For the first time in years, I've been pretty pumped for Eurovision - both the Swedish heats and the European competition. Not having to worry about your latest villain crush's fate does free up time and energy to engage in more trivial matters. However, I've come to realise that I'll never again be enthusiastic enough to watch all the entries before the semi-finals, which means pre-final blogging pretty much has to take place the same day as the big event. OK then. On the basis of the semi-finals and Youtube clips of the already qualified entries, here are my favourites for this evening:
Sweden: Yeah, I bet you didn't know Sweden had good Gospel singers, did you? But we're multicultural, us. Someone will doubtlessly make fun of the cosmopolitan vibe of this number - the folk song trend is clearly dead - but this, in Eurovision terms, is typically Swedish in the most important way: it's high-quality stuff. John Lundvik has charm in spades, and the choir of seasoned Gospel ladies adds that little bit extra. For the first time in forever (the last time was Måns Zelmerlöw, I think), I'm fully behind Sweden's choice for Eurovision. Lundvik for the win!
Russia: The way I've previously gone on about "You're the Only One", Sergey's entry from 2016, as the song to beat you'd have thought it was from the Beatles. And OK, maybe I have been overselling it a trifle, considering that it contained lyrics like "Thunder and lightning/It's getting exciting", but I really liked it. The song Sergey is competing with this year is not as strong or as hummable, but it's not bad either, and the man's a real pro. A serious contender, who'll probably be kept down by the jury groups (they nobbled his chances of winning back in 2016).
Serbia: I'm growing old, aren't I? The kind of Balkan ballad I found boring twenty years back now strangely appeals to me. Serbia was probably helped by being in the first semi-final which was considerably weaker than the second, but it was my favourite in that one. Nice and melodic.
North Macedonia: On the subject of ballads, this one delivered after a breathy start. If the whole "what will happen to my daughter/s in this uncertain world?" message is a bit too pompously worthy for you, pretend that Cersei from Game of Thrones is singing it. It's what I do.
Czech Republic: I think I like the idea behind this song more than the song itself - the lyrics seem to be about a guy explaining to his jealous girlfriend why he's so pally with the girl next door ("We knew each other when we were both thirteen... there's not much between us now... you know what I mean..."), and that's a witty idea. The song is upbeat, too, which will be welcome in a field where many of the numbers take themselves a mite too seriously.
United Kingdom: Right. This is the test. I'm not expecting the UK to win by any means, but the song is solid (written by Lundvik as it happens - which is a bit awkward as his own song is better), the singer, Michael Rice, is endearing and the video (I haven't seen this one live) was really sweet. It should do decently. If it doesn't, even after the Brits have shaped up their act in this competition for several years in a row, maybe it's time they took drastic action.
It's overblown, its expensive, many of the countries - even the ones you're subsidising - are hostile, and you'll never catch a break from the French. Brits, heed my advice: if you bomb this year as well, maybe you should consider exiting the Eurovision Song Contest.
On the subject of France: I think it's likely that they will win the whole competition this year. Many of the winners of recent years have had a Message that was In Tune With The Times. It's not what I enjoy, but it seems to fly with (extended) Europe's juries and voters. France's earnest inclusivity number will probably hit the spot. And to be fair, they are serious about it - it's not just surfing a trend, and it's not as gimmicky as Israel's winner from last year. (Is it just me who thinks it doesn't sound so bad to be someone's toy? It is, isn't it?)
Nevertheless, I'm still hoping that a good tune, preferably without world-improving overtones, wins this year. Apart from the ones mentioned above, entries from the Netherlands, Estonia and Azerbaijan kept a high standard. Not that I can hum them.
Saturday, 18 May 2019
Saturday, 4 May 2019
Heroine misfire
I was counting on making Game of Thrones my blog subject for this instalment, as I'm now completely up to speed with the series. I'd watched all of the previous seven seasons in time for the final season premiere and, thanks to an opportunistic subscription to HBO Nordic, I'm now able to see new episodes only a day or so after they air in the US. The trouble is, the latest episode threw us such a curve ball that I realise I'll have to wait until the end of the series before going off on a rant which might be rendered unnecessary by future plot twists. For now, though, I'm with the disgruntled fans who think that Jon Snow was robbed.
Instead I'll have to move to the other end of the fantasy spectrum and the sugary confection that is The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, which I watched quite a while back. The theme addressed, though, will not be that far from my current issues with Game of Thrones, as it has to do with what makes a good heroine, something I've touched on earlier. Not that the heroine of Nutcracker has much in common with the supposed heroines in GoT. Her main fault is blandness, which is not something you can accuse the women of Westeros of. The way that the creators of Nutcracker have tried to "fix" the blandness, however, is symptomatic of a specific heroine trend which makes itself felt in Game of Thrones as well as in family-friendly Disney films.
The heroine in Nutcracker, Clara, is a girl who's lost her mother at a young age. Still grieving, she doesn't realise that her father is mourning too, and that his attempts to soldier on with life do not constitute a betrayal. The setting is Victorian London - which is a bit unexpected as I would have thought families called Stahlbaum and Drosselmeyer would be hanging out in Berlin or Vienna - but it hardly matters as Victorian London has seldom looked prettier. Clara is given a box which belonged to her mother as a Christmas present, but the key is missing. However, at a lavish Christmas party at her godfather Drosselmeyer's, the traditional hunt for Christmas presents leads her to the key, but also into another world where her dead mother was once Queen and where she is now hailed as the new leader.
The plot is generic fantasy stuff, reminiscent of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and a hundred yarns about the Chosen One, and there's a plot twist you can spot from a mile off. Nevertheless, I quite enjoyed the film. It was just the sort of light-hearted fluff one needs once in a while to rest one's brain, and it looks gorgeous. It was directed by Lasse Hallström, and if like me you have a fondness for his feel-good formula, you could do worse than to see it. But Clara remained a bore throughout. The scriptwriters thought it would be enough to endow her with inventive skills - the same shorthand for "see, she's brainy!" as was tried on Belle in the live-action Beauty and the Beast, and with the same indifferent result - and to make sure that she went into clinch with the Big Bad herself, climbing waterfalls and whatnot in the process. These empowerment traits just felt tacked on, and don't tell us anything about Clara as a person. Keira Knightley as the Sugar Plum Fairy, the kind of character who professes to be good but to whom you would rather not entrust as much as a pot plant (see also Galinda in the musical Wicked and the Blue Fairy in Once Upon a Time) is a great deal more fun.
