How Netflix’s ‘3 Body Problem’ Fixed the Book’s Sexism Issue

With Netflix adaptation of the trippy Chinese language sci-fi novel The Three-Physique Drawback, David Benioff, D. B. Weiss, and Alexander Woo have taken a dense guide about thinly drawn characters fixing math issues and turned it right into a visually beautiful sci-fi horror-mystery. Now, it’s true that the collection has not noted the breathless passages about Newtonian physics that made the guide and its two sequels so engrossing. Nevertheless, lengthy stretches of characters explaining trigonometry wouldn’t look nice on TV. We watch TV to unwind – to not turn out to be higher individuals. 

Nonetheless, 3 Physique Drawback may have benefited from a bit extra exhausting science if it actually wished to seize the cerebral twistiness of its supply materials. It may have additionally benefited from a bit extra nuance in its depictions of its most important characters. To be truthful, although, the present didn’t have a lot to go on. It even needed to invent some characters to make up for the novel’s dearth of them. Certainly, in a single case, it even improved upon a personality by expunging the sexism that plagued her novelized model. 

As a type of leisure in a visible medium and all, Netflix’s 3 Physique Drawback needed to give us flesh-and-blood people to root for. That’s how characters like the rich Jack Rooney (John Bradley) got here to life. By rising to love or no less than tolerate him, we discovered to worry for his security when the more and more threatening ETO got here knocking. Moreover, Auggie (Eiza Gonzalez) is basically an invention for the collection; she seems to be based mostly on a male character from the novel. That aforementioned male character has been break up into two feminine characters for the collection, each of whom are way more dynamic than their novel counterpart. The opposite is Jin Cheng (Jess Hong). 

Although each characters are largely outlined by the plot mechanics that they set in movement, they nonetheless present a welcome feminine presence on a present that might have simply turn out to be a sexist mess. Revealed from 2006 to 2010, the Three-Physique trilogy – dubbed Remembrance of Earth’s Previous – was virtually heavy-handed in its argument that girls weren’t able to main the world from destruction. In conventional Chinese language method, the novel’s writer Liu Cixin in the end makes a case for yin and yang, suggesting that girls want the logic of males to steadiness them and mood their irrationality. Furthermore, Cixin makes the character of the previous revolutionary Ye Wenjie right into a quasi-villain just because she reveals morbid curiosity in an alien species. (Properly, she additionally wished to see the world burn, however principally, she simply wished to convey Earth into a brand new period of interstellar communication.) In any case, she’s depicted as an untrustworthy, incompetent,  irrational legal responsibility. General, Cixin is just not shy in blaming the Earth’s destruction on girls like Ye Wenjie, and even claims that the Earth of his novels is doomed as a result of it’s too “feminized.” 

The collection, fortunately, has been stripped of that sexism. Ye Wenjie is portrayed as a principled anti-hero moderately than a hothead devoid of logic. When she presses the button that contacts the Trisolarans, the motion is framed as a Regina George “watch the world burn” second as a substitute of a contemptible act of self-destruction. Plus, at no level is she, or another girl, depicted as irrational as a result of she’s a girl. Actually, one may argue that the lads of this collection are the foolish ones. In fact, that’s partly as a result of there are merely extra girls on this collection. (By episode 5, Jin Cheng is the present’s closest factor to a protagonist).

Extra doubtless, it’s since this present was made for an American viewers. In China, in any case, feminism tends to look lots completely different. Whereas China does produce feminists who share views which are just like Western feminists, these Chinese language progressives typically function inside an antagonistic framework. Because of the ruling Chinese language Communist Occasion’s stranglehold over media, Chinese language feminists typically can’t use well-worn hashtags like #MeToo with out being flagged and reported to the federal government. This often leads to the federal government deleting their accounts. Thus, feminists resort to utilizing code phrases reminiscent of mitu (actually, “rice bunny”) to avoid this. General, this provides as much as an setting that’s not very pleasant to the struggle for feminine equality. So, you may think about why this model of 3 Physique Drawback may not have gone over as nicely in China. (Actually, it could be why China produced its personal TV adaptation of the novel final 12 months.)

So, when all is alleged and carried out, the American 3 Physique Drawback has managed to adapt its supply materials in additional methods than one – thematically, visually, and culturally. And contemplating what may have been if it didn’t achieve that final endeavor, we must always in all probability be grateful. Netflix doesn’t want one other controversy after airing all of these problematic comedy specials that it’s turn out to be recognized for. Now let’s simply hope that it will get issues proper once more for 3 Physique Drawback 2.