"Ender's Game" movie faces a boycott
wired.com
wired.com
Then I thought about it.
Ignore anything else the author has done: in this particular story, he poses a conflict between survival and ethical behavior, and illustrates it repeatedly... by having characters choose survival over ethics. He makes them heroes for it.
Well. That's a brave stance. Except... that every time a character is given that decision, it is also clear, whether or not the author intended it, that there was a third path that could have solved the survival problem ethically. Maybe multiple paths.
It's not clear to me that Card actually thought about that, though, which reduces the story to what it actually is: a tale of organized child abuse, hero worship and genocide, with a "hero" who doesn't understand what he's doing but gets a magical redemption that he does nothing to deserve.
(Although the last clause is probably intentional.)
I told people this and they told me to read Ender's Shadow instead. Same complaint, the characters are shallow, no matter how vivid on the surface.
So then I decided to pick up a Card book outside that series, and read The Memory of Earth. Stunningly bad. Seriously hack work. A few years later I looked it up, turns out all he did was plagiarize The Book of Mormon and add a nominally sci-fi theme. What the hell?
Every time I complain about Card I am told that I just need to read more Card. No, not anymore.
(I know that some of them will be massive spoilers for those who haven't read the book!)
Of course as a teen I very much liked startegy, tactics, battles and kind of lord of the flies social dynamics that rang a bell with my earlier childhood memories.
I guess that this books somehow shaped my view of the world as I usually think that survival is the most impotant thing but that there's no glory or moral high ground to it and the fact you survived or saved someone doesn't absolve you in any way from what you did to achieve that.
People will boycott this because of peer pressure, and to follow the crowd. People don't boycott the countless movies based on Roald Dahl books, even though it's very common knowledge that he held strong anti-semitic views.
Yes, I think his views are terrible, but that's not going to stop me enjoying his work. His literary output has nothing to do with his views. Enders Game is a fantastic book and I have high hopes for this movie; not just that it'll be a good port to the big screen, but that it'll help the careers of a number of young actors.
Alternately, these nice people could have Googled him before agreeing to work with the guy.
being stupid enough to not realize it is same excuse as nazis "only following orders".
And they're now morally culpable for everything he's ever said? Seriously?
Almost every undertaking is carried out by a large group of people. Most of them are innocent. All of them are probably nice. But bad things are often done by nice people -- sometimes because they don't realize that they're bad. Sometimes because they don't care enough. There are no bond-villains in real life. People who do evil don't think that that's what they're doing.
A possibly controversial example relevant to this forum is Google. I'm personally convinced that Google is one of the most sinister and "evil" (to use their own parlance) corporations that has ever existed, and I can support that claim (though I won't be doing that now). Yet, I know that not only are most Google employees really nice and innocent, even their top management has the best of intentions. Still, Google is evil.
Once you understand that good intentions often lead to evil actions, you get a different understanding of political action. Precisely because many people have participated in the making of this film, it is important to boycott it (if you agree with the boycotter's arguments). Otherwise, people will always have the defense of "but I'm just an actor", or "I didn't know". Everything we do is a political statement, and ignoring that fact is a political statement in itself, which says "I don't care about the message my work sends, I only care about my career".
Maybe if you boycott the film, those innocent actors will learn that next time they should make it their business to learn who they're working for.
I haven't read Ender's Game, and I don't even know what it's about, but reading the Wikipedia article I've found something ironic:
Radford's criticisms are echoed in John Kessel's essay "Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality." Kessel reasons that Card justifies Ender's righteous rage and violence: "Ender gets to strike out at his enemies and still remain morally clean. Nothing is his fault."
It looks like (according to this criticism) that the author embodies the very viewpoint I pointed at. Namely that as long as your intentions are pure -- or, more precisely, innocent -- you are not responsible for your actions.
The lesson I took from the first book was that blind faith in leaders is terribly destructive -- that a moral person can never hand over the responsibility for their morality to anyone else. I was a teenager when I read it and I'd put that down as one of the formative lessons of my teen years.
