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Catching up post 2: links
Aug. 29th, 2013 02:09 pmI am an absolute sucker for meta. It's kind of why I internet. There's been a lot of great stuff posted recently, but I'll limit it to just a few things that are either particularly timely, or relevant to my interests. Consider each link to be full of spoilers for whatever it's discussing.
Abigail Nussbaum is one of my favourite bloggers. She has a curious and articulate interest in a lot of things that I also like to think about, and although our thinking rarely lines up completely, she always opens me up to new interpretive frameworks for the texts she analyses.
Her most recent post, on Scandal, is great.
Rhimes methodically dismantles the assumptions that lie at the core of all of her work--assumptions about love, about her characters, and about who we're expected to root for. Rhimes shows are characterized, as I've said, by outsized emotions and big speeches that extoll the characters' virtues. Scandal is the show that takes those big feelings and bigger words and asks: what if those emotions are twisted and unhealthy? What if those big words are nothing but spin? What if the characters who we've been told are heroes are just selfish, clueless cowards?
I also highly recommend her post about Sharon Kay Penman's The Sunne in Splendour and Philippa Gregory's Wars of the Roses novels. I enjoy Penman's work and dislike Gregory's, but I think the point Nussbaum makes is correct: partisan historical fiction is undermined if authors refuse to allow their darlings any flaws, or if they need to make their antagonists into manipulative, evil villains with no redeeming qualities in order for their heroes to remain unsullied.
In her novel Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel tries to do some of the same things as Gregory and Penman--to rehabilitate a historical figure usually cast as a villain, in her case Thomas Cromwell, and to draw attention to the ways that women used power in periods that officially gave them none, and to the dangers of doing so. Mantel could have made the choices that Gregory and Penman do. She could have made Anne Boleyn a blameless woman in love, or Cromwell a saint driven to evil acts by a conniving woman. Instead, Mantel recognizes what neither of these authors seem to--that to look for good guys and bad guys, and to root for a particular side, in a dispute like the Wars of the Roses is a fool's errand. Instead, she focuses on her characters' humanity. Her Anne is not an appealing figure. There is little romance between her and Henry VIII, and as he grows tired of her and she grows more desperate, she seems to shrivel up until there's nothing left but ambition and arrogance. Nevertheless, she is still human, and Mantel doesn't judge her for her choices or ambitions. Her Cromwell, too, is more than a hero or a villain (though in my reviews of Bring Up the Bodies and its prequel Wolf Hall I've taken Mantel to task for going too easy on him and downplaying his less savory actions). He has many admirable qualities, and though over the course of the book we watch his soul atrophy, and the worst in him emerge as he engineers Anne's death, we never lose sight of the good that is still in him.
Ferretbrain is another fabulous source of meta, and its essays are enhanced by the thoughtful and detailed responses and discussions they tend to garner in the comments. I've recently enjoyed Arthur B's post on The World's End, although I don't think I came out of the film with quite the same impression that he did.
On the one hand, this could be a really neat subversion of that Hollywood individualism cult I was mentioning earlier. As Gary King's own backstory gruesomely illustrates, sticking your fingers in your ears and refusing to grow up doesn't actually get you anywhere. People like to believe that as humans we are independent and will never knuckle down and sacrifice our freedom, but actually we do it every day - that's precisely what you do when you agree to be part of society. We might not like the society we have, but to change it - or to forge an alternative - we still need to co-operate as part of a community. We are social animals, after all, and if we point-blank refuse to be part of any society or community, and equally refuse to sacrifice any of our freedoms for the purposes of rubbing along happily together we end up in a sorry state - look at Gary King, look at the Unabomber.
And I'm probably outing myself as someone who has utterly appalling taste in TV, but Dan Hemmens' post on the recent season of The Apprentice is just brilliant.
It's very easy to look down on Apprentice candidates, because they do consistently make the sorts of elementary mistakes you would expect from a tired six-year-old. People were pointing this out pretty much as soon as the first episode aired [...] What I thought I'd do in this article is go through series nine, episode by episode, and talk a bit about what the candidates had to do, why (nine times out of ten) there was no way any sensible human being could actually be possibly expected to succeed at what they were asked to do, and to look a bit at the strange, almost mystical thinking that seems to go into a lot of the conversations in the boardroom.
There was a big reveal in the last episode of Pretty Little Liars. Even mentioning who is interviewed in my next link would be a spoiler, so don't click unless you're up to date (or don't care). In any case, have an interview with two people involved with Pretty Little Liars by Samantha Highfill.
On a related note, I have a link to a bit of meta by Tumblr user prettylitteliarsforeverbitches about the reveal, and what it might mean. Again, spoilerific.
