So straight white science fiction author dude John Scalzi has created a bit of a hubbub amongst straight white dudes on the interwebs with a blog post called Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is. The post, later reposted on Kotaku, is basically an attempt to talk to fellow dudes in their own language about the concept of privilege “without invoking the dreaded word ‘privilege,’ to which they react like vampires being fed a garlic tart at high noon.” (And they do.)
Scalzi’s thesis:
Dudes. Imagine life here in the US – or indeed, pretty much anywhere in the Western world – is a massive role playing game, like World of Warcraft except appallingly mundane, where most quests involve the acquisition of money, cell phones and donuts, although not always at the same time. Let’s call it The Real World. You have installed The Real World on your computer and are about to start playing, but first you go to the settings tab to bind your keys, fiddle with your defaults, and choose the difficulty setting for the game. Got it?
Okay: In the role playing game known as The Real World, “Straight White Male” is the lowest difficulty setting there is.
This means that the default behaviors for almost all the non-player characters in the game are easier on you than they would be otherwise. The default barriers for completions of quests are lower. Your leveling-up thresholds come more quickly. You automatically gain entry to some parts of the map that others have to work for. The game is easier to play, automatically, and when you need help, by default it’s easier to get.
Scalzi should have added “cis” to “straight white male,” but otherwise I’d say that’s fairly spot-on.
Of course, as Scalzi himself points out, life for straight white (cis) dudes is not always peaches and cream. They may have any of a number of disadvantages in life that make things difficult for them. They may have been born poor, or in a war zone; they may have been abused as children or the victim of crime or violence as an adult. Or faced any number of other problems and conditions and disadvantages.
Scalzi deals with this issue a little more obliquely than he could have, noting that some people begin the grand game of “The Real World” with more points than others, and that this can make a good deal of difference.
But do straight white cis males face disadvantages stemming from being straight white cis men? I honestly can’t think of any that have affected my life in any serious way, and these small disadvantages pale in comparison to the many advantages. Yeah, I had to register for the draft when I turned 18. Of course, when I registered there was no draft, and there still isn’t one, and the draft has virtually no chance of being resurrected in the foreseeable future, so I can’t say this requirement has affected my life in any tangible way.
As Scalzi puts it:
If you start with fewer points and fewer of them in critical stat categories, or choose poorly regarding the skills you decide to level up on, then the game will still be difficult for you. But because you’re playing on the “Straight White Male” setting, gaining points and leveling up will still by default be easier, all other things being equal, than for another player using a higher difficulty setting.
Anyway, Scalzi got a lot of responses to his post, many of them from straight white dudes outraged by his assertions. So he wrote a followup taking some of these critics to task. He was particularly amused by the criticism that by “picking on” straight white males he was being racist and sexist.
This particular comment was lobbed at me primarily from aggrieved straight white males. Leaving aside entirely that the piece was neither, let me just say that I think it’s delightful that these straight white males are now engaged on issues of racism and sexism. It would be additionally delightful if they were engaged on issues of racism and sexism even when they did not feel it was being applied to them — say, for example,when it’s regarding people who historically have most often had to deal with racism and sexism (i.e., not white males). Keep at it, straight white males! You’re on the path now!
I am sure there are many gems of obtuseosity in the comments, and in the Reddit thread on his original post. But it’s Friday night, and I have a migraine — which sucks, but it’s not because I’m a straight white cis dude — so I’m going to let you guys find them for me.
EDITED TO ADD: Thinking a bit more about Scalzi’s central metaphor here, and I don’t think it completely works: he assumes that obstacles other than racism, sexism, and homophobia can be explained as the equivalent of having started the game with fewer points. But it you have, for example, a disability, that’s something that makes you life harder every day; it’s more akin to raising the difficulty level than to starting off with fewer points. (Not to mention that you’re likely to face bigotry because of it as well.) This doesn’t erase the privileges a straight white male with disabilities gets from being straight, white, and male, of course, but it does ratchet up the difficulty.
<blockquoteLegolas didn’t leave for a long time. In fact, he and Gimli sailed to the Undying Lands together.
Yup. It’s quite explicit that the two of them are BFFs in a very literal sense. 🙂
Grr, blockquotes, why do you thwart me?
