Let’s talk about 50 Shades in a calm and rational way.
This is fucking superb, and sums up my problems with 50 Shades of Pish more succintly than I ever could.
The Cutprice Guignol
The Ninth Year: The Haunting of Swill House
March 9, 2014
Pure Mental: Madness on TV
Recently, me and the consort demolished two separate shows in the space of a week-Hannibal, which I reviewed earlier here, and cult anime Neon Genesis Evanglelion. Both shows are brilliant in their own right (I consider NGE, which was obviously my pick, one of the best things I’ve seen in my life, and I’ve seen shirtless pictures of James Marsters, so…), and both are worth watching if you feel like a big binge of cleverness, and, in the case of Hannibal, many beautiful men. But I digress-what struck me about these shows when held together is how different they seem on the surface but how damn similar they are on closer inspection.
I should, at this point, probably outline what Neon Genesis Evangelion is: an anime series from the late nineties that is outwardly about giant robots fighting space monsters, but REALLY concerns the importance of individuality and the nature of personal madness. Now, the best way I can describe this series is by my brother’s reaction to the ending. As the credits rolled on the final episode, he shut down his computer, turned off his lights, and climbed into bed with the covers pulled up to his chin with a mixture of bemusement and mild upset on his face. It’s really fucking strange. Hannibal is similarly bizarre; focused more on the slow but unrelenting descent into madness that FBI criminal profiler Will Graham suffers as his mind becomes enveloped by a particularly traumatic case and the machinations of psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter (played by Mads Mikklesen, a man so angular his face resembles a tremendously handsome Ikea shelf set). They might seem wildly different on the surface, but they do have one important thing in common: madness.
Now, I don’t claim to have ever been “mad” in the ways that these shows depict, and I’m thankful for that. But both myself and many people close to me have suffered from mental health problems in one way or another, so I’m always interested in how these sorts of things are depicted in fiction; either we get the sanitized, slightly glamorous version of insanity (you rarely see, for example, a character sitting around, depressed, binge-eating crap food and watching one episode of Top Chef over and over because they can’t bloody take it in), or the one-off descent into madness that’s cured by the love of a good woman/man/Vampire Slayer (I apologize for the Spike references; the consort is sitting next to me watching Angel as I write and I’m trying to distract myself from how shit it is by reminding us all that James Marsters exists).
But the way these two shows handle madness is very alike. In neither case is the madness in any way attractive or aspirational-it’s by turns irritating, harrowing, irrational, debilitating and frustrating. In Hannibal, you become lost in the woozy, violent half-dream world Will Graham finds himself in, and in NGE you grow to sympathise with characters who suffer through their problems because they have no other choice. There’s very little swooning around mantelpieces and taking to beds-in some cases, you have no choice but to carry the fuck on and treat mental illness akin to cystitis-pissy, a little painful, and constantly re-occurring. One of the final scenes of NGE features the main character being told the man the fuck up and do what he knows he has to do because, even though doing it seems like the absolute hardest thing in the world, it’s the right thing. This is the same voice I hear in my head (in a non-mad way) when I start sleeping for sixteen hours a day and refuse to change out of my comfy Batman t-shirt.
Both shows also use a very distinctive visual style to depict madness. I think this is worth mentioning because madness (and particularly depression) is often nothing to do with the world around you changing, but rather to do with your perception of the world. In NGE, characters are mostly seen isolated and lonely even when they’re surrounded by people who truly want the best for them; in Hannibal, Will is plagued by visions of animals and people he knows can’t exist. In both cases, little has actually changed, but the way we see these events through these character’s eyes lets us know that for them, everything is different. Madness is in the way we see the world, less what the world does to us.
Don’t get me wrong; many shows do a great job of depicting madness. And I am in no position to really judge the right or wrong way to do it, because I’m neither mad nor involved in making television (unlike, say, Gillian McKeith or Jeremy Kyle, who clearly cover both bases). But something that struck me about these shows was how satisfied and drawn in I was in both cases. It’s rare to discover shows that examine mental illness in a way that anyone with mental illness will appreciate, but these two definitely hit the nail on the-schizophrenic, depressed, delusional, self-harming, bipolar, OCD, disassociate, and just plain nuts-head.
