The Cutprice Guignol

August 19, 2015

How I Slut-Shamed Your Mother

So, I’ve written before about How I Met Your Mother, because it was one of the first sitcoms I truly loved- sure, it might have paled in comparison to Frasier and Happy Endings and Suburgatory and Frasier (did I mention Frasier?) in recent years, but it’s still my baby and I adore it. I last watched it when the final season was airing in 2014, and I kind of forgot about it after that atrocious ending. A few nights ago, the Consort and I were looking for something to do (besides writing Doctor Who reviews, shameless plug), and we decided to watch a few of our favourite episodes of HIMYM. And both of us came away feeling kind of…urgh. I’d never before realized just quite how fucking grim one of my favourite comedies actually is.

I picked a shot with headless women in the background, because SYMBOLISM.

If you’re in any way acquainted with the show, you’ll know that Neil Patrick Harris, the King of my heart and also of this version of Sugar Daddy from Hedwig and the Angry Inch, plays breakout character Barney Stinson, a hyper-horrible pick up artist who treats women entirely as conquests to be slept with then discarded through any means necessary. Obviously, that’s pretty gross as it is, but generally the audience is encouraged to laugh at his pathetically grim attempts to pick up women, not with him. But then there’s the way he talks about women-hos, sluts, hefties, amongst a variety of other terms, all of which the studio audience howl along with. Guys, guys, look how funny it is that he consistently treats women like shit for engaging in casual sex or not conforming to society’s idealised version of them! And that ends up blurring the line uncomfortably between laughing at his convoluted “plays” to hook up with women, and laughing at the women he takes in with them for being so easy. Equally, there are a couple of episodes where less-than-perfect men are derided for, you know, having a sex drive and wanting to be treated like a normal human being.

If every single tertiary female character didn’t look and act like this, I might feel better about the whole thing.

His character might be a caricature, but the use of these terms isn’t, as evidenced by the fact the rest of the characters regularly describe women like that too. But who can blame them, considering the fact that almost every secondary female character on this show is treated like a dumb slut? They’re consistently stupid, drunk, gullible, vulnerable people, just waiting for our main character to swoop down on them, manipulate them, fuck them, and dump them. Or they’re prudes, torturing our innocent male characters with a lack of sex, (seriously, that plotline turns up an embarrassing amount during the series) which is equally awful. I’ve written before about how sitcom’s compressed time frame often cause sexist/racist/whatever-ist stereotypes, but none have done so as consistently as this. Especially when you compare them to the tertiary male characters, who get actual funny plotlines and don’t have to have their tits out to be shown on camera.

To be fair though, Kyle Machlachlan has a recurring role in the series so I love everything about it and it’s perfect.

But hey, I hear you cry, they have two female lead characters on this show (three if you count the titular Mother in season nine), so they can’t be that bad, can they? Well, yeah, I’m not going to dispute the fact that Robin (played by Cobie Smulders) and Lily (played by Alyson Hannigan) are as well-realized characters as their male counterparts, but they’re regularly shown as part of the Not One of Those Girls trope- they drink, they smoke pot, they enjoy sex, and they’re just as happy to describe women as “bitches” or “sluts” as their male counterparts. It’s okay to deride them, the show seems to tacitly argue, because even though they engage in a lot of the behaviours the derided “hos” do, because they shame other women for doing it, too. There’s something uber-grim about women shaming other women for their behaviour- Christ, it took me months to get rid of the involuntary twitch of disapproval whenever I met a woman who was engaging in behaviours I’d been taught weren’t “ladylike”-but here it’s used to show how cool and down these women are. Ladies, take note: dudes will like you if you call other women dumb sluts!

They’re not like those other girls, because the show often makes jokes of Lily’s high sex drive, or has the men encouraging them to perform lesbianism for them, or other characters calling them sluts for hooking up with people “too soon”. And it’s doubly a shame, because HIMYM has done some awesome stuff with it’s women characters- an infertility plotline was handled fucking beautifully, and the way the show treats their careers as just as valid as the male character’s is heartening. But let’s not forget that one of the biggest plotlines of the series revolves around Barney and Robin, and how he manipulates her by lying to her, dating someone she doesn’t like to make her jealous, and telling her they could never be together, only for her to fall at his feet when he proposes and have it treated as the most romantic thing in the world. For everything good they do with their women characters, they undermine it by holding up manipulation, unwanted persistence, and outright cruel behaviour as something women should look for in a man (and something men should be doing to get women).

Josh Radnor, who plays main character Ted, makes decent riffs on Woody Allen films now. Skip Liberal Arts, go for happythankyoumoreplease.

But when it comes down to it, this is a show that consistently shames women for their sexual behaviour, while it holds up men’s conquests as a victory. And that’s a shame, because it’s a really excellent comedy show- which is not to say that I suddenly don’t find it funny, but, with whole episodes revolving around how Barney has cruelly manipulated women into sex and then discarded them, it’s difficult to laugh along quite as heartily. God-dammit, How I Met Your Mother.

