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Apr. 9th, 2011 12:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shadowkatEh..there are things I should be doing today, did manage to get the laundry in to the mat, and do my delicate items (such as the cashmere/cotton blend sweaters which cannot be put in the dryer). Got up at 7.
Watched Merlin S3 Finale, and the series finally progressed. It's no longer this episodic series that ends the same way each time. It actually pulled all its errant plot threads together. My quibble? Same as the last two seasons, we have one nice female character and two evil ones, or a series of evil female guest-starring characters..aka witches, and all the true heroes are guys. Campbell's Heroes Journey at it's shiny best. Watching it I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to switch all the gender roles. To be fair, this has always been my quibble with the Arthurian Legends. So it really isn't Merlin's fault - the legend the show is based on - is sexist. Also what's with all the Arthurian reboots? Makes me want to rent Mists of Avalon.
That said? The finale was rather enjoyable. And I agree Bradley James is quite good as Arthur. He manages to get across a great deal with his eyes.
While at the mat, doing the delicates, I was reading about the making of Scream 4 in EW, and realized once again that being a writer in Hollywood must really suck at times. Even if you are a fairly well-known and highly paid one. No wonder so many of them go do comic books as a sideline or high-tail it to tv. Poor Kevin Williamson (you know him as the scribe of Dawson's Creek and Vamp Diaries, along with the original Scream film). He comes up with this brilliant idea for Scream 4, so brilliant he's penned Scream 5 and 6 off of it in quick outlines. Calls up the producer - Weinstein, who also thinks it is brilliant, and manages to get all the original stars of the series to sign on plus horror auteur Wes Craven - because they see it as brilliant. BUT. Somewhere along the line the producer, Weinstein, decides the writer's vision isn't good enough and tinkers with it. He doesn't trust his writer to deliver a good script on time. The film is slated to go in less than two years. They fight constantly, the producer decides to hire another writer to punch up the dialogue (the writer who had written Scream 3), the producer forces Williamson to rewrite portions of the script, change whole sections, at one point the director is rewriting sections. And to date? The original script-writer, Williamson has not seen a finished version of the film and is not talking to his former friend, the Producer (Weinstein). Unfortunately, this happens all the time, apparently. It's standard operating practice.
Watched Merlin S3 Finale, and the series finally progressed. It's no longer this episodic series that ends the same way each time. It actually pulled all its errant plot threads together. My quibble? Same as the last two seasons, we have one nice female character and two evil ones, or a series of evil female guest-starring characters..aka witches, and all the true heroes are guys. Campbell's Heroes Journey at it's shiny best. Watching it I couldn't help but wonder what it would be like to switch all the gender roles. To be fair, this has always been my quibble with the Arthurian Legends. So it really isn't Merlin's fault - the legend the show is based on - is sexist. Also what's with all the Arthurian reboots? Makes me want to rent Mists of Avalon.
That said? The finale was rather enjoyable. And I agree Bradley James is quite good as Arthur. He manages to get across a great deal with his eyes.
While at the mat, doing the delicates, I was reading about the making of Scream 4 in EW, and realized once again that being a writer in Hollywood must really suck at times. Even if you are a fairly well-known and highly paid one. No wonder so many of them go do comic books as a sideline or high-tail it to tv. Poor Kevin Williamson (you know him as the scribe of Dawson's Creek and Vamp Diaries, along with the original Scream film). He comes up with this brilliant idea for Scream 4, so brilliant he's penned Scream 5 and 6 off of it in quick outlines. Calls up the producer - Weinstein, who also thinks it is brilliant, and manages to get all the original stars of the series to sign on plus horror auteur Wes Craven - because they see it as brilliant. BUT. Somewhere along the line the producer, Weinstein, decides the writer's vision isn't good enough and tinkers with it. He doesn't trust his writer to deliver a good script on time. The film is slated to go in less than two years. They fight constantly, the producer decides to hire another writer to punch up the dialogue (the writer who had written Scream 3), the producer forces Williamson to rewrite portions of the script, change whole sections, at one point the director is rewriting sections. And to date? The original script-writer, Williamson has not seen a finished version of the film and is not talking to his former friend, the Producer (Weinstein). Unfortunately, this happens all the time, apparently. It's standard operating practice.
