Reading/Watching Log #62

I have myself a New Year’s Resolution which kickstarted this month (though won’t be into full effect until April) and that’s: no more library books. Only my own books, of which there are probably hundreds that I have not yet read. As of now, I have only one more library book to read and return, and then it’s full steam ahead on my very own TBR pile.

More than that, I’m going to make a valiant effort to try and stick to a single subject for each month. February was all about the dark fairy tale, and though a few other things slipped through, this was largely the theme of the last four weeks, with books by Catherynne Valente and Neil Gaiman, two completely unasked-for sequels to fantasy films that weren’t that good in the first place, and (in honour of the terrible Netflix series that just dropped) the first season of the original animated Winx.

And no, I have not been watching Wandavision, though I have been reading comments/looking at GIF sets, and... people realize that this is just one long prologue to the next influx of movies, right?

Angela Barrett: The Snow Queen

There are very few original fairy tales that have the power of Hans Christian Anderson’s The Snow Queen, so much so that people often forget it’s the work of a single mind and not part of our collective folklore. As C.S. Lewis put it so beautifully in regards to the archetype that Anderson codified in our minds: “we are born knowing the witch.”

But it’s not just the titular Snow Queen that makes this story so fascinating; it’s very much a story about women in all their guises. There’s Gerda the protagonist, the fierce Little Robber Girl and her mother, the Crow and the Princess, the Lappish Woman and the Finnish Woman, and the children’s Grandmother, whose presence frames the story in its entirety.

But of most interest to me is the Old Lady Who Knew Magic, an elderly woman that Gerda meets almost immediately after she sets out in search of Kay, and who very nearly ends the journey before it’s even properly begun...

Standing Tall #30

Well, there was bound to be at least one dud. What feels like a commissioned piece rather than something an artist was genuinely moved to create, Wicket was situated outside the Christchurch’s Hagley Oval in anticipation of the cricket test match that was scheduled to take place there the following year.

Artist Ira Mitchell-Kirk slathers this giraffe in the white silhouettes of cricketeers and the various flags of the participating countries, to commemorate the 2015 ICC Cricket World Cup. According to my souvenir guide (because cricket is about as interesting to me as golf and drying paint), it kicked off with the Blackcaps playing against Sri Lanka – but don’t ask me who won.

But hey, with this giraffe we’ve officially reached the thirties!

Links and Updates

A quick one this time around...

Legend of the Seeker: Puppeteer

The one with the puppet show...

The placement of this episode is puzzling for so many reasons: after all the tension and anguish of Denna, we get a largely comedic episode involving two precocious little girls that nevertheless contains some real darkness. Furthermore, it’s the first episode to feature to Darken Rahl since the premiere, and it involves him... watching puppet shows and cutting birthday cake.

That’s certainly a choice when it comes to reintroducing your terrifying Dark Lord.

Even he's not convinced...

Having seen Craig Parker recently in the latter seasons of Reign, it’s difficult to recalibrate my brain into accepting him as Darken Rahl, but all things considered, I think he does a good job with the role. He doesn’t play the character as a tantrum-throwing, moustache-twirling monster set on world domination (which is essentially what this guy is) but turns the character inwards, giving Rahl a quiet menace with more intelligence, patience and observational skills then one would usually expect from an archetype such as this.

Of course, he’s still not a particularly well-written character. What motivates him? What’s he actually trying to achieve? The show never lets us in on the secret, so the considered performance is really all we have to make him the least bit memorable, and Parker does what he can to make it work.

Legend of the Seeker: Denna

The one with the half-crazed, half-broken dominatrix...

This is it is you guys, the episode which made everyone sit up straighter and think: “huh, maybe this is a show we should start taking seriously.” Which is strange in a lot of ways, as the episode capitalizes massively on the fact that its main antagonist is Ms Fanservice, beginning the episode with a slow-motion close-up montage of... well, this. If you didn’t know Terry Goodkind’s kinks before, you sure as hell do now.

And yet, it’s difficult to be too snarky about it, simply because the writing allows its titular character to be so much more than mere wank fodder. Remember how the Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation trailer featured the money shot of Rebecca Ferguson climbing out of the pool in a bikini? And then in context, it actually made sense because she was timing herself to see how long she could hold her breath underwater, an essential part of the heist she was prepping for?

Much like that example, Legend of the Seeker goes heavy with the fanservice that Denna provides, and yet it’s an intrinsic part of her character, there’s a justifiable reason why most of it exists, and it’s backed up by surprisingly solid writing. (Not award-winning writing, but solid writing). Sometimes things can pander to the lowest common denominator and be surprisingly deep and meaningful at the same time. It doesn’t happen often, but it can happen.

Legend of the Seeker: Identity

The one with the jerk who got off way too easily...

This is not the episode in which Legend of the Seeker Grows the Beard (that comes next time with a certain leather-clad dominatrix) but it does grow a little bit of stubble.

Finally the gang reaches Calabra, after taking a short detour into Very Special Episode territory to learn that using magic to solve one’s problems is bad. This episode builds on that theme, teaching us that using magic to avoid your responsibilities is also bad, by utilizing another favourite staple of the fantasy genre: the Body Swap.

It’s done with an interesting twist: despite the fact that Richard and guest-star Gryff are mildly envious of each other’s lives (Richard likes the idea of settling down with a family, Gryff wants to have world-saving adventures) the switch between them is done by a third party with no knowledge of this: the witch Shota, who has had a premonition that Richard will die at Calabra, and so thinks that exchanging the two men is a way of circumventing such a fate...

Woman of the Month: Susan Gray

Susan Gray from The Bletchley Circle

I’ll admit it: I had no idea who to choose for February’s Woman of the Month (though I have the rest of the year planned out in advance) and so ended up delving far back into the past, before I even had this blog, to a Tumblr post I wrote up in 2014 or thenabouts.

I also wrote a review for the show back then, and so am going to take a sneaky shortcut by paraphrasing what I wrote about Susan back then...

There is an Emma Thompson interview that has her talking about how proud she was to have rejected roles that required her (as the requisite female character) to continually tell the male lead: “don’t go out and do that brave thing; you’re needed here with me and the children!” In The Bletchley Circle, Susan Gray gets to be that male lead, with her husband playing the role of the spouse that stands around crying: “think of the children!”

The miniseries (which has since gotten a lacklustre second season and spin-off) is about a serial killer that targets young women... but the tedious inevitability of this is undermined by the fact that the investigators are four women who worked as codebreakers at Bletchley Park during World War II. Armed with resources and experience that help them to identify patterns and crack ciphers, the four friends commit themselves to doing what the police cannot, and bring the killer to justice.

Throughout all this, Susan Gray is their leader and commander, whose motivation is not just born out of concern for her fellow women (the first victim was a shopgirl that used to serve her at the local store) but because of a trope that isn’t usually afforded to female characters: a desire to recapture the Glory Days. As she tellingly says during their first meeting: “we can be useful again.”

Going from the excitement of the war years, in which her intellect helped save lives on a daily basis, to the doldrum routine of being a housewife and mother, has clearly taken its toll on Susan. From the ever-so subtle Sapphic vibes between herself and Millie, to the gleam in her eye that starts to shine once she and the others are on the case, it’s a fascinating look at a woman desperately trying to eke out a sense of meaningful purpose in her life.

She’s not entirely selfish, and yet she’s not entirely altruistic either. It’s a wonderful portrayal and performance, and the gift of the series is the way it highlights how women are uniquely positioned to help other women. As Jean says halfway through the case: “the only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do nothing.” She pauses. “Or good women.”