Reviews: Oscar Wao/Stolen Child/Kings

[orichalcum]

Some non-spoilery reviews, which I haven't done lately, of works that might interest some of you: (And one random comment about BSG's "Islanded in a Stream of Stars,": Mr. Olmos, "beating your head against the wall" is intended to be understood _metaphorically._ Darn method actors. ) I got both of the books free via Stanford, as they were among the books handed out to froshlings.
_The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao_, by Junot Diaz: In the end, this is a book that I admired more than enjoyed. In essence, it's your classic multigenerational family tragedy story - people in Gen 1 make mistakes, but recover; people in Gen 2 make similar mistakes, rinse, lather, repeat. What makes it stylistically fascinating is that it combines two very different cultures and settings. The novel takes place largely in the Dominican Republic from the 1950s-90s as well as Long Island and Queens, and is inundated with Spanish, Dominican history, food, and culture. However, two of the narrators interpret this culture and their own lives through the lens of 70s and 80s geek culture. Thus, the evil dictator of the Dominican Republic, Trujillo, is conceived of as Sauron, and his lieutenants are referred to as Ringwraiths; when Oscar Wao gets beaten up by local thugs, he shrugs it off by analyzing it in terms of hit point damage - as long as you're still conscious, you're fine. It's great to see geek culture treated with the same respect and love as other American subgroups - and this book outgeeks me at various points, leading me to plaintively ask my husband questions about "Queen of the Demonweb Pits" and the plot of Tron. My main complaint is that, well, it's a multigenerational family tragedy - don't read this hoping for light and fluffy, despite the geekiness. But the language and the evocation of cultures and characters is just gorgeous; I wish I could write like this. There's a reason it won a Pulitzer.

_The Stolen Child_, by Keith Donohue: This is one of the better serious fantasy novels I've read in a while, though not stylistically as strong as Oscar Wao. This book tells the story of Henry Day, an American child kidnapped in the 1950s by local hobgoblins (faeries, if you must), as well as the story of the changeling who replaces him and steals his family and life. The depiction of the feral childlike hobgoblins is terrific and terrifying; it's a society composed at some level of immortal 7-year-olds, which works about as well as you might think - more "Outside Over There" than "Labyrinth". Meanwhile, the changeling tries to adapt to human life, while concealing his true origins from everyone. Not the happiest or lightest of tales, again, but really well done. A few caveats - young or expecting parents might be unnerved by the idea of child abduction and replacement, which the story naturally dwells on. As well, there's some suggestions/hints of a relationship between the whole idea of changelings and autism - both in that the hobgoblins take only children who "don't fit in" to their families and that earlier eras might have labeled autistic kids as "changelings." So if that is a potentially sore point, this may not be the book for you.

Kings (NBC): A modernish alternate-history retelling of the biblical Books of Samuel, complete with King Silas Benjamin of Gilboa, his children Prince Jack (Jonathan) and Princess Michelle, Reverend Samuels, and the young war hero David Shepherd. It seems after the first two hours like it's got a well-developed world and terrific design and costume work (a monarchical Manhattan, with a faux-NYPL as the royal palace), possibly hampered by poor pacing, some cheap special effects, and an emphasis on formality over liveliness. Also, I feel like the casting director went for types rather than acting ability - the actors are mostly unknowns except for Silas (Ian McShane), but have sufficiently close resemblances to A-list actors that I feel like the casting director's instructions were: "We want an Olmos type for the King, a Matt Damon type for David, and a Joaquin Phoenix type for Prince Jack.") Consequently, some of them can handle the dialogue better than others. And there's a bit too much good versus evil - we first see Michelle passionately advocating for heart-transplants for 6-year-old poor African-American boys, whereas Jack is introduced drinking and smoking amidst a decadent orgy. Subtle, that. Still, definitely worth another week, especially since I've largely given up on Dollhouse.

Comments

[denyse.livejournal.com]

Nice reviews - I've only read Oscar Wao, and I agree, stylistically very nice, I didn't bounce off the couch enjoying it but I absolutely admire the writing. I was amused that any book with that many geeky references (all of which i'm afraid I caught) won the pulitzer.

[spyscribe.livejournal.com]

Re: Kings

Not to sound like an establishment mouthpiece or anything, but with two hours to introduce a entire alternate world and more than a half-dozen major characters, it's a lot easier (and frankly, more effective) to set up "These are the good guys and these are the bad guys" and then complicate it as time goes on, than to try to introduce all those people by telling the audience, "This is an important person, but I'm not going to tell you what to think about them." It feels like doing the latter would would be somehow more authentic or realistic, but in practice the result is more likely to be a whole bunch of people the audience can't tell apart, or really even remember.

Character introductions are not the place for subtle.

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Fair enough...it was really just the blatancy of Heart Transplants For Cute Kids!

[gee-tar.livejournal.com]

Yes, I pity the pilot script writer whose job is to introduce several characters that the audience can immediately remember. It can't be an easy job, by any means. Heck, it's why I tend to hate the first episodes of reality shows. If I don't already know the people (and I'm in quite an unusual situation in that I actually do know the people of the shows I watch), it's too many folks to remember all at once (hmm, perhaps this is why celebrity versions of reality shows tend to be more popular). Come to think of it, I've sometimes been overwhelmed by the number of characters in a Quest game, when it's quite crucial to be remember distinctions.

But if you take that problem and then add the complicating factor that it's a whole new world as well, as they do in Kings, that's a lot to squeeze in under two hours. At least most shows are contemporary (or in a time period we have a basic understanding of so we can make the natural assumptions) and don't have that problem. Oh, you want plot too? Geez, aren't we greedy.

