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Yearly Archives: 2017
Irish Mythology: Culture or Commodity?
Here’s a very thought-provoking article by Brian O’Sullivan on how elements of Irish culture and mythology have been used—and more often abused—in fantasy fiction. His main point is found, I think, in the these two paragraphs:
The problem, however, is that mythology is CULTURALLY based. Mythology contains elements of fantasy but at its most fundamental it’s an intellectual framework used by our ancestors to make sense of the world around them. Because it’s culturally based, many of the mythological elements and associated context have been passed down through generations and incorporated into national identity and belief systems. Today of course, the use of Irish mythology has been superseded by scientific rationale, but its core narratives remain intrinsically linked to Ireland’s self-identity and cultural values.
From an Irish perspective therefore, when you see your native cultural icons plucked from their normal environment, repackaged in some pseudo-Celtic [nonsense] and then reproduced out of context in a fantasy product, you can start to appreciate why other native groups complain about the commercial appropriation and exploitation of their cultures. For Irish people in particular, it feels as though we’ve been bombarded by mawkish, overly romanticised and culturally inaccurate interpretations of our own mythology for decades.
O’Sullivan is clearly and rightly passionate about this, and he provides much food for thought. I’m grateful for his raising my awareness of how things things are experienced for people who cherish these mythological elements, even if they don’t literally believe in them.
He later mentions the backlash over J. K. Rowling’s handling of Native American mythology in her “History of Magic in North America.” I’ve shared some of my thinking on that matter elsewhere, and much of what I say there applies here as well. My fiction is set in the United States of America. To write authentically, I feel I have an obligation to deal with the entire melting pot of cultures that I see around me on my way to work every morning. Therefore, this is what I wrote:
I’m not going to say Native American beliefs and folklore concerning magic, fantastic beasts, and so forth are off limits for fantasy writers. Nor, for that matter, should be the mythology of West Africans brought to North America as slaves. To be honest, leaving these elements out strikes me as more colonialistic than including them. Writing off black, Native American, or other non-white contributions to American life and culture leaves a story at best only half-told.
The challenge, especially for someone of European descent (something Ms. Rowling and I have in common), is to listen to these other cultures and go the second mile in attempting to depict them with dignity and integrity.
Of course, it’s up to you, my readers, to decide whether I’ve met that challenge.
Review of Wonder Woman (No Spoilers!)
On the way to the cinema yesterday, my daughter and I were talking about male and female role models in film. I told her about a YouTube video I had recently found that described Newt Scamander (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them) as a refreshingly different model for what a male hero is supposed to be like. We both agreed that, though we enjoyed stories featuring the more “traditional” male heroic archetype (Harry Potter, Iron Man, etc.), it was important to remember that there are other ways of being “a man.”
We looked forward to seeing this newest interpretation of Wonder Woman, a character who, from her inception in the 1940s, offered a rather complex role model for women and girls. She is a woman who is at the same time beautiful, kind, intelligent, and willing and more than able to kick butt and take names when the situation calls for it.
Wonder Woman, directed by Patty Jenkins and portrayed expertly by Gal Gadot, measures up and then some! Other reviewers have commented that Wonder Woman doesn’t necessarily feel like a superhero movie. Yes, there are super-powered characters in outlandish costumes, but Jenkins grounds these characters so thoroughly in the real world that I found it quite easy to suspend disbelief and imagine that it would be reasonable for Diana and the rest to exist in my world.
I think a large part of this is that the movie doesn’t flinch from portraying the horrors of World War I. Don’t let anybody fool you into thinking that the “villain” of this movie is Ares, the god of war. The true villain is World War I itself—the senseless destruction, the loss of life, the social dislocation, and especially the loss of hope that this war, perhaps more than any war that came before it, brought. And, as Chris Pine’s Steve Trevor says in a moving piece of dialogue near the end, it was all something we humans did to ourselves.