February 24, 2014
A Wanker’s Literary Reaction: Girls
Now, let’s get this straight. Girls is by no means an awful show. In fact, it’s one of the more entertaining comedies to come out of America in the last three years. At no point during my binge-watching of this polarizing sitcom was I actively not enjoying the brainchild of the supremely talented Lena Dunham, and what follows is mainly a reaction to the astonishingly passionate reception the show’s garnered over it’s three-season run. point-by-point, shall we?
It’s Derivative as Shit
Now, literally any show that follows the lives of twenty-somethings in New York can be considered original. That’s just a fact. With the existence of Friends, Will & Grace, Gossip Girl, How I Met Your Mother, 2 Broke Girls, etc etc ad finitum, no show is going to truly break new ground with this premise as it’s been gone over a thousand times in a thousand different ways by a thousand different people. That’s not to say that’s a bad thing, necessarily- New York holds a certain allure to film and television that almost no other city holds. That’s not my issue, though-my issue is the fact that Girls is Sex and The City.
The first episode shows one of the lead characters with a poster for the SATC movie on her wall; this pale nudge-nudge attempt to deflect attention from the almost unbelievable amount of crap these shows have in common. Like Carrie, lead character Hannah (played by Dunham) is a writer with a chequered sexual history and a gay best friend. The other three girls fall more or less into their respective roles- uptight Marnie works at an art gallery and describes herself as a serial dater (Charlotte), Soshanna is an ambitious and romantically reticent with a brilliantly logical mind (Miranda), and Jessa is promiscuous, straight-talking sexual free spirit (Samantha). Now, just one of these similarities you might have gotten away with- you have to consider the us of archetypes, after all-but there are various other plot points peppered throughout the series that stuck in my proverbial craw- one character dating an older, aloof artist who’s really kind of a dick, the destructive on/off relationship between the lead character and a man with a compelling nose, and the issue-of-the-week episodes (abortion, STDs, break-ups, etc) make the whole suspicious similarity thing a bit too, I don’t know, fucking clear to anyone with a mind. Now, I’m not defending SATC here-a 7/10 show at it’s best- but credit where credit’s due, Dunham. Subconsciously or consciously, you’ve created a Muppet-Babies version of Michael Patrick King’s adored series, but with nudity squared. And that brings me too…
The Nudity is Not Groundbreaking
Now, we’re comfortably past the point where seeing tits on TV leaves everyone clutching their pearls and swooning into the nearest mantlepiece, so it’s not the mere act of nudity that’s been deemed “groundbreaking” in Girls. No, it’s that we see Lena Dunham-a basically normal-looking woman-with her clothes off! Now, I’m all for trying to break down the destructive image that media presents of people at every juncture, and showing a normal person naked without trying to smooth out all the jiggly bits is undoubtedly a damn good thing to do (and a brave choice for Dunham). But the whole furore about it is undermined by the fact that every single other character on the show-man or woman-is inestimably buff, well-groomed, and up to the physical standards we’ve come to expect from people we deem worthy to point a camera at. With numerous accusations of black tokenism in the show, I’m surprised no-one has brought up the other blatant token in the show; the token normal.
It’s Also Just Not that Groundbreaking
Many people have commented on the realistic depictions of post-college, pre-family life-the disappointment, the financial difficulty, the fallible but hilarious female leads. But you know what? I’ve seen it before. I’ve seen women struggling, being unglamorous and still remaining stonkingly funny at the same time in Spaced, Black Books, Fawlty Towers. I’ve seen life as a young adult in Fresh Meat, Coupling and Peep Show (interestingly, all British shows). I don’t find Dunham’s creation to be anything new- a decent riff on an old theme, no doubt, but by no means nobly breaking down barriers for realistic, less-than-perfect women in comedy or the brutal realities of real life as a young adult.
And the presentation of characters who are often unlikable and make bad choices in almost every fucking episode (revving up for a rant here) is nothing new, either; in fact, it’s far easier to create unlikable characters who we cringe at than it is to create bastards we really relate to. Maybe my vision on Girls is somewhat blurry because I’ve never been a young adult striking out on my own in New York City for the first time, but that shouldn’t be a problem-characters and situations can transcend, and in Girls they simply don’t. It’s like watching a life I don’t want to lead starring people I don’t want to be doing things I don’t want to do.