If a racist serves you a sandwich and you find racism unacceptable in society, then rejecting the sandwich is a political action saying that such views are so unacceptable that you're unwilling to put them aside even for the sake of a meal. Of course, this is a strong political expression, and perhaps not the right one for any view you don't like.
Mr. Card in his response basically says, yeah, I know my views aren't popular, but it's not a big deal. You should "tolerate" them. Now, that is the question you should ask yourself: should you argue with Mr. Card's but tolerate his views, or do you think such views should not be tolerated in society. If it's the latter, then you have an obligation not to let him, or others who work with him, define his or their beliefs as personal and unrelated to their work.
I'm not trying to be purposely argumentative. I just cannot see why I should view it as a political statement, rather than a "I just want to see an awesome movie" statement. Also, why should people care that others should not see this movie?
Also, Roald Dahl is dead, and was, in his life, a quirky writer. Card, according to Wikipedia, is a political activist. An action against him would be quite effective, and meaningful.
People will boycott this because of their convictions regarding right and wrong.
...it'll help the lives of a number of young gays...
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Yes, I think his views are terrible, but that's not going to stop me enjoying his work.
Hypocrisy disguised as equanimity or what?
Bigotry is still bigotry if it spews from a person who saves countless lives, leave alone writing sci-fi.
Agreed! Thankfully, there are many movies being produced out of Hollywood. Just from last year, I saw great films such as Amour (French-German-Austrian), Barbara (German) and Lore (Australian-German), which were better than anything I've seen from Hollywood in years.
If someone was born in a time or place where that kind of awareness wasn't widely established, I'm willing to cut them a lot more slack. See also HP Lovecraft for another famous author whose writings have awkward racist and misogynistic undertones when read from today's perspective.
From what I can find, it is common knowledge that he would make outrageous, sometimes hurtful and insensitive statements -- and that he (especially after reviewing a book on Israel's invasion of Lebanon) considered himself to be anti-Israel and an anti-Zionist.
That's hardly the same thing as being an anti-Semite.
If you know of any sources I've missed, please let me know -- but as far as I can tell it isn't "common knowledge that he held anti-Semitic views".
However some groups are more prone to take offense than others because they have found it an effective means to quiet opposition to their point of view, regardless if they are right or wrong. I would prefer that instead of attempting to bully others into your point of view you just shut up. As in, be reasonable or go home
And after investigating, I have to say, that I would not watch the movie.
The same for me is, if someone staring/directing was a know member of say scientology. As someone promoting an organization, that clearly goes against every value I honor should not earn money from me, that would then help said organization.
So I would not want my money to help someone that intolerant.
If people I know would go there, I would ask them, if they knew, that with going, they support someone that intolerant, someone being that derogative to gays.
But this would then be their decision to make.
For anyone working on the film, stagehand, technician, engineer, whathave you, those people are already paid. They collect a salary throughout the years they're working on the film. They don't go unpaid until the movie releases, and hope for the best.
So for all of those men and women "in the trenches", they're a sunk cost, and won't feel the financial effects of how well the movie does or not. This is why some production houses end up posting losses on films. Even in those industries, the effects on those people are negligible. Movies are a journeyman industry, and quality work on a film is independent of viewer's end perceptions of it. By the time the movie is ready for release, those professionals have already moved on to other projects.
In fact, those who will feel the effects most keenly are not those at the bottom, who are already paid, but those at the top who's income is coming from the sales now that the film is completed. For OSC, who is most assuredly receiving royalties, this could be in the form of a much reduced paycheck. For the backers of this project, it could be a much smaller profit margin than anticipated, or even a loss.
Gay marriage is legal in the US, and rightly so. Neither Orson Scott Card nor middle-eastern oil will change that.
Oh please. Ender's Game is a classic. The rest of his work is worse, and the recent Shadow stuff is execrable.