There is even dialogue that implicates those who would appease the enemy by calling for an armistice are complicit in the tragedy. I don’t know if that is meant to be a cynical note, another gut punch when we the viewers have already been schooled in just how bad war can be. But I couldn’t help hearing that line in the context of Gal Gadot’s former service in the Israeli Defense Force and the many broken cease-fires her country has contended with from enemies all around. Is there a political commentary in there? I don’t know, and at any rate, if it was, it was so exceedingly subtle that it didn’t come across as in any way preachy. (As a side note, this movie could have easily gotten way too dark without the comic relief. It is applied liberally, but never in places that where it detracts from the drama.)
Gadot’s Diana and Pine’s Trevor are both complex and well-acted characters. They are multi-dimensional, and the chemistry between them seemed quite authentic to me. Some of the supporting cast may have come across as more one-dimensional, but their one dimension still added to the overall tone of the movie in important ways.
Are there nits that I could pick? Sure. As visually stunning as the movie is, there are places where Jenkins relied a bit too much on “bullet time.”
Most of my problems (and they are admittedly minor) have to do with the logic of the story world. How can the people of Themiscyra can speak so many modern languages and yet have apparently no knowledge of modern warfare—or indeed the modern world? Who thought flaming arrows were a good idea? How can a proud race of warriors manage not to invent armor for the shoulders or neck? (Yes, that’s directly from the source material, but still…)
Go see Wonder Woman, and take your young teen (or older) children. As I noted above, the scenes of wartime violence and its societal effects are quite intense, probably too intense for younger kids. But beyond that, there is little to offend. There are a few lines of sexual innuendo that will probably go over the heads of most children (and possibly more than a few teenagers!). I don’t recall any questionable language at all, though I may be forgetting something.
In my opinion, Wonder Woman strikes an almost perfect balance of humor, action, and thought-provoking themes. Well worth the price of a ticket.
Sunday Inspiration: Creativity
We can’t be creative if we refuse to be confused.
—Margaret Wheatley
Sunday Inspiration: Success
Success isn’t a result of spontaneous combustion. You must set yourself on fire.
—Arnold H. Glasow
Sunday Inspiration: Giving
I have found that among its other benefits, giving liberates the soul of the giver.
—Maya Angelou
A Blemmye in Star Wars
Just a quick update on my recent post on Blemmyes. I realized not long ago that there is a Blemmye in Star Wars: Sy Snootles.
For those who aren’t up on all the Star Wars trivia that is never spelled out on the screen, Sy Snootles is the name of the lead singer of the Max Rebo Band, which performs in Jabba the Hutt’s palace in Return of the Jedi.
According to Wookieepedia, Sy Snottles is a member of the Pa’lowick species. Pa’lowicks are “long-limbed reptilian humanoids that had spotted skin, eyes that protruded from the tops of their heads, and trunk-like mouths.” The trunk-like mouth is obviously not part of the standard description of Blemmyes, but it it is certainly the case that Sy Snootles does not possess a head—at least, not one that is easily distinguished from her body. Rather, her eyes and mouth protrude from the top of her thorax.
Sunday Inspiration: Right and Wrong
I would unite with anybody to do right and with nobody to do wrong.
—Frederick Douglass
Of Beans and Vampires
Today I learned that apparently you can use beans to trick vampires. By some sort of leguminous magic, vampires are prone to mistaking beans for pregnant women (and possibly other kinds of humans). Who knew?
This tidbit may or may not be related to my previous post about commodity items as media of exchange. Time will tell.
Also, leguminous is an adjective meaning “relating to or denoting plants of the pea family” (including beans).
Sunday Inspiration: Forgiveness
Everyone says forgiveness is a lovely idea, until they have something to forgive.
— C. S. Lewis
What Is the Exchange Rate between Cattle and Cocoa Beans?
With Oathbreaker in the capable hands of my beta team, I’ve been doing a bit of worldbuilding for another project that’s kicking around in my head.
