Whenever we discuss representation and diversity, something strange happens. Someone inevitably shows up to claim that the problem isn’t because of subconscious bias, cultural inertia, or overt bigotry: it’s because storytellers are afraid activists will yell at them.
This gets expressed in many ways, but my personal favorite is the so-called Galbrush Paradox, which is literally an angry YouTube comment that some people pass around as cherished wisdom. It posits – based on nothing – that Monkey Island protagonist Guybrush Threepwood* could never be a girl on account of how he starts at the bottom and has to work his way up to being a skilled pirate.
If you can get past how badly this rant misrepresents the Monkey Island games,* it’s a convenient microcosm of all similar sentiments. The logic goes that because activists’ standards are so high, they’ll attack the creators of any marginalized characters who aren’t perfect. Therefore, it’s really the activists who are at fault for a lack of diversity in fiction. Checkmate! The original rant was talking about women in video games, but you can easily find people making the same argument for any type of marginalized character in any medium.
Is it true? No, not at all.
History Shows Representation Is Getting Better, Not Worse
The most obvious way to disprove the Galbrush Paradox is with a glance at the history books. If modern activism is the reason we have so little diversity in western fiction, then any time before modern activism should be absolutely jam-packed with cosmopolitan casts. To what I’m sure is everyone’s surprise, this isn’t the case!
To be clear, there have always been marginalized characters in western fiction, be they heroes, villains, or comic relief. Some were written by marginalized authors, some by more privileged creators. But for the Galbrush Paradox to be true, there would have to be more diversity in the past, since there was a lot less activism back then. Why, the 1800s must have been an absolutely golden time for diverse stories. Back then, no one cared what you said about women, Jews, or Black people. Even if they did, all tweets had to be sent via telegram, so writers were well insulated from their critics.
And yet, 19th-century books and plays are lean pickings if you’re looking for any variety in gender, race, or sexuality. Unless you were looking for blackface, of course. That was pretty much everywhere. It’s almost like something other than a lack of feminist critique videos on YouTube was responsible.
The difference should be even more stark in the latter half of the 20th century. That time saw numerous pushes for civil rights, gender equality, religious acceptance, and every other social cause you can think of. With progressive ideals on the rise, we should have seen a storm of diverse stories until a hard crash in the late ’90s or early ’00s, when internet connections became more common. In fact, The Secret of Monkey Island came out in 1990, well before those rude activists could easily tell the developers how imperfect their female characters were. So… by the paradox’s logic, shouldn’t it have been Galbrush Threepwood from the start?
Stories are getting more diverse as time goes on, not less. It’s a flawed, halting process, and every fragile inch has to be fought for, but it is happening. Be it YA novels or Hollywood films, fictional diversity is better now than it has ever been. That’s because activists have pushed to make it happen. They made space for marginalized authors to publish their own stories while also making privileged authors realize the importance of representation. To blame these same activists for our remaining problems would be funny if it weren’t so obviously in bad faith.
Removing Privilege Reveals Bad Characters
Guybrush Threepwood is a particularly bizarre character for reactionaries to use as their standard, as he could be a she and most players would barely notice. Instead of an initially unskilled boy who works his way up the pirate ladder, we’d have an initially unskilled girl who works her way up the pirate ladder. Stories like this get published every day, and no one bats an eye.
However, there are two character types that can’t easily be given marginalized traits: the mediocre hero and the over-candied hero. The first is simply too flawed, incapable, or pathetic to make a good protagonist, while the second is a hero who’s just so cool you can’t stand them. Such characters are overwhelmingly white, male, straight, and cis, well beyond the normal prevalence of such traits in fiction.
When we critique these characters, especially if we mention their privileged status, we inevitably see comments about how such characters just have to be that way, since people will get mad otherwise. There is a tiny grain of truth here, but it’s not because the standards for marginalized characters are too high; it’s because the standards for privileged characters are too low.* Being either mediocre or over-candied makes a protagonist far less engaging, to the point that only intense privilege can keep them afloat with the audience.
Consider Scott Lang, aka Ant-Man, from Chris’s post on mediocre white men. Scott has no reason to be the main character of his movie. He’s not emotionally connected to the villain and he has no skills that can help him as a shrinking superhero. He doesn’t even have much of a motivation, since for most of the movie, being Ant-Man just makes it more likely that he’ll go back to jail and be unable to see his daughter.
