Why Hasn’t Octavia Butler’s Work Been Adapted?
Share the post
Share this link via
Or copy link
Octavia E. Butler is considered the first black woman to gain national prominence as a science fiction writer, so why haven’t any of her books ever been turned into a movie?
I mean, its not like her work is too hard to translate visually: Butler’s last novel Fledging, the first in a series which was released after her untimely death in 2008, is actually told from the point of view of a 53-year-old vampire who happens to look like a 10-year-old black girl. Can anyone say Twilight or Let the Right One In? Kindred, her first novel, is a time travel story revolving around an African-American woman in 1976 Los Angeles who is pulled back in time to the 1800s and has to reconcile the two eras. Hello? That’s just like Back to the Future. And let us not forget The Parable of the Sower/Talent, in which Butler shares a coming of age tale about a black woman, weaving and surviving her way through post-apocalyptic California. Well that’s just like The Road, The Book of Eli and just about ever post-apocalyptic films, which has come out in the last twenty years or so.
In a few interviews, Butler had once teased that she had been in “talks” with studio execs about some of her work, including the Patternist series, and that some of her books had been optioned for film, but “unfortunately,” people have not been able to find the money to make the movie.” But why? It’s obvious that Hollywood loves a book adaptation. And other classic and equally esoteric science fiction writers such as Robert Heinlein, Philip K. package, Frank Herbert and Stephen King have seen their work on the big screen. Yet finding the funding to support a film adaptation of a Butler book is hard to come by.
These thoughts were at the forefront of my mind as I read about the recent uproar over the reviews of The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry, a collection compiled and introduced by Rita Dove, an African American former US Poet Laureate and winner of the Pulitzer Prize for poetry. In particular, Helen Vendler, author of the Harvard Book of Contemporary American Poetry and so-called renowned poetry czar, was particularly harsh, if not borderline bigoted, in her New York Review of Books critique of the anthology in which she basically attacked Dove for including “a dubious and incoherent selection” of poets in the anthology. This “dubious” selection includes black poets likes of Amiri Barack and Gwendolyn Brooks for whom Vendler suggested showed Dove preference for “multicultural inclusiveness,” at the expense of more classic favorites such as Eliot, Frost and Stevens.
Never mind that anthologies, in general, are inherently problematic because they are always subjective to the personal taste of the author. Vendler exposed her real opposition when she wrote, “Perhaps Dove’s canvas — exhibiting mostly short poems of rather restricted vocabulary — is what needs to be displayed now to a general audience.” By referencing an anthology not dominated by the usual white poets as ‘of restricted vocabulary” exposes Vendler’s disdain, if not hostility, for the gall of Dove to include non-white poets on the same level of traditionally-recognized, “classic” poets.
In essence Vendler has disallowed Dove to see and define what is great poetry through the lenses of an African American woman. As Dove explained in a rather contentious response to the review, “this line of attack is a sign of despair or fury on part of some critics who define themselves as white — whatever that means in our mongrel society. Are they trying to make a last stand against the hordes of up-and-coming poets of different skin complexions and different eye slants? Were we — African Americans, Native Americans, Latino Americans, Asian Americans — only acceptable as long as these critics could stand guard by the door to examine our credentials and let us in one by one?”
So what does the controversy over The Penguin Anthology of Twentieth-Century American Poetry have to do with the lack of Octavia Butler’s work on the big screen. Perhaps the objection to the poetry book, particularly the use of so-called “multicultural inclusiveness,” is at the heart of why we fail to see our work immortalized in the classic sense of films and books. For me, it is a question of who gets to play curator to culture. Is it the voices of those purveyors of the past, who have traditionally excluded the work of people of color? Or should people of color have equal footing to say what is and should be considered “classic” art? Likewise, if a cultural product is not appeasing to the palate of white folks, particularly those who have been the gatekeepers of culture in our society, should it ultimately be considered devoid any cultural significance at all?
In an infamous debate with Art Critic Robert Brustein over the need for black theater, August Wilson, writer of such plays as Ma Rainey’s Black Bottom and Fences, said that “those who would deny black Americans their culture would also deny them their history and the inherent values that are a part of all human life.” If we consider how little attention and funding is put towards to cultivation of black, and other oppressed minority, art in this country you can begin to understand why so little of our work has been transformed into the larger spectrum of mainstream culture – whether it be in anthologies of the “greats” or on the big screen.
Instead of Lilith’s Brood (also known as the Xenogenesis trilogy), which allows us to view human condition through the specifics of black culture, we see Will Smith tossed into films like Independence Day and I Am Legend, in roles devoid of any cultural significance and could be easily played by European Americans, and told to treat it as a substitute for black roles and/or films.
Moreover, any attempts of trying to present an African American-centered story for larger consumption is ultimately dismissed as “too black” thus unmarketable to mainstream audiences, who can’t seem to handle either playing the “other” even in terms of just being the audience of an experience or seeing black folks outside of stereotypes of what they think we are. It’s no wonder why film projects featuring real life subjects such as Nat Turner Toussaint L’Ouverture have a hard time getting green lighted but a Quentin Tarantino’s fictionalized Django Unchained will probably out by the end of next year.
Also there is the point that Butler’s novels prominently feature black women in roles Hollywood isn’t quite ready to adapt. There are no sassy, neck-swerving, one-dimensional jezebels and mammies. But rather we see black women as leaders, heroines and immortals, contemplating their existence beyond the scope of racial, gender and social dynamics of this country, this time period and most cases, this world. And in a society that likes to remind black folks of just how limited our existence be, no way should we be allowed to see ourselves anywhere near the future.
Charing Ball is the author of the blog People, Places & Things.
