Space Jews/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: An alien, monster, or other nonhuman creature that embodies the worst aspects of a real-world racial stereotype.

  • Straight: The Foreheadians have a Mexican accent, work for other species for low wages (thus undermining their local economy) and have characteristic tan skin.
  • Exaggerated: The Foreheadians have Mexican accents. The Prehensilians are strong and drink gallons of vodka every day. The Chinridgians have narrow features and elaborate social rituals and a complicated, highly-inflected language. The Eleventoes always wear turbans and carry swords...
  • Justified: Forheadia was settled by time-traveling Mexicans, and not enough time has passed for all cultural traces to vanish.
  • Inverted: Mexico is secretly under Forheadian control, and most Mexicans are Forheadians in thin disguise.
    • Foreheadians while looking like Mexicans in many ways are the polar opposite of every Mexican stereotype. Thus the Forheadians can't stand beans or spicy food, are workaholics, and regularly enter planets legally to work at exorbitant wages that companies are willing to pay because they get far more done than humans working the same amount of time.
  • Subverted: The portrayal of the Foreheadians is not based on first-hand accounts, but rather uninformed stereotypes.
  • Doubly Subverted: ...Which turn out to be completely accurate, if a tad exaggerated.
  • Parodied: The Foreheadians have a heavy Mexican accent, wear wrestling masks and sombreros everywhere, constantly enter other planets illegally to work for low wages, subsist entirely on beans and tortillas...
  • Deconstructed: Racist white humans interact with the Forheadians derisively, assuming them to be like Mexicans in every way. Turns out they were acting like that to make us feel more comfortable, and now Earth is seen as a planet of crude bigots by the galaxy at large.
  • Reconstructed: ... a galaxy at large which, as it turns out, is in its non-disguised state stereotypically Brazilian.
  • Averted: Foreheadians do not in any way resemble a particular Earth culture or the stereotypical view of it.
  • Enforced: The authors are writing disguised social commentary on US/Mexico immigration policies.
  • Lampshaded: "Those Foreheadians remind me quite a bit of stereotypes of that old Earth civilization." "Mexico?" "Yeah, that's it."
  • Invoked: The Foreheadians adopt what they perceive to be an easily-recognizable set of human mannerisms in order to seem less alienating in social situations.
  • Defied: The Foreheadians are historical revisions of Mexicans, who invented haute culture first, live in beautiful cities and possess a vast knowledge of the universe.
  • Discussed: "Unlike in poorly-written science fiction, the vast majority of known aliens are completely beyond comparison with any aspect of Terran culture."
  • Conversed: "Can't these writers create a single species without uncomfortable racist implications?"
  • Played for Laughs: The Foreheadians are awkward caricatures of the stereotypical images we have of Mexicans. The cliché is then stretched to its limits, with lots of adventures starting from matters on food or due to misunderstandings thanks to their accent and with actual Mexicans viewing them as jokes. Hilarity Ensues.
  • Plotted A Good Waste: The treatment is meant to show how stereotypes and bigotries often persist even if the target is different. Showing that we're not as advanced as we thought.

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