Barnes and Noble "Diverse Editions"

[leebase]

http://www.informationliberation.com/?id=61169

Just diversify the book covers...bingo... <snip> -Ed.

[Sirtel]

That's as stupid as color-blind casting in movies. E.g. non-white aristocrats in the courts of medieval Europe, instead of making a movie about non-white people that's historically true (or as true as Hollywood history can be ). There were kingdoms and empires in other places than Europe, with no white people in them. Why not make a movie about them?

Or make a movie about alternate history. Steven Barnes has a series of books where the aristocrats are non-white and the slaves are white, because the history in their world went a bit differently than in ours. Such a story would make a great movie.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

That's as stupid as color-blind casting in movies. E.g. non-white aristocrats in the courts of medieval Europe, instead of making a movie about non-white people that's historically true (or as true as Hollywood history can be ). There were kingdoms and empires in other places than Europe, with no white people in them. Why not make a movie about them?

You run into the issue that you have to avoid so many nasty historical facts no matter where in the world you set your film.

I still remember being called into a parent/teacher/principal conference when my daughter did a essay on the slave trade where she wrote that for the most part, European slavers did not go out hunting slaves, they anchored offshore and traded for the slaves being supplied by other Africans or they purchased the slaves from an established factor who purchased them from their African owners. The documentary shown to her class was the usual crap with the Europeans landing and hunting down the inhabitants who were living lives straight out of a Disney film. This type of expedition did happen but often more often than not resulted in more deaths on both sides than could be considered economically viable.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by DNSB

You run into the issue that you have to avoid so many nasty historical facts no matter where in the world you set your film.

I still remember being called into a parent/teacher/principal conference when my daughter did a essay on the slave trade where she wrote that for the most part, European slavers did not go out hunting slaves, they anchored offshore and traded for the slaves being supplied by other Africans or they purchased the slaves from an established factor who purchased them from their African owners. The documentary shown to her class was the usual crap with the Europeans landing and hunting down the inhabitants who were living lives straight out of a Disney film. This type of expedition did happen but often more often than not resulted in more deaths on both sides than could be considered economically viable.

Yep, I'm aware of that. But slavery was universal in the ancient world, even in the pre-Columbian times. There's no getting around that fact. Can you make a movie about ancient Rome without the slaves? Perhaps only Disney could. And I'm pretty sure many, if not the most, of those Roman slaves were white.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Yep, I'm aware of that. But slavery was universal in the ancient world, even in the pre-Columbian times. There's no getting around that fact. Can you make a movie about ancient Rome without the slaves? Perhaps only Disney could. And I'm pretty sure many, if not the most, of those Roman slaves were white.

I'd have to agree the Romans were equal opportunity slavers. Whether that was good or bad? That's a whole other question.

As for Disney? They wouldn't make the movie without slaves, they'd just have a totally unrealistic image of slavery and likely have 99% of the slaves being black since their audience would be more comfortable with that image.

[DuckieTigger]

Originally Posted by DNSB

I'd have to agree the Romans were equal opportunity slavers. Whether that was good or bad? That's a whole other question.

Can you diversify slaves without getting into trouble? Not sure what you would call it, maybe reverse appropriation? By allowing black slavers and white slaves or black slavers having black slaves you are evilizing the victims. You should, because any slaver is evil independent of ethnicity.

[doubleshuffle]

A more balanced account of the affair:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...ssics-backlash

[doubleshuffle]

Originally Posted by DNSB

As for Disney? They wouldn't make the movie without slaves, they'd just have a totally unrealistic image of slavery and likely have 99% of the slaves being black since their audience would be more comfortable with that image.

Song of Rome.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by DuckieTigger

Can you diversify slaves without getting into trouble? Not sure what you would call it, maybe reverse appropriation? By allowing black slavers and white slaves or black slavers having black slaves you are evilizing the victims. You should, because any slaver is evil independent of ethnicity.

You can't because of todays tribalized political culture.

And you shouldn't because slavery is a primal element of the human experience going back to the first tribal pre-agrarian culture. Does anybody think the Neanderthal genes we all bear, to one extent or another, were acquired in a quiet romantic dinner? For that matter, latter day Neanderthals bore spiens genes from an earlier sapiens wave.

https://www.sciencenews.org/article/...neandertal-dna

Slaves have always been with us, whether called slaves, serfs, helots, indentured servants, forced laborers, or whatever. And there are nore people enslaved today than at any time in history.

https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/

There was a recent twitter storm over a fantasy YA book in a fantasy world that featured an anti-slavery theme but didn't conform to the...accepted model (?)... so the online torches and pitchforks came out.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...ce-controversy

https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-new...budding-career

So no, you can't "diversify" slavery narratives because you either conform to the "accepted" meme or are historically accurate and thus, non-diverse by the current yardstick.

One meme to rule them all.

[fjtorres]

Originally Posted by doubleshuffle

A more balanced account of the affair:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...ssics-backlash

Hard to be "balanced" on this one.

By itself, "diversifying" the covers isn't inherently offensive (except tbe FRANKENSTEIN cover, that is just hysterically awful) but in tbe context of BLACKHISTORY MONTH?
Implying that a proper way to celebrate black literary culture is to blackface other people's works?

And how balanced is it to blame everything on the PR firm, but not the publisher, or the artists who did the covers, or B&N execs who all saw nothing wrong?

A project like this isn't two guys in a garage. There's a whole load of those books in warehouses all over. Somebody had to write proposals, commission, draw, and accept the covers, get the books printed and shipped from the printer to the distribution warehouses.

And not one person saw anything wrong or spoke out until they held tbe press conference to launch tbe glorious initiative?

No. it was all just the PR agency.

Just last week tbere was another catfight over another mess in NYC publishing involving not just "insensitivity" or " cultural appropriation" but plagiarism of tbe "genteel" kind.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/20...-appropriation

There are a dozen reports all over detailing all the ways that particular mess pushed buttons all over but the one that stands out to me is the same as above:

Nobody in the entire process saw *anything wrong* in paying a million bucks for a book built around paraphrased sections of other people's books. Despite the author citing the (dated) books the episodes were lifted from.

It says more about the industry and its machinery (an Oprah book club selection!) than the book or the author.

In this environment, blackface covers were inevitable.

[issybird]

Members are reminded that comments should stay politically neutral.

[issybird]

I think what offended me most were Dorothy's red sneakers. Uh, that's sheer MGM and nothing to do with L. Frank Baum's original text, where they were highly symbolic silver slippers and part of his extended allegory about populism and the gold standard.

[Paperbackstash]

Glad to see they canceled this idea.

Some would get offended if the covers were kept with the stereotypes - red sneakers instead of high heels, an afro on Frankenstein, it's not worth the mess and was a bizarre idea in the first place.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Paperbackstash

Glad to see they canceled this idea.

Some would get offended if the covers were kept with the stereotypes - red sneakers instead of high heels, an afro on Frankenstein, it's not worth the mess and was a bizarre idea in the first place.

Frankenstein's monster was already of color (green).

[issybird]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Frankenstein's monster was already of color (green).

Mary Shelley described him as having yellow skin.