12 KiB
[QD] Representing Values from other Social Systems
Post:
How do people write interactions for characters who are from societies with different approaches to hierarchy and individualism?
A lot of fantasy and historical fiction seems to create worlds where characters might have setting-specific goals, but still seem to think and act like modern american professionals.
I think the problem is that authors are taking familiar situations, changing the setting, but not noticing some of the implicit assumptions in the way scenes work.
As an example, here's a fairly mundane interaction. Something like it probably played out a few thousand times over the last week.
Translating a Scene
A Modern Office
"Hey Bill! How's your report going? Hope you'll have some great numbers for us."
"Good so far. We hit our target for the half. We might have even doubled it. I'm triple-checking, just to be sure."
"That's great! Any idea when it's done? I want to get my report sent off to the VPs by the end of the week."
"Maybe tonight? Tomorrow morning at the latest. My kid's got a game, so I might leave a bit early."
"Come on, go see your kid. Tomorrow morning is fine."
"Thanks. I'll have the report on your desk by 10."
On the surface, this seems like it should be easy enough to translate over into different settings.
Instead of re-checking a report, Caveman Bill could be making fish-traps, Merchant Bill could be getting supplies for a caravan, and Mage Bill could make an illusion for a Noble's gala.
The result might be something like:
Mage Academy Workroom
"Apprentice William! How goes your work? Will you be ready to dazzle us at the mid-summer ball?"
"The basic illusion is done. But I think I can make the dragon fly! I just need to get the wing-movements right."
"A flying dragon! That will certainly set a scene. When do you think you'll have something you can show? The Lady wants to match her decorations to the color of your dragon."
"Maybe tonight? Tomorrow morning at the latest. My mother loves to see the summer lanterns being lit, so I might leave early."
"Go see your Mother. Tomorrow morning is fine."
"Thank you. Tell the Lady she'll have her dragon by mid-morning."
The problem is that, while I changed the setting-specific elements, I kept the basic structure of the scene and the character dynamic. And this structure had a lot of cultural assumptions embedded into it.
I noticed this when I tried to figure out why so many Fantasy Cultures felt like they were filled with people who think like modern, office-dwelling professionals.
Cultural Subtexts as World Building
The subtext in the 'Mage' story implies a world with very flat hierarchies.
"Apprentice William! How goes your work? Will you be ready to dazzle us at the mid-summer ball?"
The word-choice gives William a lot of ownership over his work. It's his project. Not the Academy's and not even the Master Mage's.
We also learn that he has been working pretty independently if the mage needs to check up on him in the first place.
Combined with the Mage's politeness, it seem like this is a society that values empowering lower-ranked & inexperienced people to make independent decisions.
That's a healthy office environment, but probably atypical for a medieval town.
"The basic illusion is done. But I think I can make the dragon fly! I just need to get the wing-movements right."
Instead of following instructions, William took initiative and changed the project so the dragon will fly.
He did this because, in his opinion, the result would look better. Notably, he didn't check with the Mage before deciding to change the design requirement.
William just assumed that the Mage would be ok with trainees making unilateral decisions. And he seems to be right.
"A flying dragon! That will certainly set a scene. When do you think you'll have something you can show? The Lady wants to match her decorations to the color of your dragon."
Translation: "Yep, I'm good with you taking initiative. And the Lady might work around your choices, at least to some degree."
We also learn that the society is egalitarianism & independent enough that the scheduling is phrased as an open-ended question that gives William choices.
Contrast with 'can you be ready at 4PM on Friday?'.
"Maybe tonight? Tomorrow morning at the latest. My mother loves to see the summer lanterns being lit, so I might leave early."
Translation: "I'll stay late and do it, if you tell me to. Otherwise I'd be a little late so I can see my family."
The 'might leave early' wording implies that there's a social fiction where hours are the apprentice's independent choice.
"Go see your Mother. Tomorrow morning is fine."
Translation: "That's a socially-acceptable excuse. Enough so that I, a senior person, will endure some inconvenience."
"Thank you. Tell the Lady she'll have her dragon by mid-morning."
Translation: "Yes, I know you want this ASAP, but I appreciate that you're bending. I'll put in additional effort to compensate you for the inconvenience."
Elves: At Least as Foreign as the French
Now that I'm starting to notice how cultural assumptions impact into scene structure, I'm having a hard time figuring out how to fix the problem. A lot of this is that I'm worried about my own blind-spots.
Since I'm used to individualistic cultures, it's fairly easy to think about William's scene in terms of individualistic virtues. Is he too independent? Is he not independent enough?
The harder part is that I suspect I'm missing an entire category of concerns that would be important to a character from a more collectivist or hierarchical culture, but don't really register on my own radar.
Suppose we wanted to make our Mages think less like Americans. We might put William into a group of apprentices, make him a little less independent, and make the Master Mage a bit more authoritarian.
That would dial down the individualism. But I think we'd also want to introduce concerns that would occur to more-collectivist William that might not be on the radar of a modern american reader.
