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Welcome to Today in Books, the place we report on literary headlines on the intersection of politics, tradition, media, and extra.
It Feels Like a Lot Because It Is a Lot
If your newest scroll by way of the Netflix menu left you feeling like each different possibility was based mostly on a e-book, you’re not tremendous fallacious. Nearly one-third of the English-language reveals Netflix has launched to this point this 12 months are tailored from present IP. Leading the best way are the restricted collection Fool Me Once, based mostly on the novel by Harlan Coben, and One Day, tailored from David Nicholls’s 2009 novel, which was beforehand tailored for movie in 2011. When we glance past Netflix, 7 of the ten highest-grossing motion pictures of final 12 months have been based mostly on present work, and—right here’s the actual 👀 stat—the final time the highest-earning movie of the 12 months was not tailored from present IP or half of a franchise was 1998 when Titanic raked within the equal of $600 million (equal to $1.2 billion at present) within the U.S. alone. That’s a full quarter-century of adaptation domination, and there’s no slow-down in sight.
Color Purple Actress Criticizes Film for Queer Erasure
Speaking of variations! In a wide-ranging interview at BuzzFeed, Aunjanue Ellis-Taylor, who appeared in final 12 months’s adaptation of The Color Purple, goes on the report to criticize the filmmakers for downplaying the lesbian relationshipbetween essential character Celie and her life-changing lover Shug Avery.
The Color Purple is a e-book about Black lesbians. Whether the selection was made to concentrate on that or not within the cinematic iterations of The Color Purple, it’s nonetheless a film about Black lesbians. People can attempt to say the story is about sisterhood, but it surely’s a narrative about Black lesbians. Period.
This is a well-recognized debate and hardly the primary time an adaptation of Alice Walker’s beloved novel has failed its queer characters and missed an necessary alternative to satisfy queer audiences the place they’re. It’s particularly disappointing, although, popping out of a 12 months during which some of probably the most celebrated movies and collection—All of Us Strangers, Passages, and Fellow Travelers—have been about queer relationships. Can it’s a coincidence that writers, producers, and studios have been extra snug with these tales about white males than with this one about Black girls? 🤔
National Black Arts Festival Launched Banned Book Fair
The National Black Arts Festival will maintain the primary Blacklisted! Banned Book Fair and Conference this weekend in Atlanta. The honest will function programming with authors like Tayari Jones and Nic Stone, a market the place attendees should purchase books which can be steadily the topics of challenges and bans, and interactive displays concerning the historical past of makes an attempt to ban books by authors from marginalized communities. Writing workshops, teen occasions, and a screening of Toni Morrison’s documentary The Pieces I Am will spherical out the schedule. May their efforts succeed.
No Plot, Just Vibes
Sometimes you are feeling like a plot, typically you don’t. And typically you are feeling like a plot, however what you want is to sit down down and relax. These books are for these moments.
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