Richard Morgan + Netflix = ALTERED CARBON TV series

[Astromech]

Hmm, not the scene I thought it would be.

[red snow]

1 hour ago, Hello World said:

Alerted Carbon showrunner on the only book scene she insisted be changed. 

She makes really valid arguments for its exclusion from a simple storytelling angle to it coming off as exploitative. It really will make the scene of fury following it work better on screen.

1 hour ago, Astromech said:

Hmm, not the scene I thought it would be.

that's the one that popped into my mind. The only other one I can think of was the insinuation of something very sinister having happened off the page

the scene where there was a haunted looking dog/cat and the feeling there was a human mind in it

[Ran]

Very interesting and thoughtful response. It's a complicated issuue. That said, I'm not sure I agree entirely with it. Cartesian mind-body dualism is such a central aspect of these books that the obvious solution -- the only correct solution, really! -- in my mind is that the viewer sees Kinnaman... and then when Kinnaman looks down at himself, or in a mirror, we realize that he is in a female body. We might glimpse some initial torture through Kovacs's eyes, but then you can just shift to our focus on Kinnaman and understand that the point of torture is to visit pain and fear on the mind; the body is merely a point of access.

The Quantum Leap solution, in other words. Kovacs looking like Kinnaman and not the actor playing "birth" Kovacs could be explained as Kovacs having already adapted his image of himself to his current body, the flexibility of his Envoy training (assuming that aspect of the Envoys -- elite training of various kinds -- is still part of the show). (This also makes me suspect that the climax will feature Kinnaman, not Kovacs in his Khumalo combat sleeve.)

 

[red snow]

4 hours ago, Ran said:

Very interesting and thoughtful response. It's a complicated issuue. That said, I'm not sure I agree entirely with it. Cartesian mind-body dualism is such a central aspect of these books that the obvious solution -- the only correct solution, really! -- in my mind is that the viewer sees Kinnaman... and then when Kinnaman looks down at himself, or in a mirror, we realize that he is in a female body. We might glimpse some initial torture through Kovacs's eyes, but then you can just shift to our focus on Kinnaman and understand that the point of torture is to visit pain and fear on the mind; the body is merely a point of access.

The Quantum Leap solution, in other words. Kovacs looking like Kinnaman and not the actor playing "birth" Kovacs could be explained as Kovacs having already adapted his image of himself to his current body, the flexibility of his Envoy training (assuming that aspect of the Envoys -- elite training of various kinds -- is still part of the show). (This also makes me suspect that the climax will feature Kinnaman, not Kovacs in his Khumalo combat sleeve.)

 

I'm still curious about the interview in Brazil where the actor playing "original" (although I think even that body was a sleeve?) Kovacs got a fair amount of prominence. If he gets a decent amount of screentime in the flashback scenes (which again from the Brazil interview seemed to be a decent portion of the show) then the viewer should hopefully get used to the idea that Kovacs isn't just kinnaman. By the end of the season (assuming it's doing a season = the book) this should mean the viewer may be used to the concept by the time the khumalo combat sleeve appears. Whereas the torture scene maybe occurs too soon in the show for them to be confident it would work? Another issue is that "Kovacs" will be essentially immobilised while tortured making it tricky to get his body language way of speaking over to the viewer. One of the really cool things in the show could be being able to recognise "Kovacs" just by the way he walks into a room.

I've been thinking more about Dichen Lachmann's role. Given she was in dollhouse which actually has a lot of crossover with Altered carbon but the inverse in that we followed the sleeve and not the personality from one episode to the next. Now given most of the dolls in that show did a great job at becoming someone different I'm wondering whether Lachmann's role involves her being more than one person? It would put her acting skills to good use and maybe Reileen's mind is put in prison while her body is used by someone else - it'd give us an insight into people seeing other people's bodies used, Now it doesn't really gel with the character from the book but it seems the show won't be a slave to the book anyhow. Just some random speculation.

[Martini Sigil]

On 1/17/2018 at 4:20 PM, Hello World said:

Alerted Carbon showrunner on the only book scene she insisted be changed. 

I totally get this... and to be honest, the thing she intends to change is not something that the story is dependent on... so I'm cool with that change...

Went to the movies today, and they played a commercial for this before the trailers... I didn;t know that James Purefoy is playing Laurens Bancroft...which is cool.

[Isis]

On 1/17/2018 at 9:20 PM, Hello World said:

Alerted Carbon showrunner on the only book scene she insisted be changed. 

This all makes perfect sense. It was highly likely to be perceived as torture porn otherwise and I, for one, am absolutely sick to death of that. 

