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.

 

[Gradine]

Holding to this guideline as you explain it, would prevent most anthropology-, history-, and archeology- -based novels from reaching the publishing stage.
It would serve to prevent people from learning about the experiences (pleasant or otherwise) of others, rather than increasing understanding of those experiences.

I'll point out that many of our worst and most racist stereotypes had their genesis in early anthropologists and historians. It's almost as if things tend to go much better when people are allowed to tell their own stories, warts and all. What a coincidence, am I right?

 

[Imaro]

[MENTION=57112]Gradine[/MENTION] I just want to commend you on the patience you've shown in this discussion with many of the posters. You're a better person than me. I think I've grown too cynical when it comes to ENWorld and discussing anything related to Africa. Keep fighting the good fight man.

 

[Gradine]

@Gradine I just want to commend you on the patience you've shown in this discussion with many of the posters. You're a better person than me. I think I've grown too cynical when it comes to ENWorld and discussing anything related to Africa. Keep fighting the good fight man.

You must have missed the part upthread where I ripped into Celebrim then . I have a tendency to snark and get snippy and even begin to think the worst in people, which doesn't really help anybody. As I said somewhere earlier, I try to give people the benefit of the doubt that they mean well, but that their experiences have led them to accept conclusions different than the ones I've come to. So while I can still believe very strongly that I'm right and the other side is wrong (harmfully so), I need to remember that I can't necessarily fault people that also believe they've got it all figured out my own position is doing more harm than good. Just do my best to state my case and hope I get people thinking, if not totally changed. And I may learn a few things myself along the way.

I haven't always been trying to be this empathetic, not even within this own thread. Nobody's perfect, least of all me. But I think it's still an important conversation to have and engage with. And as someone with most types of privileged identities you could think (I am a cishet white male), I can't really blame anyone for whom this subject is more directly personal for wanting to sit it out either. I had to step away from this one myself for a period.

 

[Celebrim]

On the contrary, the generalities are what are pretty important in this conversation.

No, absolutely not. From generalities is how we get stereotypes and racism and all the various ills we are discussing! No, I don't concede that statement at all. The generalities are evil. The specifics are what is important.

Your specific example, meanwhile, is pointless, a single exception you seem to think disproves the general rule.

First of all, my jaw has literally dropped. Where the hell do you think 'general rules' come from if not from the specifics?

Secondly, there is no general rule so it never even occurred to me to introduce this as an exception to it. I introduced it to spark a conversation about specifics that people wouldn't flee into vague generalities.

Thirdly, it's not a single example. It's a particularly powerful example, but it's far from the only example. But really, it's only the examples that matter. The rule is only useful if it helps us with examples. If the rule doesn't apply, then its useless or even wicked. Your theory has to stand up to testing, or its worthless. If you won't discard your theory in the face of example, then you are irrational.

Fourthly, technically a single exception does disprove a rule.

Yes, Harold Courlander was a person who did a remarkable amount of research in the lived experiences of black Americans and wrote with exceptional respect and honor to those experiences. He was also a white man who, by and large, made his living telling the stories of black people. That is, at best, an ethical gray area.

What??? Seriously? How the hell is that an ethical gray area?

One might make the argument that his lifes' work amounted to more good than harm, and I certainly wouldn't take that away from him.

Very generous of you.

And yes, Alex Haley plagiarized him when writing Roots. Unless that has ruined things for all black people everywhere forever, I'm not really sure what your point is bringing that up.

In the context of who can said to own what, you can't see how that matters to the discussion? And the only take away you have is that it would have been wrong if he had "ruined things for all black people everywhere forever"?

I do know many black people who still see within Roots their stories (or at the very least, the stories of their ancestors) and point to it as a cultural artifact (both as a novel and through the multiple TV miniseries) that is, essentially, black stories told by black artists, and still powerful for that very reason.

That is amazingly racist. Why the heck should you judge a story by the color of the man who wrote it? Am I expected to do that? Who is expected to do that and why do you expect that of them?

Again, unless your point is that Courlander broke the "black ceiling" and Haley ruined all black peoples' claim to being able to tell their own stories as black people, I can't see any real point to this digression.

Digression? Digression? And no, that sure as heck isn't the point of my story. The point of my story is that a white man wrote a good story about a fictional black man. Your take away seems to be that that was ethically gray at best, but to be actual plagiarism invites a shrug.

 

[Eltab]

... realities that have yet to be fully addressed and corrected ... would completely erase the realities of inequity today ...

How do you propose to do that?
The fact continues to stand: most people of -insert advantaged group here- are not guilty of any act that caused other people to be disadvantaged.

Bewailing the existence of inequity does not really help distinguish between that imposed by one person / group upon another, and the inequities that naturally result as the result of differing effects of differing decisions. (What do I mean by the latter? For instance: inner-cities, where many teenage girls have children - thereby sabotaging their own economic future and the child's - are poverty-stricken. Whereas societies where childbirth waits until after education, employment, and marriage tend to be wealthy.)

