Travelling with your mind

[yakalskovich]

There was a documentary just now about the popular German 19th century writer Karl May, who stands out for having colourfully and very successfully written about things and places he only knew from books, more or less pretending that all those invented adventures had been his own when during that time he'd actually been in Saxonian jail for having been a con man -- some of the things he did actually sound rather like something Moist von Lipwig might have done.

There are issues of the dreaded cultural appropriation things around what he wrote, and also strong slashy undertones, but that's not at issue.

What astonished me was the way the documentary makers went around in the man's library that is still in the house he built from the truckloads of money he made with his novels, pulled out books and went 'Oooh! It is all in here! He read books about it and then used what he learned from them! Amazing! Look, here are his notes in the margin!"

Erm.

I have got news for you. That's what we all do when we write about places where we can't go, or times we can't unfortunately not travel back to. 17th century sailing ships, both of the naval and the piratical kind? Scythians wandering with their wagons? 6th century Rome in its death throes? St. Petersburg in 1916? Mount Athos, especially if you're female?

It's called research, dudes, and combining research with imagination is what allows us to tell captivating tales that feel real and gritty, even if they're not, and we've made it all up.

Okay, we don't claim it was us who did all that. If we do, nobody usually believes us, and our main charrie will be branded a Mary Sue. Actually, to be quite blunt, May's first person narrators 'Old Shatterhand' and 'Kara ben Nemsi' are the biggest literary Marty Stus ever written.

But still, my mind boggles at the thought that these documentary film makers thought that 'research + imagination = storytelling' was anything to be very astonished about, in turn.



In other news, I was just defrauded out of an entire hour! This will force me to reset ALL THE CLOCKS in the house and make me intrinsically late for days on end. And I need to catch a train on Thursday. Waugh, world, why can't we stop doing this? It has been proven it's useless.

Comments

[paceisthetrick]

Perhaps it was unusual for a 19th c writer to do so? I think most of them wrote what they knew best.


?????

[yakalskovich]

Nope. No such things. They had their books and did their research, same as we do. Just think of all the historical novels written in that time!

Nope, there is no excuse for that odd reaction of 'Oh wow he got it all from books -- look at his actual books!'

Duh.-

[paceisthetrick]

Was it a German production?

[yakalskovich]

Yep. That makes it all the stranger.

[paceisthetrick]

Wow. I am baffled. It would have made sense if it were American.

Perhaps stupidity is catching?

[yakalskovich]

Yes, that would be an explanation.-

[paceisthetrick]

Go check. Maybe he's German-American.

[yakalskovich]

I rather think he just had a moment of derp there.

[paceisthetrick]

I wanna hear about the "slashy undertones" >.>

[yakalskovich]

Young German surveyor comes to the Wild West to survey for the railroad being built; Apache tribe protests against uninvited railroad on their land; Apache chief has this marvellously beautiful and impressive son about the age of said young German surveyor who is marvellously unimpressed and disdainful about all these white people; railroad people and enemy Indian tribe take Apache delegation incl. that son hostage; young German surveyor sekritly sets them free; fighting ensues when the Apaches come back; surveyor is injured and taken captive, then at the abandoned pueblo where the Apache tribe lives nursed back to health by the daughter of the chief/siser of the beautiful son; surveyor must do trial by combat against the chief's son to save his own life and that of all his comrades that were captured as well; in great bare-chested wrestling, he wins, only then produces the proof it was him who freed the Apaches, in shape of a lock of hair that he'd cut from the chief's son's oh so lovely long black hair; they swear to be BFF before all the tribe; at night, they meet by the river to talk about how much they really care about each other; the chief's son teaches the surveyor everything he needs to know about surviving in the wild, which involves much sneaking about in the shrubbery; when the chief and his daughter get murdered by the baddies, the son becomes the chief of the tribe, and together, the (now) chief and the (former) surveyor fight crime have these many many adventures in the Wild Wild West...

Actually, somebody who cares about the whole thing more than I do should re-write the whole thing as outright slashy fic.

[yakalskovich]

Oh, and here is the TV Tropes entry for it all.

[paceisthetrick]

You need a time turner! <3

[yakalskovich]

I do. And now I need to get myself offline and to bed, as it's magically 4 am instead of 3 am as it's meant to be.-

**grumbles**

[paceisthetrick]

Man I hope you don't have an early day tomorrow! That will seriously fuck with your naturally sunny disposition. :P

[yakalskovich]

Nope, tomorrow is Sunday, and I have nothing planned, except making muffins and watching some episodes of 'Game of Thrones' with the Nazgul.

Still, it will drag on for days, and on both Tuesday and Thursday, there are things I need to be in time for.

[paceisthetrick]

No way. You do NOT have season 2 of GoT already! It hasn't been released yet!

[yakalskovich]

Nope, this is why we are watching season 1. The Nazgul hasn't seen it all yet.

[paceisthetrick]

She's in for a treat. I loved the whole season! But I have a feeling s 2 will be even better.

[yakalskovich]

So do I. As I said, I am hoping very much that my source for these things doesn't go away.-

[paceisthetrick]

BTW it is always on youtube the first night. They catch it early on and pull it but you can always watch it there.

[yakalskovich]

I guess I fall victim to time zones here. When it premieres, I'm asleep; then, I try to DL it first thing in the morning, or did last year, to watch later. I'm trying to not turn on the computer in the mornings now, for the sake of unfucking my mornings, as I tend to stick to the computer if I do turn it on. And with my new all-in-one-TV thingger, I can play the MP3s with my qi gong music there, which was my excuse to turn on the computer.

So. However, I might of course do it again to get GoT. But by then, it might already be gone from YouTube, and/or I wouldn't have the time to watch an hour of TV in the morning. Also, it wouldn't get the Nazgul her fix on the following weekend.

[bjornwilde]

Didn't Jules Verne do the exact same thing?

[yakalskovich]

With the one difference that he didn't claim it was all true, actively inventing things that might happen in the future if technology was expanded upon, rather than writing about travels in places he'd never been.

Except if you mean 'Around The World In 80 Days'. For that, he definitely did that -- again with the not claiming it was him and he'd actually been there, though.

[ceitfianna]

That sounds intriguing but also annoying all at once. Documentaries can be odd at times when they have their own agendas to slip in.

[yakalskovich]

You're completely right about the agenda; the entire documentary was rather defensive about Karl May.