I almost began writing this post when the trailer for The Wheel of Time came out. I had begun to craft my litany of my concerns about this not-yet-out-show but, well, I ended up doing other things instead. In a way, I’m glad I did. The opening paragraph was going to have to be an apology of sorts for reviewing a show based solely on the trailer. Now I can dedicate my opening paragraph to proudly crowing that I didn’t do that.
A few nights ago, I sat down to watch the first episode of the series. There’s a very good chance that, for me, this will also be my last. What went wrong? In part, that depends on where you are coming from. In fact, unless you’ve actually read the books, or at least some of them, the rest of this post is going to read as an angry rant without the benefit of cohesiveness or purpose. The books are popular enough that hopefully I’ll make sense to some of you.
I started reading this series back in 2014. I believe I saw an old high school friend raving about the books on social media and decided I could give it a try. I got into the series, but only slowly. My very first impression came from the use of the D&D -inspired (or so I think) inclusion of the walking order of any “party” as an important part of a book. I started to worry that it was all going to be some combination of derivative and silly. This persisted even as I finished that first one, The Eye of the World. Although the book had its high points, it also had its problems. Despite my skepticism, I persevered.
My opinion after several books was still not that great. It seemed to me that, in each of the works, the first 80%-or-so of the book crawled along at a snail’s pace. Then, in a frenzy of confusing activity, a major confrontation brought an end to the book (with each new release following roughly the same formula). These “boss battles” described the action (magic and other supernatural happenings) in a way that was difficult for me to follow.
A few more books and I started to understand all the stuff about “flows” and “weaving” and the like. The story also grew on me and I looked forward to more of that. By the last four or five books in the series, I found myself very eager to move forward. In fact, by the end I’d gladly acknowledge this as one of the classic works of fantasy fiction.
What was it about the story which enthralled me so? Influenced, as I am*, by an analysis I read regarding A Wizard of Earthsea, I see The Wheel of Time as fundamentally a coming-of-age story. In fact, it seems that much of that slow 80% consists of young men agonizing about the mysteries of young women and then young women finding themselves frustrated by the inscrutability of young men. As I reached the end of the series, those books I was really into, I recall seeing Amazon reviews complaining about just that. Why is so much text devoted to these relationships? Honestly, I think that is the key to the whole series. Besides – and I’m not too old to remember this – this is what a young mind spends 80% of its time on; obsessing about boys and girls and the possibilities for romance.
In many ways, there was very little chance that any screen adaptation could get this all right. Your miss is going to be even bigger, though, if you deliberately fail on some key points.
Sexist
Let’s start with the feminism. Jordan starts off his series with a deliberate role reversal. Woman are the leaders, the rulers; the fundamental backbone of society. Men, on the other hand, are flighty and non-serious. They cannot be trusted with important matters (although sometimes women have to let them think they are in charge). It takes a while, but we finally come to realize two critical points. There is a basis for this explicit misandry which stems from the legendary (but also true) “breaking of the world,” a horrific, civilization-destroying cataclysm that was specifically caused by men and a male-only form of magic-induced madness. Secondly, we realize that in the world that he describes, the fundamental character of people as individuals and as men or women, is pretty much exactly as it is and has always been. This “men are useless” sentiment describes the exact same character, both in men and women, that people are describing when they say the opposite. The “societal constructs” are different but the reality remains the same.
Immediately, the Amazon series takes this in a different direction. Jordan’s anti-dude tirades are kind of playful. By the time we actually meet Jordan’s first “Reds,” many of whom are true man-haters, we’ve come to understand the nuance of his sexual worldview. In other words, just because everyone accepts that men are worthless doesn’t mean they are. In the show, the Reds show up pre-opening-sequence pushing their version of sexism. The episode then quickly shows us that, while it looks like our own medieval world, it is not – the (fictional) truth is more in line with what the Reds say it is. Women are, indeed, fierce warriors and mighty blacksmiths. Whereas a man may struggle to bring down a monster even with the aid of an ancient, near-magical sword, the gals can whup ‘um with a pocket knife.
I’m sure I’m reading a bit too much into it but I’m also sure it’s no accident that I see what I think I see.
Racist
After sexism, let’s go on to racism. Jordan’s world includes ethnicity almost as a character in the story. The vast majority of the tale takes place on a single, massive continent. Traveling between one nation and another can take weeks if not months and the cultural differences between distant nations are vast. The characters of the stories may have heard that there is a distant land where people actually do “X,” but they don’t really believe it. In other words, foreign cultures can be so foreign as to be dismissed as fairy tale.
To further exacerbate the situation, civilization-wide upheaval (not that “breaking of the world,” mind you, but a violent history subsequent) have left sparse populations living in the remnants of a once-mighty empire. Distances are not only vast but the cities and nations are separated by expanses of dangerous wilderness, even when spanned by the roads of the ancient empire. Logic and SCIENCE!TM dictate that after a few generations of this geographic isolation, not only would cultures start to drift apart but ethnicity would as well. Small, isolated communities (like Edmond’s Field) would start to look more and more homogeneous and less like the world outside. To put in in another, and not so politically correct way, you could easily spot a foreigner, an outsider, based solely on his looks.
