Gygax’s adventure Tomb of Horrors and combines that with source material detailing Chult, a jungle peninsula first conceived of in a 1992 novel called The Ring of Winter, in which an adventurer travels to Chult’s dinosaur-filled wilderness seeking the eponymous artifact...The canonical Chultan peninsula finally congealed in a 1993 campaign setting as a dinosaur-infested jungle where heat wiped out even the strongest adventurers and insects carried fatal diseases. Reptilian races and undead skeletons dominate the land and humans live in tribal clusters and clans. Its major city, Mezro, “rivals some of the most ‘civilized’ population centers in Faerun,” the setting reads. Slavery is mentioned about 40 times. In D&D’s 3rd edition, it’s written that Chultan priest-kings worship “strange deities” in the city of Mezro. In D&D’s 4th edition, Chult is located on what’s called the “Savage Coast.” It’s said there that the city of Port Nyanzaru is controlled by foreign traders who often must defend against pirates. Mezro has collapsed. It just sank into the abyss. What remains is this: “Human civilization is virtually nonexistent here, though an Amnian colony and a port sponsored by Baldur’s Gate cling to the northern coasts, and a few tribes—some noble savages, others depraved cannibals—roam the interior.”

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Tomb of Annihilation works hard to create a more comprehensive African culture in Chult, but it may suffer from not enough nuance:

While many players I talked to enjoyed how the history and political structures of Chult were expanded in Tomb of Annihilation (and enjoyed the adventure’s plot generally), they were still unimpressed by its execution. Its setting is an amalgamation of African cultures, a trope frequent in 20th century media that flattens the dimensionality of human experiences on the continent, which contains hundreds of ethnic groups. There are nods to West African voodoo, Southern African click-based Khoisan languages, East African attire (like Kenyan kofia hats) and the jungle climate of Central Africa. Its fantasy setting dissolves “Africa” into an all-in-one cultural stew that comes off as a little detached, sources I interviewed said.

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Is it possible to depict a more nuanced fantasy Africa? Nyambe: African Adventures for 3.5 D&D, by Christopher Dolunt, offers some hope:

My motivation for creating Nyambe was simple. Africa was a major part of the Earth that has little or no representation in fantasy literature, let alone RPGs. When it does appear, it usually follows the pulp fiction model: steaming jungles, bloodthirsty cannibals, and dark gods long forgotten by the civilized races. Of course, historical Africa was nothing like that, so my goal for Nyambe was to create a fantasy version of Africa based on the actual history and mythology of Africa, rather than previous fantasy depictions. So, I went about taking snippets of history or myth, and twisting them, adding fantasy elements or changing specifics to make them fit into an OGL world.

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[h=3]Now What?[/h]Wizards of the Coast made considerable strides in increasing D&D's diverse representation and transitioning Chult from conquered land to fantasy nation, but there's still work to do. As more people of color play D&D, the game will need to change to accommodate its players' diverse views. With Black Panther leading the way, here's hoping future game designers will take note.

Mike "Talien" Tresca is a freelance game columnist, author, communicator, and a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to http://amazon.com. You can follow him at Patreon.

 

[Sunseeker]

Something to think about for everyone, especially the self-confessed "African allies" in this whole discussion, which, while very informative, is also blatant evidence of the privilege being paraded online that is not afforded to a significant majority of African children, who live in rural African villages across many countries in Africa (especially Sub-Saharan Africa) and, thus, unable to access all these wonderful books you discussed (both the bad stereotypes and the good respectful ones).


In fact, I can almost bet a winning hand that the vast majority of those participating in this thread do not come from a rural African background (but I will not get into the politics of why many African nations despite years after Independence are worse off than relatively newer formed nations in some other parts of the world).


So while we debate the merits and demerits of cultural appropriation or even authentic representation, almost all of us here, are debating from positions of privilege that are just not available to the millions of children in rural Africa.


Just think about this point of view while you consider other replies.

Well, that's nice and all, but that's sorta the point. We can have a voice in the process while they can't (or are substantially less likely to be able to do so). I mean I'm not the friggen Lorax of sub-saharan African kids here but it's hardly disingenuous to say "Hey, those folks can't speak for themselves but you oughta keep them in mind!"

I mean, what's the alternative? F-em?

 

[Celebrim]

As for the idea that there are no struggles that aren’t common to “the human experience”...that is literally just blatant nonsense.

If I was wrong, then it would be pointless to write about those struggles, as no one would be able to relate to them even if I did describe them.

It seems to me that you have two radical positions here. First, that a person's experiences are primarily the result of belonging to some group, so that everyone in that group can relate to the experiences of everyone else in it. That is to say, if you are black woman then you are allowed to write about the experiences of being a black woman, even if that black woman is a fictional character. And secondly, you seem to hold the opinion that despite this universal experience everyone in the groups you are slapping your labels on have, nonetheless everyone's individual experiences are so unique that no one else can possibly share them in common.