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August 16, 2015

Doctor Who Recaps, Season One, Episode Three: The Unquiet Dead

When this episode first aired, I was straight-up banned from watching it. As a child with a dangerously vivid imagination, driven to weeks of sleepless horror by episodes of Grisly Tales for Gruesome Kids, I totally, in retrospect, understand why my mother didn’t let me watch it when it first came out. At the time, however, I was furious, and vividly remember acquiring the scariest, most lurid details of The Unquiet Dead from my classmates in the playground, piecing together the story and filling in the blanks in my head until it became an untinkably horrible bastion of nightmares far worse than anything the episode actually produces. It wasn’t until a couple of years later that I actually saw the third episode of season one, and even now it holds a special kind of midnight-movie horror to it-I still feel slightly nefarious, like I did reading Goosebumps under my covers by torchlight after I was meant to be in bed, watching this episode that I was so totally banned from seeing at the time.Well, that, and the fact that this is the first bonafide classic episode of New Who.

This episode is one of the best ghost stories Doctor Who ever pulled off, because they’re usually so intent on going “IT’S NOT GHOSTS, BUT A SPACE EXPLORER MOVING IN SLOW MOTION/ALIENS/INSERT MOFFAT-IAN PLOT TWIST HERE” in later episodes. But this episode, revolving around a mysterious series of re-animations taking place in a Welsh funeral home, is just a straight, Dickensian ghost story- which is appropriate, because Mr Dickens himself crops up to join Rose and the Doctor for the first of many a Victorian adventure (Look, they have to get as much wear as they can out of those costumes, alright? That’s why they shot a whole episode on the abandoned BBC Robin Hood set).

Ugh, I’m OBSESSED with Rose’s costume in this episode. Billie Piper is a goddess. Speaking of which, have you been watching her in Penny Dreadful? She’s cracking, and the show is a great high-camp rollick through sexual deviance, Eva Green, re-interpreted literary characters, and Timothy Dalton’s muscular ‘tache.

This episode, for those counting, is the first appearance of Gwen, who would later (well, an ancestor of Gwen’s, whatever, Russel T Davies don’t need no continuity and wanted to wring a bit more from Eva Myles’ contract) take on a lead role in Torchwood, television’s B-movie. And she’s a pleasure in this episode, playing a maid at the funeral home who’s psychic skills are exploited by her employers to find the corpses who’ve wandered off through the city, fulfilling the last engagements they had arranged in life. One of these corpses winds up turning up at a Charles Dickens’ (played by a genuinely brilliant Simon Callow) reading, and Rose gets snatched by the proprietors of the home after she sees too much, and the story launches into a rollicking, scary, good-humoured romp that revealed just how well New Who dealt with it’s history.

I had the serious hots for this version of Dickens back in the day. By which I mean, when I watched this episode two days ago.

As someone with a degree in history (an accidental one, but who’s counting), these episodes are usually my favourite Whoscapades (Stop trying to make Whoscapades happen, Lou). You can take these episodes on purely a surface level and enjoy the zombie-ghost action, but there’s plenty in there for those who happen know a bit more about the time period, with clever and affecting nods to things like Dickens’ tumultuous personal life and his disdain towards the occult. But either way, it’s great fun to see the Doctor turning into a swooning fanboy when he ends up in Dickens’ carriage, trying to remember the name of that scary short story he once read (side note: here’s a really good adaptation of that short story on Youtube, if you’re looking to scare yourself shitless later tonight, because it’s Sunday and that’s what you should be doing). There’s a fun earnestness to this episode, which is written by God-amongst-men Mark Gatiss, which is packed full of excellent puns (“I do love a happy medium”) and sassy Rose quips.

The zombie exhibit is one of the most popular at Cardiff’s Zoo.

This is also the first episode where we meet the truly fallible Doctor. Without giving too much away, he fucks it; despite Rose’s protests, explaining it away as a different morality, he encourages Gwen to sacrifice herself to allow the ghosts into our reality. And it turns out that their motivations were not as pure as he had thought. The Doctor here is desperately trying to fulfill the role of the hero he had been unable to during the Time War, but instead ends up killing an innocent woman in the process in an ending that makes someone other than the Doctor the hero. Things turn out as well as they could, but the Doctor wasn’t the one who made it happen, and that’s an interesting concept to throw into the mix at this early stage of the series. He admits he can’t save Rose, when the two of them are cornered by Welsh zombies (the WORST kind of zombies. Don’t ask me how I know) in a slightly shocking scene that underlines the lack of control the Doctor really has. The episode ends on a melancholy third act, as Dickens leaves the Doctor and Rose, suddenly full of new ideas for his writing and set on reconciling with his estranged family, only for the Doctor to reveal that he dies only weeks later. It’s a bittersweet ending to a lively, fun episode, and one that leaves a very different taste in the mouth that the bad-guys-get-their-due of the first two outings. If you haven’t seen New Who, or believe you have no reason to, this is the place to start to convince yourself- it’s far more than the kid-centric sci-fi ramblings than the show often gets characterised as, especially in it’s earlier seasons, and if you’ve got any fondness for horror, alt-history, or Christopher Eccleston getting compared to a navvie, then this is for you.

