Can a stereotypical character ever be made non-stereotypical?

I've been googling opinions on portrayals of the character of Fagin in "Oliver Twist'' as well as opinions on the character himself for a steampunk novel I'm writing, which is set in New York in a post-apocalyptic future and has a fence character inspired by Fagin.

My question is this; Most adaptations of Oliver Twist, except for the 1948 one, ignore Fagin's Jewishness (which isn't obvious anyway) but would it be possible to portray this character as a person who just so happens to be a fence (quite stereotypical for Jewish criminals in the 19th century) and to be Jewish? Or would this character still be a stereotype? Is a character who speaks with a 'Jewish' accent (yes, I know that not everyone who's Ashkenazi Jewish-American talks like that, but some do, and people of all racial and ethnic backgrounds get involved in organised crime, mostly to survive). What about Dodger being Black and having an 'African American' (also known as 'Black' , 'urban'or 'ghetto') accent? Is it possible to do any of this without Unfortunate Implications? I genuinely don't want to offend anyone of those backgrounds by reinforcing stereotypes, but no-one's going to deny that there are definitely some Jewish people and some Black people who are involved in organised crime. Every group of people has people who do illegal things.

So, can a Jewish Fagin and a Black Artful Dodger*

ever be non-stereotypically and non-offensively written, with no Unfortunate Implications, or will the implications always be there?

I know I'm treading on a minefield, and have experienced mild racism before as a Chinese Australian, so I want to figure out how to do this without changing it or even if it's possible. I believe I can do it without leaving out religion or making my Dodger character White, but I need to figure out how to do it without offending people. Any Jewish and/or African American tropers want to give their opinions?

EDIT: Can we please keep this thread on-topic and not derail it?

edited 18th Aug '13 11:06:51 PM by MorwenEdhelwen

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

So You Want To Avoid Unfortunate Implications comes to mind

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/SoYouWantTo/AvoidUnfortunateImplications

Helps when writing ANYTHING related to stereotypes, ive found.

edited 18th Aug '13 10:24:40 PM by SmytheOrdo

David Bowie 1947-2016

@Ordo: That isn't really the issue. What I'm thinking is hard to explain/describe easily. It's more like when you pick up a book or you watch a movie and you cringe because one of the characters feel a little stereotypical, and maybe you sigh to yourself because you've seen it all before.

As you'd know, the 'Black' or 'ghetto' accent is heavily associated with African Americans, especially those living in what's seen as bad neighbourhoods. Would you or anyone else on here's who's Black be offended to come across a protagonist who talked like that? And who's also a pickpocket...

edited 19th Aug '13 4:04:46 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

So long as the story being told is done tastefully and not gratuitously, I don't mind if stereotypes happen. Like, ghetto accents actually happen, and crime is actually really, really high in ghettos (extreme poverty causes crime — surprise, surprise). If you're going to tell a story that takes place in one, it would in fact be very dishonest not to be able to address that sort of thing.

What's tasteful or gratuitous? Well...that's the hard and really subjective part. Before all else, do your research on whatever culture you're trying to highlight, and then write the part honestly. It's okay to allow a stereotype to be an important character facet or even a driving plot force, so long as it feels natural. With things like historical racism, people (usually) are mature enough to handle an honest portrayal, so long as the thrust of your story isn't one that affirms it. This is considerably easier to do in written literature, since you can work explicit backstory into things as you go and present a historical setting.

Things like historically racist use of other cultures in entertainment is an even bigger can of worms. My literature teacher was Jewish, and had no problem with using Merchant of Venice in class because he understood the period in which it was written and was able to talk about it academically. Nonetheless, caution has to be taken if using a historically persecuted culture as a major character trait of a villain in a new work. Generally the safest way to go about it is to use their background as one of the sympathetic parts of their character — Magneto, for instance, was a German Jew during the Nazi era, and his extremism is rooted in preemptive backlash expecting the same thing to happen to mutants. IIRC he originally wasn't Jewish, but it's since been worked into his backstory so solidly and it presents such a powerful reflection of the central conflict of X-Men that it'd feel a lot more hollow if he suddenly wasn't again.

No matter what, you're going to be walking on a certain amount of eggshells, and you're going to have a certain amount of Social Justice Warriors that missed the point clamoring for your blood. So be careful, but don't be surprised when you piss someone off.

edited 18th Aug '13 11:49:46 PM by Pykrete

@Pykrete: Thanks.

edited 19th Aug '13 3:19:42 AM by MorwenEdhelwen

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

Addition to the OP: I actually think of Fagin (Dickens character) as a sort of 19th century Shylock, but more one-dimensional except for his last night alive scene.

