söndag 24 oktober 2010

The good, the bad and the downright bonkers

Promising news from the UK: it seems "Downton Abbey", the drama scripted by Julian Fellowes which apparently is a good old family saga in the "Upstairs Downstairs" style, is doing very well. Hmmm. So themes like family relationships, missing heirs and social tension set in a historical context are popular, are they? "Edgy" and "trendy" dramas not so hot anymore (if they ever were)? Feel silly about axing "Dombey and Son" yet, BBC?

Speaking of family sagas, I've now started watching "North and South" again - not Gaskell's this time, but the TV series made on the basis of John Jakes's American civil war potboilers "North and South" and "Love and War". The problem with the series is that each episode is so long - about 1 hour 30 minutes - and you don't always feel up to spending that much time in the company of the families Main and Hazard. But it is a nostalgic delight for me, because I saw it as a schoolgirl and analysed it at length with one of my best friends. It's nice to see that the things that annoyed us then still annoy me now. Subtle this series is not. The good characters are good, the bad ones are bad, and there's an end to it - no psychology or nuances needed. The whole series starts as it means to go on - we see two little girl playing one sunny day on the Main plantation. One little girl (dark-haired) robs a bird's nest. The other (blonde) urges her to give the bird its egg back. You've guessed it: they are The Good Sister and The Bad Sister of Orry Main, one of the series' heroes. It's a rotten job (in both cases), but someone has to do it. Good Sister grows up to be loyal, loving, kind to slaves etc., Bad Sister grows up to be sly, wanton, war-mongering, greedy and downright murderous. She also grins a lot.

With a setup as schematic as this, you can't really hope for any interesting villains, and so it proves. There are two things that can be said for the two head baddies Elkannah Bent and Justin La Motte: they've got great villain-y names, and they are not a pain to look at (though you tire of Bent's self-satisfied mug ere long). And that's it, really. As a girl, I used to try to feel some sympathy for Justin, mainly because he was saddled with Madeline, Orry's flame, as a wife. I had a strong dislike for Madeline back then, but I realise now that I was a bit too hard on her, and that her hubby is a lost cause villain-wise. Never mind giving your wife enough cause for adultery: Justin gives Madeline enough cause to throw a Roman orgy every other Saturday had she wished it, which of course she doesn't. He beats her. He rapes her. He cheats on her with a slave girl (who is probably none too willing, seeing he is no great friend of slaves). Later on, he kills her trusted woman servant/mother surrogate and drugs Madeline into becoming an obedient wife (actually, that part was rather fun). You really can't blame Madeline for hooking up with Orry - who is of course not only a lay but Her One True Love. Gosh, she is annoying, though. That breathiness. That sick-making goody-goody-ness. During the war, it isn't enough that she helps refugees (mainly black ones, to ensure their deserving status). She has to beggar herself doing so. Yuk.

There is one character who is even more annoying than Madeline, though, and that is Bent. Justin seems low-key and measured in comparison to this supremely irritating loony. You've got to hand it to John Jakes, though: if he wanted to create a villain whom nobody, not even the most hardened villain groupie, could like, he pulled it off. I and my friend were very scathing about Bent's over-the-topness even as schoolchildren, from the all-too-obvious name of his all-too-obviously vicious black horse at West Point to the scene where he runs into a burning building full of gunpowder bellowing "I'm gonna save my empire". Kinda stupid, wouldn't you say?

Enough criticism though: within its limits, "North and South" is great entertainment, and it does two things surprisingly well. One, it manages to give a balanced account about the North-South conflict. Not all abolitionists are wonderful people, for instance: Virgilia, the sister of the series' other hero George Hazard, is fanatically anti-South on account of the slave issue, and at one time joins John Brown, he whose body lies a'mouldering in the grave. Not a very nice character, it turns out. On the other hand, slavery is not in any way excused. Sadistic slave owners and ditto slave overseers are not the only problem either: as soon as Lincoln proclaims the abolition of slavery during the war, the ex-slaves of the oh-so-decent Main family leave, just like everywhere else. You don't say no to freedom, however nice your former owners may be. At the same time, we are given to understand that the war wasn't just about slavery: other issues were at stake, such as the wish of the southern states to be independent of the North. You get the distinct feeling that much more could have been done on both sides to promote unity and good will.

