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shadowkatFinished watching the two-part BBC miniseries, And Then There Were None, that aired on Lifetime. It was quite good, my only quibble was that it aired on Lifetime instead of PBS, where it belonged. And would not have been cut to ribbons by irritating commercials. Some day, I'm kicking commercial tv to the curb and just streaming. Ugh. Each episode was two hours long, when in reality they are probably more likely an hour and half - which they were due to fast forwarding.
Other than that it was brilliant. An excellent adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic novel "And Then There Were None".
The set-up is ten strangers converge on a remote island off the Devonshire coast for a weekend holiday. Each is given a compelling reason for coming by a mysterious couple called the Owens. Each person has committed a horrible crime. A murderer lurks amongst them, determined to pick them off one by one, assuming their guilt and paranoia doesn't drive them mad first.
I've seen the story adapted or spun off quite a few times...but this is by far the best adaptation. Where this one succeeds and the others failed -- is in managing to capture the suffocating sense of dread experienced by the characters...some of which slowly descend into madness. In flashbacks, we see how they wish to remember their crimes, the lie, and as the story unfolds, the truth is bit by bit revealed.
What made Agatha Christie's novels so compelling, was Christie was mostly interested in why people did what they did, and how they could live with it. The dark nasty emotions that motivated people.
Unlike the less memorable mystery novelists who focus on plot, Christie's novels were about the characters - and character-driven. In Then There Were None it becomes increasingly apparent that the characters are their own worst enemies. Whatever it was that motivated them to commit their own private crimes...is in the end what unravels them. Well, except for one. That's why Christie never ran out of ideas or ran into cliche...she wrote from the view of - this is an interesting character that I want to explore, and what would happen if I put them in this situation? It's the mistake a lot of modern and best-selling mystery novelists make, they focus on the plot. Folks? There are no interesting or clever plots -- no such thing. But there are interesting and clever characters.
The best-plotted novels start with interesting characters. I think I must have read every book Agatha Christie wrote, or all the ones that I could get my grubby little hands on...when I was in high school and junior high. (I was a binge reader and averaged about five books a week. Always had a book open or in progress. I'm still a binge reader.) Interesting tidbit that I discovered by accident and did not know until tonight?
The original title of the work was actually "Ten Little Niggars" based on a British Blackface Song that features in the book. In the US, the title was changed to "And Then There Were None", then later reprinted and adapted as Ten Little Indians. Evidence that art has never been culturally sensitive or politically kind.
And Then There Were None is a mystery novel by Agatha Christie, widely considered her masterpiece and described by her as the most difficult of her books to write. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939 as Ten Little Niggers,after the British blackface song, which serves as a major plot point. The U.S. edition was not released until December 1939 with the title changed to the last five words in the original American version of the nursery rhyme, And Then There Were None. In the U.S., it was both adapted and reprinted as Ten Little Indians.
I'm rather surprised the US publishers went to the trouble of changing it in the 1930s. I mean 1939 was around the same time Gone With the Wind was published and turned into a movie, and it was pretty racist. Although, they turned it into Ten Little Indians later, which wasn't an improvement. The version that I read had the US nursery rhyme...Ten Little Indians.
You'll be relieved to know that the BBC adaptation, by the way, was "ten little solider boys" -- so it was culturally sensitive, swinging away from the equally grating former titles. Keep in mind the book was first published in 1939.
A bit of history on the rhyme used in the mini-series and the book, although it was different in Christie's version and in order to understand why...
It is generally thought that this song was adapted, possibly by Frank J. Green in 1869, as "Ten Little Niggers", though it is possible that the influence was the other way round, with "Ten Little Niggers" being a close reflection of the text that became "Ten Little Indians". Either way, "Ten Little Niggers" became a standard of the blackface minstrel shows. It was sung by Christy's Minstrels and became widely known in Europe, where it was used by Agatha Christie in her novel of the same name. The novel was later retitled And Then There Were None (1939), and remains one of her most famous works, about ten killings on a remote island.
