Let's talk Christmas movies: Klaus

 Klaus:

 

 

Klaus is first and foremost gorgeously animated. It looks 3D but it is all hand-drawn. Every character is designed to be so wonderfully expressive and they all look different. Apart from that it is also a beautiful and touching story about a selfish postman sent to village willfully locked into conflict and hate who finally brings back love and light.  It is, of course, a classic Christmas theme, but made me cry nevertheless. 

P.S. I know I did not post a movie last week. Sorry about that, I might rectify that.

Let's talk Christmas movies: Jingle Jangle

 Jingle Jangle

Another Netflix movie and just like Klaus this one is gorgeous as well. The costumes are so inventive and colorful, everything is a joy to look at. The animation perfectly transports the magical elements of the movie. Apart from beautiful to look at it also has a beautiful story. A little girl goes to spend the holidays with her withdrawn grandfather, who was once the greatest inventor of the land until his apprentice betrayed him. Together with a little boy and in a race against the former apprentice turned toy seller, she brings back joy and inspiration. It's very sweet. Additionally it has a plethora of fun songs, because, yes, this is technically something of a musical. Because this movie is new, you probably haven't seen it yet and I'd recommend you do!

(Yes, I only wrote this post in January 2021, but it looks better this way.)

Let's talk Christmas movies: Rise of the Guardians

Rise of the Guardians:

 

Rise of the Guardians is a beautifully animated children's movie about fear, oblivion, faith, belonging and ultimately kindness. I enjoy the interpretations of the Easterbunny, Santa, Sandman and Toothfairy very much, inventive and fun to see. The Sandman's animation in particular was gorgeous to look at. It has a lot of heart and a simple yet gripping story that ends hopefully. Making the antagonist be more representative of hopelessness than fear - although fear was still part of it, of course - was, in my opinion, a good and meaningful choice. No wonder I like to come back to this children's movie from 8 years ago.

Let's talk Christmas movies: Love Actually

I enjoy Christmas time. I was raised Christian and even though at this point in time no one in my family is really religiously Christian anymore, we're still participating in everything to do with Christmas. And I like it a lot, from the lights to the candles to the music to the giftgiving and receiving. It's probably because it makes me feel nostalgic and reminds me of when I was a child and everything was simple. 

 This Christmas time I am more stressed than ever and I have to remind myself to rest for a second and do what brings me joy. Something that does bring me joy is watching Christmas movies with friends and family. So I decided to talk about a different Christmas movie every week.

Starting with Love Actually:

 

My old favorite. Love Actually is one of the very few romcoms I can truly like, as well as the best episodic ensemble movie in my opinion, and I watch it at least once every Christmas time. What I enjoy about it is that not every story is happy, there is a plethora of different love stories, happy, sad, funny, cute, tragic, that are all enjoyable in their own right (except for the one where the dude is in love with his best friend's wife... what was up with that?). It does have flaws, of course it does, but it still holds a special place in my heart, because at the end when they show this collage of people joyfully greeting their loved ones at the airport I fully believe that love is really all that matters and I always, without fail, end up crying.

“Not like th’ inhabitants o’ th’ earth” - The problem with representing Macbeth’s witches

(The following is a shortened version of a chapter of one of my university term papers on the representation of the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth. Have fun!)


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Shakespeare’s Macbeth is an undoubtedly popular play, numbering countless productions, movie adaptations and a conversion into opera. Consequently, the versions have changed through time, differing from each other in terms of casting and staging. A key element of the play that directors have to adapt to their satisfaction are the witches. Even though they only appear in four scenes of the playtext, their apparent influence over the play is big enough that cutting them out is next to impossible. If you cannot cut them, the question is how to stage them. In modern times the staging of the witches has been widely contested due to feminist criticism of ‘the witch’ as a deeply misogynistic archetype. All of these productions struggle with the witches’ womanhood, otherness and supernatural connotations. This paper seeks to evaluate how Rupert Goold solves the staging of the witches in his production of Macbeth.

It is important to note that his production of Macbeth does not take place in medieval Scotland. Instead, it is a modernized version set in an unspecified country strongly reminiscent of Stalinist Soviet countries. It is concentrated mostly in and around the bunker-like structure of Welbeck Abbey and embedded in black-and-white footage of an anonymous war. This setting influences the construction of the characters. Macbeth, for example, is in actions and appearance a Stalin-esque dictator. In this world, witches dancing around a cauldron would look out of place. The choices Rupert Goold made to best integrate the witches into the atmosphere influence in turn their effect on the viewer.

The viewer first comes into contact with the witches in the introductory sequence (00:00:08-06:16). The witches tend to a wounded soldier while he recounts Macbeth’s glories to King Duncan. At this point it is not obvious to the audience that these three nurses are supposed to be the witches. Following King Duncan’s departure, the background noises grow quieter, the tunnel becomes deserted and finally the lights go out one by one as the nurses kill the soldier instead of saving him. This lighting and sound-design is already reminiscent of horror films. The nurses then push down their facemasks and begin to recite their lines. When they reach “Macbeth”, they are looking straight at the audience as if to announce the title of the film (00:05:46). The horror here relies on the subversion of the expectation that nurses are caring and healing instead of vicious and lethal. While nurturing is a quality associated with women in general, it is even more pronounced in nurses. Therefore, Rupert Goold as well makes use of perverted femininity to represent the witches. Significantly, visually the witches not only reference nurses but also nuns. Thus, while Rupert Goold distances himself from the more traditional representation of witches, he nevertheless cites conservative witch-like characteristics like a perversion of womanhood and Christianity.

Notably, the witches appear more often than they do in the playtext. Rupert Goold makes a point to include them in a number of other scenes, often unacknowledged in the background. They are, for example, present when the king arrives at Macbeth’s residence through the kitchen. The witches are the only ones of the staff who watch him go but are otherwise no different from the rest of the servants (00:25:18-27:25). Later, they bring out the gurney with Lady Macbeth’s corpse amid fighting (02:15:27). Even when they are not acknowledged, the witches stand out due to being the only female background characters. The inclusion of the witches in the background of scenes makes them seem more involved; they are watching the proceedings with a close eye. Thus, they can be seen as the “manifestation of a pervasive evil”, as Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason state in their introduction to the play (103). However, it also offers the interpretation that they are directly involved with the unfolding of the tragedy and supervise the plot.

When they are not watching, the witches are actively manipulating the outcome. During Macbeth’s feast as a ruler that has him come face to face with Banquo’s ghost, his seat at the table is filled not by the ghost – as it is generally interpreted – but by one of the witches, who take the role of waitresses in this scene (01:19:29-40). The witch’s intention seems to be to disorient Macbeth and make him question reality. Since the other characters do not comment on a waitress sitting down at the table, it is possible to say that either Macbeth perceives the witches differently than the rest of the cast or that the witches control how and when they are seen. Later in the scene, the witches dance with the other characters normally, without a hint to their supernatural nature. During Macbeth’s talks with Banquo’s ghost (01:20:55-26:14), the witches remain in the background and their gazes are fixed on him, thereby suggesting their attention to the envisioned story.