This is consistent with the trend I alluded to earlier: an overreliance on making your heroine "kick-ass". Action hero stunts themselves do not make a heroine interesting - unsurprisingly, as they do not make a hero interesting either. What a heroine needs is personality. The reason I like, say, Rey in Star Wars is not that she can wield a light sabre, though admittedly it's a plus. It's that Daisy Ridley who plays her can sell her to me as a complex character with relatable feelings and insecurities. A character who has a strong personality doesn't have to kick ass to be interesting: she can stay at home and make everyone beer and sandwiches if she so chooses and still be the focus of a story. Not that I'm suggesting that heroines should stay at home and make sandwiches as a rule - that would make the plots very boring. I'm just tired of film and TV series providers taking the easy route with female characters and including "look, she fights better than a bloke!" scenes only to show us how feministically minded they (the film/series creators) are. I frankly don't care about their feminist credentials. Give me a strong plot and strong characters (ideally including a brainy villain - male) and I'm a happy part of the female popular-culture-consuming demographic.
Instead I'll have to move to the other end of the fantasy spectrum and the sugary confection that is The Nutcracker and the Four Realms, which I watched quite a while back. The theme addressed, though, will not be that far from my current issues with Game of Thrones, as it has to do with what makes a good heroine, something I've touched on earlier. Not that the heroine of Nutcracker has much in common with the supposed heroines in GoT. Her main fault is blandness, which is not something you can accuse the women of Westeros of. The way that the creators of Nutcracker have tried to "fix" the blandness, however, is symptomatic of a specific heroine trend which makes itself felt in Game of Thrones as well as in family-friendly Disney films.
The heroine in Nutcracker, Clara, is a girl who's lost her mother at a young age. Still grieving, she doesn't realise that her father is mourning too, and that his attempts to soldier on with life do not constitute a betrayal. The setting is Victorian London - which is a bit unexpected as I would have thought families called Stahlbaum and Drosselmeyer would be hanging out in Berlin or Vienna - but it hardly matters as Victorian London has seldom looked prettier. Clara is given a box which belonged to her mother as a Christmas present, but the key is missing. However, at a lavish Christmas party at her godfather Drosselmeyer's, the traditional hunt for Christmas presents leads her to the key, but also into another world where her dead mother was once Queen and where she is now hailed as the new leader.
The plot is generic fantasy stuff, reminiscent of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and a hundred yarns about the Chosen One, and there's a plot twist you can spot from a mile off. Nevertheless, I quite enjoyed the film. It was just the sort of light-hearted fluff one needs once in a while to rest one's brain, and it looks gorgeous. It was directed by Lasse Hallström, and if like me you have a fondness for his feel-good formula, you could do worse than to see it. But Clara remained a bore throughout. The scriptwriters thought it would be enough to endow her with inventive skills - the same shorthand for "see, she's brainy!" as was tried on Belle in the live-action Beauty and the Beast, and with the same indifferent result - and to make sure that she went into clinch with the Big Bad herself, climbing waterfalls and whatnot in the process. These empowerment traits just felt tacked on, and don't tell us anything about Clara as a person. Keira Knightley as the Sugar Plum Fairy, the kind of character who professes to be good but to whom you would rather not entrust as much as a pot plant (see also Galinda in the musical Wicked and the Blue Fairy in Once Upon a Time) is a great deal more fun.
This is consistent with the trend I alluded to earlier: an overreliance on making your heroine "kick-ass". Action hero stunts themselves do not make a heroine interesting - unsurprisingly, as they do not make a hero interesting either. What a heroine needs is personality. The reason I like, say, Rey in Star Wars is not that she can wield a light sabre, though admittedly it's a plus. It's that Daisy Ridley who plays her can sell her to me as a complex character with relatable feelings and insecurities. A character who has a strong personality doesn't have to kick ass to be interesting: she can stay at home and make everyone beer and sandwiches if she so chooses and still be the focus of a story. Not that I'm suggesting that heroines should stay at home and make sandwiches as a rule - that would make the plots very boring. I'm just tired of film and TV series providers taking the easy route with female characters and including "look, she fights better than a bloke!" scenes only to show us how feministically minded they (the film/series creators) are. I frankly don't care about their feminist credentials. Give me a strong plot and strong characters (ideally including a brainy villain - male) and I'm a happy part of the female popular-culture-consuming demographic.
Saturday, 20 April 2019
What is the point of Mrs Norris?
My Jane Austen Rereading Project is more or less at an end (though I may reread one of the better completions of the novel fragment The Watsons) as I have now finished Mansfield Park. I've already written about Fanny Price, and I hold to my opinion that she is, all in all, a sweet girl who has been too harshly treated by many readers and critics. (However, her reaction to Henry Crawford's and Maria's affair does feel a bit overblown - yes, it's a serious transgression which manages to injure most of the protagonists in some way, but Fanny makes it sound as if they've slaughtered a village). But there are other aspects of Mansfield Park worth getting into, as after having read and reread the novel they are still a bit of a puzzle to me. One of them is the role of Fanny's Aunt Norris.
Many will associate Mrs Norris with Harry Potter - it's the name of Hogwarts caretaker Filch's cat. I'm pretty sure that her name is inspired by Mansfield Park and is Rowling's way of signalling to her readers that this is an unpleasant animal. Judging from the films, though (I haven't read the Harry Potter books), there is one significant difference between the two Mrs Norrises, apart from one of them being a cat. Filch's Mrs Norris is beloved by her owner, while no-one loves Mrs Norris in Mansfield Park.
The unspeakableness of Mrs Norris is certainly universally acknowledged. She is stingy, officious, petty, stupid and consistently nasty to poor Fanny, whom she treats as a servant while not showing any gratitude for all the errands she makes the girl run for her. She is on the wrong side of any argument, and there is hardly one situation she can't manage to make worse. I can't be the only reader whose heart sinks a little every time Mrs Norris enters the fray. And here is perhaps her worst failing as a novel character: she is no fun to read about. As heroine antagonists go, she doesn't have the villainous glamour of a General Tilney or the entertainment value of a Lady Catherine de Bourgh. She is almost as much of a trial to the reader as to her niece. So why do we have to put up with her?
Something that struck me when rereading the novel is that Mrs Norris doesn't fill much of a plot function. Yes, it's her idea to bring Fanny to Mansfield to start with, but its owner Sir Thomas Bertram could easily have come up with that idea himself. Later, she is active in bringing about the disastrous match between Maria Bertram and the rich and thick Mr Rushworth, but Maria would have been perfectly capable of arranging the match herself. Once Mary and Henry Crawford enter the scene, it is they and the Bertram siblings who drive the plot forward, not Mrs Norris. She is just a hanger-on who can be relied on to do the wrong thing.
So why did Austen include her in the novel? The most important reason is probably to increase Fanny's misery. Fanny's story echoes the Cinderella story in many respects, and Mrs Norris is more reminiscent of the Wicked Stepmother than Lady Bertram, who may take advantage of Fanny but who is in her languid way quite fond of her niece. Then again, one thing to be said for Wicked Stepmothers is that they tend to add spice to a tale in a way Mrs Norris completely fails to do. As I've already mentioned, characters who plague the heroine needn't do the same to the reader. Mary Crawford is a case in point: as the paramour of Fanny's beloved Edmund, no-one makes Fanny more miserable than she does, but she is a delight to read about.