Unlike the cashless society of the Wonder, I’ve been pondering a world that uses some sort of commodity currency as a medium of exchange. In the process, I’ve found a few interesting options. Here are some random notes about three of them.
Irish Cattle
The Irish used cattle as a unit of exchange up until the fourteenth century. Specifically, the milk cow was universally recognized measure of worth. There were even ways to achieve fractions of that value without killing the cow. In medieval Ireland,
1 pregnant cow = 2/3 of a milk cow
1 three-year old heifer = 1/2 of a milk cow
1 two-year old heifer = 1/3 of a milk cow
1 one-year old heifer = 1/4 of a milk cow
1 one-year old bullock = 1/8 of a milk cow
Worth in milk cows could also be expressed in terms of other currencies such as “ounces” of some precious metal (usually silver), cumhala or “bondwomen” (i.e., female slaves), or séti or “jewels.” The sét seems to have been an ideal or an abstraction in Irish law, and it is not clear that transactions were ever literally conducted by the transfer of female slaves from one person to another. Still, everyone had a clear idea of what these things were worth and conducted their business accordingly.
Unfortunately, this system persisted for so long that the law codes prescribed different rates of exchange in different eras and in different regions of Ireland. A cumhal might be the same value as a milk cow or it might be two or three times as much. One source gives the value of a cumhal as two séti, another says six to seven, and yet another says up to forty.
Since 240 English pence were struck from a pound of silver, we can assume that an ounce of silver would be worth about 15 pence. At a rate of 1 milk cow = 9 ounces of silver, the price of a milk cow in silver would be about 135 pence, which is in line with some of the early medieval prices I’ve been able to find online—and, incidentally, very close to the price of 131.5 pence given for a female slave in this era.
Mexican Cocoa Beans
When the Spanish arrived in Mexico, they found a society in which cocoa beans were an accepted medium of exchange. Some of the customary prices I’ve found are:
a large tomato for 1 cocoa bean
a small rabbit for 30 cocoa beans
a female turkey for 100 cocoa beans
a male turkey for 300 cocoa beans
a copper hatchet for 8,000 cocoa beans
The Spanish adapted this system in dealing with the Aztecs. In fact, cultivation of cocoa beans was restricted in the 1700s in order to maintain their value as money.
By a royal decree of 1555, the value of one cocoa bean was set at 1/140 of a Spanish real. In 1587, this was dropped to 1/150 of a real. Since a peso or “piece of eight” was worth eight reales, we could also say that 1,200 cocoa beans = 1 peso. In the mid-sixteenth century, pesos traded in England at about 54 pence. Once again, that makes the commodity prices reasonable when compared to equivalent items in the same time frame.
Canadian Beaver Pelts
The Hudson Bay Company in Canada was a key player in the North American fur trade. Not only did their stores buy furs brought in by traders, they accepted furs as currency. The above linked article even provides a price list for the York factory in units of “made beaver” (i.e., a prime beaver pelt). Here is a selection of prices:
a hatchet for 1 beaver pelt
a pound of tobacco for 2 beaver pelts
a pair of shoes for 3 beaver pelts
a hat for 4 beaver pelts
a pistol for 7 beaver pelts
a long gun for 14 beaver pelts
In 1740, the Hudson Bay Company bought beaver pelts for about 7.88 shillings apiece (about 94.5 pence). But assessing the exchange rate isn’t that simple. In fact, the Company store customarily marked up their prices by about 50%. That means your 94.5 pence worth of beaver pelt would only buy you goods that cost 63 pence in silver at a different establishment.
And no, I have no intentions of writing a protagonist who works as a bank teller or a merchant at a company store! But I find that little touches like these add a depth of detail that can really make a setting seem real.
Plus, I’ve learned a few things along the way, and no new knowledge is ever a waste of time.
Darrell J. Pursiful 