Unsurprisingly, Rupert Goold does not include scene 3.5. Hecate scolding the witches on their behavior and explaining their coming plan would firmly place the sisters in a supernatural order and therefore undermine their role in the film. Instead of concocting a witches’ brew, Rupert Goold has them singing and dancing amidst dead bodies in a makeshift morgue. This chanting is set to distorted techno music (01:31:20-33:07). In the playtext, the witches’ language is significantly different to the other characters’. They speak in repetitions, inversions, alliterations, and rhymes, and instead of the usual iambic pentameter, their lines are in trochaic tetrameter. This difference is echoed in the film version through audio modulation distorting the witches’ voices. The show of kings is represented through sequences of Fleance walking into a hall superimposed over each other (01:38:10-39:30). Víctor Huertas Martín argues that this manipulation of images presents the witches as film-editors having access to the footage of the movie itself (95). Following this interpretation means that the witches exist outside the story. They are not only omniscient due to their part in the omnipresent surveillance, as Huertas Martín believes (95), but also due to their existence outside of the diegetic space of the film. Their continued presence and behavior does indeed suggest that their involvement in the diegetic world is under their control. This interpretation explains how they can fill different roles in the Macbeth household – cooking staff, waitresses, and nurses – without being acknowledged, not even by Macbeth at times who has encountered them as witches before. Notably, Lorraine Helms’ envisioned feminist rendition of the witches features them as extradiegetic entities as well (175). In her version, this would expose the “theatricality of witchcraft” (Helms 175) and interrogate dominant ideologies. In Rupert Goold’s production, the effect is different, due to stripping the sisters of the markers clearly identifying them as witches and their positioning similar to horror movie antagonists.

In Rupert Goold’s film the witches’ involvement in Macbeth’s loss is more obvious than it is in the playtext. When Macbeth faces off against Macduff, he seems to have the upper hand, and although he professes that he will not give up and will remain fighting to the end, he stops suddenly and turns. The witches appear standing in front of him, and he smiles at them with a relieved expression before proclaiming “enough” (02:27:23-34). That he seems to address the witches before his death, suggests that he in part acknowledges their power over the course and end of the narrative. “Enough” in this case is not only an acceptance of death but almost an assisted suicide (see Clark and Mason, 118-119). Macbeth’s last line in the playtext “And damn’d be him that first cries, ‘Hold, enough!’” (Mac. 5.8.34), which is a statement of defiance, is turned into its antithesis due to the break between “hold” and “enough”. The witches do not actively acknowledge either Macbeth’s words or his death but turn around and exit the hall silently while the camera remains focused on them (02:27:46). This communicates to the viewer that their goal is fulfilled but also stresses their emotional distance.

Since Rupert Goold’s film is a modern-dress production, it would be reasonable to assume that he decided to play down the supernatural aspects of the witches. As Elke Schuch observes, staging the play in a modern setting usually means decreasing the supernatural aspects (234). A modern-day audience differs crucially from an Early Modern English audience in terms of not only belief- but also value-system, which necessitates a different representation of magic. Even though Huertas Martín argues that the supernatural aspect of their powers is unfocused due to the witches’ alleged reliance on the surveillance-system in place (95) and Clark and Mason agree with him (103), the impression created by post-production effects, audio-modulation enhancing their voices, and fast cuts making their movements seem abrupt and inhuman, mark them clearly as other. This other, however, is not necessarily witch-like. The witches in Macbeth refuse clear classification, and witches in modern culture are presented in a myriad of ways which complicates taxonomy even further.

In fact, as Susan Gushee O’Malley and Pierre Kapitaniak argue, Rupert Goold’s witches are more easily recognized as horror movie staples (81 and 68) borrowing the trope of the horror nurse and recognizable horror editing techniques. Representing the witches as “instruments of horror” (Gushee O’Malley 81) is, according to Kapitaniak, an increasingly popular way to integrate possibly outdated magic into modern productions (68). Consequently, it could be argued that the witches of yore that are “as much childish and grotesque as frightening” (Clark and Mason 6) find their modern equivalent in horror movie tropes that elicit similar reactions from audiences. Both depictions are representations of existing anxieties. The fear and horror of monstrous women represent a toppling of existing power structures and, consequently, fit into Macbeth’s themes and story.


In conclusion, one could say that modern productions have the important and difficult task to negotiate their representation of the witches. Not only do directors have to evaluate how they want to translate the supernatural aspects of the sisters from Macbeth but also in how far they reproduce potentially problematic ideologies underlying the witch archetype. Modern audiences have different sensibilities and expectations. To evoke a similar feeling of dread, modern productions have multiple options. Rupert Goold chooses to present his witches as horror movie antagonists, inhuman and outside the story. Their extradiegetic existence allows them power over the narrative and makes them seem omnipresent. Although the witches are not distinctly marked as witches, they are still clearly other. They are “not like th’ inhabitants o’ th’ earth” (Mac. 1.3.41) and instead exist on their own terms.


Primary Sources:

Macbeth. Directed by Rupert Goold, performances by Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood, BBC Four, 2010.

Shakespeare, William. Macbeth. Edited by Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason, Bloomsbury, 2015. The Arden Shakespeare.


Secondary Sources:

Clark, Sandra, and Pamela Mason. Introduction. Macbeth, by William Shakespeare, edited by Sandra Clark and Pamela Mason, Bloomsbury, 2015, pp. 1-125. The Arden Shakespeare.

Gushee O’Malley, Susan. “Macbeth’s Witches: Nurses, Waitresses, Feminists, Punk Gore Groupies.” Shakespeare on Screen: Macbeth, edited by Sarah Hatchuel, Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, and Victoria Bladen, Presses Universitaires de Rounen et du Havre, 2014, pp. 71-82.

Helms, Lorraine. “The Weyward Sisters: Towards a Feminist Staging of Macbeth.” New Theatre Quarterly, vol. 8, no. 30, 1992, pp. 167-177.

Huertas Martín, Víctor. “Rupert Goold’s Macbeth (2010): Surveillance Society and Society of Control.” SEDERI: Yearbook of the Spanish and Portuguese Society for English Renaissance Studies, vol. 27, 2017, pp. 81-103.

Kapitaniak, Pierre. “Witches and Ghosts in Modern Times Lost? How to Negotiate the Supernatural in Modern Adaptations of Macbeth.” Shakespeare on Screen: Macbeth, edited by Sarah Hatchuel, Nathalie Vienne-Guerrin, and Victoria Bladen, Presses Universitaires de Rounen et du Havre, 2014, pp. 55-69.

Schuch, Elke. “I exceed my sex”: Inszenierungen von Geschlecht in Shakespeares Dramen: Text und Aufführung. Wissenschaftlicher Verlag Trier, 2003.

Stuff I liked as a child/teen 1: Primeval

I’m not sure I like the title of this new series of posts. But I do like the concept. Being ashamed about your harmless interests is not what I want to do with my life, instead I want to embrace my past for what it was and I’d encourage you to do the same. So, here goes stuff I liked as a child/teen.
 

First off, a British show that technically ran from 2007-2011 (so from the time I was 13 to the time I was 17), by the time it ended, however, I wasn’t watching it anymore. Too much had changed. Seasons 1-3 is where it’s at. For this show ‘like’ is probably too tame a word. For a while Primeval was it for me.

But what is Primeval? Imagine time broke apart and out of the wormholes dinosaurs escaped and had to be brought back to their time - ideally without eating a bunch of people. Every week our crew of accidental heroes needs to find the dinosaur in question and coral it back through the wormhole, while making sure not to get eaten themselves. That’s basically it. Simple wacky premise with a pretty solid execution. And okay, the creature cgi might not hold up anymore but what cgi from that time does.

What did I like about it? I really enjoyed the different creatures (apart from classics like t-rex and raptors, they even had spores and viruses at some point and creatures from the future) and the slow uncovering of the mystery behind the wormholes, but most importantly I enjoyed the cast of characters consisting of government agents, a paleontology professor, a zoologist, and my favorite, a paleontology student who also happens to be brilliant with computers and technology in general.

