Reading/Watching Log #47

Finished a ton of stuff this November, though a lot of it was started in October (or earlier) and took a while to work through. But it's been a good month, with all my favourite subjects: girl detectives, eerie fairy tales, suspenseful thrillers, period dramas, and at least one Disney princess.

His Dark Materials: The Spies

This was very much a transition episode, moving Lyra from Mrs Coulter's sphere of influence to the safety of the gyptians (with the promise of the north on the horizon), but it also made me realize something about my reading experience with Philip Pullman's trilogy, and why I'm not totally blown away by this adaptation.

So much of the joy of reading Northern Lights is in the way Pullman tells the story, his choice of prose and careful parsing of information, and those are things that any television adaptation cannot hope to capture. More than that, my enjoyment of the books is an intellectual joy rather than an emotional one.

I don't have a vested interest in Lyra or any of her relationships, rather it was always the slow uncovering of the theological mysteries Pullman had woven and the rich settings in which it all took place that engrossed me. I'm re-reading the books for the first time in years, and I just want to pore over all the strange little details and clever turns of phrase.

It was in this episode, when I saw the gyptian canal boats which were just your standard canal boats that I realized this just isn't going to capture that indefinable aesthetic Pullman crafts.

And that's okay. The books are unique in ways that are so difficult to describe (not helped by the fact they were incredibly formative texts for me) that I knew going in that I should just enjoy the ride.

International Men's Day: Top Ten Favourite Male Characters

It's International Men's Day, and I've decided to celebrate by showcasing some of my favourite male characters.

What they all have in common is a deep sense of kindness and compassion for others - which unfortunately, are traits that are not only in short supply these days, but often looked upon with contempt and ridicule. I'm reminded of a line spoken by Naomi Watt's character in The Painted Veil in which she scoffs: "As if a woman ever loved a man for his virtue," and looking around at the type of men that fandom usually stan for, it's not hard to see her point.

Or as Simone Weil wisely put it: “Imaginary evil is romantic and varied; real evil is gloomy, monotonous, barren, boring. Imaginary good is boring; real good is always new, marvelous, intoxicating.”

That assertion is up for debate, but an unfortunate side-effect of the assumption it raises is that heroic fictional characters, those who try to make the world a better place either through small acts of kindness or great feats of derring-do, are often dismissed as uninteresting, whereas those who commit themselves to violence, hatred and destruction are considered as sympathetic as they are fascinating.

Putting aside fandom's preferences, because YES I KNOW it's just fiction and shipping isn't morality, I still want to draw attention to the portrayals of good men in our media. Because simply put, I like seeing depictions of gentleness, compassion and empathy in any type of human, and it's Hercule Poirot who put it best in Evil Under the Sun: "To count - to really and truly to count - a [person] must have goodness or brains."

So these are some of my favourite male characters, not because they're morally compromised, or conflicted, or have sad backstories that justify their serial killing - but because they're fundamentally good people, and no less interesting because of it.

His Dark Materials: The Idea of North

The second episode of His Dark Materials covers a lot less ground than the first one, basically covering just one chapter of the book (whereas the last episode managed four). Yet for all of that, it makes the most of the power plays between Lyra and Mrs Coulter in the latter's opulent apartment, and adds strands of its own in subplots concerning Magisterium agents and the gyptians.

But though it was nice to slow down and delve into the complexities of Mrs Coulter, I'm a little unsure about the original scenes that fill in a few gaps which Philip Pullman had no interest in exploring. I recall an interview from him years ago in which he said "only tell the reader what they need to know", which accounts for great swathes of material throughout the trilogy that goes entirely unexplained.

In this current clime of over-explaining everything, in which every character has a backstory, every plot-hole must be plugged, and everything eventually ends up in a comprehensive encyclopedia published by the author, it's quite astonishing to read Pullman's trilogy and only get the bare essentials of what you need to know. If it's not essential to the story, it remains a tantalizing mystery.

How he managed to pull this off without seeming lazy or slapdash is a feat in itself, but it's part of where the trilogy gets its power: knowing that there are things forever beyond our ken.

Links and Updates

We're heading into the final stretch of 2019, so what's the horizon for the end of the year?

His Dark Materials: Lyra's Jordan

I have been awaiting this show for a very long time, since reading the books for the first time when I was thirteen, watching the disaster of a movie when I was twenty three, and hearing news of the BBC adaptation just a couple of years ago.

This story has been in my life for the greater part of it, from the way it changed my perception of how fantasy could be written when I was a teenager, to writing my thesis on its use of theology and religious dogma when I was at university.

And though I don't think anything could quite compare to the reading experience of the book and the way it gradually unspools its myriad of ideas and the scope of its world-building, I'm looking forward to a faithful and imaginative adaptation that hits all the major story beats of Pullman's original work, while giving itself some room to delve into the spaces that were left for further development or exploration.

I haven't done episode-by-episode reviews for a long time, but I'm going to make the effort for His Dark Materials. Just be aware that this will be full of SPOILERS, not just for the show but all three of the books, as I'm curious as to how this season will set-up or foreshadow the characters and events to come.

Woman of the Month: Jessie

Jessie from Toy Story 

I've worked my way through the Toy Story franchise this year (I'm settling down to watch the fourth film tonight), and throughout it all I kept a particularly close eye on the character of Jessie.

For a long time she was the most recognizable female character in the entire Pixar canon, a studio which has never been hugely interested in stories about women and to date has only featured three female protagonists across twenty-one movies.

Now I love Pixar films as much as the next person, but there's certainly room for improvement on that front, especially in the wake of the John Lasseter debacle. But for what it's worth, the likes of Dory, Helen Parr, Merida and Atta ensure that there's at least quality over quantity when it comes to the array of female characters Pixar has provided.

As a child watching Toy Story 2, I can't say I was overly fond of Jessie: she was so brash and boisterous - everything I wasn't, and therefore couldn't relate to. As an adult, I find her so much more endearing precisely because of the manic energy infused in her by the animators and Joan Cusack's vocal performance.

As Tom Hanks once put it: “no small amount of enthusiasm comes out of her,” and it's still a rare thing to see a female character who allowed to be so loud. Like, EXTREMELY loud.

She makes up a crucial part of Toy Story 2 considering the montage of her life with Emily ends up being the most emotional sequence of the entire film, and she provides further insight into the harrowing risks of being a toy when we learn the reason for her panic attacks. Imagine being a sentient toy that's stuck in storage for years... after being abandoned by the one person you love the most.

Sadly, Toy Story 3 relegates her to more of a supporting player. She gets a few good lines, as when she stands up to Lotso, yet she's reduced to a distressed damsel at one point for the sake of a gag (Spanish-mode Buzz rescues her dramatically).

It's not until Toy Story: Tale of Terror, the 2014 Halloween Special, that she finally gets some focus, in a story that tackles her traumatic history and crippling claustrophobia. After Bonnie and her mother stop at a roadside motel for the night, Jessie and the other toys take the opportunity to explore. But there's a strange creature at loose in the building, and when Woody is captured, sold on-line and packaged for delivery, it's only Jessie that can rescue him in a nice bit of role reversal from Toy Story 2.

That her usual confidence co-exists with a terror of abandonment and enclosed spaces is a great basis for a character, and here she's given the chance to face her fears by allowing herself to be shut in a box so that she might get to Woody, before using her wits and agility to expose the criminal scheming of the motel manager. As becomes her mantra in this episode: "Jessie never gives up, Jessie finds a way."

Is it a little frustrating that she had to wait until a twenty minute holiday special before getting a story that centred on her? Sure. But tonight I'll find out what Toy Story 4 has in store for her...