Another possible explanation for Mrs Norris's existence is that Austen may have relished creating a character whom not even the most perverse reader could like. As the Sanditon fragment shows, she was aware that there are readers who will stubbornly root for characters which the author has set up to be warning examples. As a villain-lover, I mostly fall into that category myself, though the rake villain type favoured by Austen isn't really my cup of tea. So if the intention was to force this kind of reader into line - congratulations, Austen, job done. Also, it's probably more enjoyable to write about a thoroughly despicable character than to read about one. Mansfield Park may partly be a tract against self-indulgence, but maybe Austen indulged herself a bit on the part of Mrs Norris.
The best case one can make for the importance of Mrs Norris, I think, is that she acts as a catalyst. Her treatment of Fanny rubs off on the other characters, who would perhaps have treated her with more kindness and respect had they not unconsciously taken their cue from Mrs Norris. The Bertram girls believe they're in the right to despise Fanny, because their aunt agrees with them that she is ignorant. Lady Bertram thinks nothing of employing Fanny to fetch and carry for her because she sees her sister doing the same thing, and at least she does it nicely. Not even Edmund really questions Fanny's inferior position in the family, which makes it easier for him to do her little favours for which she is then suitably grateful. As to Fanny, though I would have preferred Austen to make her suffer in a way less insufferable to the reader, I can't deny that Mrs Norris's behaviour towards her offers a better explanation as to why the girl is so shy and unsure of herself than merely the aloofness of Sir Thomas and the neglect of the rest of the family would have done. She would still have had a hard time at Mansfield Park, but maybe not sufficiently hard to make her what she is.
Mrs Norris is not a badly drawn character - in her awful way, she is believable - and it would probably have been difficult to remove her from the plot altogether, at least not without making the rest of the Bertram family a little worse. Nevertheless, I can't help thinking that we could have done with a great deal less of her.
Many will associate Mrs Norris with Harry Potter - it's the name of Hogwarts caretaker Filch's cat. I'm pretty sure that her name is inspired by Mansfield Park and is Rowling's way of signalling to her readers that this is an unpleasant animal. Judging from the films, though (I haven't read the Harry Potter books), there is one significant difference between the two Mrs Norrises, apart from one of them being a cat. Filch's Mrs Norris is beloved by her owner, while no-one loves Mrs Norris in Mansfield Park.
The unspeakableness of Mrs Norris is certainly universally acknowledged. She is stingy, officious, petty, stupid and consistently nasty to poor Fanny, whom she treats as a servant while not showing any gratitude for all the errands she makes the girl run for her. She is on the wrong side of any argument, and there is hardly one situation she can't manage to make worse. I can't be the only reader whose heart sinks a little every time Mrs Norris enters the fray. And here is perhaps her worst failing as a novel character: she is no fun to read about. As heroine antagonists go, she doesn't have the villainous glamour of a General Tilney or the entertainment value of a Lady Catherine de Bourgh. She is almost as much of a trial to the reader as to her niece. So why do we have to put up with her?
Something that struck me when rereading the novel is that Mrs Norris doesn't fill much of a plot function. Yes, it's her idea to bring Fanny to Mansfield to start with, but its owner Sir Thomas Bertram could easily have come up with that idea himself. Later, she is active in bringing about the disastrous match between Maria Bertram and the rich and thick Mr Rushworth, but Maria would have been perfectly capable of arranging the match herself. Once Mary and Henry Crawford enter the scene, it is they and the Bertram siblings who drive the plot forward, not Mrs Norris. She is just a hanger-on who can be relied on to do the wrong thing.
So why did Austen include her in the novel? The most important reason is probably to increase Fanny's misery. Fanny's story echoes the Cinderella story in many respects, and Mrs Norris is more reminiscent of the Wicked Stepmother than Lady Bertram, who may take advantage of Fanny but who is in her languid way quite fond of her niece. Then again, one thing to be said for Wicked Stepmothers is that they tend to add spice to a tale in a way Mrs Norris completely fails to do. As I've already mentioned, characters who plague the heroine needn't do the same to the reader. Mary Crawford is a case in point: as the paramour of Fanny's beloved Edmund, no-one makes Fanny more miserable than she does, but she is a delight to read about.
Another possible explanation for Mrs Norris's existence is that Austen may have relished creating a character whom not even the most perverse reader could like. As the Sanditon fragment shows, she was aware that there are readers who will stubbornly root for characters which the author has set up to be warning examples. As a villain-lover, I mostly fall into that category myself, though the rake villain type favoured by Austen isn't really my cup of tea. So if the intention was to force this kind of reader into line - congratulations, Austen, job done. Also, it's probably more enjoyable to write about a thoroughly despicable character than to read about one. Mansfield Park may partly be a tract against self-indulgence, but maybe Austen indulged herself a bit on the part of Mrs Norris.
The best case one can make for the importance of Mrs Norris, I think, is that she acts as a catalyst. Her treatment of Fanny rubs off on the other characters, who would perhaps have treated her with more kindness and respect had they not unconsciously taken their cue from Mrs Norris. The Bertram girls believe they're in the right to despise Fanny, because their aunt agrees with them that she is ignorant. Lady Bertram thinks nothing of employing Fanny to fetch and carry for her because she sees her sister doing the same thing, and at least she does it nicely. Not even Edmund really questions Fanny's inferior position in the family, which makes it easier for him to do her little favours for which she is then suitably grateful. As to Fanny, though I would have preferred Austen to make her suffer in a way less insufferable to the reader, I can't deny that Mrs Norris's behaviour towards her offers a better explanation as to why the girl is so shy and unsure of herself than merely the aloofness of Sir Thomas and the neglect of the rest of the family would have done. She would still have had a hard time at Mansfield Park, but maybe not sufficiently hard to make her what she is.
Mrs Norris is not a badly drawn character - in her awful way, she is believable - and it would probably have been difficult to remove her from the plot altogether, at least not without making the rest of the Bertram family a little worse. Nevertheless, I can't help thinking that we could have done with a great deal less of her.
Wednesday, 3 April 2019
First-class folk tale fantasy
It's always easier to fill a blog post with whinging than gushing. However, when I come across a really good read, I (mostly) feel duty bound to write about it and spread the word a bit. And Uprooted by Naomi Novik is a first-class page turner. It engrossed me during two train journeys and nearly all moments I could steal during a two-day mini-conference.
The set-up easily explains why I bought the book in the first place. The heroine, the determinedly un-heroine-like Agnieszka, lives in a village in a fairy-tale version of Poland. The village lies close to the malignant Wood, a forest enchanted in all the wrong ways which each year encroaches a little further into the land. Keeping it at bay and protecting the nearby villages is a sorcerer called the Dragon, who is also the villages' overlord. Every ten years, he claims one of the girls in the villages who then goes to work for him in his isolated tower. After the ten years are over she is richly rewarded and can return to her family. Only, in the end, none of the girls choose to stay in their home village - they all go away and make a life for themselves elsewhere.
