In the wake of the Fuck You Jim Butcher post a lot of the “It’s fantasy, don’t get offended” rhetoric is circulating again. Nothing new, but I’m a little perplexed by the argument that using real racial slurs (like Injun or Tar Baby) for fictional characters means that those real slurs are somehow neutered. That using real cities as backdrops and rewriting them to erase millions of people of color doesn’t mean anything…because it’s fiction. That including real sexist tropes & real rape culture is somehow a-okay because…it’s fiction. Fiction that is built on real racism, real sexism, & real classism is likely to be real offensive.
No one is saying that authors must write books that please everyone. That’s impossible. Fiction is supposed to be an escape for readers, (that is especially true of genre fiction) and when you use real social issues in your work you need to be aware of that fact. After all when your idea of an escape is a world where those social issues are present and often unaddressed or poorly handled? That says something about you. Don’t like what people think it says or that they’re angry when they discuss it? Might be time to examine your work and yourself a little more closely. Among other things, ask why your fiction needs to be rooted in real ‘isms. And just what are you & your readers trying to escape?
Fantasy, Reality, & ‘Ism’s -- Originally posted at The Angry Black Woman
I agree with some of the OP’s points. His work would be better if he learned more about Chicago geography and he does need to include more POC as characters / part of the Chicago background. I also understand that they’re pissed because he took a neighborhood they liked and made it darker and more dangerous than it is in their experience. But is it really odd that he gets defensive when the conversation starts with “FUCK YOU JIM BUTCHER!!” and includes the false claim that he has no POC characters? (3 of the 5 supporting characters in the last book weren’t white. Later in this book 2 new non-white re-occurring characters are introduced, but again he needs more)
What I got from the scene in question is
-The neighborhood is dangerous with lots of criminal activity.
-Artimus Bock is a Tough Guy™ because he’s been able to do business in a bad neighborhood for so long.
-In this setting magic and the supernatural are marginalized and only welcome in places that are outside the mainstream.
The last book is what, 10 or 11 in the series?
Book 13 is out this month.
It is kind of odd that Jim Butcher writes about Chicago when he hasn’t had much experience in the place. But here’s why he picked Chicago:
“Steve Bertrand: Dresden lives in Chicago?
Jim Butcher: Indeed he does.
Steve Bertrand: How did you figure on that?
Jim Butcher: My writing teacher made me pick Chicago instead of Kansas City.
Steve Bertrand: Is that right?
Jim Butcher: Yeah. The first book was originally a class project. It was originally set in Kansas City, and she looked at it and said, ‘Well, this is a genre fiction novel writing class and you are already walking close enough to Laurel Hamilton’s toes that you don’t need to set your book in Missouri, too.’
Steve Bertrand: I see. More geography.
Jim Butcher: Yeah. So, she said, ‘Pick somewhere else.’ And I said, ‘Where?’ And she said, ‘Anywhere, it doesn’t matter.’ And there was a globe on her desk and there were only four American cities marked on the globe. And I didn’t want to do New York because Spiderman’s got that all sewn up. And I didn’t want to do D.C. because then you would have to write politics and that gets rid of half of your audience right away. And then the other city was Los Angeles and I didn’t want to write about Los Angeles, it’s a Hollywood thing. So, Chicago was left. I said, ‘How about Chicago?’ and she said, ‘Yeah, that’ll be fine.’ So, I lucked into picking Chicago.”
So… he got talked into doing it.
“It is kind of odd that Jim Butcher writes about Chicago when he hasn’t had much experience in the place.”
Why is it odd for writers to write about places they haven’t lived?
I think there’s a difference between, “hasn’t had much experience in the place,” and “hasn’t lived there.”
Tolkien never lived in Middle-Earth. Lewis never lived in Narnia. Both had extensive experience of those places, though, by inventing them.
The difference is that Chicago isn’t a made-up place, so 1) you can get stuff wrong and 2) there are actual people who live there who want you to get stuff right. Both of those can get fixed through having experience of the place you’re writing about, whether you’ve lived there or not.
I mean, there’s a reason Tim Pratt put Marla Mason in Felport rather than Des Moines, you know?
—Myca
Yeah… I’m trying to figure out why he’s even all that popular.
These “detective stories” aren’t even all that detective-y.
Ever seen Murder by Death? Y’know how the “villain” is basically trying to humiliate all these classic detective characters by exposing all the shoddy “detective work” in their stories?
Yeah. Those complaints are the first three Dresden novels summed up to a T.
Anyway – with Google Maps right there on the web, it is a little hard to forgive a guy for misplacing the university. Maybe he meant Washington Park and just confused his presidents?
Of course, that still doesn’t look to be that awful a neighborhood. And it still doesn’t excuse the lack of POC characters in a series of stories set in Chicago.
On the other hand, there does seem to be a lot of leeway given to fictional representations of cities. Anyone who has ever inflicted the show Charmed on themselves and lives in the SF Bay Area knows that there wasn’t all that much actual San Francisco in the Halliwell sisters’ version of San Francisco. Nor were there all that many POCs in that version of San Francisco, either.
