The other thing with Lovecraft is his work was driven by his racism in a way that the other works we’re discussing weren’t. Even before I knew of his reputation I remember reading his works and feeling uncomfortable how cultures other than the author were portrayed (mostly African but less educated white people as well).
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They’re more than merely disagreeable. JK Rowling argues at length that transpeople’s rights are a threat to cis women. It’s repugnant. And she, a billionaire, has engaged in legal harassment to silence her critics. And while she may otherwise be a “good” person*, there’s simply no getting past someone who makes that argument.
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A safe assumption, since if he was just worried for the safety of himself or his family from the State he didn’t need to take a stance and could have given a non-answer.
The Chinese aren’t robots or in a cult. If his Islamophobia derives from misinformation then it’s incumbent upon him to rectify his prejudices by listening the many many fans and critics able and willing to tell him he’s wrong and explain to him why he’s wrong. He needs to listen, not be deprogrammed.
And the Republicans are still flaming hypocrites trying to “own the libs” for their devolving base of deplorables.
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While promoting transphobia.
Unless you’re a transwoman of course, then you don’t exist except to ravish “real” women in bathrooms.
Plenty of bigots are nice to people who they aren’t bigoted against. Doesn’t mean they’re not bigots. Lots of good Christian white people in the US during most it’s history were very nice to other white people… not so much to anyone who wasn’t white.
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On a separate note, while defending the Uighur genocide is worthy of criticism (from people other than hypocrites who themselves defend the Uighur genocide), American politicians telling a Chinese national how they ought to want to be governed is some colonizing bullshit.
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Yep. It’s both! Look at us, holding two ideas in our heads at the same time!
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Could we maybe suggest that Netflix rethink creating the series because the novels were way overhyped and they’re not going to translate well to the screen? This is the same guy who wrote The Wandering Earth, and that movie was a trainwreck because the source material was similarly weak.
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Yeah, I mean, Trump reportedly explicitly told Xi that what was happening was cool with him and Xi should go ahead with it. Trump is downright complicit with it, so it’s doubly weird that Republicans would be the ones making an issue out of it.
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Sheer bad faith. The GOP’s guiding principle has become “own the libs” and worship Hair Führer.
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Yeah, but that was before Putin told him to make China the new USSR-esque villian in the minds of the Americans. You can’t expect the man to know what orders he is gonna get months in advance. He’s just a henchman, after all.
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There’s also the public/private dichotomy with Trump in relation to China. It seems like he publicly villainizes China (but rarely for anything real), then privately calls up Xi and tries to suck up to him.
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@anon21100188 and @aluchko have done a great job in this thread disagreeing with each other in a completely civil manner. My inclination is to agree with @aluchko re: the importance of empathy for the future of humanity. For the last 100,000 years we’ve shown a distinct lack of it, and I think it’s desperately needed for us to move forward.
Also, I would not like to contribute to or participate in the enrichment of someone who whitewashes genocidal policies. If I find myself accidentally aligned with that SOB Thom Tillis on this issue, I would like to exploit that alignment for all it’s worth (while it lasts) to try and improve the lot of a greatly suffering people.
And also, Orson Scott Card is another example of a real M-Effer whose works I personally boycott. Screw that guy.
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We have a strong policy against victim-blaming here. Any suggestion that “The Uighur’s are to blame” is utterly inappropriate here. There is no level of cultural difference that supports genocide. Period.
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I don’t have an issue with Americans criticizing the treatment of Uighurs by the Chinese. But it is remarkably un-self-aware to be doing so while also supporting the detention camps at our borders. The issue isn’t that we haven’t cleaned up all the racist policies in the US before tackling racist policies abroad but that the legitimacy of the criticism is sharply undermined when it comes from people who advocate for racist policies at home.
I will try to be consistent. I will vote for people who do not support internment camps either in the US or China, and I will try not to purchase or consume products from people who support internment camps either in the US or China, including by not watching this particular Netflix show even though it seems interesting to me.
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I agree. But as I noted above, given the very real destruction the US government has done to the lives of millions of Muslims through unjust and unnecessary wars, our willingness to ban Muslims fleeing said wars, ignoring other states that have committed genocidal acts against Muslims, etc, etc, on top of the very real bigotry aimed at Muslims by the GOP here in our country, which has produced acts of violence against Muslims and people from the middle east/SE Asia, whatever their religion, it’s little more than grand standing on the part of these senators. They really don’t give two shits about Muslims, Uighurs, Chinese people of any ethnicity or pretty much any of us who aren’t white Christian men or those who kiss the ass of white Christian men in power. Saying none of that is a defense of the Chinese policy on Uighurs, though. However, I have far less ability to effect change in China than I do here. I can certainly boycott any future books by Cixin. Though we should wonder how much autonomy he has to make comments about such things, compared to Rowlings or Card, who very much do not have to worry about being sent to a re-education camp as public figures if they say something against their governments. Speaking out against the Chinese government as a Chinese citizen of prominence can have real world consequences that western authors don’t have to concern themselves with.
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That’s really true, and it seems like to Western interviewers it’s just a fun game to play sometimes: “Can I casually ask this guy a question that gets him killed?”
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I’ve read all three books. Having done that, I would ask Netflix to not make this screen adaption of the novels as 1) the novels weren’t that good 2) they would adapt poorly to the screen. There were a few interesting points in the novels which made them worth reading, but those little jems were drown in the mud of a wandering and inconsistent writing style that–for chapters at a time–left me wondering if I had accidentally switched to a different book.
There are so many good books to adapt, please don’t pick this one just because it got a little popularity. Here’s some alternatives: The “Species Imperative” series by Julie E. Czerneda. Anything by Scalzi. His books pretty much beg for a screen adaptation. How about Wool? You want a dark drama that speaks to politics, that’s your series. “The Drifter’s Alliance” is good if a bit light–but that may make it easier to adapt.
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Cixin is his given name. In Chinese names, the family name comes first.
I agree entirely. Although this is one situation where avoiding answering the question would be entirely understandable, and does make me wonder about the professional ethics of The New Yorker writer pressing him to take a public stance on it.
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