Two, the friendship between the two heroes Orry and George is really touching. I didn't care about this as a girl. Friendship was boring (in TV dramas, that is, though very important in one's own life): what I wanted from a drama was romance. There are romances aplenty in "North and South", but they are not as central to the plot as George's and Orry's friendship. When Orry and George part at one time and look dejectedly at each other, not knowing if they will ever meet again and if so if their friendship can be saved, it is as sad as a love scene: far sadder, in fact, than any of the crises between Orry and the swooning Madeline.

söndag 17 oktober 2010

Darcymania - still going strong

Phew. I started my new job Monday this week, and although it's good to have a reliable source of income again, working is - well, hard work. A lot of self-indulgence literature is needed to sweeten those half-hours of lunch. I have recently ordered a new batch of sequels to or reworkings of Jane Austen's novels - a kind of fanfiction in print, in other words. This has become a huge genre, and is a good source for light reads. One may wonder why Austen's work is especially popular in this context: other authors, such as the great Victorians, aren't nearly as much of a draw to sequel/prequel/story-from-another-point-of-view/story-reset-in-modern-times writers. But I'm not complaining: I like Austen, but not enough to feel protective of her or her characters, which makes me the ideal market for these kind of books.

One thing you can't help noticing when looking for light reads inspired by Austen at, say, Amazon, is the predominance of Pride and Prejudice-themed books in general, and Mr Darcy-themed books in particular. "Loving Mr Darcy", "To Conquer Mr Darcy", "Seducing Mr Darcy", "Mr Darcy's Tempation", "Mr Darcy's Obsession", "Mr Darcy's Decision", "Mr Darcy's Diary"... These are only a few of the mass of titles containing the name of Pride and Prejudice's famous hero. Now, I'm a little ambivalent when it comes to this trend. On the one hand, I like to see other women - the authors of these books are mostly female - admitting to having a literary crush and indulging their fantasies. It makes me feel less of a freak for salivating over entirely fictional male characters. And as heroes go, Mr Darcy isn't that bad. He's intelligent, interestingly flawed and capable of improving under the benevolent influence of his love for Elizabeth: a very romantic and appealing idea. Of course, the Davies TV adaptation of "Pride and Prejudice" did a lot for Mr Darcy, not only because of the famous "wet shirt scene" (it is really very chaste - I don't quite see what the fuss is about), but because it depicted Mr Darcy's sulky behaviour as owing more to a feeling of unease at social gatherings than to family pride. Mr Darcy, one feels, would absolutely hate to attend a modern cocktail party, and that is undoubtedly an endearing characteristic.

However, I have some problems with Mr Darcy as well: family pride is a flaw I have difficulty in forgiving anyone, and he does have it in spades. When he is acting as if Meryton society is beneath him, it's because he really thinks it is. Elizabeth's "inferior connections" pain him, and by that he means the fact that her uncles are mere - gasp - merchants and solicitors. He is only nice to the Gardiners later in the book because he wants to curry favour with Elizabeth. Moreover, I don't think he ever did properly apologise for separating Bingley from Jane. All this is forgivable, certainly, and I still feel friendly towards Mr Darcy, not least because he broke the mould for how a hero had to behave. But if, like me, one does not positively fancy Mr Darcy, then Darcymania can become a bit wearing.

My own interest in Austen sequels is shallow enough - I'm fascinated by the matchmaking element. Perhaps there is a reason why "Emma" is my favourite Austen novel. When I read a "Pride and Prejudice" sequel, it is because I want to see how the love lives of Georgiana, Kitty, Mary and the other girls who were unattached at the end of "P&P" develop. Little dramas within the already settled marriages are welcome as well, as long as everything turns out all right. Just because a marriage is happy doesn't mean that the couple in question has to spend all its time billing and cooing. I'm equally interested in sequels to the other Austen novels. However, the prevailing Darcy obsession being what it is, much of the Austen sequel/reworking market is focused on how good Mr Darcy is in bed with Elizabeth, and on novels which retell "P&P" from his viewpoint. I can understand the existence of the first kind of Darcy novels: though I find Darcy/Elizabeth sex scenes extremely embarrassing myself, this is obviously a matter of taste, and I would probably feel very differently if I read an equally graphic scene featuring one of my favourite Dickens villains who had finally managed to score. But a retelling of "P&P" from Darcy's viewpoint? Is it really necessary? Doesn't Austen manage to cover his angle quite well in the original? A retelling from the point of view of one of Austen's bêtes noires - Mrs Bennet? Mr Collins? Lady Catherine? - would yield more surprising insights. Yet there seem to be dozens of variations on the Darcy's diary-theme.

But why whine when it could have been so much worse. There are heroes who would have deserved an enormous female fan club much less. Knightleymania - now that would really have been hard to understand.

torsdag 7 oktober 2010

Whatever happened to Mandy (and other series casualties)?