CHEEKY SEANCE BANTZ

Join us next week for the first Slitheen two-parter, and my desperate attempts to justify why I’m apparently the only person who doesn’t think it’s utter shite. As ever, enjoy a different take on this episode over at Red Whine.

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August 15, 2015

Hannibal: A Love Letter

Hannibal is love, Hannibal is life. An obituary for one of the best shows on TV.

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August 13, 2015

Best and Worst Trailers from Comic-Con 2015

Nerd-baiting with the Comic-Con 2015 trailers. Suicide Squad looks awful and I’ll hear no different!

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August 12, 2015

Grace and Frankie: Heartfelt Comedy with Teeth

I will never not love Lily Tomlin

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August 10, 2015

For the Love of Anime

Look, I know I’m late to the anime game. My only knowledge of the genre came, for a long time, entirely from the hilarious and incisive parody series Yu-Gi-Oh Abridged which I’m in the midst of rewatching and killing myself over. Then I stole all of the Death Note manga from my brother (Sorry Dan) and found myself pretty entranced by the ridiculous high-concept sci-fi/fantasy battle between good and righteous evil. I sought out the anime, and it was those fantastically well-executed episodes that brought me to see what the anime genre had to offer. As someone who’s been obsessed with TV for so long, and Western TV specifically, it’s kind of refreshing to come to a genre where you have to idea what the tropes are or what you’re expectations will be. I’m sure many hardcore anime fans will dismiss my mainstream picks, and if they do, please go write your own damn list. No, seriously, do, because I want to read it and find more awesome anime to watch. So, without further ado, let’s talk about the three best anime I’ve seen so far, and why you should watch them whether or not you’re an anime fan already.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

Phew, where to begin with this one? I’ve touched on the topic of this show before, in a post about madness of TV, and I think that still pretty much sums up why I find this show so interesting: it’s just an all-out exploration of mental health disasters, told through the lens of giant robots fighting aliens. Set in a post-apocolyptic Tokyo where mysterious beings known as “Angels” launched periodic attacks on the city, the story revolves around fourteen-year-old Shinji, who’s brought in to defence organisation NERV to pilot one of their prototype weapons, a giant robot known as an Eva. What starts out as a beautifully animated if slightly off-beat sci-fi epic soon descends into outrageously perceptive journeys through each character’s psyche and how it’s been impacted by the horror of the situation they’re facing. I love it particularly for the excellent female characters, but also for it’s utter insistence to make the audience shift in their seat at least four times an episode, with rapid-fire changes of tone and suddenly stark animation.

Oh, you came for the giant fighting robots? BAD LUCK MOTHERFUCKER

The story behind the show’s creation-which included a massive cut in budget that forced the animators to use mostly still frames and prototype sketches in the last few episodes-gives a lot to it’s distinctive animation design, but be warned: you will need a cup of tea and a lie down after the opening credits alone.

What happened at 0:55? Did someone fall on a button or something?

2. Attack on Titan

I’ve watched this anime three times through in the last two months, as well as foisting it on my friends and assorted family. This could have been created for me: an alternate-history sci-fi (Yes!) surrounding the last dregs of humanity walled off from the world in a giant enclosure meant to protect them from attacks by the man-eating Titans. While things have been quiet for a while, when the Titans launch another attack on the city, the population must fight back, and the story follows three teenagers as they train up to take on the Titans and regain some of the autonomy they lost. The visual style, of the medieval-style city matched with super-futuristic weaponry, is genuinely mind-blowing, and marks out the action sequences as some of the most exhilarating and breathless moments I’ve ever seen in any medium. It’s dense with plot, intrigue, and layered characters, and also the only character from a cartoon I’ve ever had a crush on:

Look, he has a really deep voice in the sub, so ignore the fact that he looks like a fourteen-year-old.

And you know how much I love genuinely scary villains? Well, the Titans are some of the most utterly creepy, unstoppably scary bad guys I’ve seen anywhere. Sometimes, you can keep your nuanced ghost stories and intricrate psychological thrillers- all I need to scare me is a giant, unstoppable creature with an inexplicable lust for human flesh. Look, here comes one now!

I can’t be the only one who gets the heebie-jeebies watching this, right?

3. Psycho-Pass

Maybe I’ve not made it clear that I love sci-fi, but I LOVE sci-fi. My first introduction to it was a book of short stories by Philip K. Dick, and this anime is a love letter to his take on the genre- dark, gritty, thoughtful, and not afraid of being a little tongue-in-cheek. In a dystopian future, justice is not based on whether you’ve committed any crimes, but how high your propensity is to commit them. If you’re psychological state is deemed dangerous, you’re in trouble. Some of these people deemed psychologically unstable become Enforcers, recruited to police teams to help think like the unstable people they’re trying to catch. The story follows new recruit Inspector Akane, and her dealings with the suffocating system, as a mysterious villain starts influencing normal citizens to commit horrific acts of violence.

I can’t stress this enough: this guy is one of my favourite villains in recent history. So fiendish! So pretentious! So evil!

