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I'm reading a book at the moment that's one of those meet the aliens things, and it's making me uncomfortable because it's using a lot of phrasing that reminds me of cliche-China while adding that these aliens have no concept of love. Actually, even without that twist, it would make me uncomfortable to make the aliens Chinese. It's all in the phrasing with words like Auspicious and Heaven coming up a lot, and cities that have to be built in alignment with the land, and obsession with numerology. I'd like to be reading the plot but instead I'm tripping over the fakey scenery, you know? China is not alien, aliens are not china, and it's bothering me.
So I was thinking on why. It doesn't even have to be racism. When we look at other cultures we notice the sticking out parts, the glaring, the obvious. It fines it down to a stereotype fast. And we're usually unaware of the underlying reasoning, the geographic, ecological, historical conditions that made it all make sense. So we get a hollow system of glaring incongruities.
When I did cultural studies we'd look at historical literature, but whatever we learned to spot there we'd bring that to bear on current culture, and lo and behold we'd have a lot in common. So I think there's a better way to write about the Other. Look at what's foreign to you, sure, for a start, find those glaring parts, but then, come back to the familiar and find them at home too. Find the heritage buildings and the lucky numbers and trying to make your phone number spell something, and then use the familiar to make strange. Then, when you're writing your aliens, take those parts of your own culture out of context and defamiliarised. You'll have your strange Other aliens, but you'll have a lot more to draw on. And you'll have a lot of everyday language to draw on, with different social levels and so forth built in, so already it'll sound less fake.
It's like when you're looking for a Doctor Who plot. You look around your house, your office, your school, your drive in, your supermarket, and then you pick something and say 'what's weird about this'. Well, usually you say 'how could an alien kill us with this', but it's the same principle. And Doctor Who has survived on that for 50 years. So that works pretty good.
Don't present places you don't know as foreign, do it to your home town, and see what the new perspective gives you.
So I was thinking on why. It doesn't even have to be racism. When we look at other cultures we notice the sticking out parts, the glaring, the obvious. It fines it down to a stereotype fast. And we're usually unaware of the underlying reasoning, the geographic, ecological, historical conditions that made it all make sense. So we get a hollow system of glaring incongruities.
When I did cultural studies we'd look at historical literature, but whatever we learned to spot there we'd bring that to bear on current culture, and lo and behold we'd have a lot in common. So I think there's a better way to write about the Other. Look at what's foreign to you, sure, for a start, find those glaring parts, but then, come back to the familiar and find them at home too. Find the heritage buildings and the lucky numbers and trying to make your phone number spell something, and then use the familiar to make strange. Then, when you're writing your aliens, take those parts of your own culture out of context and defamiliarised. You'll have your strange Other aliens, but you'll have a lot more to draw on. And you'll have a lot of everyday language to draw on, with different social levels and so forth built in, so already it'll sound less fake.
It's like when you're looking for a Doctor Who plot. You look around your house, your office, your school, your drive in, your supermarket, and then you pick something and say 'what's weird about this'. Well, usually you say 'how could an alien kill us with this', but it's the same principle. And Doctor Who has survived on that for 50 years. So that works pretty good.
Don't present places you don't know as foreign, do it to your home town, and see what the new perspective gives you.