I zeroed in on him and Connor became not only my favorite character of the show but one of my favorite characters in general at that time. Two years ago I had the wonderful opportunity to meet his actor Andrew Lee Potts at a convention and all my teenage affections came to the forefront again and I suddenly felt 10 years younger. I managed to get my autograph and it made me very happy.

From emotion comes our power - On women and expressing anger, pain, and sorrow

“We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller. … We make them feel as though by being born female they’re already guilty of something. And so girls grow up to be women who cannot see they have desire. They grow up to be women who silence themselves. They grow up to be women who cannot say what they truly think. And they grow up … to be women who turn pretense into an art form.”
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie


Women are asked not to be too much, too angry, too sad, too happy, too passionate, too emotional. A good woman is a quiet woman, who smiles in the face of frustration, and manages to keep her voice calm. As soon as you start expressing emotion, you lose. I am aware that men are also taught to suppress certain emotions, like fear or sadness, and I’m not saying that isn’t a significant problem, I am, however, right now concerned with women and their portrayal in the media.

I want to talk with you about three relatively recent examples where women were told to control and suppress their emotions and in the end let their complicated mix of feelings out into the world in an explosion of power.


I) Captain Marvel (Spoilers)

Let’s start with Captain Marvel. I am really, truly baffled by the people who complain about Brie Larson’s lack of visible emotion in the movie. Her stoic countenance and often neutral facial expression are on purpose. And you don’t have to go searching for the reasons in the subtext. It is said, explicitly, multiple times, in dialog that the Kree value logic and stoicism, they value rationality and control, especially over one’s emotions. Even the little bit of emotion that Carol does show, a smirk, a chuckle, an uncontrolled fighting move, is immediately and strenly admonished, strongly discouraged and presented to her and the audience as a failure on her part and a definite negative thing.

Not only does this make sense in the context of the movie, @EveryJacob on twitter pointed out that women in real life have a similar experience, even though our society isn’t as rational and war-oriented as Kree society is portrayed to be.

Only when she learns about who she was, who she is, and regains some of her memories with the help of her closest friend, does she express emotion more freely. She learns about the truth behind the war and her part in it and comes to recognize that the Kree’s focus on suppression and rationality has purposefully limited her and held her back, so that she, and the power she carried, was easier to control.

In a stunning and emotional scene where Carol fights with the Kree’s Supreme Intelligence in her own mind, she reclaims her name and her identity and with it her passion and emotionality, which unlocks her potential and helps her break free from the prison they constructed for her. In the end, she chooses to be kind, she chooses to be compassionate, she chooses to be loud and opinionated and stubborn and true. She chooses to be a hero and she chooses to burn bright. And it is celebrated by the narrative as a triumph. What a healing thing to see.


II) The Witcher (Spoilers for season 1)

Yennefer (Anya Chalotra) is characterized by her wants and her wants are characterized by what she feels she lacks. From her very first scene onwards, Yennefer is a creature that hungers, for love and affection first, for power and influence later, and always, always for respect. She is, also, denied, by her family, by her mentor, by society.

In her training to become a sorceress she is told to control her feelings, that her emotions make her weak and that her magic will suffer from it. Here, too, any expression of passion labeled as “too intense” is portrayed as a failure on her part. She is trained to be an advisor, to put herself behind, to achieve power ultimately through - at least outward - subservience to men who, as she learns, do not deserve her help.

Yennefer on her own, after she rejected the teachings and broke with the academy, is honest with her desires but holds her true feelings close to her chest still because she has been taught that feelings make one vulnerable and are a sign of weakness.

It is not until her former mentor tells her to access the pain and rage and sorrow she feels, to connect to her inner chaos and let it out, that Yennefer allows herself to fully feel the years of anguish and as she cries and screams a storm of fire bursts forth from her hands burning everything in its path and destroying their enemies.


III) The Umbrella Academy (Spoilers for season 1)

Vanya (Elliot Page) is, maybe, an extreme case. Extreme because her emotions aren’t (only) suppressed by an environment or society that tells her to be rational but literally by medicine that makes her unable to feel anything strongly - a fact that prevents her from forming bonds with people and playing the violin well. Extreme also because her explosion of emotion causes the literal end of the world.

But let’s back up. Vanya is the black sheep of the family because she has allegedly no powers, nothing that makes her special. From the seven children born under special circumstances that Reginald Hargreeves adopted - read, bought - she, alone, did not exhibit superpowers, or so everyone, her included, thinks. In truth, she has strong sort of telekinetic powers that can be canalized through music and are inextricably tied to her emotions. When she was four years old, her powers had violently destructive consequences and Reginald Hargreeves decided that instead of teaching little Vanya how to deal with her emotions in a productive non-destructive way and helping her work with her power, he’d rather make her forget that she has one and permanently cripple her ability to feel emotions with medicine.

Adult Vanya has long since internalized this. She fully believes herself to be a failure and believes any emotions that’s only slightly stronger than neutral to be negative and in need to be suppressed by her pills.

Even though her expression of heightened emotions later in the season are notably destructive and damaging, she is not villainized for them and instead allowed a second chance along with her siblings. And I’m excited to see where she’ll go from here.

There are a few more female emotional explosions of power I could talk about. And it’s honestly one of my favorite things in fantasy/superhero media, if done well, because it not only lets women characters express messy unphotogenic emotions but also reinforces that we aren’t weak for having or expressing feelings that they can be a source of strength instead.

Satori over and out

Addendum: Of course, a genuine expression of emotion does not have to be connected to a supernatural power explosion. I am thinking, for example, of Furiosa’s wail of sorrow in Mad Max: Fury Road when the movie takes the time to let her grief for the green place, a dead paradise that she never got to see again. In this post-apocalyptic action movie, we get to see our tough heroine express her pain and we focus on her doing so. 

(Mostly) conflict-free movie fun aka Why do I enjoy the Ocean’s movies so much?

 

Source: Warner

I love the Ocean’s 11 movie series a whole lot. So much so that I frequently designate Ocean’s 11 as one of my favorite movies. I watch it when I’m feeling down or just want to pass the time. It’s probably - apart from the Lord of the Rings trilogy - my most re-watched movie. I’ve never been able to articulate why I love these movies so much apart from the vague ‘oh, they’re fun’, so why not explore this in a post.

While I was watching season 2 of The Umbrella Academy I realized that all the interpersonal drama and all the conflict was stressing me out a whole lot. Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed TUA greatly but I was also very very upset. I do get this way easily. Fictional stories tend to draw me in and I am almost always intensely involved. Often I enjoy this greatly. I love to be drawn in and to be completely absorbed by a piece of media. But. But! Sometimes that’s too much to take in. Sometimes I want a relaxing movie experience.

So, I posit that the reason I enjoy Ocean’s 11 (and to a slightly lesser degree Ocean’s 12 and 13) so much is because it is almost utterly conflict-free.

Let me explain. Of course, the movies have a central conflict. We’re not just watching Hollywood stars run around for an hour and a half exchanging dialog. For the sake of brevity I’ll be focusing on the first movie but most of what I’m arguing is true for the third one as well (and the second one to a lesser degree).

The central conflict in the movie runs as follows:
Gang wants to rob a casino. Casino owner doesn’t want them to.

There is a secondary (relationship) conflict as well:
Danny wants to get back with his ex wife, who is now dating the casino owner.

And, naturally, there are some obstacles that get in the way:
e.g. Danny and Rusty’s “fight”, Yen breaks his hand

First off, the conflict of the movie is deliberately started by our protagonists themselves, voluntarily and out of their own initiative. They want to steal for the money’s sake and for the hell of it. Their exact motivations differ slightly but are trivial and self-serving. The stakes are comparatively low because if, at any point in the movie, they stepped away from the job, they would incur no negative consequences.

