Let me begin by a controversial statement: nowadays, problematic aspects of famous books are spotted not as often as you may think. Not everything is deemed racist and sexist. There are authors who are judged harshly, and deservedly, but there are also authors who are still liked on the progressive side despite of their books being not entirely free of bigoted treads and misrepresentation.
Yes, I’m talking about “Discworld”, a series I’ve come to like and appreciate. But I’ve come to see, also, that there are aspects of it which didn’t age well. Which may surprise you, since you’ve might heard that Pratchett’s books were anti-sexist or even transpeople-inclusive as for their times. But let me explain.
At first, I’d like to put a little disclaimer here: I don’t think that Pratchett’s series is very racist or very sexist, neither do I think that he put some problematic content in aim of making marginalized groups upset. It seems to me also that there are indeed much more problems to such series as “The Chronicles of Narnia” than to the books about Discworld. I can see why the aforementioned Lewis’ Narnia recieves much more criticism. It was written in racist and sexist times, but it’s worth to mention that C. S. Lewis was personally biased towards, for example, Middle-Eastern people, even as for his times. So, there is certainly a difference between Discworld and Narnia. But Discworld isn’t perfect, either.
Recently, I’ve been a lot into postcolonialism and anti-racism, and honestly, because of my research some things in Pratchett’s books made me uncomfortable.
Let’s begin with the fact that the core of Pratchett’s books about Discworld is centered on English-sounding names and settings. His most famous characters are called Samuel Vimes, Nanny Ogg, Grandma Weatherwax, and even settings derived from Ruritanian Romance (like Borogravia) feature English-sounding names (Polly, Jackrum). Not that I’m surpised with it, since English-centrism is everywhere, and has been, but the thing makes some realms of the story kind of all-the-same. But what’s up with Discworld’s regions based on East Asia? Or Middle East? Well, they are described in a rather stereotypical way. Klatch Empire is a strange amalgam of Arabian countries and India, because, you know, it’s basically the same, isn’t it? Nope. And Africa, as usual, is treated as a distant and vague monolith, called… Howandaland. How subtle.
A lot has been written of racism in Tolkien’s books, hey, even Philip Pullman has been criticized that way, and deservedly! So why nobody seems to care about problematic stereotypes in Discworld? If I were a Black Briton, or an Indian Briton, for example, I might be even outraged by some elements of Pratchett’s setting.
That’s the first “racial” problem. Another one is the metaphor for racism. If your human characters are usually white by “default”, and if you write of racial tensions with dwarves/trolls/werewolves/vampires/golems/goblins/andsoandso then the message isn’t as antiracist as you’ve probably hoped, I’m sorry. In Pratchett’s world, Your Stock English Names are default, and so white people are. There are books where you encounter characters of colour, such as in “Witches Abroad”, and it must have been refreshing as for the early 1990’s, but those novels aren’t the core of Pratchett’s cycle, and neither they are about racial issues. That’s why I prefer metaphors from such series as “Morrigan Crow” by Jessica Townsend, where humans are of diverse background, from Black through Brown to white, and the things on racism are coded in situation of the so-called Wunderanimals, a group of “magical” intelligent animals who were given “human” rights barely decades before the series’ installment. In Discworld, or rather, in the city of Ankh-Morpork, the coding goes much simpler and more formulaic. There is a magical race and a bunch of stereotypes about them, but once included into Samuel Vimes’ Watch, prejudices against those groups aren’t escalated anymore, and the situation of the group improves. Not need to mention that in real world, things do not happen that way?
And Pratchett’s take on affirmative action or on appreciating cultural differences is just somewhat mislead. We can criticize identity politics and quotas, but please not by showing that diversity is about employing people with no qualifications except for being a minority. Nobody has ever opted for somehting like this and affirmative action has never relied on such methods. It’s about qualified people from marginalized groups being given an additional chance, not about picking people up randomly literally from the street. That’s one thing.