Agnieszka is one of the girls in the risk zone for being picked for Dragon duty, but she is not worried for herself: like everyone else, she is convinced that her best friend - beautiful, accomplished, sweet-natured and brave Kasia - will be the one selected. Agnieszka is no beauty, and her chief talent seems to be to tear her clothes and get herself muddy. She grieves for Kasia's sake, and yet when the day comes, the Dragon - somewhat churlishly - decides to take her instead.
So, sorcerer meets girl, sorcerer takes girl to his castle (well, kind of), sorcerer and girl get better acquainted - what's not to like? In fact, this is only one plot strand, forming a sort of classic fairy-tale base line, while there are all sorts of other things going on. We have to wait for quite a while before there is a thaw in the relationship between the Dragon and Agnieszka, and when it finally sets in they are both drawn in deeper than ever before in the fight against the Wood. There are twists and turns which keep you hooked to the end, wondering how such a formidable enemy as the Wood is ever going to be defeated.
The funny thing is, the few niggles I do have about the novel are closely connected to things that are good about it. A novel, like a person, isn't necessarily made out characteristics that are either good or bad: it can have traits that are both good and bad at the same time. Not that the aspects of the book I had problems with are bad, exactly - my criticisms are probably more to do with my personal tastes than anything else.
The reason the Dragon, aka Sarkan (which somehow sounds better though apparently it means the same thing), picked Agnieszka in the first place turns out to be that she has magic powers, and he is duty bound to train anyone with magic he comes across so they don't unwittingly make mischief. Now, Agnieszka's type of magic remains a mystery to him for a long time as it's quite different from his own, scholarly type of wizardry - it's very earthbound and close to nature. This is an important facet of the novel: because Agnieszka is so attuned to her surroundings, her descriptions of the Wood are intensely atmospheric, and it also helps her understand what kind of threat they're facing. At the same time, the whole concept of Agnieszka's magic being all earthy and mother-nature's-daughterish and Sarkan's being more dry and bookish and them complementing each other in some Yin-and-Yang way gets on my nerves a bit. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's clichéd, but somehow it's typical that the female magic user turns out to be the one who's unsophisticated but ultimately wiser because of her special bond with nature.
As I've mentioned, the relationship between Agnieszka and Sarkan is put on the back burner for a large part of the book. Which is also good in principle, because then parts of the story are highlighted that are more unpredictable. On the other hand, I liked Sarkan, and once the various adventures had reached their climax I would have preferred him and Agnieszka to move jointly into the foreground again. Instead, the narrative focuses more on Agnieszka finding her proper place and happiness on her own terms. Which is fine and dandy I'm sure, but... priorities, girl! It's not as if hot sorcerers are that easy to come by.
Agnieszka herself is another two-faced coin. She is certainly a more interesting heroine than the perfect Kasia would have been, but there are times when her anti-heroine status feels a touch overplayed, like when she's struggling at the royal court. Would it have killed her to make a little more of an effort to fit in, considering what's at stake?
These are just minor irritations, though, and as I said, probably down to my personal preferences. All in all, this novel is great, with an exciting story and well-drawn characters, including the supporting cast. Kasia somehow manages to be not unbearable; Prince Marek, who at first seems to be a typical "prince who turns out to be a bastard", has an overreaching motive for most of his actions which it's hard not to sympathise with; plus there's a delightfully shady wizard rival to Sarkan at court - the Falcon, aka Solya - who if I'm honest is even more up my street than Sarkan himself. For those who like their fantasy as close to a classic folk tale as possible, this is definitely worth checking out.
For my part, I'll be looking out for when Novik's newest novel Spinning Silver comes out in paperback, though the blurb has me somewhat worried. One can hardly fault the fairy-tale inspiration in this case, but, um, what happened to the original story's title character? Here's hoping the novel will not just be girl power all the way.
The set-up easily explains why I bought the book in the first place. The heroine, the determinedly un-heroine-like Agnieszka, lives in a village in a fairy-tale version of Poland. The village lies close to the malignant Wood, a forest enchanted in all the wrong ways which each year encroaches a little further into the land. Keeping it at bay and protecting the nearby villages is a sorcerer called the Dragon, who is also the villages' overlord. Every ten years, he claims one of the girls in the villages who then goes to work for him in his isolated tower. After the ten years are over she is richly rewarded and can return to her family. Only, in the end, none of the girls choose to stay in their home village - they all go away and make a life for themselves elsewhere.
Agnieszka is one of the girls in the risk zone for being picked for Dragon duty, but she is not worried for herself: like everyone else, she is convinced that her best friend - beautiful, accomplished, sweet-natured and brave Kasia - will be the one selected. Agnieszka is no beauty, and her chief talent seems to be to tear her clothes and get herself muddy. She grieves for Kasia's sake, and yet when the day comes, the Dragon - somewhat churlishly - decides to take her instead.
So, sorcerer meets girl, sorcerer takes girl to his castle (well, kind of), sorcerer and girl get better acquainted - what's not to like? In fact, this is only one plot strand, forming a sort of classic fairy-tale base line, while there are all sorts of other things going on. We have to wait for quite a while before there is a thaw in the relationship between the Dragon and Agnieszka, and when it finally sets in they are both drawn in deeper than ever before in the fight against the Wood. There are twists and turns which keep you hooked to the end, wondering how such a formidable enemy as the Wood is ever going to be defeated.
The funny thing is, the few niggles I do have about the novel are closely connected to things that are good about it. A novel, like a person, isn't necessarily made out characteristics that are either good or bad: it can have traits that are both good and bad at the same time. Not that the aspects of the book I had problems with are bad, exactly - my criticisms are probably more to do with my personal tastes than anything else.
The reason the Dragon, aka Sarkan (which somehow sounds better though apparently it means the same thing), picked Agnieszka in the first place turns out to be that she has magic powers, and he is duty bound to train anyone with magic he comes across so they don't unwittingly make mischief. Now, Agnieszka's type of magic remains a mystery to him for a long time as it's quite different from his own, scholarly type of wizardry - it's very earthbound and close to nature. This is an important facet of the novel: because Agnieszka is so attuned to her surroundings, her descriptions of the Wood are intensely atmospheric, and it also helps her understand what kind of threat they're facing. At the same time, the whole concept of Agnieszka's magic being all earthy and mother-nature's-daughterish and Sarkan's being more dry and bookish and them complementing each other in some Yin-and-Yang way gets on my nerves a bit. I wouldn't go so far as to say it's clichéd, but somehow it's typical that the female magic user turns out to be the one who's unsophisticated but ultimately wiser because of her special bond with nature.