For the opposite extreme, we have Babylon Five’s John Sheridan. Sheridan is the galaxy’s greatest tactician and a beloved war hero, and he’s always right. The show has multiple episodes that set up another main character doubting Sheridan just so Sheridan can be proved right in the end. Often, the writers have to bend the plot in unlikely directions to justify Sheridan being correct. We even have a funeral sequence where the other characters think Sheridan is dead and gush about how cool he is, which is probably the ultimate sign of an over-candied character.
Both of these characters remain beloved because the standards for them are so much lower than for other characters. On some level, most authors know this and are far less likely to write women or characters of color the same way. In the rare instances where they do it anyway, such characters immediately crash and burn. Voyager’s Captain Janeway is over-candied in exactly the same way Sheridan is, right down to the gushing funeral, and she’s widely ridiculed for it. From the same show, Commander Chakotay is a rare example of a non-white character with problems similar to Scott’s. Chakotay has few, if any, skills that another character can’t do better, and his motivation is either nonexistent or tied up in the writers’ poor understanding of Native American culture. Naturally, you can’t swing a phaser without hitting a critique essay about how bland and boring he is.
The takeaway isn’t that we need more marginalized heroes who are mediocre or over-candied; it’s that we need to stop depending on privilege to shore up weak characters. If enough authors make that choice, we might just get audiences to give up some of their double standards. From a more self-serving angle, authors who continue to rely on privilege may find themselves high and dry if expectations change anyway.
Context Matters to Representation
Once we get past bad-faith arguments like the Galbrush Paradox, there are actually a few instances where advocates have asked privileged writers not to use marginalized characters, or at least to exercise caution, because the alternatives are worse. It all depends on context.
In many cases, privileged heroes can easily be swapped out for marginalized ones. This is especially true in high fantasy and far-future scifi. Those stories take place in worlds completely different from our own, and authors have nearly unlimited freedom in crafting their social contexts. There’s no particular reason The Expanse’s Jim Holden or Wheel of Time’s Rand al’Thor need to be white. They could easily be characters of color without changing the story at all, and Rand is only locked into being a dude because of WoT’s badly gendered magic system. Likewise, Monkey Island’s pirate world is so heavily stylized that it’s basically fantasy, even before the ghosts show up. We could change Guybrush’s gender, race, ability, and so much more before we ever hit a problem.
However, this isn’t always the case, particularly in stories that take place in the real world. You couldn’t make Steve Rogers a Japanese American woman in Captain America: The First Avenger without serious changes to the story, on account of the anti-Japanese hysteria and rampant sexism that were all the rage in 1942 America. Of course, you could still write a story in which a Japanese American woman gets injected with supersoldier serum and punches Nazis, but it would be a very different movie. Heck, it’s highly debatable to what extent billionaire playboy Tony Stark could be Black, given that racism is still very much all the rage.
Finally, we have characters that are difficult or impossible to write well because of stereotypes. In reality, Black people get angry exactly the same way everyone else does, but the Angry Black Person stereotype is powerful, and it motivates discrimination every day. For that reason, non-Black authors need to be extremely careful about writing a Black character with anger issues, even though that could be a perfectly good arc in a vacuum.
Likewise, while Jewish and queer villains* aren’t inherently a problem, they shouldn’t prey on children. Both antisemitic and queerphobic stereotypes portray their subjects as dangerous to (Christian and straight) children, and such false beliefs are more than capable of fomenting violence. Authors who don’t keep this in mind are playing with fire, and it’ll probably be someone else who gets burned.
So there are situations where activism can restrict a character’s identity, but that’s because the alternative is worse. It’s better to write a straight, gentile villain than to perpetuate queerphobic and antisemitic tropes. The Captain America example is more complicated, as there is a lot of debate over the question of erasing bigotry in historical fiction, particularly around shows like Bridgerton that pitch themselves as feel-good fantasy. If Steve Rogers were instead Chizuko Shinagawa, should Captain America have to confront anti-Japanese racism and misogyny, or would it be better to imagine a world without them?