Things are moving professionally. I have been offered a new job, but they seem to be in no particular hurry for me to start. In the meantime, I have leisure to clean my flat, go for walks, buy things I've wanted for a long time such as a new keyboard for my computer (which turns out to be just as rubbish as the old one - surely it can't be my typing that's at fault?), read and watch more Disney Channel than is strictly good for me.

This would have been a perfect time to discover a new exciting TV series, preferably available on a DVD box, which I could watch and blog about at some length. But there is little new stuff out there to my taste. While waiting for the new Doctor Who box set (15 November?? What is taking them so long? Are we foreign geeks condemned to be always six months behind English viewers?) I must settle for unearthing/re-watching old favourites such as "The West Wing" and "Fame".

Maybe this is as good a time as any to tackle a question which engages most of us TV-series viewers, namely How To Write A Character Out Of A Script. Or more specifically, how not to do it.

It took "Fame" some time, but half-way into season two we finally get a proper write-out of the sweet old drama teacher Crandall. He dies of a heart attack; Danny, whose favourite teacher he is, goes off the rails for a bit; the pupils do a celebration piece etc. etc. Excellent. This is how it should be done. But I was reminded of a line in the same episode: "Do I have to pass on before you can be reconciled to me?". The poor actor who played Crandall had actually died: when this happens, a series character can be pretty certain of getting a proper send-off. In other cases, though - when the actor playing a character has got another job, or left the series for another reason, or if the powers that be decide to get rid of a character because they feel he/she hasn't been a hit with the viewers - we often get no write-out at all. The series goes on without the character in question as if nothing has happened, and no-one even mentions him/her anymore. An example from "Fame" is the drama student Montgomery who was part of the Fame gang in the first season: in the second one, he is no longer there and none of his bosom pals even make a remark on the fact.

What TV series creators need to understand is that viewers don't care about what has happened backstage. They (the TV people) may not feel very charitable towards, say, an actor who has decided to abandon ship, but that doesn't mean that we viewers don't care about what happens to the character the actor plays. Even if the character him/herself is not a very popular one, the internal logic of the series demands that we are informed about what has happened when he/she is suddenly not around anymore. Take another example, Mandy in "The West Wing". Poor Mandy had a tough brief: I don't think she was allowed to be right about one single issue. She was the political consultant who had to point out how the administration's politics would "play in the media". In season two, she had suddenly disappeared. No warning and no comments made by the rest of the White House staff. It didn't damage the series: the political consultant figure was not really that necessary. But as a viewer you did ask yourself: where is Mandy? Just because she was underwritten, that doesn't mean that she didn't exist.

Here are the things I as a TV viewer would very much like TV series creators to consider when they want/have to ditch a character:

Do you really need to do it? In some cases, writing out a character from a series proves completely painless. It can also become a way to bring new people in and freshen up the plots. But in other cases, a series never quite recovers from a write-out of an important character. If the actor ups and leaves, there is little you can do, except in some cases replace him/her with another actor (the viewers will grumble at first, but we'll get used to it: we do see that there can be no Holmes without Watson and no Rumpole without Hilda, whoever plays the vital part). But if there is a question of a back-stage spat, do try to make things up before kicking ut the offending actor. When it comes to popularity, remember to give characters - especially new ones - time to develop. A rapid overturn of characters is a sure sign that a series is on its last legs. Also, it should be pretty obvious that not all characters are supposed to be particularly loveable. They may still have an important part to play plot-wise. Not everyone can be either cuddly or a charismatic villain (having said that, I'm glad they got rid of Caan in "Grey's Anatomy"- what a bitch!).

Explain what has happened It doesn't have to be an elaborate explanation. "How is Mandy doing working with Senator so-and-so?" "I miss Montgomery, he would have known what to do. I hope the LA Drama School knows what it's got in him." That kind of thing. Clumsy exposition, yes, but far better than to pretend nothing's happened. If you know beforehand that an actor is going to disappear by the end of the season, use the knowledge in order to script the character's exit properly.

Don't make the explanation too dependent on new factors which the viewers cannot know about For years, I thought I had missed a couple of episodes of "Upstairs Downstairs" when I learned that the daughter in the house, Elizabeth, was not only in the States but married to a bloke I'd never heard of. I certainly don't grudge Elizabeth a husband, but it would have been less confusing if she had only just met another man at the beginning of the series where she didn't star - the marriage could come later (still off-stage).

Show the character some respect An affectionate (or otherwise) mention of an absentee character now and then does no harm to the story. There was an amusing take on the fact that discarded characters are next to never mentioned in a Doctor Who episode, where the Doctor and his then companion Rose met up with one of his old assistants, Sarah Jane. "That's funny, because he never mentioned you", Rose comments waspishly. "Wait, let me think... no, never." It does seem a bit strange, doesn't it?

