December 16, 2004
Earthsea (SciFi Channel)
I wasn't going to say anything. I was going to pretend it didn't exist.Shipwrecked in Earthsea

Starring: Shawn Ashmore, Isabella Rossellini, Kristin Kreuk, Danny Glover, Isabella Rossellini (again, because I love her namesay it with me, "Isabella Rossellini"), Denmark, Norway, and the Swedish Bikini Team.
Directed by: Robert Lieberman
Written by: Gavin Scott, based on a passing knowledge of the books by Ursula K. LeGuin.
MPAA says: Don't look at us, this was made for TV
Running time: Not sure it ever ends
Release date: December, 2004
Seen at: Home, with the remote within reach.
Whitewashing the world
I wasn't going to say anythingbeing the Critic Formerly Known as Outside Food Critic, and all that. But last night I was speaking with a nice-lookin' guy at a book reading at KGB bar. At a wild, completely uninformed guess, I'd say there's a chance the very fair-complexioned nice-lookin' guy is originally from India. (This is somewhat relevant to the topic at hand, even though I always dislike it when people look at me and say "Are you from India? Of course you're from India. You don't know it, but your family came from India." Uhm, no.) His take on The Legend of Earthsea, the miniseries that aired this week on the SciFi Channel, was, coming from the perspective of his own job in marketing, you can't have a darkskinned hero on a cable channel movie, because you'll lose 90% of your caucasian viewers, and there goes your advertising. Most of the characters in the novels are non-caucasian, but from his industry perspective, it's not a matter of "colorblind casting." It's a matter of your target audience, those non-readers, the television viewershipor, that viewership as perceived through the minds of television producers and their marketing department.

Ursula K. LeGuin, author of the Earthsea books and many other novels (including one I groused about in the entry Read the Book), counters with this column in Slate. An excerpt: "I think it is possible that some readers never even notice what color the people in the story are. Don't notice, don't care. Whites of course have the privilege of not caring, of being 'colorblind.' Nobody else does."
Aside from the casting, how was the miniseries?
A shipwreck.
Read the book.
Next week: I subject readers to 800 years of my wild and wacky family tree. Or maybe not.
Posted by OutsideFood at December 16, 2004 01:23 PM
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