I find both of those positions "blatant nonsense", but perhaps those aren't actually what you are saying.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

This. And it's important to recognize that the fantasy trials of Fantasy Black Woman in FantasyLand don't need to line up to real life, she may have some that are similar, she may have none, she may have lived a privileged life of royalty. That's all fine and dandy for FantasyLand.

But if I (a white, middle-class male) were to want to write a story about the real trials of Real Black Woman IRL, I would be well out of my league, because I have experienced nothing in my life that would even remotely mirror the experiences of an IRL minority woman, or even a white woman! But if I wanted my character to resonate with the audience, I would need to know those experiences, at least second-hand from someone who has studied them, or at ideally lived them, or both!

Sure, we may have common experiences: difficulty finding a job, trouble with bad landlords, that one waiter who was a jerk. But these "shared experiences" are so generic as to be essentially meaningless. Nobody wants to read a story about "all those things everybody does". They want to read a story about someone who has unique struggles and challenges to overcome. That's why there are movies about lone-wolf cops with nothing to lose, and there aren't movies about Shidaku's Day of Cold-Calling. We just assume that this person we're reading about has normal problems too, but we don't need to read about it.

Right! Tell whatever stories you want, but before telling stories about people whose lives you know fragall about, talk to actual humans who have some understanding of the thing.

Black Panther employed African experts on language, costume, and culture, and Black writers, director, etc, and a huge part of why it is so good is that everyone involved had so much passion for it because of all that.

My favorite example is actually from music. You can’t get an album like Tracy Chapman’s first, self-titled, album from The Mountain Goats, unless someone like Tracy is writing on the album. John is one of the best folk composers of our time, but he hasn’t lived what Tracy has lived, and he isn’t immersed in a never ending sea of explorations of lives like hers.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

If I was wrong, then it would be pointless to write about those struggles, as no one would be able to relate to them even if I did describe them.

It seems to me that you have two radical positions here. First, that a person's experiences are primarily the result of belonging to some group, so that everyone in that group can relate to the experiences of everyone else in it. That is to say, if you are black woman then you are allowed to write about the experiences of being a black woman, even if that black woman is a fictional character. And secondly, you seem to hold the opinion that despite this universal experience everyone in the groups you are slapping your labels on have, nonetheless everyone's individual experiences are so unique that no one else can possibly share them in common.

I find both of those positions "blatant nonsense", but perhaps those aren't actually what you are saying.

I think you are intentionally using dishonest rhetorical tactics, here, so don’t expect any serious engagement.

 

[Celebrim]

This. And it's important to recognize that the fantasy trials of Fantasy Black Woman in FantasyLand don't need to line up to real life, she may have some that are similar, she may have none, she may have lived a privileged life of royalty. That's all fine and dandy for FantasyLand.

Black women can't live a privileged life in reality? Is there some single black woman that can stand in for all the variety of experience black women have? Tell me the traits of this woman, please.

But if I (a white, middle-class male) were to want to write a story about the real trials of Real Black Woman IRL, I would be well out of my league, because I have experienced nothing in my life that would even remotely mirror the experiences of an IRL minority woman, or even a white woman! But if I wanted my character to resonate with the audience, I would need to know those experiences, at least second-hand from someone who has studied them, or at ideally lived them, or both!

This moves the goal posts. You might be well out of your league, and I must take that for granted. I'm probably 'out of my league' as well, depending on the specific cultural background of the person I'm planning to write about. I'm not planning to write a novel with a black female protagonist in the near future, and I hope that if I write one with a male protagonist that I'm sheltered by your theory from criticism that I'm not presenting diverse enough of a cast. (I note in passing that JK Rawlings isn't accused of being unable to write believably of the travails of a teenage boy, despite never having been one.) But if you open up the possibility that I could learn and study about being someone other than who I am, and then I would no longer be 'out of my league' you've totally changed the terms of this debate. Previously it was asserted that it was not possible for a "white male" to write about a "black woman". Now you've given a path by which he could do so. Now it's as if you are disagreeing with me while agreeing with me. Now that the goal post have moved, we aren't as far apart as all that.

Sure, we may have common experiences: difficulty finding a job, trouble with bad landlords, that one waiter who was a jerk. But these "shared experiences" are so generic as to be essentially meaningless.

No, quite the contrary. These are the experiences of life that are most important. They are what you want to write about and to a large part what makes a story worthwhile. You change the setting perhaps to provide novelty, but its those core and common experiences that give the story power - loss, death, love, friendship, pain, failure, success, and so forth. We could refine that list a lot to more and more specific, but they'd still hold a lot in common.

