veronica (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
aberration) wrote2021-01-22 10:31 am
aberration) wrote2021-01-22 10:31 am
Entry tags:
is not the experience of one life only
So MANY THINGS HAVE HAPPENED IN THE WORLD and... I'm here to talk about more movies and tv shows and books.
Movies I've logged, cut again for many movies!
Enola Holmes (2020) ★★★
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020) ★★★★
Last Christmas (2019) ★★★
Love Actually (2003) ★★1/2
Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) ★★1/2
Amélie (2001) ★★★★1/2
Wonder Woman (2017) ★★★1/2
Pride & Prejudice (2005) ★★★
Let Them All Talk (2020) ★★★1/2
Treasure Planet (2002) ★★★
Run (2020) ★★★★
The Princess Switch (2018) ★★1/2
The Princess Switch: Switched Again (2020) ★★1/2
The Wizard of Oz (1939) ★★★★
Cats (1998) ★★★1/2
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018) ★★
Finding Nemo (2003) ★★★
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016) ★★
Brother Bear (2003) ★★★
So I talk about Wonder Woman 1984 up there in my letterboxd log but here are more expansive comments –
So in 2015 I saw the movie Tomorrowland and it's generally a bad movie, but I spent most of the movie assuming a certain thing was going to happen at the end, and that assumption so colored my view of everything that happened up until the end that when the thing I thought was So Obviously Going To Happen didn't it… totally fucked with my view of the movie as a whole, like I hadn't really watched it because I hadn't seen anything the way it was intended to be seen.
Watching Wonder Woman 1984 gave me the second time I've had this experience. Because right up until the moment she got her powers back, I had assumed that Very Obviously Diana losing her powers was the cost of Barbara's wish, not Diana's. It seemed completely logical and obvious that Barbara wishing she had Diana's powers (even accidentally) would mean that Diana in turn would lose them. I know that Diana losing her powers came after Barbara's wish and after Barbara's wish started coming true; I think it may have been before Barbara started noticing she had Diana's powers, but... that would still make sense, one would transition into the other. Like, obviously Diana losing her powers would be related to another power-related thing! Why would the cost of Diana's wish be completely random and have nothing to do with what her wish was?!?! That's not how monkey's paw works it's supposed to be a twist on your wish I just -
... okay. And I thought this would be the point, that if what you want for yourself comes at a cost to others, you should care about that. And I want to make it clear here how much these assumptions completely fucked up my view of this movie – I thought it was very obvious that the 'cost' of the wish wouldn't be borne by the person making the wish, but by someone else, and that choosing to keep the wish would mean choosing to continue harming another person, while the wisher reaped the benefits of that harm.
WHICH SURE WOULD HAVE BEEN A LOT BETTER AND MADE A LOT MORE SENSE. I don't know what's worse, when I just spend a whole movie annoyed that it's not really making sense or when I spend a good chunk of a movie fooling myself into thinking it's making sense and then get slapped in the face with it. ughkjafklj.
I in turn assumed the cost of Diana's wish had been that some random guy was being possessed by Steve Trevor, that this was in fact probably something both the characters and the audience should care about. And APPARENTLY NOT. The problem with something like this should be so obvious that I don't know why I even have to discuss it, and it's to the point where I just don't see a point in getting into it if the media franchise hasn't otherwise defined a type of magical 'possession' and how it functions (which arguably they did in Suicide Squad but I even less want to talk about that movie). Because I know they did not intend to make Wonder Woman honestly kind of a rapist. They were stupid and did a stupid thing and there's not much else I can say about it.
(like ffs, this is magic, if you wanted a consequenceless Steve Trevor at least with respect to his resurrection he could just be fucking alive again! who cares! apparently there are no rules!)
And again not to be all whatever but – that???? makes????? way more sense??????????????? Especially given how the third act plays out?????? It makes way more sense that renouncing the wish is about relieving what it has cost another person, not helping yourself???? It honestly would have been way more compelling if Diana getting her powers back relied on Barbara giving up her wish, especially given the very end relies on Diana just talking and not using her powers anyway???? (I think you could even justify Diana still being able to fly because they carefully laid out that she didn't have that power before.)
I guess this also maybe reveals something about my values, but I actually think that even works with the beginning sequence of young Diana trying to cheat in the competition. Because really – if Diana wasn't racing the other women, I could care less that she found a shortcut to her goal. That's not a bad thing! It's called problem-solving! But in a race, it is bad to deviate from the course all the competitors agreed upon. Diana's victory would have come at a cost to the other competitors who also trained and worked hard and abided by the rules of the game. 'Things are wrong when they hurt other people' – what's so bad about that?
But, okay, fine, whatever. The other problem with this 'careful what you wish for' moral, aside from that in this situation that's not what it is it's not careful what you wish for if the cost is totally arbitrary (I think the movie maybe said something about the 'cost' being what the wisher valued most but – bullshit! What, Lord valued his physical health the most? Diana really valued her powers the most? Barbara valued... not being evil? wtf?)
So anyway, that's the wish-side problem and it's weird for a movie's message to be 'you shouldn't want things' basically. It is, yes, ridiculous for the movie to compare Barbara's desire for social standing and recognizable beauty with Diana as a girl wanting to cheat in a race. This is silly, you know it's silly, whatever.
But while it's torture to engage in the would have/should have as an audience, one idea from this movie that is haunting me is Maxwell Lord and the wish power. Because the idea of specifically having a villain with the power to grant other people's wishes, and needing people to make those wishes, is really intriguing to me – though in this movie it essentially meant omnipotence because limitations like 'it has to be someone else's wish' or 'it makes you subject to another's desires' didn't really matter, Lord just tricked people into wishing things and then did whatever he wanted. I did enjoy the moment when Lord snapped at a religious person to stop praying for what they wanted because that's not the same, but it didn't matter, and I actually thought for a second something might come of Lord's son wishing for him to be good, or wishing for him to come home, but that also didn't end up mattering.
The other problem with how the movie handled this ability is that this idea of being able to grant other people's wishes ... like, it fit Lord's media persona more than it did his actual personal motivations. What he actually personally wanted was wealth and power, other people only factored into that to the extent that it would help him accomplish that wealth and power (the exception being his son). So when he wished to 'become' the wishing stone I didn't get it, I'd thought he'd just wish for the wealth and power he wanted. I get that he could have been wishing around the monkey's paw aspect of the stone, but... we also know it wasn't because it didn't work, and also separately as discussed above this movie doesn't seem to really understand how the monkey's paw works.
But the idea of a villain who actually is motivated by a desire to give people what they want is way more interesting to me and I think fits with the 80s consumerism/'greed is good' culture that it... seemed like the movie was critiquing? And I think it also would have fit with the mind control aspects of comic book Lord's character, like leveraging people's desires against their agency. (I also do not at all get making him an oil baron instead of a media mogul, that seems so arbitrary, other than to edge toward political comments they sure should not have been making)
But I just got really stuck on that idea of a villain who sincerely wants to give people what they want, yet disregards the potential negative consequences or ramifications of doing so. It's a motivation that seems unselfish but still, at its core, is about self-aggrandizement. And what's absolutely tormenting me is that this would be an amazing parallel to the themes of self-sacrifice that both this and the previous movie engaged in, especially with regard to Steve Trevor (though also could have been about Diana!). That giving of oneself isn't about making people happy or making people like you, but about doing what needs to be done to accomplish the most good. and I hate this I HATE THIS. And this also could have worked perfectly well with the sudden backstory they ended up giving Lord right at the end. Honestly, are script doctors still a thing in Hollywood? Because I feel like I've seen a few movies recently with salvageable ideas in the script but that definitely needed some serious reworking.