As I've mentioned, the relationship between Agnieszka and Sarkan is put on the back burner for a large part of the book. Which is also good in principle, because then parts of the story are highlighted that are more unpredictable. On the other hand, I liked Sarkan, and once the various adventures had reached their climax I would have preferred him and Agnieszka to move jointly into the foreground again. Instead, the narrative focuses more on Agnieszka finding her proper place and happiness on her own terms. Which is fine and dandy I'm sure, but... priorities, girl! It's not as if hot sorcerers are that easy to come by.
Agnieszka herself is another two-faced coin. She is certainly a more interesting heroine than the perfect Kasia would have been, but there are times when her anti-heroine status feels a touch overplayed, like when she's struggling at the royal court. Would it have killed her to make a little more of an effort to fit in, considering what's at stake?
These are just minor irritations, though, and as I said, probably down to my personal preferences. All in all, this novel is great, with an exciting story and well-drawn characters, including the supporting cast. Kasia somehow manages to be not unbearable; Prince Marek, who at first seems to be a typical "prince who turns out to be a bastard", has an overreaching motive for most of his actions which it's hard not to sympathise with; plus there's a delightfully shady wizard rival to Sarkan at court - the Falcon, aka Solya - who if I'm honest is even more up my street than Sarkan himself. For those who like their fantasy as close to a classic folk tale as possible, this is definitely worth checking out.
For my part, I'll be looking out for when Novik's newest novel Spinning Silver comes out in paperback, though the blurb has me somewhat worried. One can hardly fault the fairy-tale inspiration in this case, but, um, what happened to the original story's title character? Here's hoping the novel will not just be girl power all the way.
Thursday, 28 March 2019
What went wrong with Wreck-It Ralph 2
A few weeks back I watched Wreck-It Ralph 2 - Ralph Breaks The Internet in the cinema and was - well, underwhelmed. At the time, I still thought it was OK. The animation is top-notch: it's hard not to be a little invested when the characters' pain at some fresh betrayal is so well-animated. Overall, I liked the side characters introduced in the film, and the Internet setting had some neat ideas. The part with the Disney princesses turned out to be more enjoyable than I'd anticipated. I'm still not wild about the "are you a princess?" interrogation scene, but in the end the fun-poking at princess tropes is pretty mild and a far cry from Shrek territory, plus the girls turn out to be handy in a crisis. There's also a really fun song where Vanellope channels her inner Disney princess and by "looking at water" realises what she really wants: to be a part of the tough, unpredictable internet game Slaughter Race. As time goes on, though, I find that the problems with the film start to grate on me more. Even on the same evening as I watched it, I thought (not without some grim satisfaction for having called it): "I guess Disney's golden revival era really is over". Now I'm even more convinced. Frozen 2 will need to be pretty spectacular in order to turn around the downward trend.
If online comments on places such as Youtube (which incidentally features under the threadbare disguise of "BuzzTube" in the film) are anything to go by, I wasn't the only one who was vaguely dissatisfied with Wreck-It Ralph 2. Few think it's downright bad, but they have various problems with it: the depiction of the Internet is too generic; Ralph behaves badly; Vanellope behaves badly; we see too little of the lovable side characters from the Arcade; the image of a computer virus in the shape of Ralph - made out of a teeming horde of needy virus Ralphs - is uncomfortable etc. I more or less agree with all of these criticisms, but what made these faults worse was the plot itself.
Quite simply, the film falls into the classic sequel trap of telling us a story which few of us wanted to see. The first Wreck-It Ralph film was mostly about Ralph accepting his role as the bad guy in his Arcade game and realising 1) that his was an important job that kept the whole game going 2) that he didn't have to be a bad guy off stage, as it were. His friendship with kid racer Vanellope in the game Sugar Rush played a large part in his acceptance of his lot, and in the touching ending of the film he admits that being thrown off the roof in his game, once he's been defeated by a player, is his favourite part of the day, because from up there he can see Vanellope racing in Sugar Rush. Now, who saw this scene and thought: "Isn't Ralph being a little clingy? Should so much of his happiness really rest on his bond with Vanellope? Wouldn't it be healthier if he gave her some space and made some other friends as well?"
I sure as heck didn't. Yet in this sequel, the message being peddled is the one the Earl of Grantham, with some justice, dismissed as a "slogan" in the Downton Abbey finale: "If you love her, you have to let her go". I didn't like the "don't be too needy" theme in Finding Nemo, and though it's not quite as enervating here as the stakes aren't so high, it still bothered me. It's not that this message is never relevant for kids as well as adults, but there's something finger-wagging about it, and unlike many a pat moral which you can just about swallow (all the while thinking "well, duh"), it's just not very compatible with family-friendly entertainment. I can't be the only one who doesn't find it enjoyable to watch someone being chastised for caring too much.
Of course all ends well, and Ralph's and Vanellope's friendship survives being long-distance. But I would have been happy to leave them both in the Arcade, happy with their roles in their respective games and with each other. In the end, watching Wreck-It Ralph 2 - Ralph Breaks The Internet subtracts a little from the experience of watching the first film - and that's something a sequel should do its best to avoid.
If online comments on places such as Youtube (which incidentally features under the threadbare disguise of "BuzzTube" in the film) are anything to go by, I wasn't the only one who was vaguely dissatisfied with Wreck-It Ralph 2. Few think it's downright bad, but they have various problems with it: the depiction of the Internet is too generic; Ralph behaves badly; Vanellope behaves badly; we see too little of the lovable side characters from the Arcade; the image of a computer virus in the shape of Ralph - made out of a teeming horde of needy virus Ralphs - is uncomfortable etc. I more or less agree with all of these criticisms, but what made these faults worse was the plot itself.
Quite simply, the film falls into the classic sequel trap of telling us a story which few of us wanted to see. The first Wreck-It Ralph film was mostly about Ralph accepting his role as the bad guy in his Arcade game and realising 1) that his was an important job that kept the whole game going 2) that he didn't have to be a bad guy off stage, as it were. His friendship with kid racer Vanellope in the game Sugar Rush played a large part in his acceptance of his lot, and in the touching ending of the film he admits that being thrown off the roof in his game, once he's been defeated by a player, is his favourite part of the day, because from up there he can see Vanellope racing in Sugar Rush. Now, who saw this scene and thought: "Isn't Ralph being a little clingy? Should so much of his happiness really rest on his bond with Vanellope? Wouldn't it be healthier if he gave her some space and made some other friends as well?"
I sure as heck didn't. Yet in this sequel, the message being peddled is the one the Earl of Grantham, with some justice, dismissed as a "slogan" in the Downton Abbey finale: "If you love her, you have to let her go". I didn't like the "don't be too needy" theme in Finding Nemo, and though it's not quite as enervating here as the stakes aren't so high, it still bothered me. It's not that this message is never relevant for kids as well as adults, but there's something finger-wagging about it, and unlike many a pat moral which you can just about swallow (all the while thinking "well, duh"), it's just not very compatible with family-friendly entertainment. I can't be the only one who doesn't find it enjoyable to watch someone being chastised for caring too much.