Secondly, it is never in question whose side the audience should be on, because while the protagonists are thieves they are gentlemanly about it and wildly likable while the antagonist is not only super rich - so he won’t suffer greatly from their theft - but also just. such an asshole. This is significant because it frees the audience from grappling with moral quandaries or reflecting on the protagonists’ actions.

Thirdly, the secondary conflict is of no consequence in the grand scheme of things. Yes, Danny might not get Tess back but the influence of that storyline on the main one is minimal at best. It might be the reason for a disagreement between the two main protagonists but even that disagreement is neatly integrated into the plan, which brings me to the next and possibly most important point.
 

The plan. Every heist movie has one and most often they are ridiculously intricate and improbable. This one is no exception. We follow the team through its execution and, of course, there are a couple of bumps on the road. Every single one of them, however, is patched over almost immediately. It’s never all that serious, never truly a problem and never really in question that the crew would walk away from the job with the money in their pockets. The viewer is even purposefully kept in the dark about some of the details, so that some of the conflicts can turn out to have been part of the plan all along.

Additionally, the protagonists themselves support the impression that this movie is just a good time. They are mostly calm and collected even in the face of obstacles. Yes, Linus and Livingston might exhibit nervousness and Basher might rage but in general they have faith in the plan, faith in Danny and Rusty, faith in themselves. Especially Danny and Rusty’s nonchalance in the face of adversity communicates to the viewer that there is no need to worry and that things are going to work out just fine, which, of course, they do.

Last but not least, the music and soundtrack sets the tone for the movie. And with songs like A Little Less Conversation (Elvis) and upbeat original soundtrack the tone is very clearly light and breezy. The sound design featuring typical Las Vegas bling and clink only furthers the excitement.

So, in conclusion, what you’re doing when you’re watching an Ocean’s movie is watching a ridiculous plan succeed, thought up and executed by people who are so confident in their success they don’t take anything too seriously, so why should you?

With all the drama and all the conflict and complications inherent in most stories, not all of which feels strictly necessary and some of which feels decidedly superfluous, it’s nice sometimes to have a (mostly) drama free time at the movies.

Satori over and out


P.S. (The conflict in the second movie (Gang needs to make a big score to pay casino owner back or he’ll kill them all.) is pretty high stakes and not initiated by our protagonists themselves. They are reactive here and loss would have grave consequences. Possibly not unrelated, the second movie is widely considered the weakest.)

Thoughts about things I saw: The Boys

 

There's a new season out. So. Time to share my thoughts on season one. 

I’m not sure how to feel about The Boys. It is an effective satire of the superhero genre, even if it’s very on the nose and over-the-top for me from time to time. It, however, also features several instances of my least favorite trope, the ‘woman dies to motivate man’ trope (three of those to be exact, which is at least two too many), one of which has a man killing a woman he supposedly loves, which is always icky (*side-eyes GoT*) and more than one instance of sexual assault. So, yeah. Not that great on the woman-front.

What I fell in love with, however, is the soft and tender depiction of Kimiko and Frenchie's relationship that seems at times almost at odds with their surroundings.

Frenchie is a weapon's expert, killer and just basic criminal that gets recruited to try and fight the clearly bad corporation that controls the superheroes in this universe. The superheroes are almost universally terrible and range from kinda questionable to homicidal maniac. So we're on the group's side, even though they're also not really good guys.

Kimiko is a woman who was kidnapped and trained by a terror group in her home country and then kidnapped and drugged by that superhero corporation to make her into a supervillain. Yeah, it’s bad.

The titular Boys, however, find her locked in a cell and in a moment of empathy Frenchie frees her. Kimiko is at this point fully feral and only half-aware of what she is doing. She recognizes those that hurt her and wants to hurt them in turn. Frenchie never stops feeling compassionate towards her. Even when everyone around him is telling him that she’s a dangerous liability, he treats her gently and attempts to talk to her and find out what her story is and what she wants, is vulnerable and open with her and most importantly, lets her choose her own path. Kimiko in turn recognizes him as an ally, seeks him out for comfort and takes care not to hurt him.

At one point he bakes with her in the safe house and it’s just the softest thing.

They both make it through season one and if I care about nothing else in this show, I care about them.

"Bad" movies I enjoy

As per my “Good movies don’t have to be good” post you know that I am very much of the opinion that enjoyment of a piece of media isn’t necessarily connected to its “objective” quality. This is why I made a list of “bad” movies I enjoy. They’re designated as “bad” either because they flopped at the box office, got mostly negative reviews or disappeared into obscurity almost immediately after their release.

All of the movies I’ll be recommending here have a Rotten Tomatoes rating of below 50%, either as a critical rating or audience score. I said it before and I’ll say it again, Rotten Tomatoes scores mean nothing to me. I’m just using them here as a guideline for which films to pick.

The Meg

(Ratings: 46/42)

Maybe it’s because I watched it while on a very enjoyable vacation in the US or because I have nothing else to compare it to - I usually stay away from this type of movies - but I liked The Meg quite a bit. It’s, as far as I can tell, a typical shark attack movie but I found it funny, surprising at times and I liked the characters and action. Quite a few shots are visually interesting and well-composed and the whole movie is just nice to look at.

My only complaint is that the shark didn’t eat even one helicopter, even though it got close several times. That would’ve completed it for me, to be honest.

I also heard Jason Statham’s real voice for the first time (I have only ever heard his German dub voice before) and realized he sounds quite likable when he’s not dubbed. Who’d have thought?

Should you watch it? - Yeah, it’s a fun shark movie and if you enjoy those, you’ll enjoy this.

“Great temperamental disabilities” - An examination of rationality vs emotionality in Doctor Who

“There is also a temperamental difference in men and women which makes an equal footing in political life all but impossible. Whatever she may have had in the past, whatever she may be going to have in the future, at the present moment she has great temperamental disabilities. [...] She lacks nervous stability. [...] A woman’s sympathies are quicker, more easily roused, more dominant than a man’s; she is sensitive and emotional in a way that differs from his way.” (Duffield Goodwin, 91-92)


***

This introductory quote might be over a hundred years old and its language might sound archaic in parts, its sentiments, however, still survive today. Not only in Christian fundamentalist or right-wing circles that seek to return to the “””good old times””” but also in so-called sceptic internet communities (some of which are explicitly or implicitly right-wing). The latter sometimes proclaim to not ascribe either rationality or emotionality to gender but nevertheless put a heightened emphasis on rationality and reason and dismiss emotion as unhelpful in the best and harmful in the worst cases. And the belief that women just naturally are more emotional than men is still widespread, one only has to look at what happens whenever a woman runs for office. It’s a belief that is often propagated in media as well, which is why this analysis is fruitful.


***


Because I liked doing the last one so much, have another post that remixes parts of my master's thesis. This time on the topic of male-coded rationality vs female-coded emotionality and how Doctor Who (or more precisely the renewal since 2005) values or devalues each. Again, it will contain different extracts of my thesis and combine them with new thoughts. Enjoy!


***

There are a variety of alien representations in science fiction. To categorize different types of aliens, Carl Malmgren formulates the following typology: the other can be other-as-enemy, other-as-self, or other-as-other (18 and 26). The alien depictions relevant for the following discussion are most clearly recognizable as others-as-self. In relation to otherness, it is possible to see aspects of the self clearer that would otherwise be less obvious and “to explore the nature of selfhood from the vantage point of alterity” (Malmgren 16). In this way, the audience can relate to an alien creature better and it allows the show to make statements about humanity, in this case human emotionality.