By all means introduce a new character, but make sure he/she is not a surrogate for the old one Makers of TV series are usually aware of this, but you sometimes come across a character whose only reason for existence is, say, that Molly needs a new boyfriend. But maybe Molly doesn't need a new boyfriend, at least not before he can have some other function as well and be well integrated in the plot. To create a new character who has precisely the same function as an old one is mostly a mistake.

Now I really have to change my keyboard back to the old one - this one keeps bailing out. I'm going to have to write it off.

fredag 1 oktober 2010

Yes, you can actually have too much "darkness"

I recently finished "Gentlemen and Players" by Joanne Harris - of "Chocolat" fame - and I'm rather puzzled as to why she is considered to be a "popular author" rather than one of the Booker Prize brigade. I can well understand her popularity: "G&P" is gripping. But it is also well-constructed, well-written and at times thought-provoking (is loyalty to an institution such as the renownded school St Oswald's a good or a bad thing?). The main characters are interesting, if not always likeable. I was especially impressed by the way the reader is manipulated into sympathising more and more with the Latin master Roy Straitley, who at first seems to be a pompous old buffer carrying on a somewhat mean-minded feud with the teachers in the German section. When the school is under serious threat, however, he stands up for his colleagues, including his old antagonist, the head of the German department. The description of the interloper who is trying to bring the school down is skilfully done: on the one hand, you shudder over the descriptions of a bleak childhood, while on the other hand, you realise that no end of childhood traumas can excuse the monstrous behaviour of this clever psychopath. I guessed one of the main twists of the plot, and still had a good time reading the book while feeling not a little clever myself. So why, to get to my point, do I get a feeling that members of the literary establishment look down their noses slightly at this author?

I may be imagining it, of course: but it is a starting point as good as any for an uninformed theory (as most theories are). I think the answer lies in the label "of 'Chocolat' fame". I remember reading a few reviews of "Chocolat" when it came out, and they were generally very favourable. It was probably the film that harmed Harris's reputation. I did see the film, and for me the problem with it was not its feel-goodiness, but the relentless trumpeting of hedonism which made even a lover of creature comforts like myself feel we ought to give the poor ascetics a break. Film critics, though, objected more to the feel-good factor. It was observed that the book was more "dark" than the film. Nevertheless, whenever I read a review of a Harris book now, I can be pretty sure that there is a variation on the theme "this book is more dark than 'Chocolat'" in it somewhere. Yet you get the impression that the reviewer doesn't think the new book is quite "dark" enough. Throughout, "dark" equals "good": the "darker" a book or a film is, the better.

Now, I'm not against a spot of darkness in fiction. After all, that is where villains come in: their job is to generate conflict and make lives difficult for heroes and heroines. A book without its fair share of strife would risk becoming boring. I have myself used the expression "dark erotic drama" about "Dombey and Son" and meant it in a positive way: happy couplings in modern Regency Romances are simply not as interesting as a spot of Dickensian power play (though that might have something to do with who the author is). Having said all that, darkness is only one ingredient available to an author. Like any ingredient, you can add too much of it, and there are some situations where it should not be used at all.

On the subject of too much darkness, it eludes me why unhappy endings are considered much more chic than happy ones. Unhappy endings are not more credible or more true to life than happy ones. The series of catastrophes at the end of "Madame Bovary" is about as realistic as if Charles had won the lottery. A classical tragedy which makes you sob your heart out has its beauty, but as for the smug "ha ha sucks to you unsophisticated readers who wanted this story to end well" unhappy endings constructed by would-be cynical authors (actually, you're not a real cynic unless you have a poor view of your own moral worth along with everyone else's, which authors rarely do), they leave me completely cold. To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, there is no such thing as a sophisticated or unsophisticated ending. Endings are either well written or badly written. That is all.

On the subject of darkness where it's really not needed: why does every film in every conceivable genre have to have a "dark" aspect nowadays? I'm not a Batman fan, but if I were I believe I would rather watch him driving the Batmobile and kicking eccentric baddie ass than contemplating his tortured comic-book soul. Every new "Harry Potter" film is described as more "dark" than the previous one: why is this a good thing? These are films about a kid wizard! People don't watch them in order to get a "King Lear" experience. The supposed "darkness" of the HP films is mostly moonshine anyway, but all the same, you wonder what's next. A "dark" Winnie the Pooh film?

Ironically, "Gentlemen and Players" is pretty dark in places, so those who like that sort of thing won't be disappointed. But more importantly, it's simply a good read.