Which also why do this moralizing nonsense of a plot at all. The weak attempts to tie it into Diana's "truth" thing doesn't work because it... doesn't make any sense and also doesn't actually matter for anything, and then they also try to tie the crystal to the WW villain 'Duke of Deception' which also doesn't actually matter! Not to mention the weird political commentary (obviously the stuff in the Middle East but ahahaha I forgot this was in the 80s during that one everyone wishing scene with the woman and man arguing and was like 'wow get rid of the Irish is kind of a quick escalation') which honestly was so nonsensical that it's hard for me to seriously talk about it. And like. YOU CAN'T HAVE EVERYTHING MOVIE. WHICH IS A THING YOU SHOULD KNOW. SINCE THAT'S LITERALLY YOUR ENTIRE THEME. Just choose a theme that isn't bad and tie it into the 80s cultural setting and fucking. stop.
Anyway whatever. Things I liked:
- There were characters and a plot and the dialogue was like, people responding to things other people were saying, this is really starting to become my bar.
- I liked the photo of Diana and old!Etta Candy at the beginning
- I generally like how I'm guessing Patty Jenkins approaches Diana's character, it was more just... this plot and stupid theming that messed it up. (Though for some reason it did straight up annoyed me that Diana apologized so profusely before electrocuting Barbara lol she didn't even die! You've punched her in the face like ten times already!)
- I mean I enjoyed the Amazon race at the beginning
- This movie includes for me examples of what I find a fun reference vs. an unnecessary one. The 'invisible jet' thing, I thought, was fun – Diana's magic is a little vague, but I'm willing to go with that, and the need for an invisible plane did arise organically from the story and also worked well with other aspects of that scene ("Well shit, Diana!" – absolutely hilarious). It all comes together and the reference is like the cherry on top.
The less good reference for me was the special armor. Which, it wasn't bad, it just was thrown in for no real reason and served on real purpose beyond I guess the Lynda Carter post-credits cameo. Of course in the version of this movie in my head where Barbara would have to renounce her wish for Diana to have her powers back, it could have been something to help Diana fight instead. whatever.
- There are honestly a lot of things I like about this movie in principle though not in execution. I like the idea of Diana/the main character being complicit in the overall problem. I like the idea of Diana winning by appealing to our better angels on a mass scale. Especially in a WW story, I like that both villains are ultimately at least sort of redeemed. I like what felt like in the end an appeal to sacrifice personal benefit in consideration of others' needs (which again would have worked better if the wishes inherently hurt other people AND THAT WAS THE PROBLEM but whatever!)
- Okay not the movie but I listened to the "Blue Monday" arrangement for this movie's trailer just repeatedly for months.
anyway yeah. It's a disappointing follow up with not great messages and honestly takes way too much of the narrative away from Diana. But also my view of it is fucked up because I was basically watching the wrong movie for like 75% of it.
And we watched this video about the 2019 Cats movie (as a note, the description of the video links to an unlisted version that has the proper music in it because the posted video has been edited due to shitty DMCA claims). And now, well –
I'd seen this musical onstage when I was a kid, and I remembered really nothing about it, aside from "Memory" which I think was more cultural osmosis than anything else. We watched the 1998 recording of the stage show after watching this video, and while I never really recall disliking the musical, it did feel like watching all these examples of this production being done very badly helped me appreciate how and why it works when it's, you know, not done badly.
Which yeah, for one thing it doesn't have a plot or a straightforward narrative in general, it's basically like The Nutcracker where we're all just showing off at a party and any 'plot' is more or less perfunctory. And yeah, I do think musicals and obviously ballets can generally pull off 'this is more or less a vehicle for showing off song and dance abilities.' And in this particular case, except for "Memory," Andrew Lloyd Webber was literally just setting poems to music. And they were poems for children about cats. By which I mean – with the exception of the whole Heavyside Layer thing which yes that's random and weird, these songs are all actually pretty straightforward. The Gumbie Cat teaches mice. The Rum Tum Tugger is a fickle tomcat. Macavity's a troublemaker made literal criminal mastermind. Mr. Mistoffelees is like if that cat that could seem to slip through walls was literally a magician. In her video about Cats, Lindsay Ellis talks about how the musical performers tended to emulate more the 'idea of a cat' than an actual cat, which tracks along with this – the poems take familiar aspects of cat behavior and exaggerate them/make them literal or invert them for humorous effect, as you know, is common in media for children.
I guess the question is whether a transition to film meant this needed to be turned into an actual three-act-structure-style story with a protagonist. Which, I don't know – the way the musical is structured makes it hard for it to work as a star vehicle (most of the songs are not sung by the character they're about, the spotlight is only briefly on any one character and then they're just part of the chorus), and while song-and-dance film musicals have definitely been a thing, they haven't been a thing terribly recently. And those that have been successful, like Chicago or Moulin Rouge have had straightforward plots and star-vehicle convenient protagonists. And also directors who knew something about how the fuck how to film a musical, I'm sorry. But I also kind of think you could attach a big name on Grizabella and then just glide on that for the rest – I mean, that's what the actual blockbuster musical basically did, isn't it? Either way, if you're going to try to force Cats into the standard movie format, that's going to require really big changes that will inevitably cut into nostalgia factors that will drive people to see it in the first place. So go big or go home on that front.
Or just half-ass everything! Whatever!
So, particular complaints:
- Look, setting aside any musical abilities issues, Rebel Wilson is a PARODICALLY terrible choice for Jennnyanydots. This character is closest to like a middle-aged British school teacher or nanny. Like that's the dichotomy, she's lazy all day and then at night she's a busybody who's teaching MANNERS to MICE. It's a silly joke from a POEM for CHILDREN, a cat teaching manners to mice! This is like an Emma Thompson role. It really seems like their entire approach to this was honestly 'well Jennyanydots starts the number wearing a coat that gives her a big frame and you know who's fat' like it's shitty but that's how it comes off. And speaking of that – WHY WOULDN'T YOU JUST PUT HER IN A BATHROBE OR SOMETHING? THAT'S LITERALLY WHAT HAPPENS IN THE SHOW, SHE'S WEARING LIKE A BIG ROBE AND THEN HAS THE DANCER OUTFIT UNDERNEATH, WHY THE FUCK, WHY THE FUCK. And then Rebel Wilson doesn't even fucking dance! What's the point!!!
And not to even whatever, but aside from being extremely weird and creepy looking, having Jennyanydots threatening her mice children and actually eating one of the roach people doesn't work because literally the entire joke of the song/poem is that she's a cat who teaches her prey manners. Like I don't know how to spell this out more clearly, that she's not eating them is the joke. It's like if you retold the story of the tortoise and the hare but had the tortoise win by having trained in secret to actually be very fast – that he's slow and wins anyway is the point that is the level of children's fable simple this is. If you're going to keep these weird visuals or otherwise take the song so literally, it at least would have made more sense for one of the other cats to try to nab one and her swipe them away.
And I'm not saying you can't play around with these characterizations, obviously you can in something like Cats where outside of their 1 song it's not going to matter – but you probably need just a little more of a vision than 'Rebel Wilson dicks around.' And it does, at least, need to work with the music – the silly transition from lazy house cat to busy teacher to flashy dancer, and the contrast between those three, is how the song is structured. If you ignore that structure, well, like the movie, it's just a bunch of random stuff happening without at least some kind of organization. You know, and the body horror. (And you know, also regarding the song itself, you cannot in fact just choose one part of a three-part harmony and be like, bam, done, solo now, wtf. Especially when that three part harmony is evoking a very specific and recognizable style of music!)
