The Problem with Monster/Race Metaphors

Folks, the writing is going well. I'm moving forward with my projects and just plugging along. Not much to report right now, but I'll let you know if that changes.

So, this last week I discovered that Disney Channel's website has a bunch of their old Halloween movies up to watch for free, like the Halloweentown movies, Mom's Got a Date with a Vampire, Scream Team, Under Wraps, those things.

They also had a new one called Z-O-M-B-I-E-S. I'd seen this movie on DVD at Target, and it was free to watch, and I was procrastinating fixing a toilet seat (short but boring story), so I decided to watch it.

My review: well, I don't watch Disney Channel original movies expecting the world's best films. Or even great films, for that matter. I watch them because they are nostalgic for me and because sometimes the music and dancing is fun.

That was the case for this movie. The music and dancing were fun, and I enjoyed the numbers. But the writing...not so much.

For one thing, the "zombies" in the movie rarely if ever actually acted like zombies (seriously, can I PLEASE get monsters that actually behave like monsters?), which made me wonder why they even wrote it like this. For another, various Chekov's guns were presented but never fired, and worldbuilding broke down in places.

But the thing that bugged me the most was the race metaphor through the whole movie. The plot revolves around a school being desegregated - aka, allowing zombie students to attend for the first time ever. The zombies leave their ghetto but aren't really accepted. The normal kids are disgusted by the zombies, who can't eat lunch with them, have to study in poor conditions, etc.

Sound familiar yet? It gets worse/better when Zed, the lead zombie character, becomes the star football player. His triumphs on the field lead to more respect for the zombies and better treatment, but only as long as he keeps winning.

There was a heavy-handed race metaphor through the movie, and it bugged me.

I don't mind stories about race. I think they're useful and promote empathy. And if there are kids who are more empathetic as a result of watching this movie, then great. But what annoyed me was the way that this movie, and so many others, draw a parallel between other races and creatures that can actually inherently hurt the protagonists.

In Z-O-M-B-I-E-S, the zombies are pretty tame, but they have and could eat people. The only control on them is a band on their wrist that prevents brain craving, but in a scene where cruel teens turn those bands offline, the zombies start hunting immediately.

The zombies are inherently dangerous, and the humans have a good reason to fear them. So, in the race metaphor, is the movie saying that other races also are inherently dangerous?

See the breakdown? And I see this all over. In X-Men. The mutants really can kill people with their powers in ways humans can't easily defend against. It makes sense that humans are worried that mutants will use those powers to harm them. So what are we supposed to compare them to again?

What about Zootopia? The predators literally have a history of eating prey. They have teeth and claws. They are inherently dangerous.

But in real life, racism doesn't make logical sense. It isn't based in any inherent danger. It's skin color and hair color. It's physical features that have no inherent danger, or it's cultural norms that are odd to another culture.

It's "I don't like that guy because of his skin color" or "I feel weird around her because her food smells strange." There's NO inherent fear of being eaten or set on fire with someone's mutant powers.

This is why I don't like this kind of metaphor. It's flawed. It doesn't reveal racism for what it really is, and could extend the metaphor to places that it doesn't belong.

So how do we fix this in our own writing? The race/monster metaphor is so ingrained that what do we do?

Well, one way would be to make the difference something cosmetic or at least not inherently dangerous. This alien race has tiny octopi for hands, or they worship a black hole (but don't sacrifice to it), or something. Something more in line with the way real racism works.

Or, if you use the monster metaphor, to show who over-the-top it really is. If these characters can accept the monsters with all this inherent threat, then why can't we accept people who are different when there is no inherent threat?

I don't think people who write these metaphors into stories are malicious in any way, but I think we can do better, and I hope we do. It will make better stories, and it will perhaps move race discussions into a more realistic light.