I think I'm going to need to do a speed read of the book before I watch though as I can't recall the entire story in detail this many years after reading it. 

[john]

I'm not sure I agree with those arguments.  She's basically saying "my writers aren't good enough to convey the nuances of the scene."  They could've at least had a crack at it and seen if it wasn't possible (Ran's solution seems perfectly plasusible for a start).  She's right that it's her choice though and it does make sense as a business decision.

[karaddin]

It's not saying that the writers aren't good enough at all, it's saying that different mediums carry different strengths and limitations and one of the limitations of visual medium is that that scene as written would not work for most of the audience. You're free to disagree with that and think she's wrong but she's certainly not shading her writers even unintentionally.

And I'm glad for the change like Isis.

[Ran]

I'm bugged by the idea that a display of gratuitous torture on a woman is torture porn whereas a display of gratuitous torture on a man is somehow any less an example of "torture porn". The "porn" in "torture porn" is about the graphic and gratuitous nature of it, not the sexualization. 

That said, thinking further, they perhaps could have conveyed the similar dualism issue by having him in a child's body with the explanation that children are more resilient but also their sensory apparatus is far less controllable, thereby greatly increasing the suffering on the mind within the body, something like that. Because I still think that the dualism at the heart of Morgan's ideas, re: the stacks, is something that _ought_ to be depicted somehow rather than elided.

Of course, there's 10 episodes or whatever. Perhaps they'll come up with some way of getting the idea across in some other scene(s).

 

[john]

15 hours ago, karaddin said:

It's not saying that the writers aren't good enough at all, it's saying that different mediums carry different strengths and limitations and one of the limitations of visual medium is that that scene as written would not work for most of the audience. You're free to disagree with that and think she's wrong but she's certainly not shading her writers even unintentionally.

And I'm glad for the change like Isis.

She said the scene does work as written, they just can’t depict it properly, apparently.  It’s not that I disagree with her particularly, I just don’t believe it’s a creative decision.

[Werthead]

 

Quote

 

I'm not sure I agree with those arguments.  She's basically saying "my writers aren't good enough to convey the nuances of the scene."  They could've at least had a crack at it and seen if it wasn't possible (Ran's solution seems perfectly plasusible for a start).  She's right that it's her choice though and it does make sense as a business decision.

 

I do agree with those arguments. It is simply outright impossible to depict an idea that complicated (which needs some parsing in the novel) visually without it looking weird or exploitative. Since we can't get into Kovacs' head like we can in the book, the scene can't work as intended. This happens in adaptations all the time, of course (GoT has suffered from it a lot because it can't convey information as GRRM does in his POV structure), but this I think is a very specific example that shows the limitation of TV/film as a storytelling medium versus novels.

 

 

[Ran]

Easy enough to show them trying to torture Kovacs in his adult, neurachem, combat body ... and then taking a new tack of swapping him into a new, more vulnerable body that makes him less capable of using his mods and his training to resist it because of whatever reason (female body -- more nerves, higher pain tolerance; child body -- less fully formed, less consciously contrallable, whatever). It's absolutely doable, if they wanted to do it, but they seem stuck on the idea that it's "torture porn" if it's any body other than Kovacs'.

Quantum Leap was able to convince me Sam Beckett was a pregnant teenage woman going through labor, I can't see this being that different or difficult. A failure of imagination? A decision made early on now to play around with the body-mind duality to keep audience's straight? It's probably the latter, but I wonder if they're underselling audiences when a film like FACE/OFF can be a big hit when it's similarly selling the idea that the face you're seeing belongs to someone else.

[Ran]

Also, EW has a review. I read that critcs were sent all the episodes in advance somewhere (probably this thread). It starts strong and pretty positive but Darren Franech seems kind of so-so on it (gives it a B-). Review here. James Hibberd, remarking on  the review, says he "quite" enjoyed it and considered it the boldest genre show since Spartacus.

 

ETA: More reviews. Spoilery one from The Verge that ends with a comment that makes me think I'm wrong about an aspect of the show. The Daily Dot review focuses on the show being toxically sexist, apparently. A more positive review at Gamespot. This from /Film is the most detailed review I've found, and sadly points out structural problems and a devotion to visuals over substance which are going to be an issue. It sounds a bit like they made the choice to expand some characters in a way that overcrowds the show and messes with the pacing. OTOH, Birth Movies Death appears to give a thumbs up to the decision, so maybe YMMV.

There's a few others, but this one from Screen Anarchy is from someone very familiar with the novel and points out some of the changes.

