![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatIt's a cool day, considering either making pumpkin muffins or pumpkin bread via a paleo recipe that I discovered on the internet. (Feel I should define what I mean by paleo - no diary, no sugar, no grains, no glutens, no yeast, nothing that I'm sensitive to. Sort of similar to lactose or diabetic or gluten free. It has bananas, chai tea, pumpkin, coconut flour, eggs, spices..) Have decided to take the weekend off to vegetate in new apt. Still adapting to it. While it does get natural light - well in the bathroom and living room, and has a nice enough view of trees and houses and sky. It's not bathed in sunlight like my last apartment. But other than that - it is admittedly a huge improvement in various and sundry ways.
On a totally unrelated topic, we really do bring our own baggage to everything we watch, read, listen or witness - don't we? What astonishes me though is how unaware people are of this fact. I'll read a professional critical review - and think, whoa, we didn't see the same series of movies and you are reading a lot into that which I'm pretty certain was not intended. Entertainment Weekly, the guilty pleasure magazine that I can't quite bring myself to stop subscribing to, had two articles in it that seemed oblivious to this fact, yet ironically emphasized it. The first one was a television critic's take on Nolan's Batman flicks, and the second was a review of the Martin Scorcese documentary -The New York Review of Books - The 50 Year Argument, which highlights a 50 year fight between Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal culminating in a verbal battle of words on the Dick Cavett Show regarding Vidal's review of Eva Figes' Patriarchal Attitudes (which isn't even by Mailer), in which Vidal stated that Mailer's analysis of gender politics "read like three days of menstrual flow", then went on to contend that Mailer, Manson (Charles Manson - the serial killer not Marilyn Manson), and Henry Miller were men who viewed "women as at best, breeders of sons; at worst, objects to be poked, humiliated, killed." I have a feeling Gore didn't realize had hard this hit Mailer - until Mailer blew up at him.
Goes to show you - you need to be careful about critical reviews, and the most seasoned and successful of writers can get riled by them. It also demonstrates how we tend to view everything through our own baggage.
This week's Doctor Who - felt a bit silly to me. Not helped by the spider monsters, which I could have done without. I knew there were spider monsters - since everything was covered with cobwebs. Hint - where there are cobwebs there are spiders. Why the characters couldn't figure this out, I've no clue. When I saw the cob-webs, I thought, how can there be any cobwebs - there are no spiders on the moon? Then, dang it, this episode is going to have alien spiders.
Clearly I'm in the minority on both counts? The silliness of Doctor Who is what has kept me from becoming a true fan of it over the years. Well that and the monsters.
The trend continues...the Doctor is being portrayed as a misanthropic, cynical, curmudgeon. Who appears to have lost all faith in humanity, yet keeps testing humans to see if they will prove him wrong. Gone is the playful madman, or the world-weary/soulful god. Instead, we have a somewhat condescending and rather cynical lonely man, who is tired of being viewed as everyone's hero. And gleefully pokes holes in the concept.
And of course there's the conundrum - do we risk it, save a life at potential risk to our own - or, kill it outright? This is a popular theme right now in sci-fi, although not necessarily a modern one. If you watched any of the sci-fi flicks/tv shows of the past 50 years - you'd have seen it in various guises before. And it's often an either/or prospect - which I find somewhat naive. The better television series, movies, books - provide ambiguity. (We didn't get any here, sorry to say.) That either way - there's always huge risk and a sacrifice. Sort of like raising children - they don't necessarily turn out as we'd expect. There are sacrifices we make in having them. And while beautiful and wonderous, they may also turn out to be deadly. The bird that hatches from the moon, could go off and devour spaceships - doesn't make it any less wonderous of course. Or Oppenheimer - the scientist who figureed out the atom bomb. Personally, I was just relieved it was a bird and not huge spider. Also why all the spiders on the moon as the bird was hatching? Oh right, they were germs or fleas. Got it. And we needed something scary to frighten the kiddies (and arachnaphobes lurking in the audience).
I understand that part of the appeal of Doctor Who is that it is aimed at children and is at the end of the day, a family show. But there are days that I wish it were a bit more like Buffy - in addressing adult themes and the camp factor and less like Lost in Space.
On a totally unrelated topic, we really do bring our own baggage to everything we watch, read, listen or witness - don't we? What astonishes me though is how unaware people are of this fact. I'll read a professional critical review - and think, whoa, we didn't see the same series of movies and you are reading a lot into that which I'm pretty certain was not intended. Entertainment Weekly, the guilty pleasure magazine that I can't quite bring myself to stop subscribing to, had two articles in it that seemed oblivious to this fact, yet ironically emphasized it. The first one was a television critic's take on Nolan's Batman flicks, and the second was a review of the Martin Scorcese documentary -The New York Review of Books - The 50 Year Argument, which highlights a 50 year fight between Norman Mailer and Gore Vidal culminating in a verbal battle of words on the Dick Cavett Show regarding Vidal's review of Eva Figes' Patriarchal Attitudes (which isn't even by Mailer), in which Vidal stated that Mailer's analysis of gender politics "read like three days of menstrual flow", then went on to contend that Mailer, Manson (Charles Manson - the serial killer not Marilyn Manson), and Henry Miller were men who viewed "women as at best, breeders of sons; at worst, objects to be poked, humiliated, killed." I have a feeling Gore didn't realize had hard this hit Mailer - until Mailer blew up at him.
