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verstehen has a post on
racial stereotypes in Heroes, and of course, now I have to stick my nose into this!
I have been debating writing a post on race in Heroes off and on for a while -- I say this not to be all "This was my idea first!" because the more people talking about race in Heroes and in general, the better. But I haven't because I didn't want to rain on the fannish squee, because I didn't want a giant wankfest in my LJ, and largely because I am tired and do not want to argue about racism for the six bazillionth time, especially because I am starting to feel like the person who is always bringing race into things. So many thanks to
verstehen for posting and getting me off my lazy butt.
So first, a few general notes on the rebuttals to
verstehen:
- Even if all the characters, white and non-white, on Heroes start out as stereotypes, the show can still be racist. Because of the general lack of characters of color in the media and the general prevalence of white characters, stereotypes of minorities have a much larger impact than stereotypes of white people. Also, the power differential between white people and people of color is such that stereotypes of people of color hurt POC more. Whether or not the characters of color transcend the stereotypes enough to counter this is another question.
- In the tail-end of her post (sorry, I tend to assume fannish people I meet via LJ are female), verstehen writes about race in casting, particularly the issue of casting a Korean actor as a Japanese character (also relevant for Heroes, given that the actor who plays Ando is Korean). I'd like to note that it does make a difference when you mix Asians up, or have a Latin-American actor play a Mexican-American character or have an Indian actor play an Iraqi. It is not the same as casting a white actor as a Hispanic. Again, this is because of power differentials, because of the amount of roles already available to white actors and the scarcity of roles for actors of color. This is also because in the past, if you were a non-Japanese Asian being mistaken for Japanese during WWII, this could have very real, very negative effects on your livelihood. This isn't limited to internment camps and times of war; when being mistaken for another minority group carries that potential weight, mixing these races up during casting is not a lightweight thing.
I say these things as someone who watches Heroes devotedly and loves the show. I personally think that the show has done some very good things with regard to race, particularly by just having more than one recurring character be a character of color, by having several interracial relationships, by having the Japanese characters speak Japanese with subtitles, and by casting a good deal of actors of color in walk-on roles (Linderman's assistant, Niki's psychiatrist, FBI agent last week, and etc.). On the other hand, the show has also done some not-so-great things with regard to race, one of these things being the stereotyped roles.
I do think that Hiro, DL and the Haitian break out of the stereotype in some ways, but not so much that you can point to them and say that they are subverting the stereotype.
( Spoilers up through Heroes 1x18 )And now, handy-dandy links to race and racism in casting and the TV world we all live in!
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rachelmanija has written up great posts on
race and casting (
part 2)
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witchqueen has some great posts on
race and slash and
a guide for white people in fandom.
And if you just click around those pages a bit more, there are tons of links to other discussions on race, racism, cultural appropriation, and fandom. I've also got lots of stuff under my tags and Memories.
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ap_racism has got a Tim Wise article on the media backlash, and Claire Light has break down of all the wrongness in the responses.