This is another important plot point. Rand, with his fair skin and red hair, passes fairly well for a native of his Edmond’s Field. Once you come to understand his true ethnicity, however, that mistake is entirely obvious (his forefathers were from a distant land of pale skin and red hair). Of course, if race and ethnicity are never to be acknowledged, you’ve got to throw all of this out the window.
The Edmond’s Field of Amazon’s series looks to be as diverse and cosmopolitan as central London. The tavern is run by an Indian (that’s dots, not feathers**) family who maintain their traditional, South Asian style of dress. Skin tone among the villagers ranges palest of lights to deepest of darks. I’m pretty sure I saw a white couple who birthed a veritable rainbow of ethnicity, as represented among their many young children.
There is a time and a place for everything. I wouldn’t mind, and might even expect, a community theater to challenge me with their casting choices. Can that great Dane Hamlet be played by a woman of color? Why not! Might the 9th James Bond actor be West Indian to shake up our complacency after nigh-on-70 years? I can see that. The Expanse‘s polyamorous, gender-fluid marriages? I hardly gave them a second thought (even as I note that these were taken, fairly faithfully, from the books). Shaking up an audience with unexpected race and gender casting choices for serious historical dramas won’t work so well. To me, when it comes to these classical, high fantasy stories, it also can’t work. I spent the entire episode subconsciously puzzling who this panoply of humankind was supposed to be, how they were related to each other, and how they all ended up together in a tiny village in the mountains.
Now, SCIENTIFICALLY, there is a way that nuclear families wind up with diversity well beyond that of their parents. While it has long been a feature of societies both historical and fictional, it tends to be something that one doesn’t talk about, much less glorify. These days, of course, one wouldn’t dare criticize the “non-traditional” mores, either. Is that what the show’s going for? Is it wrong to even think about it that way?
Ageist
Which brings me back to those love-struck teenagers.
The nation where our young heroes dwell is, in the books, a very prudish one. The inhabitants are pious without being overtly religious. A looser set of morals seems to dwell elsewhere on the continent but, if the experience of the Aes Sedai*** is an indication, a strict sense of morality and propriety is the rule rather than the exception. I found this odd – this devoutness without a church, without the clergy. After years of confusion, I finally decided that Jordan probably made the best choice. Include too much conventional religion, and your books are limited to the fundamentalist Christian market. Stray too far from fundamentalist Christian ideas and you lose that same market, who will now accuse you of paganism. From a marketing standpoint, The Wheel of Time may have done just what was needed.
Similarly, from a story standpoint, Jordan captured the wonder with which the young look upon the world. If Wheel is indeed an example of bildungsroman, then it is this psychological journey that makes the story. It is not the magic or combat or even the nature of good and evil. It is a story about finding your place in the world as you grow from child into an adult. And if this is so, if this is truly the backbone of this story, one tosses this all out at one’s peril!
Nonetheless, the Amazon production had a few good reasons to do just that. Like Game of Thrones before it, shifting all the actor’s ages up solves more than a few problems. For just one example, the smokin’ love scene between 25-year-old Emilia Clark and 30-something, man-grown Jason Momoa would have been just pervy, if not downright illegal, had Daenerys been accurately played by a 13-year-old actress. Furthermore, employing teenagers to work on a film production, in any capacity, must run the gauntlet of all manner of child labor laws. Employing 30-year-olds to play teenagers, à la 90210, well, that too can run a little to the pervy. How much easier is it just to rewrite the characters to be, at a minimum, in their early 20s?
Several reviewers assert that this age-shifting vastly improves the story. Like those naysayers regarding the tail end of the written series, one wonders if an adult audience really wants to watch the troubles of, essentially, children. Instead of teens spending chapter-after-chapter wondering whether the girl next door “really, actually likes me,” let’s give them some grown up problems to chew on. Start Perrin off right away as one-half of an interracial couple. Let Rand and Egwene express their doomed love by knockin’ boots before they have to go their, emotionally at least, separate ways. And as for Mat being known for kissin’ the girls and makin’ them cry (both, literally, as far as I understood)… Wait! scratch that altogether. Mat needs a #metoo rewrite to make him acceptable.
Listen, maybe it will work and maybe it won’t. Maybe the writers had an idea for a better story, complete with wife-murderers and HBO-style orgies. Do I care whether it is better? It says on the box cover (yeah, I know) that this is The Wheel of Time. Am I so wrong to want to see The Wheel of Time?
Technologist
Which brings me to my last complaint. The show started with these freaky-looking, SCIENTIFICALLY impossible geological features beautifully rendered by high-end graphics processors to create an otherworldly-world in which the story could take place. It ended with a symphony of ice and fire; a computer-enhanced high-fantasy battle to fully demonstrate the power of one Aes Sedai.