Other than that, decent stuff.
February 17, 2014
Robocop (2014)
Now I don’t have to bother with it at all. Thanks Cameron!
Opening scenes of a film are rather important; setting the first impression for a whole audience. Many films go for a big powerful action scene, others for a thoughtful, perhaps shocking beginning introducing tone or characters or setting or a combination of these. At any rate it should give us some idea of what we’re spending our next two hours watching. So Robocop begins, with the MGM logo mysteriously silent. Suddenly someone starts making vocal helicopter noises in time to the lion’s iconic roars, moving on to other humming, gargling sounds. It is revealed to be Samuel L. Jackson producing these sounds, warming up for a live broadcast. He turns to camera, stopping the noises and starts his report. Even when a film has a generic or otherwise underwhelming opening I find myself contentedly watching if nothing else, but at this point I could so happily have stood up and…
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January 24, 2014
It’s Always Sick in Philadelphia
A good orgasm is like a good orgasm. The physical reaction can’t be recreated in any other way (except maybe eating prawn cocktail crisps) and are vitally individual to each person. There are some experiences and events that are simply incomparable to anything else, and there are so few things that aren’t moderately universal. With literally everything shared online, next no to phenomenon, cultural, social, or otherwise, is individual to any one group any more. One of the most important parts of a person, in my eyes, is the little things that are solely theirs; and by far the one I value most in a sense of humour. And I believe I may have found the people with possibly the most wildly creative, surreal and, most importantly, one-of-a-kind sense of humour in the world: Kaitlin Olson, Charlie Day, Rob McElhenny and Glenn Howerton, also known as the main cast and creators of It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
A basic sitcom premise-four friends own and work in a bar in Philly-quickly evolved into being one of the most shockingly unpleasant and consistently hilarious shows on television. The real genius lies in the characters- selfish and shrill Dee, insurmountably disturbed but cheek-tuggingly cute Charlie, half-manipulative, half-blindingly thick Mac, and psychopath Dennis. Many, many shows have tried to create something dark and edgy and boundary-pushing (the only one that has succeeded on this level, and for the same reason, is League of Gentlemen), but their first mistake is making the characters even vaguely likable. While most sitcoms will try to deal with innocent-ish characters battered by a bizarre and incomprehensible world, It’s Always Sunny presents a world that’s constantly horrified and confused by the gang’s exploits.
While similair things have been attempted in sketch shows, these characters work on a long-term basis (nine seasons, no less) because we know what awful, awful people they are. We know the lengths they’ll go to, and we’ve seen them go further-and this works on the double stakes of managing to slightly ground the majority on the wild exploits they wind up on (highlights include: performing an impromptu and highly destructive Extreme Home Makeover on a bewildered Spanish family, kidnapping and torturing a reviewer who fails to heap praise on the bar, applying boot polish to a baby in order for it to have an illustrious career as a latino child actor) because that’s the kind of terrible, terrible people their characters are. They make me want to kill myself in a wonderful way.
When it comes down to it, though, it’s just a funny show. Not since I discovered Community and heard Angela Bisset deliver the line “white-ass cracker bitch” in AHS have I laughed so hard at the wonderfully engrossing world they’ve created in Philadelphia (like all great comedies, the cast of supporting characters are genius creations-look out for the stomach-churning MacPoyle family). Yes, it’s sick, surreal, horrible and shouty, but it’s also one of the most consistently well-written, well-performed and tight half-hours of comedy you’ll find anywhere in the world right now. Cheers to that.
January 9, 2014
World War Bun
With the last season of The Great British Bake-Off nothing but a distant memory, I’ve been grappling around for another competitive baking show to while away the hours. And I thought I’d found it in Cupcake Wars, an long-running American show in which professional bakers battle it out to create cupcakes for a glitzy event-sort of Masterchef: The Professionals meets Glee. Perfect, eh? Well, no.
