There were many excellent contributions to this discussion. Nora provided some great perspectives on the topic and I was glad to see Sherwood talk about some of her own experiments in imagining race in the future. I’m also glad Pat Reynolds brought up Roma and Phillip Pullman — the last time we had a major discussion about race in this magazine it centered around that very issue. However, the $10 prize goes to J S Bangs @ #9, for bringing in a very thought-provoking angle:

“My question when this comes up, is to what degree the fan is responsible for his tastes.”

Congrats! And thanks for the great discussion, everyone. To continue it, head over to the comment section on the original post.

I mean, seriously, why do they keep picking these actors with the emotional range of wet cardboard to portray the leads in these Arthurian movies?

But I digress …

Would such a change be absolutely true to either the original story or the Romantic reworkings of the Arthurian legend? No. Would it be true to the “historical” accuracy of Arthur’s time? Uh, maybe not, assuming you can nail down exactly when that was, of course. But so what? Hello! Were ladies really lobbing swords out of lakes at kings? Were magicians really living their lives backwards? I think there’s a little wriggle room here for creative license. Just sayin.

Besides, Arthur’s been done to death. If you WERE going to write a version of the tale, I would actually HOPE you were going to do something fresh and original with it.

Okay. Moving on

You offer some great thought-provoking details.

I’m not sure your take is so different, however. Again, I was just throwing Lancelot out there because it was the first thing that popped into my head. I didn’t realize that that one example was going to have to sustain the underlying point through multiple arguments. My own fault for not taking the time to think of a better example.

Again, obviously, not every race or ethnicity or culture makes equal sense to inject into every tale, nor does every tale need to include serious racial issues.

The overall point was just that by breaking free of the homogeneous, stereotypical or traditional racial and ethnic casting, you can add interesting additional conflict and opportunities for character growth into a story.

And yeah, Scands/ Vikings aren’t given nearly enough credit for the depth and impact of their culture (thanks in part to the prevalence of historical accounts being from the Christians who the Vikings were sacking), and likewise for the early Germanic tribes who we know of mostly through the lens of Roman perceptions.

But along those lines (and no, I’m not defending, just thinking out loud), I think it would be good for books that are written from, say, a Gaul/ Celt viewpoint to show the Germanic tribes being perceived as brutes by many of the characters – after all, these are the tribes that invade their lands, rape and pillage, take their sons as hostages, etcetera. They aren’t going to think very fondly of them, or have a fine appreciation of their culture. BUT then balance that out by showing the opposing viewpoint. That way the reader sees how the perceptions of the opposing cultures do not always accurately and truly reflect the full scope or nature of those cultures.