Of course all ends well, and Ralph's and Vanellope's friendship survives being long-distance. But I would have been happy to leave them both in the Arcade, happy with their roles in their respective games and with each other. In the end, watching Wreck-It Ralph 2 - Ralph Breaks The Internet subtracts a little from the experience of watching the first film - and that's something a sequel should do its best to avoid.
Thursday, 14 March 2019
Timeless - A nice way to spend TV time (but no new Who)
I've discovered that I'm not as good at TV bingewatching as I'd imagined. When there's a villain crush in the mix, then I bingewatch, and Doctor Who triggers the same impulse (yes, still, just about). But there are a number of series where I watch an episode now and then, think "this is nice, I'm enjoying this", but still only manage one episode per evening and very possibly watch something else the following day. Variety is good, I suppose, but it does leave me with a lot of half-watched series and a funny sense of under-achievement.
Which is one reason why I made a conscious effort to prioritise Timeless above other light-entertainment Netflix fare. One season containing fifteen episodes is available on Swedish Netflix: it was surely doable to complete it without stringing it out over months and months. I've watched the whole season now, and am glad I did, but making it to the season finale didn't really bring a reward. Instead of tying up the threads, the series opted for a classic season cliffhanger (which I'll get back to).
I hope Netflix sends the next season and the TV movie that (according to reviews on Amazon) completes the story, because I'm not sure I'm sufficiently invested in the series to buy the rest on DVD. All the same, I liked it. The story setup yields a satisfying amount of historical derring-do. A brilliant inventor has managed to build two time machines: a fancy new one (the mother ship) and the prototype, to be used in emergencies (the lifeboat). The mother ship is stolen by tortured dish Garcia Flynn, labeled a terrorist by US intelligence, and his gang of followers. His mission seems to be to sabotage key moments in American history, and a team consisting of nervy historian Lucy, tough military man Wyatt (who looks more like a pop star than a hardened veteran, but never mind) and the long-suffering programmer Rufus, who's the only one who can pilot the machine, are sent out in the lifeboat to stop him.
My impression of the first episode was "this is fun, if a little slipshod", and that impression more or less stuck during the rest of the series. The protagonists are likeable, the script is zingy and the acting's good. All the same, there's plenty to criticise. The series doesn't give you any in-depth view into or fresh angle on American history, as the famous people the heroes run into behave pretty much as described in historical textbooks. I don't really mind the hasty way in which it's established that time travel exists, and appreciate the fact that we're not bogged down with pseudo-scientific explanations as to how it's possible. The time machines themselves are clearly not of much interest to the writers: they're just an excuse to get the characters into historical adventures. Fair enough, but another far-fetched premise could have done with a little more elucidation. Flynn claims that there is a vast conspiracy, containing a large part of the American élite, who is clandestinely shaping the country in a harmful way. His history-changing plans, which include not only assassinating Lincoln but also half his government and sabotaging the moon landing, are necessary to take out "Rittenhouse", as this association of highly-placed baddies is called. Flynn turns out to be right, at least as far as the existence of Rittenhouse is concerned. However, it's not made clear what these people actually want. The conspiracy is as much of a simple plot device as the time machines, only there to furnish ethical dilemmas to the lifeboat team. Are they doing the right thing trying to stop Flynn, or should they be helping him?
What's more, little is done with the "ripple effect", which usually plays such an important part in time-travelling dramas. In the very first episode, where as a consequence of Flynn's and the team's meddling there are only two casualties in the Hindenburg disaster, the alteration has a vast impact on Lucy's life in the present. In the second episode, she has to convince her sceptical team mates that they can't stop Lincoln from being murdered as history has to play out the way it always did. Afterwards, though, this line of reasoning is dropped and the team both kill and save people in the past without it having any discernible effect on the present as long as the big events are preserved. This left the geek in me rather dissatisfied, as I had looked forward to seeing the present becoming weirder and weirder as a consequence of some random actions in the past - maybe not every episode, but every now and then. That it's never explained (at least not in the first season) how Lucy suddenly finds herself engaged to a handsome doctor she's never met was another disappointment.
My final gripe has less to do with this series specifically than with the habit (more common in the US than the UK, I think) of ending a season with a cliffhanger. I understand that it makes solid commercial sense to hook the viewers into the new season. Nevertheless, I prefer more or less completed season story arcs. Viewers who aren't too much into the series get a natural walking-off point (which, I realise, it's in no way in the series creators' interest to provide), and those who are into the series can look forward to new adventures with the satisfying feeling that at least some of the characters' old issues have been resolved. A cliffhanger which makes you feel as if you might as well have been left hanging mid-season - and I'd say the Timeless one fits into that category - can't help feeling frustrating. On the other hand, cliffhangers hinting at new dangers just as everything looks fine and dandy - such as Elsa stepping into Storybrooke (though that didn't go well) and the Doctor colliding with a space version of the Titanic - are OK. Just don't keep the original plot threads dangling forever.
Timeless isn't Doctor Who (at least not at its best), but it's still good entertainment. Speaking of Who, the series contains an actor who's often mentioned as a possible future Doctor - Paterson Joseph, who plays the morally compromised inventor Connor Mason. I'd definitely be on board with him as a future Doc; he does authority with a hint of arrogance very well. Perhaps it helps that the two parts I've seen him play so far (he was Rose's venal co-contestant in the Doctor Who episode "Bad Wolf") have been somewhat shady?
Which is one reason why I made a conscious effort to prioritise Timeless above other light-entertainment Netflix fare. One season containing fifteen episodes is available on Swedish Netflix: it was surely doable to complete it without stringing it out over months and months. I've watched the whole season now, and am glad I did, but making it to the season finale didn't really bring a reward. Instead of tying up the threads, the series opted for a classic season cliffhanger (which I'll get back to).
I hope Netflix sends the next season and the TV movie that (according to reviews on Amazon) completes the story, because I'm not sure I'm sufficiently invested in the series to buy the rest on DVD. All the same, I liked it. The story setup yields a satisfying amount of historical derring-do. A brilliant inventor has managed to build two time machines: a fancy new one (the mother ship) and the prototype, to be used in emergencies (the lifeboat). The mother ship is stolen by tortured dish Garcia Flynn, labeled a terrorist by US intelligence, and his gang of followers. His mission seems to be to sabotage key moments in American history, and a team consisting of nervy historian Lucy, tough military man Wyatt (who looks more like a pop star than a hardened veteran, but never mind) and the long-suffering programmer Rufus, who's the only one who can pilot the machine, are sent out in the lifeboat to stop him.