- On that note, Skimbleshanks parts from the 1998 recorded version at least in that in the 1998 version Skimbleshanks is very prim and proper and the film's versions is looser and a little suave/flirty, and it's fine, as it doesn't, you know, undermine the basic premise of the song.
- And I'm not even going to touch special effects because I honestly just hit a point of "ugh, whatever" when it came to the visuals. Like I'll even say this – I actually liked a lot of the sets, I genuinely kind of like the weird proportion thing and I liked the Ancient Egyptian-themed theater and the blue-purple color scheme used in some of the other sets. It does seem like there was this tension of 'is this the real world but from a cat's perspective or a world for anthropomorphic cats' and they probably should have... resolved that, but. That is the least of my concerns.
- Is there anything more telling than turning "The Rum Tum Tugger is a terrible bore" line read from something kind of flirtatiously teasing to manbaby whining because the girl won't look at him, seriously.
- Everything trying to give a plot to this movie is bad, but the specific, confirmed statement that Grizabella ran off with Macavity turns "Memory" into an apology, instead of a plea for compassion, and WHY. why why why why why. Why can't it just be that it's easy to look down on people who are down on their luck? And, yes, why the fuck would you write a song that works only undermine "Memory" which the single most important number in the musical and the show's emotional core? Why use Victoria to tear Grizabella down, what were you thinking? (Also what even is Victoria's deal? All the other cats are clearly very accepting of her and flirt with her like immediately, why is she whining about... having her entire life ahead of her?)
After a couple times of watching that video and the thorough dissection of how the movie doesn't seem to understand the importance of basic musical structures, I did pull up the movie's rendition of Skimbleshanks, one the few numbers that does more or less work, and I was struck by the very simple pleasure of a MELODY that builds and resolves itself to a BEAT.
you know. MUSIC.
anyway, Cats opinions, there you go
And then in streaming/television we also did the post-Christmas watch of Bridgerton, which I... did not especially like so let me go on for a bit about that I guess.
So keeping in mind that it is extremely not the point, these are the three Historical Accuracy things that bugged me:
(1) As this shorthand to show how bad Baroness Featherington is, she's introduced super tightlacing one of her daughters into a corset. I've now watched enough Historical Costume YouTube to be wary of the simple corset = oppression narrative, but in this case in particular it's just – tightlacing a corset was done to create an hourglass-like silhouette that emphasized a small waist, and Regency era fashion very famously embraced the Empire silhouette which does not reflect that kind of shape at all. Which is shown in this show! Where people wear clothes that generally follow that Regency-typical Empire silhouette that basically hides the waist! So why would she be tightlacing to have a tiny waist that the cut of her dress would entirely conceal anyway??? It just feels like an overly lazy shorthand that could have been accomplished another way.
(2) I again cannot emphasize enough how very little I care about strict or really serious historical accuracy BUT – this show was at least advertised pretty heavily on playing with the drama of the 'social season' and the social stratification of the period, both of which are good elements to mine for drama. But then honestly... not that much is delivered for that. This show's idea of the 'social season' seems to be 'the Queen decides who The Prettiest Girl is and everyone else just has to pray someone will save them from spinsterhood' which, what. It sounds like the book at least made a little more sense on this part given that Daphne was on her third season or so and men seemed to have an attitude toward her of 'fun to talk to but not marriage material,' but in this show it was like, 'oh there's ANOTHER girl who is also PRETTY, now Daphne's going to die an old maid.' And maybe more leaning into the ahistorical aspects, it was just totally beyond belief that Queen Charlotte would be pushing so hard for her prince nephew to marry Daphne, the daughter of a goddamn viscount, just because she had declared her Prettiest Girl of the Ball or whatever. Which again, I wouldn't care, except that it's weird to selectively ignore these issues of social stratification and takes away from attempts to use it in other contexts (like the older brother and the opera singer, which was honestly... pointless).
(Actually did you know that the Queen Charlotte's Ball specifically honored Queen Charlotte's birthday, and that the new debutants at the ball would curtsey to Queen Charlotte while she stood next to a large cake? And that all subsequent monarchs did this until the ball was abolished by Queen Elizabeth II? WHERE IS MY GIANT CAKE???? Also I believe in the modern iteration of the ball the debutants cut the cake WITH A SWORD and that is some historical inaccuracy I am absolutely here for.)
(I swear I don't have that much emotional investment in this.)
(3) Okay this is probably overly picky but it annoys me that they changed the opera singer's name from 'Maria' to 'Siena.' Maria Rosso is a pretty straightforward, obviously Italian name; Siena, as far as I know, is a name that's only really come into fashion in the last fifteen years or so, and is also to my knowledge mostly a thing in the English-speaking world and not so much Italy itself (I mean they don't name people Firenze or Venezia or Verona in Italy very much either to my knowledge). And the other names used in the show, whether or not they were maybe period-accurate, were period-evocative, which... seems to be the overall point? So I don't get changing a name that would have worked for that to one that is both modern-sounding doesn't fit a character whose name is at least theoretically, I guess, supposed to be Italian. Also you couldn't get an actor to at least fake an Italian accent for her come on where's the fun. Tom Hughes has been fake-German-accenting his way through three seasons of Victoria ffs.
Anyway, other than that... I mean I mostly didn't like this show because nearly everyone is some kind combination of mean or stupid, or they just don't do anything at all and so are boring. Whatever, let's break it down by plot:
Anthony and his bee issues or whatever – His extremely boring affair with an opera singer is absurdly, extremely boring, like it takes active work to make something this boring I don't understand. She's only here for sex scenes and then to whine when he inevitably leaves her yet again, why the fuck does she care so much. I think in the book she... doesn't, and something about despite having a lower social status than many of the women in this story, she has comparatively more freedom, could have been kind of interesting. But honestly this whole thing is so indicative of how this show seems to think it's accomplished "being interesting" by like, having sex scenes. But in REGENCY period, scandal!!!!
Anyway, besides that he's so pointlessly mean that I actually thought he was purposefully sabotaging Daphne's prospects. I seriously have no idea what this character is meant to be doing or what we're supposed to get out of this.
The Featherington Household – I've discussed some of the flat characterization here in the corset thing above, but aside from that, this really comes down to Penelope and Marina, which ultimately is mostly Marina in her bedroom being sad for like 80% of this show and then Marina and Penelope's awful battle for Colin that just made me hate everyone, which you know is partly because – does Colin do literally anything in this show besides be at the center of this love triangle? Like, literally anything at all? Here is everything I know about Colin: he shows some interest in Marina and Penelope likes him. There, that's it, how is that literally it. I couldn't relate to Penelope's feelings for Colin because I had no idea at all why she liked him, and then I found her outing Marina so utterly reprehensible that I just kind of hated her by the end of it (knowing Penelope was Lady Whistledown going in I guess didn't help things in that regard, but making it a last minute twist means we're just left with what Penelope did to Marina with no real addressing it). And Marina honestly just became more pitiful than anything else, like even her scheming about Colin didn't give her any sense of agency.
Eloise Bridgerton – I get it, she likes books. I can imagine liking... other versions of these characters, where they were given more to do, and I will acknowledge Eloise is hurt here by me not caring very much about her search for Lady Whistledown given that I already knew the answer, but ultimately she just flipped between following obvious theories and reminding Daphne that She Likes Books, She Is A Girl Who Likes Books.
Benedict Bridgerton – About around the orgy scene I'd hit the point of yelling "Is anyone in this show going to be GAY?" so I guess that happened.
