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

[cxrdevil.livejournal.com]

I would've been interested to see more gay stuff, too. I think KAA mentioned that in an interview.

It was a little strange that race wasn't talked about and the issue wasn't addressed as much, but then, it was a non-issue among the Animorphs and the only scene Cassie's got about it is while time-traveling in the distant past. Not sure if that's the right message to send but the books were aimed at a young demographic; maybe they just weren't allowed to talk too openly about racism because it was and is a touchy issue and hoped that by not treating Marco and Cassie as different types of characters because they weren't white that it'd impart a lesson of not turning people into others, "We're not different inside", etc. Given that it's an intense series otherwise with the war theme, though, I don't think that that's quite the best they could've done. And yeah, lots of kids grow up more assimilated/"white" so maybe Marco really didn't have much of a connection to a generation-removed culture, but I think considering Cassie's parents and her personality that she probably did have a solid knowledge of her background, of cultural stuff, of what society was like before with racial divides and how far it still has to go. We could've at some point been shown how important her black identity is to her, whether she brings it up often or not - just mentioning reading a Rosa Parks picture book aloud when she's little, you know. I think Cassie, being kind of a mad liberal treehugging peace activist girl, would really respect and identify with stuff that she'd know from childhood like most kids - black rights movements and MLK's speeches and know Thurgood Marshall, that sort of thing, even if she doesn't focus on just one aspect of the history of peace and is focused more on the animals and environment than social reform.

Especially considering the recurring disability thing - Andalites kick them out of society, and all the Animorphs have a knee-jerk reaction to this, but when it comes down to it they seek out people who are disabled to use as soliders, sacrifice them, and accept as the lieutenant one who is healed. I don't know what to take from that.

[anijen21.livejournal.com]

eesh, that is kind of a nasty detail about james. Good point, I never thought of it that way before.

[cxrdevil.livejournal.com]

yeah also kind of eeh that they knew he wasn't born that way, he had an injury - like all the auxiliaries had already chosen him as leader but the car-crash factor would definitely add a level of "he has a higher chance of being able to walk someday"/dances with wolves that sort of thing. idk idk it's just so weird what was applegrant really thinking of the matter in their outlines if he couldn't be leader, morph, and still have to go back to a wheelchair like the others...or that the animorphs wouldn't respect him enough if he weren't like them...or that ax wouldn't get over his culture shock enough to work with him, everything just seems strange the way james played out

[lisacharly.livejournal.com]

The other two kids who got healed also became James' sub-lieutenants, for just another factor of "hmmmm, interesting how THAT played out".

I wish we'd gotten to see more of the auxiliaries beyond #50. #50 was like "holy crap interesting social/philosophical questions!" and then they NEVER got brought up again, even in the context of the auxiliaries.

[tobiahawk.livejournal.com]

Interesting point. And a bit depressing. I wish they would have explored the aux Animorphs more, rather than essentially glossing over their slaughter. OTOH, as someone with a disability, it was nice to see characters with disabilities have a place of prominence and proactivity in the war. And, practically speaking, there is somewhat of a point about the other aux's being unable to run away, though couldn't they just have remorphed?

It always kind of bugged me that the character with cerebral palsy wasn't healed because CP, while almost always congential, isn't genetic.

[almighty-patsy.livejournal.com]

I really don't quite know what to think about the way disability was incorporated in the last few books, because it was such a, erm, cluster. I think someone has said before that the actual idea of recruiting a bunch of disabled kids was a ghost-writer's idea, and maybe the authors weren't in on it, didn't know how to use it, didn't know how to fit it in with everything else, and that was part of the reason they were pretty much killed off in a second? Even if that isn't the case, the last few books were so crowded it was difficult for a lot of things to get through properly.

I did like that at one point when Ax is reflecting on "Hey maybe my society's approach isn't entirely awesome," he points out that humans also screw up, and I think there's another time when he actually says in a discussion that humans often do exactly the same thing (cloistering people away), but it might have been nicer to have one of those revelations come from one of the human kids.