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

Along these lines...

[joking.livejournal.com]

What I find interesting is that all three (I think it's three?) offhand mentions of homophobia or of gay people in general are from Tobias. I don't think that necessarily implies that he's LGBT, because there's no evidence for it in the books at all, but I think it pins him as a straight ally in a way that none of the other characters are, and I do wonder why that is.

(I may or may not have an idea for a fic in which that nice neighbor lady we saw in a flashback in #33 is gay/bi/something along those lines.)

Re: Along these lines...

[natural-blue-26.livejournal.com]

What three moments? I'm not remembering that many, so maybe it's a Your Milage May Vary thing? Grant it, I was never even aware to look for that in this series at the age I originally started reading it so...

Re: Along these lines...

[joking.livejournal.com]

Off the top of my head, Tobias mentioned it MM4 when he was talking about the Sharing, and in I think it was either #13 or #23 when he talks about people beating up a kid because he's gay, and I think there may have been another one but I can't remember right now.

Oh, OK, I found the reference in MM4 at least:

"Was it really true that The Sharing didn't care if you were young or old, male, female, black, white, Asian, Christian, Jew, Muslim, Buddhist, atheist, straight, gay, rich, or poor?"

Man, now I want to write a fic about a gay kid at the Sharing.

Re: Along these lines...

[with-rainfall.livejournal.com]

The third one IIRC is something like, "It was hard to see how humans would accept aliens [in mainstream human society] when they would even beat up some gay kid."

I paraphrased a lot, but that's the gist. I can't remember where that was from - maybe #13?

Re: Along these lines...

[ghaweyriao.livejournal.com]

Lord, I love your icon.

Re: Along these lines...

[joking.livejournal.com]

Thank you! It's from iconomicon.

Re: Along these lines...

[sylverlining.livejournal.com]

Add book #40 to the list. If we're reading Gafinilan and Mertil that way (and... I almost can't see how you /can't,/ it's absolutely what the book was hitting on), Tobias is one of the first to speak up when Ax is being a dick. His opinion about going against societal or cultural norms to care about somebody is made very clear.

Re: Along these lines...

[joking.livejournal.com]

Ah, good point. I forgot about that. Ax can be so patriarchal and bigoted sometimes.

Yet it is still interesting, because just being an outcast isn't enough to make you feel compassion for people who are different from you. For example, in communities of color there's often a lot of enmity toward other minority racial groups, even though you might think they'd empathize with each other because of shared oppression. Tobias is not only compassionate toward a group he's not a part of, but he speaks up on behalf of that group to someone who doesn't see things the way he does. It's something to love about him.

Re: Along these lines...

[sylverlining.livejournal.com]

Seriously. I love him, I really do, but in that book I just wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and go "WHY ARE YOU BEING SUCH AN ENORMOUS DICKFACE, STOP IT RIGHT NOW!" Eh. At least he sort of comes around by the end.

Sort of :|

But yeah, that's just wonderful - and an astute observation. It's why it makes me sad that oftentimes the Black community in general isn't more sympathetic to GLBT. I'm white myself, but I grew up in an around 80-90% Black area, and... the culture's ingrained in me. It's important to me. I also like girls. That's hard to deal with sometimes.

So yeah, Tobias is amazings. <3