Well I get a little scared

[dolorosa_12]

And, like much of the rest of Europe, back we go into lockdown. To be honest, given I've been working from home throughout the entire period in which the lockdown was supposedly lifted, and barely left the house, not much in my immediate life will change. What's more worrying is that this second lockdown is happening without the furlough scheme. Don't get me wrong, we absolutely need to go into lockdown — there were more than 20,000 new cases in the past twenty-four hours — but we can't just close the entire retail and hospitality sector with a shrug of the shoulders. (Edited to add that it looks like the furlough scheme is being relaunched for workers in the affected industries, so that's at least one positive.)

I've spent most of this morning prodding at my Yuletide assignment. I think I've written about a third of it, although I was focusing more on just vomiting words out onto the page, so what exists will need substantial editing. I always find it easier to just write as quickly as possible, and focus on the editing later, though, so I feel like I'm moving at exactly the right speed.

In terms of a media roundup for this month, I've not finished very much in the way of TV — just two shows (although Matthias and I have a lot of ongoing series on the go at the moment).

The first show in question was Lovecraft Country, which in general I thought was excellent — a great cast, mostly well crafted, and completely unsubtle about its central concept (namely, that no supernatural horror threat can come close to approaching the real-world horror that is being Black in the United States). It also told an interesting story about the corrosive effect of violence within families, and was rare in being one of the few American-made shows I've seen that was actually prepared to depict the US military in a bad light — specifically to puncture the myth of the military as a positive presence occupying foreign countries out of concern for the wellbeing of their citizens. While I was mostly happy about how the show concluded its various narrative threads, I feel in one way that its final act undermined the point it was trying to make. But I found it one of the best TV series I've watched this year, I'm hopeful for its second season, and I'm pleased to see that AO3 shares my taste in OTP for the fandom.

The other show was a miniseries called The Sister, starring Russell Tovey as a man haunted by a terrible secret he's hiding from his wife. The show was created by the creator of the Luther series, and it shares a lot of the former's darkness, and emphasis on guilt and secrecy. I ultimately felt that some of the revelations degenerated into silly melodrama (although that, too, is a characteristic shared with Luther), but it felt seasonally appropriate, and I'm glad I watched it.

One of the books I read in the wake of my search for an elusive work of historical fiction, set in Al-Andalus, was Sultana, by Lisa J. Yarde. (It was not the book for which I'm searching, but it came up in my fruitless Googling to track that book down.) I'll read pretty much anything set in this place and time period, but suffice it to say that this one was adequate rather than groundbreaking.


And now, a couple of links. I'm pleased to see that Gavia Baker-Whitelaw (Hello_Tailor) has set up a Youtube channel focusing on Hollywood film costuming. I'm not someone particularly drawn to Youtube video essays as a medium — I generally feel that it's a poor format for conveying information, and always wish that the essayists would just write a blog post instead! But Baker-Whitelaw's channel avoids most of the common Youtuber pitfalls, and makes the best use of the medium: her first video is less than ten minutes long but says all it needs to say, and it uses Youtube's functionality to best effect, i.e. to illustrate points that can only be shown visually, rather than explained in words.

And, best of all, this first video is about my favourite film of all time, Mad Max: Fury Road.

Watch on YouTube

Via Matthias, another bizarre real estate listing. If you've got a spare £2 million lying around, you could be the proud owner of a property which would give you the address '1, The Thames'. Yes, they mean the river.


I hope everyone's being kind to themselves in these darkening days.

Comments

[lirazel]

I'm pleased to hear you liked Lovecraft Country! I'm holding off on it till I've read the book, but judging by gifsets, it looks really well made.

[dolorosa_12]

I really, really loved it. A word of warning (because I think I remember you saying you don't like visual depictions of violence) — it is at times incredibly gory and violent. For the most part, the gore is the sort of fake-looking horror movie gore (rather than 'real-world' violence), but I thought I should alert you to this before you watch it.

[lirazel]

Thanks!

