Earthsea's miniserie adaptation
15 Dec 2004 10:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
salineaFrom Ursula Leguin's website http://trashotron.com/agony/columns/2004/12-15-04.htm
Most of the characters in my fantasy and far-future sf books are not white. They're mixed, they're rainbow. In my first big sf novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, the only person from Earth is a black man and everybody else in the book is Inuit (or Tibetan) brown. In my first fantasy novels (the ones the miniseries is "based on"), A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, everybody's brown or copper-red or black, except the Kargish people in the East and their descendants in the Archipelago, who are white, with fair or dark hair. Tenar is a Karg, a brunette white person. Ged is an Archipelagan, a redbrown man. Vetch, from the East Reach, is black.
This color scheme was conscious and deliberate from the start. I didn't see why everybody in sf had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill. I didn't see why everybody in heroic fantasy had to be white (and all the leading women had "violet eyes"). I didn't even believe it. Whites are a minority on Earth now -- why wouldn't they still be either a minority, or just swallowed up in the larger colored gene pool, in the future?
The fantasy tradition I was writing in came from North Europe, which is why it was about white people. I'm white, but not European. My people could be any color I liked, and I like red and brown and black. I was a little wily about my color scheme. I figured some white kids (the books were published for "young adults") might not identify easily straight off with a brown kid, so I kind of eased the information about skin color in by degrees -- hoping that the reader would get "into Ged's skin," and only then discover it wasn't a white one.
I was never questioned about this by any editor. No objection was ever raised. I think this is greatly to the credit of my first editors at Parnassus and Atheneum, who bought the books before they had a reputation to carry them. These editors took a risk without complaint.
But I had endless trouble with cover art. Not on the great cover of the first edition -- a strong, red-brown profile of Ged -- or with Margaret Chodos Irvine's four fine paintings -- but all too often. The first British "Wizard" was this pallid, droopy, lily-like guy -- I screamed at sight of him.
Gradually I got a little more clout, a little more say-so about covers. And very, very, very gradually the cover departments of major publishers may be beginning to lose their blind, panic terror of putting a colored face on a book. "Hurts sales, hurts sales" is the mantra. Yeah, so? On my books, Ged with a white face is a lie, a betrayal -- a betrayal of the book, and of the potential reader. A brown face might hurt sales in the short run, but my books are long-distance runners, and for the long haul, only the truth will serve.
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.
I have heard, not often, but very memorably, from colored readers who told me that the Earthsea books were the only books in the genre that they felt included in -- and how much this meant to them, particularly as adolescents, who'd found nothing to read in fantasy and sf except the adventures of white people in a white world. Those letters have been a tremendous reward and true joy to me.
I have not had protests from white readers who resented reading about colored people, but racial bigots often hide their bigotry behind accusations of "witchcraft" and such. The Earthsea books have been forced many times to run the school banning gamut operated by fundamentalist Christians. These censorship operations against schools and libraries are stronger than ever in the present religio-political climate. They often focus on fantasy and sf books, which foster that deadly enemy to bigotry and blind faith, the imagination.
So far no reader of color has told me I ought to butt out, or that I got the ethnicity wrong. When they do, I'll listen. As an anthropologist's daughter I am intensely conscious of the risk of cultural or ethnic imperialism -- white writer speaking for nonwhite people, co-opting their voice, an act of extreme arrogance. In a totally invented fantasy world, or in a far-future sf setting, in the rainbow world we can imagine, this risk is mitigated. That's the beauty of sf and fantasy -- freedom of invention.
But with all freedom comes responsibility. . .
. . .which is something these film-makers seem not to understand.
The books are about two young people finding what their power, their freedom, and their responsibility is. I don't know what the film is about. It's full of scenes from the story, but in this different plot, they make no sense. Its hero goes through lots of Ged's experiences, but learns nothing from them. How could he? He isn't Ged. Ged isn't a petulant white kid.
It's like casting Eminem as Jim in Huckleberry Finn.
And how did Danny Glover, the Token Mage, get into this Clorox archipelago? What island is he from? Poor guy! No wonder he gets the true name and the nickname mixed up, and solemnly baptizes Ged with his nickname!
I really am sorry for the actors. They all tried awfully hard. It's not their fault.
Overall, I definitly agree. In SF it is not always so grevious, but I always had the feeling that in fantasy there was an overabundance of european influenced societies (especially celtic, of course) compared to anything else. You sometimes have the token oriental-spunned world, mostly Japanese, and the Arabian Nights series (Tanith Lee's Tale of the Flat Earth and Weis&Hickman's Rose of the Prophet springs to my mind), but otherwise tales with emphatically non-white characters shine by their absence. I love celtic mythologies as much as anyone else, but it was good that there was one famous, critically acclaimed story where most of the protagonists were emphatically described as black, or dark-skinned. That was Earthsea. Apparently this mini-serie sucks for many other reasons, but that's the one thing that extremely annoys me about it.