They say most good stories should be summed up a few words, but this one leisures in adding layers and layers to it’s universe. A neo-noir police procedural, it takes some cues from the superb Hannibal, with brooding Enforcer Kogami tussling mentally with arch-nemesis, the master criminal Nakashima. It’s one of those shows that delights in pushing boundaries, testing just how far they can go with their big themes- the price of safety, the meaning of justice, and the danger of an isolationist system- without letting their nuanced ensemble get lost in the mix. I love the sharp, slightly cynical sense of absurdity Psycho-Pass displays, because it reminds me of Terry Gilliam’s Brazil, with all it’s sugar-coated horribleness (if you haven’t seen that movie, by the way, stop reading this, and watch it now). It paints in broad strokes, but it manages to conjure up some impressive character arcs despite the fact that most of it’s brutalized women somehow end up with their boobs out (whoops).

Inspector Akane and her arc are an example of how the best thought-out character arcs can reflect the central themes of a story. AND they didn’t even have to make her someone’s love interest to justify her existence on the show!

So, that’s my list- what’s your’s? What anime should I watch next?

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August 9, 2015

Doctor Who Recaps, Season One, Episode Two: The End of the World

So, hello, and welcome to the second week of our cross-blog Doctor Who extravaganza as we take a look at the second episode of the season, The End of the World. Read a whole different take on the episode-by a strident Tennant fan- over at Red Whine. As before, if you want to join us on this ill-advised adventure through recapping (and also time and space), drop me an email an the Contact Me tab above.

Let me dive right in and start by saying that part of what I dig so much about this episode- aside from the fact it stars the once and future King of Doctors- is that we jump from saving the world in last week’s episode to watching it burn in the background all the way through this week. As a child (and, to an extent, an adult) who was petrified by the thought of the earth being destroyed in some catastrophic event (all those scaremongering Discovery Channel “documentaries” about asteroids and ice ages? Aimed directly at the kind of child I was), this episode scared the fucking bejeesus out of me, and still makes me feel kind of weird to this day. Something about seeing Earth burning out of existence- and having that basically forming the scenery of the episode- is really unsettling, and I can get on board with Rose’s assertion that this might not be the best way to make your second date go with a bang (A big one. PUNS).

“Oh, but he’s not in this episode!” I hear you cry. And I lift a finger to your lips, and shake my head sadly for your lack of pathetic insider DW knowledge.

The plot of this episode revolves around some space dignitaries-in the form of some living trees, the Face of Boe, and Lady Cassandra, the last human alive, who also happens to be, well, a giant piece of skin stretched out between two poles:

Whenever I lose weight, it’s this line that pops into my head and I immediately eat twelve donuts and a croissant because I’m fancy.

Yeah, if you thought “Terry Gilliam’s Brazil” when you saw this, you get twenty points too, because the Doctor Who props department like searing horrifying images into the memories of innocent children. After it’s revealed that a nefarious plot to bump off the guests is afoot, it’s up to Rose and the Doctor (and some living trees, but we’ll get there) to figure out what to do next. I like the simplicity of the plot, mainly because it allows for this episode to become mostly scene-setting, filling out the universe that we’ll be travelling through with this Doctor and providing a good bit of genuinely science-fictiony relief from the Earth-bound episodes on either side of it. One of the best things about this series of Who from a writer’s perspective must have been introducing this universe to whole bunch of new viewers (like me) who had no idea what to expect, and it shows, with real effort put in to making this as casually out-there as possible. Just some sentient trees wandering about, confusing me with how attractive they are. No biggie.

Insert “getting wood” joke here

I tell you what, too- I love this episode for the fact that it sets the vaguely sinister tone for the whole of season one. Now, it might be because I watched them when I was a terminally impressionable child, but I still think the most frightening episodes ever all belong to the first two seasons of New Who, and The End of the World is no exception. As the radiation given off by the dying earth threatens to burn our heroes alive, the whole spaceship set-up moves from dazzlingly inventive and quirky to claustrophobic and deadly, with a handful of guest-stars meeting grisly ends-whether burning alive, exploding in the heat, or being irradiated to death, it’s not just the bad guys who wind up dead.

Not just the bad guys, but the ENTIRE WORLD.

And the Doctor’s callous reaction to the villain of the piece-allowing them to burn in their own trap- marks out Eccleston’s ability to bring something a bit unsettling to his Doctor. From this episode onwards, you don’t want to end up on his bad side, and that’s an important part of the characterisation for the Doctor which is still being explored in Capaldi’s episodes today (by the way, is anyone else feeling less than enthused about the return of the series in just over a month? Until something changes- preferably finding a new showrunner, at fucking last- I’m just expecting a re-run of the off-puttingly patchy season eight, and, terrifyingly, a two-parter written by the creator of the painful Kill the Moon). If the first episode is about filling out Rose’s character, this is about giving us a look into the Doctor. The episode might end with them waltzing off to get chips, but we’ve had a glimpse into the effects of the Time War on our hero (Gallifrey and it’s fate are referenced for the first time in this episode, as is the excellent Bad Wolf season plot, for those keeping score at home).

