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Eruonen
Half-elven
Dec 8 2024, 8:09pm
Post #1 of 8
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I wish Hollywood focused on real historical girl bosses than destroy established characers
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https://www.quora.com/...sides-the-Amazonians
Some great stories from diverse cultures and time periods:
1. They were known as the Oiorpata (Oy-or-pah-tah) [Literally translates to: man/human - killers/beaters].
They were an off-shoot of the Scythes. They settled near the Terme river, and their queendom, Themyskyra, still exists today as the modern city of Samsun in Turkey.
2. There was an all-female military regime in the kingdom of Dahomey, a affluent state/governance in the Benin empire. Dahomey had a fierce caste system. And part of their defensive military/national guard was an all woman force of musketeers called “the Mino”.
3. Without one single doubt the warrior princess “Khutulun”. She makes the fictional “Zena” look like a prepubescent private school girl.
4. One of the most famous was Lozen, sister of the Chiricahua Apache leader Victorio. Another was Dahteste, a close friend of Lozen’s, who took part in many raids
5. Belawadi Mallamma and her army of 2000 warrior women.
6. Boudicca, Boudicea, also known as Boadicea /boʊdᵻˈsiːə/ and in Welsh as Buddug [ˈbɨ̞ðɨ̞ɡ])
AD 60 or 61) was a queen of the British Celtic Iceni tribe who led an uprising against the occupying forces of the Roman Empire.
7. Joan of Arc has been portrayed.
8. Shield Maidens - Examples of shield-maidens mentioned by name in the Norse sagas include Brynhildr in the Vǫlsunga saga, Hervor in Hervarar saga ok Heiðreks, the Brynhildr of the Bósa saga ok Herrauðs, and the Swedish princess Thornbjǫrg in Hrólfs saga Gautrekssonar. Princess Hed, Visna, Lagertha and Veborg are female warriors named in Gesta Danorum.
Saxo Grammaticus[6] reported that women fought on the side of the Danes at the Battle of Brávellir in the year 750:
Now out of the town of Sle, under the captains Hetha (Heid) and Wisna, with Hakon Cut-cheek came Tummi the Sailmaker. On these captains, who had the bodies of women, nature bestowed the souls of men. Webiorg was also inspired with the same spirit, and was attended by Bo (Bui) Bramason and Brat the Jute, thirsting for war.
Some of these examples have been the object of Hollywood however, too often the stories are inaccurate. But, at least they attempt to tell stories based on real characters without drastically changing well loved characters....i.e. Snow White for example.
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DGHCaretaker
Rohan
Dec 8 2024, 9:09pm
Post #2 of 8
(675 views)
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I wish Hollywood focused on real historical girl bosses than destroy established characters
Or create all new characters. Imagine that.
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Felagund
Rohan
Dec 8 2024, 9:46pm
Post #3 of 8
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I haven't seen an adaptation of Snow White since the Disney classic, although I'm aware that there's a new one coming out (or maybe it's out already?).
I'm also aware that the Brothers Grimm collected up the original story of Snow White, Sneewittchen, in the early 19th century and presumably this process could also be called adaptation, to one degree or another. The Grimms revised their own work decades later, which strikes me as defo getting into adaptation territory. I have no idea which version Walt Disney used, in his adaptation to create what for many people is the 'loved' version.
The list you cite features very impressive historical women, who it'd be great to see adapted on the big screen. There are lots of others, including powerful women who didn't have to be warlords and warriors to shape their times, their countries or the world around them. I'm thinking Olympias (Molossian princess and mother of Alexander the Great), Zenobia (ruler of the Palmyrene Empire) and the royal women of the Roman imperial Severan dynasty (Julia Domna and Julia Maesa).
