Ender's Game

Ahhh, that's the book cover I remember from my youth.  Those were simpler times.

I've always had a hard time enjoying T. S. Eliot's poetry because one of the first things I learned about him was that he was an anti-Semite.  I heard somewhere that Robert Frost beat his wife, and I have no idea if that's even true or not, but still it colors my view of his poetry.*  So suppose there was a popular American sci-fi author who, until recently, served on the board of the anti-gay hate group the National Organization for Marriage, and who lamented in 2004 that "already any child with androgynous appearance or mannerisms—effeminate boys and masculine girls—are being nurtured and guided (or taunted and abused) into 'accepting' what many of them never suspected they had—a desire to permanently move into homosexual society."

Hello, Mr. Card.

Thank you so much for once again bringing up the fascinating topic of how, exactly, the character of a great artist should inform our response to that person's artwork.  I mean, Roman Polanski raped a thirteen-year-old girl, but I still really enjoyed Chinatown.  I did not know this about Mr. Polanski when I watched Chinatown.  Similarly, when I read Ender's Game, sometime around 1993, I realized I was gay, but did not know that a few years earlier, Orson Scott Card had also written this:

"Laws against homosexual behavior should remain on the books... to be used when necessary to send a clear message that those who flagrantly violate society's regulation of sexual behavior cannot be permitted to remain as acceptable, equal citizens within that society. The goal... is not to put homosexuals in jail. The goal is to discourage people from engaging in homosexual practices in the first place, and, when they nevertheless proceed in their homosexual behavior, to encourage them to do so discreetly, so as not to shake the confidence of the community in the polity's ability to provide rules for safe, stable, dependable marriage and family relationships."

Card commented publicly on this quote in May 2013, when his homophobia was hitting the news and becoming an embarrassment for the Ender's Game film project.  His statement, which I'm paraphrasing, was along the lines of "come on, guys.  It was 1990 and I was talking to other Mormons."

The thing that upsets me so much about this is that I loved his books.  Ender's Game and its sequels had a proud place on my young sci-fi nerd bookshelf with Asimov and Heinlein and the crumbling issues (from the 1950's!) of Street and Smith's Astounding Science Fiction that I'd discovered for a dollar apiece at a used bookstore.  Ender's Game, the cover proclaimed, was the first novel ever to win both the Hugo and the Nebula awards!  I had no idea what the hell that meant, but it sounded super important.

So anyway, it was with some misgivings that I sat down in the darkness of the Elkins Cinema 8 with a box of Wonka Bottle Caps and a small Mello Yello to watch the long-awaited screen adaptation of a beloved novel from my childhood written by a man who later turned out to be a terrible bigot.  Oh, plus, I was at the movie theater alone because my boyfriend didn't want to go, for which I totally do not blame him.

Eh, it wasn't bad.

It wasn't great, but it was fine if you're into 114 minutes of kids doing military training in a vast zero-gravity jungle gym and then fighting vaguely Star Wars-y battles against giant alien ants who have somehow developed space flight.  If you're not familiar with the world of the book, lots of things about the movie will be confusing.  If you are familiar with the world of the book, you'll notice some differences.  The kids are a bit older.  In the book, the titular Ender Wiggin is six years old.  In the movie, he's supposed to be twelve, but is played convincingly and well by sixteen-year-old Asa Butterfield.  This was necessary.  No six-year-old actor could have handled that role.  Plus (spoiler alert) if you think it's bad, as a moviegoer, to watch a twelve-year-old character methodically kick another child to death in a science classroom, take a moment to imagine that he's six years old, and instead of a science classroom he's in a locker room shower, so everybody's naked.  I haven't read the book in twenty years, but I seem to recall that that scene happened in a shower.  Don't worry, the movie has another horribly uncomfortable fight scene in a shower during which we learn that in the future, towels will be so advanced that you can have a violent physical confrontation with one wrapped around your waist and it won't come off.

I guess maybe this isn't turning into a ringing endorsement of the movie.  Still, if you liked the book and aren't too bothered by the creepy politics of its author, Ender's Game is probably a better use of your moviegoing time than Last Vegas.

Oh, here's a change from the book that's sort of fraught.  Ender has a mentor, a veteran of the alien wars named Mazer Rackham.  In the movie, for some reason they decided to make Mazer Rackham a Māori guy from New Zealand.  As some Māori do, Mazer Rackham wears tā moko, a highly distinctive facial tattoo.  New Zealand, of course, has a thriving film industry and there are plenty of really talented Māori actors.  Instead of casting one of them, the film's producers seem to have felt that they needed somebody with a higher profile, and so Mazer Rackham is played by Sir Ben Kingsley doing a Kiwi accent that goes in and out a bit.  Tā moko is a cherished aspect of Māori cultural identity that has seen a resurgence in the last few decades, and if I were a filmmaker I would think very, very hard before painting one onto a non-Māori actor.  They did shoehorn in one line about how Rackham's father was a Māori and this was his way of honoring his ancestry or something, but it still reminded me uncomfortably of blackface.

Soooooo.  Ender's Game.  Yeah.  If you really liked the book, then maybe go see the movie.  Perhaps it will be uncomfortable, but Harrison Ford's colonel-boss-character is sort of avuncular and the space battles are pretty.

Wait, I nearly forgot to mention one last change from the book.  In the movie, the ant-like aliens are called the "Formics."  Ah, clever, right?  A variation on Formicidae, the scientific name of the ant family.  Of course, they had to change it, because in the book, the grotesque creatures that threaten humanity's very existence are called "Buggers."  By an odd coincidence, "bugger" is an archaic synonym for "faggot."  Keep it classy, Mr. Card.  Keep it classy.


CORRECTIONS:  According to my friend Bill on Facebook, whose memory of the books is more recent and complete than mine, the first kid Ender kills in the novel is actually on a playground, Mazer Rackham really is Māori in the books, and the word "Formics" comes from the later Ender's Shadow series, which I have not read.


*That and the fact that my eighth grade English teacher made every single person in the class memorize and recite "The Road Not Taken."  Twenty-eight people reciting the same poem.  It took days.  It was excruciating.