I'm back!

Hey! I'm back in Australia and it's the same temperature as Scotland! What is with that? Now that my mental health has almost re-stablised since finishing my Masters and leaving Edinburgh, I hopefully will have more time to watch TV and hence update this blog.

In the meantime, the lovely peeps at Kill Your Darlings have published my review of TV series Treme (it's made by David Simon and Eric Overmyer, who made The Wire) on their blog so read that badboy HERE.

Here's a picture of John Goodman from Treme, who possibly plays the most awesome English Professor ever characterised in a TV show.

do you like the new skins better than the old skins?

I’m reviewing skins season 5 even though I never watched the final episode, because even though I love the new bunch of characters to bits, the storylines started to drive me nuts.

I think the acting talent is GREAT (I’m surprised every week by how good the actors are, considering all of them except Dakota Blue Richards have never acted professionally before). I actually cried in every episode. Two actors in particular took the cake for me. The first is the gorgeous Freya Mavor (from our very own Edinburgh) who plays Minnie, who shattered my heart the most when, under pressure from her rugby-captain boyfriend to have sex (for the first time), spends a whole scene contorting herself into different positions from a magazine article about “pleasing your man”. The pain and fear evident on her face during this scene depicted the pressure on teenage girls to be sexually competent even though they may be virgins, and sensitively reveal the secret insecurities of a girl who is otherwise the most popular and beautiful girl at school.

the new kids on the Bristol block

The other was Laya Lewis – but I can’t tell if I loved her acting, or just loved her character, or both. She has guts – she gets what she wants when she wants it, but she’s also humble enough to admit when she’s wrong and loves her friends enough to apologise (like when she sleeps with her best friend Minni’s boyfriend). There were a bunch of other turtly ahhsome moments – Nick bailing from his position as rugby captain when he realized the pressure of the role was turning him into someone he didn’t like, or Rich and Grace being too self-conscious to tell each other that they like each other for ages (awww! Loved it.)

But, I couldn't help but feel the screenwriters are running out of ideas - majorly. I mean, it has been five years and viewers are still watching kids feel alienated by their angry parents, get wasted, and come to sort of resolution about it, followed by speech about what they’ve learned and how they need to change. (Ok sure - that actually is a pretty real set of circumstances that probably happens to most teens but I don’t really want to spend an hour watching it on TV every week for that long). There was some variation – like I said, Minni’s episode was heart wrenching and sensitively complex and focused on her own insecurity rather than her parents (though there was the suggestion that her relationship with her promiscuous mother wasn’t great). But for the most part, each ep was about angry, overbearing and largely absent parents versus headstrong and oppressed teenagers, all culminating in the teens learning some level of humility and/or way of moving forward on their own terms...which is fine and good - but it was a recurring theme almost every week. 

Also, even though skins has always tended to focus each episode around a story of a different character, I feel like previous seasons did this in a way which highlighted individual stories while still continuing the other characters’ stories at the same time. Earlier seasons seemed to entwine the character’s stories together reasonably convincingly – season 5, however, seemed to focus so intently on one or two characters each week that the stories became isolated and somewhat contrived. Even though the scene where metal-head Rich watches Grace’s ballet performance and finds beauty in something other than metal (and other than himself, essentially) was effective in terms of its meaning, we don’t know enough about these characters by the time their episodes come around for it to be as emotionally affective as when, for example, Chris’ mother bails on him in Season 1.

Nevertheless, I’m still looking forward to Season 6. The screenwriters have set up a lot of interesting material to be explored (for example I hope they explore the Frankie’s family situation – she is adopted by gay male parents) and since the acting can only get better, I’m sure it will be just as melodramatic in the endearing way that skins always is – especially if the actors have some meatier scripts to work with. 

PS - here is another blog article on the merits of skins and some good stuff about Season 5 - all of which I agree with.

HEROES we need more girl ones.

