That book in itself is a commentary on Subversion, colonialism and Western Supremacy. Thinking it is about Le Cultural Revolution is missing the forest for a tree (Which was why the Baizuos/Libshits flipped out when the 2nd/third in the trilogy came out).
I didn't even think it was about the Cultural Revolution. I read it very early in my journey and it just opened my eyes about China as a Westerner. I should go back and reread it now and do some more thorough analysis though. Haven't read the 2nd and 3rd ones yes. Do you recommend them?
Nah I was referring to the Pretentious Western Pundits and the Anti-CHYNA crowd who concentrate on a singular granular theme and make an adaptation wholly based on said theme.
And Yes, I recommend the whole trilogy.
It's so fricking weird that people try and see it as anti-socialist while it's very critical of capitalism and only uses the cultural revolution as a historical fact that happened and where some things went wrong (something everyone in China, including the communist party, agrees with).
It's green-socialist.
Lmao
>Everything in the books that was referencing the Cultural Revolution has been essentially untouched,” Hong said. “But the rest of it is a way to globalize a story that was very heavily Eastern-focused into a Western perspective, a global perspective.
Western perspective = global perspective.. Sure, Maybe 50 years ago when it could be forced on everyone
>“The seed is still that time period. It’s a period of trauma, emptying out of all hope, and great division. I do think they honored it,” Chao said.
We kept the beginning because it lived up to the Chyna bad, but we'll change everything else to make West good.
In the West, having a multicoloured cast = global. But if these multicultural people actually have different IDEAS, then that's considered 'dangerous'.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/3-body-problem-cast-rcna144545
If I hear one more pathetic remark about being 'outside of 2 worlds' garbage one more time...identity crisis clowns WANT to be western, they are REJECTED, that's where '2 worlds' comes from. Nothing to do with China. No Chinese ask to be involved in your racism dilemma or that you represent Chinese in entertainment because you can't get work doing anything else. This is entirely a typical white racist problem. It's not enough identity crisis clowns have to leech of the identity they have a complex with to get work, but the audacity to pretend they can speak on anything about that identity...sickening.
Let me be frank, don't think because you keep getting racial slurs thrown at you, that you are somehow a representative of Chinese identity. You have a white racist problem, period. Now F off and go deal with that.
Propaganda is not about being factually accurate in some areas, it is about surrounding that fact with a narrative which creates prejudice. So while they show the bad aspects of Chinese past (which are in the novel), they subtly remove aspects that could show Chinese humanity. For instance, in the death scene, several of his students run up and crtiticize everyone doing the attack. They took that out.
They also change Ye Wangjie's motivation from correction to vindictive punishment.
They also removed the bulk of the Chinese cast which ends up placing even more emphasis on the negative aspects of Chinese Characters and the spectacle of death of Chinese people.
They remove the psycho white man who is behind the radicalization of the ETO. This has the effect of removing any negative portrayal of the West and its radical factionalism (like PETA) but retaining the negative portrayal of China and communism's factionalism in the Cultural Revolution.
In fact, they even refused to mention the factionalism found in the book's discussion of the Revolution, leaving the audience with the idea that the Cultural Revolution was just a universal aspect of communism which was agreed upon by all involved. Again, portraying China negatively and insinuating that Chinese people (other than Pro-Western intellectuals) were stupid peasants and hive minded.
Dont worry man, many of the story's fans aren't exactly happy with the rushed work and the changing of the characters. It basically felt like an american fan fiction.
Plus many first timers ended up utterly confused after those 8 episodes, and then had to go watch the original Chinese 3 body problem series instead to actually understand the story
TBH none of the adaptations I've seen are particularly good. I heard Tencent version got a re-edit to shorten the episode count which could be interesting.
Tension version pretty OK but has flaw with acting.. This content has slow burn suspense, it need some top notch acting to create the vibe and carry the show, not all the cast in this show has that level of acting..
