The Wizard of...Albion?

How did I not know before that the Sci-Fi channel filmed a version of Wizard of Earthsea a few years back in which they make Ged (and a number of other important characters) white? Ged. White. That is so incredibly messed up that I can't believe it happened recently (in 1994 2004! brainfart). Read this excellent essay to learn more (I too wondered as a young person about why everyone on the twin-sunned desert planet of Tatooine was so...white.) Read'em and weep:

Robert Halmi, Sr. said this:
"Legend of Earthsea, the miniseries, was cast completely colorblind, as any of my productions have been. We searched for the right actors for the roles and brought in diversity to the cast as a result. There was no decision to make Ged blond and pale-skinned."
— Interview on Scifi.com's Ask Robert Halmi, Sr. feature on its 'Legend of Earthsea' website, July 20, 2004

Bastard. Unmitigated bastard. 

Comments

[ajay]

They made Johnny Rico white too. Oh, the humanity!

Seriously, is this really such a huge issue? Ged's skin colour is referred to about once ("red-brown") in the book - have people actually become attached to the book solely on those grounds? Isn't that rather pathetic? Are there actually people out there who cannot empathise with a pale-skinned wizard who lives in an imaginary world and talks to dragons, but have no problem at all if he's slightly browner?

Come to that, Ged comes from Gont, a cold, mountainous, cloudy northern island. On the Tatooine argument, wouldn't he be pale-ish?

[belle waring]

dude, ajay. the wizard of earthsea was the first fantasy novel I ever read that had a non-white main character. particularly with the way LeGuin sneaks it up on you, it made a big impact on me. until then I had never imagined that the world of a fantasy novel might reflect, in terms of who you see in ordinary life, my actual world. how much more of an impact do you think this novel had on minority sci-fi/famtasy readers?

casting everyone in Othello besides the main character as black, and Othello as white, can be stunt casting which comments on our expectations (and that said, I usually find that kind of thing annoying). taking a seminal novel like Earthsea and gratuitously changing the main character to a blond white guy? I have a lot of trouble chalking that up to some alleged "colorblindness", rather than down-home, old-timey racist assumptions about what "the audience wants." I'll believe it was random the next time they make a Conan movie, and he's ebony black, with no comment or explanation. plus 70 other white turned to black castings with no ostensible reason. and even then I'll be suspicious. sorry, I call bullshit on this one.

[Patrick Nielsen Hayden]

This TV series was made and shown just a year or two ago. Where did you get the idea it happened in 1994?

[chris]

Well, LeGuin herself seems to think it matters: "On my books, Ged with a white face is a lie, a betrayal—a betrayal of the book, and of the potential reader."

[Carlos]

You know, this came up very recently in a conversation with the exgf about stupid SFnal subcultures. (Neither one of us is white, but in almost exactly opposite ways.) The automatic genre assumption of whiteness -- even if given a quick brush of wood stain -- makes her teeth grind.

I have my own theories, but they might send Patrick into another hissyfit.

[Steve]

Minority actors play Shakespeare all the time. And perform classical (European) music. And this ain't Shakespeare or Beethoven. Get over it. Get over yourself. Quit being a hypocrite.

Steve

[Doctor Slack]

ajay: Seriously, is this really such a huge issue?

Race wasn't a central focus of Earthsea, but Le Guin was one of the first fantasy writers to recognize the multicultural nature of her audience and to deliberately write a world in which "minorities" didn't appear solely as either savages, villains or bit-players. As the essay Belle linked to illustrates, it was a significant departure in a genre that was mostly imitative of Tolkien's attitudes to race (which at best was a kind of genteel recycling of the stereotypes of chivalric romance), and it was part of the fabric of the setting. To make a filmed version of it that cast against that was indeed quite weird and off-putting, in much the same way that it would be weird to cast Morgan Freeman as Patton in a WWII flick. (And no, Steve, this ain't Shakespeare -- the context and the genre being adapted are different, and the difference matters.)

There's a school of screenwriting and filmmaking that, while pretending to be "colourblind," is actually obsessed with avoiding any hint of "political correctness" to the point that it avoids casting non-whites even in settings where they'd be non-controversial or expected. Kind of a species of anti-anti-racism, which not surprisingly comes out looking in the end a lot like just plain racism.

