Old Pulp Gender Role Bending

[bellatrys]

This isn't the Barsoom post I was intending to write (still working on that one) or rather, it's a chunk of it broken out, because it was obviously not all going to fit under one essay-umbrella. In honor of the possibility that Dark Horse has thought better* of gambling a dozen or more thousand simoleons on the dark horse named "Gor", as noted over

Comments

[sartorias]

This is the first time I've experienced a desire to revisit ERB's stuff. (I read most of these when I was 14 and 15, when one of the dads of kids I babysat insisted they were the best stuff ever written, far better than that hobbit thing). I was mightily puzzled, mostly bored, but in reading this I am now aware of just how much went over my head. (With some other rejecta of the time, I still am convinced there was no there there.)

Now I'm wondering if I should give Islandia

Hm, haven't read Islandia

[bellatrys]

I like Tarzan for all its flaws, it's right there with Dracula for me - not great, but good fun

Re: Hm, haven't read Islandia

[sartorias]

A comic would be wonderful. (I happen to really like all the swinging from airship to airship and duels and like that--I just like wit instead of grue or speeches inbetween.)

I also like looking at those earlier works and seeing where tropes are givens and where they are examined, even if the conclusions are not contemporarily acceptable. One of the reasons I love Catherine Grace Gore's Pin Money is not because it's the second great Silver Fork novel, but because the young husband and wife have to learn to be friends and compatriots after the high society wedding.

[bright_lilim]

There was a comic in the 70s. It was even translated to my native Finnish. Alas, it seemed to have been cancelled pretty quickly and the storyline wasn't finished. The people weren't completely naked, though.

http://www.erbzine.com/comics/jcmarv1.html

I hope you're happy

[david_wisdom]

If Dark Horse [i]has[/i] canceled their Gor omnibus, where will Norman's fans go for their misogynistic pseudo-porn? Through the dusty piles of remaindered paperbacks? [i]What about their allergies?[/i]

[i]What hath we wrought?[/i]

(also, thanks to your essay I'm now inclined to go digging for ERB's stuff)

snerk!

[bellatrys]

Yes, sneezing and itchy eyes do spoil the fervid fanboy's mood, don't they?

--Oh, I'm really evil, I just had the idea for doing a fake site (a la Bonsai Kittens) to advertise Gorean Slavegirl outfits for your RealDoll...

You'd be weeping for humanity within the first month

[david_wisdom]

How many emails do you think you'd get from Goreans asking how to order them?

I don't know, but it would be awfully funny to see!

[bellatrys]

We could offer, at an extra charge, *engraved* slave collars, just like Talena's! (After the whole Sideshow Statuette thing, I *have* no good opinion of fannish humanity left.)

[serizawa3000]

Princess of Mars is the only Barsoom book I've read so far (and I read it more than ten years ago, when I was in my twenties), though I do have a couple of them on my shelf. Tars Tarkas was probably my favorite character... but your writing now makes me think Tars Tarkas = Magic Negro?

I also read Michael Moorcock's homage/pastiche to Barsoom in his "Kane" novels...

There has been talk about making a John Carter of Mars movie for some time now... for a while it was going to be the people who did Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, and then it was going to be Jon Favreau (who did Zathura and, er... Iron Man), but I haven't heard anything else. William Stout had done some design work back in the 90s, but the director attached to that project (John McTiernan, I think) was looking for ways to use real animals (camels and elephants) "made up" to look like Barsoomian wildlife instead of fancier visual effects.

Nah, he's definitely a Noble Savage

[bellatrys]

but your writing now makes me think Tars Tarkas = Magic Negro?

Clearly, with equal parts of Proud Warrior Race Guy and Warrior Poet - and the Federation Earthman Brings Civilization To Backwards Folks is all through, but a couple things to remember are that this was after all 1911, and unlike 1967, this really was extremely good for pop-culture treatment of race and culture tropes

How to make a bad John Carter of Mars movie

[deiseach]

Give it to the bloke who did "Earthsea" and is now doing "Flash Gordon

Are you, like, trying to work off your Purgatory in advance

[bellatrys]

by giving *us* the opportunity to experience our Purgatory on earth, eh?

Yes, this is exactly what they'd do, to start with. And you know, the whole Astral Projection thing is the flimsiest bit (and was when ER Eddison did it, too), but a little handwavy preface, a little borrowing from the Old Guard of Occultism who were ERB's contemporaries, and you could have a frame that would make it Plausible, if not Probable - and if you wanted to insert something to make it more likely, you could do the whole Sympathetic Vibrations and Ley Lines and make portentuous noises about how in Ye Olden Dayes, mortals believed that the Wandering Stars influenced the fate of kingdoms and empires on earth, Mars and Venus and Jupiter bringing the will of their respective gods into our lives - now here is a story of the reverse happening! It could be made to work--And yes, they would totally turn the Princess of Helium into a voluptuous red-headed "spitfire" aka "spoiled brat" whose "spunkiness" continually endangered herself AND John Carter, who would

[voxwoman]

I never read the Barsoom books (or if I did, I don't remember them). However, I did read a ton of Tarzans, and then shifted over to Howard's Conan and a Red Sonja novel that I thought was Howard, but now I'm not sure. (I'm sure it was the Frazetta covers that attracted me to all these books in the first place)

I'll probably read a few of the Barsoom books now (or add them to the ever-growing queue).

The first Tarzan was always my favorite

[bellatrys]

I felt the others kind of suffered from sequelitis, but hey, what doesn't? And as someone who read all the Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys I could get hold of, I certainly have no right to jibe. I don't know if anyone else but Howard ever wrote Red, I know there were some other writers doing Conan eventually (including the late Robert Jordan, iirc) but I never saw any new Sonja books, aside from the comics, when I was working in the bookstore.

Re: The first Tarzan was always my favorite

[voxwoman]

I never read any Nancy Drew *or* Hardy Boys. It was the Black Stallion and Dr. Doolittle, and then I found the Heinlein and Asimov juveniles at the library, once I had exhausted Walter Farley and Hugh Lofting. (My other childhood reading was strictly non-fiction, other than the early reader stuff, like Dr Seuss).

Red Sonja (late reply)

[saphanibaal]

The original Red Sonya (note the spelling) was a secondary character, Russian I believe, in one of Howard's set-in-real-world-times adventure stories; I never actually found a copy, but both de Camp and Carter (IIRC) mentioned her as "might even have been a match for Conan (had they coexisted)."

The comics borrowed her and dropped her into the Hyborian Age, and then David Tierney wrote at least five tie-in novels. I used to have some of them; not sure where they've got to.

Hey - Pixar agrees with you ...

[the_resa]

http://www.comingsoon.net/news/movienews.php?id=38181

Pixar intends to do a three movie series about the work.
Of course, they also intend to have it come out in 2012, and we all know how the world is supposed to end by then.

But, if they do it and the world fogets to implode, being an animated movie, maybe they'll stick closer to the book. And not have hordes of four armed slave girls with big, pouty lips.

Well, I can hope. Hope. Hoping.

Best,
Teri