ETA #2: Actually, one more that's concerning on a couple of fronts; siding with /Film in some respects, but also doing what I was worried about, re: the interview regarding the torture sequence, namely that the philosophical aspects are getting skimped in favor of action and too much plot.

[john]

It’s not impossible to depict, it’s just difficult.  Here’s two more ideas, to add to the ones Ran already suggested - Have Kovacs sitting motionless, his eyes closed and we just hear the torture going on in his head. Or show it from his POV, seeing it through his eyes, the blood flying, blades cutting or whatever.

Good TV should avoid showing special converted-into-woman torture, fair enough.  It should also avoid treating viewers like simpletons.  Maybe the scene isn’t necessary and they’re going to dive into the theme of bodies as commodities in other ways, which is fine.  But it’s already kind of worrying that they have a main actor in a role that shouldn’t have a main actor, I’m not getting that they’re particularly attached to the main premise of the story.

[Ran]

Decided to dig further into reviews and commentary and such, and an io9 piece asking Laeta Kalogridis about whitewashing led me to this commentary from shortly after the announcement. I don't agree with all of it, but based on some of the reviews and interviews, I do think they had the right instinct that this whole thing should have been done Quantum Leap-style, with us seeing "Birth Takeshi" for the most part while occasionally seeing Takeshi-as-Ryker and so on from the outside or from certain instances. This would have resolved the torture issue easily, and would have kept more of a focus on the body-mind dualism aspect of things.

Ah well. Fingers crossed that the more positive reviews are right. And Kinnaman's a Swede, so have to cheer him on regardless.

[Liver and Onions]

I saw the trailer for this on Netflix yesterday. It has been a while since i read the book. I admit, if they're really did trim/alter that that particular scene, I'm not going to be complaining. 

It will be interesting to see how the series portrays a lot of the book's psychological stuff. I, too, am wondering if I should try to reread the book before giving the series a go. 

[karaddin]

15 hours ago, Ran said:

I'm bugged by the idea that a display of gratuitous torture on a woman is torture porn whereas a display of gratuitous torture on a man is somehow any less an example of "torture porn". The "porn" in "torture porn" is about the graphic and gratuitous nature of it, not the sexualization.

If a female body is being tortured it will be sexualised, that's a huge part of the problem. This doesn't even have to be a thing that was done on purpose, with the camera or the action or anything else, it's a function of society itself that female bodies are constantly sexualised and objectified. It doesn't mean I would necessarily blame the showrunners etc for this, but it does make me glad that they are taking steps to avoid that in this case. I would also say that this particular scene *is* sexualised because the violence inflicted is in part sexualised - go read the description of it again.

And for the record I'm not a fan of torture porn in general, but if I have to get through it to watch a show I'm interested in I can at least appreciate them trying to avoid the parts that bother me the most. Especially when I agree wholeheartedly with the showrunner on why the scene wouldn't have worked on film the way it does in text.

As for whether they're abandoning that theme? I'd wait and see how the rest of the show does at addressing it instead of concluding it's being ignored just because of this.

[Ran]

If a man is tortured, that too can be sexualized (threats of castration, genital abuse, forced nudity, rape, etc.). Female bodies do not have a unique claim to sexuality. I can pretty much guarantee from the reviews that Kovacs torture on the show is going to be sexualized as part of the proceedings. So I don’t think sexualized torture is the objection from the producer.

[Isis]

12 hours ago, Werthead said:

 

I do agree with those arguments. It is simply outright impossible to depict an idea that complicated (which needs some parsing in the novel) visually without it looking weird or exploitative. Since we can't get into Kovacs' head like we can in the book, the scene can't work as intended. This happens in adaptations all the time, of course (GoT has suffered from it a lot because it can't convey information as GRRM does in his POV structure), but this I think is a very specific example that shows the limitation of TV/film as a storytelling medium versus novels.

Viewers often don't get what is happening in relatively straightforard scenes so if something complicated and nuanced is happening with the story and characters but what is seen on the screen looks like gratuitous nudity and violence then what is seen (as opposed to what in intended) is going to be 'how people see it'.

I'm not saying that I think that television and film needs to be dumbed down to the lowest common denominator. Obviously. But I don't blame them for considering this scene and realising that it probably isn't going to work as intended by the author on screen. And that they just don't feel it's worth it - the inevitable negative reactions vs struggling to keep the scene as written.

And yes, when I said torture porn I was referring to gratuitous violence on screen (not pornography).

 

[Zorral]

Are we really discussing whether a scene of prolonged, detailed graphic torture and degradation that has been dropped from a generic television series is "dumbing down?"