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I took a break from the dissertation to watch Princess Weekes's nearly hour-long video on SF/F and white saviorism. It's very good IMO. I shouldn't have read the comments, which include a lot of "well actually Paul Atreides is a criticism of white saviors, how dare" responses that are predictable and generic enough to have been produced by a dedicated bot farm (especially considering that she directly addresses Herbert's attempts to criticize the trope, at some length) & various ASOIAF/Daenerys stans who also ignore the more complex argument that Princess Weekes makes in the video itself.
I have really liked some of Princess Weekes's other videos, though she can be a bit hit or miss for me in general—she doesn't always give herself the space or time to get into finer details/relevant points of a potentially complicated argument (e.g., I liked her video on imperialism in cartoons like Steven Universe and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, but found it rather odd to talk about SPOP's depiction of imperialism without discussing the First Ones at all, esp given her argument about the levels of metaphor in the depiction of the greater Horde). But she gives herself the space she needs for this one and there's clearly a lot of research and nuanced thinking that went into it.
I've been interested for a long time in the way in which Daenerys, for instance, both is and is not racialized (in terms of her ethnicity/her cultural upbringing/her associations through conquest/the extremely white coding around the Targaryens) and it was really fascinating to see someone discuss that beyond snappy sound bites. I also thought she made a really intriguing point about the failures of subversion wrt white savior aesthetics, or even subtler complications of the narrative than outright subversion. The white savior aesthetic is the point for many fans and, regardless of the ultimate purpose of using a white savior aesthetic, deploying it gives a significant portion of the audience what they're after and they'll simply tune out the rest. (This seems akin to the old question of whether it's possible to successfully convey an anti-war theme via war films.) I also thought the connection with Haggard's Ayesha was an interesting insight; I read She in a sci-fi class during my PhD and was struck by how powerfully racist it was (even including the ever-fun "modern Greeks aren't really Greek because they're racially impure"), but I wouldn't have associated Ayesha with Daenerys.
Anyway! It was intriguing and quite good, I thought.
I have really liked some of Princess Weekes's other videos, though she can be a bit hit or miss for me in general—she doesn't always give herself the space or time to get into finer details/relevant points of a potentially complicated argument (e.g., I liked her video on imperialism in cartoons like Steven Universe and She-Ra and the Princesses of Power, but found it rather odd to talk about SPOP's depiction of imperialism without discussing the First Ones at all, esp given her argument about the levels of metaphor in the depiction of the greater Horde). But she gives herself the space she needs for this one and there's clearly a lot of research and nuanced thinking that went into it.
I've been interested for a long time in the way in which Daenerys, for instance, both is and is not racialized (in terms of her ethnicity/her cultural upbringing/her associations through conquest/the extremely white coding around the Targaryens) and it was really fascinating to see someone discuss that beyond snappy sound bites. I also thought she made a really intriguing point about the failures of subversion wrt white savior aesthetics, or even subtler complications of the narrative than outright subversion. The white savior aesthetic is the point for many fans and, regardless of the ultimate purpose of using a white savior aesthetic, deploying it gives a significant portion of the audience what they're after and they'll simply tune out the rest. (This seems akin to the old question of whether it's possible to successfully convey an anti-war theme via war films.) I also thought the connection with Haggard's Ayesha was an interesting insight; I read She in a sci-fi class during my PhD and was struck by how powerfully racist it was (even including the ever-fun "modern Greeks aren't really Greek because they're racially impure"), but I wouldn't have associated Ayesha with Daenerys.
Anyway! It was intriguing and quite good, I thought.
