Exoticising diversity...

[hawkwing_lb]

So, I was reading this post by amagiclantern (via alankria), Dear Western SFF: stop it with 'exotic' already.

It is an interesting post. And got me thinking about my own life experience (because it's all about me, of course [ed. note: snark in play]), growing up with certain things coded exotic/foreign/strange. (And other things, familiar things, romanticised in an unfamiliar way - but I am not going to get my hate on for US portrayals of Irishness and Irish mythology.)

Anyway. So, the coding of things as "exotic." I accepted it mostly uncritically. Because, you know. Fresh melons. Halva. Grapefruit. Fava. Spicy food that wasn't bad curry. Beans that weren't baked in tomato sauce. Polish sausage. These things didn't form part of my daily experience, so clearly they belonged to a bizarre and impenetrable world of foreignness.

Which, you know. I have come to acknowledge is bullshit framing. But only after getting a tiny bit of enlightenment kicked into me a particle at a time. And only after spending enough time in a foreign country - and reading widely enough; hard to see people and places and things as terribly Different when you spend a lot of time reading their own words, even in translation - to start to get in my gut that what's weird to me is perfectly ordinary to other people. And actually have stuff that started out weird to me become perfectly ordinary. (Rice flavoured with oregano. Fried cheese. Melon. Buying bread in a bakery and meat in a butcher's shop.)

I'm not special. And I fuck up bunches, especially navigating Greek culture - I get cut a bit of slack, because I try to use my pathetic infant Greek, but that rebounds when the nice Greek person assumes I understand more than I really do - and I have the option of taking the easy way out, of being the idiot tourist who assumes everyone speaks English and doesn't even try. I'll never get it from the inside. But if I keep working on learning the language, maybe I'll get it a bit better than I do now.

Lots of things still strike me as strange and weird and hard to understand, but that's on me. It doesn't make them objectively strange and weird and incomprensible.

---

In an odd confluence of links, I was reading amagiclantern's post at the same time I was reading a certain writer of alternate histories claim that Europe and specifically Mediterranean Europe/the Levant/North Africa is not and was not historically phenotypically diverse.

Is this an American thing? Not seeing regional variation? Because even within a limited range of skin pigmentation (which was historically less limited than said writer claims, considering the amount of trade with sub-Saharan Africa during the medieval Islamic period), even today, there's a significant amount of regional variation in terms of body-type and features around Europe, and even around the Mediterranean.

(Otherwise there would be never be accusations of northerner-southerner prejudice in Italy. And the detective-type Greek policeman, when I reported my pickpocketing, wouldn't have asked me if the boys had looked like Macedonians or Serbs. And "he looked like a Turk" wouldn't be something I've heard.)

Dear Americans: just because you can't see it doesn't mean it's not there. And just because you can't see it doesn't mean I don't know Polish folks in Dublin who've been hassled for looking too Polish. Or that I don't know someone you'd probably call "white" have his shoulder dislocated because some young arsewipes thought he looked too foreign.

Not that I'm celebrating the fact that more visible regional variation usually equals more bullshit reasons for othering people. I'm saying don't use the bullshit argument that because you can't see diversity in the real world, there should be less diversity in fictional worlds. Because bullshit.

---

I'm watching Marple, and recognising why it irks me so. Agatha Christie's work is astonishingly classist, and though the television series has toned down the xenophobia I remember from the novels, it's still there. Miss Marple, like many other cosy detective stories, elides the reality of all the intersecting oppressions that make a "respectable" rural middle and upper class possible. Marple is fundamentally unchallenging, fundamentally reinforcing a nostalgia for power structures in which people knew their places, in which "girls of that class" can be spoken of with a certain smug certainty. Those people aren't like us, don't you know, Freddy.

I identify with the murderers too much. Even the child-killing ones. Because I'm one of those kind of people too, aren't I? Not respectable. Not polite.

I mean, it's lovely to see a mature lady be the smart star. But *shudder* the values of the "respectable" middle class...

So very alien.

Comments

[browngirl.livejournal.com]

This is an excellent post/linked set of posts. (And that certain author.... *sigh*)

[between4walls.livejournal.com]

I had no idea that melon could be exotic, it's so normal. Which, I guess, is the whole issue with the concepts of normal and exotic.

