In retrospect...

[azurelunatic]

... it should have bothered me a lot more at the time to encounter a science fictional world where the main antagonists were called a slur originally intended for gay men, and where the Noble and Oppressed protagonist comes from a family whose suppressed religion insists on large families.

Basically, authorial leakage equivalent to Twilight. Except with a lot less pleasant author.

Comments

[elanya]

I am informed by people with more familiarity with both the series and the religion that yes, especially the later books are all MORMONS....IN.....SPAAAAACE!

I haven't read the first one, because I am torn between hearing it is such an amazing book and then also knowing what is lurking beneath and knowing the author is a dick >.>

[azurelunatic]

I am sure it was amazing before the suck fairy visited. But in the context of 2013, it is no Huckleberry Finn.

I might pay good money to someone who loved it enough to transform it out of the horrors, but I do not trust the film studio to have done.

[elanya]

Yeah... I have pretty much settled comfortably into my "there are so many other amazing stories out there to read/watch, I don't really need this problematic one" stance.

[azurelunatic]

Yep.

I don't think less of people who loved it as kids, especially because it was a lifeline to so many people I know, but I sure as fuck think less of people who try to claim that Card is okay, and anybody who thinks that basically no Card got on the book is deluding themselves.

all his stories are based on abuse of a child

[snippy]

All of them. All his short stories that I read and loved, when I looked back at later I noticed that the basis of the plot was the necessary abuse of a child. It's like the living example of LeGuin's "Those Who Walk Away from Omelas."

Re: all his stories are based on abuse of a child

[azurelunatic]

All of this is making me wonder exactly how bad his childhood was. Not that a bad childhood excuses him from responsibility for his actions and public expression of horrible opinions, but this sort of stuff often has a context.

Re: all his stories are based on abuse of a child

[snippy]

I agree on all points. Maybe he's trying to justify the treatment he received because he turned into a moderately-good writer? Or who knows what, but yeah, childhoods can mess us up but once we're grown it's our responsibility to work on that stuff instead of repeating it.

[batrachian]

The film studio has done a rather well-executed pragmatic adaptation from the book; that said, a few of the plot points that I'd have considered Critical were left on the editing table.

Most of the...problematic implications are still present, alas (and they did manage to add some new sexism-related doozies). It's my opinion that EG is a lot less heavy-handed about the authorial viewpoint than some of the later books, though, so I found it a tolerable watch.

From the sound of things, you would most likely be Disappointed.

[azurelunatic]

Disappointed and possibly fleeing the theatre before the rage-hives erupted, yes.

[pickledginger]

I am pretty sure that in EG and other early works, a lot pf the contamination was edited out.

[batrachian]

This would not surprise me in the least. Not inconsistent with the later books being more...preachy, either; Protection From Editors is definitely a Known Effect with established authors.

[foxfirefey]

Not as much as the Homecoming series (also by OSC) that was a very blatant Book of Mormon allegory set in space!

[azurelunatic]

I think that the author's worldview informing and infusing the book is more or less unavoidable, and is basically a neutral thing -- it just happens. Sometimes the worldview confounds reality, as in the authors whose worlds are entirely straight and white. Sometimes the worldview is excellent, such as dduane. And sometimes it is "ew ew I need a shower and pass the brainbleach". I would not ask to become less sensitive to the more subtle indicators of homophobia and religious extremism, because awareness of that sort of thing can be literally life-saving.

[aella_irene]

Elizabeth Moon?

[azurelunatic]

Card.

Though now I am pondering evil-Ents, and also evil-elves, because of the alternate possibilities in slurs.

[dreamatdrew]

Oh dear god can I quote you... or can you put this on that other site so I can reblog?

[azurelunatic]

Just the original entry, or some of my comments too?

[dreamatdrew]

just entry

[rymenhild]

I didn't notice the suck fairy on my first few reads of Ender's Game.

However, I knew even at fifteen that Songmaster was poisonous... that is, I felt poisoned by it. I've been meaning to write a post on the toxic attitudes towards sexuality in Songmaster for about ten years, but every time I think I might do it, I decide I don't want to pay enough attention to the book to write about it.

[azurelunatic]

I think if I'd read Ender's Game before Cyteen, I'd have bonded a lot harder to it.

I'm trying to recall which other OSC books I read, aside from the follow-up books in the Ender series. I bought a whole bunch when I found them, but then didn't get around to reading them before I moved out.

[quartzpebble]

Huh, interesting. I read Ender's Game in 9th grade but didn't get to Cyteen till college. I definitely imprinted on Ender (oh high school) but I am kind of wishing I'd found Cyteen earlier. It would definitely be a different flavor of messed up than a lot of other stuff I read in high school.

[azurelunatic]

As far as I can tell, the major effects on me involved putting better tabs on the sources of my information, and making me a lifeblogger in the late 90s, on paper.

[silveradept]

Yep. And while youngers can gloss it, olders find the suck fairy at the door, wondering why they can see her now and not earlier.

[azurelunatic]

Well, the generally better the world gets, the more the youngers will recoil from it as The Wrong Kind Of Bad. I mean, it's a fairly broad dystopia to start with, but I am hoping for many fewer kids relating to the sadistic sibling reign of terror kicking off a school experience from hell.

[silveradept]

I hope for that, too. I think, though, that even though there's a lot of Tell without Showing in the book, the core idea of Ender as the ostracized kid because he's Inherently Superior to everyone else and can only receive grudging respect by Showing Them All all the time will still be resonant for a lot of kids as they go through schooling.

[elf]

Kid the Younger saw the movie last week as part of a school field trip. She liked it, but didn't rave about it; it's not likely to have any lasting impact on her worldview. (Yay.) We discussed the problematic ethics--I ignored the sexism and weird religious views about family and focused on the "Innocent Killer" aspects.

I wasn't trying to convince her that the movie was bad, or that the characters were evil, but she agreed that there's something wrong when people commit genocide of a species over a miscommunication, and nobody admits any wrongdoing and nobody is held accountable for it.

Card's moral viewpoints are all through his writing, and his anti-gay messages and his anti-sex messages (the purpose of marriage is procreation, doncha know, not pleasure; you don't have to like it or your partner; you just have to make babies together) may be more subtle in the action movies, but his concept that "good" and "bad" have nothing to do with people's actions or the consequences thereof, are more than present.

[azurelunatic]

That is an excellent essay. Thank you for bringing it into my life.

[elf]

That's the link I throw around when people make noise about "but but but THIS book doesn't have any homophobia, so you can't possibly object to it!" And it's also why I didn't want him writing Superman; I don't need a Superman who thinks that as long as he "meant well," it's okay if people die. Or it's okay if they die if they were "bad people." Or whatever whacked justification Card would come up with to warp Superman into his morality.

[pickledginger]

Terrific essay - and yes, an OSC Superman is a,scary concept.