How to slaughter a great book: Amazon's Man in the High Castle
When I read that Amazon would turn Phillip K Dicks Novel into a TV Series I was sceptical and rightly so. To be honest, I only watched a few episodes and then gave up, but what really pissed me off was how much they missed the core message of the book.
The worst in the TV Series is the concept of the "resistance". In the book there is no resistance, people accept the world ( in which the Nazis and Japan have won the war and occupied the US ) as the "logical" historical outcome, they can't imagine a different course of history. The only character in the book who could be perceived as "resistance" is a german officer who is extremely disillusioned and pragmatic, to the depressing extend that his only "hope" is to support the SS versus the german army ( which wants a nuclear war ).
And this is the whole point of the novel, the fact that there is a book inside the novel most of the characters read or hear about which shows them that there ARE possibilities and that history could have ( and still can ) take a very different course. They all at some point get it on a different level, either understanding that the book is a threat or something which gives hope. Simply understanding that the world doesn't have to be like this IS the message. Amazon's series tries something simlar with "forbidden films" but it just doesn't work, because it is not about getting hold of that film material ( as in the series ) but about the idea.
As a sidenote, in that way Amazon did to the novel a similar thing the movie version did to "V for Vendetta".
Rant over ;)
The worst in the TV Series is the concept of the "resistance". In the book there is no resistance, people accept the world ( in which the Nazis and Japan have won the war and occupied the US ) as the "logical" historical outcome, they can't imagine a different course of history. The only character in the book who could be perceived as "resistance" is a german officer who is extremely disillusioned and pragmatic, to the depressing extend that his only "hope" is to support the SS versus the german army ( which wants a nuclear war ).
And this is the whole point of the novel, the fact that there is a book inside the novel most of the characters read or hear about which shows them that there ARE possibilities and that history could have ( and still can ) take a very different course. They all at some point get it on a different level, either understanding that the book is a threat or something which gives hope. Simply understanding that the world doesn't have to be like this IS the message. Amazon's series tries something simlar with "forbidden films" but it just doesn't work, because it is not about getting hold of that film material ( as in the series ) but about the idea.
As a sidenote, in that way Amazon did to the novel a similar thing the movie version did to "V for Vendetta".
Rant over ;)
