"They were typical male Orcans: tall and lean, brown of skin, black and bushy of hair and closely cropped beard, their faces mostly oval and somewhat flat, their nostrils flared and lips full." (p. 197)
In any screen adaptations, care must be taken not only with aliens but also with human beings adapted to alien environments. Similarly, ERB's black Martians (see image) should not look like black Earthmen. A John Carter film should not look like a Tarzan film. Black Martians should look alien: uniformly very black skin combined with facial features and bodily proportions not like anything seen on Earth. Whether in the Technic History or on Barsoom, we should always be aware of alienness, sometimes alienation.
8 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Trouble is, however, ERB was, gloriously page turning writer tho he was, writing SCIENTIFANTASY, not hard science fiction. So his humanoid Barsoomians looked far too much like ordinary Earth humans to be plausible, when taking into account what Barsoom/Mars is actually like. But ERB was a good enough writers that most readers don't care!
Any scientifically plausible humans/hominins long resident on Mars should be more like the people we see in Stirling's IN THE COURTS OF THE CRIMSON KINGS. Which is one of my favorites of his books.
Ad astra! Sean
Given the racial notions of the early 20th century, it's interesting that ERB's Barsoom has a dominant ethnic group that are the result of complete admixture between the "white", "yellow" and "black" races of a much earlier period; this is explicitly mentioned several times. Of the humanoid martians, only the Reds survive in any numbers -- the others are remnants in out-of-the-way places.
In other words, the "red" Martians are mestizos, pretty much.
In some of the earlier book, it's mentioned that they look rather like American Indians.
Oddly enough -- ERB couldn't know it -- the Amerindians are in fact a mixture between archaic East Asian types and a population known as "Ancient North Eurasians", the latter being a major component in modern Europeans.
This is why DNA analysis of Amerindians kept giving anomalous results, showing "European admixture" in cases where it was historically very unlikely.
The reason was that it -was- evidence of mixing of populations, but in a very ancient timeframe, over 20K years ago, before the first human migrations to the American hemisphere.
And, when Carter arrived on Barsoom, there was an oppressive hierarchy with greens and reds on the lowest rung, white therns above them and Black Pirates on top. But I never thought of these or the yellows as paralleling Terrestrials with similar skin colors. They were Martians and aliens.
Carter made friends and allies among greens, reds, blacks and I think yellows.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling and Paul!
Amd that was a Barsoomian greeting! (Smiles)
Mr. Stirling: Now that was way cool interesting, how ERB unwittingly paralleled actual human ethnic groups.
Paul: Wait, I thought the green Martian Tharks were wild wandering barbarians who were much the enemies of everybody else on Barsoom?
Ad astra! Sean
Sean,
Carter's best friend was Tars Tarkas who became Jeddak of Thark. Thark became allied to Helium.
Paul.
Tars Tarkas is unusually empathetic for a Thark, or Green Martian generally. Eg., he takes a personal interest in his daughter, a social no-no.
ERB just didn't think things through the way someone with generations more experience would today -- eg., humans and humanoid Martians are interfertile even though the Martians lay eggs.
(And Martian women have breasts. Why? Their young hatch, and do so able to walk and eat solid food.)
Kaor, Paul and Mr. Stirling!
Paul and Mr. Stirling: True, what you both said about Tars Tarkas, an unusually empathetic Thark.
Mr. Stirling: fond as I am of ERB's Barsoom stories, I admit to agreeing with the hilarity some critics have heaped on the sexual absurdities to be found in them!
But I like Frank Frazetta's illustrations for the SFBC editions of the the Barsoom stories.
Ad astra! Seam
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