Unf dat smile tho

The End of the World isn’t the best episode this season had to offer, not by a long shot. But it’s a gratifyingly simple story, filled with plenty of genuinely memorable characters (so good, in fact, that the villain who be brought back for the season two opener) and a pretty dark tone that keeps it from landing in “forgettable” territory. But honestly, who cares, because next week we’ve got the first bonafide New Who classic, in the form of the only episode of TV I was ever outrightly banned from watching, The Unquiet Dead. Stay tuned!

Yeah, insider jokes are the name of the game this week.

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August 2, 2015

On Celebrity Culture and Abuse

I’m going to go ahead and stick a trigger warning here for discussion of domestic abuse.

You know Sean Penn, right? That guy who beat the ever-living shit out of his wife, was charged with domestic assualt, and then got an Oscar? Maybe Roman Polanski is more familiar to you, as the guy who took a plea bargain back in 1977 that laid out his unlawful sexual intercourse with a thirteen-year-old child? We gave him an Oscar, too, and a Palme D’or, even after he fled the USA to avoid be imprisoned for his crimes. Ozzy Osbourne was happy chatting to an interviewer about the time he was arrested for trying to murder his wife, Sharon, but he’s still just that wacky rocker guy to most. Charlie Sheen, sitcom star and internet meme, was charged with third-degree assault on his then-wife, Brooke Mueller, but we remember him for his Emmy-winning turn in Two and a Half Men. Chris Brown continues to see his songs chart, even as the harrowing pictures of his one-time girlfriend Rihanna crop up online, depicting her black and blue face after he assaulted her. This are my cut-offs. These are the things that I will not support someone after hearing. You might have different standards, but it’s always good to remind ourselves that the people the media idolizes for us aren’t always worth idolizing.

I’m talking about the misogyny and general nasty undercurrent in our media that allows us and encourages us to embrace these men to our screens. We, as a culture, have found a way to forget the violence many of our treasured cultural icons have committed against people, especially women. We hold our desire to be entertained above the right of the people they abused not to see their attackers idolized. And it’s not about justice, it’s about the fact that, time and time again, we’re happy to ignore the flagrant ways celebrities abuse their power, to hire them, to watch them, to promote them, even to go as far as holding them up as humanitarian icons. I don’t know about you, but that makes me feel a little gross. Either our cultural memory is that short, or we’re simply willing to hold the notion that Sean Penn once left Madonna tied to a chair after roughing her up for hours on end so that he could go out and buy more booze and that we still want to see his movies in our heads at the same time. I’m not sure which is worse: the fact that we might just have collectively forgotten, or that we remember and it just doesn’t register high enough on our “things that matter” list to stop us wanting to see his mannered, average performances.

And look, I’m not saying that it’s pleasant, having to think about what and who you’re supporting when you just want to watch half an hour of television or a couple of hours in the cinema. But that’s the problem- it’s easier for the media to stamp down on these issues, to try and blot them from our cultural memory, than it is to question why it’s okay to hand a self-confessed sex offender who never saw a day of prison one of the highest cinematic trophies in the world. We prefer to remember Sean Connery as James Bond, not as that guy who said that hitting a woman was fine if she was “being a bitch”, because it’s easier not to muddy the waters of our one-dimensional vision of him with the fact that he’s a piece of shit.

And I know it’s a shitty, awful, saddening, infuriating thing to think about, but we have to consider who we’re supporting when we choose what to see and who to spend our money on. I think it’s up to you to decide who you want to support, because we all have different cut-offs for what constitutes unforgivable behaviour, but also to try and wade through the media’s effort to negate the bad things that their highest-grossing celebrities have done. We’re taught to consume our media mindlessly, but only by questioning what and who we lend our time and money to will we weed out those who are abusing the power we’re giving them, and encouraging us to forget their unpleasant histories.

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July 28, 2015

Doctor Who Recaps, Series 1, Episode 1: Rose

Doctor Who has been part of my life for ten years now. It started with the rebooted series, watched over dinner on a Sunday night, before Scrapheap Challenge and Time Team. It was my introduction to pop culture, in a lot of ways- the first show that I followed which had long-running, over-arching plots and real character development, it sparked a love affair with television that I still can’t see an end to. I started reviewing Doctor Who from season seven onward on this blog, I met my current boyfriend when he was dressed as Doctor Who (it as Halloween, to be clear, but it is basically his daily attire), and I still have handfuls of Doctor Who annuals tucked away at the back of my bookcase. So when it came time to pick something else to recap, there was only really one choice.

So I’m recapping New Who, from Ecclestone to Capaldi, right here, starting right now. My boyfriend/also a freelance writer will be blogging his recaps of the same episodes over at his blog, Red Whine (because he’s ginger and also a nightmarish whinge- I had a hand in the name), so you can compare and contrast our two very different attitudes to our favourite show-here’s a link to his review of this episode. It might cause us to break up, because we usually have to avoid talking about Doctor Who lest in cause another genuine row, but that’s the sacrifice I’m willing to make. For you. Faithful blog-readers. Oh, and if any of you have your own blogs and would like to join in with our recaps, please do-just drop me an email/tweet so I can link your reviews and let you know what the rough schedule is.