Comments ?
Most of the characters in my fantasy and far-future sf books are not white. They're mixed, they're rainbow. In my first big sf novel, The Left Hand of Darkness, the only person from Earth is a black man and everybody else in the book is Inuit (or Tibetan) brown. In my first fantasy novels (the ones the miniseries is "based on"), A Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, everybody's brown or copper-red or black, except the Kargish people in the East and their descendants in the Archipelago, who are white, with fair or dark hair. Tenar is a Karg, a brunette white person. Ged is an Archipelagan, a redbrown man. Vetch, from the East Reach, is black.
This color scheme was conscious and deliberate from the start. I didn't see why everybody in sf had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill. I didn't see why everybody in heroic fantasy had to be white (and all the leading women had "violet eyes"). I didn't even believe it. Whites are a minority on Earth now -- why wouldn't they still be either a minority, or just swallowed up in the larger colored gene pool, in the future?
The fantasy tradition I was writing in came from North Europe, which is why it was about white people. I'm white, but not European. My people could be any color I liked, and I like red and brown and black. I was a little wily about my color scheme. I figured some white kids (the books were published for "young adults") might not identify easily straight off with a brown kid, so I kind of eased the information about skin color in by degrees -- hoping that the reader would get "into Ged's skin," and only then discover it wasn't a white one.
I was never questioned about this by any editor. No objection was ever raised. I think this is greatly to the credit of my first editors at Parnassus and Atheneum, who bought the books before they had a reputation to carry them. These editors took a risk without complaint.
But I had endless trouble with cover art. Not on the great cover of the first edition -- a strong, red-brown profile of Ged -- or with Margaret Chodos Irvine's four fine paintings -- but all too often. The first British "Wizard" was this pallid, droopy, lily-like guy -- I screamed at sight of him.
Gradually I got a little more clout, a little more say-so about covers. And very, very, very gradually the cover departments of major publishers may be beginning to lose their blind, panic terror of putting a colored face on a book. "Hurts sales, hurts sales" is the mantra. Yeah, so? On my books, Ged with a white face is a lie, a betrayal -- a betrayal of the book, and of the potential reader. A brown face might hurt sales in the short run, but my books are long-distance runners, and for the long haul, only the truth will serve.
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.
I have heard, not often, but very memorably, from colored readers who told me that the Earthsea books were the only books in the genre that they felt included in -- and how much this meant to them, particularly as adolescents, who'd found nothing to read in fantasy and sf except the adventures of white people in a white world. Those letters have been a tremendous reward and true joy to me.
I have not had protests from white readers who resented reading about colored people, but racial bigots often hide their bigotry behind accusations of "witchcraft" and such. The Earthsea books have been forced many times to run the school banning gamut operated by fundamentalist Christians. These censorship operations against schools and libraries are stronger than ever in the present religio-political climate. They often focus on fantasy and sf books, which foster that deadly enemy to bigotry and blind faith, the imagination.
So far no reader of color has told me I ought to butt out, or that I got the ethnicity wrong. When they do, I'll listen. As an anthropologist's daughter I am intensely conscious of the risk of cultural or ethnic imperialism -- white writer speaking for nonwhite people, co-opting their voice, an act of extreme arrogance. In a totally invented fantasy world, or in a far-future sf setting, in the rainbow world we can imagine, this risk is mitigated. That's the beauty of sf and fantasy -- freedom of invention.
But with all freedom comes responsibility. . .
. . .which is something these film-makers seem not to understand.
The books are about two young people finding what their power, their freedom, and their responsibility is. I don't know what the film is about. It's full of scenes from the story, but in this different plot, they make no sense. Its hero goes through lots of Ged's experiences, but learns nothing from them. How could he? He isn't Ged. Ged isn't a petulant white kid.
It's like casting Eminem as Jim in Huckleberry Finn.
And how did Danny Glover, the Token Mage, get into this Clorox archipelago? What island is he from? Poor guy! No wonder he gets the true name and the nickname mixed up, and solemnly baptizes Ged with his nickname!
I really am sorry for the actors. They all tried awfully hard. It's not their fault.
Overall, I definitly agree. In SF it is not always so grevious, but I always had the feeling that in fantasy there was an overabundance of european influenced societies (especially celtic, of course) compared to anything else. You sometimes have the token oriental-spunned world, mostly Japanese, and the Arabian Nights series (Tanith Lee's Tale of the Flat Earth and Weis&Hickman's Rose of the Prophet springs to my mind), but otherwise tales with emphatically non-white characters shine by their absence. I love celtic mythologies as much as anyone else, but it was good that there was one famous, critically acclaimed story where most of the protagonists were emphatically described as black, or dark-skinned. That was Earthsea. Apparently this mini-serie sucks for many other reasons, but that's the one thing that extremely annoys me about it.
