Hatrack River Forum: Thoughts about First Meetings

This is topic Thoughts about First Meetings in forum Discussions About Orson Scott Card at Hatrack River Forum.

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Posted by LockeTreaty (Member # 5627) on :

After reading "The Polish Boy" I remembered hearing somewhere that OSC was having difficulty with finding places to put in female actresses as adults in the film, because with the exception of the adults on Earth there were no people portrayed as females in Battle School or Eros. It made me wonder if Helana Rudolf was purposely put in the story so the people who already read the book wouldn't be so upset about the addition of a new character in the movie.
He even seems to try to justify, again, why females are under represented in his books. In "The Polish Boy" he discusses, through Col. Sillain, how females are more likely to be fooled by cute faces, and things of that sort.
What do you guys think about this idea?

Posted by Icarus (Member # 3162) on :

There are no women on the battle school or on Eros because we see virtually no adults on either. We see a couple of administrators, one teacher who, as I recall, was unnamed, and that's about it.

I think you would need to justify the claim that females are underrepresented in Card's works as a whole. I certainly do not have that impression from having read them all. I also find highly suspect that a line of dialogue is intended to justify traits of OSC's writing. It's much more likely, imo, that this line is present to further characterize the speaker. I don't think this is OSC speaking "through" a character.

Posted by Da_Goat (Member # 5529) on :

Depending on how involved he gets with Bean's story, Sister Carlotta could play a little part, and, at the end, if he does decide to include EG's end, Valentine is and could be portrayed by a young adult. But, true, that is a little slim. The only main female part is Petra, but she's a little girl.

Posted by LockeTreaty (Member # 5627) on :

My point exactly, Da_Goat. In asking this question I was not refering to any of OSC other writing, just in Ender's Game, because as I said above in the movie for Ender's Game there are very few key adult postions that could be filled by adult actresses. So I was wondering if OSC purposly introduced the character so that he could place that character in the movie with out us whining about it. I don't believe he was writing "through" anything but a piece of paper.
[Smile]