is it just me?

[kaigou]

So the word is that Gaiman is adapting Journey to the West. Now, I will give the man props for doing a beautiful treatment for the subtitles of Spirited Away that really kept the poetry and meaning of the original, and I'll set aside for now the issue of Cameron's involvement, which I do consider so many kinds of wrong I don't even know where to begin.

It's this bit in the linked article that's got me coming back, and twigging again each time:

Additional pressure may come from the Chinese government itself, which has been known to censor creative works. Speaking to that, Gaiman said, “Monkey is irrepressible. The moment that you try to censor Monkey, he’s not Monkey anymore.”

First of all, I'm dubious as to what the Chinese government would censor in terms of Monkey. I mean, haven't there already been like sixty-something various treatments of Journey to the West already, just in China -- radio, television, movies, books, comics, and so on? It's not like we're talking about current events here.

Second, if the Chinese government were to insist on changes (because to film, you must submit a script for review), is that automatically censorship?

I've been trying to think of a Western tradition/story that's as well-known and loved as Monkey. Hmm, maybe Robin Hood (because here I'd say the Arthurian Legends are a little too, uhm, formal -- in the sense that Robin Hood's semi-satirical characters, like Friar Tuck, are impertinent in the same way that one might see Sanzo's party as mildly impertinent). What happens if I consider the shoes on the other feet?

Let's say someone in China decides to do a film adaptation of Robin Hood and the British government were to insist on an approval process to, say, film at certain locations. And let's say there's something in the script that contradicts the understanding of the British review board when it comes to their own legends. Like, I don't know, the idea that Robin Hood kept a lot of the loot for himself. Or that he was abusive towards Maid Marian. Or that Friar Tuck was a double agent. I think if I were on that review board, I'd express my dissatisfaction with the script. If I had the power, I might even say, "you're filming something, but it's not the story of Robin Hood. Go ahead and film it, but I'm not putting my stamp of approval -- or permission to use historical locations -- on your not-our-Robin-Hood story."

I don't consider that censorship. I consider that a natural human self-interest when it comes to stories we consider "ours". If Robin Hood is a story I "own" in some sense due to family background and language and other socio-cultural factors, then I'm going to have -- whether or not I realize it, most of the time -- some kind of cultural possessiveness about it. It'd take someone doing Robin Hood really really wrong (and I won't mention the times that's happened), but that's when I'd stop and say, hey, that's not Robin Hood. It could be a good story, but it's not the Robin Hood.

As much as the West sometimes likes to paint China with the broad brush of a totalitarian system, it's still a system comprised of humans... and we're talking about a story that probably every single one of those humans (in any government review board) probably grew up with. I would expect each of them to feel, whether or not they've ever been made consciously aware of it, somewhat protective of Monkey.

I guess that's what's got me twigging -- the sense of entitlement and arrogance in saying that any assertion by a Chinese government board is (implied automatically) censorship. I can't believe someone who didn't grow up hearing stories of Monkey all over the place could possibly ascertain what is, or is not, Monkey... better than those for whom Monkey is a continuing, constantly-entertaining, story-force. Or maybe I should say: I have a bubbling sense of disgust for the implied argument that if someone -- whose culture effectively 'owns' a large chunk of the legend -- corrects for doing it wrong that this is immediately the error of the correcting culture.

Actually, the other analogy that popped into my head when I first read that short article was of drinking alcohol. If in my home country, drinking wine comes with loud cheers and extra rounds and raised voices, let's say then I travel to the country where that wine was originally made. If that country is one where wine is drunk with reverence and only at solemn occasions, but I'm in the back whooping it up -- if I get shunned, or even thrown out, can I really claim that wine-drinking is irrepressible, and that attempts to make me adjust my behavior to what's considered proper were a sign of a totalitarian system that wanted to censor me?

There's a phrase for that -- gaijin smash -- though I guess in this case it'd be weiguoren smash.

ETA: I think maybe what's bugging me is the hidden antagonism in the proclamation. I mean, try inserting some other government/country/culture, and it feels more blatant. Does it seem acceptable to [the speaker] to state such assertions because the government in question is presumed to be hostile?

Comments

[mediumrawr]

I didn't grow up with Monkey. Whatever. My cultures have their own heritages of stories, and I doubt one of them has not been worked over for at least one recent major motion picture within the last several years. Protectiveness bores me, and I think it ought to bore everyone who participates in a community that's all about re-approaching works.

