posted
Here's what i find confusing about her article: The story was apparantly totally changed to remove the heart of it and make it about sex and violence.
And she spends most of the article complaining about the skin colors of the actors.
posted
Can't really blame her. How rare it is to see people of colour in fantasy novels. Now I will have to totally reread that book.
Posts: 9942 | Registered: Mar 2003
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posted
The first time I read Wizard of Earthsea I didn't notice the colors, until she mentioned the Kargad...and even then I was imaginig a REALLY white people, viewing Ged as someone with a really gpd tan. Then someone mentioned it to me, so I re-read them, and found out that Ged was Amerindian...or at least that is the colsest to what I know. Not black, but not white either.
I loved those books then, and I still do now.
And I love how she ripped into them. They deserve every word she wrote there, and many more that she probably said in private.
quote:From article: I think it is possible that some readers never even notice what color the people in the story are. Don't notice, don't care. Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being "colorblind." Nobody else does.
Okay, this statement irks me. Whites are the only race that HAS to be colorblind, because we're the only race not allowed to place any pride whatsoever in the color of our skin or our culture.
That's fine, though, and morally correct. I have no qualms about disregarding skin color. It's been something I've rarely noticed or cared about since childhood. But if that, along with a healthy understanding and sympathy for the problems people of color have faced, is not good enough, what are white people left with? Hating ourselves for being white?
I think it's fantastic that Ursula K. Le Guin wrote a fantasy book with a non-white protagonist. Kudos for doing that! And the filmakers should've had the guts to keep that element true to the book.
But the way she goes about making her case rubbed me the wrong way.
Posts: 407 | Registered: Jul 2003
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posted
I had the same reaction as Dagonee to the article.
When I read the books, I was aware of the color of skin of the charcters, but it didn't matter. I don't see why it matters for the SciFi version.
Posts: 16551 | Registered: Feb 2003
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posted
I loved the first three Earthsea books when I was a kid. Then when I was a teen 'Tehanu' came out. After the billionth passage about how:
'Wizards are shallow-rooted trees that fall over in the first strong wind while Witches are deep, mysterious wells of...uhm...deepness...and there's something going with dragons...stuff...lots of...*...yeah...'
Well, I gave up on the series.
Did it ever start improving again?
At least this essay isn't quite as abrasive as the one she wrote years ago where she claimed the reason why 'The Left Hand of Darkness' didn't contain any same-gender relationships was the brainwaves of her straight white male readers invaded her own mind and kept her from exploring it.
(At, that's what she _seemed_ to be saying. She was putting the blame on some vague set of other folk.)
Posts: 7 | Registered: Dec 2004
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posted
I'm suprised that LeGuin makes race out to be such an important element in her books. I certainly didn't see it.
What does race mean in fantastical literature, anyway? Unless there are racial tensions, RACE MEANS NOTHING! LeGuin even points this out, but continues to rail-- illogically, in my opinion, against Sci-fi's choice of actors.
I wonder why she chose the race battle, and not the battle that is so much easier (and in this case, more important) to fight-- the fact that her story was mangled. Why is the race issue, which she acknowledges is a non-issue in the context of a fantastical story with no racial motivations/conflicts/tensions, more important than the over all integrity of the story?
Feh-- far be it from me to try and divine her motivation. She writes some good literature, and the Earthsea books are simply beautiful. I hate to see them bannerized in this manner.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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posted
I only vaguely remember any references to race in the books. Race didn't seem to have any impact on the stories.
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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posted
"Unless there are racial tensions, RACE MEANS NOTHING!"
I think that was part of the reason she was angry. Race means nothing, right -- so why replace the skin colors of the actors involved, if race truly means nothing? (It's also worth noting that there WERE racial tensions in the books; it's just that they were inverted, and the metaphors reversed.) Were there no Amerind actors out there capable of doing as "good" a job as the guy they recruited for Ged?
It's a very obvious, immediate symptom of the overall problem: that they completely missed some of the themes she considered essential to her work. This theme is one that can be immediately pointed out to people without having to discuss script elements.
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
On the one hand, it's always sad for me to see an author's work butchered on the big (or small) screen (I still haven't gotten over The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood).
OTOH, it's hard to feel too sorry for her. She should have negotiated a better contract if the integrity of her work was that important to her. I think that OSC is the ultimate example of this - how much money has he passed up over the years to make the Ender's Game movie that he wanted? How much of his own money and time has he spent? I wish more authors did the same.
Posts: 3037 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
Points are percentages of the movie's profit. Kind of like shares of stock. If you get net points, it means you get a percentage of what the movie nets and if you get gross points, you get a percentage of what the movis grosses.
Basically, if you have net points, you make almost no money and if you have gross points, ca-ching.
It's a common industry ploy to dupe writers into accepting net points - it's a cliche at this point. That's why writers need both agents and entertainment lawyers.
Posts: 3037 | Registered: Jan 2002
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posted
I'll just use Dagonee for my lawyer. If I post a question to Hatrack, history has shown that he has to answer.
Posts: 14554 | Registered: Dec 1999
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