Richard Morgan + Netflix = ALTERED CARBON TV series

[Slurktan]

3 minutes ago, Zorral said:

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?"

It hasn't been dropped.  That's the point.

[Zorral]

Just changed gender then?

Which if that is the case, I still say -- it's unnecessary horror that isn't helping anything, and makes things worse.

Morgan may have gleefully thought writing such stuff for people to read was delightfully hipster transgressive and edgy -- back in the day when he wrote his novels.  But we are living in a different era in which such actions are horribly everyday, and anything but delightfully edgy and hip -- especially in a nation in which by Janyary 23rd we've had 13 school shootings -- since January 1.

[Quijote Light]

What does a school shooting have to do with an extended torture scene? 

[red snow]

1 hour ago, Zorral said:

Just changed gender then?

Which if that is the case, I still say -- it's unnecessary horror that isn't helping anything, and makes things worse.

Morgan may have gleefully thought writing such stuff for people to read was delightfully hipster transgressive and edgy -- back in the day when he wrote his novels.  But we are living in a different era in which such actions are horribly everyday, and anything but delightfully edgy and hip -- especially in a nation in which by Janyary 23rd we've had 13 school shootings -- since January 1.

It's not like the scene wasn't controversial at the time - I really don't think it's a case of modern sensibilities having an issue with it. It was always a scene where people were a bit "not so sure about that". But that's part of Richard's style to the point where I think he does it to provoke feelings of being uncomfortable moreso than him doing so because he thinks it's cool/edgy (although there's maybe a little of that too).

[Zorral]

7 minutes ago, red snow said:

It's not like the scene wasn't controversial at the time - I really don't think it's a case of modern sensibilities having an issue with it. It was always a scene where people were a bit "not so sure about that". But that's part of Richard's style to the point where I think he does it to provoke feelings of being uncomfortable moreso than him doing so because he thinks it's cool/edgy (although there's maybe a little of that too).

Am I recalling correctly that it is Morgan who switched to writing fantasy and included a gratuitous, gleeful scene of a female antagonist getting gang raped to death in terribly gratifying detail, which was quite too much for very many people, not all of whom were female and not all of whom were straight males.  He admitted that in retrospect it was terribly sexist and gratuitous and cruel, but at the time of writing it he thought "it was fun."  

The only book of his I really admired was Black Man, renamed Thirteen (Th1rte3n) here in the US.

 

[polishgenius]

39 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Am I recalling correctly that it is Morgan who switched to writing fantasy and included a gratuitous, gleeful scene of a female antagonist getting gang raped to death in terribly gratifying detail, which was quite too much for very many people, not all of whom were female and not all of whom were straight males.  He admitted that in retrospect it was terribly sexist and gratuitous and cruel, but at the time of writing it he thought "it was fun."  

The only book of his I really admired was Black Man, renamed Thirteen (Th1rte3n) here in the US.

 

I haven't seen those quotes from him, but that scene really felt like he'd decided people weren't seeing Ringil as unheroically as he'd been anticipating and had him do that to absolutely drive the point home. Obviously he got it wrong; there were better ways to do that.

[red snow]

50 minutes ago, Zorral said:

Am I recalling correctly that it is Morgan who switched to writing fantasy and included a gratuitous, gleeful scene of a female antagonist getting gang raped to death in terribly gratifying detail, which was quite too much for very many people, not all of whom were female and not all of whom were straight males.  He admitted that in retrospect it was terribly sexist and gratuitous and cruel, but at the time of writing it he thought "it was fun."  

The only book of his I really admired was Black Man, renamed Thirteen (Th1rte3n) here in the US.

 

I think he also had teenage men being raped as part of their warrior training and anally impaled on stakes by homophobes. So it's not that he's singling women out. An issue could be made of his general use of this approach though - I just don't see how it can be seen as him targeting a particular gender - especially when these things occur within the same series. Although I never got round to the third book so maybe it's more skewed?

[Zorral]

53 minutes ago, red snow said:

I think he also had teenage men being raped as part of their warrior training and anally impaled on stakes by homophobes. So it's not that he's singling women out. An issue could be made of his general use of this approach though - I just don't see how it can be seen as him targeting a particular gender - especially when these things occur within the same series. Although I never got round to the third book so maybe it's more skewed?

O good. He didn't single out a single gender or group.  All OK.  Thanx for setting us straight.

He did admit this stuff was a bad idea (on his blog), but he never apologized to -- ANYBODY. Not that it matters.  What matters is finding ways to present eviLe and horrible, and not present torture and abuse as 'fun'.  And cool.

