WisCon wrap-up
I wrote several blog posts about WisCon for the Underwire blog on Wired. One covered two comic book panels on female superheroes, another was about a panel called “Why Is This Universe So White?” The latter has gotten some really amazing comments from people arguing over the importance (or lack thereof) of having more people of color in science fiction and fantasy stories. I also wrote about a strange performance art piece called Cafe Scifi+tique put on by Mari Kotani, a Japanese science fiction author, who wanted to critique Japanese “maid cafes” by staging a maid cafe where mad scientists wait on women. I think the mad scientists were supposed to be like the otaku who normally go to maid cafes and get waited on by cute girls. So the tables were turned: otaku waited on the cute girls, rather than vice versa. Finally, I talked about Andrea Rubenstein’s fascinating paper about body image in video games, especially her stuff about sexual dimorphism among fantasy creatures in World of Warcraft.
June 1st, 2007 at 12:51 pm
This is a really weird coincidence. Just yesterday I was wandering through a Target megastore with my friends in Buffalo and decided to buy a copy of World of Warcraft since they were only $20. And last night I looked through the booklet and found myself lingering on the photos of the different races and wondering, “Why the hell are the females so small and delicate?” And then today I see your blog post and link to Andrea’s paper.
Now I feel annoyed and like I don’t want to play the game after all. Grump!
June 1st, 2007 at 5:08 pm
You could always play it as a male character and just tell everybody that you’re female.
June 2nd, 2007 at 2:03 pm
re called “Why Is This Universe So White?†interesting comments but no one mentioned SRD which struck me as odd.
id read most of his books before I knew athat he was Black – and completely missed all the Bi/Gay stuff.
June 8th, 2007 at 6:43 am
Loved your Wired Blog about the Whiteness of Space. I really wanted to be on that panel and was disappointed when I was on the preliminary programming list and then not in the final… and then I didn’t make it to listen in.
I’ve always had issues with the whiteness of SF (literary and media). I started a huge fight on a listserv of Trekies when I suggested that a black Vulcan was a good thing and that I thought the New Generation was clearly a bunch of colonialist (actually I used a more inflamitory word which invokes racial purists), given that the “French” captain spoke with a British accent as did the “Indian” doctor on DS9.
We never brought up race on the BSG panel and I wanted desperately to. Maybe that can be at the next WisCON. Will you be coming next year?
Oh, and I’m lovin’ SHE’S SUCH A GEEK.
June 8th, 2007 at 8:19 am
Yay — I’m glad. I always thought of the ST gang as a bunch of cultural imperialists. You know, they don’t use guns or WMDs. Instead, they use the Prime Directive to keep some planetary groups from having access to the “advanced technology of the Federation. And then sometimes they intervene in planetary feuds, but always in a liberal “let’s help the out” sort of way. You know, bring democracy to the galaxy and all that.
June 14th, 2007 at 5:21 am
You guys must have loved the Matrix; they went as far toward diversity as they could while maintaining profitability. All the major supporting characters are black (Morpheus, Niobe, Oracle); if they’d made Neo or Trinity nonwhite they would have lost ticket sales. (They might have been able to make Trinity Asian.)
I dug up a collection of SF by black people (on sale at Borders in the discount bin, for one dollar) and plan to give it as a gift to a (black) geek friend of mine.
What you say is true, though kind of ironic as ST has always struck me as the more ‘liberal’ of the two major SF franchises, Star Wars involving genetically chosen people whose fate the universe depends on and plenty of heroic violence. I remember reading about ST: Enterprise in both the Nation (where the writer was disgusted) and the National Review (where the writer was pleased); maybe the series took a turn to the right? I never watched it, so I can’t say.
The thing I never got was why make Patrick Stewart, who’s as english as afternoon tea and hiding behind the sofa from the Daleks, a Frenchman? Isn’t that kind of like casting Susan Sarandon as Phyllis Schlafly?
So, what do you have to say about Doctor Who?