Whether you’ve watched the series before, or want to start watching it now, I’ll be trying to keep these posts spoiler-free (ish) and welcoming to those who don’t know the mythology of the show as well as I do. Which is maybe the nerdiest thing I’ve ever felt smug about. Seriously though, if you haven’t watched it, please come join me on watching at least the first series, because it’s awesome and you can spare forty minutes a week to awesome, can’t you?

So, without further ado, let’s take a look at season one, episode one- Rose.

Let’s get one thing straight: this is the best iteration of the theme song.

Right? Awesome. I’m glad we agree. Murray Gold wrote some incredible music for Who, but he didn’t beat this, and never will. Especially not with the bastardisation of the opening credits we’re subject to now (I’ll have you yet, Moffat). But let’s now think of how badly this show was going to let me down- let’s focus on how utterly bloody brilliant everything about the first series was.

I make no secret of the fact that Christopher Eccleston is my Doctor. Sometimes I get quite irrationally angry about the fact that he only had one season, and stomp around and curse things and bargain with the Gods to sacrifice the first half of season seven for another few episodes of Chris. And I think a huge part of it is his introduction in this episode- how could you NOT find him fascinating? The plot is a throwaway piece of nonsense, as the Doctor attempts to stop Autons (living plastic dummies) destroying the human race, used as a framing device to introduce the Doctor and fill in his backstory for viewers who don’t know who he is. I’m really fond of the way the show introduces him- leaning through a door, grabbing Billie Piper’s hand, and declaring “Run!”- but I’d forgotten just how good the detail was in this episode. Take, for example, the Doctor’s speech to Rose when she asks who he is:

” Do you know like we were saying, about the earth revolving? It’s like when you’re a kid, the first time they tell you that the world is turning and you just can’t quite believe it ’cause everything looks like it’s standing still. I can feel it…the turn of the earth. The ground beneath our feet is spinning at a thousand miles an hour. The entire planet is hurtling around the sun at sixty seven thousand miles an hour. And I can feel it. We’re falling through space, you and me, clinging to the skin of this tiny little world. And, if we let go… That’s who I am. Now forget me, Rose Tyler. Go home.”

I WISH I COULD FORGET YOU

That’s some pretty heavy shit for kid’s TV. It’s a genuinely brilliant speech, and is filled out by an entertaining turn by Mark Benton as Clive, the conspiracy theorist obsessed with the Doctor who Rose contacts for more information. Though she writes him off as insane, he manages to explain his constant appearences through history, his apparent immortality, and his changing face, not to mention squeezing in the immortal line about the Doctor’s only constant companion being death, and I’m a little surprised my parents let me watch this considering what a terrifyingly hyperactive imagination I had (vis: When I was nine and first watching this episode, I had to get my Dad to turn it off before the Doctor even arrived because I found the Autons so scary. Now I just sit around watching The Human Centipede over dinner. Funny how things change). He’s equal parts witty (that “it’ll never work- he’s gay and she’s an alien” line is generally how I describe my relationship), cutting, compassionate and hard-edged (and bloody handsome to boot- just me?), and I love how sharp his scripting makes him. We’re given just enough of the Doctor to tantalise us, but when it comes down to it, this episode isn’t about him. It’s about Rose.

Never without twenty layers of mascara. Seriously, even in the scenes where she’s waking up.

Ah, Rose Tyler: England’s Rose, played by Billie Piper, a tween pop starlet who stars as the nineteen-year-old chav and best assistant ever (she’s since proved herself over again in stuff like Penny Dreadful, which you should have seen by now). The episode’s named after her, for Christ’s sake- this outing, and to an extent the whole series, is about her emotional journey. And the show really takes it’s time setting up her life, and the characters therein. I always really liked that Rose’s life wasn’t awful, just that average kind of dreary, because it would have been so easy to give her an awful boyfriend or an annoying family to escape from. But here, Noel Clarke (who’s BAFTA speech is one of the things that inspired me to take up writing, so thanks for that, mate) as Mickey and Camille Coduri as my MILF-Goddess Jackie are just people, people that you know, people that you work with. They’re played with amazing warmth by both the actors (Camille Coduri’s delivery of “There’s a strange man in my bedroom…anything could happen” is up there in my top ten moments of the series, and Noel Clarke and Billie Piper have a really believable chemistry). Their normality isn’t bad, necessarily, but, when offered the chance to escape, Rose takes it. Because we all would.

Camille Coduri: making nine-year-old girls feel funny feelings since 2005.

And there’s the best part about this episode. The assistant has always been an audience surrogate, but she’s never been more relatable than Rose. Because Rose is living a completely unremarkable life, a moderately satisfying existence that doesn’t really lead to anything of note, as many of us are (or secretly believe we are). So when she’s offered the chance to change everything and travel through time and space in a blue box, of course she says yes. By inviting her along on this adventure, the Doctor (and by extension the show) is inviting the audience, too. And by God, I defy anyone to turn down a trip in the Tardis after this belter of an opening. Join us next week (maybe) for episode two, The End of the World, and maybe a bit less pretension, if I’m feeling generous.