To start, we’ve got the host. Now, I’ve watched about seven episodes of this nonsense and I couldn’t for the life of me actually give you his name: turns out he’s Justin Willman, enigma. Some casual research reveals he broke both his arms as a child trying to ride a bike while on rollerblades (brilliant), is a magician (superb), and presumably has a twisted fetish for presenting low-stakes gameshows in his spare time (as well as Cupcake Bores, his credits include Last Cake Standing and the momentously hilarious Scrabble Showdown). We can only hope that he’s created some elaborate illusion of himself and sent it to daytime TV, laughing all the way to the magic bank.
Anyway, Willman is cursed with both an impossibly terrible script and a surgical lack of charm; his witty comments basically amount to “A man walks into a bar…cupcakes” or “Knock knock…frosting”. His only use is explaining the self-explanatory rules of the game and looking simultaneously slightly inhuman and infuriatingly like someone else you can’t quite remember.
If Willman is a charisma vaccumn, the judges are a positive black hole of likability. First, there’s the magnificent Florian Bellanger, co-owner of Mad Mac Macaroons (get it?) and full claimant to a French accent last heard in a crass 1970s British sketch about the frog-eating continentals. Seriously, you can’t prepare yourself for how screamingly unbelievable this voice is; maybe that really is how he speaks English, but as long as people continue to laugh at me for sounding a bit plummy when I’m drunk I shall continue to piss myself every time Florian croons out another sentence about candied walnuts or fondant. A guest judge, usually linked tenuously with the event the winners will be catering, rolls up to plug their existence and attempt to say anything other than “huh, cupcakes” and nod sagely as Florian speaks entirely in vowels. They’re joined by someone so dramatically unremarkable that even this sentence about her isn’t worth writi
The contestants are delightfully predictable; you’ve got the down-to-earth, endearing ones (usually with the word “soul” in their team name; one went by the moniker of “Soul Cups” which, to me, sounded like a pair of especially spiritual tits), the shrieky, “You go girl!” chicks, the clear winners, and the overly-confident losers who end up setting their bun cases on fire or something equally unlikely.
As my closing statement, I’d like you to consider this: over the course of its entire run, Cupcake Wars has created somewhere in the realm of 231, 380 glorified afternoon teas. That’s enough to start World War Bun!
I’ll see myself out.
December 18, 2013
The Last Action (Man) Hero
Hilarious wander through the landscape of early Action Man.
Action Man was, frankly, a bit of a disappointment. Like so many toys in the 1960s the reality didn’t live up to the intense anticipation and hype. Not that you would have guessed that when Palitoy launched their new “moveable fighting man” in the UK in 1966 to a fanfare of publicity.
Action Sailor. C’mon now, really?
The problem was that the initial launch included just three figures – Action Sailor, Action Soldier and Action Pilot. They were, without exception, crap and were rightly and justifiably shunned by most small boys. The box art for Action Sailor for example, showed a dramatic scene of a wetsuit clad figure complete with aqualung, dynamite and dagger. The actual contents were very different – Action Sailor came with just a blue shirt, boots, jeans and a perky white cap. Even to my nine year old eyes he looked worryingly like a bloke in jeans. In…
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December 5, 2013
On Adulthood and Alcohol
In the past week, it’s been my birthday, I got really sick, and a Fast & Furious star died in an ironic car crash. I’ve been getting good and existential over the last few days, helped by the slight move closer to death and lots of rum consumed over the last few days. With my teenage life-less as a member of the human race than as a runner in a weepy, Paula-Radcliffe style half-marathon-entering into it’s last year, some semblance of adulthood is drawing near and I feel this should be acknowledged. There have definetly been some vague steps in this direction over the last year-university, wobbly steps into a writing career, my own flat, becoming weirdly obsessed with hipster American sweets-but one of the main things that defines one’s leap into the Real World is alcohol.
When you start drinking-and my very first drink was a bottle of tooth-achingly sweet pear cider my Dad got me when I was sixteen-there is a certain amount of mystique to it. You think you’re infallible, impossible to inebriate and immune to hangover. The first time I got drunk was with my excellent friend back home over two Jackass films, when I realized I had had far too much to drink after I woke up with both my foot and my hair in a small pile of my own sick on his floor. My head was furious at me, my eyes thick with blergh, and my friend wasn’t impressed that I’d been sick down his Busted Tour T-shirt (sorry Cameron). But there was a kind of righteous, swaggering dignity to that hangover; like bills or unwanted pregnancy, I had a problem that was exclusive to the quasi-adult world. In my ironic t-shirt and crusty hair, I’d permanently joined the world of the grown-ups for a grim, miserable morning.