I don’t know the answer, but I do know that authors must at least be aware of the debate. If that awareness leads to some hesitancy, it’s still better than authors plowing into dangerous waters with no idea of what they’re doing.
What Really Prevents Diverse Casts
So if it’s not social justice advocacy that’s behind a lack of diverse characters, what is causing it? Lots of things, and they all come back to prejudice and bigotry, much of it unconscious. Agents, editors, and producers tend to favor projects with more privileged characters, sometimes out of an incorrect belief that it’ll sell better, sometimes without any awareness of what they’re doing. Meanwhile, more privileged actors are more likely to be given starring roles, which boosts their marketability, which means they get more starring roles, and so on.
Authors also tend to write characters who are like themselves, and most people who can afford to be authors are quite privileged. Technically anyone can write a novel, but doing so requires energy and free time, two things that are hard to come by if you’re working two jobs and getting home completely exhausted. Poverty statistics being what they are in the US, it’s not hard to see who is more likely to have time for writing. This is before you even get into issues like access to education or even a laptop that’s not constantly crashing.
Solving this problem is not easy or simple. It will require a more just distribution of wealth, the confrontation of unconscious bias, and also for privileged authors to include diverse characters when they can. One thing that won’t help is whining in YouTube comments about how activists are too mean to video game publishers.
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I’ve said it before and I’m gonna say it again: Janeway isn’t more candied than Sisko. She gets a lot of candy, sure, but all Star Trek captains do, and Sisko is even the freaking chosen one! I really think it’s sexism that makes people mistakenly think that Janeway is loads more glorified than other captains…
Regarding the choice between portraying bigotry in the past realistically and making a wish fulfilment past, I think it depends on what kind of story it is. Also, please keep it consistent. I love Legends of Tomorrow, but over the shows long run, they alternated between these approaches…
Although both realistic portrayals of bigotry and bigot-free wish-fulfilment can work for me, I hate it when there’s bigotry but it’s portrayed as unrealistically easy to overcome it. Like, you have a bunch of sexist men, but then our lady hero shows them that she’s tough and competent, and they immediately give her the respect she deserves. So… they were only sexist because they had never come across a competent woman before? Are there no other competent women in this universe than our lady hero? THAT’S not a great message.
I agree
It also says nobody back then TRIED to fight racism or sexism, if it was that easy to fix
Right! Or as if women, PoC etc today could easily shatter glass ceilings right and left if only they were more competent.
I’ve always thought that Guybrush could just as easily be Galbrush. His biggest ‘skill’ is holding his breath for ten minutes – that’s not a ‘men only’ skill at all.
I mean, it would change things between him and Elaine a little (the female governor of three islands, if you take Monkey Island 2 into consideration, which is a good chunk of representation). LeChuck is never a real third point of a love triangle. It’s clear from the beginning that Elaine is not interested. So making her and Galbrush a couple would be no problem there, either. It would make LeChuck the guy who ‘doesn’t get it’ that Elaine isn’t into men in general and not into him in particular.
THIS. I’ve seen the Galbrush Paradox passed around on the internet a lot of times, and people who tout it always write with the assumption that everyone in a hypothetical Galbrush game would be gender-bent. All it takes is a few important female characters in the game who are different from Galbrush to lessen the implications. Like, seriously, female characters can have all sorts of flaws if the writer so wishes (And they should, flawed characters mean room to develop and grow), the problem is when any important women in the story are painted with that one brush.
As is, the game has Elaine as a central character – opinionated and everything but a damsel, as she’s far more competent than Guybrush/Galbrush. Then there’s the Voodoo priestess who’s been around since the first game, too. She’s always helpful and knowledgeable. I’m not sure whether the female swordmaster is in the first or second game, but she exists, too. None of them has to be gender-bend for Galbrush. There’s also no need to gender-bend male characters. Galbrush can interact with them just fine.
Interestingly, there’s a documentary out on YouTube about the development monkey island and the original intention was to have the player choose whether they wanted the protagonist to be male or female. This was scrapped solely due to the tight space limits of floppy disks at the time – they didn’t have the capacity for two sets of protagonist animations – but the story for the first game had already been roughly drafted to work with either gender.
The swordmaster is actually based on one of their real employees at the time.