Come to that, Ged comes from Gont, a cold, mountainous, cloudy northern island. On the Tatooine argument, wouldn't he be pale-ish?

You mean, like, how the Inuit are pale-ish?

[Erika]

I always assumed that the whiteys on Tatooine were settlers and the "Sandpeople" (man, that's a racist term if I've ever heard one) were the original inhabitants. That might explain why George Lucas got a PC on us and changed their name to Tusken raiders.

[belle waring]

patrick; I meant to write 2004.

[Luke]

That was a great essay you linked to, Belle.

I hadn't really paid attention to the Sci-Fi adaptation of Earthsea, after their adaptation of Riverworld, well, sucking ass.

They seen to do reasonably well creating their own series, to an extent, but terrible at adapting things, and should be kept away from any more major Sci-fi/fantasy works. Except Battlestar Galactica.

Cheers

L

[Patrick Nielsen Hayden]

Carlos: "I have my own theories, but they might send Patrick into another hissyfit."

Am I the Patrick in question? And if so, what on earth are you talking about?

If you think I disagree on subject of the genre's "automatic assumption of whiteness," you've got another think coming.

[ajay]

I'll believe it was random the next time they make a Conan movie, and he's ebony black, with no comment or explanation.

Ha ha. A major character in a Conan movie being black without any comment or explanation. What a bizarre idea! Yes, that would be strange!
(James Earl Jones is presumably white, then. OK.)

the wizard of earthsea was the first fantasy novel I ever read that had a non-white main character. particularly with the way LeGuin sneaks it up on you, it made a big impact on me. until then I had never imagined that the world of a fantasy novel might reflect, in terms of who you see in ordinary life, my actual world

As I say: do you really think along those lines? "This is a mediaeval fantasy world with kings, barbarian raiders, wizards, men who talk to dragons, shadow beasts and spirits summoned back from the dead - and I was completely able to handle it until I noticed that the melanin count was a bit off! It's just not realistic any more!"

I'm not trying to be aggressive or unpleasant here, it's just that this barrier - this obsession with matching skin tones over anything else (like wealth, ability, nationality, class) - is very, very alien to me.

I appreciate I didn't share the same experience as most people, for three reasons: 1. I grew up in an almost all-white town; 2. I'd been reading fantasy with non-white heroes since, well, before I could read (Mowgli, Suleiman bin Daoud, Aladdin, Abu Ali for example); 3. almost all the novels I read of any genre were set in other countries, with characters who were almost always foreigners, so I learned to deal with it pretty fast.

I was sorry to hear Le Guin complaining about this, but she lost me when she shat in the well by writing 'Tehanu'.

[Carlos]

Patrick, yes, I meant you. Do you remember the fit of dudgeon you had when my co-blogger commented on your love of being angry on Obsidian Wings? I got to see fandom at its finest there. w00t!

[yabonn]

I'm not trying to be aggressive or unpleasant here, it's just that this barrier - this obsession with matching skin tones over anything else (like wealth, ability, nationality, class) - is very, very alien to me.

It is to me too ; the skin color theme just wooshed over my head as i was reading the thing.

But we have the author there, who says that it is not at all what she meant. I'd agree completely that sometimes you just don't care what the author says, but not this time. The skin color was important for her. For a lot of readers too, it seems.

I can't imagine - despise his slaughter of the books - that the director is so tone deaf as not to have raised and resolved that point. Solved as in "a white guy will sell better".

[Doctor Slack]

ajay: (James Earl Jones is presumably white, then. OK.)

They made Conan black in that movie by casting James Earl Jones? That doesn't sound right...

this obsession with matching skin tones over anything else . . . is very, very alien to me.

I don't think it's fair to describe it as an "obsession with matching skin tones over anything else." The skin tones were hardly the only thing Le Guin was pissed at; she was just as irritated at the amateur-hour attempts to mash several of her books together into an actioner. It's a larger question of clear disinterest in treating the setting with any sort of respect -- because unfortunately, film producers tend to hear "kings, wizards and dragons" and assume that all such settings are flatly interchangeable.

[Doctor Slack]

Patrick: Carlos is referring to this memorable thread at Making Light. Though I'm not sure why he's going out of his way to bring it up...

