“That would be for her to have treated American peoples — all of us — with the same respect that she did European. Pretty sure she would never have dreamt of reducing all of Europe’s cultures to “European wizarding tradition”; instead she created Durmstrang and Beauxbatons and so on to capture the unique flavor of each of those cultures. It would’ve taken some work for her to research Navajo stories and pick (or request) some elements from that tradition that weren’t stereotypical or sacred — and then for her to do it again with the Paiutes and again with the Iroquois and so on. But that is work she should’ve done — for the sake of her readers who live those traditions, if not for her own edification as a writer. And how much more delightful could Magic in North America have been if she’d put an ancient, still-thriving Macchu Picchu magic school alongside a brash, newer New York school? How much richer could her history have been if she’d mentioned the ruins of a “lost” school at Cahokia, full of dangerous magical artifacts and the signs of mysterious, hasty abandonment? Or a New Orleanian school founded by Marie Laveau, that practiced real vodoun and was open/known to the locals as a temple — and in the old days as a safe place to plan slave rebellions, a la Congo Square? Or what if she’d mentioned that ancient Death Eater-ish wizards deliberately destroyed the magical school of Hawai’i — but native Hawai’ians are rebuilding it now as Liliuokalani Institute, better than before and open to all?
Sigh. She just shouldn’t have touched North America if she was going to gloss over everything that makes this part of the world what it is — the grotesque along with the sweet. This is who we are, for better or worse. Our history — all Americans’ history — needs respect, not pablum and stereotypes.”
[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name – singular) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, goodreads, and Vulcan’s shit list.]
“…And perhaps most offensive, we’ll get the book’s Big Statement About America, which is bizarrely insulting to Native Americans. Near the end of the novel, a Native American with magical powers named Whiskey Jack tells Shadow he’s not a god, but rather a “culture hero,” because the land we call America “is not a good country for gods.”
“There are creator spirits who found the earth or made it or shit it out, but you think about it: who’s going to worship Coyote?” Whiskey Jack tells Shadow. “[W]e never built churches. We didn’t need to.”
Really? No houses of prayer? How, then, do you account for the Longhouses the Iroquois built for their prayer ceremonies? And no true gods that anyone bothered worshipping? That’s an insane generalization about more than ten thousand years’ worth of spiritual culture across an entire continent.
There’s one other cultural shift since 2001 could trip up the American Godsseries: the oversaturation of flawed, macho male protagonists in cable dramas. Unless the series undergoes a truly radical change in its TV adaptation, we’ll end up with a show about a tough guy struggling with inner conflict, a sexy man fighting his demons and solving problems in a changing world. Snore.
None of this is to say American Gods is a bad novel in terms of storytelling. Despite its datedness, it’s an extremely entertaining read filled with vivid scenes, goose-bump-inducing vignettes, and often-gorgeous prose. Fuller and Green are smart guys, so perhaps they’ll jettison or modify all the stuff that could trip the show up. And Neil Gaiman is no doubt aware that some of what he wrote doesn’t quite work these days; if so, in his role as executive producer, he can offer guidance on correcting the course.
Still, we shouldn’t rush to anoint this upcoming text-to-TV translation as the next mind-blowing thing quite yet until we see whether the source material can work in 2014…”
What do you guys think? Does the series sound promising?
[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, and goodreads.]
We just saw Christopher Nolan’s new film. It was a good film, though not his greatest. We were never bored. The story itself was good, though our assumptions about the film’s foundations were sadly correct – even more than correct. They spot-on celebrate everything we find wrong with the post-apocalyptic genre. The pro-natalist leanings are the movie’s downfall and are what kept me from really caring what happened to this version of the human race in general.
Interstellar wasn’t just about saving the humans – it was also about starting it over if necessary. Starting us over.
Some of the humans in the film are prepared to go off and leave everyone on earth and just start over with an “ark” of human eggs and sperm. This plot point was somewhat pathetic (on the characters’ part) but necessary to show the multiple levels of human thinking. It asks the question: What is more important, those already living and suffering or the thought of no humans existing at all?
