Brad DeLong's Semi-Daily Journal: A Weblog

Not being able to say what's true sounds like a good definition of hell.

They don't call the envoy "the black guy", they call him "the pervert".

[Very true...]

Does it surprise anyone that the daughter of an anthropologist should have strong opinions about color and perceptions of color?

Race wasn't an element of the trilogy you read because you live in the Bay Area, the most integrated area in the most integrated State in the most integrated Nation on this planet. The people you bump into on a daily basis are random selections of races and nationalities, so LeGuin's carefully constructed cosmopolitan universe does not seem that exotic to you.

One more point I wish I'd added before. When discussing the film Fellowship of the Ring, a friend of mine said he hated the music. I said I didn't really notice the music. It was a major problem for him, though. I think Le Guin has as strong a feeling for what colors people might be in worlds that are very real to her, as Tolkien did about the grammar and pronunciation of the languages of Middle Earth.

(Me, I thought the scripts were super cool and the words and names had a great sense of reality, but it made no difference to me that Quenya was a lot like a Finno-Ugric language.)

Wasn't it Starship Troopers that closed with the kicker that the main character's name was Tagalog?

Well, many of us can afford not to notice what color the people in LeGuin's books are because we're white. I had completely forgotten that most of the Earthsea people are not white until one of the commenters to my LJ mentioned it. Part of that is that I'm not a visual reader -- I hear words, I don't see pictures when I read -- but more of it is because I'm white. The person who had made that comment was black. LeGuin says she has gotten numerous letters from YAs who read the novels and written her to thank her for including them, as non-whites, in their favorite branch of literature. I do think the portrayal of the characters as non-white is important to what LeGuin is trying to do; not just with any one story, but with the body of her work.

MKK

Well, the difference is important, I think. Not that they are black, but that there is a difference between the Archipelagic people and the Kargad Empire barbarians. I think race and colour do matter quite a bit in the Tombs of Atuan.

When I first read the books as a child in in the deep south in the 70's, I did notice the fact that there were different colors in the Earthsea universe. It didn't bother me and in fact I thought it made logical sense. It wasn't the defining factor in my appreciation of the story, though.

Perhaps I was just more of a geek than most, but what seemed much more important in the Left Hand of Darkness was the main character's sexual thing. I think hermaphrodite (sp) is wrong, but we're in the same sort of ballpark, if you will.

I've asked this before, and probably lost track, but, Dr. DeLong, WHAT IS the secret to your speed-reading? Every week, it seems that you get much ahead professionally, and yet STILL manage to squeeze in some indulgent fiction before bedtime. Is there a course or method that you can recommend? Or just an attitude, that being busy should enable one to become busier because one notices it less?

I didn't notice the race of Ged until later readings, but Vetch did stand out for me. I read this when I was pretty young - in NW Indiana where I literally didn't know a single black person.

Only later did I notice the race of the individuals, and was massively impressed with the subtlety of awareness and compassion she was showing for all humans by making race so unimportant, but still bringing it almost everywhere in the stories. Through this lens the stories became even more interesting to me.

Isn't it amazing how few pages these little books contain? They are a few hundred pages at most. The economy of her writing shows her mastery. She is able to leave out the unimportant information, and leave in the big impact words and ideas - like the race of the characters.

Obviously the "important thing" in The Left Hand of Darkness is Genly's isolation and the inhabitants' sexuality, but race plays an important part in both. Genly himself talks/thinks about how on his world he stood out because of his race, whereas on Winter, he pretty much fits in racially, but is a freak because of his gender.

At the risk of piling on:

It seems to me that academic and professional training may explain as much as geography in the way in which you experienced Earthsea. Trained in sociology, with a strong interest in social psychology and cultural anthropology, I always find LeGuin's cultural subtext the most fascinating part of her books. Except in 'The Word for World is Forest,' which is sadly lacking in her usual subtlety.

I think that, on the whole, economists need to be blind (professionally) to issues like race and ethnicity, unless of course they are analysing the economic effects of discrimination. This tends to enhance their credibililty as policy analysts, at least in popular perception. Who but an economist could describe a mass starvation in terms that make it sound like a good thing? An unfair stereotype, but useful. What "realist" (not a word that belongs in the same sentence with 'neocon,' of course) would give 10 seconds notice to anything a 'warm and fuzzy' anthropolist has to say.

