Writing the Other by Nisi Shawl & Cynthia Ward

Author:Nisi Shawl & Cynthia Ward [Shawl, Nisi & Ward, Cynthia]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: writing, writing exercises, writing and race, cultural appropriation, characterization in fiction, (¯`'•.¸//(*_*)\\¸.•'´¯)
ISBN: 9781933500935
Publisher: Aqueduct Press
Published: 2011-10-31T13:00:00+00:00

Sidekicks-R-Us

The straight, white, usually male main character has a best friend of a significantly different ROAARS categorization, and that friend exists primarily to validate the hipness of the main character.

Cynthia didn’t see the TV series, but the novels she read in Robert B. Parker’s Spenser detective series clearly used the character of the calm, collected, criminal black man Hawk to function as a “coolness” indicator for the white hero, Spenser.

Using marked-state characters to lend cachet to un-marked heroes, thus bringing them closer to the marked state, is such a cliché that the TV comedy show In Living Color parodied it (and specifically the Lethal Weapon movies) with a joke TV show called “Sidekick.”

A particularly weak variation on Sidekickism is to have just one to three black characters in the novel/movie, who exist only as bit-players: cops or bodyguards or the like. Alternatively, a minority character may have a better role (like that of a fellow soldier or fighter pilot in a war movie), but he (it’s usually a he) is soon killed off, apparently because the author can’t think of anything else to do with the poor guy. “There!” you can hear the writer thinking. “I promoted diversity. Now, on with the real story!”

The sidekick’s fatal marked state isn’t always related to ROAARS traits. A happy relationship or family life leads to sidekick death frequently enough to be parodied in the 1991 move Hot Shots: white fighter pilot Pete Thompson is so happy about his wife and kids that all the other pilots call him “Dead Meat”—and he’s barely introduced before he’s killed.

Laurell K. Hamilton’s Cerulean Sins displays a couple of variations of Sidekickism.

Hamilton does create sympathetic, complex gay, bisexual, and polyamorous characters, and she has also come up with an interesting and effective way to examine ROAARS classifications, category, and the unmarked state. Her alternate Earth is partly populated by vampires, werewolves, and other were-beasts—­intelligent beings who have recently won legal rights in the US but still face prejudice and hatred.

There is, however, a major problem with Cerulean Sins. The book is set in St. Louis, a midwestern US city known for its proportionately large black population, and despite its sizeable cast, only three black characters appear in the whole novel. Any reader who knows anything about race in the US will ask, “So where did all the dark-skinned people go?” One of the three black characters is a werewolf bodyguard for the main character’s ex-lover. The other two are foreign vampires who speak an unknown language. They are bodyguards for the antagonists, and they exist only to be killed—repeatedly. Since they’re vampires, it takes at least two attempts to make them truly, permanently dead.

Talk about “Dead Meat”!

Counter-Example: The Hap & Leonard mystery/suspense novels of Joe R. Lansdale. In this series, the relationship between marked- and unmarked-state characters is one of equals; neither exists to prove anything about the other.

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