In the context of Africa, since the 1950s, the peoples of the continent have also been cursed with post-Independence governments that understood enough Socialism to become effective thieves of all available 'surplus' wealth, but not enough to know NOT to kill the golden goose. Hence, a concentration of misery that had nothing to do with any outside group's action / inaction.

 

[ngenius]

Great arguments but still tone deaf in some parts.

So if a modern black American author writes a story about Africa and then profits from its publication, is that better than a white American writing the same story and profiting from it, with both profiting at the expense of the suffering Africans whose stories were good enough for a novel, but whose voices were not properly represented, since the profits from the stories based on their African experiences were basically kept in an already privileged nation (GDP-wise at least than any of the countries of Africa)?

This sort of exploitation could also apply to many role playing games. Most published hard cover full color table top games, including, those inspired by various African cultures, are just too expensive for a majority of African children to ever purchase and play with their under-privileged friends.

Is cultural exploitation okay in the games industry when publishers incorporate ideas and the stories from an under-privileged group to profit someone other than the group whose experiences created a profitable narrative?

 

[Gradine]

How do you propose to do that?

I don't have the answer to that. I don't think anyone has all the answers to that. I think maybe not continuing to steal stories from cultures who have had, as a matter of historical colonization, had their narratives and stories stolen from them, is a pretty damn good place to start though.

The fact continues to stand: most people of -insert advantaged group here- are not guilty of any act that caused other people to be disadvantaged.[/quote]

That we're not personally guilty means we needn't feel any guilt, not that we aren't still responsible for dismantling the inequity that we benefit from at the expense of others.

Bewailing the existence of inequity does not really help distinguish between that imposed by one person / group upon another, and the inequities that naturally result as the result of differing effects of differing decisions. (What do I mean by the latter? For instance: inner-cities, where many teenage girls have children - thereby sabotaging their own economic future and the child's - are poverty-stricken. Whereas societies where childbirth waits until after education, employment, and marriage tend to be wealthy.)

You are ignoring history again. The negative impacts you describe are not the net results of individuals making bad choices but of structural inequalities taking good choices away. The fact that you bring up education as a factor for wealthier, better-off communities boggles the mind; do you actually believe that access to education is equal in our society?

In the context of Africa, since the 1950s, the peoples of the continent have also been cursed with post-Independence governments that understood enough Socialism to become effective thieves of all available 'surplus' wealth, but not enough to know NOT to kill the golden goose. Hence, a concentration of misery that had nothing to do with any outside group's action / inaction.

The argument would (and has) been made that these oppressive regimes exist because the conditions created and through methods learned from colonization. I'm not nearly expert enough to know how much credence to give those arguments, but people smarter than I or, I assume, anyone else on this thread have made them. Of course, there were terrible things about these societies pre-colonization, and who's to say how those would have advanced or been corrected in the absence of them. But I think that saying that colonization (to say nothing of the modern-day tactics of the World Bank and IMF) have nothing to do with the current plight of Africa is, once again, ignoring important historical factors and contexts.

 

[Gradine]

Snip

This is where our conversation must end, I'm afraid, because we're not even having the same argument anymore. You've dismissed that which is most relevant to the conversation without so much as an explanation as to why you believe it's irrelevant, and you seem to want continue with this incredibly specific digression that has little bearing on what's actually being discussed. Not to mention that I don't think you have a strong grasp on what racism means, at least not in any sense I'm familiar with, including the ones that wrong. I at least can't wrap my head around how stating that black people still find incredible power in the story of Roots in spite of its sordid history can be, in any way, racist.

 

[Sunseeker]

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.

OOOO, whatboutism. Sorry, not bothering.

This moves the goal posts.

No, it doesn't. This is exactly what we've been talking about. And by "we" I mean the people who know what this is all about. If you're not one of them, I suggest some research on the subject.

(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.)

Because she's writing about Fantasy Boy in Fantasy Land. That plays right into what I said. His trials don't need to mirror the IRL trials of IRL Boy because he's not IRL Boy, he's Fantasy Boy.

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.

I don't know who asserted what, and frankly: I don't care. A lot of people like to shoot their mouths off about what Cultural Appropriation is or isn't. I spent the time to learn about it as part of my major, so I can, with a reasonable certainty say I know what it is and I cannot be held accountable for what other people might claim.

And yes, I have read theories by a few that a white person can never write about a black person, or should never, or that a man should never write about a woman, and so on and forth. These people are by-and-large the minority and generally considered on the extreme end. The general consensus is that you shouldn't write about things you don't know about without putting in some reasonable effort to learn about them (and then since you would know about them, the statement wouldn't apply to you).