Nobody wants to read a story about "all those things everybody does". They want to read a story about someone who has unique struggles and challenges to overcome.

Well, yes and no. We might never have been marked from the time we were a year old with a lightning bolt and been the chosen one destined to fight a dark wizard, but that is not IMO why a book like Harry Potter was so successful.

That's why there are movies about lone-wolf cops with nothing to lose, and there aren't movies about Shidaku's Day of Cold-Calling. We just assume that this person we're reading about has normal problems too, but we don't need to read about it.

We have a very different idea of what literature is. Shidaku's Day of Cold-Calling could in fact be an important part of a very good story. I'm more terrified of Cold-Calling than almost anything I can think of.

 

[Celebrim]

I think you are intentionally using dishonest rhetorical tactics, here, so don’t expect any serious engagement.

Ah, in that case, I won't bother.

 

[Gradine]

@Celebrim no one, anywhere, is saying that you can’t tell stories that are about a black woman if you’re a white guy. They’re saying that you do not have the relevant experience to tell a story that is about the specific experience of being a black woman in America, for instance, when you are a white dude.

As for the idea that there are no struggles that aren’t common to “the human experience”...that is literally just blatant nonsense.

Came to respond with essentially this, but you beat me to the punch. I'll add that, just because you're a straight white dude doesn't mean you can't have well-rounded, multi-dimensional female, queer, and/or people of color in your stories (you absolutely should, in fact!) It also doesn't even mean that they can't be dealing with issues of sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. Just that the general consensus is that you shouldn't be writing stories that are entirely or primarily about those issues if you don't have the first-hand experience. I'd go so far as to argue that doesn't even mean that you couldn't try and possibly even be successful at it! Just that... there's going to be criticism either way regarding telling stories that aren't yours to tell.

Other than that, I can't find myself arguing with most of the rest of post, and I especially want to agree on the point about stereotypes. I did particularly call out stereotypes that are negative, but all stereotypes are problematic and harmful, includes ones that might be considered "positive".

 

[Gradine]

If I was wrong, then it would be pointless to write about those struggles, as no one would be able to relate to them even if I did describe them.

It seems to me that you have two radical positions here. First, that a person's experiences are primarily the result of belonging to some group, so that everyone in that group can relate to the experiences of everyone else in it. That is to say, if you are black woman then you are allowed to write about the experiences of being a black woman, even if that black woman is a fictional character. And secondly, you seem to hold the opinion that despite this universal experience everyone in the groups you are slapping your labels on have, nonetheless everyone's individual experiences are so unique that no one else can possibly share them in common.

I find both of those positions "blatant nonsense", but perhaps those aren't actually what you are saying.

To give you the benefit of the doubt [MENTION=6704184]doctorbadwolf[/MENTION] didn't, I think you are severely mistaking their position. Your first stated position is not only correct but hardly radical at all. To deny that black people face experiences as a result of being black that other people don't face, and that most black people are able to relate to those experiences is to deny simply truths, basic reality, and essentially all data that has ever been collected on racial bias and discrimination. People of different races may have faced similar experiences, but they still tend vary race-to-race (just to stick the example of race, but sub in gender, sexuality, religion, disability, etc.) in extremely significant ways. Your second position is radically misunderstanding what they're saying.

There are experiences that universal to, say, black women, but every individual black woman experiences those in slightly different ways from one another, but in ways that are still relatable to most black women. I say most because there are always going to be exceptions, folks who belong to any particular identity group that have not experienced the negative things that most of the other members of their group, or have simply not noticed them, or have simply been able to ignore said experiences thanks to some other matter of privilege (usually, class).

That is to say, there do exist experiences that only happen to black women, but don't happen to all black women, and don't happen to every black woman in equal measure or in quite the same manner.

Also, if you are not a black woman (say, you are white man, but even a black man or a white woman), this does not mean that you cannot understand or empathize with their experiences. I am a white man, and I like to think I possess some measure of both. Never perfectly, because I will never experience those myself and can simply never truly know how it feels, which is precisely why I shouldn't go about writing stories about those experiences. But I can, however, address them as well as I can, such as that is, from my own admittedly limited point of view.

 

[doctorbadwolf]

Came to respond with essentially this, but you beat me to the punch. I'll add that, just because you're a straight white dude doesn't mean you can't have well-rounded, multi-dimensional female, queer, and/or people of color in your stories (you absolutely should, in fact!) It also doesn't even mean that they can't be dealing with issues of sexism, racism, homophobia, etc. Just that the general consensus is that you shouldn't be writing stories that are entirely or primarily about those issues if you don't have the first-hand experience. I'd go so far as to argue that doesn't even mean that you couldn't try and possibly even be successful at it! Just that... there's going to be criticism either way regarding telling stories that aren't yours to tell.