In case it's not obvious, I really want to talk about PLL with someone...
Abigail Nussbaum is one of my favourite bloggers. She has a curious and articulate interest in a lot of things that I also like to think about, and although our thinking rarely lines up completely, she always opens me up to new interpretive frameworks for the texts she analyses.
Her most recent post, on Scandal, is great.
Rhimes methodically dismantles the assumptions that lie at the core of all of her work--assumptions about love, about her characters, and about who we're expected to root for. Rhimes shows are characterized, as I've said, by outsized emotions and big speeches that extoll the characters' virtues. Scandal is the show that takes those big feelings and bigger words and asks: what if those emotions are twisted and unhealthy? What if those big words are nothing but spin? What if the characters who we've been told are heroes are just selfish, clueless cowards?
I also highly recommend her post about Sharon Kay Penman's The Sunne in Splendour and Philippa Gregory's Wars of the Roses novels. I enjoy Penman's work and dislike Gregory's, but I think the point Nussbaum makes is correct: partisan historical fiction is undermined if authors refuse to allow their darlings any flaws, or if they need to make their antagonists into manipulative, evil villains with no redeeming qualities in order for their heroes to remain unsullied.
In her novel Bring Up the Bodies, Hilary Mantel tries to do some of the same things as Gregory and Penman--to rehabilitate a historical figure usually cast as a villain, in her case Thomas Cromwell, and to draw attention to the ways that women used power in periods that officially gave them none, and to the dangers of doing so. Mantel could have made the choices that Gregory and Penman do. She could have made Anne Boleyn a blameless woman in love, or Cromwell a saint driven to evil acts by a conniving woman. Instead, Mantel recognizes what neither of these authors seem to--that to look for good guys and bad guys, and to root for a particular side, in a dispute like the Wars of the Roses is a fool's errand. Instead, she focuses on her characters' humanity. Her Anne is not an appealing figure. There is little romance between her and Henry VIII, and as he grows tired of her and she grows more desperate, she seems to shrivel up until there's nothing left but ambition and arrogance. Nevertheless, she is still human, and Mantel doesn't judge her for her choices or ambitions. Her Cromwell, too, is more than a hero or a villain (though in my reviews of Bring Up the Bodies and its prequel Wolf Hall I've taken Mantel to task for going too easy on him and downplaying his less savory actions). He has many admirable qualities, and though over the course of the book we watch his soul atrophy, and the worst in him emerge as he engineers Anne's death, we never lose sight of the good that is still in him.
Ferretbrain is another fabulous source of meta, and its essays are enhanced by the thoughtful and detailed responses and discussions they tend to garner in the comments. I've recently enjoyed Arthur B's post on The World's End, although I don't think I came out of the film with quite the same impression that he did.
On the one hand, this could be a really neat subversion of that Hollywood individualism cult I was mentioning earlier. As Gary King's own backstory gruesomely illustrates, sticking your fingers in your ears and refusing to grow up doesn't actually get you anywhere. People like to believe that as humans we are independent and will never knuckle down and sacrifice our freedom, but actually we do it every day - that's precisely what you do when you agree to be part of society. We might not like the society we have, but to change it - or to forge an alternative - we still need to co-operate as part of a community. We are social animals, after all, and if we point-blank refuse to be part of any society or community, and equally refuse to sacrifice any of our freedoms for the purposes of rubbing along happily together we end up in a sorry state - look at Gary King, look at the Unabomber.
And I'm probably outing myself as someone who has utterly appalling taste in TV, but Dan Hemmens' post on the recent season of The Apprentice is just brilliant.
It's very easy to look down on Apprentice candidates, because they do consistently make the sorts of elementary mistakes you would expect from a tired six-year-old. People were pointing this out pretty much as soon as the first episode aired [...] What I thought I'd do in this article is go through series nine, episode by episode, and talk a bit about what the candidates had to do, why (nine times out of ten) there was no way any sensible human being could actually be possibly expected to succeed at what they were asked to do, and to look a bit at the strange, almost mystical thinking that seems to go into a lot of the conversations in the boardroom.
There was a big reveal in the last episode of Pretty Little Liars. Even mentioning who is interviewed in my next link would be a spoiler, so don't click unless you're up to date (or don't care). In any case, have an interview with two people involved with Pretty Little Liars by Samantha Highfill.
On a related note, I have a link to a bit of meta by Tumblr user prettylitteliarsforeverbitches about the reveal, and what it might mean. Again, spoilerific.
In case it's not obvious, I really want to talk about PLL with someone...
