Earthsea on SciFi (1 Viewer)

[Rex Bachmann]

Chuck Anstey wrote (post #59):


I can't speak to the books, as I have never read them, but this fictional "world" of the miniseries draws very much on Western, and especially English-speaking, consciousness. Most of these "neo-Medieval" tales---the filmed ones, at least---are inextricably entwined with British-based cultural models, from the accents haphazardly employed, to the architecture of the castles and shanties depicted, to the style of dress of the characters, to even the soundtrack music (here an unhappy mélange of Celtic and Middle Eastern).

I don't know anything about a "direct connection", but it is just plain intellectual dishonesty to pretend that the representations that are presented to evoke these kinds of worlds are somehow "raceless" and "cultureless", even if the themes of the stories somehow strike us as "universal" just because they may find resonance in us. That is the cultural (and maybe racial) egotism that I think Ms. Leguin was trying to depart from in the first place, and what underlies her plaints about the casting of the film.

 

[Chuck Anstey]

I have quite a discussion response and not in a bad way to the last two posts by Todd and Rex but I will leave it as:

All can say in this case I simply have the opposite belief about who is being condescending and dishonest about race and culture. Of all the changes from the books to the mini-series, the cast's outward racial appearance or the destruction of EarthSea's multi-cultural panacea was one of the least important IMHO. To elevate it higher I think is to see something that isn't there.

An author can decide the words we read in a book or how we interpret those words, but not both. I had my interpretation of them as a youth and it was quite sufficient for the books to "speak to me".

Chuck Anstey

 

[LanieParker]

Taped it! I will not get to watch it however, until after I get back from vacation. So sometime next year (hee hee) I will get to discuss it with you all.

I am starting the book on the plane though!

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Chuck Anstey wrote (post #62):


How "we interpret those words" is heavily, though (obviously) not totally, dependent on the baggage we bring to the exercise, which has nothing necessarily to do with the author.

 

[Rex Bachmann]

Maybe I missed an explanatory scene or dialog in the movie; but who is/was the "Lady Elfarren", and why was it important to conjure her up from the dead?

I get the impression that this is something explained in the book(s) as important background information that got cut out of either the teleplay script or the finished film, or both.

Anyone?