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Legacy & Othering
Dec. 4th, 2009 04:14 pmThinking about the Titans' Rose Wilson, specifically, but it may apply to other cases: Making a character a clone of that character's father, down to the clothes worn, may be an exercise in "othering."
Oneself, or a character one identifies with, will tend to be defined as a person, distinct from one's parents. But the child of a villain can be a clone of that villain if one sees other people that way--as merely functions of types. This happens all the time with foreigners, or members of other ethinicities--they become stereotypes. But as applied to individual families within one's own countrymen, I find it surprising.
Adventure stories often have had the child of the tyrant or criminal be different from the father, whether sympathetic or not. In Golden Age comics, the audience was children & youth, & the desire to be different from one's parents was understood.
But in the age of Alex Ross, that self-identity is discarded. One is a child of one's parents, caste-bound & de-individuated. Bizarre. A previous generation would say, Un-American.
But if one's own neighbors are Other, not to be sympathized with, there you go.
"Ah!" you say, "These aren't my neighbors! These are the creatures of Comic-Book Land!"
Well, that's othering too, isn't it? Or a related concept. Treating fictional characters not as simulacra of human beings but as something less than. Unsympathetic because they are not real. Kind of missing the point of telling stories about made-up people, isn't it?
Oneself, or a character one identifies with, will tend to be defined as a person, distinct from one's parents. But the child of a villain can be a clone of that villain if one sees other people that way--as merely functions of types. This happens all the time with foreigners, or members of other ethinicities--they become stereotypes. But as applied to individual families within one's own countrymen, I find it surprising.
Adventure stories often have had the child of the tyrant or criminal be different from the father, whether sympathetic or not. In Golden Age comics, the audience was children & youth, & the desire to be different from one's parents was understood.
But in the age of Alex Ross, that self-identity is discarded. One is a child of one's parents, caste-bound & de-individuated. Bizarre. A previous generation would say, Un-American.
But if one's own neighbors are Other, not to be sympathized with, there you go.
"Ah!" you say, "These aren't my neighbors! These are the creatures of Comic-Book Land!"
Well, that's othering too, isn't it? Or a related concept. Treating fictional characters not as simulacra of human beings but as something less than. Unsympathetic because they are not real. Kind of missing the point of telling stories about made-up people, isn't it?