Before we get into the specific case, let’s take a look at Nu Who’s stance on emotionality in general.

First off, the Doctor, who in all regenerations except the last is presented as a man, is a rational being. Cordone and Cordone examine the Doctor across regenerations and they emphasize the Doctor’s vital character traits, which are, according to them, a certain disregard for others’ opinions, heightened confidence in one’s ability and decision-making (12), heightened sense of importance (10), and most importantly superior intelligence (9). These traits are, according to them, immutable and ensure that the audience recognizes the Doctor as the same character across incarnations. The Doctor has an outward aversion to violence and tendency to solve conflicts with reasoning instead of aggression. This focus on rationality, however, goes hand in hand with a decreased emotionality. Lorna Jowett, for example, postulates that “his alien nature is most often identified in relation to emotion” or lack thereof (15). He is often portrayed as cold and detached and in his focus on the big picture sometimes disregards the smaller concerns of the people around him.

It is, here, important to note that at least from time to time this detachment is not portrayed as positive. While the Doctor’s superior intelligence, experience and reasoning abilities most often save the day, the show makes the point of sporadically emphasizing that individual people, their emotions and their fates, matter. When the Doctor kills the children of the empress of Racnoss in “The Runaway Bride”, it is significant that even though the empress has been consistently portrayed as a monstrous villain who needs to be defeated and has caused her personally harm, Donna is seen empathizing with the empress’ pain and being perturbed at the Doctor’s seeming unaffectedness.

The companions, who are largely female, thus fulfill the dual role of being an audience surrogate and simultaneously tempering the Doctor’s worst impulses and keeping him from becoming “too alien and distant” (Jowett 17). They provide an emotional center and a contrast to the Doctor’s rationality.

It is, furthermore, important to note that with her regeneration into a woman, the Doctor’s rationality is toned down and she is, for example, more prone to listen to those around her and accept others’ judgments than her predecessors were and is more emotionally available and expressive. Personally, I welcome these changes, however, they are emblematic of the show’s connection of rationality with men or those perceived to be men and emotionality with women or those perceived to be women.

This is true for the Master as well. When she regenerates into a woman, quite a few of her behaviors change. Despite the fact that her femininity can be seen as a parodic exaggeration of typical womanhood, her arc in season 10 emphasizes the inherent changes. They become especially apparent when she interacts with her former male regeneration. The Master’s line “Her? It’s a Cyberman now. Becoming a woman is one thing, but have you got empathy?” (“The Doctor Falls” 24:16) spoken with derision lampshades the change in personality from one regeneration to another. The Master, here, equates womanhood with a heightened emotionality. However, this connection is not only done in-universe by a villainous character, whose judgments the audience knows not to trust, but the show itself implies that Missy’s willingness to seek a form of redemption and ally herself with the Doctor is due to her changing gender. Even though it is lampshaded here, the show, nevertheless, constructs womanhood as inherently more emotional and empathetic.

McDunnah comments that “the trap lies first in ascribing essential characteristics to certain genders at all, and then in assuming that any exhibition of those characteristics is necessarily attributable to gender”. While he is right in his appeal to separate personality attributes and gender, especially considering the lack of applicability of a gender binary to humans, it is a reality that mainstream society, including the writers and producers of the show, does ascribe certain characteristics to certain genders. Popular media products like Doctor Who, here, help enforce these stereotypes.

An example of this can be found in the episodes “The Hungry Earth” and “Cold Blood”. The Doctor, Matt Smith at this point, and his companions Amy and Rory travel to the British countryside where a drill has been driven deep into the earth and woken up the slumbering Silurians. The Silurians that wake are the exclusively female warrior class, aggressive and determined, as well as the male king and a male scientist. This characterization can be seen as a role-reversal, with the women filling traditionally masculine roles and adopting traditionally masculine characteristics. While the king and the scientist do still fill traditionally masculine roles, they exhibit through their kindness and willingness to empathize, more traditionally female attributes. It is, however, also possible to interpret these episodes as a criticism of female emotionality. Especially throughout the episode “Cold Blood”, Silurians are used as an other-as-self construction. Their similarities to humans are emphasized, and humans and Silurians attempt to find common ground in a negotiation. The Doctor explicitly rejects the categorization of the Silurians as villains and says that they are “not monsters, not evil. Well, only as evil as you are” (“Hungry Earth” 35:39).

The female Silurians that have lines in these episodes, Restac and Alaya, are presented as hateful, aggressive, and irrational. Alaya, for example, insults her human captors, refuses to assist in peace talks, and finally baits them into killing her specifically so that the peace the Doctor is trying to broker will fail. Restac is focused on fighting and intends to kill all of humanity so that the Silurians might once again rule the Earth. She is shown to be irrational and needlessly violent when she repeatedly ignores orders from the king and willingly breathes in lethal fumes to shoot and kill a random human in retribution. Despite being portrayed as wise and calmer, it is implied in “A Good Man Goes to War” that the Doctor’s Silurian friend and recurring character Vastra was almost feral before the Doctor convinced her to change her ways (19:54). The male Silurians, a scientist, and the king, in contrast, are portrayed as rational, reasonable, and compromising, for which Restac attacks them, which is accompanied by war-like music underlining her aggression.

As the female Silurians are presented as irrationally angry, their behavior is mirrored in the human woman who ends up killing Alaya. She has strict instructions not to harm their prisoner, and her actions are presented as ultimately senseless and driven by grief, anger, and fear. In a mirror to the king and the scientist, two human men remain on the surface and function as a moderating presence. The women’s emotionality, Silurian and human, is contrasted with the men’s rationality and depicted as lacking. This is reinforced by Silurians as a whole not being depicted as antagonists, and the only antagonistic characters are female.

It comes down to the concerns of Mrs. Duffield Goodwin over a hundred years ago. Women’s emotionality might be a “great source of strength in her own place in the world” (92), which might be in the home or at a man’s side keeping him from becoming too detached, but “it will be her greatest danger and greatest source of weakness in the political life” (92). Her words might be old, her convictions, however, endure.


Episodes mentioned:


“A Good Man Goes to War.” Doctor Who, written by Steven Moffat, directed by Peter Hoar, season 6, episode 7, BBC, 2011.
“Cold Blood.” Doctor Who, written by Chris Chibnall, directed by Ashley Way, season 5, episode 9, BBC, 2010.
“The Doctor Falls.” Doctor Who, written by Steven Moffat, directed by Rachel Talalay, season 10, episode 12, BBC, 2017.
“The Hungry Earth.” Doctor Who, written by Chris Chibnall, directed by Ashley Way, season 5, episode 8, BBC, 2010.
“The Runaway Bride.” Doctor Who, written by Russell T. Davies, directed by Euros Lyn, Special, BBC, 2006.

Sources:

Cordone, John and Michelle Cordone. “Who is the Doctor?: The Meta-Narrative of Doctor Who.” Ruminations, Peregrinations, and Regenerations: A Critical Approach to Doctor Who, edited by Christopher J. Hansen, Cambridge Scholars Publisher, 2010, pp. 8-21.
Jowett, Lorna. Dancing with the Doctor: Dimensions of Gender in the Doctor Who Universe. I.B. Tauris, 2017.
Malmgren, Carl D. “Self and Other in SF: Alien Encounters.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 20, no. 1, 1993, pp. 15-33.
McDunnah, Michael G. “Doctor He, She, or They? Changing Gender, and Language, in Doctor Who: Celebrating the Power of Speculative Fiction to Challenge Our Preconceptions.” Conscious Style Guide, 16 Jan. 2019.