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

I'm not sure how much help this is, but the movie Tropic Thunder has a whole team of actors who are stereotypes that start out subverted or go that way with some Character Development (though only Alpa Chino is a subverted ethnic stereotype - the black rapper).

Whatever you do, avoid the Funetik Aksent because using it for Real Life accents is patronising as fuck.

edit

I think that if the only Jewish or African-American characters in your work are criminals, people may assume the view taken is that is what they are like in real life, or perhaps that you are thoughtlessly following caricatures from bygone eras where that was the predominent representation of those groups. So the answer might be to distinguish yourself from those old stereotypes by having a variety of personalities with multiple Jewish characters etc, including the criminal.

Worth noting that even Dickens accepted that rather than just writing a Jewish criminal, he'd written an anti-semitic stereotype.

edited 19th Aug '13 7:36:30 AM by editerguy

The graphic novel "Fagin the Jew" by Will Eisner might be useful for you to read for your portrayal of a character that would be similar to him.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fagin_the_Jew

It's basically the story of Oliver Twist from his point of view and is an attempt to show realistically how a Jewish person in England at the time period would end up becoming the Fagin character in the novel.

@editerguy:

I undestand that about the accent.

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

Personally, I always read Fagin as being a Bastard first... and a Jew a remote second. The guy was obviously cracked in the head and a nasty piece of work in his own right without having to justify any of that by clapping a yamaka on his head.

He wasn't a Jerkass because he was Jewish — he was just rather psychotic: no specific race need apply. He was one because practically the only way he could manage to make a living was through psychotic behaviour (granted, linked to being grouped in a minority by a societal majority). <_< He could have been any minority group of the period — including just "impoverished because born to poor and abusive family".

edited 19th Aug '13 4:48:14 PM by Euodiachloris

Wiki talks about Dicken's changed view on Fagin here, and also claims that he rewrote it to be less antisemitic.

In answer to the OP, I think a useful reference is The Wire because it shows how to do this kind of thing right. At least half that show's cast were black ghetto criminals, but the show was popular and acclaimed because the writers didn't just go "okay, so we'll have another black ghetto criminal - in real life, there must be some people like the old stereotype so we'll use that." They gave the characters individual quirks and unique traits that made them real people rather than lazy stereotypes. The characters were based on real people the writers knew.

As a fellow Australian, can I ask whether you will write such characters based on your own experience living in the USA or near a US ghetto? If not, would you not be simply basing these characters on second-hand, possibly clumsy media stereotypes by necessity?

@editerguy: I've never actually been to the US but find it very very interesting and would love to live there. It's based rather loosely on accounts of the old Five Points neighbourhood in lower Manhattan, which is where it's set. That particular neighbourhood no longer exists but did in the 19th century and was the setting of the movie Gangs Of New York.* I've done a lot of research on the area. Since the place doesn't exist anymore you can't exactly go to Five Points unless someone invents time travel. The area was famously multicultural, full of Black Americans, Jewish immigrants, German Christian immigrants, Irish Catholic immigrants, Chinese immigrants, and Italian immigrants. I don't actually watch much TV, so I barely know anything about American sterotypes beyond what I've found on the internet.

In the future of the story, the five points intersection has been rebuilt. If it hadn't been cleared and partially razed, it might have ended up like 21st century "ghettos''.

^note  which was based on a true crime book from 1928 called Gangs Of New York by Herbert Asbury

edited 19th Aug '13 7:20:07 PM by MorwenEdhelwen

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

You should watch Copper if you're interested in Five Points. The show is generally pretty good, too.

edited 19th Aug '13 7:44:06 PM by Ekuran

Any other Australians (editerguy?) know when the show's usually on?

edited 19th Aug '13 8:14:42 PM by MorwenEdhelwen

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

It apparently airs on FX Australia.

Or you could just watch it online.

@Ekuran: Found the Foxtel TV Guide and searched for it on there but it didn't turn up for some reason, but it does turn up on the channel homepage.