Oh shit, Rose is younger than I am now in this episode. I want to kill myself. I’ll have you yet, Davies.

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July 25, 2015

Final Fifty Shades of Grey Recap: Chapter Twenty-Six

So here we are: the end. Yes, it’s the final chapter of Fifty Shades of Grey, and my last recap on the topic of EL James’ soul-destroying series. I started these recaps over a year ago, and I wondered, in the few weeks leading up to this moment, if I would miss my weekly adventures into serial abuse, coercion, and bad sex. And, much as I’ll miss all the awesome readers who came along on this journey with me, the answer is no. I’ll be officially evicting Fifty Shades from my bedside table, and putting it in it’s rightful place: the back of the bookshelf, where no-one can ever find it. It’s where every copy of this book belongs.

When I started this book, I was living in a shared flat, distantly out of town, and just halfway through my university career. Now, I’ve got my own place, a job where I get to write porn all day, and a cat of my own- as well as an ordinary degree. My life has improved drastically over the course of these recaps, but that had nothing to do with EL James’ talent.

Let me make one thing clear here: my opinion of the book has not changed in the course of doing this recap. This is a piece of thinly-veiled plagiarism, written with an embarrassing lack of flair, that glorifies and romanticises abuse because the author is too stubborn or too stupid to acknowledge that it’s there. The writing is dire, but the message is worse and, while there seems to be a stronger backlash against the books than way I started, a new instalment to the series was released and we’ve got another two movies to come yet. This cultural behemoth doesn’t stop going, and that’s powerfully depressing. The best we can do is to keep talking about it, keep pointing out the dangerous messages it sends to both women and men, and force EL James and her defenders to admit to the fact that they’re part of a culture that victimises and blames women for their abuse, while telling men that this kind of treatment is expected and desired.

Okay. Come on. One more time.

Chapter twenty-six opens with Ana waking up to Christian playing the piano, and it’s exactly the same as when this scene was in this book before. Remember?

Christian is moody and bitchy, etc, and Ana wants to know why he’s not asleep. Well, that’s because some dick is playing piano in the middle of the night and keeping everyone awake. Tosser. Christian decides he wants to fuck, and Ana suggests that they talk instead, to which he’s like “LOL no I like my idea better.” I’ve said it once, but I’ll say it again: sexual agency, who needs it?

Ana says she needs some things straightening out, and he asks what needs straightening. She replies that the two of them do. Sorry if I’m wrong, but the two of you seem like the most stereotypically fucking straight people in the world. Hey, we even get that latent homophobia that comes through later in the series, and in Christian’s POV! So no, you guys don’t need “straightening out.” Unless it’s on a rack. That I get to adjust.

Muppet Treasure Island is one of my all-time favourite movies.

She asks about the contract, and he’s says that it’s moot. Well, he says that, and then this happens:

“”So let me be clear. You want me to follow the Rules electment of the contract all the time but not the rest of the contract?”

“Except in the playroom. I want you to follow the spirit of the contract in the playroom, and yes, I want you to follow the Rules- all the time. Then I know you’ll be safe, and I can have you any time I wish.””

This gif is the only clue regarding my next set of recaps.

So- wait, what? I went back to look at the Rules section (I’m pretty sure they’re all rules, but okay), and that involved control over her food, her clothes, her exercise routine, her personal hygiene habits and her “obedience”- ie, her consent to do anything, whenever he wants it, without questions. So…just all the stuff that she objected to? What the fuck even is this? Some kind of joke? The contract is still in play, she just hasn’t actually signed it so EL James can give her SOME semblance of personal autonomy? Does EL James even know what she wrote in her OWN DAMN BOOK?!

Oh, except they score food off the list now, so I guess that means everything’s different? Even though Christian will try to control what she eats within four chapters of the next book. Ana rolls her eyes, and Christian’s erection just about explodes out of his pants as he tells her that he has to spank her now. He doesn’t ask for her consent, even are she tells him that he’ll “have to catch” her first, and runs away. Because someone trying to escape you is exactly what enthusiastic consent is, right, EL?

She tells him that she has no intention of letting him catch her, and he just tells her that it’ll be “worse” when he does catch her. Seriously, I think this is supposed to read as playful, because Ana refers to herself as a child (boke) during this sequence, but it’s gross, because he doesn’t give a shit if she’s playing or not. He wants to spank her, so he will. He says it seems like she doesn’t want him to do it, and she replies:

“I don’t. That’s the point. I feel about punishment the same way you feel about touching.”