Comments ?
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no subject
Date: 15 December 2004 02:53 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 December 2004 03:11 pm (UTC)But with all freedom comes responsibility. . .
Now this? Is one of the things I keep trying to explain through psychis links to bad fantasy writers, and fanfic writers when it comes to that. You can invent anything, but you shouldn't. It should work, and make sense, too. You owe your creations a parental debt. Turning them into a featureless amalgam of 'cool' is child abuse.
Poor Ms. LeGuin. I've really gotta read those books and get my brain into the right way of thinking before seeing this horrible travesty.
I was kind of (okay, not kind of at all) thinking about her and Earthsea when I was doing my NaNovel, and deliberately made the characters' skin colors range from literally white to literally black. Aryocentric cliche is something up with which I will not put! (Warning: Has had to read Mussolini and Hitler for class. Is, therefore, inclined to go into rant mode on subject of race.)
Stupid moviemakers, abusing such great works of literature...
no subject
Date: 15 December 2004 03:35 pm (UTC)About characters which are non-white, Judith Tarr´s Avaryan series is sort of this family dinastical fantasy, the very first ruler is very black, though skin colors of that family change a lot through the generations ( not an unusual thing). Martha Wells´ Wheel of the Infinite has this awesome Cambodja like setting.
no subject
Date: 15 December 2004 04:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 15 December 2004 04:43 pm (UTC)arrgh now you remind me I have to catch back on all those Nanonovels I missed because they were updated too quickly *feels guilty*
The responsability of a writer is a difficult thing to assess. One one hand, there's an obvious responsability for everything you write, especially when it may catch a big public, and you should always be careful of what kind of ideologies might slip beneath your words sometimes without you even being aware of it. On the other hand, sometimes people will see and hear things in what you write that you never meant to be there. And that's also about what art is. Which, errr, doesn't really relate to the responsability of making a work coherent... I'm rambling again ^^
and yeap... the fact under this legal system people have a right to make such a sham of adapting litterary work, while the writer has no regard on the script etc., makes me mad.
no subject
Date: 15 December 2004 05:17 pm (UTC)*sends further guiltwaves*
I think there's a responsibility to the story not to make it, basically, a forum for your ideas of 'cool'. I don't think there's anything wrong with subtextual ideas sneaking in--I don't know how to keep them out. But when you use your entire story to hit me over the head with your belief...argh.
Seriously. They mess up literature, they mess up history, what's next? (At least we'll always have Miyazaki...)
no subject
Date: 15 December 2004 06:08 pm (UTC)God, I'm about to fall over dead of tired, so I'll stop rambling in what may or may not be a nonsensical manner now. >>
no subject
Date: 17 December 2004 01:31 am (UTC)In fact, do we have to write a book especially addressing racial issues before we start having dark skinned characters in it ?
And of course it's more complicated than that !
But the point I was trying to make is more about the fact that, when you are part of a minority and that what you read/watch etc. always present characters that are emphatically not like you, it's hard to identify with them. I mean, of course, a leap of imagination and trying to identify with radically alien characters is a big part of what SF and fantasy is... but what if it's so systematic that you really never got anyone like you ? Wouldn't you get annoyed ?
If the pretty heroin was always blonde and tall, and you were dark and rabby, wouldn't you start wondering if you're pretty ?
If the couples are always the same manly guy + damsel in distress, and you were gay, wouldn't you start wondering if your kind of romance couldn't have any legitimacy ?
It's not a question of addressing what racism is through those books, it's a question of how racist it is that it's always the same thing pictures, and that some demographics are systematically ignored. (of course gay romances are less ignored than black people in fantasy !) Not that it means that people should always be careful to keep a PC quota of character to represent in their story, but the global lack of concern for presenting black characters in fantasy is telling about the systems of cultural representations among people in the field of fantasy.
no subject
Date: 17 December 2004 01:34 am (UTC)I had the impression it was easier to show the token black character in a story without the book being all about that issue in mainstream... but I might totally be wrong. And a token character doesn't make quite enough the work, either.
I'm concerned about fantasy, because it's what I know and read the most... but yeah I suppose you're right. That's something that should be seen more often in every kind of litterature and movies.
no subject
Date: 17 December 2004 01:36 am (UTC)*gets stricken by the guiltwave and falls* I'm melting...
ugh, i hate that kind of stories, about hitting you over the head with your ideas... *hates Lawhead for this reason*
Miyazaki... won't make movies for much longuer ;_;
Earthsea
Date: 18 December 2004 03:30 pm (UTC)Of course not! But having a fantasy novel have characters with dark skin does not make it a novel adressing racial issues, nor do I think the skin color for the fantasy universe being dark or green or blue matters to the characters in that universe. So yeah, the petulant white child totally lost my sympathy for them changing what was after all a detail and a nice detail in the books.