[To say that "The Word for World Is Forest" is lacking in subtlety is the biggest understatement I've heard all day... :-) ]

I can't read these.

OT, when I was a kid in the 50's and 60's, I read every science fiction book in my local library, and many of the story lines stayed with me all these years later. I am now re-reading many of the books which made a difference in my life, and have found very few of those sci-fi books. I cannot remember the names, mostly I liked the collections of short stories. I wonder where they all went?

Fiction writers, if you want a job done right you've got to do it yourself. Write and direct your own freakin' movie. Nobody in Hollywood or anywhere else in the world shares your vision.

Not that I know anything about Hollyweird contracting, but I would certainly think an Ursula K. Leguin could have negotiated script and casting approval. Or just not sold the book without it. I guess she'll know better next time.

See, Alan, I think that the point is that there is something wrong with the our media is produced and distributed that it cannot convey the kinds of ideas that Le Guin wants to convey. That is the point.

It's not that they can't. They just don't want to.

I guess I shouldn't say that

Oh, come on Brad. You're not a wingnut. And neither you nor the wingnuts that commonly indulge in this same kind of posturing on a daily basis are targets of an all-powerful all-pervasive PC-police-state. It's crap. And it may not be beneath them, but it is beneath you.

If you think something's true, you can say it. (*sob* God Bless America. *sniff*) If you think it's true, but embarrassing, you can choose not to say it. But this "I guess I shouldn't say"? You guess wrong. No. You don't guess. You lie. If you really thought you "shouldn't say" these things, you wouldn't say them.

The only thing you really shouldn't say is that kind of intellectually dishonest crap.

I always just assumed Ged and the rest of the Gontishmen were some sort of pseudo-Britons (they're short, they're darkish, they live on a damp foggy island and they farm goats) fighting off the pseudo-Viking Kargish barbarians (they're blond, they land on the coast and they burn your village down). I didn't know that they were supposed to be making some sort of social point by doing it.

I think the Earthsea novels are wonderful and sublime (well, the first three, anyway), but I'm not particularly sympathetic to Leguin's complaint. Film adaptations almost always distort the books they are based on, and writers are lied to as a matter of course. Filmmakers aren't interested in respectfully adapting a book (or comic or play or theatre piece), they're interested in making a marketable product.

Once you sign away the rights, you basically give up all control over the project, and if they want to re-imagine your touching Holocaust memoirs as a screwball comedy, well, that's their right. And the verbal assurances they give you that they'll respect your input aren't worth the paper they're printed on. Hell, there are studios that shined Tom Clancy on adapting his Jack Ryan novels.

Faithful adaptations of challenging works are so rare as to be noteworthy when they occur. For every Fight Club, Lord of the Rings, or Harry Potter movie (savvy Rowling kept control over most of the decisionmaking, vetoing directors and scripts and casting choices) there are a dozen Starship Troopers, Minority Reports, or Leagues of Extraordinary Gentlemen (ugh). The "consultant" tag is just a license for you to talk all you want; it doesn't compel the producers to actually listen to what you have to say about adapting your own work.

None of this is a secret, or even particularly notable. My question is, if LeGuin was really concerned about the film adaptation of her work turning out OK, why did she sign away all of her rights, particularly given the awful track record of most SF/Fantasy adaptations? Did she not watch the terrible SciFi network version of Dune/ChildrenofDune? I suspect she thought, somehow, that her case was different, that these producers really cared about being faithful to the novels. She wouldn't be the first writer to be seduced and then discarded by the great Tinseltown machine.

I first read the books back when they were published. I was a white kid from a lily-white suburb in Iowa, then living in a lily-white suburb in Australia. For whatever reason, I don't create mental images of people & places when I read fiction. I was absolutely oblivious the races of the peoples in the trilogy.

Had I seen a movie adaptation as LeGuin would have had it created, then I could not have ignored the element of race - it would have been staring me in the face in every scene! And, I would, no doubt, had had a very different reaction to the work. (Movies are *very* different beasts from books!)

Here is a thought experiment - to what degree is the narative insensitive to race. I.e., if the characters were all of the same race, and all references to race, skin, and hair color were removed, would the actions, words, and emotions stop making sense?

Note that the barbarians would still be barbarians to the more civilised peoples. And, one character could probably still tell where another character was from through dress, language, accent, and other social differences. But, would the thread of the story be lost? would it become non-sensical?

