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Friday, May 31, 2019

Reading/Watching Log #41

Okay, so it looks like I read and watched stunningly little this month, which isn't strictly true - it's just that Kingdom of Ash by Sarah J. Maas is the size of a doorstop, and I'm juggling about six separate shows at the moment (Into the Badlands, Killing Eve, American Gods, and the four Arrowverse shows).
And of course, I had to take some time to have a quick meltdown over Game of Thrones. I got over it, but the fact I didn't watch the last three episodes means I'm not going to include it here.
So that leaves a grand total of two books, one graphic novel, and two movies...

Tuesday, May 21, 2019

Thoughts on Game of Thrones...

Okay, let's do this...
First, here's a quick reminder of my relationship with Game of Thrones. I have read the first three books of George R.R. Martin's series, but not seen the first five seasons of the show in their entirety. Partly because of the show's sexual violence, and partly because back in 2011 I had no way of getting hold of full episodes, my knowledge of the story was garnered through YouTube clips and popculture osmosis.
For the most part I entertained myself with on-line discussion (which I often find more interesting than actual shows - if you're a long-time reader of this blog, you probably already know that) and all the essential clips (which helpfully left out most of the gratuitous violence and rape).
But by the time season six rolled around, the show had overtaken the unfinished book series and I admit to being fascinated by the idea of a show continuing to tell a story beyond the reach of its source material. As they said frequently in the promotional material for that year: "you have no idea what's coming next." To my knowledge, a show outpacing the material it's based on had never happened before (at least not till The Handmaid's Tale), and that whole concept intrigued me.
I wanted to see how things would be handled - so ironically, I hopped on the bandwagon at about the same time everyone else began to sour on the show.


Monday, May 6, 2019

Meta: What Do We Want When We Say "More Female Friendships"?

In no less than three of my fandoms, an interesting discussion on a particular subject has emerged. The fandoms are Stranger Things, Star Wars and Game of Thrones, and the subject is that of friendships between women.
In recent promotional materials and trailers released for all three franchises, there's been an interesting emphasis on female characters, and specifically the relationships they have with each other. The trailer for season three of Stranger Things involved several shots of Eleven and Max hanging out with each other, which is notable considering their only interaction in the second season was Eleven rebuffing Max's offer of a handshake.
On a similar note, there were several still images released for Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, which included one of Rey and Rose together. This is notable for two reasons: firstly because the two have never interacted together on-screen, and secondly because there's no image of Rey with either Finn or Poe, two characters she would have greater reason to be pictured with.
Yes, the trailer was very heavy on shots of the official trio, but it still strikes me as significant that of the entire collection of stills, the only one that features Rey interacting with someone is the same one that features Rose (who appears in no other bit of promotion).
Finally, the very first footage we saw of Game of Thrones's season eight was of Daenerys being introduced to Sansa at Winterfell, and the rather cool reception she received. Of all the material they could have selected - the dragons flying overhead, the money-shots of the Unsullied entering the gates, any one of the myriad reunions that take place within its walls, they chose to go with the meeting between two of its female characters, in which even Jon Snow is more of a bystander than a participant.
So it's not just me, right? In all three of these fairly massive franchises, there has been an emphasis - to one degree or another - on the relationships between women. And that interests me.

Friday, May 3, 2019

Reading/Watching Log #40

So, I take it we all made it through Marvel's Endgame and Game of Thrones's long night safely? I'll have more to say on both in a later post...
This log took a little longer than usual to put together. It's been difficult to write lately, though this means more downtime to read, which can never be considered a bad thing. This month I continued my "finish what you started" reading list, as well as my "treat yo self" one, not to mention a Disney animated classic, a feline-inspired musical, and several 2018 films/2019 shows (my bid to play catch-up in this regard is failing miserably).
We got cats, school-girl detectives, secret assassins, star ships, space ports, superheroes, time travel, fairy tales, robots in disguise, and Disney Princesses.

Thursday, May 2, 2019

Woman of the Month: Princess Irulan Corrino


Princess Irulan Corrino from Dune
The news about Denis Villeneuve's adaptation of Dune is accumulating, with cast announcements, a release date, and a report from the director that it will be divided into two parts. I'm fascinated by Frank Herbert's Dune, mostly because I can never quite figure out whether I like it or not. 
The last time it was adapted was as a three-part miniseries on the SyFy Channel in 2000, and though it had its problems, it was largely considered a faithful rendition of the novel's characters, plot and themes. But there was one element that was greatly changed in the transition from page to screen; a character who reminds me a lot of Natalie Dormer's take on Margaery Tyrell on Game of Thrones in the sense that she's expanded upon greatly outside the source material.
In Herbert's novel, Princess Irulan exists for two reasons: 1) to supplement Paul’s "love versus duty" narrative, and 2) as the Chekhov’s Gunman to a thread of intrigue that wends its way throughout the course of the book. 
See, the novel Dune is not divided by chapters, but by quotes and passages from documents that are attributed to Princess Irulan, a character who does not appear in person until the very last chapter. It’s not until then that the reader grasps who she really is: a political pawn that Paul plans to wed in order to consolidate his rule over Arrakis, despite his love for the Fremen Chani. 
The book's final passage has Paul’s mother telling Chani: “that princess will have the name, yet she’ll live as less than a concubine – never to know a moment’s tenderness from the man to whom she’s bound. They say she has pretensions of a literary nature. Let us hope she finds solace in such things; she’ll have little else.”
Thus the meaning behind the quotes strewn throughout the book become clear: they illustrate that Jessica was indeed correct when she predicted Irulan would have nothing to do but write about her husband-in-name-only. We learn absolutely nothing else about the character beyond this.
It’s a clever conceit, but naturally, it does not translate well to a visual medium. And so the 2000 miniseries decide to take the opportunity to flesh out Irulan’s character and expand her role into a significant subplot. Suddenly, Irulan is a character in her own right, a compelling figure whose youth belies her cunning mind and who the denouement depicts as a proud yet pitiable figure whose future is cast in shadow. 
Wearing elaborate head-pieces that rival Queen Amidala’s, Julie Cox plays Irulan as lithe and soft-spoken, but also perceptive and cunning. There’s a striking scene in which she, shrouded in white and looking rather like a novice at a convent, enters the chambers of Feyd-Rautha, The Dragon of the story’s Big Bad. She approaches him, slipping effortlessly into seductress mode whilst exchanging glances with the courtesan she’s sent to infiltrate his household, wheedles the information she needs out of him, and smoothly passes him back to her spy once she’s done, reassuming the virginal look once she’s left the room. It’s a great sequence.
So what we get is an interesting subversion of the Standard Hero Reward, firstly in that Irulan herself is a Politically Active Princess who spends most of the miniseries accumulating information through devious means, and secondly that Paul himself is not romantically interested in her despite their early (and largely positive) interaction. 
Book purists have argued that the thematic power of Irulan’s deliberate marginalization in the book has been lost, but it's an opinion that ignores the fact that her quotes and passages would have been all but impossible to portray on-screen. And because this version of Irulan is more fleshed out, the audience is able to feel some modicum of sympathy for her as she stands alone in the great hall, Jessica’s voice-over dismissing her as the woman her son will never love.