I've made a bit of a reputation for myself talking about Tolkien's questionable representation of ethnic minorities.
While he sometimes created really cool characters of color, and could learn from his mistakes,
he also relied on anti-Asian, anti-semitic, and anti-black stereotypes to craft his world.
But as complex as Tolkien's racial politics were, they paled in comparison to the binary
presented by one of his closest friends, and another well-known and beloved author, CS Lewis.
CS Lewis made not only one of the most successful fantasy series of all time,
but also one of the most groundbreaking sci-fi trilogies, one of the most entertaining
autobiographies, two of the most influential Christian apologetic books, and some pretty decent poetry. While the modern fantasy world certainly takes more cues from Tolkien,
we can't deny that Lewis left his mark on the world in more ways than one,
especially for children.
In the English-speaking world, many children's first exposure to the fantasy genre, if not literature as a whole is The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe.
Heck, not even just the English-speaking world. It's been translated into dozens of languages and sold around 100 million copies.
That's incredible.
And the rest of the series was also very successful, in all comprising of a seven book collection within the fanciful,
inviting world between the lamppost and Aslan's country.
Narnia is a big deal for a lot of kids, just like Middle-Earth and Hogwarts.
Of course, as these stories have broad appeal across the globe,
I think it'd be only right to talk about how they fare in terms of representation.
How does a white man in the 1950s hold up today when it comes to subjects like gender and race?
Well, in terms of gender, Lewis was actually pretty progressive.
Every book in this series has a girl as a main character, and I would argue that
Lucy is the main character of The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe and Prince Caspian, and Jill is the main character of Silver Chair.
Girls are also simultaneously allowed to be whatever they want without compromising
their girlhood. Girls can be great warriors, girls can be great healers, and if girls don't want to fight, like Polly Plummer,
that’s great, too.
Girls can fall in love, grow up and get married, or they can stay happily single their entire life. Are things perfect?
No, not by any means,
but there are men and women as main antagonists, and the women’s evil is never linked to their womanhood, their
sexuality, or their love life, which is fantastic. Now, as for race, that's a bit more complicated.
And I don't mean complicated like you might think. So, not outright racist, but actually complex.
Although there still was a lot of outright racism.
Not as much as we got in Tolkien's works, or Edgar Rice Burroughs’s, or even JK Rowling's, or a
lot of modern fantasy authors, but comparatively less racism doesn't really mean anything.
It's still racism, and Lewis had it. Most famously was in the portrayal of the nationality of the Calormenes.
The people of Calormen were dark-skinned, slave-owning warriors and scholars that wore turbans, grew beards, worshipped evil gods,
invaded Narnia, used lies and manipulation to coerce people into following their religion, and wielded scimitars.
They're widely painted as cruel and cunning, and their leaders are either
scheming to bring ruin to northern society or trying to force English women into relationships with them.
If it's not obvious, the Calormenes are racist, xenophobic
stereotypes of Western Asians, and particularly of Arabs.
There's been debate as to whether or not they're Muslim stereotypes, as, while on the one hand,
they're
polytheistic, which Muslims are certainly not, and Lewis would have certainly known as much, on the other hand, medieval Christian understanding of Islam believed that
the religion was centered around three main deities, and thus some see similarities between the Calormenes and the Saracens present in medieval European
texts like the Song of Roland. I won't pretend to know which was really the scenario Lewis intended, but it ultimately doesn't matter. It's
anti-Arab at the least, and it's also worth mentioning that religion in pre-Islamic Arabia was largely polytheistic.
But religion aside, the dark-skinned Calormenes are not only generally presented as evil,
their evil stems from a jealousy of something supposedly intrinsic in the light-skinned humans of Archenland, and
the men of color in the books regularly assert that the light-skinned characters are beautiful.
Though Lewis doesn't outright say that darker skin is ugly, his writing
horribly leaves open the opportunity for readers to make that evil inference.
So why, if all of that is true, do I assert that Lewis was less racist than Tolkien, and even many modern white fantasy authors?
Well, Lewis actually had complex leading characters of color. In The Horse and His Boy,
one of the two protagonists is Aravis, a dark-skinned Arab-coded girl that is never made lesser or inferior.
She's brave, intelligent, wise, and loyal.
Unfortunately, fandom disrespects her, but that happens to any dark-skinned female character, and while she starts with a bit of pride and underhandedness,
she grows through these characteristics throughout the course of the story.
