Plumbing the hivemind!

[oyceter]

1) So... does anyone have examples of sf/f books with third-culture kids, or anything resembling a third-culture kid?

A third-culture kid is basically someone who is born into one culture, raised in another, and then returns to the first culture or moves on to different cultures, thereby creating a "third culture" that is a mixture of the first two. Or something. The difference between a third-culture kid and an immigrant seems to be that last step of returning to the "original" culture and finding it foreign as well.

My one example so far is Temeraire, and that's a sort-of example.

2) Also, any examples of movies in which a white man goes into a non-white culture and saves it or somehow one-ups it? Or basically, movies set in non-white civilizations that still end up focusing on the white guy.

My current list:
- Last Samurai
- Dances with Wolves
- Kingdom of Heaven
- Glory
- Cry Freedom
- Blood Diamond
- Constant Gardener
- Geronimo
- The Last King of Scotland (critique + example of trope? Haven't seen it)
- Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee (from current casting reports)
- Wind Talkers

Comments

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

(1) is the Narnia books; most of the Pevenseys are never quite at home in the world again.

[littlebutfierce]

Heh heh, picking brains for WisCon panels? :) I was going over the program today--so much good stuff!

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

The Emerald Forest is almost an example of both: Based on a true story, Powers Boothe plays an American dam engineer in Brazil. Boothe's son (played by Charlie Boorman - son of director John Boorman) is kidnapped by a rain forest tribe, and raised as one of their own. Boothe continues to look for him and after many trials and adventures, stumbles upon him.

[fmanalyst.livejournal.com]

Along the same lines, Tarzan is another case of both.

[the_rck]

For #2, I think Little Big Man might qualify. This is based on my memory of my father's long plot summary (which made me decide never to see it).

[the_rck]

Along those lines, Mowgli in Kipling's Jungle Books would qualify for #1.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

1) Jeff Kerwin in The Bloody Sun. Maureen McHugh's Mission Child.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

1) Possibly Karin Lowachee's Warchild, though a) got bored, didn't finish, b) I'm not sure the protagonist gets back to his original culture till book two, if there is a book two.

Possibly Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic books, though any returning to the original culture is spread through many books.

Possibly Robert Heinlein's Tunnel in the Sky, no, really. Well, read it and see if you agree. (Oyce annoyance factor: Pro: depicts tough, capable women. Con: They all turn out to be dying to lay down their weapons and have babies.) Actually, several Heinlein books deal with people going to a new culture (often one they partially create), becoming part of it, then returning home and feeling like home os totally alien to them. See also Time Enough for the Stars, Farmer in the Sky, Have Spacesuit Will Travel.

2) Haven't seen it, but perhaps Shogun?

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

What these people need is a honky, old-school: Shogun (http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0080274/).

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

And also Magdalene/Margali from The Shattered Chain and Thendara House. Pretty much.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

A number of characters in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire are well on their way to becoming third-culture kids, should they survive that long.

[coffeeandink.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes. She's a much better/more sophisticated take on it than Kerwin, I think.

It feels like there ought to be a C.J. Cherryh example, but I can't think of one. Most of her characters become alienated (alienized?) as adults.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I thought that too, except I couldn't think of one who went back to the original culture.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

Rudyard Kipling's Kim is both one and two! It's worth reading, the physical details of India are right on.

[kate_nepveu]

I was thinking about Pierce's books, but I don't think in any of the Circle books, the kids actually go *back*. Daja and Briar have brushes with their original culture, but they end up sticking with their new one.

Arguably Kel does in the *winces at the name* Protector of the Small quartet, in the Tortall universe, but that raises the whole problem of wholesale importing Japan into a generic medievaloid world . . .

[kate_nepveu]

should they survive that long

. . . no bet.

[oyceter]

2) Haven't seen it, but perhaps Shogun?

*snort* Like you wouldn't believe. Last Samurai is an interesting update of Shogun, but it ends up falling in a lot of the same traps.

[fourthage.livejournal.com]

Books: Takeo from the Tales of the Otori series.

Movies: The Magnificent Seven.

Is is bad of me to want to offer up the Ewoks in RotJ as a counter-example to your movie list?

[oyceter]

Argh, oops. The last comment was supposed to be to the Narnia comment above.

But um, yes. LJ knows all!

I am now rabidly watching movies and attempting to take notes.

[oyceter]

Oh, duh, of course! I never thought of them that way, but it's so obvious!

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

Oh! here is something that fits *both* genres! Although it is embarassing to admit having read it (I was young and had no taste): Clan of the Cave Bear & sequels.

And, for the third-culture one, Dune? (It has been decades since I read it, but the general plot-shape seems to be what you're looking for.) Also: Harry Potter? Steven Brust's Vlad Taltos series might count eventually, but Brust hasn't actually *shown* us the part where he visited the Easterner lands.

I can think of a few other examples of characters living in a different culture, then returning to their culture-of-origin and feeling like they don't belong, but they don't have the "growing up" aspect you're looking for.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

1) Harry Potter and Cor in C. S. Lewis's _The Horse and His Boy_ (which is problematic for so very many reasons) should be examples, but they don't really work because they're both raised in ignorance. But possibly relevant to your discussion? They both have to a certain degree an idea of the return as homecoming, or the return as something somewhat idealized, which I am not very comfortable with. Perhaps also in this category: Candy Quackenbush in the Abarat books.

2) These are probably borderline, but possibly still relevant to any discussion: South Pacific; Lost in Translation; Lawrence of Arabia.

[desdenova.livejournal.com]

1) I was thinking of HP the other way 'round: he starts in mundane culture, then moves to the wizard culture, and returns to the mundane culture to find himself even more out-of-place than he previously had been.

movies Now With White People

[rushthatspeaks.livejournal.com]

Seven Years in Tibet, from all reports (note: have not seen it myself).

Amistad. An unusually well-done and historically accurate one of those, but still one of those.

The whole set of works dealing with Anna and the King of Siam-- the original musical The King And I, the movie, the later Anna and the King.

The recent The Painted Veil, in which a nasty cholera academic is the Disturbing Backdrop to the white medicine-providing protagonists' marital problems.

The friend I am sitting with (thespooniest) said he feels the treatment of the Ewoks in Return of the Jedi to be an extension of this syndrome, for lo, they cannot possibly do anything without Our Heroes and their purpose is to be cute/cuddly/exotic/helpful.

[rilina.livejournal.com]

Heh, I just realized that Echizen Ryoma in Prince of Tennis is totally a third-culture kid, though that's not an sf/f story. Unless you want to count the cracktastic magic tennis as fantasy.

I guess Carrot Ironfoundersson from Pratchett's Discworld novels doesn't really work for the same reasons as Harry Potter and Cor.