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For one second all I know, everything is made of snow
I was just informed that there will be a television adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin's The Left Hand of Darkness (1969).
If the Gethenian characters are not cast with genderqueer actors, I will feel someone is missing the point.
If the Gethenian characters are not cast with genderqueer actors, I will feel someone is missing the point.
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I'm not even going to disagree with you: I don't even know how a TV script would weave in the Ekumen reports and the folklore of Winter (I could see it working on stage). Just in the same way that any portrayal of Earthsea should obviously star a bunch of non-white people, I feel this way about the characters in The Left Hand of Darkness, as a minimal sign of understanding how the book's world works.
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And there's a moment during the time Genly spends with the Foretellers that could work beautifully, but what is television going to do with "the perfect uselessness of knowing the answer to the wrong question"?
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I feel very strongly that good television can be made of conversation, but I agree that introspection is tricky.
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I have no hopes! Just opinions.
[edit] That's not entirely true: I really do hope that having optioned the property and remembering the tire fire that was Earthsea, they will do better by Winter, if only because the negative reaction will be huge if they don't. I just don't necessarily believe that they will. It would be nice.
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Agreed, but since I won't be okay with them doing it badly, I might as well have expectations of minimal fidelity than resign myself to another tire fire.
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//drags hands down face
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Would you have felt more comfortable if they had said "glaciers and philosophy"?
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Aaaaaaaaah.
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Altho, the BBC did do a full cast adaptation of Darkness a while back. http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b05pkpgg Just look at the cast:
Role Contributor
Genly Ai Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
Estraven Lesley Sharp
Argaven Toby Jones
Tibe Louise Brealey
Faxe Noma Dumezweni
Ashe Ruth Gemmell
Ong Tot Adjoa Andoh
Shusgis Stephen Critchlow
Obsle David Acton
Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N0GyAnZjHFw
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See, I have much less difficulty with the idea of a radio version because then its central conceit depends on the androgyny of the voices, which it looks like they handled by casting a mix of actors of different genders who are all in mostly the same vocal range; that's clever. Onscreen, the question of bodies comes into play, and I worry it will all go heteronormative by default unless there are deliberately disruptive factors, like actors whose gender identity more closely matches the Gethenian norm than cis (I believe straight) Genly.* Speaking of whom—
Genly Ai Kobna Holdbrook-Smith
Dude. Maybe they just want him for the TV version?
* The other issue being, obviously, representation and identification: I know a lot of people, including myself, who saw themselves in Winter, and that deserves to be reflected onscreen.
[edit] I get that not every science fiction adaptation I see can be Bellona, Destroyer of Cities, but seriously, why not?
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(I have a love-hate relationship with Genly. He's a very charming narrator but he's also sexist and Lord is he sheltered. I remember the first time I read the book I was groaning at his naievete right along with Estraven. Which is unfair, he's supposed to be the untouched First Envoy above politics and the human connection and all that, but he misses SO MANY cues. But I guess that's the point.)
This was also really interesting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AsBgiOqg4Zg
it's the scene where Estraven thaws Genly's eye, which in the book takes about half a paragraph and maybe two sentences, but this really makes you feel the physicality of it.
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Well, it tells you how minutely Genly genders even ostensibly neutral activities like arithmetic.
Genly's always frantically looking for the binary in Estraven, the EITHER/OR, male or female, friend or sexual partner, confidant or schemer, rescuer or traitor. But he's always both, which is of course Genly's big moment of enlightenment, so simple a realization and so terribly hard for him to realize.
Yes. Which is another reason I want an adaptation where the only heteronormativity is coming from Genly, as there's no one else on the planet who should be bringing gender roles to the party.
Which is unfair, he's supposed to be the untouched First Envoy above politics and the human connection and all that, but he misses SO MANY cues. But I guess that's the point.
I had a reaction to Genly that I realized years later was akin to my reaction to Gentlemen's Agreement (1947)—while I like and sympathize with him as a narrator, there were ways in which his familiar lens felt stranger to me than the alien world I was supposed to see through him—only Le Guin knew exactly what she was doing with that kind of double vision and I'm really not sure Kazan's movie did.
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//scowls more at Genly Remember when he tells Estraven "Women tend to eat less"? YEAH, AROUND MEN, YOU SCHMUCK ....ahem.
I had a reaction to Genly that I realized years later was akin to my reaction to Gentlemen's Agreement (1947)—while I like and sympathize with him as a narrator, there were ways in which his familiar lens felt stranger to me than the alien world I was supposed to see through him—only Le Guin knew exactly what she was doing with that kind of double vision and I'm really not sure Kazan's movie did.
Oh, that's very good! I like that a lot. Le Guin said in her written and rewritten annotated essay on writing Left Hand that she thought men kind of approved of the book more than women -- that it gave them this journey into androgyny and back out again. But the female readers wanted more, they pushed harder. But she does play with it -- Genly's a privileged man, from a sweeping interstellar alliance, but he's also very solitary and disbelieved, and he's not white, altho I think race doesn't really come up on Gethen. Estraven thinks at one point he blends in too well, that's why they don't believe him, IIRC.
when I read the book as a teenager I was so upset I wrote fix-it fic in my head where Estraven barely survived but he did and Genly nursed him back to health &c &c. fannish before I knew what fandom was
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It's a reasonable question and I don't know. The reason I think it might be possible is a couple of recent TV casting decisions that made news for casting actors of the appropriate ethnicity and gender identity even when it took extra looking: Buck on The OA and Bobbie Draper on The Expanse. Both performances have been really well received, too, which should encourage more shows to follow suit. In general, it is slowly becoming accepted that trans characters can and should be cast with trans actors. Genderqueer actors would be an analogous rather than identical situation, but it does not feel to me as though it should be absolutely impossible, especially with a sufficient name to anchor the ensemble as Genly.
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I had not heard of two of the movies on that list, so thank you!
(I really need to watch Sense8. My father has been following it since the pilot and with the exception of the recent Christmas episode loves it, so I get regular reports and it continues to sound really good.)
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Okay, David Harewood would be great.
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I am so fucking nervous about even the IDEA of television doing anything with this important (both in terms of SF literature and in terms of emotional significance to me) property that the only way I am going to be able to deal with it is to pretend I never heard this news.
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Legit.
I want at least to see who they cast as Therem, because that will determine whether I watch cautiously, ignore its existence, or write a lot of angry letters.