[Luke]

Ajay,

It's not just "matching skintone" that matters. Earthsea is a communal thing, as well as Le Guin's thing. As the author of the essay made painstakingly clear, it's an issue of identity politics. Which is not to say that there's some rubric of white heroes, black heroes, Asian heroes, etc. in any genre, but swords and sorcery is whitebread--then again, so's all things "teenaged" or "atheltic"[Minus the Token, and/or racial harmony movies such as _Glory Road_ and _Remember the Titans]--and so, if you, like the author of the essay, are black, and really like fantasy, it's kind of a big deal to come upon a book that doesn't do the "Magical Negro" Shtick, but creates someone whom you identify with, Ben Anderson, blah blah.

That's changed, somewhat, since Earthsea was published, but only marginally--Nalo Hopkinson and Octavia Butler--I'm not sure where to put Sam Delany. But Earthsea matters as being a first-of-its kind, and the big impact it had on lots of readers, as well as what it meant for Le Guin.

To have someone you strongly identify with as the [presumably] successful protagonist in a novel is a step toward self-empowerment. If you were black and came of age at the time Earthsea was published, first in 1964, you'd go from Frodo and the Ring to "Holy Shit, black people can be _Powerful_" when Ged saves his village.

Perhaps an Earthsea published at another time would be less a big deal, but being what is and when it was published, I can see people being rightfully furious about this; it's not "Starbuck is a man!" or anything like that; it's a legitimate gripe about changing the message and image of a text.

OTOH, no one complained that Whitey Powers, of _Mystic River_ became black in the film. But that's an utterly minor character.

Cheers

L

[Gary Farber]

A very long post with some long excerpts from a recent Le Guin interview in which she mentioned the Earthsea/movie/skin tone issue, by the way.

Le Guin has mentioned it in many interviews in the last couple of years, as I noted to Belle in an e-mail.

(Said post also has long excerpts from an interview with Terry Pratchett, and a bunch of other skiffy-type stuff.)

I know, my palms grow more hair every day.

[Ray]

'Making Conan black' and 'making the evil sorcerer who wiped out Conan's village black' are not quite the same thing, ajay.

The issue is not 'realism'. The issue is that up until Earthsea, many readers had never seen a hero who looked like them. Its not an obsession with matching skin tones. And if its not a big deal, then why not stick with a red-brown Ged? Were the only available actors white?

[ajay]

If you were black and came of age at the time Earthsea was published, first in 1964, you'd go from Frodo and the Ring to "Holy Shit, black people can be _Powerful_" when Ged saves his village.

But, ahem, Ged isn't black. That's made very clear indeed. Vetch is black. He's the one that black kids would empathise with, surely?
He's the sidekick. And what exactly does he achieve? He's the only major black character in the books. He isn't even in two of them. In 'Wizard of Earthsea' he's the hero's friend, but he's continually in awe of Ged, who's a far better magician, and of Jasper, who's also far better (and far whiter). We never see Vetch do any magic at all (except, as far as I remember, eating fried chicken and turning the bones into little birds. Fried chicken?) When he graduates he goes back to His Own People out in the boondocks and lives a happy life eating cakes. But he's just chock-full of Homely Wisdom, isn't he?

Ged is 'red-brown' - so presumably southern European, Indian, or native American-looking.

[Doctor Slack]

ajay: But, ahem, Ged isn't black.

But he was a not-white guy who got to be the protagonist. That was plenty cool enough, given that he emerged from a wasteland of mainstream sword-and-sorcery where the swarthy folks were villains or savages where they turned up at all. (At least, so it seemed to me when I first read it as a kid.)

Ged is 'red-brown' - so presumably southern European, Indian, or native American-looking.

Are actors who look like this in short supply, or something? Why would it be necessary to avoid them? It's obviously not as though the guy they cast was a thespian-for-the-ages, just too darn good to pass up.

[Gary Farber]

Unlikely anyone is going to be still reading this thread, but since the most recent comments appear for a blink up in the sidebar, and this is still, barely, on the front page, it seems just barely worth coming back here to note.

If you can read the piece I link to here, by Pam Noles, let alone her links at her blog post, and still not otherstand why the pigment tones in Earthsea could matter to anyone, there's simply no explaining it to you.

And everyone should at least read Noles' whole primary piece, anyway. It's superb, on every level.