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 A little girl goes to spend the holidays with her withdrawn grandfather, who was once the greatest inventor of the land until his apprentice betrayed him.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!)


***

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.