For the record, my favorite book has become Emilie Autumn’s Asylum for Wayward Victorian Girls, and there are no happy endings in the asylum. (lower case as I mean both the book and the place, it’s got layers upon layers of allegories, which is a good bit of why I love it so much)
I really wasn’t expecting everyone to have a happy ending, just annoyed at how willingly Tolkien split the fellowship — that too is probably a reflection on his time at war and the loss of contact with friends he’d made while serving though; particularly given examples like the unlikely friendship between the elf and the dwarf. Both elves and dwarves would shun such a friendship, but they became friends over the course of many battles, to the point they directly refer to each other as friends (or at least, Gimli “never thought [he’d] die alongside an elf” “what about a friend?” “aye, that I can do”) — I guess much of my annoyance is Tolkien’s experience as a veteran and that I lack that perspective.
I need a LoTR geek to explain…the trilogy implied Elrond, Frodo et al were the last elf ship to leave, but wiki is saying that Aragorn not only united the various races, but that Legolas didn’t sail to the undying lands until after Aragorn had died (of old age it seems) and that Gimli did go too?!
That would just make my day if true (it’s been a slow day, so that’s actually not just a phrase)
Interesting thing about Sam is, he rose to considerable degree of prominence after he got back to the Shire.
Not only did he gain recognition for beautifying and restoring the Shire, as well as rejuvenating its agriculture, he also went to become the Mayor of Hobbitton and keeper of the Red Book of Westmarch.
The bit about the ship Frodo takes being the last elf ship is just in the movie, not the book – there are indeed later ships, including the one Legolas and Gimli take together. Wiki has it right.
answered while I was reading the wiki — w00t, I am glad at least some of the friendships created during the books got to stay friends in the end.
“and it’s definitely very strongly implied that Aragorn’s awesomeness as a king is very much based on his general awesomeness as a person and his respect and decency towards everyone.” — yeah that’s what I was trying to get at, that yes, he is heir to the throne, but he’s also just a frikken excellent person
I remembered Eomer lived, and Eowyn certainly did, but I’d assumed nephews/not-sons didn’t count given the big stink over Aragorn’s heritage. A silly assumption considering I don’t know he’s related to the steward of Gondor, if at all.
I am definitely thrilled that Gandalf, Frodo, Sam, Legolas and Gimli all end up in the undying lands eventually though. And from the wiki it sounds like Aragorn, Pippen and Merry got to live they lives they wanted to before dying of old age. Quite possibly the happiest endings any of them could’ve hoped for.
Interesting that Eomer marries a woman from Gonder given his sister marries Faramir, that pretty much seals that the kingdoms will be on speaking terms for a rather long time.
Legolas and Gimli were largely responsible for restoring friendship between the dwarves and what elves remained on Middle-Earth, if memory serves.
To have been at Elrond’s meeting they both had to be pretty important, so that makes a lot of sense really. Boromir was next in line to “rule” Gondor (steward not king issue aside) so I’d assume the other people in attendance were also important within their respective systems. I got the impression that Legolas, and maybe Gimli, were heirs to their thrones, or at least nobility. IIRC Gimli’s cousin was the dead king of Moria, and Legolas is treated with respect by every elf he meets, like his fame precedes him.
So it’d be a bit weird if their kings were friends but their people hated each other. (oh Moria, what a terrible idea that was…”we have a cave troll” — the tone Boromir says that in is priceless)
“they* have a cave troll” whoops! (my brother bought one of the games and I gave up after that thing killed me about a dozen times)
http://youtu.be/UAyh23l1mx4
I think what you have to accept here is that for all the elves and hobbits and magic, in some ways LOTR is more realistic than you might expect. In reality, very few people get happy endings – if you try to create them for everyone because you think they deserve it, you end up with a novel that feels deeply unrealistic. If you took all the sadness out of LOTR it wouldn’t be a series of books that’s been massively popular for over 50 years. It’s the pain and the sadness as much as the excitement and the friendships that makes people love those books so much.
(I really dislike when authors tie up their endings with neat little bows and the good rewarded/the bad punished. It just feels fake.)
Not all of the elves felt the need to return to Valinor, because some had never been there in the first place.
The Sylvan elves of the Woodland Realm in Mirkwood (known at the time as Greenwood the Great) chose to remain behind and resist the forces of Morgoth (Sauron’s predecessor) when the Valar called the elves to join them in the safety of their newly founded home.
And yeah, Legolas was the son of the king of the Mirkwood elves. The reason he felt the calling to return to Valinor is that the royal family of the Woodland Realm were not Sylvan elves like the majority, but Sindaran elves, who had left Middle-Earth and returned.
Cassandra — yeah I know, and honestly I’d be pissed if the asylum did have a happy ending, it just never could without it being very forced (they do for awhile, but it gets the highly realistic all good things must end ending) — but LoTR is supposed to be Classic Myth, and all the heroes get heroic ends…I guess permission to travel to the undying lands being granted to a mere hobbit is a heroic ending though.