His was pretty much arrogant a$$hole behavior, which far too many considered hip and cool and edgy back in the day, by people who were anything but, and it still kinda works that way. Which is how somebody could seriously ask what is the relationship to gratuitous torture, etc. of female bodies (or any bodies) to gun killings in schools, or even the sexual pedophile abuse of Olympic gymnasts.  It;s COOL!  Edgy! Hip!

[Quijote Light]

Wow. The mental gymnastics you performed there in the last paragraph are impressive. Thank you for letting me know you haven’t a fucking clue what you’re talking about. 

[red snow]

9 hours ago, Zorral said:

O good. He didn't single out a single gender or group.  All OK.  Thanx for setting us straight.

 

I never suggested it was "all ok" because he wasn't singling out a gender or group - I was merely pointing out he wasn't singling out a gender or group. I even said " An issue could be made of his general use of this approach though - I just don't see how it can be seen as him targeting a particular gender " so you're the one singling things out in much the same way you were only highlighting certain events in one of his books.

I get this stuff is emotive - just try and keep a level head when responding to others' messages instead of twisting them to feed your outrage.

Don't take this question as provocation but I'm interested - will you be watching the show? Again, it's not in a " if yes, go away" way - it's totally valid to point out why you wouldn't support a TV show based on a book with scenes you find repulsive by an author you have issues with. It might help people unaware of the show make a decision too.

[Mexal]

I'm good with the scene being taken out. I think her reasoning is sound and while there are ways that it "may" work, it's impossible to know that until it's filmed, edited, produced and tested. That's an expensive way to test a scene that is not critical to the book or series.

[AncalagonTheBlack]

"Ultimate Fight" Trailer

 

[Zorral]

9 hours ago, red snow said:

I never suggested it was "all ok" because he wasn't singling out a gender or group - I was merely pointing out he wasn't singling out a gender or group. I even said " An issue could be made of his general use of this approach though - I just don't see how it can be seen as him targeting a particular gender " so you're the one singling things out in much the same way you were only highlighting certain events in one of his books.

I get this stuff is emotive - just try and keep a level head when responding to others' messages instead of twisting them to feed your outrage.

Don't take this question as provocation but I'm interested - will you be watching the show? Again, it's not in a " if yes, go away" way - it's totally valid to point out why you wouldn't support a TV show based on a book with scenes you find repulsive by an author you have issues with. It might help people unaware of the show make a decision too.

Thank you for that vastly superior condescending and patronizing rebuke, in which you read objection to being condescended to as outrage.  Excellent demonstration of  reading and writing skills, o ya!

It's highly unlikely that I will watch this, based on my reactions to the Kovaks books. Nor did I find them awesome as so many sf readers did. Beyond not liking them because of the creep factor, by which I feel even more bombarded and overwhelmed after so many years of this stuff in the entertainment market place and real life now than when the books came out. Beyond that, to me they read as derivative of what some non-genre writer- had done before and better -- -- and particularly film and tv series makers -- and who knew and understood some of the locations at first hand, which Morgan clearly did not.  What he did more of than they did was the creepy violence for violence sake, and getting congratulated for it by his admirers.

What I did admire was his depiction of what the USA devolved into in his Thirteen / Black Man.  I thought it was a clear-eyed vision of this nation's divisions as seen from the perspective of across the Atlantic. Those divisions are even more obvious now than in 2008 when the book was published.

I did not care for his fantasy novels for All the Reasons.

Series such as Suburra and Gommorah and even Narcos roll for me much better because they seem, oddly, more real and not so self-consciously pandering -- despite, considering, for instance the writers of the books on which Suburra for instance are based on, that sense makes no sense even to me. But there you go.

[Ran]

There's also one focused on Ortega, played by Martha Higareda. Like the fact that it's appealing pretty directly to Spanish-speaking viewers:

 

[RedEyedGhost]

Why are Ran's and AtB's videos just showing up as links to the Nintendo Switch on Amazon?

ETA: hmm, they work now.  The Nintendo link was also the banner ad at the top and bottom at that time.

[Ran]

Sounds like the code went odd on the ad. Will keep an eye out for it.

(This is weird, but I admit, seeing Martha Higareda in action here ... she'd make a pretty damned good Anita Blake, if anyone ever wanted to adapt the initial, before-they-went-porn novels to TV. Which at one point they were planning to do. Not sure of the status of that.)