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

bump

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

Also, how far can you go in portraying a certain kind of person of a certain ethnicity before a character (in my case the Fagin character) becomes a big vaudeville-style cliche of an "Ashkenazi Jewish person" complete with Yiddish as a Second Language/distinctive accent or whatever? TBH I'm actually very afraid when I think about the character, because of this crazy idea that "If you put one foot wrong he could end up as an ethnic stereotype" and part of my brain keeps saying "You know you're being really stereotypical in the way you're portraying this guy, right?" And he hasn't even really come into it yet. But the more rational part of my brain goes, "Stereotypes are usually based on some small grain of truth."

edited 25th Aug '13 3:19:49 PM by morwenedhelwen

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

If you've made up your mind ethnic stereotypes are 'rational', what are you actually asking?

I think that relying on stereotypes from a foreign country you've never been to is absurd if you're after realism though. By definition you will be writing cliches.

@editerguy: Sigh. I knew that would get misinterpreted. I genuinely hope this doesn't come off as defensive.

Nowhere in that post did I say "stereotypes are RATIONAL."

I'm just saying that the part of my brain which rationalises everything I think of doing(the "rational" part) comes back at me with the sentence that "Stereotypes have a small grain of truth." Emphasis on small. Note that that doesn't mean stereotypes are true.

I didn't say anything like:

Stereotypes are 100% (or even 99% or 98%) true and we should all assume everyone fits their national/ethnic/racial/religious/sexuality/sex/gender stereotype

or I WANT to use stereotypes so fuck everyone who's telling me I can't. Well if that's true, as you said, why the hell did I start this thread? If I did, obviously I don't think stereotypes are rational. If I was that kind of person, I wouldn't even bother with a thread like this- I wouldn't even give a shit if people were offended. But obviously I do.

What I said above, about stereotypes having a grain of truth? That's true in that there are immigrants who retain their original accents from Country A which does not speak English/specific area of Country A which speaks a different language than the rest) when they migrate to Country B which is an English-speaking country.

If a person with parents from Country A grows up in a neighbourhood filled with first-generation immigrants from Country A, then they might have the Country A regional accent, with an American (or Aussie or British) influence. Or they might develop a normal-for-their-region Aussie, British, or American accent.

It's reality/Truth in Television that the Kosher Nostra did and do exist. And that in the 1800s-1900s (the era that this story borrows from) there were a lot of Eastern European Jewish immigrants in American cities like New York, as well in Britain and Australia, who used Yiddish words and phrases and spoke English with a distinctive accent. These immigrants lived in slums where some of them turned to crime to survive and were considered part of what some officials called the "dangerous classes."

I'm aware that firsthand experience tends to be better, but the story is set in Five Points, a lower Manhattan neighbourhood that doesn't exist anymore. Not a modern New York housing project. The small basis in reality makes this a very complex issue. This isn't a racist rumour like the blood libel which has no basis in fact. Plus a place like Five Points is very very different to a 21st century housing project.

Again, I'd like to hear from Black or Jewish tropers(or even a Black Jewish troper, if there is one) on this issue. Then again one of the posters already on here is Black, but I'm assuming he isn't Jewish and neither are the other posters.

edited 25th Aug '13 4:58:22 PM by morwenedhelwen

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

The most important thing you can do is research. Stereotypes are a grab bag of truth and fiction, and the truths are usually for reasons that aren't obvious looking at the stereotype.

For instance, the fried chicken and watermelon stereotypes about blacks look nearly identical on the surface, but came about for very different reasons. The watermelon one appears to have been made up whole cloth by slaveowners to make them look simple-minded and silly, but fried chicken actually has a degree of historical basis — slaves were allowed to raise chickens and little else, and often had little access to good cooking equipment, so they ate fried chicken a lot.

In writing a period piece, a careful use of either of these stereotypes can actually be used to enhance the authenticity of the setting. The one sparks analysis of slaveowners' use of memes to discredit their slaves as complex beings, and the other may be used as a tool to focus on the often squalid living conditions foisted on slaves (ever lived with chickens? They will turn your entire house to feces).

As always, the best thing you can do is research. Actually, the best thing you can do is give many facets to every character you use and ensure that they're not defined solely by stereotypes, but research is a close second.

edited 25th Aug '13 6:00:14 PM by Pykrete

My mum lived with chickens when she grew up in Malaysia. The droppings were everywhere apparently.

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien

Well we had a hutch but a fox got them.

I don't really understand what your question is OP. I mean there is French chefs, Jewish bankers, Australian hunters, Irish police officers and Arab oil sheik in the world. You can have characters be stereotypes while still being well fleshed in depth characters.

edited 25th Aug '13 6:28:51 PM by joeyjojo

hashtagsarestupid

Is there a difference between "stereotyped character" and "well-rounded character with stereotypical traits"?

The road goes ever on. -Tolkien