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Date: 2011-04-09 05:15 pm (UTC)Camelot is going to move more I bet, but most of the actors are soap opera material and the misogny is gagworthy.
I'm not really one for counting how many good or bad guys there are and in the end I prefer men going up against women, instead of those gender segregated fights (you know where the good chick battles the bad chick, while the good guy battles the bad guy), but I hate it when the female villains get drawn as incompetent and I feel that both on Merlin and on Camelot Morgana gets to be a dumb villain. If you have a bunch of guys ganging up on one woman, you have to make her competent or it just becomes ridiculous.
I think my favorite villains of all time is Lady de Winter from the three musketeers which is a similar character and always suffers in the movies because they never really dare to stick with book on moral ambiguity.
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Date: 2011-04-09 05:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-09 06:32 pm (UTC)I'm actually quite impressed by Bradley James, and it isn't only because of his good looks (although that bone structure, that mouth and those eyes are really something!).
Yes the Arthurian legend is sexist and male-oriented, like so many many stories and classics (or even more recent works like Tolkien's). I don't mind so much as long as it's well done and creative in some way.
As for this version, well, the show isn't essay material, it's still a mere guilty pleasure but I think that the writing became better in season 3, and Tony Head was wonderful as broken Uther. What bothers me the most in Merlin is that the actress playing Morgana is beautiful but she isn't very good, or at least most of the time she is not as good as the males or the girl playing Guenevere, so the character looks so caricatured (I couldn't bear constant her smirking to show that she was bad now!), although her last scene was fine.
Mists of Avalon is a poor tv movie and a bad adaptation of Marion Zimmer Bradley's book. She must have rolled over in her tomb!
Anyway there's one common thing in all the version of Arthurian legend I have seen, it's Lancelot being boring, annoying and uptight.
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Date: 2011-04-09 08:35 pm (UTC)Vamp Diaries is less melodramatic and navel-gazing heavy than Dawson's also better paced. Actually it is the fastest paced and best plotted gothic television serial I've seen. But that may be less due to Williamson and more due to Julie Plec and a few other writers, such as Dollhouse's Andrew Chambliss and Craft and Fain.
It's difficult to determine in Hollywood who is responsible for what. I know they have to do things really fast. And get burned out. George RR Martin - a television scribe and producer as well as screenwriter, got so fed up with the limitations that he left to become a novelist. You make the quick buck writing for the screen - but eventually you become a hack. Just ask Chandler, Hammett, and Fitzgerald who all went nuts doing it. ;-)
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Date: 2011-04-09 09:02 pm (UTC)ripping offhomaging. The commentary on horror tropes is the entire point. Once Williamson (and with him, much of the horror film industry) stopped the commentary and simply went on repeating the tropes that Scream had already deconstructed, always with a knowing "Yeah, we know, this has all been done better before" wink but with nothing to add, I lost patience....Yeah, I take horror movies seriously. ;) You're right, it's probably not fair to hold Williamson responsible for something that goes way beyond the power of any one screenwriter, but his post-Scream movies are a very good example of everything I dislike about what happened to the US horror tradition.
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Date: 2011-04-09 09:04 pm (UTC)Yes the Arthurian legend is sexist and male-oriented, like so many many stories and classics (or even more recent works like Tolkien's). I don't mind so much as long as it's well done and creative in some way.
Just had a discussion about this with my mother over the phone. She loves Merlin. And loves Westerns. And we more or less had the same conversation. ;-)
My reaction? Well, I think we need to be critical of this in both our guilty pleasures and non-guilty pleasures - particularly if it makes us uncomfortable. It's an argument that I've been having for ages, been on both sides of it actually.
When I was in college - I remember defending my love of the Western and Noire tropes, which tend to be predominately male and border on the misogynistic. And more recently? My love of Justified, Merlin, Supernatural (although not so much this season), amongst others. But, I've come to the conclusion that
you can love these shows and still be critical of them, point out that they are pushing a white male view. Predominately male.
And predominately white. That has got to be picked at.
