The Problem with Fantastical Racism

The series *Frieren: Beyond Journey's End* presents a compelling narrative that positions itself as a strong candidate for the 2024 anime of the year. The story centers on an elf mage named Frieren who, following the loss of a companion, recognizes her emotional distance and begins a journey to deeply understand humanity. During this quest, Frieren and her new party undertake various side missions, including confronting powerful demons. These demons are depicted as beasts driven by consumption, existing within a fantasy ecosystem alongside humans and elves. Crucially, the narrative establishes demons as powerful magic users who have mastered human speech and emotional manipulation, yet operate strictly on a power-based hierarchy incompatible with human morality.

Despite the explicit explanation provided within the series regarding the demons' nature—that their manipulation stems from a fundamental incompatibility with human morality—a significant portion of the audience discourse insists that these creatures function as an allegory for real-world issues. Theories have surfaced attempting to link the demons' inability to grasp human morality to concepts like racial discrimination or even autism, suggesting a problematic transformation of narrative elements into direct social commentary.

This ongoing conversation serves as an excellent starting point for discussing the trope known as fantastical racism. This literary device occurs when prejudice directed toward non-human groups in speculative fiction functions as an examination of actual bigotry or discrimination in the real world. This can manifest either as an extension of existing prejudices or as a direct mirror held up to the audience to explore their own inherent biases within fictional contexts. This technique appears frequently across novels, comics, and television shows in both science fiction and fantasy genres.

Have you tried not being a mutant?

On a surface level, the use of this trope seems logical, given that mythology contains figures and creatures based on existing stereotypes. However, when creatures are clearly aligned with moral corruption, as is the case with the demons, audiences often resist accepting this as simple world-building. Instead, there is a tendency to interrogate this aspect deeper, seeking a hidden allegorical layer. The issue is not the potential for depth, but how the construction of these tropes primes the audience to view certain fictional dynamics as direct indicators of real-world racial dynamics.

It is essential to recognize that race is fundamentally a social construct, meaning it lacks inherent biological existence; all human beings belong to the same species. Historically, the concept of race has been utilized to signify different things, initially serving to justify the divine heritage and right to rule for certain families. As slavery and colonialism became entrenched systems, the need arose for biological justifications to support white supremacy, leading directly to the development of race science for large-scale operation.

The concept of 'whiteness' itself is multifaceted, operating differently across global contexts, such as distinguishing between whiteness in America versus Europe. Oppression manifests uniquely across the globe, and while acknowledging these caveats is necessary, the core idea revolves around systems designed to break humanity down into a hierarchy. This complexity underscores why global interpretations of oppression differ significantly.

The foundation of fantastical racism as a narrative tool traces back to the philosophical exploration of 'the other.' In philosophy, the self is defined as one's own being, requiring an 'other' to act as a counterpart to establish that definition. Manifestations of this 'other' in Western cultural studies include racial science and orientalism, where the self (the West) is positioned as the default, and the other is characterized as primitive, dangerous, or ill-formed.

This philosophical division leads to tangible societal issues, manifesting in phenomena such as diaspora wars and anti-native sentiments across various cultures. Even within concepts like queerness, the 'other' represents a difference that causes discomfort, leading to perceived cultural instabilities. Fantastical racism exploits these perceived instabilities, using allegory and thematic writing to signal to the reader a connection between the fictional conflict and real-life societal discomfort.

The HBO series *True Blood*, based on the *Southern Vampire Mysteries*, achieved significant success by expanding the 'monsters as other' concept prevalent in folklore. The premise involved vampires recently gaining civil rights after existing secretly, leading to conversations about discrimination, addiction, and faith. Alan Ball, who is gay, used these supernatural elements as clear stand-ins for marginalized groups seeking basic rights, despite facing resistance from human factions.

The X-Men are feared and hated by the world they have sworn to protect, the world of homo sapiens.

Problems arise because the roots of vampire and werewolf narratives often involve historical prejudices like anti-Semitism, misogyny, and Islamophobia. When these monsters are reclaimed and intellectualized, they gain new life, but their original function was often villainous, representing the West's view of the Eastern European or queer 'other,' as seen in characters like Dracula. A significant clumsiness occurs when stories explicitly tie minority rights to monsters, frequently resulting in the monsters being overwhelmingly white, leading to white allegorical creatures harming actual marginalized characters within the narrative structure.