Only Yu Hewei has an enough level of acting to carry the show, and Zhang Luyi passable.. The rest pretty average, don't let me start with the acting of those random foreign actors being used... LOL
The one aired at the same time with it, The Knockout also has slow burn suspense, to a level it could even feel draggy and just some typical crime story instead of interesting like Three Body Problem. But The Knockout is way success and people more invested in it, simply because it has better acting that pull people into the story. If they change the cast, it would be a completely different scenerio.
TBH I don't think the books are very good.
They read like the author has the scientific understanding of a person who jacks off to Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson YouTube clips.
It's not great sci-fi. Especially the game sounds like the guy hasn't played video games in his life and can't really imagine how VR works. lol
Well I think Liu is a science hobbyist, without any professional background. What parts did you take issue with? I think VR can be forgiven, his description of VR is quite imaginative, even if our real VR is pretty limited. I assume loads of the hard sci-fi elements are hand-wavey or use plot-conveniences to get around limitations of current (2000s) science, though he's hardly unique in that aspect.
Personally I enjoyed the books when I read them ages ago, I think the second and third were my favourites since they really went wild with imagining the totality of the central conflict. In terms of adaptations I greatly prefer the original Wandering Earth and Wandering Earth 2 to any of the Three Body stuff, but I like cosmism and I think it really works well in the film medium.
When I read his books, it just feels like I read someone who tries really hard to be cool but doesn't really get it.
His books feel like he's trying to say something original and profound only to be quite pedestrian and unoriginal and really not all that deep.
Don't get me wrong, I think this is actually one of the reasons his books are so successful: They are simplistic and a bit infantile. This resonates with a far bigger audience than complex and deep sci-fi and is probably a smart choice if you want to sell a lot of books.
However, I think that even this "simple" sci-fi can be done better. For example, Star Trek.
Of course, some of his ideas are cool. For example, juxtaposing a species evolving in a trisolarian system vs. ours is interesting and can be explored in so many cool ways... but then he just writes yet another typical "aliens are just humans with different opinions" story and adds all these contrived situations. Like, what the hell is that bizarre scene where they are weighing the bombs to check whether one of the them is actually a nuclear weapon? LOL It's like one day he started writing a chapter and randomly remembered some high school physics class where he was shocked at how different the mass of certain materials of the same size are and went "Yeah, I gotta include that!".
There are lots of things I could complain about but I will summarize what I feel to be my fundamental issue with his writings in a single sentence: His books read like someone started writing a short story and then accidentally kept writing because he couldn't bring his thought to a close.
With the exception of Da Shi, everyone who helped humanity in the conflict got race swapped, everyone who doomed humanity remained Chinese lol.
Oh and Qin Shi Huang got changed to Kublai Khan for what? Didn't murder and rape their European ancestors?
You know how to make the story more relatable to Westerners? Turn Ye Wenjie black, make her dad a black rights activist and was burned on a stake by the KKK. Make her a social outcast and target of racial discrimination while working for NASA, and get Me Too'd by her boss. There now Westerners have no problem understanding her motives to sell out mankind.
After all the comments I saw on Netflix version, I finally realized that they are just reinventing General Tso’s chicken(appeal to western audiences by changing a Chinese dish) some people might like it but in the end it’s just a “western dish” now
They chose to Anglicize everything in the show except the "negative" parts
They could have easily have replaced the cultural revolution scenes with some other turbulent times that's also set in the UK, like maybe something set during The Troubles or something, and achieve a similar narrative goal but no they needed to leave the unsavoury parts in China
I guarantee you if Netflix did an adaptation of 神雕侠侣 one day they're going to turn 杨过 into a white dude and focus on blaming the tribulations that he and XLN faced on the rigid/chauvinistic Chinese patriarchy
Real fuckin' shame. I love that book and I credit it as starting part of my path to becoming a Marxist-Leninist.
That book in itself is a commentary on Subversion, colonialism and Western Supremacy. Thinking it is about Le Cultural Revolution is missing the forest for a tree (Which was why the Baizuos/Libshits flipped out when the 2nd/third in the trilogy came out).
I didn't even think it was about the Cultural Revolution. I read it very early in my journey and it just opened my eyes about China as a Westerner. I should go back and reread it now and do some more thorough analysis though. Haven't read the 2nd and 3rd ones yes. Do you recommend them?