Variants of this song have been published widely as children's books; what the variants have in common is 'that they are about dark-skinned boys who are always children, never learning from experience'. For example, it had been published in Holland by 1913; in Denmark by 1922 (in Börnenes billedbog); in Iceland in 1922 (as Negrastrákarnir); and in Finland in the 1940s (in Kotoa ja kaukaa: valikoima runosatuja lapsille and Hupaisa laskukirja).[5] The Bengali poem Haradhon er Dosti Chhele (Haradhon's Ten Sons) is also inspired from Ten Little Indians.
Wiki goes on to state that because this song, and even the original term Indians, have become politically sensitive, modern versions for children often use "soldier boys" or "teddy bears" as the objects of the rhyme.
The unaltered republication of the 1922 Icelandic version in 2007 by the Icelandic publisher Skrudda caused considerable debate in Iceland, with a strong division between people who saw the book as racist and people who saw it as 'a part of funny and silly stories created in the past'. In Kristín Loftsdóttir's assessment of the debate,
Some of the discussions focusing on the republishing of the Ten Little Negroes can be seen as colonial nostalgia in the sense that they bring images of more "simple" times when such images were not objected to. As such, these public discourses seek to separate Icelandic identity from past issues of racism and prejudice. Contextualising the publication of the nursery rhyme in 1922 within European and North American contexts shows, however, that the book fitted very well with European discourses of race, and the images show similarity to caricatures of black people in the United States.
The republishing of the book in Iceland triggered a number of parodies or rewritings: and Tíu litlír kenjakrakkar ('Ten little prankster-children') by Sigrún Eldjárn and Þórarinn Eldjárn; 10 litlir sveitastrákar ('Ten little country-boys') by Katrín J. Óskarsdóttir and Guðrún Jónína Magnúsdóttir; and Tíu litlir bankastrákar ('Ten little banker-boys') by Óttar M. Njorðfjörð.
For more on this verse go HERE
Hmm..there was actually a movie made in 1949 entitled
Ten Little Niggars.
Here's an excerpt from Agatha Christie's autobiography about the book:
I "had written the book Ten Little N** because it was so difficult to do that the idea had fascinated me. Ten people had to die without it becoming ridiculous or the murderer being obvious. I wrote the book after a tremendous amount of planning, and I was pleased with what I had made of it. It was clear, straightforward, baffling, and yet had a perfectly reasonable explanation; in fact, it had to have an epilog in order to explain it. It was well received and reviewed, but the person who was really pleased with it was myself, for I knew better than any critic how difficult it had been... I don't say it is the play or book of mine that I like best, or even that I think it is my best, but I do think in some ways that it is a better piece of craftsmanship than anything else I have written."
For the exact rhyme that Christie used, go here: HERE.
She came up with an idea, then got interested in the characters. So was able to do plot and character in tangent. It was the hardest book she wrote, because the plot and character mechanics are tricky.
When you watch the miniseries, you'll see why. Also no worries about it being culturally insensitive or racist, that's been extricated completely.
Was Agatha Christie racist? I don't know. Maybe. It was 1939. Most of the Brits were racist in 1939.
Actually, most of the world was. No, doesn't excuse it. But you sort of have to look at it in context.
I can't say I liked Agatha Christie as a person, but to be fair, I don't like most famous/best-selling writers. Conan Doyle was an ass. Have no interest in meeting a lot of them. Doesn't keep me from enjoying their work. I think the only writers I've actively avoided are the ones who used their work to fund their neo-nazi or hateful agendas such Orson Scott Card and the Rabid/Sad Puppies. I mean if they are actively promoting an agenda that makes my skin crawl and is morally abhorrent -- I will avoid their art like the plague. But, I still think people should have the right to create it.