*X-Men* stands as perhaps the most significant modern example of fantastical racism allegory, largely cultivated by Chris Claremont. The series inherently deals with bigotry, prejudice, genocide, and various political ideologies because the mutants are collectively feared and despised by humanity solely due to their inherent nature. This foundational conflict allows the narrative to explore complex themes surrounding identity and societal rejection, making the existence of characters like Magneto particularly compelling due to his canonical background.

Magneto's characterization is profoundly colored by his identity as a Jewish Holocaust survivor, which shapes his perspective on mutant rights struggles. While many default to comparing Magneto and Professor X to the Martin Luther King Jr./Malcolm X dynamic, recent analysis suggests their ideological split draws inspiration from Israeli political figures: Menachem Begin and David Ben-Gurion. Begin, a conservative Zionist leader responsible for the King David Hotel bombing, contrasts with Ben-Gurion, who oversaw the 1948 Palestinian exodus, adding a specific, political layer to the seemingly universal allegory of mutant rights.

The genius of the X-Men metaphor, as articulated by Claremont and Bryan Singer, is that it applies broadly enough to permit reader identification without directly mapping onto any single real-world marginalized group. Mutants represent the despised and oppressed 'other' in opposition to *homo sapiens*. However, the specific political inspirations behind key figures complicate this universality. For instance, the African nation of Janosha in the comics was initially created as a stand-in for South African apartheid, involving slave labor and brainwashing engineered by figures like Cameron Hodge.

The narrative surrounding Janosha shifted over time; after Magneto took control, some interpreted it as an Israel stand-in, though this reading lacks the ancestral homeland displacement inherent in real-world conflicts. Because mutants can represent any marginalized group—including Black people or Jewish people, both of whom have specific mutant characters—it becomes difficult to assign a singular meaning. This fluidity allows the fictional ideologies to evolve without directly harming the histories of real people, but it also means that readers often connect only to a general idea of 'the other,' losing the specific political context intended by the creators.

The conversation about race in fantasy often returns to the depiction of Orcs, whose modern conception is heavily influenced by J.R.R. Tolkien and codified in franchises like *Warcraft* and *Dungeons and Dragons*. Tolkien created Orcs as inherently evil monsters contrasted against the fair Elves. In texts like *Beowulf*, Orcs are sometimes traced to Cain, the first murderer, linking their perceived evil to biblical origins. The problem arises when this inherent evil is visually signified by dark features, mirroring real-world racial signifiers of light versus dark.

The orcs are definitely stated to be corruptions of the human form seen in elves and men.

Tolkien's letters reveal that he described Orcs as squat, broad, flat-nosed, shallow-skinned versions of European types, specifically referencing 'the two Europeans least lovely Mongol types.' This Victorian-era language otherizes the enemy by direct comparison to specific racial stereotypes. While Tolkien himself opposed Nazis and South African apartheid, demonstrating no malicious intent toward racism, his language reflects the imperialist context in which he lived. This results in a situation where modern writers often copy these descriptions without understanding the problematic historical roots, perpetuating the dehumanization.

The conversation surrounding fantasy and race remains deeply interwoven because many foundational writers worked within a colonial context. This does not automatically invalidate their works, but it necessitates unpacking these elements over time to track the genre's evolution. The fantastical racism trope does not need to be retired entirely, but world-building requires skill; writers must not simply copy the choices of predecessors without understanding the sociopolitical realities that informed those decisions.

Truly successful works manage to touch upon complex themes of otherness without resorting to cliché or repetitive structures. Robin Hobb's *Farseer Trilogy* is cited as brilliant because the author utilizes deep lore and legends to build a world that feels unique while consistently engaging with themes of otherness in a compelling manner. The capability exists to explore these difficult topics effectively, but it demands that writers demonstrate their work, avoid lazy copying, and consider who they choose to represent the face of fantastical racism, ideally selecting characters who exist at multiple intersections.