MemeMachineGo!

I heard something about an Earthsea movie. I generally don’t expect much of film adaptations, and don’t have cable anyway, so I didn’t think much of it besides that it was an awfully pale cast .

Ursula Le Guin herself emphasizes that that’s an important difference.

The fantasy tradition I was writing in came from North Europe, which is why it was about white people. I’m white, but not European. My people could be any color I liked, and I like red and brown and black. I was a little wily about my color scheme. I figured some white kids (the books were published for “young adults”) might not identify easily straight off with a brown kid, so I kind of eased the information about skin color in by degrees — hoping that the reader would get “into Ged’s skin,” and only then discover it wasn’t a white one.

I was never questioned about this by any editor. No objection was ever raised. I think this is greatly to the credit of my first editors at Parnassus and Atheneum, who bought the books before they had a reputation to carry them. These editors took a risk without complaint.

But I had endless trouble with cover art. Not on the great cover of the first edition — a strong, red-brown profile of Ged — or with Margaret Chodos Irvine’s four fine paintings — but all too often. The first British “Wizard” was this pallid, droopy, lily-like guy — I screamed at sight of him.

Gradually I got a little more clout, a little more say-so about covers. And very, very, very gradually the cover departments of major publishers may be beginning to lose their blind, panic terror of putting a colored face on a book. “Hurts sales, hurts sales” is the mantra. Yeah, so? On my books, Ged with a white face is a lie, a betrayal — a betrayal of the book, and of the potential reader. A brown face might hurt sales in the short run, but my books are long-distance runners, and for the long haul, only the truth will serve.

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.

And in response to the director’s inept attribution of her intent, she has further comments.

They’re very good books. I hope the film, and Le Guin’s comments (excerpted on Slate) inspire a lot more readers to pick them up.