Warning: rant on Italian regional divisions follows. Take with grain of salt as I don't live there:

Northerner-Southerner prejudice in Italy is both complicated and incredibly stupid. There is phenotypic variation (most Italian-Americans are southern and half-Indian, half-northern me looks more like them than like my northern parent, who is often mistaken for Irish), but the prejudice is more about perceived cultural and historical differences, than perceived ethnic differences. And there are a bunch of ways besides looks to tell apart northerners and southerners. So the phenotypic differences do matter (for example the racist saying, "Africa begins south of Rome."), but it's incorrect that "otherwise there would never be accusations of northerner-southerner prejudice in Italy." One of the most hateful aspects of the prejudice is the southerners-are-poor-so-they're-inferior. People are really blatant about money-based resentment, it's the main appeal of the disgusting Northern League.

IMHO the reason why Americans don't always see those kinds of phenotypic differences, why my mom can tell a Romanian from an Italian by looks and I can't, has to do primarily with two things- one is the fading of prejudice against non-British European immigrants. The other is that there have been people of African extraction here about as long as people of European extraction, not to mention the Native Americans being here first, so given the sheer breadth of phenotypic diversity, people get lumped into broad categories. Plus the fact that a lot of white people are a mix of different European ethnic groups (and non-European, or European groups often not considered white- a white American friend of mine is a quarter Korean and a quarter Roma). Weirdly, the inability to see diversity is a product of the diversity of the country. It's extremely problematic for Americans trying to understand Europe and the way prejudice works there ("why do they hate each other, they're all white aren't they?"), but at the same time I'm not really sure I want to be able to pick a Romanian out of the crowd in Italy.

Most Americans, however, do see variation around the Mediterranean- that guy's perceptions strike me as unusual in that regard. Not seeing variation among sub-Saharan Africans, East Asians, or Northern Europeans would be more typical.

Your policeman story is infuriating. How did you answer such an awkward question? Hope you are having a good time in Greece otherwise.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Yeah, well, Ireland. Melon is not so exotic there as it was when I was ten. (When it was a "treat" to find bits in a fruit plate.) But until I visited the Mediterranean I had no idea that melon was not a small fruit and came in varieties other than "tasteless and watery."

Thank you for educating me on the regional differences in Italy. Shallow foreigner, me! (I knew money had something to do with it, but I don't have anything like an insider perspective, so I defaulted to talking out my ass.)

Yeah. I'm not celebrating the ability to, well, spot the foreigner. But outside of the big cities, even now, most Europeans are surrounded by a very limited palette of difference, so smaller typological variations are much more noticeable. (I'm thinking the EU's open borders might change this in a few more generations.)

The policeman thing is from a couple of years ago. I told him I had no idea if the boys didn't look Greek, but they certainly spoke Greek (so there). Lovely people, policemen. I can't express how reassuring it is to walk past a teenager carrying a submachine gun on the way to the museum.

(Not reassuring at all.)

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Thank you. (And yes. I am glad I read the books of his I actually liked before I learned he is a raging internet asshole? Because so not buying any more. Ever.)

[rose-lemberg.livejournal.com]

Thank you for writing this.

I was reading a certain writer of alternate histories claim that Europe and specifically Mediterranean Europe/the Levant/North Africa is not and was not historically phenotypically diverse.

Is this an American thing? Not seeing regional variation?

I went over and read the certain writer's comments, and it made my blood boil. Completely accidentally, I know something about those things, and the writer in question has no idea what he is talking about. No. Idea. No. Clue. None. Nada. Gurnisht. Zilch.

I could never quite enjoy Christie, for the reasons you outlined.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Thank you for thanking me! (Okay, I promise not to get stupidly recursive. Or more so.)

Yeah, I mean, I was saying to myself pretty much What is this I don't even. I mean, even going by my really shallow knowledge of post-Roman Mediterranean history, talk about erasing entire identities and experiences.

[rose-lemberg.livejournal.com]

He's erasing more or less everything. There is incredible diversity in those parts of the world. He may be a history nut, but he has no effing idea what he is talking about. Oops, sorry, I said this already. My bad.

Not worth the spoons, tbh.

[hawkwing-lb.livejournal.com]

Feel free to say it as often as you like.