Life is borderline chaotic at the moment, and even though I’m writing furiously at every possible opportunity, I still feel like this blog is stagnating. To tide you over until my review of Buffy the Vampire Slayer’s first season, here’s a ranking of all twelve episodes that comprised that season, from worst to best.
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| Source (yes, I know it's AI generated, but I couldn't find a decent illustration of this character ANYWHERE). |
Wilhelmina “Mina” Harker, née Murray from Dracula
I always try to pick a spooky-themed woman for October, and having just finished up Bram Stoker’s Dracula, what better choice than the female lead in the most famous vampire novel of all time?
I wasn’t entirely sure what to expect when I first cracked open Dracula, though given that it was first published in 1897, I wasn’t exactly anticipating a subversive heroine that charted the course of early feminism. But sometimes these old books can surprise you, especially in the horror genre.
It doesn’t get off to an auspicious start, since our very first mention of Mina is a brief note written by her fiancé Jonathan in his journal, reminding himself to get her a recipe for a meal he enjoyed, presumably so she can cook it for him. As his experiences in Dracula’s castle become ever more terrifying, he references her in his writing with more and more desperation, until his last words are committed to the page: “Goodbye all! Mina!”
Once we reach her narrative, we can glean some details about herself that she reveals in passing: she’s an orphan (“I never knew either father or mother,”) she works as a teacher at a girls’ school (“the life of an assistant schoolmistress is sometimes trying,”) and she’s learning shorthand (“when we are married I shall be able to be useful to Jonathan.”) Beneath this practicality, there’s also a sense of wistfulness and romanticism about her, stating in a letter to her friend Lucy: “it must be so nice to see strange countries. I wonder if we – I mean Jonathan and I – shall ever see them together.”
If it wasn’t already obvious from Jonathan’s journal, Mina’s correspondence makes clear there’s an attachment and understanding between these two characters, though Mina herself doesn’t seem to have any ambition beyond becoming the perfect helpmeet to her future husband. As the story progresses, a lot is piled on this girl’s plate: she instinctively worries that her fiancé is in grave danger, has to deal with her friend’s nightly sleepwalking, and grapples with a palpable dread that only intensifies when the preternatural events occurring all around her become undeniable.
And yet, she has a zest and enthusiasm for life, and she’d probably be described as a Cute Bookworm in modern parlance. She has an interest in the New Women, her portable typewriter goes with her everywhere, and she writes to Lucy: “I shall try to do what I see lady journalists do: interviewing and writing descriptions and trying to remember conversations.”
This encapsulates her most important role in the story: to be the recorder, the transcriber, and the editor of all the events that follow. She copies everyone’s letters and diaries, types out Doctor Seward’s phonograph entries, and collates relevant newspaper articles. It’s through parsing through the words of the men that she figures out what route Dracula is taking back to his castle, and her idea that she should be hypnotized each day in order to get a fix on his location.
In other words, she holds the power of the narrative. We have this story because of her. To compare her to another character in a similar role, she’s like Eliza at the end of Hamilton, drawing together all the accounts and interviews and letters to form a coherent history. “Who lives, who dies, who tells your story?” Mina does.
But because none of the movie adaptations can effectively demonstrate the legwork she puts into organizing the mass of documents that make up this book (because watching a woman type isn’t exactly interesting) and are loathe to arm her with a stake and turn her into a vampire slayer (though she is given a revolver in the book’s final act), much of her importance to the narrative is lost on-screen.
Across various films and television shows she largely comes across as a passive victim of Dracula – if she’s not being forced into a turgid and completely fabricated love affair with him – much like how the irony of Irulan’s purpose in the Dune novels is lost when you cut out her quotes at the start of each chapter. Some things only work on the page, with the written word.
There are other elements to Mina that are present in the book and dramatized in various adaptations: sadly, a lot of it has to do with the Madonna/Whore Complex, with Mina explicitly compared to the vampiric women that hold Jonathan captive (“Faugh! Mina is a woman, and there is naught in common”) and implicitly with Lucy after her transformation into one of the undead. When she plays a trick on van Helsing there is an interesting passage in which she states: “I could not resist the temptation of mystifying him a bit – I suppose it is some of the taste of the original apple that remains still in our mouths,” though later she leans heavily into the “mother” aspect of the Madonna archetype when she comforts Arthur Holmwood:
“I suppose there is something in woman’s nature that makes a man free to break down before her and express his feelings on the tender or emotional side without feeling it derogatory to his manhood; for when Lord Godalming found himself alone with me he sat down on the sofa and gave way utterly and openly... we women have something of the mother in us that makes us rise above smaller matters when the mother-spirit is invoked; I felt this big, sorrowing man’s head resting on me, as though it were that of the baby that some day may like on my bosom, and I stroked his hair as though he were my own child.”
