Reading/Watching Log #50

I am now one month into my New Year’s Resolution and it’s amazing! Female characters improve exponentially when they’re in the hands of female writers and directors, and I’ve enjoyed an abundance of stories that showcase them in all sorts of lights: as heroines, as villains, as complex and flawed mothers and writers and princesses and thieves.

Following on from Greta Gerwig’s take on Little Women, I revisited the 1994 version (probably closest to my generation’s heart) and the one from 1949, which are fascinating in their contrast, particularly regarding what scenes each one choses to adapt, and what sister they decide to focus on.

I made sure to see Cathy Yan’s Birds of Prey in cinemas (I went in with no expectations, and it was fantastic!) and somehow ended up reading a lot of books based on Greek/Roman mythology: a witch, a princess and a goddess all made it onto this month’s list, along with a graphic novel about a young Wonder Woman.

It’s not perfect: in the three female-centric television shows I’ve watched there have still been fridged women, simply because certain toxic tropes run so deep into the patterns of storytelling that we’re not even close to rooting them all out. But even just the change to female-led (or at least female-friendly) stories has done wonders. I’m looking forward to the rest of the year…

(There are spoilers for pretty much everything I discuss under the cut, so tread carefully).

Standing Tall #27

Now this was one of my absolute favourite giraffes. Called Moa Giraffe by Mandii Pope, it was located by the Cashmere Valley Reserve (specifically, the playground) which was the perfect place given its connection to the natural world and its sense of fun.

This extinct bird is one of the iconic symbols of New Zealand, but obviously a two-legged flightless bird doesn't translate too well into the form of a giraffe. Yet Pope found a way: by painting its back legs to look like moa legs, and covering its front with native ferns, complete with two large eggs and baby hatchlings.  

Its body is covered in feathers, its nose is painted as a beak, and its ears and ossicones have become feathers. The finishing touch is a Māori Koru Headband (so we can infer this is a female giraffe, if the presence of eggs wasn't already a giveaway). 

It was one of my favourites, just for the novelty of the idea and the way it was carried off. A moa that looks like a giraffe. Genius.

Top Twelve Best Film/Television Moments in 2019

This is over a month late, but it’s taken that long to summon enough energy to summarize 2019. Here in New Zealand, it was marked by two terrible tragedies: the terrorist attack that claimed fifty-one lives at two mosques, and the eruption of Whakaari on White Island that killed twenty-two people. This isn’t taking into account the injuries both physical, mental and emotional.

But the latter was a natural disaster, the former was man-made, and as many said at the time, it destroyed the innocent of this country. Though it wasn’t our first mass shooting, it was the first that has been so racially motivated and certainly our biggest hate crime.

We’re coming up to the anniversary in March, and though it brought out the best in some (most) people, it also brought to light the unmistakable racism just brewing beneath the surface of our seemingly idyllic culture.

Working at my local library I was approached by an elderly man who opened the conversation with: “there are over a million Muslims in America, isn’t that scary?” which is without contest the stupidest thing anyone has ever said to me on so many stupid levels, as well as the elderly woman who complained about how taxpayers were going to pay for the funerals of the victims and the other elderly man who dropped: “not all Muslims are terrorists, but all terrorists are Muslims,” like it was the most profound fucking thing anyone has ever said (by this time, I was seasoned enough to challenge him on it).

If there is one consolation, it’s that all these people were in their seventies, which means their stupidity and hatefulness will be dead in the ground along with them sooner rather than later (too harsh? Don’t care) but it’s a chilling indictment of what’s really going on in some people’s brains – especially since they were clearly motivated by the attack in their decision to say these things aloud.

The underlying sense of victim-blaming combined with bizarre resentfulness that they were not the victims of a Muslim terrorist attack is grotesque, and openly smeared on their smug, entitled, wrinkly little faces.  

