That’s completely true. And yet, so many of our stories end up in the same rut of tired, unrealistic tropes. Maybe a look at the reality behind such depictions will encourage authors to exercise some of that vaunted imagination and break out into new directions. After all, an appeal to imagination doesn’t make much sense when you’re just using it to defend doing the same things that everybody else does.
mmmmm...some tropes are rooted firmly in reality, maybe a little exaggerated sometimes, but there is truth to them nonetheless, just like there is some truth stereotypes.
I think there is nothing inherently wrong with using tropes. Freedom to choose is what is important. If the author wants to use tropes, they should be able to.
Nobody is questioning that. However, you’re pretending that doing the same thing as everybody else has always done is ‘using your imagination’, which is laughable.
If writers actually follow these guidelines, god help us. Imagination will be curtailed and suffer, and we the readers will suffer as a result.
This misguided attempt to "wokify" storytelling is reminiscent of the attempts by INGSOC in 1984 to eliminate the expression of the shades of meaning inherent in ambiguity and nuance from Oldspeak (Standard English). In order to reduce the language's function of communication, Newspeak uses concepts of simple construction: pleasure vs. pain, happiness vs. sadness. Goodthink vs. crimethink linguistically reinforces the State's totalitarian dominance of the people of Oceania.
I hope nobody follows those guidelines. I pitty the fool who does.
Writers should be able to write how they want, employing whatever literary devices they want, about whatever topic they want. There should be no restriction imposed.
On another note; writers can't ignore reality, if they are writing about reality that is. Homeless people exist. They are smelly and unclean and in many cases can be violent. Ask anyone living in San Francisco, Los Angeles etc. Sure, not every homeless person is white, but the majority are. Trying to pressure writers into adding forced "diversity" due to wokeness is ridiculous. Reality is not woke, it is what it is.
If they want to use tropes, no problem. If they want to find different ways of representing real life situations without the use of tropes, no problem. Whatever. Choice.
What i disagree with is the imposition of language that the OP (Chris Winkle) is trying to impose; that tropes are somehow bad and to be avoided or "cleaned up" because they are somehow demeaning or offensive.
I agree.
In order to get writers to include black homeless people, they would have to write stories about black neighborhoods which is already a stretch.
Just including a smattering of black homeless people in a show about predominantly middle-class whites show would look like simple racisms.