My impression of the first episode was "this is fun, if a little slipshod", and that impression more or less stuck during the rest of the series. The protagonists are likeable, the script is zingy and the acting's good. All the same, there's plenty to criticise. The series doesn't give you any in-depth view into or fresh angle on American history, as the famous people the heroes run into behave pretty much as described in historical textbooks. I don't really mind the hasty way in which it's established that time travel exists, and appreciate the fact that we're not bogged down with pseudo-scientific explanations as to how it's possible. The time machines themselves are clearly not of much interest to the writers: they're just an excuse to get the characters into historical adventures. Fair enough, but another far-fetched premise could have done with a little more elucidation. Flynn claims that there is a vast conspiracy, containing a large part of the American élite, who is clandestinely shaping the country in a harmful way. His history-changing plans, which include not only assassinating Lincoln but also half his government and sabotaging the moon landing, are necessary to take out "Rittenhouse", as this association of highly-placed baddies is called. Flynn turns out to be right, at least as far as the existence of Rittenhouse is concerned. However, it's not made clear what these people actually want. The conspiracy is as much of a simple plot device as the time machines, only there to furnish ethical dilemmas to the lifeboat team. Are they doing the right thing trying to stop Flynn, or should they be helping him?
What's more, little is done with the "ripple effect", which usually plays such an important part in time-travelling dramas. In the very first episode, where as a consequence of Flynn's and the team's meddling there are only two casualties in the Hindenburg disaster, the alteration has a vast impact on Lucy's life in the present. In the second episode, she has to convince her sceptical team mates that they can't stop Lincoln from being murdered as history has to play out the way it always did. Afterwards, though, this line of reasoning is dropped and the team both kill and save people in the past without it having any discernible effect on the present as long as the big events are preserved. This left the geek in me rather dissatisfied, as I had looked forward to seeing the present becoming weirder and weirder as a consequence of some random actions in the past - maybe not every episode, but every now and then. That it's never explained (at least not in the first season) how Lucy suddenly finds herself engaged to a handsome doctor she's never met was another disappointment.
My final gripe has less to do with this series specifically than with the habit (more common in the US than the UK, I think) of ending a season with a cliffhanger. I understand that it makes solid commercial sense to hook the viewers into the new season. Nevertheless, I prefer more or less completed season story arcs. Viewers who aren't too much into the series get a natural walking-off point (which, I realise, it's in no way in the series creators' interest to provide), and those who are into the series can look forward to new adventures with the satisfying feeling that at least some of the characters' old issues have been resolved. A cliffhanger which makes you feel as if you might as well have been left hanging mid-season - and I'd say the Timeless one fits into that category - can't help feeling frustrating. On the other hand, cliffhangers hinting at new dangers just as everything looks fine and dandy - such as Elsa stepping into Storybrooke (though that didn't go well) and the Doctor colliding with a space version of the Titanic - are OK. Just don't keep the original plot threads dangling forever.
Timeless isn't Doctor Who (at least not at its best), but it's still good entertainment. Speaking of Who, the series contains an actor who's often mentioned as a possible future Doctor - Paterson Joseph, who plays the morally compromised inventor Connor Mason. I'd definitely be on board with him as a future Doc; he does authority with a hint of arrogance very well. Perhaps it helps that the two parts I've seen him play so far (he was Rose's venal co-contestant in the Doctor Who episode "Bad Wolf") have been somewhat shady?
Thursday, 28 February 2019
The message of Northanger Abbey: is there one?
What to make of Northanger Abbey? I reread it this year as I planned to do as part of the Jane Austen Rereading Project and was pleasantly surprised, as it was more enjoyable than I remembered it. I've said before that it's my least favourite Austen novel, but I'm not so sure now: with its wealth of dialogue, it's a livelier read than the exposition-heavy Sense and Sensibility. It's also less of a critique/parody of the Gothic genre than I expected - the main plot is a straightforward Austenesque one hinging on how the heroine manages to bag her man. But this is what's so puzzling about it. Since most of the story is in no way dependent on the whole Gothic novel context, why bother with it in the first place?
The two TV adaptations of Northanger I've seen have both played up the protagonist Catherine Moreland's propensity for daydreaming. Her dreams and fantasies, where the people she meets in real life are cast in various Gothic-novel parts, are contrasted with her more humdrum reality. In fact, the novel's Catherine isn't as big a fantasist as all that. It's only for a comparatively short section of the book, when she is staying at Northanger Abbey itself, that she believes herself caught up in a Gothic mystery. During all the time she stays in Bath with her friends the Allens she has no exalted expectations of great adventures. Moreover, aside from making a friend of the mercenary flirt Isabella Thorpe - an error of judgement which is totally understandable in a seventeen-year-old, especially as the Thorpes are for a time the only acquaintances the Allens have in town - Catherine behaves pretty sensibly in Bath. She quickly realises that Isabella's brother John, in spite of being the friend of her own brother James, is someone whose company is to be avoided as much as possible. In spite of the Thorpeses' best efforts, she manages to make the better acquaintance of Henry Tilney (her love interest) and his sister Eleanor (too sensible to be much fun at this stage). She quickly notices something is off when Isabella, by this time betrothed to James, starts flirting with Henry Tilney's brother. When she voices her concerns to Henry, he waves them away, but in time Catherine is proven to be right: Isabella's association with Captain Tilney does lead to (an implied) scandal.
In fact, when Austen contrasts Gothic novel clichés with Catherine's reality in the first half of the novel, it's not the heroine's expectations she's puncturing but the reader's. This soon gets a little wearisome, especially if you didn't expect a Gothic yarn to begin with or in fact don't have much conception of what a Gothic yarn is like. It's a problem for me - and I suspect many a modern reader -that I have very little knowledge of the kind of book Austen's supposedly parodying. The more she concentrates on what does happen in Catherine's life, without pointing out how different this is from what would have happened in a Gothic novel, the better Northanger Abbey works for me.
So what does Austen want to say when she's sending up the Gothic novel? That you shouldn't confuse fiction with reality? It always makes me impatient when a novel preaches the importance of keeping fiction and reality apart, because the novel's reality is, of course, also a fiction. The unrelenting misery of the ending of Flaubert's Madame Bovary is as much of a construct as a happily-ever-after would have been, and some of the characters - ruthless merchant, womanising local squire - are types you'd be much more likely to come across within the pages of a novel than in a real small town in 19th century France. What's more, there's something disloyal about a novel that aims to show the dangerous influence of novels on impressionable minds. Jane Austen herself claims, in a defence of the novel which can be found in Northanger Abbey: "I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding". Is she as good as her word, though?
If there's a moral lesson to be learned in Catherine's mistakes, it is a pretty confused one, for in a way, she is vindicated. Her greatest fault is believing that Henry's father, General Tilney, did away with his wife or has her secretly locked up. This isn't true, and Catherine is suitably mortified when Henry guesses what she has been thinking. But the General is still the villain of the piece - he is a domestic tyrant, he throws Catherine out of his house when he discovers that she isn't the heiress he thought she was, and there's much to indicate that he was as impatient with his deceased wife as he is with his children. He expects his offspring to marry into money, more or less pimps Henry to Catherine as long as he thinks she's an heiress, and probably married money himself. Catherine leaping to the conclusion that the General is a murderer on scant evidence is very silly, but not as silly as if the General, in spite his formidable manners, had turned out to be a good egg after all.