Dracula — oh, ok…I was basing that off Elrond’s annoyance his daughter wanted to stay, it made me assume she’d be the last of her people. He certainly never entertained the idea she could life with Aragorn until he died and then move in with other elves. That’d have been not nearly controlling enough of him, Elrond is easily the most obnoxious character in the entire trilogy, Sauron is just evil, Saruman is deceived, Elrond is an old controlling stick in the mud.
Elrond’s issue with Arwen has a lot to do with the fact she was planning to choose mortality over the immortal life of the elves. Elrond is half elven, and like all half-elves had to make choice for himself. As his daughter, Arwen is faced with the same decision.
He still comes off as a father unable to realize his daughter is an adult now…which might be another little kind of progressive note of Tolkien’s. His own daughter would’ve been ~25 when they were published it looks like, so maybe that’s more commentary on his own life?
Elrond didn’t allow for that option because it wasn’t actually an option. Elrond is himself descended from two unions of an elf and a human, and the way those basically work in Middle Earth is that the members of his family get to decide whether to live as humans or elves – and if they choose humanity, they are mortal. By marrying Aragorn and tying her life to his, Arwen is choosing to grow old and die along with him. Elrond is less than perfectly pleased with this not because he’s a big meanie, but because really, what father would be happy about the prospect of one of his kids dying when it could be avoided? (And given his heritage, he has a pretty complicated relationship to human-elf pairings. He chose to live as an elf; his brother chose humanity and died, so y’know, there’s that.)
The movie does make him seem like more of a dick about it than the books, though, both by leaving out all that background and by just generally making him act kind of dickish.
Nah, you can’t blame Tolkien for this one – book-Elrond really just says, “Well, I’m sad about this, but all I demand is that Aragorn be awesome enough to deserve this sacrifice.”
I quite like the movies overall, and think they are by and large good adaptations, but the writers did seem to have decided at several points that there wasn’t enough conflict and chosen to create it by making characters who are awesome in the books randomly act kind of shitty. (I’m looking at you, WTFaramir…)
Elrond has two sons (twins, if I remember correctly), she’s not his only child. Also, he’s much more against their marriage in the film than in the books.
I suspect they wanted to put her in conflict with her father as a way of fleshing out her character a bit for the movie. They had to do a lot to expand her role in the story.
Sorry to comment so quickly again, but I totally hated what the films did with Faramir too, polliwog. The entire point of Faramir is to be a foil to Boromir, making him give in to temptation as well really ruins his character.
Point taken about book-Elrond. Movie-Faramir isn’t kind of shitty, kind of stupidly loyal maybe, but his one questionable action is to ride into what is almost certain death when his father demands it (and wtf else was he going to do with every route out of Gondor swarming with orcs?)
Do you mean Boromir, the one that’s part of the fellowship? Or that their father is less an ass in the books?
I remember Faramir being a bit “kidnapping hobbits now” in the books too, there’s more explanation given as to wtf is going on there, but the movies have enough explanation to make it clear he’s smarter than his father or brother by miles.
<blockquoteSorry to comment so quickly again, but I totally hated what the films did with Faramir too, polliwog. The entire point of Faramir is to be a foil to Boromir, making him give in to temptation as well really ruins his character.
Agreed! I was so annoyed by that, especially since I was a little bit in love with Faramir in the books. I could deal with a lot of the movies’ changes – even losing the Scouring of the Shire and Tom Bombadil – but I freaking hated WTFaramir and the hasty Ents.
(…that totally sounds like a band. “Good evening, ladies and gentlemen, please give a big welcome to WTFaramir and the Hasty Ents!” Now I need to form a band just so I can name it that. :-p )
darksidecat — but Faramir doesn’t give into the temptation of the ring, he lets them go once he’s actually tempted by it personally, even gives them directions for safe passage. Faramir has the lightbulb moment that Boromir never has that the ring is pure evil and must be destroyed, one of his men says something about how if he lets them go his life will be forfeit, and he replies “then it is forfeit”.
IDK, maybe you are all thinking of something I’ve forgotten, but I rewatched the movies yesterday and Faramir comes off as the only sensible member of that family.
All right, I definitely need to reads the books again. I can’t recall at all how Faramir’s actions differ.
No, I mean Faramir – in the books, he completely rejects the idea of taking the Ring from Frodo from the get-go. He has a line that’s something to the effect of, “I would not take the Ring even if I just found it by the side of the road and also it was the only way to save Minas Tirith.”