The goal posts haven't been moved. You've just been claiming the extremes are the norms, and this is false.

No, quite the contrary. These are the experiences of life that are most important.

YOU may think so, but the vast majoritydoes not agree with you. So on an Occams Razor scale between "the vast majority be wrong because you think these things are important" and "you must be wrong because the vast majority disagrees with you" I'm going to think that the obvious answer here is: you are wrong.

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.

These subjects are so meaningless as to not even warrant discussion. Yes, people want to read about "loss, death, love, friendship, pain, failure, success, and so forth" but they want to read about the guy who had the unique loss. The weird death. The crazy love. The impossible friendship. The extreme pain. The punishing failure. The incredible success. They don't want to read about Bob and Joe's normal adventures in normal time.

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.

Then lets take the fantasy out of it and talk about Diary of a Wimpy Kid, which is for all intents and purposes, Harry Potter but without the magic. This book was successful for many of the same reasons Harry Potter was, it wrote about a subject in a manner that was familiar to the target audience. It didn't spice things up with magic but fundamentally while Hollywood did a lot of that, Harry Potter was your usual coming-of-age story...spiced up with some magic.

Now I can't speak to the research or input these writers got on their subject, or their personal knowledge of it, but my point is: they wrote stories to appeal to a certain target demographic. It worked because it connected with those readers. That's all I'm saying about if your want to write the IRL Adventures of Black Female. You're writing a product to appeal to a certain target demographic so you need to know your stuff.

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.

Humor aside, I don't care what your definition of literature is. We have plenty of sample material based on what books get read a lot and what books don't that we can objectively say what sort of material makes for interesting literature and what sort of material doesn't. You'll note that Tolkein doesn't have a book detailing the 61 years between The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings because what Bilbo did can be summed up in a couple sentences: he went home with his money and led a nice normal life for a really long time. Because noone is going to read that book. Noone is going to buy that book. But they'll happily read the book that surmises Bilbo's life in a short paragraph.

 

[Celebrim]

This is where our conversation must end...

I'm afraid so. I'm finding I can't continue this discussion without really telling you what I think. In as gentle of terms as I can muster, you live in a world of boxes, labels, and stereotypes which you cast around freely and impose on people with arguments from averages and statistics and other crazy nonsense. The thing you most remind me of is shouting with the son of the local head of the KKK over whether average IQ's proved blacks were inferior. I find your whole worldview just as detestable and it has pretty much the same basis.

You say, "I at least can't wrap my head around how stating that black people still find incredible power in the story of Roots in spite of its sordid history can be, in any way, racist."

Well, you might could wrap your head around that more easily if you actually had contemplated what you actually said and what I said in response. Banal generalities like your strawman aren't the problem. I already made it clear that I have no problem with people finding incredible power in the story of roots in spite of its sordid history, so pretending that is what you said is just a really crappy thing to do.

What you actually said was, "I do know many black people who still see within Roots their stories...essentially, black stories told by black artists, and still powerful for that very reason."

You are probably sadly right, but it disgusts me that the test of a story's importance seems not to be truth or quality, but rather the color of the person who told it. You'll happily apply a double standard there and not be the slightest ashamed about it. That's the problem I have here. I don't mind that a story spoke to them. I do mind that the only reason it spoke to them is the color of the author.

Your way will never bring healing, only division. It breeds hatred and contempt and irrationality.

You've dismissed that which is most relevant to the conversation without so much as an explanation as to why you believe it's irrelevant, and you seem to want continue with this incredibly specific digression that has little bearing on what's actually being discussed.

I can't even imagine how you think that.

We have a very different theory on what it means to be human and what it means to be moral. You accused me of not knowing what "identity" means. I think you are quite wrong. We have a fundamental disagreement on its importance. Let's remove all ambiguity from the term. In your world view, a person's identity is the collective groups that they belong to - that is the thing that makes them the same as other people (at least by your agreed upon classification scheme). In Latin, you are talking about identitas. Your view of morality is that we should treat people according to the collective group that they belong to according to your preferred classification scheme (race, gender, sexuality, etc). Ironically, you call this 'not being racist'. My view could not be further away from yours. In my world view, a person's identity is the thing that makes them uniquely themselves - what in the Latin we would call the ipseitas. In my world view, the person's individual ipseitas is vastly more important than their identitas. Only from knowing the ipseitas do we truly know them and treat them as individuals rather than as labels on a box or numbers in a bin. If all we know is their identitas, we might know something about them, but usually not nearly as much as we would think because every identitas is tainted by stereotypes and biases. Only if we see past that can we know the individual. In my world view, the way we treat each other morally is to treat them according to what they deserve as individuals, preferably with the same respect that we would like to be treated with as individuals. We don't lump them into classes and then think we've got enough to go by. We call that in my world prejudice. We call it that, because that is what it is.