If we aren't critical, it won't change. Merlin is fun, but it's depiction of women is sexist. This is a reflection of our societial view, which we should be critical of, pick at and attempt to change. Doesn't mean I can't enjoy it. Supernatural is fun but also very sexist. As is Doctor Who. Buffy. Angel. Dollhouse. Being Human. (sigh).
Mists of Avalon is a poor tv movie and a bad adaptation of Marion Zimmer Bradley's book. She must have rolled over in her tomb!
I admittedly haven't made it all the way through either. I know, I'm a bad little feminist. The only Arthurian tale that focuses on women...and well.. they both put me to sleep. Don't know why.
It was about five to ten years ago. May have been a mood thing?
Tony Head was wonderful as broken Uther. What bothers me the most in Merlin is that the actress playing Morgana is beautiful but she isn't very good, or at least most of the time she is not as good as the males or the girl playing Guenevere, so the character looks so caricatured (I couldn't bear constant her smirking to show that she was bad now!), although her last scene was fine.
Agreed. Katie McGrath is not a very good actress. She has two expressions. Surprise and smirk. The actress playing Guen is so much better - I love that actress. And Bradley James is astonishingly good as Arthur. Plus Head actually makes Uther sympathetic - his shell-shocked Uther in the two-parter is rather touching. Discovering that the daughter he loved and cherished, is eaten up with hate because of him.
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Date: 2011-04-09 09:25 pm (UTC)Williamson is at his best when he's not taking himself too seriously. Which was well, Scream 1. The best thing about the Scream films was Jaime Kennedy, once he left the premises the films lost their ...oomph. (Which was in the second film.) Love humorous horror flicks - like Tremors and Aliens.
While you can do a "serious" horror film well - few do. I've seen a handful. I tend to veer away from the serious ones most of the time - because I like to be able to sleep at night and the dang things keep me awake. Still have issues with Nightmare on Elm Street. Halloween oddly never bothered me.
My favorites are the weird psychological ones such as Robert Wise's minimalist classic The Haunting, the Jodi Foster/Martin Sheen film - The Little Girl Who Lives Down the Lane, the Lucas Han film about the ghost girl that I can't remember the name of,
The Vanishing (the original not the stupid US remake), The Skeleton Key, and Let the Right One In.
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Date: 2011-04-09 09:32 pm (UTC)Will state - that at least Merlin had Morqaux who is generally speaking fairly smart. She had no way of knowing Merlin had magic. Morgana on the other hand? You would think she would have figured that out at some point? A bit too convenient.
Agree - Lady de Winter is a really good villain. Fascinating. I think Rebecca De Mornay portrayed her in the American miniseries way back in the 1970s with Michael York and Oliver Platt. If you ever try Justified? The second season of that series has an excellent female villain - possibly the most complex female villain that I've seen on tv in quite a while.
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Date: 2011-04-09 09:46 pm (UTC)Actually, I'd say its problem is that it doesn't take itself seriously enough. That is to say, it never bothers to make us believe it, it just goes through the motions of what a horror movie should be without being one. A good horror movie needs a sense of humour (which may or may not include a single remotely funny moment) to surprise the viewers, but it also needs to be serious enough to make us care what happens. I was cheering for the death of everyone in IKWYDLS long before the halfway point. And that included the people behind the camera. (Well, not really.) A good horror movie needs guts, brains and heart (often literally); IKWYDLS has neither. And it became the blueprint for every new US horror movie for 10 years.
...I need to catch a plane in six hours so I better stop there or I'll be up half the night defining good horror. :)
Speaking of Arthurian legends, I watched the first 3 eps of Camelot and I'm done with that. Morgan is great, but the rest is dull, dull, dull, with a thoroughly annoying Arthur looking constantly surprised in the middle. I think I'm sticking with Monty Python and Excalibur on that one.
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Date: 2011-04-09 09:58 pm (UTC)you can love these shows and still be critical of them, point out that they are pushing a white male view. Predominately male. And predominately white. That has got to be picked at.
If we aren't critical, it won't change. Merlin is fun, but it's depiction of women is sexist.