Other sources:

Grace Duffield Goodwin. Anti-Suffrage: 10 Good Reasons. Duffield, 1912.

Absurdist horror and the horrifically absurd - A case study of Welcome to Night Vale

Recently, I got back into reading more. I’m commuting to work by train and have the time now, which I use to either stare blankly out of the window, nap, or read. Therefore, I finally managed to finish the Welcome to Night Vale novel It Devours! by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. It has given me the idea to write an analysis of a specific technique they use to create suspense and unease. To do that I will use an excerpt not from this novel but the one preceding it, simply called Welcome to Night Vale.

 

Welcome to Night Vale is a podcast created by Joseph Fink and Jeffrey Cranor. In it, the radio show host Cecil Baldwin (voiced by a man of the same name) talks about the going-ons in the fictive small desert community of Night Vale. These goings-on are almost always surreal, absurd, and often border on eldritch horror. They are told, however, in such a way that they are naturally intertwined with the everyday life of the town and mundane and unremarkable to the residents, and therefore, while novel to the listeners, not a source of horror. That horror comes from the characters reactions to these occurences. If something is normal absurd or scary absurd depends solely on how it is treated in-universe.

The excerpt of chapter 9 (p. 75-81) of the Welcome to Night Vale novel discussed in the following is a perfect example to demonstrate this strategy in action.

In the novel perpetual nineteen-year-old pawnshop owner Jackie Fierro receives a mysterious paper she cannot let go of and attempts to investigate the man who gave it to her; a search which slowly unravels her life. Mind you, the fact that Jackie does not grow older isn’t presented as unusual (in the beginning), time works different in Night Vale after all. Neither are her strange business practices considered worrisome - she buys abstract concepts for example and it requires an intricate ritual. The little slip of paper in her hand, however, is. To distract herself, Jackie visits her mother in chapter 9, only to find that the house she lives in seems sterile and Jackie can’t shake the feeling of unfamiliarity.  

“She looked around the kitchen trying to guess which drawer held the silverware, the surest sign of kitchen familiarity, and she hadn’t a clue.

[…]

Jackie tried another drawer. It was full of an opaque, fatty liquid, simmering from some invisible heat source.” (p. 77-78)

Now, searching for the silverware drawer in your mother’s kitchen and instead finding a drawer full of a mysterious pulsating liquid would in any other story be cause for alarm. It’s a grotesque image, the strangeness of which can in already tense situations elicit horror. That is, however, not the case here, as the following lines prove.

““No,” Jackie told herself. She hadn’t been looking for the hot milk drawer. The silverware drawer. If she knew where that was, then she knew the house. If she didn’t, then.” (p. 78)

The strange liquid isn’t the problem. Jackie casually refers to it as hot milk in a way that suggests that having such a drawer is not only not unusual but expected, something everyone has in their kitchen in Night Vale. The novelty is only for the reader and therefore accepted as a part of the quirky fictional world. While the discovery of the boiling liquid in the drawer does add to the horror, it’s not because the liquid is an alarming find, but because it is NOT the silverware Jackie is searching for and therefore proof that she does not know the kitchen or the house.

The first drawer Jackie tries is full of towels. Regular kitchen towels the readers might store in their kitchens as well. The tension and unease in that case is the same as with the hot milk drawer later.

There’s this technique called defamiliarization, a term coined by Viktor Shklovsky, which refers to making unfamiliar everyday objects and concepts. It can be used in art, poetry, and literature to focus the reader’s/audience’s perception on the artistic language, to elicit unease and subtle horror, or for comical purposes. Nathan W Pyle’s comics about blue aliens are an example of the latter. The aliens call, for example, a ‘hug’ a ‘mutual limb enclosure’, a ‘candle’ a ‘primitive light source’ and a ‘tan’ ‘star damage’.

What WTNV does, is almost the opposite. They take concepts that are unfamiliar and frightening and normalize them in description. Through their POV-character’s narrative perspective objects and occurrences that at first seem strange, and possibly unsettling, are turned mundane, which makes it immediately obvious when something strange is in fact grounds for terror.

Jackie not knowing where the silverware drawer is could very easily be mundane in-universe. It would, for example, not be out of the realm of possibility that drawers in Night Vale’s kitchens just switch from time to time or maybe the faceless old woman who secretly lives in your home changes them to keep you on your toes. Because neither Jackie nor her mother offer up a casual explanation for Jackie’s lack of familiarity with the drawers, it becomes unsettling. In fact, not only does no one offer up an explanation, Jackie’s mother insists that she should be familiar with the house and ignores Jackie’s protests that are getting increasingly more agitated (p. 78-79).

In conclusion, WTNV, the podcast as well as the novels, despite being set in a fully surrealist world in which eldritch horrors are abundant, manages to easily distinguish estrangement that is part of the worldbuilding and estrangement that is the source of horror by using the narrative perspective and tone shifts.

Satori over and out

Books I haven't yet read

I'm making this list primarily to remind myself not to buy anymore books before I finished the ones I still have lying around. There are so many books on my "to read" list, fascinating stories and worlds I can't wait to explore, these will have to be read first though. And I'll tell you all about them.

• Qualityland by Marc-Uwe Kling 
• This is a German novel but I have included it and not the other German novels I also haven't read yet because people tell me there's a good English translation out as well. And Marc-Uwe Kling is just very funny. He's best known for episodic tales about co-habitating with a talking communist kangaroo (yes, it is exactly as absurd and political as it sounds). Qualityland is a completely unrelated novel about a capitalist dystopia and I'm looking forward to finding out how his writing style and one of my favorite genres interact with each other.

• Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
• I bought this novel to read on vacation but alas I never did and it is still sitting on my bedside table today. Why this novel? Netflix recommended the movie to me and it looked so visually interesting and atmospheric that I was immediately intrigued. Now that I have the novel I feel I need to read that one first before I can watch the movie, so I have done neither at this point. I only know that a group of scientists enter a strange zone that no one ever came back from and that no one knows much of anything about. I'm looking forward to reading the descriptions of the world the characters encounter.

•  The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2019 edited by Carmen Maria Machado and John Joseph Adams
• As I've told you before I love these short story collections. I have absolutely no idea what tales await me but in this case that is exactly what I want. I'm looking forward to discovering new favorites and authors I have never heard of before.

• Record of a Spaceborn Few by Becky Chambers
• I love Becky Chambers' other novels taking place in this world (The Long Way to a Small Angry Planet and A Closed and Common Orbit), so it is no surprise that I'd buy the third one. She has created a beautifully creative and fascinating science fiction universe that I love to live in for the duration of her novels. This one tells the stories of a couple of humans and their lives aboard the fleet of ships that carried humans away from their dying homeplace and into the stars and I'm looking forward to falling in love with these new characters and to explore this novel's themes. 

• Wool by Hugh Howey
• I read the sequel to Wool, Shift, on vacation once while believing it was a stand-alone. Somehow I missed the two in Roman numerals on its cover. I had no problem following the plot and in fact suspect I discovered the backstory of the world that you are not yet meant to know when reading book number one. I liked Shift enough to want to read Wool but since it's a pretty dark post-apocalypse, where humanity lives in underground silos, I haven't been in the mood since and it just sits on my shelf. I'm looking forward to finding out what the first expression of that world should have been.

• The Whale Rider by Witi Ihimaera
• I love the movie. I was a child when I first watched it and too young to understand why my parents were crying. In university the movie was on a watchlist for a lecture and this time I understood. Rewatching the movie made me want to read the novel it is based on, the story about a Maori girl who grows up wanting to prove herself to her grand-father, the chief of her tribe. I'm looking forward to experiencing the beautifully moving story in its  original form.

