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Author Topic: A small question
babooher
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I'm not sure about what word to use. I'm writing a steampunk bit and I keep imagining a scene where a cadre of people with dwarfism rush in to mop up the blood from a fight. Quite frankly, I think it would be anachronistic to use the term "little people" or "people with dwarfism" and being a subgenre of fantasy, I'm reticent to use the term dwarf. I keep thinking "midgets" would be the best term, but I also don't want to be offensive on this. Any thoughts?
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LDWriter2
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I think almost any word could be considered offensive in this situation. Some people just get offended too easily but I have read a steampunk story where the word dwarf was used. In fact the MC was a "little person". I think she used various terms including dwarf. I don't think she used midget though but I'm not sure.

That was the word they used back then. Then being the time steampunk usually takes place in.

That would be a hard choice. I think "little people" is too far in the future.

Someone else here may know other words that were used or have more experience with using offending words.

But I don't think steampunk is a subgenre of fantasy unless there's magic in it then it would be more like subgenre to Urban Fantasy but I'm not the expert with such things.

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genevive42
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I agree that you could get away with using whatever the historically accurate term is. You could also make up your own. Something to consider is how your characters use the term. Is their attitude around it neutral, positive or negative? That will make a great difference in how it is received. If you want it to be negative, I'd consider making up your own slang term.
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extrinsic
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When arts' social consciousness and responsibility comes into clash with cultural appropriation, a dilemma of great proportions raises concerns. Insensitive use of any cultural term, label, or icon will be met with controversy, especially if malappropriated.

Cultural malappropiation is when a culture group's identity markers are appropriated by any outsider, usually, though insider malappropiation as well, in a manner that derogates, disparages, detracts from the group's identity. The malappropiation axis can run from extremes of innocent gratuitous use to outright derogating negativity.

Using characters with a medically based growth inhibition, such that their adult stature is below 4-foot 10 inches, for a menial chore is a problematic appropriation, if that menial chore or other gratuitious roles is their dramatic function. In other words, as MacGuffin characters used for gratuitous humor or disparaging purposes, no matter what label, term, or terms are used.

Perhaps the degree of audience objection might be low, might be focused from a small segment, might pass muster generally. Then again, the use might raise a clamor of indignation.

The label itself is not per se problematic, rather how it's used, by whom, and in what context and texture: who, when, where; what, why, and how. A number of methods defuse somewhat or altogether an appropiation's malappropiateness. Each involves generally the writing specificity principle. Uses that generically disparage an entire culture group's identity are problematic. Uses that are specific to individual characters are less problematic.

A generic group of short-statured, menial servants who show up, clean up, and go away seems to me a gratuitous use, for humor or whatever intents. Balance that objectionable use with more noble ones, say they agitate for personal liberty, have honorable social codes, mores, and values as well as an ordered, noble hierarchy, and are compassionate beings--much of the objectionableness will be defused.

Contrarily, portray specific agitators in the group as wicked, socially flawed, frail persons of questionable behavioral traits, while the majority are noble. The group then either way becomes as differentiated and invidiually distinguishable as all of the milieu's society and its manifold culture groups.

Wickedness portrayals benefit from another writing principle related to specificity. This is fiction's reassigning responsibility for attitudes, viewpoints, and opinion positions to personas internal to a narrative. Not the writer. If, for example, a wicked central character uses a disparaging label for these short-statured menial servants, the blame for its malappropiateness readers will assign to the character.

This technique has an added benefit: it shows the character as flawed, which might add to that character's character dimensionality development and signal to readers he or she is a villain, maybe even preoposition the character for later malfeasance or malappropiateness that nonetheless gives readers a sense of the character's flawed, frail, and ignoble character. This might signal early on that this character is the bad guy.

If these characters have an auxilliary role or a supporting extras' role, minor, in other words, a balancing cue or two will suffice, if in proportion to their significance and duration to the time span they are portrayed. If they play larger roles, proportion still matters. Appropriateness to malappropriateness proportion is a key.

I don't feel so much that the label matters so much as the portrait.

[ February 07, 2014, 02:54 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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Denevius
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quote:
I don't feel so much that the label matters so much as the portrait.
This, and extrinsic's reply in general, is a really good analysis of the situation. Is there any particular reason relevant to the plot or the universe, or any particular reason that logically follows from the plot or the conditions of the universe, that they are small in size as well as assuming this manservant role?
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babooher
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Denevius, in a nutshell, yes, both culturally and logistically. And it is all in the exposition, all in the background, all something that needs to happen but probably shouldn't be noticed. I'm beginning to wonder if I shouldn't get passive for a second, say the blood was cleaned up, and move on.
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Kathleen Dalton Woodbury
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Passive could work in this case.
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Robert Nowall
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Well, if the era is Victorian---you just said "steampunk," which could be anywhere, really---"dwarf" and "midget" would be the acceptable terms.

Keep in mind, though, that "dwarf" and "midget" aren't interchangable---the physical appearance they describe are considerably different.

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Reziac
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"Little People" or "Small Folk" used to mean fairies and elves and brownies and such.
http://tinyurl.com/2tzauk
(forum software won't let me post the wikipedia link)

The modern reason the term might be called 'anachronistic' could itself be accused of 'cultural appropriation': it wasn't originally 'owned' by the LPA but rather by a broad range of cultures across history.