I also liked his A Planet Called Treason
The only criteria is:
They must be primarily known for sci-fi
They must be alive today
I'll start with:
* William Gibson * Ursula K. LeGuin * Charlie Stross * Margaret Atwood
Anyone else care to add to the list?
If it weren't for the "alive" requirement, I'd include Iain M. Banks. :-( Regardless, I highly recommend anything Banks has written over anything of Card's.
If we're willing to include fantasy...
* Brandon Sanderson * Patrick Rothfuss * George R. R. Martin * Terry Pratchett * Mira Grant * Jim Butcher
This just from a brief glance over my most-recent on Goodreads. There is lots and lots of good Sci-Fi and Fantasy out there, and I'd be willing to argue any of these authors over Card in terms of quality. (Though -- to be fair -- I was monumentally unimpressed with Card even before I knew his politics.)
A few of the authors on my list have politics I disagree with as well, but they at least are much less obnoxious and hateful about it.
(On the other hand, American natural gas and Canadian tar sands may break us free from dependence on the Saudis and their deplorable political and social system.)
http://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Devil-Washington-Saudi-Crude/...
[NB: From what I can tell the author, Bob Baer, is fairly credible - he is a former CIA field officer with a lot of experience in the Middle East.]
edit: While we're on the subject of sci-fi and capitalism; I highly recommend Bruce Sterling's latest book, the Zenith Angle: http://www.amazon.com/The-Zenith-Angle-Bruce-Sterling/dp/034...
One problem I see is that so many times, beliefs are also linked to hatred. There's really no place for hatred when two parties are trying to practice tolerance.
Using another picked on minority, I don't consider a "casual" neo-nazi skinhead and a dedicated one to be on particularly different levels. They both disgust me fairly equally (if for no other reason, then because the former incubate and insulate the later.)
http://www.snopes.com/politics/gasoline/saudigas.asp
People boycott in America for political reasons all the time. I don't particularly care about this boycott, but I'm not going to ridicule them for exercising their right to free association. If they don't want their money going to a bigot, that's their prerogative. If a person wants to boycott Chick Filet because of their stance on gay marriage, Heinz Ketchup because John Kerry's wife owns it, or any other good or service where someone their money will go to political views they do not support, then that is their Constitutional right.
It's also your right to ridicule them, but maybe you should try and come up with some concrete examples instead of just flinging random, unsupported assumptions about moral inconsistencies you think they exhibit.
On the one side you can retreat to the woods and live off of roots and berries trying not to do any direct harm. But then, depending on your privilege, you leave on the table so many opportunities to steer the ship of society in a less harmful direction.
Or, at the other end of the spectrum you can yield all reaponsibility for your direct actions, instead throwing yourself into the wheeling and dealing of systems of harm, trying to invest what privilege you have to gain leverage so that you can make a bigger difference, focusing only on some theoretical calculus of your global influence, measuring yourself by your imagined net global effect.
Or, more likely, you pick something in between. In the end, we all make a personal decision about what we are willing to sacrifice.
I often use oil, even though I know it's harmful, because I think my boycott of it would cost the world more than it would gain. I could be wrong, but that's my best guess based on my (flawed) understanding of my self and my world.
And I may boycott Ender's Game and I do not think that's hypocritical. It's just an acknowledgement that there are limits to our power and we must choose our battles.
We must not imagine for a second that a personal boycott is a significant political/moral act to anyone but ourselves. I agree, you must do what you can, but the movie is a trivial point at best. Your posting on this forum is more significant than, probably, the entire boycott issue.
A penny saved is penny earned. And that penny can now be used for so much other than supporting bigots.
To illustrate - since I was a teenager I realized that the war on drugs was manifestly wrong. I chose not to participate in any aspect of the war on drugs as best I could. When I was fresh out of college, most forms of employment required a drug test. So I did it, reluctantly, but I felt I could stand on my principles as a pauper or compromise and live a reasonable life.
But once I had FU money in the bank, I felt that it was my obligation to refuse all future drug testing because the cost to me is now practically nil. Since I can pick and choose the jobs I take, it is my moral obligation to never compromise again.