And, well, that just puts Christian in his place, doesn’t it? He gets all sad and ashen, and Ana immediately backtracks in her head, scolding herself with “it can’t be that bad, can it?”. He asks if she really hates it that much, and she’s like “I feel ambivalent about it. I don’t like it, but I don’t hate it.” Which…is not how you’ve felt for the rest of the book. Once again, has EL even aware of events that happened earlier in the story? Where Ana cried her eyes out because Christian “assaulted” her? Where Ana thought about their BDSM encounters as a matter of survival? Thank fuck there’s only a few pages left. Thank FUCK. Because this shit is so painfully inconsistent, so stupidly badly put-together, that sometimes I just want to give up writing forever and kill myself. If this is what people want, I will never be able to do this to them, because I was raised on the old-school, out-of-date methods like “character consistency” and “a coherent plot.”

Ana tells him that she’s worried that he’ll hurt her, and that she does the BDSM for him. Now, if Christian were a good dom, this would be a huge red flag- the only reason anyone should be doing BDSM is for themselves, and someone- especially someone as romantically and sexually inexperienced as Ana- admitting that she does it for him is a no-no. But, of course, Christian ignores that, and tells her that he needs it, but he can’t tell her why he needs it, because he’s a needy fourteen-year-old emo kid whose trying to write Fall Out Boy lyrics, I presume. He kisses her, and begs her to stay, telling her that she said she would in her sleep so she can’t go back on her word. See above re: needy emo kid. Speaking of:

I don’t give a shit about trying to make these gifs relevant anymore, I’m in too deep and I just want to look at Gerard Way. Also, Ellie: this is for you, for reading these recaps from the start. You’re the REAL hero.

Ana wants to make him happy, so she tells him to show her how bad it can get. If her comments about doing it for Christian weren’t worrying enough, this is ANOTHER big red flag that Ana is not in an emotionally healthy place to be doing BDSM with Christian. She believes that it’s the only way to save their relationship, which she believes is the only way to keep him happy, which is the only thing she cares about, which is a super, super unhealthy way to live. She’s just told him outright that she wants to push her limits, but not in a fun, sexy way, only because she wants to satisfy his need. She LITERALLY JUST SAID that BDSM didn’t fulfill anything in her, and yet he STILL thinks this is a good idea. There are a lot of people who will use the fact that Ana didn’t use the safeword as “proof” Christian didn’t know what emotional damage he was inflicting, but there were hundreds of signifiers leading up to that moment that any dom- hell, any decent person- would see as a red flag coming from their sexual partner. Heads up, folks: if the person you’re sleeping with tells you over and over again that they’re only doing certain acts because you like them, and that they actively dislike them and feel bad doing them, DON’T DO THOSE THINGS. DON’T. DO. THEM.

Moriarty: still a more considerate lover than Christian. Probably.

Christian takes her to the playroom, and bends her over a bench thingy. And then he gets a belt. Hold up, a fucking belt? Of all the things to hit her with, that seems particularly painful, especially after she’s said over and over how much she only does this for him. Then he starts to hit her. Let’s pick some choice segments from this upcoming bit, shall we?

“I desperately scrabble around my psyche looking for internal strength.”

“Tears spring unwelcome to my eyes…he’s not holding anything back.”

“The belt bites me again, and tears are streaming down my face.”

“My voice is more a choked, strangled sob, and I think I hate him.”

Legit reaction to this page.

Do these sound like the thoughts of someone having a fulfilling sexual experience? No. As anyone who’d been paying any fucking attention to her previous reactions, she doesn’t like being hit, and beating her with a belt isn’t going to change that. And Christian, once again, should be reading her reactions- she’s crying, she can barely talk, and when she does, she describes it as a “scream”. These should be tip-offs that get him to check in and see if she’s doing okay, even if she hasn’t used the safeword. I don’t think I should have to explain that, if your partner is weeping openly because you’re involving them in your fetish, maybe fucking don’t.

NOW THERE’S A FIFTY SHADES FANFICTION THAT WOULD ACTUALLY MAKE SENSE

Ana storms off, and thinks about how Christian tried to warn her about this- about how he wasn’t normal, because BDSM is a sympton of being mentally unwell, right? She thinks about how she never wants him to hit her like that again, and refers to him as “Fifty Shades” twice in a page, which would make me laugh if my mouth were not set into a hard line. Christian comes through, and apologises for hurting her, and she replies, I swear, “I asked for it.” Because, as we all know, if a man has coerced a woman into doing what he likes with NDAs and abuse and contracts and the withholding of emotional intimacy, and she finally agrees to do it so she can please him, it’s her fault and not his.

So they talk, and Christian says they should break up, and Ana loses her ever-loving shit, referring to it as an “unfolding tragedy”. Remember how they’ve been dating, like three weeks? Yeah. Her world is now “sterile ashes”, all her hopes and dreams “cruelly dashed”, because Ana never wanted anything more than to be trapped in an abusive relationship with a slightly kinky billionaire, right?

Ana collects her things, thinks how hot Christian is again, and then…IT’S OVER! SHE’S GONE! THE BOOK IS DONE! SHE LEAVES THE APARTMENT AND, IN MY HEAD, REMAINS BROKEN UP FROM HIM FOREVER HURRAH!

Fuck everything.

Thank you to everyone who’s joined me for these recaps- you can read them all from the start in the blog directory, above. Despite the awfulness, it’s been a lot of fun, and I’m looking forward to starting my next recapping adventure with you all.

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