Queen Charlotte – I actually found the one scene that really deals with her relationship with her husband to be pretty interesting, but then she spends literally all of the rest of the show whining about a gossip pamphlet and being obsessed with her Prettiest Girl contest.
Daphne Bridgerton – Her initial contempt for Simon does not feel earned or motivated, and I don't know, it's a weird way to introduce your main character. I get that maybe some people are into this, girl is incredibly rude and guy is very gracious and then girl realizes guy is in love with her thing but. In a show again full of people being variously stupid and mean, it didn't do much to endear her to me. I know the nominal reason is that she knows Simon is her brother's friend and so I guess is also probably going around sleeping with opera singers but... why does she care, honestly? Because she totally believes in the rules of polite society? Because she thinks that means he would inevitably treat her the same way? Because she feels bad for the women he maybe sleeps with and then leaves? I guess it could be any of these things, but I don't know, clearly showing the specific reasons why your main character is being consistently rude to this handsome man who is only every gracious to her seems like some pretty basic storytelling work.
I didn't really care about their rushed courtship, because like I said above I thought everything in the way this show depicts the social season and social stratification was... well, lazy or kind of stupid. But there were some moments I liked from Daphne: I could enjoy the conversations she and Simon had once she wasn't snapping at him for like, existing near her. I found her learning about being a duchess and the complications and pitfalls that came with handling an estate and the local population to be genuinely interesting. I was not really into her whole getting someone to explain sex to her thing, though it did make me genuinely curious about the history of sex education.
And then there's That Scene, which honestly I don't even want to deal with so I won't. Bottom line there were some things involving her storyline I found interesting, but mostly she was mean and then she was flat.
Simon Basset – Okay someone who is not mean and mostly not stupid or at least his stupid is motivated stubbornness. Though that motivation that drives kind of everything he does, his anger at his father, shows the perils of making changes in adaptation that aren't followed through. To my knowledge, in the book, Simon hated his father because of his father's obsession with the ducal bloodline and continuing that bloodline, and so Simon's determination to never have children follows directly from that.
The problem is that Simon's father's motivation in the show is more nuanced. The show cast Black actors for the Basset family and then, instead of basically not commenting on this casting at all, makes this suggestion that the noble titles of people of color in this world are more fragile and tenuous than those belonging to white families. While the former Duke of Hastings is monstrous in his anger toward what he perceives as his son's failures, he expresses the fear that his child must be exceptional, as their family in particular is under constant pressure to show they are worthy of their titles.
Like, I've seen people say that people of color in this show are simply totally equal to white people and this show exists in a universe with no race issues, which would have been a 100% fine way to approach it – but that's not true? Simon's father clearly seems to think his family faces pressure that his white peers don't. The problem is that this is basically one line of the show and then is never mentioned again. It's not something Simon seems concerned about, nor... again I can't remember it coming up again at all? I think maybe Lady Danbury said something to Simon that alluded to it at some point, but that's it. And there was opportunity to explore this a little more, like one way it could have been used with the Social Stratification issues would be that Daphne's family's title would put her not inconsiderably lower than that of a Duke, but her family's investiture would be older and her whiteness would protect her from the scrutiny Simon might face. Again, none of this had to be in here, but as it was it's kind of weird to make it a thing and then basically ignore it later.
And the problem is that changing that motivation means that Simon's reaction doesn't really work anymore – not having children does not resolve the underlying problem Simon's father was reacting to, and it makes his reasoning for not wanting children just feel weak. Like your dad is dead, he's not going to know or care, and you're not preventing the thing he specifically wanted anymore by doing it, so who cares. And the thing is there were stronger motivation options for Simon readily available. He could have feared that he might act like his father when subjected to the same pressures that his father was, that he might also be terrible to his children. Or honestly he could have even just been afraid of Daphne dying in childbirth since his own mother died in childbirth, and then being left raising his children alone and ... again being afraid of being like this father, like being afraid of being like your bad parent is an effective motivation all I'm saying. Incorporating either of those motivations would have tied much more directly into Simon's actions.
Like, if you're adapting something and you change an element of a character's central motivation, that should change the character and their actions, too. To me this is like saying that because 2+2 = 4, 3 + 2 + 2 also = 4. Nope, you've changed the equation, your answer has to reflect that or you have to make more modifications to get the answer you want!
anyway, whatever, I didn't like this show very much.
We also watched the first season of Pose, which I think I'll talk about after we've watched the second season, and an Italian show about witches that is not A Discovery of Witches, called Luna Nera, which I may talk about in its own post because that would be funny.
And I've read some books, among them The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, warning for discussion of sexual violence –
This is a retelling of the Trojan War almost entirely from the point of view of Briseis. If you don't remember all the details of The Illiad or the Trojan War or didn't read it because whatever, Briseis had been married to a prince until her city was sacked by the Greek army during the war, and she was given as a slave to Achilles. The main role she plays in The Illiad is in a dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon, where Agamemnon demands Achilles give Briseis to him and Achilles responds by abandoning the battle until Patroclus' death.
The general aim of the book is pretty apparently to give a woman's perspective on this story, which basically means it's a horror show. Briseis's family is slaughtered and she is raped every day and this happens to more or less every woman in the story. It's a natural reality that's not really of interest to the male perspectives around them. And Pat Barker is very effective at conveying this. It is a miserable story to read, but she also includes some piercing moments that, we'll say, rip up the stitches of the men's narratives. King Priam comes personally to Achilles, asking to take the body of his son Hector, and the book quotes The Illiad, "I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before – I put my lips to the hands of the man who killed my son" – to which Briseis thinks in response, "I have done what countless women have done before, I've spread my legs for the man who killed my husband."
My only qualm is the book ends up spending a lot of time from the perspectives of Achilles and Patroclus, which ... seems counterproductive and unnecessary. We know who they are, we don't need them explained, and I think they would have been better served as only viewed from the point of view of Briseis and the other women. The book that's supposed to be about women's views on this should keep to that, even if you have some great Achilles and Patroclus ideas.
I also think it would have been nice to have chapters from the point of view of women other than Briseis, who as awful as her situation is still occupied a very particular place in this camp. We do get some other women's perspectives, but it's only in what they say to Briseis and through Briseis' judgment of them. So I feel like the book would have been served letting them be the viewpoint characters as well, instead of you know, two of the most famous men in this story.
– and The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin –
So at first I found this pretty interesting, I liked the worldbuilding and my biggest complaint about A Wizard of Earthsea was that there weren't very many women in it and I'd like to see a wizard school that includes students who aren't boys, too.
And then, uh, Ged shows up, tells the main character her culture and religion are all Bad and Wrong, and then the book ends. Cool! uh.
That being said I rarely have encountered a book where the author writes a long afterword directly addressing all of my complaints, and I... sure didn't agree with Ursula K. LeGuin on anything in it. "This inverts the usual narrative by having the enlightened person of color encounter/save the white barbarian" okay but the 'barbarian' narrative is also inherently bad. "I can't give women a place of agency in these stories because even though it's fantasy it still has to reflect some reality" THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT NOT INCLUDING PEOPLE OF COLOR.
so yeah I don't think I'm going to continue this series because I don't really feel like I'm going to get something that really engages me out of it.
... and because consuming media is pretty much the only non-work thing I can do in life right now... yep! My parents may be getting their first vaccine doses soon, though, so I'm excited for them.
Yeah, other than that it's perpetually checking for updates on my laptop that I had to send in for repair because one of its fan was making an ear-splitting screech, and um, less doomscrolling! I do appreciate the latter.
