Quick link

[megwrites]

This article from the NYTimes Op-Ed "Sucking the Quileute Dry" about how the Quileute people have been affected by the popularity of the Twilight series of books and movies.

To millions of “Twilight” fans, the Quileute are Indians whose (fictional) ancient treaty transforms young males of the tribe into vampire-fighting wolves. To the nearly 700 remaining Quileute Indians, “Twilight” is the reason they are suddenly drawing extraordinary attention from the outside — while they themselves remain largely excluded from the vampire series’ vast commercial empire.

I find it so saddening that Meyers has made such a profit from appropriating the Quileute, and that this is neither an isolated nor especially egregious case (given other cases) of non-native authors, creators, and entrepreneurs making profits hand over fist by taking the cultural property of others as though the beliefs, names, history, and heritage of other peoples are up for grabs because they are not copyrighted or patented under law.

Appropriation has real consequences, especially for the appropriated who often lack the numbers or resources to fight back, to balance the uneven, unresearched, unethical portrayals of themselves in larger media outlets.

Or: as if I needed another reason to dislike the Twilight phenomena entirely.

Comments

[handyhunter.livejournal.com]

Hmm. Maybe it's not just research, but research + some sort of...empathy*? for one's characters (who are of a different race/culture). I mean, if we can have well-portrayed vampires and Vulcans, etc, we should be able to write people that way too.

*ETA: Or respect, I suppose. But that also runs into the problem of what respect means to different people. It's almost like, for some, POC should be grateful they show up in stories at all, never mind how they're portrayed.

[fiction-theory.livejournal.com]

It's almost like, for some, POC should be grateful they show up in stories at all, never mind how they're portrayed.

This, exactly this. I've read a lot of books where the research was good, but it was misinterpreted or misconstrued and the author seemed to just want to be rewarded for even including and researching that other inferior culture at all and including it in their book.

I also think maybe being able to de-center one's own experiences and views (to the extent that ANY human being can do this) is part of it, because if a writer can try not to privilege their own views about something and their own cultural experiences above that of others they stand a better chance of actually writing something good, something that doesn't add to other people's oppression and misrepresentation.