Well i'm sick as a dog but what really made things better was buying a set of cowgirl coasters this morning with my friend Deb after we had a coffee. Also we talked a lot about Supernatural and the weirdest TV characters we've been attracted to (both of us admitted they were aliens on badly scripted 90sTV shows which will remain nameless). But more importantly I was so sick last night that all I managed for dinner was a block of chocolate and some wine and THE LAST FOUR EPISODES OF HEROES SEASON 2. (This is going to be a really predictable post about why the representation of women really peed me off, btw. You can pretty much read the rest of my argument about this stuff HERE).

the male:female ratio is like so mid-20th century.

I mean seriously! here is how what started off good just went bad. All the chicks are kind of helpless and totally dependent on men to make decisions for them. Maya, for example, who can make everyone drop dead somehow while she's angry, cries all the time and gets really easily deceived by the bad Sylar. He doesn't even have to try, she just falls for his every word! Besides, totally annoying that she's the 'evil one' and she always needs some dude around to calm her down and stop her from killing people. Claire the cheerleader is probably the coolest. But even when she defies her deceitful father, she eventually believes that he was right in all the advice he ever gave her and that if she had only listened to him, everything would be alright - even though he totally lied to and manipulated her.

All Elle wants to do is make her Daddy proud of her, even though he tortured her as a child on the ground it would 'increase her powers' - except rather than enhance her own agency, she has just become his (and his company's) pawn in shady business which even Elle herself doesn't know the extent of! (Though at the end of the season she saved some people's lives, and they were grateful, and I got the impression she was starting to find a new sense of purpose in helping people, rather than just blindly doing what her dad says). I think the WORST scene possibly on TV during the past 5 years was where Noah and Bob (Claire and Elle's respective dads) take each other's daughter hostage and then trade them  with each other in exchange for peace. As if the trading and ownership of daughters was the way men negotiated peacefully. As if they were property to be exchanged! And the girls didnt even question it!!! (And it wasn't even peaceful - Elle got shot, and so did Noah). Not to mention Caitlyn, the lovely Irish girl who gets taken off to the future and left there; the Japanese Princess in the past who just shifts from male hero to male hero and looks pretty and then is left there; Noah's wife who nearly dies from the amount of memory removal he has subjected her to; and Matt's ex-wife who is written off as a lying and unfaithful wife. Moreover, it is the men on the show who remain the most powerful; who run the 'organisation' (and who run the coup to take the organisation down) men make all the big decisions about everyone else (including women); it is men who are always positioned as wanting to save the world or destroy it; it is women who are being   being neglected (Caitlyn and the Princess), seeking help for their problem (Nikki) or being lied to (Claire and Elle) but without any real chance (yet) of standing up for themselves or actually questioning the power dynamics of their world. 

Nicki's split personality kicks butt

Sure, it was pretty cool that Claire's blood is what can save everything. But it is because of that, that she remains an object to be protected and transacted - she becomes a resource. Why don't they take Adam or Peter's blood - those two guys have the same powers of regeneration?? No, those two are too busy doing more important things like destroying or saving the world or saving girls. Much easier to use up the cheerleader. I'm retaining my hopes for Nikki and Monica who are showing some promise. But they're still kind of positioned as emotionally unstable, despite their power. But Nikki is awesome - she is physically strong and beats up everyone, but still loves her son enough to sacrifice a lot for him. In fact Nikki is pretty good. So far she's been the best I think. Monica too, though haven't seen much of what she can do yet.  

As much as I loved the show, I felt pretty nauseated by the end of that season. Just sick of watching women fall back into some sort of dependency role when women and men should be taking on stuff like 'saving the world' (and whatever you might take that to mean metaphorically) TOGETHER. Action TV is still dominated by guys. thought things would've changed since Buffy but no, I guess I'll be watching Kill Bill again tonight to make up for it.

END RANT. I STILL LOVE HEROES BY THE WAY. 

PS If you're familiar with the show - I saw this japanese guy running really fast through the food court at Collins Place in melbourne with a poster tube slung over his back. Just sayin'. Time travel is probably for real.