That’s not even getting into the ongoing prejudice and racism towards Maori in New Zealand, which certainly isn’t going to go away any time soon (choice quotes from customers: “they’re as cunning as a Maori dog,” and the old git who rambled on about the double-standards Pakeha are subjected to before my colleague dropped: “my husband is Maori” into his stream of verbal diarrhoea. He buggered off rather quickly after that, but guess who got an earful of his nonsense next time he decided to visit? Me, it was me).

So yeah. This has been the worst year since 2016 in terms of the horrible things that’ve happened in the world, all the more so because terrorism finally came to our isolated little islands, which I’ve long since believed (naively) would always be spared such horrors.

In the world of fandom, things weren’t much better – in regards to quality, not actual human suffering, obviously.

A staggering number of popular shows and franchises came to an end in 2019: Poldark, Orange is the New Black, A Series of Unfortunate Events, Elementary, iZombie, Killjoys, Into the Badlands – even stuff I haven’t gotten around to watching yet, like Jane the Virgin, Gotham, Mr Robot and Veep. There’s more scheduled for the chopping block in 2020: Arrow, The Good Place and Anne with an E have wrapped up, soon to be followed by the final seasons of Vikings, The 100, Homeland, How to Get Away with Murder… even Supernatural and The Big Bang Theory, after what feels like an eternity.

The Netflix Marvel shows came to a premature end, cheating both Luke Cage and (believe it or not) Iron Fist out of third seasons to wrap up their storylines, and among movie franchises we saw the X-Men go out with a whimper, How To Train Your Dragon manage considerably better, Toy Story 4 negate pretty much everything the last three films tried to teach us, and whatever the heck M. Night Shymalan’s Unbreakable trilogy was. Even It: Chapter Two brought home the concluding sequel this year.

And of course, the big three: The MCU, Game of Thrones and Star Wars. Ironically the one I cared about the least stuck its landing the best, whereas the latter two are currently undergoing a world-wide memory scrub.

Unsurprisingly there’s going to be a LOT more coming from all three of these franchises, but I find myself in a blissful state of calm knowing that I’m not going to watch any of them. I haven’t even seen TROS yet, and I doubt I will for a while given that fandom is a nightmare, it doesn’t sound very good anyway, and I’m totally oversaturated by the whole thing. I think it’s time we as a whole stepped away from these big blockbusters and sought out smaller, more interesting projects, which have a greater chance of being good (or at least thought-provoking) and result in fandoms that aren’t as insanely hysterical.

So it was the end of an era in many ways, and I had plenty to keep me busy: I got through all the Disney Princess films with a friend who had never seen any of them, cracked down on my TBR books and now only have a few thousand left to read, and saw some great stuff like The Dark Crystal: Resistance, Carnival Row, and the third season of Stranger Things. I suppose His Dark Materials fits in here too, as it was a treat to see it re-adapted for the screen, though it wasn’t anywhere as good as it could have been.

It was also a good year for the theatre, and I got to see Aladdin on stage, Swan Lake, The Wind in the Willows and Measure for Measure. Some times it makes all the difference to see a live performance instead of something on the screen.

There was also plenty of Alfred Hitchcock, though he’s not going to fit well into my New Year’s Resolution: to focus on stories that are female-centric and female-written. If 2019 taught me anything it’s that male writers in general (not in specific cases) still have a staggeringly long way to go when it comes to depicting female characters in ways that don’t render them as victims, sacrifices, nurturers, villains, or vessels for some dude’s redemption, emotional growth, or man-pain.

With that in mind, I’ve tried to make the following list something of a tribute to the women who didn’t get horribly treated by their respective stories in 2019…

Women of the Month: Amy March

Amy March from Little Women (2019)

I'll be honest: I was one of the readers who counted Amy has my least favourite Little Woman, and my reasons for doing so were probably the same as everyone else's: she's the youngest, prettiest sister, coddled by the rest of her family, ends up marrying the man most readers wanted to wed Jo, seems to avoid all the hardships and heartaches of her sisters, and - worst of all - burns Jo's manuscript in an insanely disproportionate act of revenge.