Legally...it's never been clear where the line is drawn between art that is obscene, hate speech, defamation or libelous and just risque and offensive. It seems to vary per jurisdictional ruling.
Other than that it was brilliant. An excellent adaptation of Agatha Christie's classic novel "And Then There Were None".
The set-up is ten strangers converge on a remote island off the Devonshire coast for a weekend holiday. Each is given a compelling reason for coming by a mysterious couple called the Owens. Each person has committed a horrible crime. A murderer lurks amongst them, determined to pick them off one by one, assuming their guilt and paranoia doesn't drive them mad first.
I've seen the story adapted or spun off quite a few times...but this is by far the best adaptation. Where this one succeeds and the others failed -- is in managing to capture the suffocating sense of dread experienced by the characters...some of which slowly descend into madness. In flashbacks, we see how they wish to remember their crimes, the lie, and as the story unfolds, the truth is bit by bit revealed.
What made Agatha Christie's novels so compelling, was Christie was mostly interested in why people did what they did, and how they could live with it. The dark nasty emotions that motivated people.
Unlike the less memorable mystery novelists who focus on plot, Christie's novels were about the characters - and character-driven. In Then There Were None it becomes increasingly apparent that the characters are their own worst enemies. Whatever it was that motivated them to commit their own private crimes...is in the end what unravels them. Well, except for one. That's why Christie never ran out of ideas or ran into cliche...she wrote from the view of - this is an interesting character that I want to explore, and what would happen if I put them in this situation? It's the mistake a lot of modern and best-selling mystery novelists make, they focus on the plot. Folks? There are no interesting or clever plots -- no such thing. But there are interesting and clever characters.
The best-plotted novels start with interesting characters. I think I must have read every book Agatha Christie wrote, or all the ones that I could get my grubby little hands on...when I was in high school and junior high. (I was a binge reader and averaged about five books a week. Always had a book open or in progress. I'm still a binge reader.) Interesting tidbit that I discovered by accident and did not know until tonight?
The original title of the work was actually "Ten Little Niggars" based on a British Blackface Song that features in the book. In the US, the title was changed to "And Then There Were None", then later reprinted and adapted as Ten Little Indians. Evidence that art has never been culturally sensitive or politically kind.
And Then There Were None is a mystery novel by Agatha Christie, widely considered her masterpiece and described by her as the most difficult of her books to write. It was first published in the United Kingdom by the Collins Crime Club on 6 November 1939 as Ten Little Niggers,after the British blackface song, which serves as a major plot point. The U.S. edition was not released until December 1939 with the title changed to the last five words in the original American version of the nursery rhyme, And Then There Were None. In the U.S., it was both adapted and reprinted as Ten Little Indians.
I'm rather surprised the US publishers went to the trouble of changing it in the 1930s. I mean 1939 was around the same time Gone With the Wind was published and turned into a movie, and it was pretty racist. Although, they turned it into Ten Little Indians later, which wasn't an improvement. The version that I read had the US nursery rhyme...Ten Little Indians.
You'll be relieved to know that the BBC adaptation, by the way, was "ten little solider boys" -- so it was culturally sensitive, swinging away from the equally grating former titles. Keep in mind the book was first published in 1939.
A bit of history on the rhyme used in the mini-series and the book, although it was different in Christie's version and in order to understand why...
It is generally thought that this song was adapted, possibly by Frank J. Green in 1869, as "Ten Little Niggers", though it is possible that the influence was the other way round, with "Ten Little Niggers" being a close reflection of the text that became "Ten Little Indians". Either way, "Ten Little Niggers" became a standard of the blackface minstrel shows. It was sung by Christy's Minstrels and became widely known in Europe, where it was used by Agatha Christie in her novel of the same name. The novel was later retitled And Then There Were None (1939), and remains one of her most famous works, about ten killings on a remote island.