Movies I've logged, cut again for many movies!
Enola Holmes (2020) ★★★
Ma Rainey's Black Bottom (2020) ★★★★
Last Christmas (2019) ★★★
Love Actually (2003) ★★1/2
Wonder Woman 1984 (2020) ★★1/2
Amélie (2001) ★★★★1/2
Wonder Woman (2017) ★★★1/2
Pride & Prejudice (2005) ★★★
Let Them All Talk (2020) ★★★1/2
Treasure Planet (2002) ★★★
Run (2020) ★★★★
The Princess Switch (2018) ★★1/2
The Princess Switch: Switched Again (2020) ★★1/2
The Wizard of Oz (1939) ★★★★
Cats (1998) ★★★1/2
The Nutcracker and the Four Realms (2018) ★★
Finding Nemo (2003) ★★★
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon: Sword of Destiny (2016) ★★
Brother Bear (2003) ★★★
So I talk about Wonder Woman 1984 up there in my letterboxd log but here are more expansive comments –
So in 2015 I saw the movie Tomorrowland and it's generally a bad movie, but I spent most of the movie assuming a certain thing was going to happen at the end, and that assumption so colored my view of everything that happened up until the end that when the thing I thought was So Obviously Going To Happen didn't it… totally fucked with my view of the movie as a whole, like I hadn't really watched it because I hadn't seen anything the way it was intended to be seen.
Watching Wonder Woman 1984 gave me the second time I've had this experience. Because right up until the moment she got her powers back, I had assumed that Very Obviously Diana losing her powers was the cost of Barbara's wish, not Diana's. It seemed completely logical and obvious that Barbara wishing she had Diana's powers (even accidentally) would mean that Diana in turn would lose them. I know that Diana losing her powers came after Barbara's wish and after Barbara's wish started coming true; I think it may have been before Barbara started noticing she had Diana's powers, but... that would still make sense, one would transition into the other. Like, obviously Diana losing her powers would be related to another power-related thing! Why would the cost of Diana's wish be completely random and have nothing to do with what her wish was?!?! That's not how monkey's paw works it's supposed to be a twist on your wish I just -
... okay. And I thought this would be the point, that if what you want for yourself comes at a cost to others, you should care about that. And I want to make it clear here how much these assumptions completely fucked up my view of this movie – I thought it was very obvious that the 'cost' of the wish wouldn't be borne by the person making the wish, but by someone else, and that choosing to keep the wish would mean choosing to continue harming another person, while the wisher reaped the benefits of that harm.
WHICH SURE WOULD HAVE BEEN A LOT BETTER AND MADE A LOT MORE SENSE. I don't know what's worse, when I just spend a whole movie annoyed that it's not really making sense or when I spend a good chunk of a movie fooling myself into thinking it's making sense and then get slapped in the face with it. ughkjafklj.
I in turn assumed the cost of Diana's wish had been that some random guy was being possessed by Steve Trevor, that this was in fact probably something both the characters and the audience should care about. And APPARENTLY NOT. The problem with something like this should be so obvious that I don't know why I even have to discuss it, and it's to the point where I just don't see a point in getting into it if the media franchise hasn't otherwise defined a type of magical 'possession' and how it functions (which arguably they did in Suicide Squad but I even less want to talk about that movie). Because I know they did not intend to make Wonder Woman honestly kind of a rapist. They were stupid and did a stupid thing and there's not much else I can say about it.
(like ffs, this is magic, if you wanted a consequenceless Steve Trevor at least with respect to his resurrection he could just be fucking alive again! who cares! apparently there are no rules!)
And again not to be all whatever but – that???? makes????? way more sense??????????????? Especially given how the third act plays out?????? It makes way more sense that renouncing the wish is about relieving what it has cost another person, not helping yourself???? It honestly would have been way more compelling if Diana getting her powers back relied on Barbara giving up her wish, especially given the very end relies on Diana just talking and not using her powers anyway???? (I think you could even justify Diana still being able to fly because they carefully laid out that she didn't have that power before.)
I guess this also maybe reveals something about my values, but I actually think that even works with the beginning sequence of young Diana trying to cheat in the competition. Because really – if Diana wasn't racing the other women, I could care less that she found a shortcut to her goal. That's not a bad thing! It's called problem-solving! But in a race, it is bad to deviate from the course all the competitors agreed upon. Diana's victory would have come at a cost to the other competitors who also trained and worked hard and abided by the rules of the game. 'Things are wrong when they hurt other people' – what's so bad about that?
But, okay, fine, whatever. The other problem with this 'careful what you wish for' moral, aside from that in this situation that's not what it is it's not careful what you wish for if the cost is totally arbitrary (I think the movie maybe said something about the 'cost' being what the wisher valued most but – bullshit! What, Lord valued his physical health the most? Diana really valued her powers the most? Barbara valued... not being evil? wtf?)
So anyway, that's the wish-side problem and it's weird for a movie's message to be 'you shouldn't want things' basically. It is, yes, ridiculous for the movie to compare Barbara's desire for social standing and recognizable beauty with Diana as a girl wanting to cheat in a race. This is silly, you know it's silly, whatever.
But while it's torture to engage in the would have/should have as an audience, one idea from this movie that is haunting me is Maxwell Lord and the wish power. Because the idea of specifically having a villain with the power to grant other people's wishes, and needing people to make those wishes, is really intriguing to me – though in this movie it essentially meant omnipotence because limitations like 'it has to be someone else's wish' or 'it makes you subject to another's desires' didn't really matter, Lord just tricked people into wishing things and then did whatever he wanted. I did enjoy the moment when Lord snapped at a religious person to stop praying for what they wanted because that's not the same, but it didn't matter, and I actually thought for a second something might come of Lord's son wishing for him to be good, or wishing for him to come home, but that also didn't end up mattering.
The other problem with how the movie handled this ability is that this idea of being able to grant other people's wishes ... like, it fit Lord's media persona more than it did his actual personal motivations. What he actually personally wanted was wealth and power, other people only factored into that to the extent that it would help him accomplish that wealth and power (the exception being his son). So when he wished to 'become' the wishing stone I didn't get it, I'd thought he'd just wish for the wealth and power he wanted. I get that he could have been wishing around the monkey's paw aspect of the stone, but... we also know it wasn't because it didn't work, and also separately as discussed above this movie doesn't seem to really understand how the monkey's paw works.
But the idea of a villain who actually is motivated by a desire to give people what they want is way more interesting to me and I think fits with the 80s consumerism/'greed is good' culture that it... seemed like the movie was critiquing? And I think it also would have fit with the mind control aspects of comic book Lord's character, like leveraging people's desires against their agency. (I also do not at all get making him an oil baron instead of a media mogul, that seems so arbitrary, other than to edge toward political comments they sure should not have been making)
But I just got really stuck on that idea of a villain who sincerely wants to give people what they want, yet disregards the potential negative consequences or ramifications of doing so. It's a motivation that seems unselfish but still, at its core, is about self-aggrandizement. And what's absolutely tormenting me is that this would be an amazing parallel to the themes of self-sacrifice that both this and the previous movie engaged in, especially with regard to Steve Trevor (though also could have been about Diana!). That giving of oneself isn't about making people happy or making people like you, but about doing what needs to be done to accomplish the most good. and I hate this I HATE THIS. And this also could have worked perfectly well with the sudden backstory they ended up giving Lord right at the end. Honestly, are script doctors still a thing in Hollywood? Because I feel like I've seen a few movies recently with salvageable ideas in the script but that definitely needed some serious reworking.
