The Good Earth - A Critique and Parody

...seriously. HOW did this win the Nobel Prize AND the Pulitzer Prize? I mean, GAWD. But I confess, I am doing this more for fun than any real!activist! reason. Meheh. Someone has to criticize it though. Ah, and there's a lot of irony/contradictions, but I -might- just be covering up my failure. Who cares?

ENJOY! (TAKE IT SERIOUSLY, PLEASE :P)
This is a pretty random (and quickly-paced) film--keep your eyes open for the geometric/fibonacci/artihmetic sequences.

music: MIDI made by a friend of SSBM music (Mushroom Kingdom, xDDD)
pictures: drawn by Artemis (wow, yes, I know...)
ideas/etc: friends/classmates, given nicknames not-by-choice
book: The Good Earth by Pearl S. Buck

Category:

Film & Animation

Tags:

• The
• Good
• Earth
• Pearl
• Buck
• Critique
• Fails
• Parody
• xotsukiyume

[tYcoriania]

Oh good; someone else agrees with me that the whole of the book was actually bad~ And for more legitimate reasons than "omg; it was, like, 300 pages of required reading!!". This was a hilarious video, and I'm glad that you parodied it--the diction examples were exactly what I had in mind!

[xotsukiyume]

@tYcoriania

Thank you so much~! ^^

[jc5five]

You are reading it as though she wrote it sitting next to you. She wrote it in 1930. She wrote it trying to emphasize the obedience of women and their mistreatment. O-lan is a heroine, in what epic or novel do you think that all the actions of a hero are believable?

[xotsukiyume]

@jc5five

*shrugs* ...I thought that the unbelievability of her actions were just issue #2. Besides the convolutedness of the plot, the crappy diction and tone, and the creepy aspects of Chinese culture which she chose to emphasize, sure, it's a couple leaflets of decent pages.

[xotsukiyume]

@jc5five

But the real problem I have with O-lan's (surreal) capabilities is that Pearl S. Buck has stated in interview after interview that the purpose of this novel wasn't just to write some epic!adventure story about "teh aweshume OLAN and her equally aweshume marriage" but to "demystify" (what that means is anyone's guess here) the mysteries surrounding the orient. The whole of this video was on how she failed to do that.

[exotification]

LOLLL.

(I agree, tho!)

[abiganoush]

Funny, intelligent video. In general I like Pearl Buck - the writing can seem simpleminded but the action carries me along. She writes from deep knowledge of Imperial China. Girls were sold, men took concubines and women had low official status. The characterizations now seem condescending but in the 1920s she was countering negative stereotypes. Try "The Hidden Flower" for a trite beginning that turns into something more interesting. Thanks for the laugh. I can tell you like to think.