Once again, the fact that the production would do this isn’t so outrageous. It’s not uncommon to blow your special effects, um, wad-of-cash in the pilot to build up an initial audience. Forget that even to get this far you are already, now, half-way through. Jazzing up (what in the book was) an off-screen encounter into a 15-minute visual spectacular in a way that would seem to rival that overly-confusing (for me) ending might win some eyeballs. The effects, however, being made-for-streaming-TV budget level, just look kind of chintzy. It’s probably inevitable but it is extra-unfortunate given the other failures of this conversion.
Deplorable
After I watched, I waded into the festering swamp that is the comments section for this series on the Amazon website. I wanted to see if my thoughts were shared by others or if, just maybe, I really had rendered my verdict based on that trailer. Was my mind refusing to budge, no matter what the show offered? As always, reading the comments was an interesting experience.
Nearly every review on Amazon is either five stars or one star with little in between; neither extreme seems particularly warranted for this show. The one-stars are mostly upset with woke politics ruining what, for many, was their favorite fantasy book series. The five-stars are generally saying that any show should draw inspiration from the underlying book, not slavishly reproduce it. They also say that it’s wrong to call the show “woke” and, well, even if it is, that’s progress for ye.
Amazon has expressed disappointment in the performance of the early episodes. In contrast to the five-star-user reviews (“No the show doesn’t follow the book but it is still GREAT!”), even the New York Times review, while mostly praising the concept, summarizes that the show lacks heart. It’s probably attempting to read too much into it, but the NYT piece almost reads as a review that struggles to remain positive while finding too little to be positive about (see The Times‘ high praise for the CGI, for example). Compare and contrast to one of the one-star commenters who said, if the show were “Generic Fantasy Series #112,” it would have gotten a better review from her. It’s the fact that this effort intends to bring the book to the screen that generates much of the disappointment.
I’m not so sure I’d want to watch Generic Fantasy Series #112, either. Would another show about magic, and swords, and not-really-orcs be able to overcome its bad CGI and heavy-handed moralizing? Would funding ever have materialized without the heron mark of The Wheel of Time on it? I don’t see it.
It would appear Amazon is going to be another demonstration of the phrase “get woke, go broke,” with the caveat that I don’t understand**** how self-developed, exclusive content actually makes money for a streaming service. At least one article has despaired that this stuff will hurt the prospects for development of the series beyond Season 2 – a multitude of seasons seemingly a necessity for 14 book series that took nearly 30 years to finish. Not mentioned is how this impacts the prospects for other independently-created, high-quality content. Is Netflix now second-guessing some of their projects because Amazon flopped?
My own worry is that I’m getting a sneak peek at the future of entertainment. Does any project, to get funded, need to check off all the boxes? Racially and gender-identity-ly diverse cast? Check! Flawless and fierce female lead? Gotcha! A little climate gloom and doom for good measure? Check and mate! Maybe *my* kind of entertainment is a thing of the past – as blackface or cowboys and Indians came and went for my parents’ generation. Maybe we really all will be better off if we stopped watching entertainment that perpetuates the inequities of Western Civilization. Maybe I should hide my copy of The Wolf of Wall Street in a Ghostbusters 2016 DVD case, to be only taken out when I’m alone and unobserved?
Because surely there were at least some at Amazon that knew that this was not the Wheel of Time that Wheel of Time fanatics wanted to see? Maybe they all knew it. Maybe they decided that THIS version of the story would be better for us and better for society as a whole. Because isn’t it time to stop acting like we’re living back in the bad-old-days of 1990 and get with the woke program?
Ah well. “The wheel weaves as the wheel wills.” (related)
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*If you saw that earlier post, I see Jordan’s Wheel of Time as drawing heavily from LeGuin’s “world.” I was speaking about the elements of magic and the supernatural, as well as the feminist slant, but one may see repeated also the story of the teenager who must confront the ultimate evil and save the world. I could probably write several paragraphs of how alike Ged and Rand are.
**Yeah, that really is racist. It’s a line from The Wolf of Wall Street about the inventor of the Quaalude. Blame Jordan Belfort, Martin Scorsese, and (scriptwriter) Terence Winter. I’m a victim here of over-saturation by mass media. Oh, and stereotyping Indians into the hospitality trade? That really is racist, isn’t it?
***I only just learned that aes sídhe is Irish and means “people of the (burial) mounds.” It describes a supernatural race that may be a form of fallen angel, a minor deity, a being from beyond the graves, or simply the “old ones,” the inhabitants of Ireland before the coming of the Celts.
****Oh, I understand that better content attracts better subscribers. What I don’t understand is how you actually allocate views to a revenue stream, especially if those viewers are NOT new subscribers. In other words, if The Wheel of Time (which is already a go for Season 2) is unimpressive in its viewing numbers, how does that lose Amazon money? They’ve already spent their development coin and the return is based on the full pantheon of Amazon-exclusive content. As an Amazon Prime customer, I will like some Amazon-exclusive content and some of it I won’t. How does the latter hurt their business?