This is England: three years on

This Is England ’86, the televised mini-series and sequel to Shane Meadow’s film This is England (2006) has just screened in the UK. It's set three years after the film took place and stars all the same actors, who are just a bit taller and have different sections of their heads shaved, and more scars (thanks to all the beatings they took in the film’s world of 1983). In Episode 3, the focus was not on skinheads and racial tension, but sexual tension, and how to negotiate sex in a world where most people get they want through violence, and anyone who tries otherwise just ends up hurting their friends anyway.

      Shaun, for example, leaves home when he catches him mum in the act with her new boyfriend: something he can’t quite forgive in memory of his dead father. He spends the episode working through how he feels with Smell, who eventually convinces him that all women have needs and he should give his mum a break. Lol sleeps with, Milky, who is the best friend of Woody, her ex, and Milky spends the ep working out whether he values his new relationship with Lol over his friendship with the lonely and dejected Woody.

      Three-quarters of the way through the episode, I was enjoying it, but felt a bit let down because it didn’t seem to have the same devastating tone that the film did. Shaun admitting his mum can have a boyfriend doesn’t seem to compare to skinhead Combo bashing the shizola out of black Milky on the big screen, especially when all the ads leading to the sequel’s screening were full of seemingly heartbreaking scenes to a backdrop of moving piano music.

      Until: the rape scene. An absolutely shattering rape scene, perhaps the most powerful I’ve ever seen. Mick (Lol’s dad) rapes the teenage girl Trev in his lounge room, and it’s violent, and graphic, and she is utterly helpless against the strong, grown man who almost strangles her in the attempt to hold her down. But it's also clumsy and slow, and on an old couch while the TV's on. An awful act in the middle of suburban normality.

      Although still reeling from it, I appreciated this rape scene because it was real, ie. it did not come across as a plot device to explore power structures and dynamics; it was not a metaphor (for example, for patriarchal racist England colonising and policing against the racial/gendered other) it simply said: look. This is real. And it happens while all her friends are at the pub watching the footy, it happens while her friends are negotiating sleeping with their ex’s best friend, and it happens with a man that she knows. It happens in real life while the rest of us are distracted with our normal lives.

      Viewers were initially outraged, but shortly changed their tune. To quote some tweeters, “‘The last ten minutes of This Is England '86 was horrific. But I'm glad they had the b*lls not to gloss over the horror of the situation,' was how one tweet encompassed the sentiment, backed up by another: 'Tough stuff to end with but had to be done. This sort of thing goes on right now somewhere.'” (1)

      I agree. And in all honesty I appreciated the innocuous conversations  between Shaun and his mum by the end of the episode – I think it was just the producers being gentle with their audience.

1. http://www.metro.co.uk/tv/841703-this-is-england-86-viewers-left-stunned-by-sick-rape-scene

           

My love/hate relationship with Dexter Morgan

So I’m getting really confused about my feelings towards Dexter – the TV series, that is. The show is pretty much made for me – blood, guns, dead bodies, cool chicks and conflicted masculinity with a hearty dose of violent stabbings and death-by-strangulation. What could be more appropriate? (For a gender/violence Masters project, that is). Behind the show’s colourful array of forensic labs, bloated corpses, Miami palm trees and ridiculously good-looking actors lies a set of deep contradictions which establishes Dexter as a show committed to exploring the grey areas of justice and responsibility…whilst also encouraging us to be, if not empathetic, at least sympathetic to the actions of a serial murderer. It’s this second message which makes me uncomfortable, because it’s unavoidable due to the plot’s very construction and the nature of prime time TV.

