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

[lisacharly.livejournal.com]

Actually, I find Marco's being a white-boy hispanic (Little Debbie?) kind of refreshing, as a white-girl Asian (banana/Twinkie?) myself. It's pretty common for the children of immigrants (of which Eva is one) to assimilate and whitify themselves, especially if the parents made it a point not to raise them bilingual.

[anijen21.livejournal.com]

lol what is it about calling racial hybridism snack foods? I've heard the terms oreo and twinkie used the same way, lol why is that a pattern?

[lisacharly.livejournal.com]

I think it started with Oreos and then the other minority communities jumped on the bandwagon. _____ on the outside, white on the inside, and totally fattening!

[sylverlining.livejournal.com]

Would Native Americans be Apples?

Now I feel bad.

[nyxelestia.livejournal.com]

Probably about to be incredibly racist here, but if we're going down this direction...

Asians = Twinkie
Blacks = Oreo
Latinos/Indians/Middle Easterners = Cream-centered brownie (I forget what they're called)
Native American = Sno-balls

Anyway, as a American-homogenous Indian, I'm also happy about Marco's characerization - seriously, immigrants and ethnic minorities don't always insist on raising their kids to be as much a part of their home culture as possible, despite what media likes to think, and seeing this pattern was actually somewhat refreshing in the Animorphs books.

[sylverlining.livejournal.com]

xD Why thank you. I feel that my knowledge of racist terms is now more complete.

I think cream-centered brownies would be called... Ho-hos? Those Little Debbie things, or... Hostess cupcake... things? I don't know.

But hell yeah, I totally hear ye on the characterization front. :3

[nyxelestia.livejournal.com]

Hehe, I looked it up and realized I mixed up some of the above things.

Latinos = hostess cupcakes/ding-dongs
Indians/Middle Easterners/Southwest Asians = ho-hos