GuyBeardmane Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 Native Americans are to elves as white america is to the fantasy genre. Meaning, the way white people talk about indigenous people is with all this reverence to their history, but then when encountered with actual living indigenous people they treat them as outsiders. Discuss. 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vamped Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 1 2 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vela Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 If I'm not mistaken it's called.... .... ....ignorance. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sir Teddybar Gut Fullung Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 I suddenly wanna read Lord of the Rings again. Thanks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seight Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 Oh shit, you might be on to something here! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scoobdog Posted October 30, 2019 Share Posted October 30, 2019 2 hours ago, GuyBeardmane said: Native Americans are to elves as white america is to the fantasy genre. Meaning, the way white people talk about indigenous people is with all this reverence to their history, but then when encountered with actual living indigenous people they treat them as outsiders. Discuss. Well, just off the top of my head - the seminal works in the fantasy genre owe an awful lot to the likes of Tolkien and Lewis who relied heavily on the Judeo Christian mythology for their archetypical characters and, on top of that, were informing on societies with a different relationship with native peoples. While the "myth of the noble savage" you describe might, along with Early Modernists, possibly share roots in Victorian and Romanticist literature (as well as the Middle English epic), Americans were still coming to reckon with the systematic abuse of Native Americans at the same time as fantasy was in its formative stage. Whereas elves are portrayed as noble, but aloof - perhaps complicit in their own victimization - Native Americans are often portrayed as noble wounded animals - not responsible for the demise of their culture, per se, but not necessarily capable of adapting to invading white societies. There is a persistent and insidious problem with American Literature having difficulty in humanizing Native Americans in relation to their interactions with white settlers which isn't reflected in the fantasy genre. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Doom Metal Alchemist Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 I don't know enough about the fantasy genre to be able to agree or disagree. To me elves are just the ones that make Santa's toys. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Vela Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 (edited) shhhhh everybody continue to not reply to @scoobdog's meaningful comment. Edited October 31, 2019 by Vela NO DON'T LIKE either...HE'LL KNOW! 2 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonSinger Posted October 31, 2019 Share Posted October 31, 2019 17 hours ago, GuyBeardmane said: Native Americans are to elves as white america is to the fantasy genre. Meaning, the way white people talk about indigenous people is with all this reverence to their history, but then when encountered with actual living indigenous people they treat them as outsiders. Discuss. Where did you live at where you got to see that? I'm probably biased because I live in a state where I get embarrassed just seeing our baseball team play and hearing everyone sing that Tomahawk song while doing 'The Chop'. 😑 1 Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GuyBeardmane Posted November 1, 2019 Author Share Posted November 1, 2019 14 hours ago, SorceressPol said: Where did you live at where you got to see that? I'm probably biased because I live in a state where I get embarrassed just seeing our baseball team play and hearing everyone sing that Tomahawk song while doing 'The Chop'. 😑 Michigan, mostly. Growing up there then moving south and meeting people who basically think of indigenous people like mythological beings, there's a lot of celebration of their mystique and their "closeness to nature" and etc, but it's basically just that. I spent many of my formative years in Tennessee so I know the chop, also. But it's like a level of hypocrisy I can't wrap my head around. People talk about how they're 1/128th Cherokee or whatever but then they bitch about how the Washington Redskins and Chief Wahoo aren't racist. This is a bit of a tangent, but related. Scoob covered a lot of it. In a lot of things in the fantasy genre, books, games, shows, and all, elves are mysticized beings who often live in tune with nature and seem to have a higher state of consciousness. The same mysticism applied to elves in fantasy is applied to indigenous people by a lot of white people. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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