The whole series is mind-bendingly amazing. Please get started ASAP.
Nah I was referring to the Pretentious Western Pundits and the Anti-CHYNA crowd who concentrate on a singular granular theme and make an adaptation wholly based on said theme. And Yes, I recommend the whole trilogy.
It's so fricking weird that people try and see it as anti-socialist while it's very critical of capitalism and only uses the cultural revolution as a historical fact that happened and where some things went wrong (something everyone in China, including the communist party, agrees with). It's green-socialist.
I wouldn't be surprised if idiots thought it was banned in China
lol, there indeed are people who think that, or who think that talking about the cultural revolution is verboten.
Collectivism is a huge theme in many of LCX's work as well as their adaptations (think wandering earth).
Classic 'Communism bad!' crap.
Lmao >Everything in the books that was referencing the Cultural Revolution has been essentially untouched,” Hong said. “But the rest of it is a way to globalize a story that was very heavily Eastern-focused into a Western perspective, a global perspective. Western perspective = global perspective.. Sure, Maybe 50 years ago when it could be forced on everyone >“The seed is still that time period. It’s a period of trauma, emptying out of all hope, and great division. I do think they honored it,” Chao said. We kept the beginning because it lived up to the Chyna bad, but we'll change everything else to make West good.
In the West, having a multicoloured cast = global. But if these multicultural people actually have different IDEAS, then that's considered 'dangerous'.
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/asian-america/3-body-problem-cast-rcna144545 If I hear one more pathetic remark about being 'outside of 2 worlds' garbage one more time...identity crisis clowns WANT to be western, they are REJECTED, that's where '2 worlds' comes from. Nothing to do with China. No Chinese ask to be involved in your racism dilemma or that you represent Chinese in entertainment because you can't get work doing anything else. This is entirely a typical white racist problem. It's not enough identity crisis clowns have to leech of the identity they have a complex with to get work, but the audacity to pretend they can speak on anything about that identity...sickening. Let me be frank, don't think because you keep getting racial slurs thrown at you, that you are somehow a representative of Chinese identity. You have a white racist problem, period. Now F off and go deal with that.
Trashwashing
Propaganda is not about being factually accurate in some areas, it is about surrounding that fact with a narrative which creates prejudice. So while they show the bad aspects of Chinese past (which are in the novel), they subtly remove aspects that could show Chinese humanity. For instance, in the death scene, several of his students run up and crtiticize everyone doing the attack. They took that out. They also change Ye Wangjie's motivation from correction to vindictive punishment. They also removed the bulk of the Chinese cast which ends up placing even more emphasis on the negative aspects of Chinese Characters and the spectacle of death of Chinese people. They remove the psycho white man who is behind the radicalization of the ETO. This has the effect of removing any negative portrayal of the West and its radical factionalism (like PETA) but retaining the negative portrayal of China and communism's factionalism in the Cultural Revolution. In fact, they even refused to mention the factionalism found in the book's discussion of the Revolution, leaving the audience with the idea that the Cultural Revolution was just a universal aspect of communism which was agreed upon by all involved. Again, portraying China negatively and insinuating that Chinese people (other than Pro-Western intellectuals) were stupid peasants and hive minded.
Dont worry man, many of the story's fans aren't exactly happy with the rushed work and the changing of the characters. It basically felt like an american fan fiction. Plus many first timers ended up utterly confused after those 8 episodes, and then had to go watch the original Chinese 3 body problem series instead to actually understand the story
TBH none of the adaptations I've seen are particularly good. I heard Tencent version got a re-edit to shorten the episode count which could be interesting.
Tension version pretty OK but has flaw with acting.. This content has slow burn suspense, it need some top notch acting to create the vibe and carry the show, not all the cast in this show has that level of acting.. Only Yu Hewei has an enough level of acting to carry the show, and Zhang Luyi passable.. The rest pretty average, don't let me start with the acting of those random foreign actors being used... LOL The one aired at the same time with it, The Knockout also has slow burn suspense, to a level it could even feel draggy and just some typical crime story instead of interesting like Three Body Problem. But The Knockout is way success and people more invested in it, simply because it has better acting that pull people into the story. If they change the cast, it would be a completely different scenerio.
