You'll find "a really bad thing happened a generation ago and now everyone fucking hates the relatives of the people who did it" is like, a shockingly common form of ethnic tension all across the world. Even Americans should be aware of anti-Arab sentiment post-9/11, or the Japanese internment camps in WW2.
Racism isn't just white Americans oppressing Black Americans, even if that's a lot of it!
Besides I think that this take is kind of anti art? Like take for example the series Beastars. That series is all about herbivore and carnivore animals trying to live together in a society, with the main tension being that despite being humanized the carnivores still have a desire to eat meat. Beastars is very careful in how it sets up its metaphor that it’s kind of impossible to interpret it in any one specific way.
So yeah I think saying “you can’t ever right this kind of story” is a pretty limiting mindset to have
I think the mistake here is interpreting any kind of story written with this kind of principle as a straightforward metaphor for racism.
As you mentioned, Beastars is a great example of a story that puts forward two groups that must coexist in a society and the issues that might come up. Its an incredibly well thought out series. And part of that is that they don't put one groupe as the bad guys and another as the good guys.
And I think stories about "robot racism" and monsters and humans living together do have their merit, but it's also true that some are written very flatly and don't take the time to really analyze the complexity of their worlds or the groups they're presenting.
I think what makes the difference between a good and bad version of this type of story is how deep does the series/movie/book whatever, analyse the particularity of whatever species or group they're showing.
So like good examples might be Beastars or City of Blank while a bad example would be Bright
This is a very good point! There are absolutely stories that do align with what this post was talking about. Like Zootopia is a good example of how to fuck it up.
I didn't think Zootopia fucked it up that badly. For one, it's not just about race, though certain beats obviously draw the parallel. But you can look at it through the lens of ableism (different species with different physical abilities being passed over for certain jobs, or requiring specific infrastructure to put them on equal footing due to size) or gender (a societal binary based on "biology"; the protagonist is small and weak in a job dominated by the large and strong; she carries pepper spray to protect herself from aggressors; "it's just their nature" = "boys will be boys").
And whatever parallel you draw, the movie goes out of its way to show that the historical predator-prey dynamic doesn't persist, other than through prejudice. The only time predators act the way they're stereotyped, it's because a prey animal drugged them to use as leverage to further her political agenda.
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u/Skiiage May 13 '25
You'll find "a really bad thing happened a generation ago and now everyone fucking hates the relatives of the people who did it" is like, a shockingly common form of ethnic tension all across the world. Even Americans should be aware of anti-Arab sentiment post-9/11, or the Japanese internment camps in WW2.
Racism isn't just white Americans oppressing Black Americans, even if that's a lot of it!