I've not read the books in 20+ years, so someone else will have to help me here.

Linkmeister - just remember that Heinlein knew what he was doing in naming the human protagonist of The Moon is a Harsh Mistress--Manuel.

And, as an aside, the title of the article is Dead Wrong. The books abide. They haven't changed. There just happens to be a video adaptation now starting Iceman and Lana Lang.

I am afraid I am with Dr. DeLong on this one: magic and death, not melanin, were the notable Le Guin elements for me. Oddly, I still feel this way about the world, both the living one and the one of imagination...but then I grew up in San Francisco.

I did not much notice race as an element in these books, either, until about the tenth time I read them (which was earlier this year). The element of race, once noticed, added a small element to the series, but it didn't fundamentally change any meanings. So no, IMO, the stories are not about race, per se.

In my view, one of the beautiful things about the Earthsea books is how she deals with religion/spirituality/truth-seeking. She never preaches at you about which ways of life are good and which are bad; she just describes them and makes them real and lets you experience them. Ogion's quiet, peaceful life is a sort of religion, and it has a dignity and a beauty to it that Ged just can't see until he is older. The whole concept that magic is based upon knowing the true names of things -- it's sort of Platonic, of course, but with words to be learned instead of forms to be, um, whatever you do with forms. But anyway, it's a beautiful vision of a verbal Platonism as religion as power. It could almost be Christian ("In the beginning was the word") but it's about knowledge & study, not faith alone with no brains required. A very appealing religion for scholars, I'm sure. And then of course the death and human sacrifice of the Atuan religion: you can see the attraction of it for its practitioners but also the ugliness and evil underneath.

The writer writes one book, each reader reads another one.

The hero in Starship Trooper spoke Tagalog, the one real clue about where he came from and what he might look like.

Ditto what FMguru says above. LeGuin has been writing fiction professionally for as long as I've lived, and only now she's realized how little Hollywood cares about the integrity of the books they adapt for the screen? Lawzy!

>>> The hero in Starship Trooper spoke Tagalog, the one real clue about where he came from and what he might look like. <<<
||
IIRC, he also comments that there should be a ship named for Ramon Magsaysay, who was president of the Philippines in the 1950s.

They waved the scriptwriter for LotR in front of her.

The books the author wrote were not the books he read - postmodernism may not have conquered economics, but it seems to have conquered economists.

[It's not postmodernism, it's common sense: reading is an activity that takes place between the ears. It is triggered by the black marks on a beige background that are what the author wrote, but it is not identical to the black marks on a beige background.]

>>>They waved the scriptwriter for LotR in front of her.<<<

They made some vague assurances of LotR's scriptwriter being attached to the project - again, a verbal semi-commitment not worth the paper it wasn't printed on. That should have been a warning sign, not an everything-is-all-right signal. Unless you get it in writing, unless you see Phillipa's finished script or negotiate final authority over the script or the editing, you should assume that they'll turn the whole thing over to some hack like Akiva Goldman, who'll retell the Earthsea trilogy as a story about Ged trying to connect with his distant father. Otherwise, if you care about the integrity of the project, you don't sign on the dotted line.

I know they told her what she wanted to hear to get her to sign on the dotted line ("Oh yes, Ursula, we'll get the LotR team to write the script, and let me just say that we're COMPLETELY committed to bringing your vision of Earthsea to the screnn."). That's what they do in Hollywood. I know LeGuin is fiercely intelligent and probably figures she's hard to bamboozle - I suspect she just fell afoul of a very slick effort, put on by professionals who negotiate these things for a living. Again, why did she think that her project would be treated any better than, say, I, Robot? Because a bunch of Hollywood types gave her vague assurances it would be that way?

Flattery is a very effective way to get past people's defenses, and people who think they're smart and hard to fool are often the easiest marks of all.

Raymond Chandler had the best response to questions about being upset when Hollywood botched an adaptation of one of his books. He pointed to his volumes on one of his shelves and noted "they're still there."

Oh, and Brad - new Flashman novel coming out in April 2005. "Flashman on the March", covering the Abyssinian Campaign of 1868. Still no word on the Civil War chapter...

FMGuru: First, I have to disagree with your opinion of the Dune series.

The first one, anyway, was nothing short of wonderful; it hinted at layers of characterization even Herbert couldn't manage. And it was parsecs, lightyears, entire galaxies better than the Hideous Pile O' Steamin Crap that deLaurentis dumped on an unsuspecting public back in the '80s.