She's fantastic, and she's the main character of a fantasy book from the 50s. If she exhibits Arab stereotypes,
I personally don't recognize them. Admittedly, that’s not a statement saying that they don't exist, just that I as a non-Arab
am unaware of them, but she's honestly pretty unique.
There's a handful of men of color that pop up in the great British classics like Heathcliff and Samwise Gamgee,
but I can't really think of many women and girls of color, at least not in leading roles, and
throughout the series we meet heroic or noble Calormenes. Emeth, Alimash, Lasaraleen.
It's not that the Calormen are inherently evil. It's still questionable— no, that's way too generous.
It's still horrible that the white Archenlanders are freedom loving and the Arab-coded Calormenes are a slave trading society.
But Lewis acknowledges that the fact that atrocities happen within a society does not mean that the people of that society are evil.
Rather that, more than anybody else, they are its victims.
Also, it's worth noting that the Calormen are not the only culture of color in Narnia. Far from it. In Prince Caspian,
we meet the Telmarines, an ethnic group descended from non-defined pirate men and Pacific Islander women.
From the beginning, the Telmarines are at the very least half Oceanian,
Given the occurrence of a blonde phenotype, most likely Melanesian, and
though some of these individuals are bad, the majority of good humans from Narnia are Telmarines, and
Caspian, Rillian, and Tirian are at least part Pacific Islander. How Pacific Islander translated to Spanish and the Disney adaptation?
I don't know.
But Caspian especially is one of the most important characters in Narnia.
I'd say he's in the six most central figures, alongside the Pevensies and Aslan.
Despite all of Lewis's shortcomings when it comes to the Calormen,
he made the heroic humans of five of his Narnia books people of color.
That's pretty astounding for someone with enough problems to fill the River Rush Gorge. All of this is to say that people aren't necessarily either
extremely racist or not racist at all.
One can be racist in certain aspects and
progressive in others.
Too often, authors, creators, and even other historical figures that have passed are put into either column, and,
while, sure, in the case of people that owned slaves or advocated genocide, we can say they were firmly racist,
when we pretend that somebody was progressive enough to say that they were not racist,
we overlook the fact that they had a lot of biases that were common to the society that they lived in, and
someone like Lewis had racism in the back of his head, and
progressivism in the front when it came to terms of representation.
Of course, representation is not the end of progressive thoughts when it comes to race.
I don't say this to mean that Lewis's racism shouldn't be criticized, quite the opposite. Rather, when you try to be supportive of
equal civil rights, sometimes your biases and bigotries go unchecked.
Labels like leftist, liberal, or progressive are not cures for racism. You can't magically erase your prejudice.
What you can do, however, which so few fiction writers truly try, is to reassess your work,
even if you think it's progressive, and see where your bias slips.
Editing isn't just for filling in plotholes or strengthening characterization.
When you acknowledge the possibility that your story may be harmful and take it back into the writer shed,
you show not only an appreciation for the art form, but, much more importantly, in appreciation for human decency.
It may take longer to write or draw or shoot. But if your goal is truly to use art to uplift, an
improvement is well worth the delay.
Thanks for watching.
Okay, Thomas you're going to want to sit down for this.
(Thomas): Did you finally find my killer?
(Moth): Oh, yeah, about a month ago, actually.
(Thomas): What?! Why didn't you say so?
(Moth): You were gone on solstice break, and I had no way of contacting you.
Plus, it's not like I can sneak in these plot segments in my videos that might actually be popular.
(Dumeril): You can say that again pal.
(Thomas): Oh, never mind who killed me? Who was I before all of this?
(Moth): Well, the clues were all around us. Using your regalia,
I pinpointed your original time period and location to 19th century or early 20th century
France.
(Thomas): What? But, my accent...
(Moth): I know I was confused, too.
But listen, there's more. I found record of an anarchist journalist named Tomas
Roturier, who covered the French mafia at the turn of the century.
(Dumeril): Roturier. French for commoner.
(Thomas): Wait, how do I know this?
Why why can't I quite remember who I am?
(Moth): Listen Thomas. This is pretty heavy. Are you sure you want me to—
(Thomas): Yes. Yes. Keep going, please. Who killed me?
(Moth):Well, it seems that elements of the French mafia allied themselves with a supernatural bounty hunter.
Thomas,
Professor,
have either of you heard of Burnout?