A corollary to this approach is that anyone who shares my ideals and chooses to give up the comfort of an easy life for those ideals deserves an enormous amount of respect because whatever character flaws they may have, they are "walking the talk" more than I was willing to.
If I were to encounter an employer willing to make an exception to their policy for me, I would have to consider the greater implications. I might accept such a job as long as I remained free to tell anyone and everyone that an exception had been made so as to undermine the policy going forwards. Maybe. Hasn't happened yet.
It's interesting because I remember in a later book in the series (Xenocide?), there were many off-planet colonies, and on those homosexuality was the norm and heterosexuals were seen as "weird". I don't recall any aggressive stance against gays in the entire series. Maybe I missed something?
I think as long as the book series doesn't mirror the authors perspective, it shouldn't play that big of a role.
I don't have a copy of Xenocide at the moment to check but are sure you're not thinking of 'The Forever War' by Joe Haldeman?
I don't think it's entirely fair to assume an inherent bias or hidden agenda in the work based solely off beliefs the creator is believed to hold. What if Card felt this way, but just kept those feelings to himself? I understand that people don't want to support or empower those like Card, so I'm personally conflicted now as to whether I will see this film.
As an interesting personal side note, I went to high school in Massachusetts in the early 2000s, when the state was at the forefront of progress for same-sex marriage, and Ender's Game was required reader for every English class during the summer before sophomore year. I suspect it still is, and it's probably required at other schools. We spent weeks discussing the book, and it still comes up in conversation every now and then, since we all had to read it, and this is the first I've heard about Card's homophobic beliefs.
On the one hand, I don't like OSC's personal views about gays.
On the other hand, it's Ender's Game. As a movie!
And anyway, come on.
Ender's game is one of the greatest science fiction books of all time. Lots of creative people hold and express unpopular views. Often those views change, over the course of their lives. What matters is whether their work moves you, inspires you, makes you think of new things.
You should judge an author (painter, musician) on her work, not on what she says outside of her work.
it's not punishing people for expressing their views, it's punishing people for their views. Allowing evolution deniers the stage to talk lowers the level of political discourse.
For artists, one could go with the 'Wagnerian razor', i.e. does the artist make money by your individual contribution? Which would be the case if Card gets a box office share. Although even that is morally questionable, as you're part of the support and thus fund future projects, enriching the author that way.
I sadly file all that under "things that would make me a better human", like regular exercise or visiting the dentist twice a year. Although this one wouldn't be hard, as never was a big fan of Ender's Game, being a bit too old for the Mary Sue factor and not liking the morals of the book. I still play Monkey Island every few years, though...
For instance, here's an ethical guide to consuming content created by awful people: http://thinkprogress.org/alyssa/2013/02/21/1619481/an-ethica...
:(
Well known ones have enough negotiating power to demand a cut of the gross receipts and merchandising.
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Edit: A little more on the Winston Groom aside from Wikipedia:
Winston Groom's price for the screenplay rights to his novel Forrest Gump included a share of the profits; however, due to Hollywood accounting, the film's commercial success was converted into a net loss, and Groom received nothing. That being so, he has refused to sell the screenplay rights to the novel's sequel, stating that he "cannot in good conscience allow money to be wasted on a failure".
Sorry for the language.
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russias-duma-...
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/vladimir-putin/907...
Why do you keep making it? You come off sounding desperate, defensive, selfish. You make sex sound mechanical, impersonal. I cannot imagine what kind of marriage you are describing, but it is not a marriage of joy and commitment.
This is like the made up term "homophobia". Just because I disagree with you and use my free speech to do so, does not give you the right to assume my opinions are coming from negative attributes. On the contrary, I care deeply about the future for my children.
lots of older couples, infertile couples, 'normal' couples get married
And they certainly can get married and consummate. It's unfortunate they won't be able to have children but perhaps they can adopt. I do not think same-sex couples should adopt, because this kind of terrible things happen[1].
