Amazing Stories, the ‘Selfie’ and the Lack of Gratuitous Diversity

On November 28th Author Felicity Savage wrote an article for Amazing Stories Magazine Online detailing the issues with the “selfie” (The Oxford English Dictionary’s “Word of the Year”) and what the selfies means to the artist. In the article she details how selfies never work out for the average person because there’s too much of the self involved and not enough objectivity. It wasn’t, however, until Savage used the selfie as a tool to prove a point that she was met with derision n the sci-fi/fantasy community.

There’s so much talk about representing diverse voices. It’s a good thing to have stories written by lots of different sorts of people, of course it is! But the call for diversity is usually interpreted with deadly literal-mindedness as a call for more characters who are female / black / Asian / what have you. Why are we all so keen to see ourselves on the page?

Savage essentially likened the selfie to writers, readers, and fans who call for more diverse characters, settings, and characterizations in sci-fi, fantasy, and specifically in speculative fiction. She goes on to further her point by citing an incident at WisCon that a blogger writing for The Angry Black Woman publicized on her blog in 2010 where a safe space they were trying to cultivate was ruined by gawkers and trolls and calls for a “wee drop of compassion for the straight, white, able-bodied, cis-gendered male!” Why might one do this? Savage writes of this tyoe of male, “He’s lectured on his lack of diversity, told to read more stories about and by people with diverse perspectives – and yet when he tries to approach them in real life, it all too often … doesn’t end well.” She links to an article by blogger K Tempest Bradford about her issues with former friend and author Jay Lake.

Now these are all personal accounts so it’s hard to look at it in a true objective fashion but by the sounds of the story Bradford shared it sounds like she had been working to help Lake with his understanding of some of his more problematic views, but the message wasn’t being received so it should be understandable that the situation didn’t end well. This does not seem to illustrate the point Savage is making that cisgender, straight, white men are trying, but people of color and the GLBTQIA crowd aren’t having any of it. Based on the story Savage provided it sounds like people of color are trying to be patient but the second they stop playing nice and actively discuss issues the straight cis white male shuts down. Obviously this is just one story however this was the story Savage chose as her evidence that straight cis white men are in some way also oppressed.

In response to critiques of the article, Steve Davidson, the editor of Amazing Stories, made deeper statements about the article in the comments which bogged the argument down a bit more when he stated:

I think that calling into question gratuitous examples of diversity advances a valid argument: stating that a character belongs to a particular minority while not backing that character up with background and characteristics that make them genuine representatives of that minority is, in many respects, gratuitous. The point of featuring non-majority characters is to expand our experience and knowledge, not to make a work more marketable. (And other things, like creating more opportunity, providing good role models, etc)

I, for instance, am bothered by television commercials where it is obvious that some corporate hack somewhere demanded that “one of every kind” be visualized in the commercial. They’re not genuine portrayals, they’re contrived and as such distort.

To deconstruct the argument for a moment Davidson is saying that diversity for diversity’s sake essentially weakens a piece of art, in which he uses TV commercials as an example. Davidson is not saying he’d rather see all white people on TV commercials because that feels more genuine. But what exactly does he mean if he doesn’t mean that?  Regardless of skin color, sexual orientation, or ableism, TV commercials are all staged. They are trying to convey the message “Buy this,” even if the product isn’t tangible, it is asking you to buy into a thought, a concept, or a product. Part of selling a product is to show that a wide variety of people should want it. The problem with calling “gratuitous diversity” in commercials into question and making one uncomfortable would be more that commercials are actively selling, so all interactions are going to be inherently uncomfortable regardless of who is portraying that message.
Savage then, on Twitter, responded to critics by stating that “…I don’t read for social commentary. I want characters to be themselves, not reflections of us.” One can beg the question “If you don’t read for social commentary, why write a piece about social commentary in speculative fiction?”

Another blogger, author NK Jemison, offers further insights into the issues with this blog post: “Concern trolling and ‘gratuitous diversity’.” Jemison details the issues with this mindset of concern trolling. A concern troll “participates in a debate posing as an actual or potential ally who simply has some concerns they need answered before they will ally themselves with a cause. In reality they are a critic.” (From here.) Jemison states that:

It’s not lost on me that neither Mr. Davidson nor Ms. Savage have done or said much to advance the cause of “genuine diversity” in SFF — whatever they think that means — unless they’re doing it in so esoteric a way that I simply can’t recognize it. Quite the contrary: Ms. Savage seems to have advocated against full inclusion for women in adventure fantasy*, and judging by her ridicule of Expanded Horizons in the article, it’s clear she’s not all that interested in racial inclusiveness in SFF either.

Jemison then discusses the various reasons why Davidson and Savage might have issues with a lack of “genuine diversity” in speculative fiction including:

…presumably she understands the point of all this gratuitous diversity that so irks her — which is the fact that in English-language literature, only straight white men are granted the privilege of unquestioned ubiquity. If we want to change that, we need to see more non-straight non-white non-men popping up in SFF, as gratuitously as straight white men do.

Some might argue that selfies are art, and to an extent they are, but the point Savage appears to be making is that selfies are self indulgent and therefore lacking any artistic merit. This, she equates to writers who focus on people of color and people of varying sexual and social identities because they lose the objectivity needed to be a piece of art. Just because Savage doesn’t read for social commentary in her speculative fiction doesn’t mean everyone who reads or writes speculative fiction agrees, and it certainly doesn’t mean it can’t or isn’t currently being done.

While Savage makes an excellent point about selfies the way she frames her article sounds less like an article for the community in general and more catered towards her own preferences. Maybe she and Davidson could learn from this experience and try to understand from the perspective of someone outside themselves and therefore help with creating characters that are fully fleshed out and aren’t reflections of the author. To quote Savage herself: “The principle here is a familiar one. The harder you try to look good the worse you will actually look.”