Yes, I can see the story come out well for both genders. Later on, when they could have had the choice, Guybrush was already established, so he stayed the hero.
Cool to learn the swordmaster has basis in the real world!
For privileged authors writing urban fantasy with a black protagonist, what would you recommend? In thinking through issues of representation, that feels tricky to pull off without getting it wrong.
I’d say go ahead, but if possible elide or gloss over racism. At most, have it be a very minor issue
If racism is NECESSARY to the story, I’d recommend finding a sensitivity reader
I’m writing urban fantasy, too, so, I’m kinda struggling with the same issue.
The first thing to consider is how much the protagonist interacts with the normal world. If most of the story is centered on conflicts between secret vampire/werewolf/wizard/fairy communities, it shouldn’t be much of a problem.
If your protagonist has to regularly interact with the police like Harry Dresden does, it might be a problem. All those scenes where Dresden got beaten and arrested would surely take on a new meaning if he were Black.
But I don’t think you’re gonna need such scenes. The good thing with urban fantasy protagonists is that, unlike superheroes, they are rarely celebrities. They live at the intersection between the natural and supernatural worlds and only interact with a small slice of the urban landscape. That said, if your protagonist lives in a Black neighborhood, you should probably research how things work there, even if it’s not the main focus. I’m white myself, so, take everything I’ve said with a grain of salt, but I think it should be doable.
Regardless if you’re planning on making racism a part of the story or glossing over it, I say get a sensitivity reader. Both approaches can be fraught with problems, but this is an issue that can be solved with research & help (said sensitivity reader).
“Likewise, while Jewish and queer villains aren’t inherently a problem, they shouldn’t prey on children. Both antisemitic and queerphobic stereotypes portray their subjects as dangerous to (Christian and straight) children, and such false beliefs are more than capable of fomenting violence. Authors who don’t keep this in mind are playing with fire, and it’ll probably be someone else who gets burned.”
Yep. More examples of quality villains vs. negative stereotypes include Bane from Batman vs. the Mexican gangsters on Breaking Bad (in the case of Latin Americans), or Light Yagami vs. the villains in a WW2 propaganda cartoon (in the case of Japanese people).
It’s a bad faith argument that just loops back into the old “hysterical SJW” narrative. Like when conservatives hear about one person on Tumblr using an unusual neopronoun and throw a fit about how children all over the world are being brainwashed.
Yes, you will find the occasional tweet from someone who nitpicks any and all minority representation as flawed. (Being someone who advocates for diversity in media doesn’t mean you’ll always be right.) Just like you may hear people criticizing a show that does everything in its power to promote acceptance and diversity just because the cast is mostly straight. But it’s the same old argument, blowing a very tiny minority out of proportion.
Editor’s note: I’ve removed a comment because, intentionally or not, it pushed the idea that diversity and good storytelling are somehow opposed, when in fact, diversity is an element of good story. It’s like saying “well developed characters are important, but a good story should come first.”
Writing a diverse character is a good thing, but you just have to be careful with villain-type marginalized characters. For example, the Naruto villain Orochimaru is an evil scientist who also steals/possesses the bodies of young children for eternal youth. One of the victims of this is SPOILER ALERT Sasuke, Naruto’s best friend who is 13 years old at the time. Orochimaru is never shown in a romantic relationship, nor as being particularly religious, but his character is a good example of the “preys on kids” villain you mentioned earlier. Had he been gay or Jewish, it would have been a major issue. As it is, Orochimaru has no marked traits besides being Japanese, and this is anime so every character is Japanese (well mukokuseki technically but they are intended to be seen as Japanese, even the blond and blue-eyed Naruto.) but the answer is that the issue with minority villains is when there are no minority heroes and/or the villain’s powers are problematic. For example, there’s nothing wrong with writing a Black villain. The problem is when said villain falls into problematic tropes and there are few Black/POC heroes to balance them out. For example, my hypothetical villain might be an “evil scientist” like Orochimaru and the superhero team that fights them might be majority POC. This is just a simple example, but in general: stereotypes are bad.
PS I think I’ve made a Naruto-related comment on this site before under a different name. Can someone please tell me which article?
Pretty sure that was Six More Character Archetypes to Ditch when you were posting under Lurker in the Shadows.
Thanks, Oren! Glad to know!
