More on Windup Girl
Jul. 2nd, 2015 12:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asakiyumeThe story won me over. I found myself caring very much about the power struggle between Future!Thailand's Ministry of Trade, which is eager to dance with the devil--the devil being the calorie companies, multinational Future!Monsantos that hold the world's perpetually famine-ready population hostage with their sterile seeds and their genetically engineered plagues--and the "white shirts" of Ministry of the Environment, which is sworn to protect the country from the same. In particular, I became a fan of Jaidee, an idealistic white-shirt captain, and his protégé Kanya. As Little Springtime pointed out, those two were the ones whose moral dilemmas were most complex.
When Jaidee reflects on all that the world's lost in terms of genetic diversity, there's real pathos:
It makes you want to go running outside and start seed saving. [view spoiler (click here)].
(To add just a smidgeon of criticism, that "all is suffering" talk? Although it's pretty appropriate at that particular moment, one annoying tic of characterization is that good-guy Thai characters always-always think in terms of kamma [karma], dhamma [dharma], and other Buddhist principles. However, as Jaidee and Kanya get involved in trying to foil Trade's dealings, there's enough going on that that ceased to bother me.)
The way the plot came together--the way everyone's stories intersected at key points--was brilliant. And the way Bacigalupi laid the groundwork was perfect too. A hint here, a mention there, and then when something blossoms into Big Trouble, it's been coming all along.
Anderson Lake--an undercover agent of AgriGen,** a calorie company--is the most opaque character. Why do you be so unconcernedly evil, Mr. Lake?
**Can I note that AgriGen's executives have the most badass Evil Outfit. Because they do. Click here to see.
Hock Seng, Anderson's factotum, is the most painfully stereotyped character (for some rants on that, click this), but his character gradually opens up. His post-traumatic stress, having suffered through ethnic cleansing in Future!Malaysia (reminiscent of historical mass killings of Chinese in Indonesia in the 1960s), is very believable, as is the tenuousness he and his compatriots feel as refugees in Thailand.
He and Anderson make a good contrasting pair, with Anderson several times assuring would-be killers and other opponents that a win-win deal can be worked out and Hock Seng, contrariwise, always assuming imminent catastrophe and needing to talk himself down.
Emiko, the titular windup girl, comes pretty magnificently into her own, though not before suffering two on-screen, no-holds-barred rapes. Yeeeaah. I completely understand that being an absolute deal breaker for people. As for me, I was more bothered by the stereotyping of Japanese women. It was uncomfortable to read. But as we got into her internal struggle to live life on her own terms and to come free of training and genetic predisposition, she became more interesting.
In the end, I was won over by the worldbuilding, the intricate and (for me) satisfying plotting, and Jaidee and Kanya's storyline. The stereotyping that had incensed me at first seemed to grow less as time went on and we moved from generalizations about characters to particulars, but it's also true that I was willing to put up with Jaidee's name-checking kamma and Emiko saying "Anderson-sama" and the many many ways of saying "foreign devil" because I was so absorbed in the plot. I'm definitely not trying to change people's opinions of it; all I'm doing here is explaining how it came to pass that I ended up feeling differently.
When Jaidee reflects on all that the world's lost in terms of genetic diversity, there's real pathos:
On one wall, a bo tree is painted, the Buddha sitting beneath it as he seeks enlightenment.
Suffering. All is suffering. Jaidee stares at the bo tree. Just another relic of history. The Ministry has artificially preserved a few, ones that didn't burst to kindling under the internal pressure of the ivory beetles breeding, the beetles burrowing and hatching in the tangled trunks of the bo until they burst forth, flying, and spread to their next victim and their next and their next...
In a thousand years, will [people] even know that bo trees existed? Will Niwat and Surat's great-grandchildren know that there were other fig trees, also gone. Will they know that there were any many trees and that there were of many types? Not just a Gates teak, and a generipped PurCal banana, but many, many other as well?
Will they understand that we were not fast enough or smart enough to save them all? That we had to make choices?
It makes you want to go running outside and start seed saving. [view spoiler (click here)].
(To add just a smidgeon of criticism, that "all is suffering" talk? Although it's pretty appropriate at that particular moment, one annoying tic of characterization is that good-guy Thai characters always-always think in terms of kamma [karma], dhamma [dharma], and other Buddhist principles. However, as Jaidee and Kanya get involved in trying to foil Trade's dealings, there's enough going on that that ceased to bother me.)
The way the plot came together--the way everyone's stories intersected at key points--was brilliant. And the way Bacigalupi laid the groundwork was perfect too. A hint here, a mention there, and then when something blossoms into Big Trouble, it's been coming all along.
Anderson Lake--an undercover agent of AgriGen,** a calorie company--is the most opaque character. Why do you be so unconcernedly evil, Mr. Lake?
**Can I note that AgriGen's executives have the most badass Evil Outfit. Because they do. Click here to see.
Hock Seng, Anderson's factotum, is the most painfully stereotyped character (for some rants on that, click this), but his character gradually opens up. His post-traumatic stress, having suffered through ethnic cleansing in Future!Malaysia (reminiscent of historical mass killings of Chinese in Indonesia in the 1960s), is very believable, as is the tenuousness he and his compatriots feel as refugees in Thailand.
He and Anderson make a good contrasting pair, with Anderson several times assuring would-be killers and other opponents that a win-win deal can be worked out and Hock Seng, contrariwise, always assuming imminent catastrophe and needing to talk himself down.
Emiko, the titular windup girl, comes pretty magnificently into her own, though not before suffering two on-screen, no-holds-barred rapes. Yeeeaah. I completely understand that being an absolute deal breaker for people. As for me, I was more bothered by the stereotyping of Japanese women. It was uncomfortable to read. But as we got into her internal struggle to live life on her own terms and to come free of training and genetic predisposition, she became more interesting.
In the end, I was won over by the worldbuilding, the intricate and (for me) satisfying plotting, and Jaidee and Kanya's storyline. The stereotyping that had incensed me at first seemed to grow less as time went on and we moved from generalizations about characters to particulars, but it's also true that I was willing to put up with Jaidee's name-checking kamma and Emiko saying "Anderson-sama" and the many many ways of saying "foreign devil" because I was so absorbed in the plot. I'm definitely not trying to change people's opinions of it; all I'm doing here is explaining how it came to pass that I ended up feeling differently.
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Date: 2015-07-02 06:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-07-02 06:29 pm (UTC)That makes sense to me; I have trouble talking sometimes about things I love wholeheartedly, and stories that are flawed and fascinating sometimes offer the most to think critically about. I never wrote about the novel Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell, although it was one of the loveliest reading experiences of 2006; I just finished writing two thousand words on LJ/DW about the finale of the miniseries, because some of it really worked for me and some of it really didn't and the reasons in both cases are interesting for me to think about. I am still thinking. Sometimes a thing being done not quite right brings into focus what it is you value about what the work was attempting to do.
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Date: 2015-07-02 06:41 pm (UTC)Sometimes a thing being done not quite right brings into focus what it is you value about what the work was attempting to do. --Absolutely.
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Date: 2015-07-02 06:46 pm (UTC)Yes! Last night. It's the sort of thing I should probably have waited another four weeks to post so that most of my U.S.-based friendlist could have the chance to see the complete series first, but now is when I've been thinking constantly about it . . .