Other than that, I can't find myself arguing with most of the rest of post, and I especially want to agree on the point about stereotypes. I did particularly call out stereotypes that are negative, but all stereotypes are problematic and harmful, includes ones that might be considered "positive".

Absolutely right, thank you.

And honestly that is exactly where sensitivity readers come in (paid when possible/practical) to the process, which you touched on before.

Also, you’re absolutely right in your reading of my position in the other post. I haven’t the inclination or patience to give that poster the benefit of the doubt, but I commend your patience in doing so.

 

[Celebrim]

To give you the benefit of the doubt [MENTION=6704184]doctorbadwolf[/MENTION] didn't, I think you are severely mistaking their position. Your first stated position is not only correct but hardly radical at all. To deny that black people face experiences as a result of being black that other people don't face, and that most black people are able to relate to those experiences is to deny simply truths, basic reality, and essentially all data that has ever been collected on racial bias and discrimination. People of different races may have faced similar experiences, but they still tend vary race-to-race (just to stick the example of race, but sub in gender, sexuality, religion, disability, etc.) in extremely significant ways. Your second position is radically misunderstanding what they're saying.

There are experiences that universal to, say, black women, but every individual black woman experiences those in slightly different ways from one another, but in ways that are still relatable to most black women. I say most because there are always going to be exceptions, folks who belong to any particular identity group that have not experienced the negative things that most of the other members of their group, or have simply not noticed them, or have simply been able to ignore said experiences thanks to some other matter of privilege (usually, class).

I think I can sum up my objection to that by saying that I don't think there are experiences that are universal to all black women. To believe otherwise is to create a stereotype out of the phrase "black woman" and one that is likely both negative and false. There might be experiences that are common to most black women in a particular place and time, whether to a majority or to a plurality. But any experience absolutely universal to that group would be one universal enough to extend beyond it as well, by virtue of our common humanity.

But then, to confuse that further, you say this:

That is to say, there do exist experiences that only happen to black women, but don't happen to all black women...

Now, I'm not entirely sure that I agree that there experiences that only happen to black women. I'm rather agnostic on that fact. Maybe there are and maybe there aren't. Someone could explain one and I'd feel I'd learned something. To point out a similar idea, the experience of childbirth only happens to women and is exclusive to and common to women. But to me, when you say an experience is universal, you mean exactly that it happens to all people. I would not assert that childbirth is an experience universal to women.

I would also not assert that though the experience of childbirth is exclusive to women, that it was so extraordinary in its uniqueness that it could not be understood or written about by a man. (And I'm using childbirth here precisely because I consider that there is no possible human experience more extraordinary and exclusive, so that no greater example could be given.) Nor in particular would I ever assert that there was something about being black that was as different from being white as the self-evident differences between men and women. The contrary position strikes me as overtly racist.

and don't happen to every black woman in equal measure or in quite the same manner.

I mean fundamentally, if we throw away "black woman" as a stereotype, not only is this obvious, but it's obvious that this very fact means that a black woman has no more or no less right to write about a fictional black woman than a white man does. Because there is no such thing as this universal black woman in the first place. She could be from rural Minnesota, inner city New York, suburban Dallas Texas, Brazil, or Kenya and these women would have no more in common with each other necessarily than I or someone else would have in common with them except for perhaps common experiences (like childbirth) that don't particular have anything to with being "black". The same thing applies to the stereotype "white male". It's quite likely that a man from a cultural background similar to the fictional black woman could right with much greater authority about being a black woman in that culture, than some black woman from some different culture. When you start dealing with people as individuals, the utility of these stereotypes like "black woman" go away. I have very little idea what they mean; I know, have known, and know of too many "black women".

Also, if you are not a black woman (say, you are white man, but even a black man or a white woman), this does not mean that you cannot understand or empathize with their experiences.

This is the sort of statement that makes me think we are not so far apart, and it is the sort of concession or viewpoint that removes my objection. But, as a precondition of being able to understand an experience, I must have some common experience with them. If I have no frame of reference in common, then I can never empathize with their experiences. I can't possible empathize with seeing something blue, if I've never seen anything blue. If someone tells me about the delight of eating a ripe mango, fresh picked from the tree, I can't fully sympathize unless I've done that very thing myself, but I can't empathize at all without knowledge of ripe fruit, sweetness, hunger, and so forth. If I have knowledge of ripe fruit picked fresh from the tree, sweetness in your mouth, juice dripping down the chin, and hunger satiated then even if I never eat the mango, I'm together with them in that place. (Full disclosure, I've eat a lot of ripe mangos.)

As long as you are willing to concede that overlap and the ability to come to understand, then on this topic we only disagree about small and unimportant details or the particular semantics. It's not at all clear to me that everyone in this thread is willing to concede that much though.