I could get over all the rest, but every writer feels the destruction of that manuscript as the ultimate sisterly betrayal.

So with several Mary Sue qualities (and I don't use that term lightly), a romance that feels like it's been stolen from another character, and a rather lopsided character arc, in which we spend more time with the bratty, spoiled Amy than the emotionally mature one (who is more talked about than demonstrated in Alcott's writing), it's no wonder she's never been the favourite.

Greta Gerwig and Florence Pugh are here to change all that. Granted, it is a stretch to accept twenty-four year old Pugh as a twelve year old, but once you embrace the suspension of disbelief, it's clear the writer/actress deliberately lean into Amy's immaturity. While burning Jo's book she's wearing fairy wings, and afterwards is totally unable to comprehend why everyone is so upset.

Most film adaptations of Little Women unsurprisingly cast Jo as the story's protagonist, forgetting that Meg, Beth and Amy each have chapters devoted to them and their personal growth, and in Amy's case it robs us of the biggest transformation the novel has to offer.

So Gerwig does something that's never been done before: she positions Jo and Amy as co-protagonists, as deliberate foils to each other, each with their own parallel arc. Gerwig also adds original content to Amy's character, such as Amy declaring that she's been second to Jo her whole life (that would come as a surprise to Jo, but it's true from Amy's perspective and could even be meta-commentary on how they're treated in adaptations), admitting that she's loved Laurie in secret for years (which we see in the flashbacks, where she's clearly nursing a crush on him from day one), and giving Laurie a succinct break-down regarding her options in marriage and why it's an economic proposal for her (and all women).

When Jo complains that Amy has always been able to avoid life's miseries, we see that her glamourous trip across Europe is anything but. She's a companion to the imperious Aunt March, learning depressing truths about the quality of her art, and well-aware that it's her choice in marriage that will determine her family's fortune. As she puts it: “One of us must marry well. Meg didn't, Jo won't, Beth can't, yet, — so I shall, and make everything cozy all around.”

That's a heavy burden.

We love Jo for fighting against the gender roles imposed upon her, but the more practical and shrewd Amy takes a different path: using her femininity to negotiate the world around her, despite clear-eyed awareness of the double-standards she and her sisters face. This is precisely the reason she gets to go to Europe (stealing another of Jo's dreams), while her sisters are left behind: because she can work the system and live up to Aunt March's expectations of ladylike behaviour. Sometimes you have to go along to get along.

And Gerwig's choice to play around with the story's chronology means that we first see Laurie and Amy together in Europe, placing greater narrative emphasis on their relationship, in stark contrast to other films in which their coming together is a bizarre last-minute, off-screen coda.

But my favourite moment would have to be the scene that's present in every adaptation: when Jo cuts her hair and Amy cries: "your one beauty!" This is always followed by a scene in which Jo is weeping, a sister assuming that her tears are for their father, and her wailing in response: "no my hair!" It's a great sequence, which is why it's always included, but what's really fascinating is that in the 1933 version it's Meg that comforts her, in 1994 it's Beth, and in 2019 it's Amy who creeps out of her bed to be with Jo.

And in this adaptation she is eventually the one to give Jo the encouragement she needs to write Little Women, by telling her that their everyday lives will become important by the act of her writing about them. We have this story because of Amy as much as Jo, and that's a beautiful way for her to atone for the destruction of Jo's first manuscript.

In short: justice for Amy!

Watching/Reading Log #49

It's 2020, and my resolution to focus on female-focused media has begun, even if a few shows I started last year were finished up this month. Still, I'm looking forward to this resolution and what new projects it introduces me to, and I got off to a good start with Greta Gerwig's take on Little Women. There's also another novel by Frances Hardinge (READ HER) and a somewhat mixed offering from Mindy Kaling.

I'm ready!