Oh I didn't mean that we couldn't be critical, just that we come from sexist centuries and our cultural heritage (myths, legends, literature)is based on phallocratie (andocracy in English?).
You won't change the Arthurian legend now, just like you won't change other legends from Middle Ages or Shakespeare's Othello, or ancient Mythologies or the Bible or Tolkien's vision! No matter the versions, you can't say it's this and do something else entirely.
But if we create new legends and mythologies these days that are still sexist, now that's another story. Merlin isn't a great show, but we can't expect from it to pretend, on the one hand, that it takes place in the the "dark ages" yet, on the other hand, suddenly change the essence of the legend and the "spirit" of the knighthood times, especially since the premise is about how sorcerer Merlin helped young Arthur Pendragon to become the great kind he is supposed to be. It plays on the legend, is rather unfaithful to the oral tradition and the medieval literature (Chrétien de Troyes and Thomas Malory)by changing a few things but it doesn't create a new myth, it's still about "the one" as the male one. Basically it cannot not depict women in a sexist way.
The other shows you mentioned aren't based on a previous work so it's different. They reflect nowadays. We're forging new legends, and television may be the main blacksmith indeed. Not sure I agree with you about the equal sexism of all those shows (not saying that Buffy was free from any sexism but they tried something nevertheless with a "the one" that was female), but I agree that we still live in a men's world, and many of the "old views" and structures we've inherited are still pregnant (does the word work this way too in English?) and there's still a LOT of work to do!
The question that is haunting me now is: can we really re-invent ourselves and create new legends or are we so impregnated by certain notions(the notions of "passion" and "marriage" for instance!) that we are doomed to repeat the same old stories peu ou prou?
PS: You know, what irritates me the most about Merlin is the fact that new generations may know the Arthurian legend only through this mediocre work and think that this is it, without even supposing that there might be superior versions of the legend.
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Date: 2011-04-09 10:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-04-10 04:44 am (UTC)Speaking of Arthurian legends, I watched the first 3 eps of Camelot and I'm done with that. Morgan is great, but the rest is dull, dull, dull, with a thoroughly annoying Arthur looking constantly surprised in the middle.
Can't really comment on Camelot - since I haven't seen it. But all the reviews I've read online agree with you. The actor playing Arthur just does not work. Which is a problem, since he sort of is the center of the whole thing. So, I guess I can blatantly ignore it? Yay!
No disagreements, the only Arthurian presentations I've enjoyed to date are Excalibur (which has the noted distinction of being the first R-rated film that I ever saw in the theater - I was 13 I think, I don't what my parents were thinking - possibly that
it was a Fantasy and should be okay for kids? The first ten minutes killed that illusion.) Rather adore that movie, even if Nicole Williamson overacted.
And Monty Python has the distinction of being the only Arthurian version to make it to the stage, outside of Lerner and Lowe's Camelot (which I rather adore, although have seen one too many times). Yes, I've seen both Camelot and Spamalot on the Stage.;-)
I think I'm sticking with Monty Python and Excalibur on that one.
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Date: 2011-04-10 07:03 am (UTC)I really hope Starz does a better job with Torchwood.
I have not seen all of merlin yet, but I do like the Morgana/Morgause duo. Having two female characters (even villains) that are good friends and clearly loyal to each other, it's very rare.
I keep hearing good things about Justified but it's so no my cuppa thematically...but we'll see, maybe someday.
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Date: 2011-04-10 02:21 pm (UTC)You won't change the Arthurian legend now, just like you won't change other legends from Middle Ages or Shakespeare's Othello, or ancient Mythologies or the Bible or Tolkien's vision! No matter the versions, you can't say it's this and do something else entirely.
Not change maybe, but we can certainly re-interpret. The Arthurian Legends, being legends they already have been interpreted. Not the same as the legends form the Middle Ages.
The Arthurian Legend actually predates The Middle Ages. It dates back to the period before the Roman invasion and Christianity.