Which also why do this moralizing nonsense of a plot at all. The weak attempts to tie it into Diana's "truth" thing doesn't work because it... doesn't make any sense and also doesn't actually matter for anything, and then they also try to tie the crystal to the WW villain 'Duke of Deception' which also doesn't actually matter! Not to mention the weird political commentary (obviously the stuff in the Middle East but ahahaha I forgot this was in the 80s during that one everyone wishing scene with the woman and man arguing and was like 'wow get rid of the Irish is kind of a quick escalation') which honestly was so nonsensical that it's hard for me to seriously talk about it. And like. YOU CAN'T HAVE EVERYTHING MOVIE. WHICH IS A THING YOU SHOULD KNOW. SINCE THAT'S LITERALLY YOUR ENTIRE THEME. Just choose a theme that isn't bad and tie it into the 80s cultural setting and fucking. stop.
Anyway whatever. Things I liked:
- There were characters and a plot and the dialogue was like, people responding to things other people were saying, this is really starting to become my bar.
- I liked the photo of Diana and old!Etta Candy at the beginning
- I generally like how I'm guessing Patty Jenkins approaches Diana's character, it was more just... this plot and stupid theming that messed it up. (Though for some reason it did straight up annoyed me that Diana apologized so profusely before electrocuting Barbara lol she didn't even die! You've punched her in the face like ten times already!)
- I mean I enjoyed the Amazon race at the beginning
- This movie includes for me examples of what I find a fun reference vs. an unnecessary one. The 'invisible jet' thing, I thought, was fun – Diana's magic is a little vague, but I'm willing to go with that, and the need for an invisible plane did arise organically from the story and also worked well with other aspects of that scene ("Well shit, Diana!" – absolutely hilarious). It all comes together and the reference is like the cherry on top.
The less good reference for me was the special armor. Which, it wasn't bad, it just was thrown in for no real reason and served on real purpose beyond I guess the Lynda Carter post-credits cameo. Of course in the version of this movie in my head where Barbara would have to renounce her wish for Diana to have her powers back, it could have been something to help Diana fight instead. whatever.
- There are honestly a lot of things I like about this movie in principle though not in execution. I like the idea of Diana/the main character being complicit in the overall problem. I like the idea of Diana winning by appealing to our better angels on a mass scale. Especially in a WW story, I like that both villains are ultimately at least sort of redeemed. I like what felt like in the end an appeal to sacrifice personal benefit in consideration of others' needs (which again would have worked better if the wishes inherently hurt other people AND THAT WAS THE PROBLEM but whatever!)
- Okay not the movie but I listened to the "Blue Monday" arrangement for this movie's trailer just repeatedly for months.
anyway yeah. It's a disappointing follow up with not great messages and honestly takes way too much of the narrative away from Diana. But also my view of it is fucked up because I was basically watching the wrong movie for like 75% of it.
And we watched this video about the 2019 Cats movie (as a note, the description of the video links to an unlisted version that has the proper music in it because the posted video has been edited due to shitty DMCA claims). And now, well –
I'd seen this musical onstage when I was a kid, and I remembered really nothing about it, aside from "Memory" which I think was more cultural osmosis than anything else. We watched the 1998 recording of the stage show after watching this video, and while I never really recall disliking the musical, it did feel like watching all these examples of this production being done very badly helped me appreciate how and why it works when it's, you know, not done badly.
Which yeah, for one thing it doesn't have a plot or a straightforward narrative in general, it's basically like The Nutcracker where we're all just showing off at a party and any 'plot' is more or less perfunctory. And yeah, I do think musicals and obviously ballets can generally pull off 'this is more or less a vehicle for showing off song and dance abilities.' And in this particular case, except for "Memory," Andrew Lloyd Webber was literally just setting poems to music. And they were poems for children about cats. By which I mean – with the exception of the whole Heavyside Layer thing which yes that's random and weird, these songs are all actually pretty straightforward. The Gumbie Cat teaches mice. The Rum Tum Tugger is a fickle tomcat. Macavity's a troublemaker made literal criminal mastermind. Mr. Mistoffelees is like if that cat that could seem to slip through walls was literally a magician. In her video about Cats, Lindsay Ellis talks about how the musical performers tended to emulate more the 'idea of a cat' than an actual cat, which tracks along with this – the poems take familiar aspects of cat behavior and exaggerate them/make them literal or invert them for humorous effect, as you know, is common in media for children.
I guess the question is whether a transition to film meant this needed to be turned into an actual three-act-structure-style story with a protagonist. Which, I don't know – the way the musical is structured makes it hard for it to work as a star vehicle (most of the songs are not sung by the character they're about, the spotlight is only briefly on any one character and then they're just part of the chorus), and while song-and-dance film musicals have definitely been a thing, they haven't been a thing terribly recently. And those that have been successful, like Chicago or Moulin Rouge have had straightforward plots and star-vehicle convenient protagonists. And also directors who knew something about how the fuck how to film a musical, I'm sorry. But I also kind of think you could attach a big name on Grizabella and then just glide on that for the rest – I mean, that's what the actual blockbuster musical basically did, isn't it? Either way, if you're going to try to force Cats into the standard movie format, that's going to require really big changes that will inevitably cut into nostalgia factors that will drive people to see it in the first place. So go big or go home on that front.
Or just half-ass everything! Whatever!
So, particular complaints:
- Look, setting aside any musical abilities issues, Rebel Wilson is a PARODICALLY terrible choice for Jennnyanydots. This character is closest to like a middle-aged British school teacher or nanny. Like that's the dichotomy, she's lazy all day and then at night she's a busybody who's teaching MANNERS to MICE. It's a silly joke from a POEM for CHILDREN, a cat teaching manners to mice! This is like an Emma Thompson role. It really seems like their entire approach to this was honestly 'well Jennyanydots starts the number wearing a coat that gives her a big frame and you know who's fat' like it's shitty but that's how it comes off. And speaking of that – WHY WOULDN'T YOU JUST PUT HER IN A BATHROBE OR SOMETHING? THAT'S LITERALLY WHAT HAPPENS IN THE SHOW, SHE'S WEARING LIKE A BIG ROBE AND THEN HAS THE DANCER OUTFIT UNDERNEATH, WHY THE FUCK, WHY THE FUCK. And then Rebel Wilson doesn't even fucking dance! What's the point!!!
And not to even whatever, but aside from being extremely weird and creepy looking, having Jennyanydots threatening her mice children and actually eating one of the roach people doesn't work because literally the entire joke of the song/poem is that she's a cat who teaches her prey manners. Like I don't know how to spell this out more clearly, that she's not eating them is the joke. It's like if you retold the story of the tortoise and the hare but had the tortoise win by having trained in secret to actually be very fast – that he's slow and wins anyway is the point that is the level of children's fable simple this is. If you're going to keep these weird visuals or otherwise take the song so literally, it at least would have made more sense for one of the other cats to try to nab one and her swipe them away.
And I'm not saying you can't play around with these characterizations, obviously you can in something like Cats where outside of their 1 song it's not going to matter – but you probably need just a little more of a vision than 'Rebel Wilson dicks around.' And it does, at least, need to work with the music – the silly transition from lazy house cat to busy teacher to flashy dancer, and the contrast between those three, is how the song is structured. If you ignore that structure, well, like the movie, it's just a bunch of random stuff happening without at least some kind of organization. You know, and the body horror. (And you know, also regarding the song itself, you cannot in fact just choose one part of a three-part harmony and be like, bam, done, solo now, wtf. Especially when that three part harmony is evoking a very specific and recognizable style of music!)