For instance, should he be concerned that his Flying Dragon would overshadow the parts of the illusion that are being built by other apprentices?
I feel like this is something where it should be possible to find research on the values of existing, real-world cultures to use as a basis.
Unfortunately, I've found that a lot of the work that I can find seems too abstract or philosophical to operationalize nicely into a story.
Have people found descriptions that would be useful to this?
Are there techniques or stories that do a good job of making characters really feel like they're thinking in another culture's frameworks?
Comments:
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u/alexanderwales:
Go watch some foreign-language television. Watch the stuff that's been subtitled really well and that hasn't made the translation from their culture to our own. There's loads of it on Netflix. Try to find romance, drama, or workplace stuff; I think generally speaking, those will highlight the differences much more. I just got done watching two shows that I thought really illustrated cultural differences well. "Coffee Prince" is a sort of silly Korean drama about a girl pretending to be a guy at a coffee shop. The Netflix translation is terrible, but in this case that's sort of good because it includes a lot of the concepts that don't translate cleanly. "Atelier" is a Japanese show about a lingerie shop, notable because pretty much all of the relationships in the show are *work* relationships. Most American workplace comedies are about things other than work, but Atelier seems notable in that it's *driven* by the workplace and professional/vocational issues, rather than using the workplace as a setting for interpersonal drama. The easiest way to see cultural assumptions is to go grab some stuff from another culture and see how it compares.-
u/PlaneOfInfiniteCats:
I second this advice. The best way to get a feel of foreign cultures I know of is watching/reading things from foreign cultures. Anime is often really good for this purpose if you wish to look for more hierarchical society. The whole "Japanese have word for younger/older sibling, but not for sibling in general" thing blowed my mind when I encountered it first. See also: senpai/kouhai. Often when characters in anime behave strangely, it is because we, western watchers, lack the cultural context to understand what happens and why, but it makes perfect sense within the culture of characters. I also want to complain about US authors. Many, many US authors just don't care about cultural context. I have lost count how many times I encountered fantasy characters horrified by violations of laws and morals of California. Things like legal drinking age being 21, etc. In most fantasy settings legal drinking age doesn't make sense as a concept, for Cthulhu's sake. The other way to pay more attention to cultural context is learning to notice your own cultural context. Paul Graham wrote an [absolutely fantastic essay](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html) on doing this. I really recommend you to read it.- u/None:
>I second this advice. The best way to get a feel of foreign cultures I know of is watching/reading things from foreign cultures. Perhaps something from our past as well? [This](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/2aiobi/i_want_to_write_a_novel_in_medieval_austria_can/civjgv4) great post tries to argue that, even in relatively recent times, the mores were *very* different and that writing fantasy is superior to historical fiction since, unless you're truly immersed, you'll never really get the culture of even a recent civilization "right". I think the bit about "taking credit for things he didn't actually do but made decisions about" would fit with the above snips the OP posted. The benefit with going with something older is that it's probably going to be in English. Depending on how popular the work is all of the secondary material and discussions will be in English too. Of course, this is probably true of something like..Greek works. > In most fantasy settings legal drinking age doesn't make sense as a concept, for Cthulhu's sake. Partly the audience is to blame I imagine. The audience can tolerate the idea that all sorts of violence and butchery was acceptable, but certain things (rightly or wrongly) tweak their moral noses.
- u/None:
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u/ArgentStonecutter:
I'm going to have to mull this over, but that's a very interesting point. You might look for works that don't make these mistakes to "prime the pump". In the _1632_ universe we get to see 20th century attitudes like these running into 17th century ones, and some of the authors produce scenes like these, and others seem to have thought through what you're talking about and you get entertaining misunderstandings... from both sides. Glen Cook's "Wiz Biz" series has Wiz Zumwalt slapped down over and over again in the first book where he's expecting people to treat him like a peer and they... well... don't. -
u/None:
>Are there techniques or stories that do a good job of making characters really feel like they're thinking in another culture's frameworks? Ursula Le Guin books tend to be nice for it. She was an anthropologist: read anthropology. Also, travel.- u/IllusoryIntelligence:
Seconding Ursula Le Guin, her works are a great read in general but for cultural distinctions I'd really recommend Left Hand of Darkness which manages to include clear distinctions of class, race and gender. If you're up for an example from fanfic [Embers](https://www.fanfiction.net/s/5398503/1/Embers) by Vathara does a good job of handling the difficulties 4 values distinct cultures face when attempting to interact diplomatically, it also comes with some pretty useful discussion of the real world influences used as author's notes.
- u/IllusoryIntelligence:
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u/Transfuturist:
I have not seen anything like "Mage Academy Workroom," save Naruto fanfiction and similar that just plain gets their society wrong. I'm not sure this is actually hard to avoid. There are plenty of alt-society tropes in use everywhere. -
u/MonstrousBird:
Perhaps look closer to home? Think about how children are treated, or how women sometimes have to behave in offices. This is all really good stuff and I have to remember to incorporate it anyway.