A quick Wikipedia check tells me a little about Journey to the West - that it is itself, at least in part, a sort of appropriation/retelling of a collection of older Chinese folktales. As far as I can come up with, there's only one close comparison in the West, Le Morte D'Arthur, and the Robin Hood story fails to match up because it drifts in and out of publication without any telling ever becoming really authoritative.

A major film was just published, called Robin Hood, in which Robin is a commoner who takes on the identity of Robert Loxley, who is active not during King Richard's reign but during King John's subsequent one, in which the Merry Men meet while fighting in the Crusades... et cetera, et cetera. It filmed in Wales, around London, and in Sherwood.

Another major film was put out in 2004, called King Arthur, in which Arthur is a Roman officer trying to preserve Hadrian's Wall against the Picts. It bore little resemblance to the Arthur myth, and yet claimed to be the most accurate telling yet. It was shot in the United Kingdom and Ireland.

If you assert that the British government would have had the right to create review boards that would prevent filming in the United Kingdom for stories which do not get script approval, you then have to demonstrate two things: first, that the British people have a right to dictate who and how people get to tell 'their' story, and second that a small review board is qualified to and capable of deciding on their behalf. I'm skeptical on both counts.

Ultimately, I'm very skeptical of what you apparently take for granted - that Chinese "culture effectively 'owns' a large chunk of the legend". I don't know what 'effectively' nor 'owns' means here, nor, in fact, 'a large chunk'. Demonstrating that some subgroup any smaller than the human race 'owns' a story will prove to be as difficult, I think, as demonstrating that an individual owns a story.

The only way a person can keep his grip on a story is not to tell it to anyone, ever. Is the only way a culture can keep its grip on a story to never tell it to anyone outside the group? Well, it's a bit late for that. The story's out, and now it's going to get told and told again. Whether or not it qualifies in the strictest sense as 'censorship', attempting to exert creative influence over someone else's telling of that story isn't just pointless - it's likely to do a lot more harm than good.

It annoys me that people routinely expect the things Gaiman says in casual conversation to meet the standards of minutia-nitpick that the online fan community loves to bring to the table with respect to pretty much everything. The bottom line is that if I trust anyone to bring me a version of this story which I am capable of accessing, it's Gaiman a lot more than either any film review board I could think of or any group of people who grew up with this story indigenously. (Maybe not James Cameron, though.)

Woah, screed. If I spent half so many words on my actual writing...

[kaigou]

Your examples would be why Robin Hood (and perhaps even just the very-different-West) is an incomplete/inadequate analogy. I just couldn't think of any others. At least as far as the US is concerned, I'm still drawing a blank for a legend, only vaguely rooted in history, that's as thoroughly ubiquitous as Monkey.

Try this one instead: Thailand wants to do a film about Queen Elizabeth I and film it on-location. Except that in their film, she murders five people. Or someone from Japan wants to do a film about the first American president, and film it on location, but in their version, George Washington is a philanderer who did drugs in his off-time. I would fully expect the reviewing groups (that is, who manage or oversee the location in question) to refuse permission. I do recall hearing of films that were refused permission to film, when the location-owners/managers had script review rights and wouldn't give an implied approval to something they considered that wrong.

Yes, I am aware that there have been multiple adaptations of the Robin Hood legends, and the King Arthur legends. There have also been multiple adaptations of JttW, too. At least 20 of JttW in film & television, not counting anime, books, radio, and comics. The thing with retelling our own legends is that a lot of them require that you already know the legend, to understand where it's being changed. Parodies and satires and inversions and flips work best when the audience can see where and what. If the audience is utterly ignorant of the original, then significant changes mean nothing to them, because they don't know the original to compare.

That's the real danger: not in retelling a well-known story to a knowing audience, but in mangling an unknown story such that the unfamiliar audience thinks they're being handed the real thing.

When I say 'own', I mean not as tangible good but as something in which the person has invested cultural interest. I would say that I definitely have a vested cultural interest in how people represent my country's historical figures, or our loosely-based legends (like Johnny Appleseed, or Davy Crockett, or similar). Not that I'm going to go on a rampage about it, but I would get irritated when someone from outside my culture purposefully mangles them. Perhaps it's just that I extend the same benefit of the doubt to other people -- that they might have a similar reaction if I did the same to their childhood stories -- no matter who/where they are.