I guess this is why most television drama consists of hospital and cop shows: the audience is already familiar with the rules so you can immediately start playing with them. Even masters of the craft can stumble at such a daunting task. While Serenity is one of the best pilots I know of, when Joss was forced to scrap it, the mediocre Train Job was the result (I actually like The Train Job, just not as a first episode).

I'm not entirely pleased with either the beginnings Dollhouse or Kings, but just because they're so different than anything else on television, I want to give them both a healthy chance. Especially Kings since I really enjoy world-building, and its alternate history might prove sufficiently intriguing as we learn more about it.

[spyscribe.livejournal.com]

You're totally right about reality show casting - where creating an immediate "type" is arguably a larger infraction since you're dealing with people and not characters. But yeah, I'm sure most of the American public spends the first couple episodes of Survivor talking about "Blond dude", "curly haired dude", and "that other blond dude."

Heck, I watch TV as a professional, which means I really should be paying attention to this sort of thing, and I still summarized recent episodes of Sarah Connor to a former boss by telling the story of "John's girlfriend Riley", "The chick from Razor," and "Evil Irish Robot."

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

I wish Kings' casting director were less interested in a blond alt-history retelling, in particular. (Not watching, but not on those grounds; I can't remember when last I saw more than a stray episode of U.S. tv.)

And then there's Star Trek (see also), and the live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender (which responded to fannish outcry against the all-white cast--re: an imaginary world founded entirely upon non-European cultures--by casting a person of South Asian descent *as the villain*).

I am not grumpy at you, and I apologize for being grumpy in your lj, but I am mildly curious, at a tangent, why relatively few people notice these things. (And it has nothing to do with a wish to see myself reflected; I rarely see "myself," anyway, unless one counts advertising spots by Tiger Woods and Roger Federer.)

[orichalcum.livejournal.com]

Actually, I think they may be setting up some interesting stuff with race in Kings, which I had forgotten in the capsule review but is worth mentioning. Reverend Samuels is black; King Silas' mistress is played by an half-Indian, half-English actress (and their son is played by an Indian child actor), and most of the royal staff, secretaries, and random soldiers that we see are black or of ambiguous ethnicity. I'm not saying it's a good thing that the royals and the heroic Shepherd family are the only blondes and pale Caucasians around, but I do wonder if it's being set up as one of the future axes of tension, given that the biblical books in question have a strong thread of prejudice against non-Israelites and exogamy, despite the Israelites being a serious ethnic and religious minority in the area.

Regarding not noticing it - you're right that I should pay more attention to such things. Given my academic background I tend to focus on gender and sexuality more than race in media, though I have a whole interesting lecture on the problematic use of black characters in films about antiquity.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

(I wasn't reproaching you in particular, truly.) That does sound interesting! There's a certain irony, actually, to the fact that I've seen half a dozen posts about Kings today/yesterday and they sound as though they're about two entirely different shows; and till your comment, there's been nothing to harmonize the two.

[(Anonymous)]

I tend to suspect it's just a case of, "we see white people in the majority/in charge all the time in daily life, so it doesn't register as different, and what doesn't register as different is much less likely to register at all." Not that that's a good thing, obviously, but pretty human-nature-y.

I'm pretty confident I'm going to hate the Star Trek remake. The stuff pointed out in the link you gave isn't even the first case I noticed of them doing something unnecessarily careless re: historically underpriviledged groups and their roles.*

*Frakking miniskirts. *is bitter*

[contrariety.livejournal.com]

Uh, that was me.

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

*nods* And it depends somewhat on "we": I don't actually see white people in the majority or in charge in all aspects of my daily life, and I don't try very hard.

I have this sense, however, that at this point one has to try hard to make a chunk of an ensemble cast light-skinned blonds, because the biz has plenty of professionals available to it who don't fit that description.

Ah, the miniskirts. Yeah. And Timothy Burke has voiced some decent suggestions for what Uhura's role ought to involve--shades of Troi aside--not that I have any faith the filmmakers will have seen it that way....

[contrariety.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I think you're right that the biz has more and more people available who don't fit that description. But I would argue that the cast makeup they ended up with on Kings was nonetheless the path of least resistance rather than a conscious effortful choice, except insofar as they were making conscious effortful choices to present certain dramatic "types". I suspect the biz still has a shortage of, for instance, people who aren't light-skinned blondes AND who instantly say "moneyed patrician woman" or "earnest heartland golden boy" to the average layman's eye, which is clearly what they were going for in casting the queen and David. But that's not actually a problem with the casting director; it's a problem with the viewing audience (though mediated through the casting director's understanding of/beliefs about the viewing audience's unconscious biases).

I think the media is in a genuinely hard spot here even when well-intentioned (though of course they aren't always that). Presenting characters that viewers can grok quickly, which (usually?) means invoking subconscious roles viewers are comfortable with, is very useful in easing viewers into a new world quickly; but it just means they end up perpetuating the stereotypes.

I would love to see them do something decent with Uhura, but I have no expectations. Admittedly, this is based on my general lack of expectations. So far, from the trailers, I have learned:

1) James Kirk is Luke Skywalker!
2) ***redacted because this one would out me as one of those "offended by the Enterprise being built on land" people*** *
3) Our Asian stereotypes have progressed from "calm and elegant gravitas" to "Hong Kong action flick!" I have to say, as stereotypes go, I liked the first round better, but I guess it wouldn't have fit so well with the general "James Kirk has a Great Destiny, and it involves kicking a lot of ass! With car chases!" theme.


(*I... I just can't help myself. It's stupid!)

[thistleingrey.livejournal.com]

*nods*

2) heh. Yeah.

3) It was a huge deal for Sulu to get his shirt off and a fencing foil in his hand in "The Naked Time" because Asian American actors hitherto were absent or buck-toothed brains onna stick. We should not be stuck there forty years later. FFS.