[red snow]

5 hours ago, Zorral said:

Thank you for that vastly superior condescending and patronizing rebuke, in which you read objection to being condescended to as outrage.  Excellent demonstration of  reading and writing skills, o ya!

It's highly unlikely that I will watch this, based on my reactions to the Kovaks books. Nor did I find them awesome as so many sf readers did. Beyond not liking them because of the creep factor, by which I feel even more bombarded and overwhelmed after so many years of this stuff in the entertainment market place and real life now than when the books came out. Beyond that, to me they read as derivative of what some non-genre writer- had done before and better -- -- and particularly film and tv series makers -- and who knew and understood some of the locations at first hand, which Morgan clearly did not.  What he did more of than they did was the creepy violence for violence sake, and getting congratulated for it by his admirers.

What I did admire was his depiction of what the USA devolved into in his Thirteen / Black Man.  I thought it was a clear-eyed vision of this nation's divisions as seen from the perspective of across the Atlantic. Those divisions are even more obvious now than in 2008 when the book was published.

I did not care for his fantasy novels for All the Reasons.

Series such as Suburra and Gommorah and even Narcos roll for me much better because they seem, oddly, more real and not so self-consciously pandering -- despite, considering, for instance the writers of the books on which Suburra for instance are based on, that sense makes no sense even to me. But there you go.

EDIT: Double quote.

 

I do wonder whether my enjoyment of Morgan's early SF work was in large part because I was a lot younger? For example the reason I never read his last book might not be so much that I wasn't enjoying the fantasy series but possibly because my tastes have changed over the course of a decade? It's one of the reasons I often fear re-reading books I loved from over a decade ago. Sometimes you can't go back.

Thirteen/Black Man has definitely benefitted from recent events making things seem more plausible. I found this with market forces in the sense I read it while in London during the financial crisis and it gained a ring of truth in terms of where that city could go/was going.

That's a good point about Narcos - I think the fact it's based on actual events and reflective of that time and place makes a lot of the unpleasant scenes that feature in it work. It's a bit trickier in purely fictional SFF scenarios as such things don't need to happen or be depicted there.

Gomorrah is one of those shows I keep meaning to watch and I'm pretty sure I'll be asking myself why I didn't do so earlier. Everyone I know who's seen it has heartily recommended it.

[BigFatCoward]

The reviews i've read so far are pretty dire to be honest, i'll probably give it a whirl but not in much hope or expectation.

[Zorral]

12 minutes ago, red snow said:

EDIT: Double quote.

 

I do wonder whether my enjoyment of Morgan's early SF work was in large part because I was a lot younger? For example the reason I never read his last book might not be so much that I wasn't enjoying the fantasy series but possibly because my tastes have changed over the course of a decade? It's one of the reasons I often fear re-reading books I loved from over a decade ago. Sometimes you can't go back.

Thirteen/Black Man has definitely benefitted from recent events making things seem more plausible. I found this with market forces in the sense I read it while in London during the financial crisis and it gained a ring of truth in terms of where that city could go/was going.

That's a good point about Narcos - I think the fact it's based on actual events and reflective of that time and place makes a lot of the unpleasant scenes that feature in it work. It's a bit trickier in purely fictional SFF scenarios as such things don't need to happen or be depicted there.

Gomorrah is one of those shows I keep meaning to watch and I'm pretty sure I'll be asking myself why I didn't do so earlier. Everyone I know who's seen it has heartily recommended it.

Even though I admire these series a great deal for a series of reasons, I tend to avert my gaze from the torture -- and there are a variety of ways to torture and these characters seem to employ them all.

I don't know if it helps my acceptance that I've spent time in their locations too?  The consequences of these characters' actions isn't only suffered by each other, but many other real people and their society and nation at large, and inevitably the world.  It was so right that we see one of the characters in Gommorah spending an extended period in Colombia -- and then he brings the methods and attitudes of what he saw and learned there, back to Italy.  It's real.  And it's not good.  But it is fascinating.

[Werthead]

Quote

 

The reviews i've read so far are pretty dire to be honest, i'll probably give it a whirl but not in much hope or expectation.

General consensus seems to be that it's not as good as the book and it wastes a lot of potential, particularly because the first episode is really strong and the rest isn't up to the same standard, and the effects and fight scenes are outstanding.

Other than that the reviews are pretty contradictory. Some indicate that the first half is good and the second half falls apart. Others say the exact opposite. Some say that Kinnaman is too bland but others say that he embodies that disconnected ruthlessness of Kovacs quite well.

I can see this being a divisive one.