To begin with, the protagonist is a psycho-killer. He hides his addiction to killing by only slashing the baddest of the bad – serial rapists, child murderers, abusive pornographers, etc. After Dexter has sliced and diced his victims he dumps their bodies in the bay and preserves a drop of their blood on a glass slide for his collection that he keeps in the air-con vent in his apartment (weird). Cool thing is, all this weirdness is explained away when you find out Dexter, at a very young age, saw his mother hacked to bits with a chainsaw inside a shipping container and was then trapped in there amidst bloody family limbs for several days. He grew up, consequently, an emotionless sociopath with a desire to kill. Interestingly, Dexter does not stick to killing those who “deserve” death in some attempt to exact justice (which would make him like Batman) rather, he does so avoid getting caught and to “fit in”, because he can’t actually stop killing (more like Dracula).

But we still like Dexter despite his inability to care about morals. We don’t want him to get caught, because he’s learned to fit in so well that we, the audience, get duped by his sweet smile, his great wit, his fantastic forensic skills, the way he protects his sister, and most of all (for me) his beeeautiful relationship with his girlfriend Rita and her children. It’s this relationship where we see Dexter’s own fear and confusion as he starts experiencing true emotions for the first time in his life. Dexter himself becomes conflicted – he wants to be honest with Rita about his true self, but of course he can’t be, because then she’d be terrified of him and leave him. This results in an elaborate set of lies which ends up with Rita believing Dexter is a heroine addict and Dexter having to go to rehab to keep the façade going. I started getting uncomfortable here because I wanted Dexter to successfully deceive Rita so they could stay together…whilst also being disgusted that their whole relationship is based on a lie.

By the end of Season 2 though I was feeling even more uncomfortable. Two divers find garbage bags containing the fruit of Dexter’s dismembering adventures at the bottom of the bay and the public begin mythologising about the “Bay Harbour Butcher” and who this may be. The audience spends the whole season watching all the near-misses Dexter has with getting caught, till he finally frames his fellow colleague and policeman Sergeant Doakes – one of the shows main characters. Incidentally, Doakes dies at the hands of Lilah, an addict Dexter meets in rehab. But the evidence has been set up so well that Doakes is posthumously convicted, much to the dismay of the Miami PD. I felt sick that Doakes died so suddenly and that he became known as this killer: I felt sick about Dexter’s smugness and how happy he was not only for his freedom but also for Doakes’ death (the two never got along). And yet I was so so SO happy he wasn’t caught, because it meant he could get back together with Rita (my favourite female character in crime television, even more than Olivia in SVU) and it meant he could kill that psycho-hose-beast Lilah (my least favourite female character in crime television, no thanks to her annoying nasal voice).

This is the crux of it all. I don’t like killing and it makes me feel gross. But I still love Dexter. I don’t think the series endorses killing, because someone always has to take the punishment for the crime. It’s just who receives punishment and who should receive punishment which is played around with. The show even acknowledges the horror of its protagonist’s actions - Dexter’s foster dad Harry actually commits suicide once he realises who his son has become. But while the show engages with the subtleties of justice, guilt, responsibility and flaws of the legal system and encourages audiences to do the same, I wonder how much any prime time American TV show can engage with this truly. For the sake of ratings and the audience’s contentment, Dexter always has to win and hence always has to lie. I can’t fathom he’ll ever get caught and go to prison for life for what he’s done; nor can I imagine him coming clean and the citizens of Miami accepting him as their very own vigilante protector (like I said, he’s not Batman). However I’ve only just finished Season 2 so who knows how mental things get. I’m still going to keep watching – I’m addicted, and Dexter and Rita together make me feel a warmth inside I haven’t felt since Buffy and Angel first made out in ’96 (wow). While conflicted and conflicting, Dexter is nevertheless engaging audiences well if it makes me react so strongly. And despite its promotion of a killer, it’s forced me to think about and articulate my views on morality more than any other Miami-based murder series – take that, Horatio. Dexter’s sandy hair is way more natural than yours anyway.

NB – let’s not forget that Julie Benz (the actress who plays Rita) became famous through her stellar performance as the vampire Darla in Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Angel. She's still hooking up with dudes who dig blood and all about putting her life on the line to protect her kids. Amazing!