Missing the point by a mile - or leagues, rather

[bellatrys]

Or, Did Alan Moore even read Jules Verne?

The theme of this year's International Blog Against Racism is "Intersectionality" which ought to be a snap for me, but as usual I'm behind and disorganized but thanks to shewhohashope and oyceter both posting about steampunk and colonialism, I remembered something which I've been meaning to try to examine in greater detail,

Comments

The only way to appreciate it?

[mad_troll]

Forget about the original characters/stories.
Then it's possible to like it, in an "Austin Powers" way.

RE: O'Neill's drawing skills.
Burn the man. Or just his hands.=_='

Oh, I would NEVER say such a thing.

[bellatrys]

RE: O'Neill's drawing skills.
Burn the man. Or just his hands.=_=

He just shouldn't have a job that requires drawing people. I suspect he'd be just fine at illustrating technical manuals, that seems to be much more in line with his style.

Forget about the original characters/stories.
Then it's possible to like it, in an "Austin Powers" way.

Well, no, I don't think so, because the point of Austin Powers is that it IS a spoof of 60s/70s era Bond films, and on its own apart from that matrix it doesn't stand up at all well (and it isn't as funny as when Peter Sellers did the same thing back *in* the 60s and 70s, anyway.)

It would only be enjoyable on its own if it had, well, enjoyable original characters doing fun and interesting things with good production values, like a good movie that is totally different from the good book it is based on (that rarest of avises) and as many of us have noted, it fails, rather in rather epic ways, in that regard.

the thing about 20,000 leagues is that it's not really Hollywood material

[bellatrys]

imo - that is, yes, there's a lot of action, but the *charm* of it is the personal relationships, namely the interaction between the central figure of Nemo and Pierre Arronax who in an odd combination stands in for the viewer who is vicariously experiencing this strange new world beneath (and all these ethical and political challenges to unquestioned assumptions) and also is the main source of the Asyouknowbob infodumps - and of course the "Romantic Travelogue" descriptions of the marine environment. Instead of being nonstop scenes of fights and near-shipwrecks, these are the punctuations for aesthetic sensawunda interludes and the moody, atmospheric interpersonal exchanges as well.

It requires an entirely different handling than the Boy's Own Adventure take which it has always been simplified to. (This is also the problem with making movies of Joseph Conrad novels - Hollywood doesn't do well with trying to get the viewer to experience this "exotic" new world from the inside, or with "culture clashes" that depend on extremely

[voxwoman]

I'm not done yet (barely just started), but I'll have to put it aside since people want actual work from me today... However, when I saw this:

Verne, through the voice of Professor Arronax,

I had to do a double-take because I read that as "Professor Anthrax" and now I know where the "Yellowbeard" character came from.

[mawombat]

amazing post, thank you so much for it. I haven't read 20,000 leagues in ages and dont remember any of it, but now I want to read it again!

[fledgist]

I read both 20,000 Leagues and King Solomon's Mines as a boy and part, but not all, of La isla misteriosa as a serialised comic in a Spanish publication.

What struck me back in my late childhood and teens, reading both Verne and Haggard, was the portrayal of non-white, non-European characters as fully developed human beings (this is also true of Around the World in Eighty Days -- and you might also consider the subtext of interracial marriage, badly mishandled though it was, in Conan Doyle's 'The Mystery of the Copper Beeches' [if that's the right story, I'm working from memory here]). Kipling's Kim, fits in there too, with its fully realised Indian, and, in the case of the Lama, Tibetan, characters. The rise of 'hipster racism' is something I find very alarming, since it legitimises ignorance and stupidity as 'cool' once more. It's one thing when you're being patronised by someone who actually thinks you're human, it's another when you're despised.

[deiseach]

The Conan Doyle story is "The Yellow Face"; the Copper Beeches has the really creepy Jethro Rucastle and his unique domestic life (budding psychopath son, daughter locked in attic, wife so completely under his thumb as to be invisible, governess impersonating - unknowingly - daughter to mislead suitor).

[fledgist]

Thanks, Deiseach. It's been a while since I read it.

There's also his non-Holmes story,

[bellatrys]

"The Black Doctor," which is a murder mystery/morality play about a small rural English town overcoming its prejudice against a Latino physician in their midst, and a mixed relationship, and a progressive happy ending, too.