By skyforbes For those who don’t know, the Fantastic Racism trope is when a setting has discrimination against non-existing fantasy creatures.
I was recently watching “The Happytime Murders”, an adult comedy movie about puppets and humans co-existing and one puppet detective investigating a series of murders. In the movie is clearly established right away that the puppets are second-class citizens and discriminated against. Thing is… this has no baring at all in the plot. The whole plot could have be just the same if you retire the element of anti-puppet racism in the setting. The only reason is there I think is because writers probably thought “it should”. Like is the default situation, in a setting with humans and non-humans interacting the non-humans have to be discriminated. There’s “no way” this couldn’t happen either because “won’t be realistic” or “that’s the way is always written”. I notice that this mindset also permeates movies with terrible worldbuilding like “The Electric State” and “Bright”.
And don’t get me wrong, sometimes is necessary. Movies like Roger Rabbit, Disctrict 9 or the X-Men franchise need it, the plot couldn’t work without it.
But others don’t. One thing I liked about the “Rescue Rangers” movie is that they deal away with the Fantastic Racism. At no point in the movie is shown toons are discriminated, in fact some are in positions of power or are clearly rich. Which is fine, it wasn’t needed for the plot and they didn’t use it. Same can be said about one TV show I really like which is “The Legend of Vox Machina”.
But maybe is just me. Opinions?