I’m happy to report that for the first time I will be attending WisCon, a feminist science fiction convention at the Madison Concourse hotel. Please note that I will be there as an attendee, and not as a panelist or a speaker. Due to writing and life commitments, I will be there on Saturday and Sunday. If anyone happens to know what the parking situation is around that area (i.e. appropriate ramp to park at or where I could street park for free) I’d appreciate that.
In addition to WisCon, I’ll be going to see Indiana Jones and the Crystal Skull friday evening. We went to see the Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian last weekend. I thought that it was better than the first movie and would be a great rental. My biggest challenge with the film was that the fantasy race, Telmarines, were not treated as a “fantasy race” at all. Instead, the filmmakers had chosen to bill actors of Latino descent and even went so far as to “paint” two of the main actors to look that way. (Both Prince Caspian and the general.)
I had written about this trope in a writing exercise where I talked about how you can apply research to avoid common fantasy tropes, but I also wrote about it in an earlier post about writing unconventional fantasy settings. My point here is not one of political correctness (even though that may be implied), but about truly making a fantasy setting — fantasy. In Prince Caspian, the common trope could have been avoiding by simply adding in more unique rituals or mannerisms to truly make the Telmarines a fantasy race that had a reason to be “bad.” Remember, that when cultures clash (in this case Telmarines and Narnians) good and bad are often relative to points-of-view.
Other places I’ll be heading this weekend will be the Ale Asylum, Farmer’s Market, and hiking/picnicking/kiting on Memorial Day. Busy weekend but thank the stars warm weather is finally coming!
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Rodolfo May 22, 2008
Hello.
Actually, Telmarines are not a “fantasy race”. They are humans, just like us, and they probably had either a Spanish, Dutch or English origin, since their ancestors were pirates. That’s what’s in the book, at least.
Probably there could be a more extended explanation in the movie on why were they bad, but I think is just a matter of expansion and colonization. Some generations ago, Caspian I decided he wanted to be a vast empire and went to conquest Narnia. There were things Telmarines never knew, like talking beasts, minotaurs, satyrs, etc., and so they were afraid and the killed them all. That’s it…
By the way, in The Horse and His Boy the bad guys are arabs, and I believe this would be seen as politically incorrect if they put it that way in the movie now. That’s sad, because the esthetic would be great, kind of one and thousand nights…
patrick May 22, 2008
haven’t seen Prince Caspian yet but definitely looking forward to it… i’ll have to look over the book one more time just to remind myself how the original story goes