The other issue we had was the main point to the film – of finding another planet to colonize. If we couldn’t take care of the last one then how dare we feel entitled to another one? Not to mention the fact Nolan conveniently didn’t acknowledge other life on those planets (that I can remember) – only if they did or didn’t support human life.
Another bone we have to pick was on a topic Nolan could have explored more. One of the characters has and loses a child on earth to a sickness the dust storms cause (affecting the lungs). Why the hell would you be having babies when you knew your world was dying? Not only is everyone starving, but they can’t breathe and you think it’s a good idea to bring another oxygen-needing, food-needing human into the world? Huh?
Jessica Chastian’s character asks of her then-in-space dad at one point “Did you leave us here to die?” What it really should have been was, “Why the hell did you bring me into this world, dad?”
But back to the main point. Nolan seems to be very anti-earth in this film, though I don’t know if he meant to be. He likens the struggling farmers trying to feed the population as “caretakers” who are pathetic and without dreams – as if going into space and leaving the human mess behind is the only way to have hope.
Sorry, but no. It is that very escapist outlook that many of the European colonizers had (escape Europe, start over, be in charge of a colony! Never mind the Native Americans who already live here). Leaving earth won’t solve humanity’s problem. It will leave them going from planet to planet like locust, continually throwing things off balance.
I would much rather be a caretaking steward of the earth we do have than have my species blamed for killing off every other species (plant and animal – oh, and not a single animal was seen in the film, by the way. Hm, I WONDER WHY). I would much rather our species be able to fix problems rather than escape them the way Nolan suggests in this film.
Let me give you an example: Instead of leaving a planet that was losing its oxygen, why not have scientists mutate the human body to have them better withstand the nitrogen that was taking over in the film? Why not genetically modify humans to withstand the climate they created? That’s adapting.
My point is: There has to be a better way than leaving our mess behind. Leaving is only a temporary solution. We will always have to come back and face our “ghosts” eventually. I don’t want to be a scary ghost. [Spoilers] After all, even in the film, the human race (which now knows more about 5th dimensions and gravity and time and space and is perhaps more evolved (?)) comes “back” to make sure things go right for the human race. Why can’t we just work toward being good ghosts from the beginning? [End Spoilers]
However, I think people will be talking about the topics this film raised for a long time to come. I know we will be.
-Gabbler
“Don’t go down so gently…I’m just waiting on you to breathe without permission”
[“BLA and GB Gabbler” (really just a pen name – singular) are the Editor and Narrator behind THE AUTOMATION, vol. 1 of the Circo del Herrero series. They are on facebook, twitter, tumblr, goodreads, and Vulcan’s shit list.]
“That would be for her to have treated American peoples — all of us — with the same respect that she did European. Pretty sure she would never have dreamt of reducing all of Europe’s cultures to “European wizarding tradition”; instead she created Durmstrang and Beauxbatons and so on to capture the unique flavor of each of those cultures. It would’ve taken some work for her to research Navajo stories and pick (or request) some elements from that tradition that weren’t stereotypical or sacred — and then for her to do it again with the Paiutes and again with the Iroquois and so on. But that is work she should’ve done — for the sake of her readers who live those traditions, if not for her own edification as a writer. And how much more delightful could Magic in North America have been if she’d put an ancient, still-thriving Macchu Picchu magic school alongside a brash, newer New York school? How much richer could her history have been if she’d mentioned the ruins of a “lost” school at Cahokia, full of dangerous magical artifacts and the signs of mysterious, hasty abandonment? Or a New Orleanian school founded by Marie Laveau, that practiced real vodoun and was open/known to the locals as a temple — and in the old days as a safe place to plan slave rebellions, a la Congo Square? Or what if she’d mentioned that ancient Death Eater-ish wizards deliberately destroyed the magical school of Hawai’i — but native Hawai’ians are rebuilding it now as Liliuokalani Institute, better than before and open to all?