This is related to something that I’ve been thinking about recently. The Regency series Bridgerton has gotten both acclaim and criticism for engaging in race neutral casting for a regency romance. Some people love it for having a Regency romance where you have at least some non-white actors and others have criticized it as candy-coating all the bad stuff that existed at the time like slavery and the growing British Empire in India in favor of frothy romance where you have non-White members of the British gentry and peerage.
In a diverse society you can approach this in two ways, incorporation or confrontation. Incorporation is what Bridgerton does. It takes the existing national mythology but includes members of the minority groups within said mythology. Think of how many modern tellings of Robin Hood also have a Moorish character since the 1980s. Not part of the original mythos but it is way to tell British Asians and British-Africans that Robin Hood stories belong to them to. The advantage of the incorporation technique is that it is inclusive and easier to digest for most people, white and non-white. It is also a lot of fun.
Confrontation basically sees incorporation as not really moving towards justice because you aren’t dealing with the atrocities of the past. Like does the multiracial gentry of Bridgerton have plantations in the Caribbean and are the invested in the East Indian Company earning hefty dividends? They might have a point but most people, regardless of their ethnic background, tend to see confrontation group as not terribly fun at best. From what I can tell incorporation into the national mythology tends to be more popular by just about everybody than confrontation.
I guess a related issue is that many groups on this planet are basically earth bound and using the incorporation technique is hard. You can make Star Wars more diverse by just increasing the diversity in the actors. Adding a Jewish character, and I’m a Jew, to Star Wars isn’t going to work because having Jews depends on our Earth existing in a speculative fiction universe. Alien civilizations that code Jewish tend to turn out badly for the most part. The Vulcans and Kryptonites being exceptions.
Yes, incorporation is hard with some groups once you leave earth for a fantasy or far-future sci-fi setting. Star Trek could have Jewish crew members (although that might seem strange to some, as religious creeds seem to play a very little role in that future, if they do exist at all). Star Wars could not, because there is no connection to earth.
I think that incorporation has its place, showing a more diverse society where people of different ethnicities can live together. I can see why some say that it’s glossing over the problems, but sometimes you just want to show that ‘British Nobility’ doesn’t have to mean ‘all white society’ or something similar.
I mean Dune managed to have Jews be the only Earth culture to remain intact in a far future setting. I’ve always had a soft spot for Dune because of that. You can have a fantasy culture equivalent of Jews but that might involve dipping your hand into some things that might not come across well.
I’d argue the scenario is the exact opposite; it’s not the activists that will kick and scream if a protagonist is a woman, it’s the anti-sjw types. Without fail, if the main character is a woman, she is scrutinized to an insane degree and accused of anything they can think of to discredit her. She’s called a Mary Sue for displaying any competency at all, dull if she’s nice, any number horrible of names if she’s tough/cool-tempered/gruff. If she doesn’t adequately cater to men’s sexual fantasies, she’s feminist SJW propaganda. If she’s a woman of colour and/or LGBT+, she’s pushing an agenda. In the eyes of reactionaries, anything other than straight, white and male is offensive, and I can think of nothing more limiting than there only being one type of protagonist that can exist.
Couldn’t have said it better!
Absolutely.
SJWs normally are happy to see any kind of lead who isn’t outright horribly written and not a straight white male. It’s the other side who is digging up the slightest error in the making and making a big fuss of it.
Someone once described Batman, but using female pronouns, and suddenly Batman was the worst Mary Sue to ever breathe (I mean, it’s fair to say Batman is over-candied and over-competent, but people would never accuse him of being a Mary Sue, as he’s a superhero).
One of those things that’s funny yet not funny. On one level, I find it silly that people would make comments like that. On the other hand, it’s insensitive. I’m not sure whether to laugh or get sad about it myself.
What I have noticed is that some countries seem more open to a female bungling hero than Americans for some reason. Japanese and British audiences seem to have no issue with female bungling heroes. Usagi for Sailor Moon, Miaka from Fushigi Yuugi, and Bridget Jones of Bridget Jones diary are all bunglers. American audiences do not seem to like female bungling heroes. We barely like male bungling heroes as well but tolerate them somewhat more depending on the story. So maybe it is just that American audiences really don’t like bunglers that much for their protagonists regardless of what gender, race, or sexuality of the protagonist is. Exceptions apply.