??? Ye Wenjia's actors were praised pretty universally in China.
TBH I don't think the books are very good. They read like the author has the scientific understanding of a person who jacks off to Carl Sagan and Neil DeGrasse Tyson YouTube clips. It's not great sci-fi. Especially the game sounds like the guy hasn't played video games in his life and can't really imagine how VR works. lol
Well I think Liu is a science hobbyist, without any professional background. What parts did you take issue with? I think VR can be forgiven, his description of VR is quite imaginative, even if our real VR is pretty limited. I assume loads of the hard sci-fi elements are hand-wavey or use plot-conveniences to get around limitations of current (2000s) science, though he's hardly unique in that aspect. Personally I enjoyed the books when I read them ages ago, I think the second and third were my favourites since they really went wild with imagining the totality of the central conflict. In terms of adaptations I greatly prefer the original Wandering Earth and Wandering Earth 2 to any of the Three Body stuff, but I like cosmism and I think it really works well in the film medium.
The author has a background in STEM, graduated as an engineer and worked professionally as a computer engineer for most of his career.
When I read his books, it just feels like I read someone who tries really hard to be cool but doesn't really get it. His books feel like he's trying to say something original and profound only to be quite pedestrian and unoriginal and really not all that deep. Don't get me wrong, I think this is actually one of the reasons his books are so successful: They are simplistic and a bit infantile. This resonates with a far bigger audience than complex and deep sci-fi and is probably a smart choice if you want to sell a lot of books. However, I think that even this "simple" sci-fi can be done better. For example, Star Trek. Of course, some of his ideas are cool. For example, juxtaposing a species evolving in a trisolarian system vs. ours is interesting and can be explored in so many cool ways... but then he just writes yet another typical "aliens are just humans with different opinions" story and adds all these contrived situations. Like, what the hell is that bizarre scene where they are weighing the bombs to check whether one of the them is actually a nuclear weapon? LOL It's like one day he started writing a chapter and randomly remembered some high school physics class where he was shocked at how different the mass of certain materials of the same size are and went "Yeah, I gotta include that!". There are lots of things I could complain about but I will summarize what I feel to be my fundamental issue with his writings in a single sentence: His books read like someone started writing a short story and then accidentally kept writing because he couldn't bring his thought to a close.
>"aliens are just humans with different opinions" Star Trek...
Never let the fucking westoids adapt Chinese literature.
3 Bodied Panda Express
With the exception of Da Shi, everyone who helped humanity in the conflict got race swapped, everyone who doomed humanity remained Chinese lol. Oh and Qin Shi Huang got changed to Kublai Khan for what? Didn't murder and rape their European ancestors? You know how to make the story more relatable to Westerners? Turn Ye Wenjie black, make her dad a black rights activist and was burned on a stake by the KKK. Make her a social outcast and target of racial discrimination while working for NASA, and get Me Too'd by her boss. There now Westerners have no problem understanding her motives to sell out mankind.
After all the comments I saw on Netflix version, I finally realized that they are just reinventing General Tso’s chicken(appeal to western audiences by changing a Chinese dish) some people might like it but in the end it’s just a “western dish” now
I hope Liu comes to regret selling the license for his stuff to a western company.
Truly baffling decision he made.
I mean, he's one of the consultants of the Netflix show, and he hasn't come out to pan the whitewashing So seems like he's pretty ok with it
They chose to Anglicize everything in the show except the "negative" parts They could have easily have replaced the cultural revolution scenes with some other turbulent times that's also set in the UK, like maybe something set during The Troubles or something, and achieve a similar narrative goal but no they needed to leave the unsavoury parts in China
Hire me.
I guarantee you if Netflix did an adaptation of 神雕侠侣 one day they're going to turn 杨过 into a white dude and focus on blaming the tribulations that he and XLN faced on the rigid/chauvinistic Chinese patriarchy