And another is that antiracist message doesn’t ring true enough when you actually confirm some stereotypes about your “minorities”, i.e. dwarves eating rats (is that some xenophobic coding for one’s image of East Asian cuisine?) and goblins being dirty because they think that they are destined to be so. So, really, if you seek antiracist metaphors in fantasy, pick another series instead. “Morrigan Crow”, let’s say.
But guess what? I have to admit that Pratchett’s books have never offended my sensibility in a dire way, and it has aged much better than, let’s say, very sexist “Xanth”. I’ve read fifteen books in the series so far, including the installment, and although there are moments when I can’t tell whether somehting is sexist or a parody of sexism, those moments weren’t numeorus or outrageous. However, it’s hard to not see that Pratchett ether writes his female characters well (in the Witches’ subseries or in “The Monstrous Regiment”) or he writes not enough about them. And really, when it comes to novels on Samuel Vimes, I’m a bit tired with reapiting jokes of “Your Old Lady” lot. It could have been worse, book series like “Xanth” or literally most of an average male-written fantasy from the 1980’s and before are the best proof of that. But it could have been also better, with a writer as witty as Pratchett.
He’s witty, but he also repeats himself nevertheless, and that’s my another, less “political” problem with the series.
At first, he repeats tropes well-known to the Western audience, such as the dychotomy between the wizard and the witch, the symbolism of a big chaotic city, the figure of a stern but reliable statesman (Lord Vetinari). His images of a wizard, of a dwarf, of a troll, are literally stock images already embodied withing our culture by folklore, fairy tales, and famous fantasy writers such as Tolkien. And that’s not bad. Sometimes, Pratchett plays with this stocky- and sketchy-ness on unexpected and funny levels, but sometimes, what is sketchy in his books is really sketchy, and thus boring. I love his parody of Shakespeare but I dislike his parody of “Arabian Nights”. And within his very universe, some motifs and descriptions get too repetitive. You can predict what phrases will be used to describe certain characters. You can predict what references will be made, and who is going to appear in the certain subseries of the universe. Also, the whole cycle takes a span of years, including changes in technology and mentality, but sometimes, the chronology simply fails. Why Samuel Vimes or Lord Vetinari seem to be eternally middle-aged? Why this particular time-stopping applies to so many other characters? And why we are usually left with restauration of the status quo? The most probable answer to me is that Pratchett must have liked his characters and threads so much thad he kind of froze them all on a certain stage. I can understand it in Agatha Christie’s “Poirot”, but in a fantasy cycle, whatever funny-and-not-serious it’s intended to be? I cannot, to be honest.
And there’s social class, a thing which is worth of delving deeper into it, and which was, at least to my mind, another lost chance of this series. I’m glad to read about Samuel Vimes keeping his commonfolk customs and still being able to identify with those at the bottom. But I’m also disappointed to see how often Pratchett shows people as general as prone to manipulation and exploitation. There’s more to the crowds. And Lord Vetinari being constantly portrayed as “lesser evil”? Well, that’s the most complicated question, and the saddest, and it is difficult to me to even touch it. Instead, I prefer to remember Pratchett’s wry antimonarchism, and his critics of feudal order, which is shown as default in so many other fantasy series, and it is shown so not because the authors are aware what it meant for the people living in such a society. Rather, they are unaware of meaning of feudalism for us.
And come on, it isn’t that I’m condemning “Discworld”. I can see why people perceive dwarves as transpeople (and enjoy this interpretation), or why they consider “The Monstrous Regiment” trans-inclusive and “Equal Rites” a feminist novel debunking sexist myths. I’m glad that we can find such meanings in a series which ran for decades, and I’m glad if somebody had their thoughts on racism thanks to The Watch subseries. But it doesn’t mean that Discworld is sacred, and that as a series, it wasn’t influenced by the English-centered biases of the time. Because it was. It was, to paraphrase Edward Wadie Said, influenced by the Empire.
Left Hand of Fiction 