Now that I'm thinking about it, there have been interesting treatments over the years on screen of Elizabeth I and Mary Queen of Scots, as well as Catherine the Great.
further off topic
I know adaptation that departs from source material isn't necessarily your cup of tea, however I genuinely can't recommend enough Margaret Atwood's The Penelopiad and Madeline Miller's Circe. These take well-known figures from Homeric Greek myth and flip the perspective to that of the two eponymous heroines. I think one of the reasons both novels appealed to me is that the Ancient Greeks were certainly capable of flipping perspective from a solely male one to at least include a female one, and these authors are going with that grain. This was the case for at least some ancient tragedians (Euripides) as well as comics (Aristophanes). I was a Classicist for a decade or so, and I can attest that this isn't even particularly controversial as an observation and certainly predates our era of reflex action culture wars.
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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Annael
Immortal
Dec 9 2024, 1:10am
Post #4 of 8
(658 views)
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If I may paraphrase from my own dissertation:
Elizabeth Wanning Harries, Professor of English and Comparative Literature at Smith College, argues in Twice Upon a Time: Women Writers and the History of the Fairy Tale, that “all the stories we now call fairy tales have been written and rewritten, printed and reprinted over centuries.” We have no way of knowing what the original oral stories were, who told them first, or even if they ever existed. Harries contends that most of the stories we think of as fairy or folk tales were changed if not entirely invented by those who wrote them down, who were predominantly men. Claims by the Grimm brothers that they collected stories directly from old wives in villages have been cast into doubt by folklorist Jack Zipes. It is obvious from comparison with other, older versions of the same stories collected by others that the Grimms edited their stories to fit the sensibilities and attitudes of their particular time and culture.
Harries argues that today’s most beloved folk and fairy tales “were created primarily by highly educated and literate people,” including Wilhelm's wife Dorothea. The literary genre of fairy tales was essentially invented in France around the year 1690, and at least two-thirds of such tales were written by upper-class women, known in French society as conteuses. The conteuses never pretended that they did not invent the stories. But male writers like Charles Perrault and the Grimms deliberately encouraged the idea that they had collected their stories from village women storytellers such as Mere Loye (Mother Goose). To maintain this fiction, Perrault adopted a simple style for his stories that contrasted with the sophisticated and complicated style of the conteuses. Male literary critics of the time praised Perrault’s stories for being “authentic” in an attempt to “carefully construct literary standards that exclude women’s tales.” It worked. The stories “collected” by the Grimm Brothers and Perrault are still considered sources of authentic fairy tales, while those written by conteuses such as Marie-Catherine d’Aulnoy, Catherine Bernard, Henriette-Julie de Castelnau, and even Perrault’s niece Marie-Jeanne Lhéritier are largely unknown.
I am a dreamer of words, of written words.
-- Gaston Bachelard
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NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
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Meneldor
Valinor
Dec 9 2024, 1:11am
Post #5 of 8
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I was a US Air Force C-130 flight engineer. Between '03 and '08 I logged over a thousand hours of combat flight time, mostly over Iraq, Kuwait, occasionally Afghanistan, Somalia, and other fun places near the Persian Gulf. Probably half those missions, there was at least one woman on the crew: pilots, copilots, navigators, loadmasters, occasionally a mission commander. If I had to come out of retirement and fly another mission, I would happily fly again with any of those women. And I can't say that for all the men I flew with.
They that go down to the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep. -Psalm 107
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Eruonen
Half-elven
Dec 9 2024, 4:49am
Post #6 of 8
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Adaptations will always include changes - unavoidable with different mediums.
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I just think turning a well known literary character into something completely different for a film adaptation is fraught with disaster.
For example, if there was an adaptation of The Life of Queen Elizabeth I and features her as leading her navy at sea with Sir Francis Drake as a swashbuckling Queen with a cutlas strapped on her hip and a knife held in her teeth as she climbs up an enemy ship mast, cuts down the Spanish flag and hoists the Royal Standard in victory....the viewer who is familiar with her life may be disappointed.
Or, she is with Drake in the Caribbean and learns of the impending Spanish Armada. She leaps into the sea and swims back to England to rally her people. She encounters a sea turtle who tows her across the ocean and she emerges from the English Channel beneath the white cliffs of Dover and leads the English army against the Spanish who landed near Cornwall and routed them.
