1.24
posted 31st Jul 2020, 1:00 PM
31st Jul 2020, 1:00 PM
pocketsizedquasar
Oh, I love this chapter :’)
Alright, full disclosure: the original line in the book reads “...this soothing savage had redeemed it.” I didn’t want to say that for obvious reasons (re: racism & the dehumanizing of Indigenous folks) and so I changed it to “stranger” because fuck that, but it does beg the larger question of what to do with a work written by a very racist white author in 1851. Even though Melville writes a lot about race and capitalism and colonialism (ESPECIALLY in Moby Dick), he’s...got genuinely awful portions of the book, and the way he treats the characters of color is at best less than flattering (see: queequeg) and at worst actively violent & harmful (see: fedallah). like, he's just awful, and so I am trying to create something that's able to call out the racism of the time period without also perpetuating it (my success on that will inevitably be varied). It’s something a lot of adaptations either ignore entirely (and by doing so, are making a very Obvious statement on race even if they themselves aren’t conscious of it), or...otherwise fail to deal with adequately.
I don’t pretend to be an expert on this (i’m just one brown queer kid taking a book written in the 19th century and making my own version of it), but at the very least, I hope to add something to this conversation, this absolute leviathan of a book. And I hope, as always, to learn when I inevitably fuck something up, and fix it.
In other news, tomorrow is Herman Melville’s birthday! His 201st, if I remember correctly. That’s exciting.
I might be doing a livestream tomorrow evening (PST) to celebrate and just vibe, so keep an eye on my Instagram for updates about that, I suppose.
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user comments
31st Jul 2020, 2:42 PM
Marcel
I'm not sure I agree with sanitizing the racist attitudes of the time, but I'm really enjoying your work here. I'm ashamed to admit that I haven't read the book so I can't judge how faithful your adaptation is, but I like it!
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31st Jul 2020, 2:51 PM
pocketsizedquasar
Yeah that's fair! the intention is far less 'sanitizing' those racist attitudes or pretending they weren't there (which is why i'm still trying to call attention to them when they exist), but to create a work of my own that is, for lack of better terms, less shitty. (though i know the intention is not always what comes across) I would prefer to call attention to the racism of the time (which, obviously, still exists and will still exist in this version of the story) without perpetuating specifically the author's racism. IE: where the characters of color get zero characterization beyond caricatures and racist stereotypes, I am trying to not do that; where the narrative doesn't call into question Ishmael's (or others') racism, I hope to do that.
Where to draw that line between authorial racism vs diagetic/in-world (for lack of better word) racism is fuzzy and i'm definitely...not going to put that line in the right place every time, but yeah. In this case, I just...really did not want to have my main character call an Indigenous person a savage. there's no way i could justify that to myself.
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31st Jul 2020, 8:55 PM
shyangry
I'm really enjoying reading your comments here! It seems like a difficult question to answer, but I definitely think you're doing the right thing both by making the changes, and being transparent about the original material & your intentions. You have all these experiences to draw from that Melville didn't. Every adaptation comes with an added viewpoint, and the layering of perspectives can make for some really great art!
Also very sweet page. :)
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1st Aug 2020, 2:05 AM
pocketsizedquasar
Ahh I’m glad you liked the page! And thank you; it’s definitely something I’m trying to be very mindful of, especially since just by the very nature of adapting a work, something is always lost and something is always gained in adaptation! Hopefully the changes I’m making are positive ones.
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