- On that note, Skimbleshanks parts from the 1998 recorded version at least in that in the 1998 version Skimbleshanks is very prim and proper and the film's versions is looser and a little suave/flirty, and it's fine, as it doesn't, you know, undermine the basic premise of the song.
- And I'm not even going to touch special effects because I honestly just hit a point of "ugh, whatever" when it came to the visuals. Like I'll even say this – I actually liked a lot of the sets, I genuinely kind of like the weird proportion thing and I liked the Ancient Egyptian-themed theater and the blue-purple color scheme used in some of the other sets. It does seem like there was this tension of 'is this the real world but from a cat's perspective or a world for anthropomorphic cats' and they probably should have... resolved that, but. That is the least of my concerns.
- Is there anything more telling than turning "The Rum Tum Tugger is a terrible bore" line read from something kind of flirtatiously teasing to manbaby whining because the girl won't look at him, seriously.
- Everything trying to give a plot to this movie is bad, but the specific, confirmed statement that Grizabella ran off with Macavity turns "Memory" into an apology, instead of a plea for compassion, and WHY. why why why why why. Why can't it just be that it's easy to look down on people who are down on their luck? And, yes, why the fuck would you write a song that works only undermine "Memory" which the single most important number in the musical and the show's emotional core? Why use Victoria to tear Grizabella down, what were you thinking? (Also what even is Victoria's deal? All the other cats are clearly very accepting of her and flirt with her like immediately, why is she whining about... having her entire life ahead of her?)
After a couple times of watching that video and the thorough dissection of how the movie doesn't seem to understand the importance of basic musical structures, I did pull up the movie's rendition of Skimbleshanks, one the few numbers that does more or less work, and I was struck by the very simple pleasure of a MELODY that builds and resolves itself to a BEAT.
you know. MUSIC.
anyway, Cats opinions, there you go
And then in streaming/television we also did the post-Christmas watch of Bridgerton, which I... did not especially like so let me go on for a bit about that I guess.
So keeping in mind that it is extremely not the point, these are the three Historical Accuracy things that bugged me:
(1) As this shorthand to show how bad Baroness Featherington is, she's introduced super tightlacing one of her daughters into a corset. I've now watched enough Historical Costume YouTube to be wary of the simple corset = oppression narrative, but in this case in particular it's just – tightlacing a corset was done to create an hourglass-like silhouette that emphasized a small waist, and Regency era fashion very famously embraced the Empire silhouette which does not reflect that kind of shape at all. Which is shown in this show! Where people wear clothes that generally follow that Regency-typical Empire silhouette that basically hides the waist! So why would she be tightlacing to have a tiny waist that the cut of her dress would entirely conceal anyway??? It just feels like an overly lazy shorthand that could have been accomplished another way.
(2) I again cannot emphasize enough how very little I care about strict or really serious historical accuracy BUT – this show was at least advertised pretty heavily on playing with the drama of the 'social season' and the social stratification of the period, both of which are good elements to mine for drama. But then honestly... not that much is delivered for that. This show's idea of the 'social season' seems to be 'the Queen decides who The Prettiest Girl is and everyone else just has to pray someone will save them from spinsterhood' which, what. It sounds like the book at least made a little more sense on this part given that Daphne was on her third season or so and men seemed to have an attitude toward her of 'fun to talk to but not marriage material,' but in this show it was like, 'oh there's ANOTHER girl who is also PRETTY, now Daphne's going to die an old maid.' And maybe more leaning into the ahistorical aspects, it was just totally beyond belief that Queen Charlotte would be pushing so hard for her prince nephew to marry Daphne, the daughter of a goddamn viscount, just because she had declared her Prettiest Girl of the Ball or whatever. Which again, I wouldn't care, except that it's weird to selectively ignore these issues of social stratification and takes away from attempts to use it in other contexts (like the older brother and the opera singer, which was honestly... pointless).
(Actually did you know that the Queen Charlotte's Ball specifically honored Queen Charlotte's birthday, and that the new debutants at the ball would curtsey to Queen Charlotte while she stood next to a large cake? And that all subsequent monarchs did this until the ball was abolished by Queen Elizabeth II? WHERE IS MY GIANT CAKE???? Also I believe in the modern iteration of the ball the debutants cut the cake WITH A SWORD and that is some historical inaccuracy I am absolutely here for.)
(I swear I don't have that much emotional investment in this.)
(3) Okay this is probably overly picky but it annoys me that they changed the opera singer's name from 'Maria' to 'Siena.' Maria Rosso is a pretty straightforward, obviously Italian name; Siena, as far as I know, is a name that's only really come into fashion in the last fifteen years or so, and is also to my knowledge mostly a thing in the English-speaking world and not so much Italy itself (I mean they don't name people Firenze or Venezia or Verona in Italy very much either to my knowledge). And the other names used in the show, whether or not they were maybe period-accurate, were period-evocative, which... seems to be the overall point? So I don't get changing a name that would have worked for that to one that is both modern-sounding doesn't fit a character whose name is at least theoretically, I guess, supposed to be Italian. Also you couldn't get an actor to at least fake an Italian accent for her come on where's the fun. Tom Hughes has been fake-German-accenting his way through three seasons of Victoria ffs.
Anyway, other than that... I mean I mostly didn't like this show because nearly everyone is some kind combination of mean or stupid, or they just don't do anything at all and so are boring. Whatever, let's break it down by plot:
Anthony and his bee issues or whatever – His extremely boring affair with an opera singer is absurdly, extremely boring, like it takes active work to make something this boring I don't understand. She's only here for sex scenes and then to whine when he inevitably leaves her yet again, why the fuck does she care so much. I think in the book she... doesn't, and something about despite having a lower social status than many of the women in this story, she has comparatively more freedom, could have been kind of interesting. But honestly this whole thing is so indicative of how this show seems to think it's accomplished "being interesting" by like, having sex scenes. But in REGENCY period, scandal!!!!
Anyway, besides that he's so pointlessly mean that I actually thought he was purposefully sabotaging Daphne's prospects. I seriously have no idea what this character is meant to be doing or what we're supposed to get out of this.
The Featherington Household – I've discussed some of the flat characterization here in the corset thing above, but aside from that, this really comes down to Penelope and Marina, which ultimately is mostly Marina in her bedroom being sad for like 80% of this show and then Marina and Penelope's awful battle for Colin that just made me hate everyone, which you know is partly because – does Colin do literally anything in this show besides be at the center of this love triangle? Like, literally anything at all? Here is everything I know about Colin: he shows some interest in Marina and Penelope likes him. There, that's it, how is that literally it. I couldn't relate to Penelope's feelings for Colin because I had no idea at all why she liked him, and then I found her outing Marina so utterly reprehensible that I just kind of hated her by the end of it (knowing Penelope was Lady Whistledown going in I guess didn't help things in that regard, but making it a last minute twist means we're just left with what Penelope did to Marina with no real addressing it). And Marina honestly just became more pitiful than anything else, like even her scheming about Colin didn't give her any sense of agency.
Eloise Bridgerton – I get it, she likes books. I can imagine liking... other versions of these characters, where they were given more to do, and I will acknowledge Eloise is hurt here by me not caring very much about her search for Lady Whistledown given that I already knew the answer, but ultimately she just flipped between following obvious theories and reminding Daphne that She Likes Books, She Is A Girl Who Likes Books.
Benedict Bridgerton – About around the orgy scene I'd hit the point of yelling "Is anyone in this show going to be GAY?" so I guess that happened.
Queen Charlotte – I actually found the one scene that really deals with her relationship with her husband to be pretty interesting, but then she spends literally all of the rest of the show whining about a gossip pamphlet and being obsessed with her Prettiest Girl contest.
