Animorphs and Discrimination

[blue_rampion]

Before we get into the minor character discussions, there is a topic I've been wanting to bring up here - discrimination and how they are dealt with and portrayed in the books. We see examples of racism, speciesism, sexism, and discrimination against the disabled, but they're all examined to different degrees and in different ways.

With racism, we see that most prominently with Cassie ("I can turn white" indeed). Marco gets all of one line about being followed by mall security, but they're both characters that would have both dealt with racism in their lives. But overall, while it's brought up on occasion we don't really go too heavily into this issue.

Now, speciesism - that we see a ton of, and I'd argue that a lot of the issues that usually come up in a discussion of racism are in fact explored through speciesism. All of the various aliens have opinions and stereotypes of the other aliens - the Andalites are 'arrogant', the humans are just meat to the Yeerks, the Yeerks are all 'evil', and Hork-Bajir and all nice and sweet and stupid. They've all got preconceived notions of each other, some of them good but a lot of them not good.

Sexism isn't gone into too much, but the series touches on it every now and then - Rachel's got some strong feminist leanings, and we have the Axis of Awesome assuming that the Governor is a man.

And as for discrimination against the disabled...well, we definitely go into that, and this is definitely one of the major failings of Andalite culture.

There's probably also other forms of discrimination in the books that I can't think of, but my questions to you are: Do you think the series do a good job of depicting these issues? Could it (and should it) have gone into more detail on any of them?

Comments

[sylverlining.livejournal.com]

Yeah, man - during my re-read of The Hork-Bajir Chronicles, I was kind of struck by not only the "omg Aldrea morphed Alloran", because I didn't remember that part the first time around, but also how... nothing was really mentioned of it. Ever. It was just like:

'Okay, i'm a girl... and now I'm a guy with all the appropriate equipment - la-dee-dah, this is a totally normal thing I'm doing specifically for this goal of accessing the virus, there is nothing strange about this whatsoever.'

So... either Andalites have a really laid-back approach to gender (which we know isn't true, ha) or KA just didn't want to get into it AT ALL for fear of censors or parental backlash or something or thought the question of gender identity was too complex -

Oh ha, yeah, just realizing how stupid that last supposition sounds. xD This is Animorphs. Disregard that, I fail rather hard.

But yeah. I'd have LOVED to see that issue raised a little more, specifically when Aldrea and the Anis morph people of different genders.

[anijen21.livejournal.com]

I mean, not only that, there's so little psychological fallout from her becoming a Hork-Bajir accidentally--you'd think she'd have a little identity crisis from that, but the only detail I remember is that for that second when Visser Three infested her, she was thinking about running on the Andalite Homeworld.

idk. Part of me is "GUH THIS IS SO INTERESTING WHY DIDN'T THIS HAPPEN" and the other part of me loves the restraint, because all the unwritten, implicit angst is like twice as powerful as a couple hundred extra pages of whining and analysis.

[sylverlining.livejournal.com]

Jeez, I know. Honestly some of the best/most powerful stuff in Animorphs comes from what isn't actually said, and you're left to infer on your own.

... But still. I would have liked a LITTLE analysis. Even with the whining (which we know can be done well at least). I'm just a sucker for gender weirdness and looking at it from a ton of different angles.