“Forced inclusion”, a modern way of discrimination?

Pills of Thought 3: Instead of forcing that inclusion when it is not rational or reasonable, perhaps we should understand the difference, and the possibilities that these differences give us normally.

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For a while now, western societies suffer a deep guilt complex regarding its responsibility derived from the power dynamics and relations implemented throughout history by it. It is obvious that the history of the world is, in a sense, essentially a history traversed by the white occidental man’s domination on other human races, ethnics and genders, and it is equally obvious that our times still have things to learn and to implement in order to overcome the problem of arbitrary discrimination completely. Nevertheless, instead of working on serious and significant policies and instructions to learn how to do those things politically better, it seems that we are stubborn in keeping us inside the limits of useless political correctness movements, ideas, and policies.

Lately, in global cultural industry the concept of “racial inclusion” or, actually, “forced inclusion” has become popular. This global cultural industry has thought that the correct way to overcome discrimination against some historically neglected by the industry ethnic groups is to introduce people from these ethnic groups in any kind of stories, even though that introduction is not supported or explained by the structure of the story or the features that define the background context or the consistency of its narrative. It is possible to point out some examples of that in our recent audiovisual productions, for instance, regarding the remakes of some Disney films like The Little Mermaid or the Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. In both cases, the point of the discussion lies in the fact that the actresses chosen for those roles are people of color, and it would not be a problem were it not for the fact that those stories were thought and designed in very different intellectual and historical contexts. The story told in The Little Mermaid was created at the beginning of the 19th century, and the events it consists of are located in Denmark, a place where, due to its geography and climatic conditions, does not allow the possibility to have many native people of color.

Facing this situation, I think that we can find two important foundations for popular reactions against these inclusions: first of all, merely racism, and I mean, the complaint or refusal of people of color in these remakes based specifically on the fact that these actresses are people of color, and no more. In my opinion, this is not an interesting perspective to be analyzed beyond pointing out that this reaction constitutes a similar kind of ignorance than the ignorance of people who defend that it does not matter at all in any context. Secondly, this refusal or criticism comes from something that Aristotle already wrote in his book Poetics, and that consists of an issue linked to the core structure of the plot and, even more, with the concept of truthfulness that the plot should show to the audience. The point is that the story that is being told to the audience, in order to be accepted as something coherent and consistent and, thus, as something artistically valuable, has to pursue the image of the truthfulness or credibility. It means that the story that is told must be, or a description of something true and, therefore, should follow the events as they were; or a chain of events consistent enough between them to create a story that could occur in an eventual reality. This second element is which is affected by productions as The Little Mermaid or Snow White, in these cases not because the structure of the story is itself modified, but because the introduction of people of color in those works implies clearly not a will to work following the story’s consistency, but to work following a political message far away of art aims and interests.

Apart from that, nowadays cultural industry arrogates the faculty to decide how to change and modify the original sources of those stories, committing an illegitimate appropriation of another’s work. And that appropriation could be even more ridiculous than illegitimate if we consider, for example, Snow white’s case, a story which defines, for reasons of the very plot, the future princess as a girl white as snow.

In any case, someone could argue regarding these considerations that these stories are, after all, fantasy, and for that reason can be re-interpreted and re-designed in order to become more accurate to nowadays standards. In spite of that, we cannot forget that these stories were created in a specific context and it means that the features and conditions which defines it have, necessarily, a specific consistency that we are not allowed to modify without modifying the essential parts of the story. But due to the fact that all these stories are fantastic creations, we can assume that they could be changed or modified in order to build up a more accurate interpretation to our political correctness standards. And that could be a convincing argument if the background of it were not the will to force minorities’ inclusion independently from any criteria of consistency or coherence. That will is clearly shown regarding the audiovisual productions elaborated about events as, for example, the live of Anne Boleyn or Margaret d’Anjou, or the myth of Achilles, people who are depicted in nowadays productions as people of color.

I want to clearly emphasize that the problem is not the feature of «color», the problem is the inconsistency of introducing people of color when the plot or the event that is told to the audience does not allow their presence. In the cases of fantasy creations, we could admit that, beyond the fact of the academically inappropriate appropriation of another’s creation, and the problem derived from the inconsistency of the plot that actually does not affect to the general development of it, it is not more injurious than merely ridiculous attending to its real goal. However, I conceive as a deep and concerning situation the same policy applied to the historical events as I pointed out before, for example, regarding Anne Boleyn, Achilles or Margaret d’Anjou. Those cases are clearly representations of the will to underestimate the truthfulness and the academic rigor in favor of political messages that do not matter to history’s reality nor development. It is simply a lie to present Anne Boleyn or Achilles as people of color, because it goes against the common sense, the historical correctness and the rational assumption of that reality.

In my opinion these events should force us to think about why they exist, and to investigate what is the foundation of this kind of audiovisual policies. The main element of the existence of these cases is for me a fundamental mistake regarding the goal that they allegedly pursue, because by uncritically introducing people of color to these productions where that people could not be explained by the plot nor the reality, we are pointing out that people as different and, specifically, as people outside their proper place, or even more, we are victimizing these people in a paternalistic vision that understands that they are people to be essentially protected by over-recognition. Therefore, is it not conceivable that those who are actually discriminating are the very ones who force the presence of people of color in these productions, since they put an artistically irrelevant yet obvious feature over the needs of truthfulness or the plot of the story itself? The cultural industry is not putting the talent or merit of the actresses or actors as a fundamental value when choosing them for certain roles, but, invoking forced inclusion, it chooses them almost exclusively on the basis of their skin color. And, as I see, the question that society should ask to itself can be none other than if it is not that will to put the skin color as an element to be chosen for a playrole in those productions the main issue that we wanted to avoid nowadays. Indeed, wanting to prevent the skin color from becoming an excluding or determining factor, we are actually implementing that very criteria.

The way to normalize and protect the interaction between different people is to understand that this interactions must be founded on the normality of our differences, and on the fact that the obvious differences that we have among us are not a reason to complain. Instead of forcing that inclusion when it is not rational or reasonable, perhaps we should understand the difference, and the possibilities that these differences give us normally. And, in any case, we should create new stories reflecting this kind of inclusion that some people want to force. Perhaps this discussions are only the clearest demonstration of the lack of creativity that our current culture industry has.