The first term of university is best glossed over; while I didn’t drink myself into a coma every night, being away from home and forced at fucking gunpoint by everyone in the world to MAKE FRIENDS FOR LIFE because it’s PART OF THE UNIVERSITY EXPERIENCE was simply aided by a generous dollop of social lubricant. It was also around this time that I began to see nothing wrong with indulging in a good movie, a bottle of wine and no humans cluttering up the proceedings because sometimes, people just can’t live up to inebriated fiction.
(On a side note, drinking alone is curiously maligned; I wouldn’t encourage sitting at home weepily downing a bottle of whisky as the night draws in evening after evening, but simply peppering around a bunch of people to make it seem more legitimate is ridiculous. I had a cheeky few glasses of wine over a Heston Blumenthal marathon last week and it was heaven; other people would have just laughed at me for getting weepy when he made the sick kids at that hospital happy).
I realised earlier this evening that I’m a real grown-up/ponce when I made and enjoyed a Fancy Drink (rum, coke and a squeeze of lime. Alright, so my standards are low). I sat with a great friend, gossiped, chatted about real life, American Horror Story and ate junk food as the night wore on-and that’s the best part. The moment at which alcohol becomes, not a quick way to avoid an arse-clenchingly awkward lack of conversation, or a cheap sleeping pill with added hangover, but simply a tasty addition to an already wonderful evening, is when I consider it to be a part of my grown-up life in the real world. I’ll drink to that.
November 20, 2013
American Horror Story: Burn, Witch, Burn!/The Axeman Cometh
I’ve noticed something about this series of AMH; each pair of episodes seems to play out at a set-up/pay-off rate from week-to-week. One week there’s a plot heavy furore where we get introduced to all the shit that’s going to go down in the next episode. I don’t particularly mind this set-up, but it still leaves the season with an overall sense of uneveness and lack of coherency.
Take the last two episodes as an example: Burn, Witch, Burn! was a ridiculous, thrilling, breathlessly entertaining hour that blasted through a bunch of brilliantly fun plot points, climaxing in an outrageously slick finale/tribute to Resevoir Dogs in which a stake-burning took place to the strains of Right Place, Wrong Time. It was sickeningly cool; fuck, Jessica Lange lit to pyre with her cigarette. Also scattered around the episode were some cool zombies, Taissa Farmiga growing some balls (and wielding a chainsaw into the bargain), and Jessica Lange winning herself an Emmy in the course of five minutes, a hospital room and a stillborn baby. It was a manic, hilarious, grotesquely affecting episode that hit all the markers set up by last week’s outing.
Then the latest episode-featuring Danny Huston as real-life serial killer The Axeman of New Orleans-just seemed to be preparing us for what was about to happen. Aside from Angela Bisset delivering the line “white-ass cracker bitch” and some gratefully recieved Lily Rabe, there wasn’t much actually going on in The Axeman Cometh. It was still entertaining enough (and benefited from a lack of Kathy Bates, who the writers just don’t seem to know what to do with), but there was a real sense of tantric TV; they brought us to the pitch of excitement then did nothing about it because they’re saving their metaphorical ejaculation for next week’s outing.
On a side note, I’ve been doing a bit of research into this series (which Stevie Nicks has confirmed her appearance in, yeah!), and discovered that no less than three characters are based directly off people who really existed. The least offensive of these is probably Angela Bisset as Marie Laveau, the Voodoo Queen of New Orleans. Because there’s clearly a lot of mythos surrounding her anyway, adapting her into a kick-ass voodoo bitch-slapper isn’t really much of a leap. But then you’ve got Kathy Bates as Madame LaLaurie. Now, forgive me if you disagree, but when you take someone who genuinley existed, and did some really quite upsettingly horrible things to innocent people for a large part of her life, and whack her in a semi-serious show as an immortal, highly racist bit of comic relief, aren’t you somewhat undermining the nature of the astoundingly awful things she’s done?
So, this week on AMH: I over-analyse my over-analysing. Great.
The Cutprice Guignol 