But setting aside any nitpicking on the analogy, I guess I don't really know where you're coming from. In your perspective, is appropriation is not an issue for stories/legends? Or that the only way to achieve an accessible version is if it's retold by someone who shares non-culture status alongside the audience? Not to be combative, just to clarify, because I'm not sure I'm reading your meaning properly.

[mediumrawr]

I've been going over this a bit, trying to figure out exactly how to say what I want to say.

I'm not particularly concerned by appropriation. Is it possible that much of a viewing audience will look at this movie, no matter what it ends up looking like, and think it is essentially identical to the original? Yes, absolutely. But so what?

(And also, how many people think the same thing about Journey to the West itself?)

The only people who will be fooled into thinking that are people who are unfamiliar with the actual original. Anyone who is actually interested in the story will, by hook or crook, come across information that will set them straight. Anyone who isn't actually interested won't much affect anything.

Those people will have a picture of the story that isn't directly based on the original. Lots of people do, about the works in the literary canon. It essentially impossible that a viewer of this film would be able to claim to speak with authority about the original material without being set straight first, unless they were solely in a community of people who didn't know about the material. The story never corrupts the original, and anytime the two come in contact the first one has the weight of verifiable fact.

There was a historical time when this was not so, but this is no longer the case.

The real danger that you describe is not frightening to me, because it boils down to some people being wrong about something they don't think about or discuss.

When you talk about culture, I start to feel like you're speaking a different language. I don't know what "invested cultural interest" means. I'm automatically skeptical whenever someone says that belonging to a culture confers some kind of ownership. (Though, for an interesting treatment of, among other things, that concept, I'm reminded of Roger Zelazny's masterful ...And Call Me Conrad.) Culture is a canon of experiences and references and common context that influences the way you approach something, but there's no reason a part of one canon can't be taken and mutilated into a new part of another. Just ask Shakespeare.

Irritation is natural, because we have a vision of a story and it annoys us when it turns out someone else views it differently. But that experience is hardly unique to intercultural transmission; in fact, I think it's a transposition of the same reaction we so often ridicule from authors.

[kaigou]

I think the language is showing its limitations (or I'm showing my exhaustion after two long days in the workshop). I don't mean "own" as in something you can buy or sell. I don't mean "invested" as in "I spent money on this". I mean "own" as in, "if you were to ask me what stories shaped me as a child, this would be among the collection." And I mean "invested" as in "this is part of my identity as a person, that I know/retell/enjoy these stories".

The story never corrupts the original, and anytime the two come in contact the first one has the weight of verifiable fact. There was a historical time when this was not so, but this is no longer the case.

I would argue, sadly, that this is still not yet so. There are still too many people who believe what they see on the big screen (or the little one), no matter how maladapted, and whose privilege gives them the blinders to decide that this mainstream-inflected, distorted version is therefore the right one. And with privilege comes a really big bullhorn -- or at least the unquestioned assumption that one deserves a really big bullhorn.

That's how you get the average non-native USian quite convinced that "being Indian" means you live in a teepee and wear eagle feathers. Oh, sure, the original story -- of being Cherokee, or Navajo, or some other non-teepee-living type, like the Indians I know who live in condos -- isn't technically corrupted. It's just erased. Or simply drowned out by the new version.

I don't have a problem with someone adapting my cultural stories. I rather like it when people tell me they've begun reading things like the Brer Rabbit stories, because they're showing an openness to something that matters a lot to me. What I have a problem with is when someone with significantly more privilege adapts -- or to use your term, which I find very telling, 'mutilates' -- a different culture's stories. Lesser privilege means never getting a big enough bullhorn to right such wrongs or even to present an alternate version, and no, most people won't go look it up, or learn more.

But they will correct me, down the road, and speak to me as though their distorted version is the 'right' one, and all others -- including the original cultural version -- are aberrations. But when the original story is one that has significant cultural import to a people, then... it's most definitely not an issue of "so what".

And lastly, if one does not consider oneself invested, in any level, in a story -- if one is most likely to shrug and say, 'so what' -- then I personally think it's best one step back from the fray, having no irons in there. Let those to whom it is a significant emotional matter be the ones whose voices carry.