• The Silent Stars Go By by Dan Abnett
• Every fall I see this novel sitting on my shelf and tell myself, "this Christmas, I'll finally read it". But I never do. It's a Doctor Who novel about 11, Amy and Rory turning up to help a colony in trouble. It is very clearly winter and Christmas-themed, which is why it would feel weird to read at any other time of the year and which is why I haven't read it yet. I'm looking forward to a fun, heart-warming seasonal story. Hopefully this Christmas.

 Maybe one of these books interests you as well. Or not. I might talk a bit more about one of these books (if I ever get around to reading them that is).

Satori over and out

Thoughts about things I saw: The Magicians

moviepilot.de

I like The Magicians. At its best it’s a wonderful mix of fantastical and wacky and serious and dramatic. At worst its tone shifts are abrupt and jarring. I enjoy the characters and the magic and the incorporation of the fairytale not-Narnia that is both deconstructed and played completely straight.

One of my favorite, if not my absolute favorite, scenes of the show is the coronation of season 2 episode 1. As it happens, one of the ragtag group of magic college students is destined to be the high king of this fairytale land. For him to be recognized, however, he needs a crown, as do the three co-rulers he gets to pick. The crowning isn’t supposed to be an opulent affair, instead they travel to an old man by the ocean who guards the crowns.

Quentin, who is arguably the protagonist and who lives with depression, is the one to earnestly believe in the magical world and insists that they don’t just put the crowns on but crown each other. And it’s… it’s so very good. All these people are fucked-up and broken in their own ways and they made mistakes and treated each other badly. The coronation scene is so emotional because it is so genuine and earnest, full of true emotion and honest intentions.

Alas, the show never really delivers and the four of them never rule together. (Two of them do and it’s very good, but not what was promised by that scene.) The show makes a bit of a habit on not delivering on wonderful concepts and premises and it makes me sad because, damn, the potential is there, you just have to follow through.

"Devour what she likes" - On abject female hunger

Imagine a hungry woman. Hungry for what? Power? Love? Respect? Food? Does it even matter? The image is the same.

"Oh man", my friend told me, her tone elated, when we came out of a screening of Ocean's 8, "did you see that? They were eating constantly! And not even just tiny bits of salad! But, you know, actual food." We nodded along and agreed with her, just happy in that moment, but later I thought, how weird, how strange it is that we find it remarkable that women in a movie were shown eating.

***

Women’s appetites are often demonized, that is hardly a hot take. From media analysis, over poetry and art to political and feminist writings, a lot of women from different walks of lives have written on the subject. It isn’t just a media studies thing, far from it, it is a social justice issue as well, translated and refracted and spread through media.

Nevertheless, I want to share with you a part of my master’s thesis that deals with exactly that topic. I’ll be using excerpts from my thesis as well as additional sources, quotes and thoughts. Enjoy:

***

First off, some context. Women in society are often marked as other. Aliens in media are representative of the other, often of a specific type of human other. The construction of female aliens, therefore, makes symbolic statements about human womanhood. The alien woman discussed in the following is the Empress of Racnoss, the clear antagonist of the Doctor Who episode “The Runaway Bride”. She follows the other-as-enemy distinction, as Carl Malmgren formulates it (18). Using this strategy, the human other, for whom the alien is a stand-in, is dehumanized and presented as an enemy whose defeat is desirable. The other in science fiction, therefore, can be employed as a tool to reinforce desired societal norms. Norms that in Christian cultures often go back to the Bible, as Nina Coomes confirms when she observes that the hungry woman as the ultimate sinner is inextricably connected with Eve and her desire to know and to want and to eat.

The first look at the Empress of Racnoss, portrayed by Sarah Parish, shows her spider-like legs and her red lips and sharp teeth through which she hisses “I’ll eat you up” (28:18) when she sees the Doctor, mixing sexually suggestive language with animalistic intentions, the impression of which is strengthened due to the camera’s close-up focus on her mouth. Because the audience does not see her full face or body, she remains mysterious and monstrous – she is reduced to parts of her that seem threatening – and is, consequently, denied personhood. The empress is from the beginning onwards connected with hunger and desire, both visually and through dialog, and this hunger is also clearly characterized as threatening and abject.

Additionally, the Doctor proclaims the Racnoss to be aggressive omnivores, an statement confirmed through the visual focus on the alien mouth, marking the species as evil and, therefore, preemptively justifying any action taken against them. The Doctor’s description combined with the looks and staging of the empress serves to further dehumanize and alienate her. In combination with her earlier assessment of the Doctor, her “various appetites, be they procreative, literal, or carnal” and her “biological drives” (Rowson 93) are linked to her gender and presented as a threat, positioning a female focus on the body to be destructive. To hunger for anything while being female is to ask too much. It doesn’t matter if this appetite is for attention, sex, power or nourishment, it “always overreaches”, as Jess Zimmerman says in her examination of her own relationship to hunger, literal and emotional, “because it is not supposed to exist”.

It is, furthermore, notable that the alien mother is depicted without a husband or father of the children, centering her desire to procreate on her womanhood, and presenting her as different from the nuclear family ideal of heterosexual mainstream culture. This is how the depiction of the empress falls in line with a horror trope Cynthia Freeland calls “queen bugs” (70). The queen bugs combine “the primitive instinctual drive to reproduce with a tendency to dominate the male of the species” (Freeland 70). The empress being portrayed as a spider-like creature even implies that she consumed the father of the children as some spiders do. Her desire to procreate is, consequently, connected with her literal hunger and made fully her own. It can’t be excused as someone else’s in the same way eating alone in public forces you to own your hunger as Laura Maw describes.

In her evaluation of Alien (1979), Lynda Zwinger concludes that it insists “on a border between representations of the nurturing mother necessary to the middle-class bourgeois dominant culture and the transgressive power maternity might achieve if left to its own (supposed) desires” (74). This assessment can be applied to the empress as well, especially considering that her visual design is in part reminiscent of the xenomorph queen’s. Like the famous alien, the empress’ desire to consume and procreate and her obvious power to do so if not stopped, transgresses accepted boundaries and thus becomes a threat.

Presenting the Racnoss as conquerors and omnivores has the effect of categorizing the empress’ appetite as abject because its satiation would be to the detriment of innocent human lives. It has, additionally, the effect of denying the validity of any of the empress’ desires since they are, as the Doctor and the narrative clarified, monstrous and destructive in nature. Her drive for procreation, however, the desire to see her decimated species alive again, is one the Doctor - and the audience - should be able to at the very least relate to.

There is a compelling comparison to be made to Donna, whose exaggerated desire for companionship is ridiculed and ultimately the source of her suffering. As Jess Zimmerman notes, to want something for yourself as a woman, is to be seen as ‘attention-seeking’. Donna’s wanting is purposefully designed to be over-the-top, to be mocked and made the butt of a joke, something to laugh at, because how dare she actively pursue love.

It is significant here, that even though the empress has been consistently portrayed as a monstrous villain who needs to be defeated and has caused her personally harm, Donna is seen empathizing with the empress’ pain and being perturbed at the Doctor’s seeming unaffectedness. Even though the music takes on triumphant notes, the camera shows the scene in a Dutch angle, adding a sense of unease. Donna’s empathy for what is essentially a grieving mother links them in their womanhood.

In the end, the Doctor kills the Racnoss children with water and therefore puts an end to her procreative desire. The empress herself escapes by teleporting to her ship and vows revenge but is promptly killed by Earth’s military; her female abjection is thusly thoroughly defeated by male forces. Her excessive overreaching hunger could only be stopped by not allowing her to continue. Because a female creature whose appetite becomes uncontrollable is a monster like no other.

