On the Necessity of Change in Fantasy

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

This is sort of old news now, but I've been meaning to bring this up for a few days.

Anyway, the news is that Wizards of the Coast, publishers of the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game (which they acquired from TSR in 1997), have announced that they are going to be making some cosmetic changes to the games to better represent diversity and change alleged racist content. I first found the announcement on Tor.com, which can be read below and which also links directly to the company statement:

https://www.tor.com/2020/06/29/wizards-of-the-coast-takes-steps-towards-changing-racist-dungeons-dragons-content/

I can't say for sure, but I think that, once upon a time, I might have been a bit troubled by this "politically correct" move, but as I am increasingly finding myself distanced from both straight right or left ideologies, I applaud their intentions. For one thing, here is an article on Black Gate that's also worth reading on the subject:

https://www.blackgate.com/2020/06/30/inherent-evil-is-lazy/

As I've grown more fond of stories, I can see the benefits to this from a writing standpoint. Fantasy - and by extension all genre fiction - can't stay in a bubble or it will stagnate. Yes, that may mean it gives a platform to some positions that you might not necessarily agree with, but if you shut out those voices, then it comes across as exclusionary. It can't stay the same way that it was in the 1950s. The genre needs to grow and adapt to modern developments in culture and even shed a lot of its more problematic material.

For one thing, I don't think that it was ever meant to be that way in the first place, and at least from my limited "research", genre fans have been making these arguments for years. For instance, take the announcement from both links regarding the characterizations of orcs and dark elves (drow), both typical fantasy archetypes. Now some may argue that this may come across as a denial of evil in the world, that what should be called out as sinful and despicable is being treated as valid. However, I don't think the authors and creators of such characters ever meant for them to be necessarily inherently evil - that's just something that imitators and followers have exaggerated and taken out of context. I'm thinking in particular about J. R. R. Tolkien and the orcs. While some, again, may decry this as a move by "PC culture", from what I've read, Tolkien always had difficulty in reconciling his own depictions of the orcs with his devout Catholic beliefs, hence why The Silmarillion was unfinished at the time of his death. It seems that his plan for Middle-earth was always for evil to be a deliberate CHOICE, not something inherent, as if comparatively unattractive species are diabolical by nature, but he had difficulty in finding a proper solution. Everyone who read and capitalized on the books simply ran with the ugly-is-evil and born-evil narratives, to the consternation of many who realized the unfortunate implications. The choices of Wizards of the Coast in this case are simply a long overdue correction of something taken far beyond the original context.

So I'm glad that they're making the effort, because, in a world that's increasingly ambiguous and polarized, treating everything as black and white seems a little too simplistic and reductionist now. In order to be more truthful and honest, writing needs to acknowledge the complexity of life.

So what's you're opinion on the decision? Do you think that "inherent evil" is a lazy way out in writing? How do you go about reconciling right and wrong with ambiguity?

[Raven]

I think it entirely depends on the stories. I can see there being an issue in Tolkien's use of humans of different ethnic/racial descriptors as fighting for Sauron, although there may also be historical reasons for why he chose to do that (Tolkien was writing within a very European mythic sensibility, and Europe had been invaded for centuries by Arabic and Asian peoples).

Yet when it comes to orcs and trolls and goblins, I see no problem why it is problematic to describe physically hideous creatures as being morally evil by default. At the same time, we see within the Warcraft mythos that orcish people in that universe have been treated with a lot more "humanity" than in Tolkien's world. That is fine within that world. In Tolkien's world, the orcs are servants of darkness and vile by nature. In Tolkien's world, people struggle with evil internally (particularly in relation to the ring) but evil is also externalized in the evil creatures of the world. Sometimes fantasy gives authors the opportunity to embody and externalize evils that often have roots in the internal and so depict the battle against evil in an external way. This is a function of imagination and mythopoeia. Certainly, that can be done in a racially insensitive way, but that is not a given. Not all fantasy must be so terribly morally ambiguous as is in vogue in today's fantasy. The Chronicles of Narnia contains both creatures wicked by default and individuals who have chosen evil. I don't think that is a problem as far as storytelling.

[Coír Draoi Ceítien]

Yeah, I can see that. I was going to politely disagree, but I think I have to put my thoughts together more before I do.

Anyway, here are a couple of relevant articles about Tolkien's work and racism accusations, both of which touch on what you've been talking about. Sure, I meant for the initial post to cover more than Tolkien, but since he's pretty much the trope codifier and it always seems to come back to him, that's a good place to start, I guess.

Here's a defense of Tolkien from Psychology Today, though it could be problematic in itself: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/checkpoints/202004/no-orcs-arent-racist

And here's a large article on The Tolkien Gateway - a great Tolkien wiki - on the racism subject: http://tolkiengateway.net/wiki/Racism_in_Tolkien%27s_Works

Both are pretty interesting, in my own opinion.