And the LPA has condemned the use of the word 'midget', apparently not understanding that medically, 'dwarf' and 'midget' are NOT interchangeable.

In dogs, 'miniature' breeds or types are roughly half the average species size. They are genetically midgets, but they are NOT dwarfs. Conversely, unusually short-legged dogs of any size ARE dwarfs. (And it's possible to be both, such as the miniature Dachshund.)

<rant type="politically incorrect"> As to the term 'cultural appropriation' -- it irks me no end. It implies that by borrowing from a culture, you've in some way diminished or stolen it -- as if cultures were physical objects that could be carried off, rather than being fundamentally a pool of shared ideas. Since when are ideas owned by any one group?? And many elements of every culture from the proto-humans onward were themselves borrowed and bent, which is to say, 'appropriated' from some other culture. Now what? Where do you draw the line?? </rant>

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Jed Anderson
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Midget and dwarf are two entirely different things. Look up both definitions and decide which one is most relevant to what you are writing about.

Also, it's your story, your words, your world, so why should you give a **** what one person may think if you're entertaining hundreds. Jeff Dunham has a puppet of a dead terrorist. Does anyone care? No.

Tell your story. Don't worry about what the few negatives might think when it's the many you are entertaining.

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extrinsic
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quote:
Originally posted by Reziac
:<rant type="politically incorrect"> As to the term 'cultural appropriation' -- it irks me no end. It implies that by borrowing from a culture, you've in some way diminished or stolen it -- as if cultures were physical objects that could be carried off, rather than being fundamentally a pool of shared ideas. Since when are ideas owned by any one group?? And many elements of every culture from the proto-humans onward were themselves borrowed and bent, which is to say, 'appropriated' from some other culture. Now what? Where do you draw the line?? </rant> [/QB]

Cultural appropriation is a neutral term used for the borrowing of culture groups' identity markers, rituals, objects, celebrations, etc., in the sociology segment of social sciences, also with political geography and folkloristics concerns, in the sense of a method of cultural transmission.

"Political correctness," on the other hand, comes with both negative and positive connotation precedents, since the term has been used in both derogatory and celebratory contexts and textures.

Cultural ownership in general revolves around celebrating unique cultural identity. Cultural appropriation, transmission, and diffusion benefit and harm cultures, in that sharing and shared cultural identity develop strong and meaningful community bonds. Therein is a potential issue arising from excluding outsiders who do not share a similar cultural identity, which in turn also contributes to strengthening community bonds. An issue of cultural transmission and community bond strengthening, though, is the ongoing loss of unique cultural diversity's community strengthening characteristics. The most problematic issue of multiculturalism is its movement toward a single, encompassing, hegemonic monoculture.

As artists, writers are not forbidden from cultural appropriation, no more than any other art or science or social activity. Free speech is a human right, as equally countered by others' rights to free speech in dissent with any individual's expression. Rather as artists we have a duty to respect our fellow sojourners on the journey of life. That respect does not require favorable outlooks about anyone or all or any group or all groups but instead artful, timely, judicious, and proprotionately dimensional and persuasive portraits of the characters we portray.

Otherwise, we'd have no villains, no nemeses, no antagonist characters against which our troubled and imperfect protagonists and such struggle, clash, and strive to cope with and with which to contend, confront, do battle. Also otherwise, we would not be true to ourselves, to life, and to our audiences. Also otherwise, our writing would be stuck in tepid, watery, pastel green pea soup expression.

I repeat: I don't feel so much the label matters so much as the portrait.

Whether that portrait is satisfied by a narrator's passive voice summary expression like "the blood was cleaned up," or by a transition scene away from the blood spill that doesn't portray the cleanup on stage at all, or artfully and proportionally portraying the menial servants who do clean up--between exacting detail or in passing as empathy-worthy or unsettling extras for scene setting, authenticating the narrative's illusion of reality development--and in so doing develop the characters and perhaps narrator who express an attitude about the menial servants--favorable or unfavorable--and in all how the narrative point of view, overall narrative voice, and aesthetic distance are managed.

Many choices, none of which necessarily precludes cultural appropriation nor necessarily precludes malappropriation, though the latter deserves consideration of audience sensibilities if publication is intended.

[ February 08, 2014, 06:36 PM: Message edited by: extrinsic ]

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rstegman
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You can also alleviate part of the problem you are looking at is if you give them a very good reason for doing gathering the blood, such as good money (A business they started and do well in) for keeping the place clean, or making use of the blood for their own purposes (for use in some kind of magic). they stop being servants or political correctness insults, and become empowered.
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extrinsic
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"Empowered"

A fully loaded writing principle. Does empowerment happen in the course of an unfolding dramatic action. Or does empowerment come fully realized from the outset. The former is a potent direction for a plot to develop, either as part of the main dramatic complication or as an accompanying organizing principle. The latter's development in an introduction, whether from the outset or when the opportune moment arises, ideally before a midpoint, nonetheless poses potent potentials.

Yet a third possibility is the degree of empowerment is a given presupposed, because the milieu's culture's value system, social codes, and such support if not expect a given group's empowerment. Entltled to privileges superior to others' privileges is another way of saying expected empowerment. Sense of entitlement is itself a double-edged sword.

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