The Introduction of the Oxford World's Classics edition of Northanger Abbey argues that the novel is in fact a subtle defence of the Gothic novel, and that Catherine's adventures do in fact have a flavour of the Gothic. The General's character is a case in point. As for the "rational" Henry Tilney, he is a mansplaining idiot (this is more elegantly expressed, of course). It's easy to agree with the opinion that Henry's protests against Catherine's imaginings sound hollow. His argument is that such things would never happen in England, with its admirable laws and institutions etc. This means that he's not really defending the General at all - he's saying that his country, not his father, is too civilised for anything too Gothic to take place. Which apart from being insulting to the General is a pretty dumb argument in itself as the most spectacular crimes can happen in the most well-ordered of societies.
However, I'm not sure I completely buy the argument that Austen is defending the Gothic novel as an art form that may contain a kernel of truth in spite of its sensationalism. It is she, not the reader, who has been scathing about Gothic clichés in the first place - what's the point of knocking down the pieces she herself has set up? The surface contradictions of Northanger Abbey may contain a message of some kind - say, that the relationship between reality and fiction is too complicated to be summed up in "novels are a trusty guide to explaining real life" or "novels are nothing like real life". But there is another possibility. Austen was a master craftswoman, but this is after all the first full-length novel she wrote. She may have started it intending it to be a parody of a Gothic novel, then not found the exercise interesting enough. While writing, she then gravitated more and more towards the kind of psychological realism - with a good deal of romance thrown in - that would become her trademark. Even the brightest authors don't always have a master plan - sometimes they just make things up as they go along. Northanger Abbey may not be trying to tell us anything in particular about "good" novels, "bad" novels and ordinary life after all.
The two TV adaptations of Northanger I've seen have both played up the protagonist Catherine Moreland's propensity for daydreaming. Her dreams and fantasies, where the people she meets in real life are cast in various Gothic-novel parts, are contrasted with her more humdrum reality. In fact, the novel's Catherine isn't as big a fantasist as all that. It's only for a comparatively short section of the book, when she is staying at Northanger Abbey itself, that she believes herself caught up in a Gothic mystery. During all the time she stays in Bath with her friends the Allens she has no exalted expectations of great adventures. Moreover, aside from making a friend of the mercenary flirt Isabella Thorpe - an error of judgement which is totally understandable in a seventeen-year-old, especially as the Thorpes are for a time the only acquaintances the Allens have in town - Catherine behaves pretty sensibly in Bath. She quickly realises that Isabella's brother John, in spite of being the friend of her own brother James, is someone whose company is to be avoided as much as possible. In spite of the Thorpeses' best efforts, she manages to make the better acquaintance of Henry Tilney (her love interest) and his sister Eleanor (too sensible to be much fun at this stage). She quickly notices something is off when Isabella, by this time betrothed to James, starts flirting with Henry Tilney's brother. When she voices her concerns to Henry, he waves them away, but in time Catherine is proven to be right: Isabella's association with Captain Tilney does lead to (an implied) scandal.
In fact, when Austen contrasts Gothic novel clichés with Catherine's reality in the first half of the novel, it's not the heroine's expectations she's puncturing but the reader's. This soon gets a little wearisome, especially if you didn't expect a Gothic yarn to begin with or in fact don't have much conception of what a Gothic yarn is like. It's a problem for me - and I suspect many a modern reader -that I have very little knowledge of the kind of book Austen's supposedly parodying. The more she concentrates on what does happen in Catherine's life, without pointing out how different this is from what would have happened in a Gothic novel, the better Northanger Abbey works for me.
So what does Austen want to say when she's sending up the Gothic novel? That you shouldn't confuse fiction with reality? It always makes me impatient when a novel preaches the importance of keeping fiction and reality apart, because the novel's reality is, of course, also a fiction. The unrelenting misery of the ending of Flaubert's Madame Bovary is as much of a construct as a happily-ever-after would have been, and some of the characters - ruthless merchant, womanising local squire - are types you'd be much more likely to come across within the pages of a novel than in a real small town in 19th century France. What's more, there's something disloyal about a novel that aims to show the dangerous influence of novels on impressionable minds. Jane Austen herself claims, in a defence of the novel which can be found in Northanger Abbey: "I will not adopt that ungenerous and impolitic custom so common with novel writers, of degrading by their contemptuous censure the very performances, to the number of which they are themselves adding". Is she as good as her word, though?
If there's a moral lesson to be learned in Catherine's mistakes, it is a pretty confused one, for in a way, she is vindicated. Her greatest fault is believing that Henry's father, General Tilney, did away with his wife or has her secretly locked up. This isn't true, and Catherine is suitably mortified when Henry guesses what she has been thinking. But the General is still the villain of the piece - he is a domestic tyrant, he throws Catherine out of his house when he discovers that she isn't the heiress he thought she was, and there's much to indicate that he was as impatient with his deceased wife as he is with his children. He expects his offspring to marry into money, more or less pimps Henry to Catherine as long as he thinks she's an heiress, and probably married money himself. Catherine leaping to the conclusion that the General is a murderer on scant evidence is very silly, but not as silly as if the General, in spite his formidable manners, had turned out to be a good egg after all.
The Introduction of the Oxford World's Classics edition of Northanger Abbey argues that the novel is in fact a subtle defence of the Gothic novel, and that Catherine's adventures do in fact have a flavour of the Gothic. The General's character is a case in point. As for the "rational" Henry Tilney, he is a mansplaining idiot (this is more elegantly expressed, of course). It's easy to agree with the opinion that Henry's protests against Catherine's imaginings sound hollow. His argument is that such things would never happen in England, with its admirable laws and institutions etc. This means that he's not really defending the General at all - he's saying that his country, not his father, is too civilised for anything too Gothic to take place. Which apart from being insulting to the General is a pretty dumb argument in itself as the most spectacular crimes can happen in the most well-ordered of societies.
However, I'm not sure I completely buy the argument that Austen is defending the Gothic novel as an art form that may contain a kernel of truth in spite of its sensationalism. It is she, not the reader, who has been scathing about Gothic clichés in the first place - what's the point of knocking down the pieces she herself has set up? The surface contradictions of Northanger Abbey may contain a message of some kind - say, that the relationship between reality and fiction is too complicated to be summed up in "novels are a trusty guide to explaining real life" or "novels are nothing like real life". But there is another possibility. Austen was a master craftswoman, but this is after all the first full-length novel she wrote. She may have started it intending it to be a parody of a Gothic novel, then not found the exercise interesting enough. While writing, she then gravitated more and more towards the kind of psychological realism - with a good deal of romance thrown in - that would become her trademark. Even the brightest authors don't always have a master plan - sometimes they just make things up as they go along. Northanger Abbey may not be trying to tell us anything in particular about "good" novels, "bad" novels and ordinary life after all.
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