Again, I’m not trying to excuse the behavior – merely pointing out that it seems to be an unfortunately reoccurring and widespread theme in fictional versions of real-life cities. Even such Joss Whedon classics as Angel don’t seem to be immune to this whitening of the world (c’mon, Joss… they were in freaking L.A., dude! No Hispanics? One Asian guy, and he was a villain? Most of the Blacks are 30-year-old gang members?).
Myca–no, I really don’t think so. There’s an argument for “do your damn research” but that doesn’t mean “don’t do it.”
I haven’t been to England. Should I avoid London as a setting? Maybe I could visit London; I’m economically privileged enough to do that, if not to live there. But what if, like most full-time writers, I don’t have an overpaid spouse–does my lack of economic privilege mean I should be more proscribed? Or just that I should just check out other avenues of research?
I think American fiction could use a larger diversity of well- and smartly rendered settings, not a smaller one.
American authors tend, for instance, to erase Africa from their futures. A barrier like “move to Africa before you write about it” is not going to realistically solve that problem. Ignorant writing doesn’t really solve that problem either. But there is the miracle of research.
(apologies for double post)
I’m … not sure what you’re talking about here. “Do your damn research’ is more or less my point, as opposed to either, “It’s okay to wildly make shit up about Des Moines and hope nobody notices,” or, “You can’t write about a place unless you live there.”
I think that when you’re writing about an actual place full of actual people, you have an obligation to get things at least somewhat right, even in fiction. I’m happy to concede that knowledge of a place doesn’t have to come from physical presence, though.
—Myca
Okay. I misread you. I thought you were saying that it made more sense to set things in places you couldn’t live in (e.g. Narnia) then places that it’s physically possible to live in but that you haven’t personally. I’m sorry for misunderstanding you.
I think there is a big difference between making concious changes to a fit it into a world of fiction- if I write fantasy, I have to figure out how the existence of magic (or vampires or werewolves …) has influenced the world- and just plain writing something that is removed from reality because I couldn’t be bothered to find out what reality actually is.
These books pretty clearly seem to be a case of the latter, which is why the “it’s fiction” excuse really holds no water. The author didn’t make concious changes to Chicago to show how the world is changed by the fantastical elements, he just described what he needed for plot-reasons.There is no reason in his story and the fantasy-based world itself for the changes, because the author doesn’t even seem to be aware that changes were made.
(Even when changes to reality are story- based, they can of course still be racist, ableist or sexist or full of fail in other ways, and discussing those is still not something that can be thrown of with “It’s just fiction”.)
@ Lauren, I think the description of hyde park is an example of a writer describing the setting to suit the story. He’d previously introduced college kids that could turn into werewolves and stated that they patrolled the area around the campus. Makes sense for that area to be sort of scary. Also, the fact that it’s a dangerous place makes the owner of the book store seem tougher.
You missunderstand what I meant. Sometimes authors ignore reality to´make it fit with their plot- as, possibly, in this case. But that is still not a change that is based on the logic of the story. That would only be the case if, for example, the existence of magic had caused the area to become a bad one- the difference to reality would be a logical consequence of that world functioning by different rules.
An author saying “I want him to live in a bad area of town, so I will write that that are is a bad one, because it fit’s my plot” is a case of being to lazy for research. It can’t be that hard to find the actual “bad” parts of town.
Doesn’t it depend to a large degree on the type of fiction?
Many novels appear to try to use a lot of the real world: they’re trying to convince you that the police station where the protagonist works actually exists. They’re after suspension of disbelief.
The Dresden novels are a pretty big stretch in terms of disbelief, to say the least.
Frankly they’re not so far from the parts of Harry Potter where magical buses go wheeling through London.
It seems reasonable to be significantly less concerned about literary accuracy in a place that is heavioly infested by demons, werewolves, and wizards, because the book is so obviously not real. It’s less reasonable to ignore literary accuracy when you’re trying to write a book that isn’t so obviously a tall tale.
The area is infested by vampires and demons, of course it is a bad area of town. It is pretty clear that Butcher hasn’t been there in this world, and that he isn’t setting it in an exact facsimile of this world.
I read the first few books, which were ok but not amazing. However he did have an interesting character in the Russian atheist demon killer. There was a fantastic discussion between him and Dresden that went something like “How can you not believe in God? You’ve been personally visited by angels, given a holy sword, and you fight demons and vampires. Doesn’t that tend to suggest that there is a God?” “Not really, I could be insane.” That scene alone was worth the price of at least two of his books.
He wasn’t an atheist, he was agnostic. Could be god, could be aliens, could be insane. I’d also point out that he was a monster killer because he was a good Communist. (okay, Trotskyite but I don’t know the difference.)
Fwiw, the series get’s a lot better after the 3rd book.
“How can you not believe in God? You’ve been personally visited by angels, given a holy sword, and you fight demons and vampires. Doesn’t that tend to suggest that there is a God?” “Not really, I could be insane.”
These are not necessarily mutually exclusive.