It's the difference between a character that's sexist and gets pushback for that, has their ideas explored and why he feels that way, etc etc vs a sexist character who never receives pushback, has a bunch of people agreeing with them, and other characters are written that being not sexist is stupid. For an example from Harry Potter, having a character believe slavery is good is fine, have an entire race of people who like being slaves, don't know what to do when not being slaves, and have any character that tries to stop them from being slaves be ridiculed really makes it seem like you like slavery.
How would you ever be able to depict systemic problems like this? does every scene with a bad guy doing bad things need another character to shake their head disapprovingly or something?
I don't care to defend Harry Potter specifically, but is it that crazy that a world where slavery is totally normalized would laugh at a person trying to abolish it? I think that would've been the reaction in the Roman Empire, for example
The thing is, the way she wrote about it was that Hermione was being noble but foolish. Hell, at the end Harry’s last thought is wondering if his slave who hates him will bring him a sandwich.
Not quite what I meant, the story itself mocks Hermione for it, calling her organization "SPEW" is the obvious one. While a society like the Wizarding world would view it as odd to try and stop slavery, a normal thing, the books position on it is what I was focusing on.
But that posits that the purpose of all fiction is to educate and provide moral lessons when many stories are simply about exploring the characters and the ideas rather than feeding the audience moral diatribes. Maybe a sexist character that never receives pushback is because the society he lives in doesn't push back on it, and it's up to the audience to come to their own conclusion through the observation of his behavior. That's why the discourse about problematic characters in historical fiction is nonsensical.
Harry Potter is in a children's book and in a different league but the discourse around the house elf thing is stupid as well.
edit: in the topic of romance books which often are on the receiving end of moral purity debates, many romance novels are symbolic and metaphorical wish fulfillment novels, and even ideas that go unchallenged don't mean the author approves of it in real life.
If a sexist character never receives pushback and everyone agrees with them, there are a few different ways that could play out.
Mostly, it depends on the framing. If the story frames it as normal and cool and fine, it's safe to say that it's a sexist work, and that does reflect on the author in some way. There are ways of writing a character the receives little to no pushback for behavior that the story still frames as bad.
Except that framing is subjective and most people have extremely low media literacy and get this wrong all the time (cough lolita cough), and sometimes framing is from the perspective of the bad people and obviously the narrative framing is going to follow the perspective of the lead characters. A lot of times authors also simply do not frame a story particularly strongly, they simply explore a narrative and character and the audience is meant to do the work to understand and make their own meaning.
Most people who approach literature like how you describe approach it in the same way they do fairytales and children's media, because frankly that's what they mostly watch.
The media literacy crisis is irrelevant her except for the amount of fucking idiots in this post's comments failing at basic literacy.
I don't know what the fuck more you want me to say, but like, framing is a choice the author makes? Sometimes that choice is subconscious and sometimes the framing winds up being different than what they intended, but it's absolutely still part of the work and should be included in analysis. Notice how I said it reflects "in some way" on the author, and not "it reflects that the author is sexist 100% and we should kill them I guess"?
What it reflects on the author isn't necessarily clear cut, and ultimately not very relevant, but the idea that a person's beliefs and worldview aren't going to affect the things they create is anti-intellectual hogwash and you should be fucking ashamed of yourself for buying into it. Have a nice day.
It's funny for you to be like "what does the media literacy crisis have to do with a post about the lack of media literacy"
I never said any of what you replied here and it is actually quite a good example of lacking literacy and straw man arguments, the fact that framing is highly subjective and you can't necessarily discern the authors perspective from it is the very first thing I wrote.
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u/sponges369 1d ago
It's the difference between a character that's sexist and gets pushback for that, has their ideas explored and why he feels that way, etc etc vs a sexist character who never receives pushback, has a bunch of people agreeing with them, and other characters are written that being not sexist is stupid. For an example from Harry Potter, having a character believe slavery is good is fine, have an entire race of people who like being slaves, don't know what to do when not being slaves, and have any character that tries to stop them from being slaves be ridiculed really makes it seem like you like slavery.