Saw a message on BlueSky that resonated with me just now, about how autistic characters should be allowed to be villains.
And it made me realise. Someone’s gender, race, disability, gender identity etc shouldn’t be a factor as to if they’re a hero or villain in a story.
The issue with many forms of media is that it seems to go to two extremes:
1. Every member of a group is evil because [writer prejudice]
2. No member of a group can be evil because it could be offensive
But both are ridiculous. People are people. Some are kind hearted and have good intentions, some have good intentions but do awful things, some are just jerks all around.
And these identity factors have nothing to do with any of that. Anyone of any gender, ethnicity, age, disability type, etc could be the nicest or worst person you ever met.
So fiction should reflect that. Let characters be good or evil regardless of identity traits. Don’t stereotype people or put groups on a pedestal.
Don’t do what RTD did with Doctor Who and make Davros suddenly not disabled because it might be seen as in bad taste to have a wheelchair using villain:
I get the idea, but it feels misguided. Instead of the stereotype ‘disabled = evil’, we get another one which is basically ‘disabled = always good’.
It’s just flipping the usual problem with representation in media.
@CM30 My take on this is that there is currently a process. That representation tends to move from no representation to negative/dehumanising representation to positive representation (as a redress for the harm caused by the previous stage) to more nuanced representation to (hopefully) the people being represented getting a proper platform for their own art that shows the full range of their experience to a general mainstream removal of othering (have we ever seen that last one? Not sure).
I don’t know what happens if we skip over the positive representation stage.
Like if society at large has demonised a marginalised group and then see representation of them as complex flawed human beings, do they appreciate the shared human experience or do they just cherry pick from it to reinforce their negative assumptions? Molly coddling people out of their prejudice feels wrong but is it more effective or not?
I’d be curious to read some expert or academic analysis on that
This Sydney Poitier quote has influenced my thinking on the topic but he was speaking in 1967 and I first heard it in 1992/3, so I expect the discourse has moved on
“If the fabric of the society were different, I would scream to high heaven to play villains and to deal with different images of Negro life that would be more dimensional . . . But I'll be damned if I do that at this stage of the game. Not when there is only one Negro actor working in films with any degree of consistency”
@CM30 Pretty sure there is a lot of "damned if you do, damned if you don't" about this...