Variants of this song have been published widely as children's books; what the variants have in common is 'that they are about dark-skinned boys who are always children, never learning from experience'. For example, it had been published in Holland by 1913; in Denmark by 1922 (in Börnenes billedbog); in Iceland in 1922 (as Negrastrákarnir); and in Finland in the 1940s (in Kotoa ja kaukaa: valikoima runosatuja lapsille and Hupaisa laskukirja).[5] The Bengali poem Haradhon er Dosti Chhele (Haradhon's Ten Sons) is also inspired from Ten Little Indians.
Wiki goes on to state that because this song, and even the original term Indians, have become politically sensitive, modern versions for children often use "soldier boys" or "teddy bears" as the objects of the rhyme.
The unaltered republication of the 1922 Icelandic version in 2007 by the Icelandic publisher Skrudda caused considerable debate in Iceland, with a strong division between people who saw the book as racist and people who saw it as 'a part of funny and silly stories created in the past'. In Kristín Loftsdóttir's assessment of the debate,
Some of the discussions focusing on the republishing of the Ten Little Negroes can be seen as colonial nostalgia in the sense that they bring images of more "simple" times when such images were not objected to. As such, these public discourses seek to separate Icelandic identity from past issues of racism and prejudice. Contextualising the publication of the nursery rhyme in 1922 within European and North American contexts shows, however, that the book fitted very well with European discourses of race, and the images show similarity to caricatures of black people in the United States.
The republishing of the book in Iceland triggered a number of parodies or rewritings: and Tíu litlír kenjakrakkar ('Ten little prankster-children') by Sigrún Eldjárn and Þórarinn Eldjárn; 10 litlir sveitastrákar ('Ten little country-boys') by Katrín J. Óskarsdóttir and Guðrún Jónína Magnúsdóttir; and Tíu litlir bankastrákar ('Ten little banker-boys') by Óttar M. Njorðfjörð.
For more on this verse go HERE
Hmm..there was actually a movie made in 1949 entitled
Ten Little Niggars.
Here's an excerpt from Agatha Christie's autobiography about the book:
I "had written the book Ten Little N** because it was so difficult to do that the idea had fascinated me. Ten people had to die without it becoming ridiculous or the murderer being obvious. I wrote the book after a tremendous amount of planning, and I was pleased with what I had made of it. It was clear, straightforward, baffling, and yet had a perfectly reasonable explanation; in fact, it had to have an epilog in order to explain it. It was well received and reviewed, but the person who was really pleased with it was myself, for I knew better than any critic how difficult it had been... I don't say it is the play or book of mine that I like best, or even that I think it is my best, but I do think in some ways that it is a better piece of craftsmanship than anything else I have written."
For the exact rhyme that Christie used, go here: HERE.
She came up with an idea, then got interested in the characters. So was able to do plot and character in tangent. It was the hardest book she wrote, because the plot and character mechanics are tricky.
When you watch the miniseries, you'll see why. Also no worries about it being culturally insensitive or racist, that's been extricated completely.
Was Agatha Christie racist? I don't know. Maybe. It was 1939. Most of the Brits were racist in 1939.
Actually, most of the world was. No, doesn't excuse it. But you sort of have to look at it in context.
I can't say I liked Agatha Christie as a person, but to be fair, I don't like most famous/best-selling writers. Conan Doyle was an ass. Have no interest in meeting a lot of them. Doesn't keep me from enjoying their work. I think the only writers I've actively avoided are the ones who used their work to fund their neo-nazi or hateful agendas such Orson Scott Card and the Rabid/Sad Puppies. I mean if they are actively promoting an agenda that makes my skin crawl and is morally abhorrent -- I will avoid their art like the plague. But, I still think people should have the right to create it.
Legally...it's never been clear where the line is drawn between art that is obscene, hate speech, defamation or libelous and just risque and offensive. It seems to vary per jurisdictional ruling.
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Date: 2016-03-16 06:54 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-03-17 01:19 am (UTC)