***

Sources from my thesis (I’m only citing them this academically because of the master’s thesis excerpts, don’t expect that for future posts):

“The Runaway Bride.” Doctor Who, written by Russell T. Davies, directed by Euros Lyn, Special, BBC, 2006.

Freeland, Cynthia A. The Naked and the Undead: Evil and the Appeal of Horror. Westview Press, 2000.
Malmgren, Carl D. “Self and Other in SF: Alien Encounters.” Science Fiction Studies, vol. 20, no. 1, 1993, pp. 15-33.
Rowson, Emily V. Impossible Girls and Tin Dogs: Constructions of the Gendered Body in Doctor Who. 2017. University of Northumbria, PhD dissertation.
Zwinger, Lynda. “Blood Relations: Feminist Theory Meets the Uncanny Alien Bug Mother.” Hypatia, vol. 7, no. 2, 1992, pp. 74-90.


Extra sources:

Coomes, Nina. “On Eve’s Temptation and the Monsters We Make of Hungry Women.” Catapult, 15. Jul. 2019, https://catapult.co/stories/on-eves-temptation-and-the-monsters-we-make-of-hungry-women-nina-coomes

Maw, Laura. “There’s Nothing Scarier Than a Hungry Woman.” Electric Literature, 17. Oct. 2019, https://electricliterature.com/theres-nothing-scarier-than-a-hungry-woman/
(The title quote is from this essay.)

Zimmerman, Jess. “Hunger Makes Me.” Hazlitt Magazine, 7. Jul. 2016, https://hazlitt.net/feature/hunger-makes-me

Z Nation and the glories of "trash TV"

When I wrote the other comparative post, the one about The Witcher and Game of Thrones, I made sure to tell you that it wasn't meant to elevate one over the other. Here it definitely is.

So, disclaimer: I will complain about what I didn’t like about TWD, if you don’t want to read that, turn back now.

Lately I rewatched some The Walking Dead and I realized that even in my most negative assessments I have given it too much credit in the past. Even the few "good" episodes per season, aren't really all that entertaining to begin with. What had happened instead was that I tried to justify my six-season long loyalty to the show by insisting that from time to time it was actually good and enjoyable, when the only thing I really enjoyed where the characters.

Of course, you have to credit TWD with the reinvention of the zombie apocalypse genre or at least with its re-popularization. Z Nation wouldn't exist were it not for TWD. TWD, however, does not exhaust the potentiality of the genre and instead reiterates the same narrative elements over and over again in an attempt to stay serious quality TV.

 Z Nation is different from the get go. Produced by the people that made Sharknado it was already conceptualized as more trashy, which granted it the freedom to play with the genre and its tropes. It is in no way meant to be realistic and combines over-the-top gory moments with ridiculous happenstances like a giant wheel of cheese rolling down the countryside smashing zombies along the way.

It is often self-referential and employs meta-humor that explicitly lampshades conventions of the genre (they also call zombies zombies). Nevertheless, it isn’t a comedy. It has its comedic elements sure and its comic relief but the main story is a dramatic one. Instead of the goal of the protagonists being survival, however, as it is in TWD (after season 1), they have the clearly defined mission of getting a man, whose blood might be the only chance at a vaccine/cure, to a lab. This goal makes the characters in Z Nation more proactive, as they are moving towards something, while the survivors in TWD mostly just react to threats to their safety. It also allows for story progression in a way TWD does not.

Due to TWD’s insistence on “realism” and the differing structure - the protagonists in TWD often stay in one place while in Z Nation they are constantly on the move and cover a lot of ground between episodes - the possible narrative beats are limited and it shows, when the ‘temporary sanctuary overrun by enemies and/or zombies’ is still the main source of conflict 8 seasons in. Z Nation on the other hand not only starts 3 years into the apocalypse already (a good choice, in my opinion, as it makes the chaos and decay of the world that much more believable), it also features a variety of absurd apocalypse inhabitants and scenarios.

The group, among others, meets a fanatic zombie media enthusiast, a Mexican drug cartel, people growing weed from zombie-infested plants, a Mad-Max-esque caravan, and post-apocalyptic bounty hunters. They have to stop a nuclear power plant from melting down, escape a zombienado, deal with an anthrax infection, and a half-zombie baby. And that’s only in the first two seasons.

Despite the show’s obvious “trash TV” nature and usually fast pace, it does not lack genuine drama moments. One of my gripes with TWD is that a lot of the dramatic potential is lost because characters constantly have extended fake deep conversations about it. Z Nation doesn’t attempt to cram as much meaningful-sounding dialog into its episodes and instead focuses on the novel action (for the most part). In this way, however, dramatic scenes are allowed to stand for themselves.

At one point, for example, the group finds themselves in Roswell, where people gathered that believe that aliens are going to come and rescue them from the apocalypse. One woman, so they say, was contacted by the aliens and soon, the aliens would take them all away. Over the course of the episode the group goes investigating in the military base and finds out that it wasn’t in fact aliens but one man with high tech equipment. The woman is with them when they find out, but still goes back to her people and keeps the belief alive because she recognized that hope to them is more important than the truth. None of this is spelled out or explicitly mentioned and this is exactly why it has the impact it does.

In conclusion, Z Nation’s categorization as “trash TV” allows it the freedom to be creative and combined with the narrative drive it is, to me, very much enjoyable.

Satori over and out

See also Nadine Dannenberg’s article “‘Is This a Chick Thing Now?’ The Feminism of Z Nation between Quality and Trash TV” in Gender and Contemporary Horror in Television

Widely decried “overused” filmmaking things I actually like

I spend a good amount of my life concerned with media. Consuming it, analyzing it, reading about it, creatively engaging with it. In that process, I've also read and listened to others’ opinions on movies and how they are made. There are certain things in filmmaking, be it tropes, camerawork, or aspects of post-production, that are widely decried as overused - or just bad. I want to use this space here to share with you some of these things that I actually sincerely enjoy:

Star Trek 2009 (syfy.de)

- lens-flares: dammit but I love the light reflecting off of surfaces and shining brightly into the camera. It gives everything an otherworldly feel. It’s very sci-fi to me and I think lens-flare aficionado JJ Abrams put it into words well: “The reason I wanted to do [lens flares] was I love the idea that the future that they were in was so bright that it couldn’t be contained and it just sort of broke through.” 

- this action scene is just noise: How often have I heard that an action scene in a movie is meaningless because it’s just noise and nothing else and while that might be true, I tend to still enjoy it. It’s cinemasins’ “explosions! running! excitement!” sin but fully genuine.

300

- slow motion, especially slow motion fight scenes: I just can’t help but think that slo-mo shots are stylish and cool, no matter how often they appear in a movie. Slo-mo makes fighting especially look very sleek and I love that.

- person in the foreground doesn’t notice fight in the background: That’s just a little fun thing to do. Whenever I see it in a movie or show I just think it’s a joy.

Kingsman

- fun songs during fight scenes: No matter how often I hear a joyful song playing during a fight scene, I will always enjoy it greatly. I’m thinking Freebird in Kingsman, Istanbul in The Umbrella Academy, or I’m Just a Girl in Captain Marvel. I like fight scenes and seeing someone kick ass to a cheery tune is just great.

- narration: I know it’s ‘show don’t tell’. But sometimes I like to be told. Sometimes I just like to be explicitly told what’s going on.

I’m sure there’s more that I’m currently forgetting. This post kind of fits with the theme of the “Good films don’t have to be good” post. These things are used for a reason and even if they are seemingly overused, they can still spark joy in your heart.

Satori over and out