An Open Letter to PT Black: On the subject of Ender's Game

[chromatomancer]

All right, PT, you asked for it! :-) I like Rebecca Onion's "delay watching Ender's Game for at least two weeks to game the numbers" solution quite a bit, as I've been wrestling with the selfsame issues. Should we boycott the Ender's Game movie because of Orson Scott Card's vocal opposition to gay marriage? Card rankles. He's an ass. His positions

Comments

[apintrix]

Thanks for this great exposition of some of the many deeply troubling aspects of Ender's Game!

I'm not sure it's a redeemable book precisely because its apparatus of sympathy for the underdog, who is secretly intergalactic overdog, is so powerful. It's like a virus targeted directly at bullied geek kids teaching them that they are secretly superior (and perhaps justified in brutally beating up other kids in the locker room, for instance, because "I'm the underdog!".) I find that a deeply poisonous equation. The answer to ostracism isn't to turn it upside-down into secret superiority. That just resituates the same problematic dynamic again.

[lt_kitty]

As a sci-film viewer, my biggest concern is that Hollywood will get a different idea from a successful boycott than intended. Not "don't buy film rights from loud-mouthed homophobes" but something like "don't buy film rights from authors who have unpopular ideas," "Harrison Ford is too old to headline a movie," or (worst of all) "serious science fiction doesn't sell."

Hollywood is nothing if not overly simplistic in their analysis of what did or didn't work about a film.

The best approach to the film's boycott I've heard: if you'd have gone to this movie before knowing about Card, and it won't distract you from the story, go anyway and donate an equal amount to a non profit that helps gay teens. It will support a good cause, keep the sort of movies you like marketable, and it will annoy the author. Can't go wrong. ;)