strange and random happenstance: Representation

Does everyone else remember in 2014 when Anthony Doerr's All the Light We Cannot See was released and it was like everywhere? It won the Pulitzer, it won the Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence, it was the choice for book clubs everywhere, even my Mom's! It was THE BOOK of the moment. And, because of the society we live in which doesn't see a book as an end product, everyone was talking about the adaptation to come as a future darling of the Oscars. The buzz was literally up there with Killers of the Flower Moon and The Devil in the White City, and I just realized that those were both optioned by Martin Scorsese. And then we finally got an adaptation of All the Light We Cannot See, with multiple Oscars nominees no less, and like nobody talked about it. At all. James Newton Howard did the freakin' music and we're just not going to talk about it!?! I just don't understand this. It somehow fell through the cracks between Killers of the Flower Moon and The Devil in the White City, it didn't go to the Oscars and it didn't get bogged down in developmental hell. It came and it was forgotten and I am here to say, it's not that bad. Personally, I really don't like reading or watching anything to do with WWII, or Mark Ruffalo for that matter, but I'm a sucker for Hugh Laurie. In other words, I am in no way the target audience for this and yet I found it enjoyable. You could see what it wanted to be and how it fell just short. Like not everyone was the first choice. Which can really be seen with the character of Standartenführer Reinhold von Rumpel played by Lars Eidinger. This role was written for Rory Kinnear. How do I know this? Just watch the show, it's glaringly obvious. In fact I have a whole scenario written in my head where they approached Rory and he was like, naw, already did that. And then they'd be all, when the hell did you do this? To which he'd say, Penny Dreadful: City of Angels... And then it would get very awkward because that show was so so bad and I don't even really want to admit I watched it myself and these imaginary suits obviously had never even heard of it. So, that's when they hired Lars Eidinger and said, can you give us your best Rory Kinnear? I mean, even his weirdly long forelock was so like Rory's in the original Penny Dreadful I just can't not see this... But I have to say that one thing that really impressed me about this production, aside from the Mark Ruffalo stunt casting, is that the Germans were played by Germans, Marie-Laure LeBlanc, a blind girl, is shockingly played by an actress with low vision. Representation matters and Aria Mia Loberti made the character and the show feel authentic. You weren't thinking, wow, I really believe this character is blind, good for this totally sighted actress for pulling it off. You we thinking Aria Mia Loberti IS Marie-Laure. As others have said, this was her first ever acting job, and she brings something special, something genuine to the role. As more productions think about inclusion I'm sure she will get plenty of roles. I mean, she's already popped up on The Spiderwick Chronicles.

Posted by Miss Eliza at 12:00 AM 0 comments

Labels: All the Light We Cannot See, And the Emmy Goes To, Aria Mia Loberti, Blindness, Hugh Laurie, James Newton Howard, Marie-Laure LeBlanc, Mark Ruffalo, Oscars, Penny Dreadful, Representation, Rory Kinnear, WWII

Rules For Vanishing by Kate Alice Marshall
Published by: Viking Books for Young Readers
Publication Date: September 24th, 2019
Format: Kindle, 416 Pages
Rating: ★★
To Buy (different edition than one reviewed)

In the town of Briar Glenn the kids play a game. The game is innocent enough. You hold someone's hand, close your eyes, and take thirteen steps. Then a road will appear in the woods and you'll see the ghost of Lucy Gallows. Everyone thought it was just an urban legend. Everyone except Sara's sister Becca. A year ago Becca snuck out to play the game and disappeared. Since then Sara has become withdrawn and preoccupied with the origins of Lucy Gallows. She has pushed away all their mutual friends and obsesses about finding Becca. A few days before the anniversary of Becca's disappearance everyone gets an anonymous text to find a partner, find a key, find the road. In other words, to play the game. The REAL game. This could be what reunites the group. A chance to find Becca. Anthony has been Sara's best friend longer than she can remember and he's secretly in love with Becca, so he agrees to help Sara pull this off despite them barely talking for a year. Then there's Trina and her younger brother. Nick and his girlfriend. Anthony's douchebag best friend. And Sara's crush, Mel. Though Mel has apparently brought not just one but two dates along with her! After one of Mel's dates takes offense to the menage, the group is ready to take the first step. The only problem is, they're an uneven number. The game states you HAVE to have a partner. At this point Sara doesn't care, she's willing to bend or break this rule to find Becca and get on that road and once that road appears, things get real. As real as the stones beneath their feet. From Becca's notes they have to pass through seven gates to get to the end of the road and they are returned home, hopefully finding Becca along the way. The first gate though takes a toll. They lose two people. Because they broke the rules. Which means they can not break any more. But that gets harder and harder as the tasks required of each gate get more complex and dangerous. The road might be asking too much, but if they save Becca and Lucy too, is the price worth it? Only those who love Becca most could say that for sure...

Rules For Vanishing is a YA version of Annihilation. There's even a scene in a lighthouse for Pete's sake. That is the crux of my problem with this book, it's too much other things and never it's own thing. The whole time I was reading it I kept thinking, this reminds me of something but I just can't place it. Probably because the author draws from so many sources you'll see what you connect to most. Here's a bit of Dungeons and Dragons, here's a bit of The Goonies, here's a bit of The Neverending Story, here's a bit of Labyrinth, here's a bit of some other eighties movie that didn't let you sleep for months. On a side note, what was it about "children's" movies in the eighties that they seemed to be purposefully designed to traumatize us? If the story had leaned into the urban legend part of the setup and veered away from the very Lovecraftian named city of Ys as the road's destination, maybe this would have worked for me. And yes, I know it's actually a legend from Brittany, hence all those French books in the aforementioned lighthouse, but Dahut was doing it with Cthulhu wasn't she? Also, the faux-documentary style likened to The Blair Witch Project in the book's blurb... well, I've seen it done better. I like that they try to incorporate many forms of media from recordings to written transcripts to cellphone footage, it's just, as I said, I've seen it done better. There's something a little clunky about how it's handled here. It's like Kate Alice Marshall is trying too hard to keep certain things hidden and not show her hand that the writing suffers. The story should be first, the gimmicks should be second. But what I did like was the representation in this book. In the gang of teenagers that go into the woods we have at least two LGBTQ characters, two different minorities, and two different disabilities. I felt like that this not only gave anyone reading the book someone to identify with, but it also felt more real. My friends are diverse and it's rare that we get to see this in literature. So while there where things I didn't like, tropes that were overdone, at the same time I want to point at the book and tell others that THIS is what needs to be seen more often! THIS is true representation!