It's all insanely Victorian, and as with most things of this nature, I’m in two minds about it. Obviously, there’s nothing wrong with comforting a grief-stricken man, and I’m sure there’s a lot of truth in men being more comfortable being emotionally open in front of women than other men, but there’s a ring of old-timey condescension here that bleeds into the menfolk’s decision to keep Mina in the dark when it comes to how they intend to deal with Dracula:
“When we part tonight, you no more must question. We shall tell you all in good time. We are men, and are able to bear; but you must be our star and our hope, and we shall act all the more free that you are not in the danger, such as we are.”
“Somehow, it was a dread to me that she was in this fearful business at all; but now that her work is done, and that it is due to her energy and brains and foresight that the whole story is put together in such a way that every point tells, she may well feel that her part is finished, and that she can henceforth leave the rest to us.”
“Our first step has been accomplished without the bringing thereinto our most sweet Madam Mina or troubling her waking or sleeping thoughts with sights and sounds and smells of horror which she might never forget.”
“Mrs Harker is better out of it. Things are quite bad enough to us, all men of the world, and who have been in many tight places in our time; but it is no place for a woman, and if she had remained in touch with the affair, it would in time infallibly have wrecked her.”
And what does Mina have to say about all this? “I did not say anything, for I had a greater fear that if I appeared as a drag or a hindrance to their work, they might even leave me out of their counsels altogether.”
And yet to Stoker’s everlasting credit, he makes it very clear that leaving Mina out of the loop is the wrong decision. Heck, it’s a crucial plot-point that it’s the wrong decision. The fact the men do not share basic information with Mina about what’s happening is what nearly gets her killed. After she’s attacked and infected by Dracula, the men change their tact entirely:
“When the question began to be discussed as to what should be our next step, the very first thing we decided was that Mina should be in full confidence; that nothing of any sort – no matter how painful – should be kept from her.”
With Mina in the inner circle, she proves herself invaluable to the destruction of the vampire – as mentioned, she figures out by which route he’s returning to his castle lair, and comes up with the idea that she be hypnotized in order to exploit the psychic bond that now exists between her and the vampire they’re hunting. As she said earlier: “Fortunately I am not of a fainting disposition.”
And because she’s been bitten by the vampire, her very soul is now at stake. There’s some surprisingly fraught conversations about suicide and euthanasia, with van Helsing urging her to live at all costs – for were she to die before Dracula is killed, she’ll return as one of the undead. As they travel with her across Transylvania, all the men are acutely aware of the danger she poses, for just as she can peer into Dracula’s psyche, it stands to reason that he can do the same to her.
It's a no-brainer writing technique to add deeply personal stakes to whatever large-scale conflict the protagonists are attempting to resolve, and in this case the men are spurred on by their love for Mina just as desperately as their understanding that an unholy demon that preys on human beings cannot be allowed to live. In this case, it also nearly leads to one of my most hated tropes: a man being forced to kill the woman he loves.
As Mina says of the gathered menfolk:
“I shall tell you plainly what I want, for there must be no doubtful matter in this connection between us now. You must promise me, one and all – even you my beloved husband – that, should the time come, you will kill me... you too, my dearest. You must not shrink. You are nearest and dearest and all the world to me; our souls are knit into one, for all life and all time. Think dear, that there have been times when brave men have killed their wives and their womenkind, to keep them from falling into the hands of the enemy. Their hands did not falter any the more because those that they loved implored them to slay them. It is men’s duty towards those whom they love, in such times of sore trial! And oh, my dear, if it is to be that I must meet death at any hand, let it be at the hand of him that loves me best.”
Bleh.
It’s one of those things that on a Watsonian level it makes perfect sense; of course she’s asking to be killed if she becomes a monster. But on a Doylist level, it’s yet another example of a male writer eagerly exploring the possibility of what it must be like to kill a woman and be absolutely justified in doing so. I’ve ranted at length about this before (Maid Marian, Daenerys, Vanessa Ives, Jean Grey, the list goes on) so I’ll spare you the repetition, but it wasn’t much fun to see here, especially knowing that this scene probably inspired countless other books on the same subject.
As the core reason for their passion and drive; the very thing that the menfolk rally around to protect and fight for again overwhelming evil, Mina is inevitably showered with effusive praise. I mean, it’s not like they’re going to do all this for one of those voluptuous women, right? The Madonna Complex is in full effect, and nobody holds back with how precious and pure and wonderful Mina is.
To wit: “a pearl among women,” “there are darknesses in life, and there are lights; you are one of the lights,” “she is one of God’s women, fashioned by His own hand to show us men... that there is a heaven where we can enter, and that its light can be here on earth,” “so true, so sweet, so noble, so little an egotist,” “she has man’s brain – a brain that a man should have were he much gifted – and a woman’s heart,” “this boy will some day know what a brave and gallant woman his mother is. Already he knows her sweetness and loving care; later on he will understand how some men so loved her, that they did dare much for her sake.”
And look, it’s not like I disagree with any of these platitudes – Mina is indeed amazing. Like Molière said: “to inspire love is a woman's greatest ambition,” and for many such women, that’s all they want in life. But I sense that Mina wanted more. By elevating her onto a pedestal that high, she ends up robbed of some of her humanity, and the hopeful young woman who at the beginning of the story wrote: “it must be so nice to see strange countries,” doesn’t get much of a look-in by the end.
