A Wizard of Earthsea

Le Guinn expresses her views on the film and miniseries many times. Although there were many changes, in particular, the way the characters were changed from print to film made a huge difference to the meaning and atmosphere of her fantasy land that she was trying to convey. In particular, Ged's character, who is meant to be a red-brown, is white. This ruins what she was attempting to do in her novel, to avoid the typical white-hero archetype of fantasy. "I didn't see why everybody in science fiction had to be a honky named Bob or Joe or Bill. I didn't see why everybody in heroic fantasy had to be white" (Ursula K. Le Guinn, 2004) 

In relation to relatability, perhaps an audience can relate better to white characters, although Le Guinn points out that most of the world is not white. She expresses that white people are now a minority. This idea is understandable from when she mentions "Bob or Joe or Bill." These are "average" names, therefore, people can identify with 'just your average Joe'. She explains that (although the book is over 30 years old, so now-a-days the views could be different for people) she was not sure if people would be able to relate to the character Ged right away because of his skin colour, so she wanted to allow the reader to get 'into his skin' before they discover his actual skin colour. She used more discrete descriptions to explain him until later in the novel. " I figured some white kids... might not identify straight off with a brown kid, so I kind of eased the information about skin color in by degrees" (Ursula K. Le Guinn, 2004) 

This idea leads me to believe that if the views are still the same as 30 years ago, the film would be unable to describe Ged's skin colour and the audience would see it straight away. Perhaps they thought the same way Le Guinn did, and took this into consideration when casting the character. The audience would see him right away and they needed the character to be as it was in the book: Relatable. They needed the audience in his skin as much as Le Guinn needed the same result. Although this may not be applicable any more. Today people are (supposedly) more open minded about race than they were in the 60s and 70s, so it should have been more simple for the audience to see the characters, although not 'white', as something they could relate to.

"I have heard... from readers of color who told me that the Earthsea books were the only books in the genre that they felt included in" (Ursula K. Le Guinn, 2004)


Le Guinn, Ursula K. (2004). Retrieved from: http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2004/12/a_whitewashed_earthsea.html on 10/20/2012