Daphne Bridgerton – Her initial contempt for Simon does not feel earned or motivated, and I don't know, it's a weird way to introduce your main character. I get that maybe some people are into this, girl is incredibly rude and guy is very gracious and then girl realizes guy is in love with her thing but. In a show again full of people being variously stupid and mean, it didn't do much to endear her to me. I know the nominal reason is that she knows Simon is her brother's friend and so I guess is also probably going around sleeping with opera singers but... why does she care, honestly? Because she totally believes in the rules of polite society? Because she thinks that means he would inevitably treat her the same way? Because she feels bad for the women he maybe sleeps with and then leaves? I guess it could be any of these things, but I don't know, clearly showing the specific reasons why your main character is being consistently rude to this handsome man who is only every gracious to her seems like some pretty basic storytelling work.
I didn't really care about their rushed courtship, because like I said above I thought everything in the way this show depicts the social season and social stratification was... well, lazy or kind of stupid. But there were some moments I liked from Daphne: I could enjoy the conversations she and Simon had once she wasn't snapping at him for like, existing near her. I found her learning about being a duchess and the complications and pitfalls that came with handling an estate and the local population to be genuinely interesting. I was not really into her whole getting someone to explain sex to her thing, though it did make me genuinely curious about the history of sex education.
And then there's That Scene, which honestly I don't even want to deal with so I won't. Bottom line there were some things involving her storyline I found interesting, but mostly she was mean and then she was flat.
Simon Basset – Okay someone who is not mean and mostly not stupid or at least his stupid is motivated stubbornness. Though that motivation that drives kind of everything he does, his anger at his father, shows the perils of making changes in adaptation that aren't followed through. To my knowledge, in the book, Simon hated his father because of his father's obsession with the ducal bloodline and continuing that bloodline, and so Simon's determination to never have children follows directly from that.
The problem is that Simon's father's motivation in the show is more nuanced. The show cast Black actors for the Basset family and then, instead of basically not commenting on this casting at all, makes this suggestion that the noble titles of people of color in this world are more fragile and tenuous than those belonging to white families. While the former Duke of Hastings is monstrous in his anger toward what he perceives as his son's failures, he expresses the fear that his child must be exceptional, as their family in particular is under constant pressure to show they are worthy of their titles.
Like, I've seen people say that people of color in this show are simply totally equal to white people and this show exists in a universe with no race issues, which would have been a 100% fine way to approach it – but that's not true? Simon's father clearly seems to think his family faces pressure that his white peers don't. The problem is that this is basically one line of the show and then is never mentioned again. It's not something Simon seems concerned about, nor... again I can't remember it coming up again at all? I think maybe Lady Danbury said something to Simon that alluded to it at some point, but that's it. And there was opportunity to explore this a little more, like one way it could have been used with the Social Stratification issues would be that Daphne's family's title would put her not inconsiderably lower than that of a Duke, but her family's investiture would be older and her whiteness would protect her from the scrutiny Simon might face. Again, none of this had to be in here, but as it was it's kind of weird to make it a thing and then basically ignore it later.
And the problem is that changing that motivation means that Simon's reaction doesn't really work anymore – not having children does not resolve the underlying problem Simon's father was reacting to, and it makes his reasoning for not wanting children just feel weak. Like your dad is dead, he's not going to know or care, and you're not preventing the thing he specifically wanted anymore by doing it, so who cares. And the thing is there were stronger motivation options for Simon readily available. He could have feared that he might act like his father when subjected to the same pressures that his father was, that he might also be terrible to his children. Or honestly he could have even just been afraid of Daphne dying in childbirth since his own mother died in childbirth, and then being left raising his children alone and ... again being afraid of being like this father, like being afraid of being like your bad parent is an effective motivation all I'm saying. Incorporating either of those motivations would have tied much more directly into Simon's actions.
Like, if you're adapting something and you change an element of a character's central motivation, that should change the character and their actions, too. To me this is like saying that because 2+2 = 4, 3 + 2 + 2 also = 4. Nope, you've changed the equation, your answer has to reflect that or you have to make more modifications to get the answer you want!
anyway, whatever, I didn't like this show very much.
We also watched the first season of Pose, which I think I'll talk about after we've watched the second season, and an Italian show about witches that is not A Discovery of Witches, called Luna Nera, which I may talk about in its own post because that would be funny.
And I've read some books, among them The Silence of the Girls by Pat Barker, warning for discussion of sexual violence –
This is a retelling of the Trojan War almost entirely from the point of view of Briseis. If you don't remember all the details of The Illiad or the Trojan War or didn't read it because whatever, Briseis had been married to a prince until her city was sacked by the Greek army during the war, and she was given as a slave to Achilles. The main role she plays in The Illiad is in a dispute between Achilles and Agamemnon, where Agamemnon demands Achilles give Briseis to him and Achilles responds by abandoning the battle until Patroclus' death.
The general aim of the book is pretty apparently to give a woman's perspective on this story, which basically means it's a horror show. Briseis's family is slaughtered and she is raped every day and this happens to more or less every woman in the story. It's a natural reality that's not really of interest to the male perspectives around them. And Pat Barker is very effective at conveying this. It is a miserable story to read, but she also includes some piercing moments that, we'll say, rip up the stitches of the men's narratives. King Priam comes personally to Achilles, asking to take the body of his son Hector, and the book quotes The Illiad, "I have endured what no one on earth has ever done before – I put my lips to the hands of the man who killed my son" – to which Briseis thinks in response, "I have done what countless women have done before, I've spread my legs for the man who killed my husband."
My only qualm is the book ends up spending a lot of time from the perspectives of Achilles and Patroclus, which ... seems counterproductive and unnecessary. We know who they are, we don't need them explained, and I think they would have been better served as only viewed from the point of view of Briseis and the other women. The book that's supposed to be about women's views on this should keep to that, even if you have some great Achilles and Patroclus ideas.
I also think it would have been nice to have chapters from the point of view of women other than Briseis, who as awful as her situation is still occupied a very particular place in this camp. We do get some other women's perspectives, but it's only in what they say to Briseis and through Briseis' judgment of them. So I feel like the book would have been served letting them be the viewpoint characters as well, instead of you know, two of the most famous men in this story.
– and The Tombs of Atuan by Ursula K. LeGuin –
So at first I found this pretty interesting, I liked the worldbuilding and my biggest complaint about A Wizard of Earthsea was that there weren't very many women in it and I'd like to see a wizard school that includes students who aren't boys, too.
And then, uh, Ged shows up, tells the main character her culture and religion are all Bad and Wrong, and then the book ends. Cool! uh.
That being said I rarely have encountered a book where the author writes a long afterword directly addressing all of my complaints, and I... sure didn't agree with Ursula K. LeGuin on anything in it. "This inverts the usual narrative by having the enlightened person of color encounter/save the white barbarian" okay but the 'barbarian' narrative is also inherently bad. "I can't give women a place of agency in these stories because even though it's fantasy it still has to reflect some reality" THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT NOT INCLUDING PEOPLE OF COLOR.
so yeah I don't think I'm going to continue this series because I don't really feel like I'm going to get something that really engages me out of it.
... and because consuming media is pretty much the only non-work thing I can do in life right now... yep! My parents may be getting their first vaccine doses soon, though, so I'm excited for them.
Yeah, other than that it's perpetually checking for updates on my laptop that I had to send in for repair because one of its fan was making an ear-splitting screech, and um, less doomscrolling! I do appreciate the latter.