And you can find references to it in The Mabinogi. The difficulty is that monks translated the records and reinterpreted them - taking the Celtic legend and making it a Christian one. This happened a lot - when one country invaded another they would take that countries stories, myths and legends, and religious beliefs and twist them to incorporate their own beliefs. As a result the original Arthurian Legend about a King who sacrificed himself to a mother goddess is translated to a King who sacrifices himself in battle to a more male one. The priestess Morgana is changed. Each version changes her - in some she is Arthur's half-sister through his mother Igraine, and in other's such as Merlin and Camelot she is his half-sister through his father, Uther. Barrowmore's Excalibur actually is the closest to the Welsh Myth handed down through the ages. And remains my favorite. Guy Gaverial Kay also did a version of the Mabinogi in his Wandering Gyre series.
In the Arthurian Legends, Arthur was the King of Wales - Wales was Camelot. He is actually reported to be buried according to the legends in a cavern somewhere in Northern Wales. (When I was an undergrad in College in the 1980s, I traveled to Wales and studied the original legends at the National Library in Aberwysthe and in Cardiff, as well as interviewed and spoke with experts on the Mabinogi. I had a minor in Myth, Epic and Folklore and my focus was on Welsh Mythology. It was over 20 years ago, so my memory may be hazy in places.) But the Arthurian Legend is not a legend of the Middle Ages, no matter what the Monks like to believe. It is older than that and goes back to a matriarchial period - the old religion is the mother goddess or the religion of the Ancient Celts which predates Christianity, the new religion - Christianity or the religion of the Romans - who invaded the British Isles...is what took over.
The legend of Arthur was changed in the Middle Ages to reflect Christianity in a good light. As is true with most legends and myths - we do not know what the original story was. It has been lost because of all the tinkering.
What this means is there is nothing preventing us from re-imagining it or re-interpreting. Arthur can still be King, but he does not have to be the hero, and Morgana does not have to be the villain. Any more than Gwen must be the heroine, or Merlin male. Legends tend to be malleable things.
That's the difficulty with history actually - if we aren't careful it can turn into legend. There are for example historical records of Jesus' existence. But his story has fallen into religious myth and legend to such a degree that we no longer know fact from fantasy. This is also true of others, such as Mohammad, Buddha, Abraham. We rely on the writers to tell us the truth, but we don't question their veracity. And we have to.
So, I guess it depends on which version you wish to base your Arthurian tale on - the popular and more well known Morte D'Arthur or the lesser known tidbits scattered through the Welsh legends in the Mabinogi. The translations vary. (Shrugs)
As for Shakespeare - can we reinterpret Othello with an all female cast? Of course we can. Julie Taymor recently did a film version of The Tempest with Helen Mirren in the role of Prospero.
Does it change the meaning? Yes. But we can do it. Shakespeare cast the female roles with men back in the day. It's really no different than doing fanfic. Once the story is out in the world - those who read it and watch it, can play with it. Stories aren't stones - they can and do change with each teller.
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Date: 2011-04-10 06:59 pm (UTC)Justified...I don't know if you'd like it or not? It's a modern western that focuses on the hills of Kentucky and Applachia. It's not really cop procedural, which may be what is turning you off? If it was, I wouldn't be watching it. I can't watch the Sheild and it's one of the reasons I haven't been able to get into either The Wire or Chicago Code. I got burned out on cop shows in the 1990s. It's really not a cop show any more than the Good Wife is a legal procedural or for that matter Breaking Bad is a cop show. Just happens to have a main character who is a US Marshal - but the focus is more on his interaction with his hometown environment which he fled years before. Think Western as the genre, not cop. Now, if you aren't a fan of Westerns or quirky Elmore Leonard style dramas such as Terriers or Get Shorty or Out of Sight (film with George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez)...than probably not your cup of tea. First three episodes will most likely tell you one way or the other.
That appears to be the general consensus on Camelot - that it is not a good show. No one on my flist who has seen it - likes it.
Regarding Torchwood? It's getting very good reviews - apparently Doris Egan and Jane Espenson are writing for it. And RTD is structuring it the same way he structured Children of the Earth as a mini-series or novel for television. Also has a good cast.
Will have to rent on DVD - not worth it to subscribe to Starz just for Torchwood.
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Date: 2011-04-10 07:00 pm (UTC)