Children Of was, I admit, not as good. It telescoped too much, and left out important character development. (But then, I had some plausibility and OOC problems with the book as well.) I have to say, though, I did enjoy the underlying sexual tension between Leto II and Ghanima, which was barely hinted at in the book.

Moving on to LeGuin. I suspect she's smart enough to know a studio's verbal promise isn't worth the paper it's written on. I think she made a conscious decision to take a chance and see how it worked out. She's allowed to be bitter, if not surprised.

(I think she was pleasantly surprised by The Lathe of Heaven. IIRC, she praised that production. Maybe she hoped this would be another good experience.)

I thought she might have done better to insist on a deal like Rowling's - but then remembered that HP is an ongoing franchise, deeply beloved by millions of readers and their families, and Rowling has a lot of pull with them. I know HP fandom, like the LOTR fangroups, were keeping a very sharp eye on how the books were treated. The studio had everything to lose by alienating the books' built-in audience. One word from Rowling, and I imagine millions of young people would have taken to the streets around the studio headquarters.

The Earthsea trilogy is not current, not hot, not a surefire moneymaker; and its readership, though devoted, strikes me as unlikely to be a significant target demographic to studio eyes. The adaptation was all about target demographics - why else cast Kristin Kreuk, who has no acting chops whatsoever (don't get me started on her Lana Lang character), but who is wildly popular among the adolescent set.

SciFi Dune? The one where Irulan was rewritten into a major character? That used a curtained soundstage to present a endless sweeping desert vistas? That spent about 40% of its budget on impressive hats? It was a more faithful adaptation than the Lynch movie, but that's not setting the bar particularly high. His name is a killing word!

As for LeGuin, she's certainly entitled to voice her opinion of the adaptation of her work (and from what little I've seen and heard about Earthsea, I agree with her criticisms). But the wounded, betrayed, how-dare-they, what-about-the-millions-of-fans-of-the-novels, can-you-believe-how-they-treated-me tone of her comments is hard to swallow coming from someone who should have had no illusions when she signed the contract.

Actually, Rowling's power is in the fact that she's licensing the books one at a time. Since each book is a billion-dollar windfall, the studio has every reason to bend over backwards to accomodate her - if she's unhappy, she'll just take the remaining movies (and their 10-figure revenues) to another studio. The result, at least for the first two, was a very plodding and mechanical and literal and faithful adaptation of the books. Sometimes it actually IS best to let the professionals make the film.

Joe, LeGuin is a Bay Area native as well.

Ajay, medieval Britons are dark? Only when the fire goes out.

As for race in Earthsea, it's been a while since I read the books but the skin tone of characters, from Vetch to Tenar is attached to their names as much as any epithet from Greek literature. I know it's been a while for most of us since we read the books, but I have no idea what text you were reading that left out the physical description of the characters.

"That spent about 40% of its budget on impressive hats?"

LMAO. I gotta give you that one. As much as I enjoyed Dune, I burst into giggles during the climactic duel scene, at the sight of the Ladies of Dune all decked out in their futuristic-retro-1930's glamour gal getups, complete with inappropriately precious hats.

Esp. what Jessica and Chani wore. Dear god: "Yes, Sayyadina; this *is* what everyone's wearing while viewing their beloved engage in a desperate fight for his life."

It was a more faithful adaptation than the Lynch movie, but that's not setting the bar particularly high. His name is a killing word!

Amen. Lynch's Dune was a sandworm-sized cinematic disappointment.

While I can understand the viewpoint that Le Guin shouldn't complain after having sold the rights, she has made it absolutely clear that she was planning on not saying anything about it, until the point where the director started telling everyone that she was happy about it, and what she intended:

"There was nothing I could do about it at that point, and I said nothing negative in public. It seemed mean-spirited to bash the thing it before other people had a chance to see it. Anyhow, what's the use whining? Take the money and run, as whoever it is said. Someday, somebody would make a real Earthsea movie. . .

But then Mr. Lieberman published a statement telling people what "Ursula" (whom he has never met) "intended" by the books. That changed the situation. They were taking advantage of my silence by sticking words in my mouth. I put a reply on my web site, and since then have spoken freely to interviewers who have asked my opinion of the production."

From Earthsea in Clorox (http://trashotron.com/agony/columns/2004/12-15-04.htm)