The argument that history isn’t diverse is also flawed, or at least more limited to a certain era & place (19th century Europe/America(USA) than the article suggests.
Unless that’s because they are also assuming only that time period & place is highly influential to the majority of what is published & read now. Which, maybe?
But it’s also a big world.
Unfortunately, due to colonisation, Europe/America had a high influence on what was published in the past and is considered a ‘classic’ now. It’s largely European and North American texts which influence the understanding and the teaching of writing and literature. There are many interesting text to find elsewhere, but they’re not as world-widely known as the ‘classics’ of European/North American literature.
Sorry, should have clarified that I was talking about western fiction. Article edited to be more specific.
This may have been true several years ago, but ever since the Isabel Fall incident I think we owe it to ourselves and each other to stop and take stock of how things have changed in the last decade or so.
One of the most important platforms for unagented and/or indie authors is Twitter. Nobody likes it but there we all are. And minority authors are leaving that platform in droves due to a small but incredibly vicious contingent of (perhaps well-meaning but mostly loud) twitter warriors who are more interested in the perfect and uncomplicated purity of the movement than they are in supporting honest but sometimes imperfect allies and community-building. Three of my favorite upcoming authors have quit writing altogether and two of them required psychiatric care to recover from harassment campaigns by this section of OUR community.
The title premise is outdated. There is a small but loud contingent of SJWs who absolutely are scaring off leftist, socially conscious creators in vulnerable positions (no institutional support from agents/publishers, but also no grassroots support from the movement). I hear it in writing workshops from young creatives who want to write from their perspective but are legitimately afraid. The fear of being branded an imperfect ally is real and it’s time we admit that it’s not solely The Enemy’s fault, whatever form that outsider may take.
The call is coming from inside the house.
Hello!
I really don’t think this is entirely the case, at least in very large part. I’m studying creative writing at a liberal arts college, which is the type of place conservatives like to paint as one of the most PC, liberal, etc etc places there are, and if anything the opposite is the case. Sure, some people are intimidated by the idea of portraying minority groups in respectful ways, but I’ve found that even more are extra motivated to try and depict these underrepresented groups. It’s hardly fear motivating it, in my experience. It’s a question of awareness.
It’s not like Twitter mobs aren’t a thing, for sure! And some people online are vicious and ridiculous, like you say. But they’re hardly the deciding factor in what types of stories are being written on the whole. And everyone is certainly not on Twitter! Internet toxicity is terrible and needs to stop, but by your own admission this is a tiny group of people. They’re not the driving force in what the vast majority of people decide to write or decide not to write.
No, not everyone is on Twitter. I personally have a twitter account, but I haven’t posted on it for ages. I never fully got into it, preferring the ‘old people’ option of Facebook, mostly because there was a friend whom I could easily stay in contact with there.
Personally, I’ve learned to distinguish between ‘I just want to complain about something’ and valid critiques. I don’t care about the ‘just complain’ ones and, as I’m not on Twitter, I don’t have to worry about sh!t storms there.
Looking back, we have a lot more diverse characters today, in ethnicity, in gender, in sexual orientation, whatever way you want to look on it. That is because of SJWs and not in spite of them.
Just for the record, there is definitely a problem with marginalized authors being held to higher standards than privileged ones, whether one is on twitter or not. It’s a problem that can absolutely destroy people’s mental health.
However, in my experience, this problem is caused by the very same bigotries that act against diverse stories in the first place. It’s just that some people have learned how to cloak their prejudice in social justice language.
True, this is a good point. I was more discussing privileged authors who are looking to write marginalized characters, but this facet of horrible toxic standards definitely can’t and shouldn’t be overlooked!
Hey Oren, I’m wondering if you might do an article on how climate change impacts social justice issues and/or the reverse? Marginalized people feel climate change impacts the most from my understanding.
Do you think that instead of just saying SJW you add that it means Social Justice Warriors? That is, unless it means something else and this was just what the place I looked it up declared.
Most people use SJW when they’re writing it down. It’s shorter and people usually know what it means.
I agree, though, that using the long form in the title and at least once in the article would have been good for those who are unfamiliar with it.