Why do you keep making it?
This is the first time I've posted about gay marriage on HN.
I cannot imagine what kind of marriage you are describing, but it is not a marriage of joy and commitment.
Any parent will tell you: children are the greatest joy and a huge commitment. That is exactly what I'm describing.
Free speech is a responsibility - not a right to say dumb things just because you can.
Actually no. There's defamation laws and such like that trump free speech.
People need to learn that free speech isn't an excuse for trolls and bigots to post unfounded and hateful remarks. "Free speech" doesn't mean "free pass to act like a dick and intentionally piss of whole subsections of society". Which is why I refer to it as a responsibility; as with all great power comes great responsibility.
You may be confusing United States law with many European nations, which have very different interpretations of speech rights. For example, in Germany it is illegal to advocate for NeoNazism. In the United States, it is perfectly legal, even though it fits all of your "disallowed" criteria.
That doesn't make the slightest bit of sense. If I was to make up some rubbish about you (eg selling drugs to school kids), then you'd be able to take me to court over those things that I said. Thus there are limitations on freedom of speech as those laws are there to protect people like you from in situations like the aforementioned. They're not there to protect people from /SAYING/ dumb things - like you stated. The laws are there to protect the subject /AGAINST/ dumb things being said.
However that's a tangent as it was never my original point. As I'll explain next:
> You may be confusing United States law with many European nations, which have very different interpretations of speech rights. For example, in Germany it is illegal to advocate for NeoNazism. In the United States, it is perfectly legal, even though it fits all of your "disallowed" criteria.
I'm not confusing any laws here. You're misunderstanding me as you're talking purely from a legal perspective where as I'm talking about social obligation. A rather crude example would be gun laws in the US. A large number of people are calling for guns to be banned because a small minority chose to abuse their right to own a gun. Sure, they broke other laws (just as people who abuse their free speech might break defamation (et al) laws). And just like with free speech, we have a moral obligation not to dilute our freedom of speech with mindless hatred as otherwise we might see such rights taken away "for our own benefit". In fact we are seeing this already with idiots who post dumb comments on Twitter getting arrested. They set a precedence where the police can intervene, which makes it easier for police and "do gooders" to take action in future times when circumstances might not be so extreme. And we've seen it with the pressure that Facebook face to sensor the messages left on there because of a meme going out of hand.
Sometimes having freedoms is as much about knowing when not to abuse it as it is about knowing when to exercise your freedoms. Which is why I say great power comes great responsibility. Just because someone legally can do something, it doesn't mean that they should.
That's what this whole news story is about. A dignified and successful author is against homosexuality, and the progressive community can't handle any opposition to their views so they tar and feather their reputation. So much for tolerating other viewpoints...
On one side lies liberty and civil rights, and the other is for disenfranchising people. It's a slanted argument. You're accusing one group of people of being inferior and immoral. It's a dig against other human beings, an assertion that some aren't as deserving.
One can debate methods or policy as to which is more effective, or whether or not designated hitters should be allowed in baseball. It's another thing entirely to assert that a whole range of people are unworthy of the same rights as others. Regardless of whether you or I prefer we live our lives in a different way, doesn't imply that somehow we should trample the liberties of others.
"Intelligent and sane" individuals don't tolerate segregation, racism, or the persecution of others based on their orientation. That your puppet legislature miraculously cast a unanimous vote for continued repression while all other governments across the world continue to roll back this anachronism speaks much for the state of "modern" Russia.
What are you, a Russian peasant? Did you grow up in a Kolkhoz? In a small village in Siberia? Is that a joke? "Yes, we Russians want good, strong, healthy family. We like our women with strong child-bearing hips". I hope the readers here don't get the impression that you represent Russian culture, so just to make things clear: just like in America, these views are more representative of Russian hillbilly rednecks. Russia has given us some of the most subversive, interesting, anti-bourgeois minds in all of Western culture.
There has never been a single universal definition of marriage.