The Eiger Sanction

[chris_gerrib]

Apropos of nothing, I found myself thinking about diversity in fiction. One of the arguments against having non Straight White Males in fiction, especially historical fiction, is that the non-SWMs are "not representative" of the era.

Well, here's a fact - prior to the arrival of the Industrial Revolution in any given society, 90% of the population was engaged in subsistence agriculture. They were farmers and herdsmen, poor and living hand-to-mouth. Everybody else in the society, from kings to knights to wizards to the village blacksmith, everybody, fit in that other 10%. So, any non-farmer in fiction is inherently unrepresentative, and any other occupation would be even more unrepresentative, consisting of maybe 1% of the population. Maybe 1%.

Yet how many historical fictions have you read about farmers? Even if the main character starts as a farmer, something happens to make him leave the farm. In short, pretty much any piece of historical fiction you've ever read is "un-representative."

Here's the truth - all characters in fiction are unrepresentative. In the zombie apocalypse, 90% of humanity are dead and zombie-fied, yet the story is about the 10% who aren't. If the characters weren't exceptional when the story started, they become so over the length of the story.

In short, anybody trying to tell you that we should only have "representative" characters in fiction is offering to make change for a nine-dollar bill in threes.


(with apologies to The Eiger Sanction)

Comments

[baron-waste.livejournal.com]

Now, now, don't be ill-tempered.  All I know of the book is what you've said of it.

- And as to that, Why IS this post called “The Eiger Sanction”?

[chris-gerrib.livejournal.com]

Well, if you make a slur to the effect that the only way a book got published was to meet a checklist, you might want to Google the author's name first.

The "change a $9 bill with $3s" is from the movie.