Goes to show you - you need to be careful about critical reviews, and the most seasoned and successful of writers can get riled by them. It also demonstrates how we tend to view everything through our own baggage.
This week's Doctor Who - felt a bit silly to me. Not helped by the spider monsters, which I could have done without. I knew there were spider monsters - since everything was covered with cobwebs. Hint - where there are cobwebs there are spiders. Why the characters couldn't figure this out, I've no clue. When I saw the cob-webs, I thought, how can there be any cobwebs - there are no spiders on the moon? Then, dang it, this episode is going to have alien spiders.
Clearly I'm in the minority on both counts? The silliness of Doctor Who is what has kept me from becoming a true fan of it over the years. Well that and the monsters.
The trend continues...the Doctor is being portrayed as a misanthropic, cynical, curmudgeon. Who appears to have lost all faith in humanity, yet keeps testing humans to see if they will prove him wrong. Gone is the playful madman, or the world-weary/soulful god. Instead, we have a somewhat condescending and rather cynical lonely man, who is tired of being viewed as everyone's hero. And gleefully pokes holes in the concept.
And of course there's the conundrum - do we risk it, save a life at potential risk to our own - or, kill it outright? This is a popular theme right now in sci-fi, although not necessarily a modern one. If you watched any of the sci-fi flicks/tv shows of the past 50 years - you'd have seen it in various guises before. And it's often an either/or prospect - which I find somewhat naive. The better television series, movies, books - provide ambiguity. (We didn't get any here, sorry to say.) That either way - there's always huge risk and a sacrifice. Sort of like raising children - they don't necessarily turn out as we'd expect. There are sacrifices we make in having them. And while beautiful and wonderous, they may also turn out to be deadly. The bird that hatches from the moon, could go off and devour spaceships - doesn't make it any less wonderous of course. Or Oppenheimer - the scientist who figureed out the atom bomb. Personally, I was just relieved it was a bird and not huge spider. Also why all the spiders on the moon as the bird was hatching? Oh right, they were germs or fleas. Got it. And we needed something scary to frighten the kiddies (and arachnaphobes lurking in the audience).
I understand that part of the appeal of Doctor Who is that it is aimed at children and is at the end of the day, a family show. But there are days that I wish it were a bit more like Buffy - in addressing adult themes and the camp factor and less like Lost in Space.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-10-05 04:46 pm (UTC)The episode did have a certain poetic quality to it (it's better to take it that way, otherwise the science fiction side is just too silly to suspend any disbelief), and Capaldi was brillant, but I wasn't blown away either.
I don't think that the Doctor had lost faith in humanity, he even pointed out that he had faith in Clara and she's the embodiement of humanity, or at least the humanity that was trained by him, through so many companions!
Basically, the Doctor is showed as an educator there (after all in Latin, doctor is a professor, not a healer/physician), and I guess that Clara being a teacher is just yet another way to mirror who the Doctor is.
The teenage girl The Doctor brought along was a plot device to echo the main theme, hence her calling Clara "Miss" to the end and yet choosing to leave the Tardis and do something eventually.
At some point, an educator has to let the youngsters make their own choices...that's the only way to let them grow into adulthood.
On the paper it's rather good writing, but the problem with DW is often the execution, and yes the monsters...so no I wasn't blown away.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-05 09:24 pm (UTC)I'd agree - while it makes a decent sci-fi short story, wasn't all that entertaining as television episode due to the execution.
no subject
Date: 2014-10-05 06:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-10-05 09:32 pm (UTC)So was I. I kept wandering off to do other things, and had to rewind to see what I missed - which wasn't all that much. They spent a lot of time wandering about and avoiding giant spiders. What is it with horror series and giant spiders??
It was probably easier for Clara to trust that the Doctor wouldn't have just taken off if there really was a chance of the Earth's destruction if they made the wrong choice, but I'm not sure how the astronaut was supposed to know that
I've been noticing a bit of a pattern here this season - where Clara trusts the Doctor, but others are given reasons not to. The astronaut - who is given every impression that he's abandoned them, in previous episode, Mr. Pink.
And of course the young student. Also, Clara is being persuaded more and more to break things off with him. I see a big break up coming...where Clara decides she's had it, and discontinues her adventures with the Doctor - and hooks up with Mr. Pink instead. (Another pattern in the series seems to be when the companion grows up and stops traveling with the Doctor, and either gets married (Amy/Rory) or pursues another venture (Martha Jones) or gets permanently separated for other reasons (Donna Noble/Rose Tyler/Dr. Song).