The first panel Friday morning, at 10, was “Representation vs. Cultural Appropriation: Where’s the Line?”
From the program description:
Whether you are a career writer or a complete newbie, writing diverse characters can quickly cross into cultural appropriation. Can new writers learn where that line is and learn how to avoid crossing it before they start writing? Writers and other professionals will discuss their experiences creating works of solid, meaningful cultural representation.
Curtis C. Chen (M), Shweta Adhyam, Lydia K. Valentine, Richard Stephens
The first thing pointed out was that “a character” cannot be diverse. You can have a diverse cast of characters, but a single character is not diverse, despite that term often being used to describe one.
Recommended podcast: “Yo, is this racist?”
Apparently, it often boils down to “If you have to ask…”
Some good examples of representation done well:
- Avatar: The Last Airbender
- In the sequel series, Kora, though, apparently women were represented better, but everything else was worse.
- Anything by Jeannette Ng
- Encanto
- Turning Red
- Good example especially of being respectful to own culture while also trying to fit in to a new one
Shweta Adhyam recommends googling the “Cultural Iceberg” – the idea that what you see of a culture is the top of an iceberg, but to really understand it or represent it well you need to know some of what’s below it, otherwise your depiction will seem shallow or false.
An example given is “What does a parent chewing out their child look like?
- When would they?
- How does the kid feel?
- What do others think when they see it?
As with anything else, you’ll end up knowing a lot that doesn’t appear on the page. But it still informs everything there even if it’s not seen directly.
Another book recommendation: Writing the Other
“Your story can be set in another world, but whatever you write will still be read in this one.”
— Shweta Adhyam
She was talking there about the writer’s responsibility to their readers.
One example was in Disney’s Robin Hood (the animated one), the animals are very distinctly coded white, despite being animals.
“It’s not pie.” – I don’t remember who said it, but they were pointing out that deliberately including a diverse cast and representation of people who aren’t the white men that feature so prominently in science fiction and fantasy doesn’t take away anything from those who are.
“We react to the bottom of the iceberg.” — Another reference to the “cultural iceberg”.
Further study: Decolonization. Much has been written about it, but the panel ran out of time by now, and googling it was left as an exercise for the reader. Or, the writer as the case may be.