This may make for an entertaining film but is it an acceptable historical adaptation of the Life of Queen Elizabeth I?
Anyway, there was a bad adaptation of Cleopatra in the mini series Queen Cleopatra. Similar criticism for The Woman King.
"Many historians have criticized the movie for not showing an accurate depiction of the Kingdom of Dahomey and King Ghezo in relation to the slave trade. In reality, he was actually a notorious slave trader that would utilize the Agojie during raids to capture and sell enemies, and continued the practice for the most part until his death in the mid 1800’s.
Director
Gina Prince-Bythewood – never claimed it to be a fully accurate depiction, rather relying on the distortion of some history in order to provide adequate entertainment.
“Most of the story is fictionalized. It has to be,” Viola Davis said."
https://granitebaytoday.org/...cas-amazon-warriors/
I have not seen the film but is seems like the lead female warrior General Nanisca was recognizable as a character similar to the historical warriors.
"Is The Woman King based on a true story?
In short, yes, but with extensive dramatic license. Though the broad strokes of the film are historically accurate, the majority of its characters are fictional, including Davis’ Nanisca and Thuso Mbedu’s Nawi, a young warrior-in-training. (Nanisca and Nawi share names with documented members of the Agojie but are not exact mirrors of these women.)"
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/...e-amazons-180980750/
So, it all comes down to how well the book was adapted...some are good and some are bad (especially if both factually wrong and lacking entertainment). Being entertaining can save an adaptation from box office failure.
(This post was edited by Eruonen on Dec 9 2024, 4:50am)
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Felagund
Rohan
Dec 9 2024, 8:57am
Post #7 of 8
(602 views)
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This is an awesome setting out of the nuances involved in transmission and adaptation - thank you for posting!
I suspect what you set out may have some resonance with regard to the works of other 19th century 'collectors' of folklore, like Krisjanis Barons and Elias Lönnrot. It was that kind of century!
Welcome to the Mordorfone network, where we put the 'hai' back into Uruk
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Annael
Immortal
Dec 9 2024, 3:03pm
Post #8 of 8
(574 views)
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the recent "Persuasion" with Dakota Johnson comes to mind
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in which the central character--one of my personal favorites--was changed out of all recognttion. I couldn't watch past the first five minutes. Both the Syfy and Studio Ghibli versions of "A Wizard of Earthsea" likewise. They used the same names but otherwise went totally off-book.
I'm happy to see all these "adaptations" were roundly panned by critics and fans of the books. But people who hadn't read the books liked them, which is why such stuff keeps getting made, apparently.
I don't mind adaptations that take a story and reimagine it in another time and place. Seen some wonderful Shakespeare adaptations, like "A Midsummer Night's Dream" set in the 1970s, or "Macbeth" set in feudal Japan. "The LIzzie Bennet Diaries" reimagined Pride and Prejudice with a cast of millennials working in digital media. But the characters and plot were true to the originals. Peter Jackson's big flaw, imho, was his overwhelming need to ramp up tension and create a character arc for every single character, even those who remain unwaveringly themselves in all situations in the book (especially Aragorn, Faramir, and Sam). It backfired for me; I thought it detracted from the stories of those who did change over time, and added nothing, plus I kept growling "He would never say that! He wouldn't act like that!" at the screen.
Overall, I agree with the sentiment that if you want to change the characters to fit modern sensibilities, don't pretend you are retelling the same story. Rename everything, say "inspired by" or call it your homage to the original if you must.
Now I'm remembering the classic Pauline Kael review of "The Scarlet Letter" with Demi Moore, which she said "was 'freely adapted' from the book in the sense that methane is 'freely adapted' from cows."
I am a dreamer of words, of written words.
-- Gaston Bachelard
* * * * * * * * * *
NARF and member of Deplorable Cultus since 1967
(This post was edited by Annael on Dec 9 2024, 3:12pm)
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