[naye]

I loved the Mad Max: Fury Road video! And the one on historical costumes was really interesting too - I really loved the point about "accurate" not being that helpful because modern viewers can't read anything about the character from unfamiliar clothes. (This is something I think a lot about watching historical Chinese shows - I'm having to learn a whole new visual language to parse things that would be obvious to a viewer who'd grown up with the genre.)

[dolorosa_12]

I'll need to watch the historical costumes one, as I've not seen it yet, although I seem to remember her making a similar point back when she had a blog on film costuming.

That's really interesting about the Chinese shows — even something as simple as the meaning being signalled by a costume's colour is different, and that's not getting into the finer details.

[naye]

Exactly! Starting with how the mourning color is white and the wedding color is red it's a whole new frame of reference. Then add things like what color is reserved for the imperial family at court (yellow) and who can wear dragon-motifs (...I swear there's a difference in how many claws the dragon has but it's an imperial symbol for sure)! And those are just the super obvious cues - then there's different style of headwear for different level court officials and women's hair decorations and it's a long learning process! I'm really glad I'm watching with someone who is used to it so I can ask a lot of questions, even if some stuff (what do the different type of jade belt pendants mean?) isn't something Skuld necessarily knows.

[dolorosa_12]

I knew about white, red and yellow, but yeah, all the other little details are new to me, and really interesting! Would you say that Chinese historical dramas are better about getting all these specific signifiers right than you usually see in Western historical films/shows?

It's nice that you're able to draw on Skuld's knowledge while still finding things that they can't answer, so that the two of you are able to discover the meaning behind new details together.

[trepkos]

I had no knowledge of Al-Andalus, and now I want to live then and there.

[dolorosa_12]

I don't want to completely overstate the case: Al-Andalus was not a paradise for the entirety of its existence, and the fact that religious minorities were well treated there (as well as elsewhere in the Islamic world) by the standards of the time is notable mainly because they were treated so appallingly in the medieval Christian world. Al-Andalus, for me, is a reminder that history is not an inevitable journey from barbarism to progress — little oases of pluralism, where art and architecture and knowledge were valued, and where people's identities were fluid and multiple, can easily be swept away by violence and fanaticism and a return to religious fundamentalism. I think a lot about Al-Andalus, these days, because the story it tells me is one of incurious, violently dogmatic people with no tolerance for complexity and pluralism destroying something that whose value they could never understand. For obvious reasons, it resonates with the world as it is now, and with Brexit Britain in particular.

[merit]

Oh dang. The listing has been removed! Probably *too much* attention.

I read Lovecraft Country last year, enjoyed it, and I'm now in the odd circumstance where I care about about an adaption. Though it looks like a beautifully made TV series.

[dolorosa_12]

Oh, that's a shame. It was a 'historic artillery store' on the 'strategically important' confluence of the Thames and another river, which just made me cackle with glee.

My understanding is that they changed quite a few things when adapting Lovecraft Country the book to TV, so I would avoid the adaptation if you care about things like that. I'm someone who never watches TV or film adaptations of books that really speak to me, so I find your attitude completely understandable.

[merit]

I probably /can/ watch it, I'll just need to a little more time to build up to it. I can live with a few changes etc though if it was something very close to my heart (see the Watch adaption).

[dolorosa_12]

Oh, I hear you about The Watch (and Rhianna Pratchett's passive aggressive statements about that adaptation give me life). For me it's adaptations of His Dark Materials — by all accounts the current BBC series is really good, but those books just matter too much to me for me to be able to engage with it at all.

[scripsi]

I really enjoyed Lovecraft Country a lot, but it's very different from the book- to a point it's even mentioned in the show! Most of the changes worked very well, but I thought the vastly changed ending was not a good call. I preferred the book ending. But the casting and acting and look- all wonderful.

[dolorosa_12]

That's interesting to hear, because the one thing I found particularly dissatisfying about the show was the ending. Maybe I'll check out the book and see if I feel differently about the way it ended.