I hope that in the years to come, she gets to see those strange countries, and takes that portable typewriter with her. Perhaps she’ll write a travelogue, or a history, or a book on ancient folklore. For my favourite passage from her reminded me a bit of Tolkien’s take on Éowyn, of whom he said: “like many brave women [she] was capable of great military gallantry at a crisis.”
Or as Bram Stoker says of Mina: “There may be a solemn duty; and if it come, we must not shrink from it. I shall be prepared. I shall get my typewriter this very hour and begin transcribing.”
If it looks like I did nothing but watch television this month, it’s not true. The truth is that I simply finished a lot of stuff this month that was stretched out across a very long period of time (Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Elementary, Star Wars Visions, Abbott Elementary) and which have only just wrapped up.
I had two weeks off this month, though the first was mostly spent running errands, and the second in trying to make a dent in the giant stack of library books on my floor. I am so determined to get them read by the end of the year and then read my own damn books in 2025, but who even knows at this point.
Now as October starts, we’re heading into the spooky season (which is also spring and summer in Aotearoa) and as I made werewolves the subject of last year’s Halloween viewing, it’s only fitting that I follow it up with vampires. And there’s a lot to get through.
Also, I'm going to give Buffy the Vampire Slayer a full-season write-up later in the month, which is why it isn't featured on this list.
I’m currently on leave for two weeks, so let’s get this DONE.
We’re three episodes out from the season’s final episode (which ended up being the final episode of the show in its entirety) and there are a lot of moving parts on the board: a resurrected Darken Rahl, the Sisters of the Dark running around, and our heroes – now with an understanding of what they need to do with the Stone of Tears – using the compass to finally get where they want to go. No more detours, it’s go-time.
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Somewhat unsurprisingly, this is a Cara-centric episode. It brings her season-long arc full circle, what with her being recaptured by her former friends/allies, subjected to Mord Sith “training” (that is, torture and brainwashing) and withstanding the mental and physical pain long enough to secure her own escape. The writers, and actress Tabrett Bethell, have put in the work to make this storyline satisfying, the character having convincingly won the trust of Richard, Kahlan and Zed over the course of the season, and worked through the multitude of Capital-I Issues when it comes to the psychological turmoil she’s undergone since childhood.
In many ways, this episode is the culmination of her journey.
And so we come to the end of season four. I started posting about it back in... holy shit, July 2022! I didn’t think it was that long ago.
These final three episodes provide a pretty decent wrap-up for the themes and storylines of the season – not only returning to Rome and the Ides of March (and fulfilling Xena’s season-long vision of herself and Gabrielle getting crucified) but also touching on reincarnation and bringing Gabrielle’s pacifist arc to a thankful conclusion. Ephiny and the Amazons return, as do Caesar, Pompey, Brutus and Eli, and we’re introduced to Amarice, a character who will continue on into season five.
I’m writing about ten posts concurrently, which is the reason why this blog has been quiet for so long, so here’s a Links and Updates page to tide us over until I can post something more substantial.
Woman of the Month: Janine Teagues
Fandom usually tends toward edgy, moody, dark characters in fiction – but fiction, as in real life, will always require the existence of people like Janine Teagues. The protagonist of mockumentary Abbott Elementary, she’s defined by her determination to be the very best second grade teacher she can possibly be, in circumstances that often make that goal extremely difficult.
She’s perpetually on the bright side. Her favourite day is Monday. Her wardrobe seems to be made up entirely of mustard and canary yellow cardigans.
But it turns out her boundless optimism and drive can be just as much of a flaw as it is a virtue. Instead of waiting for the handyman to repair a light fixture, she does it herself and causes a blackout. Her attempts to reason with the children about “desking” (jumping on top of the desks during class) only makes them more determined to do it. She can’t bring herself to admit her terrible boyfriend is holding her back. She’s so positive, and such a people-pleaser, that it skews towards toxicity.
But she tries – oh, how she tries.
There’s another issue that’s often mined for laughs, but which is deeply poignant in its implications. She’s desperate for a surrogate mother and mentor in her life, and has decided co-worker Barbara Howard is the one to take on this “mum-tor” job. Barbara is not as receptive. But Janine’s obvious yearning for a connection is a little heartrending, and in a genre where drama is usually derived from women getting jealous over a man, Janine insecurity piques on meeting Barbara’s daughter Taylor. (Who then starts dating her love interest, so I guess the show covered both bases).
Here is a woman who believes deeply in her chosen career field, someone brimming with passion and drive, but who permanently exists on the verge of a breakdown. She’s a sunflower that knows she could be pulled up at any moment. Any second someone could verbalize what she’s always thinking: she’s not good enough. And so she wields her sunny attitude like a shield to deflect reality. She doesn’t leave her boyfriend because she doesn’t think she deserves any better. She’s optimistic to the point of delusional.
And yet, she’s also a woman that will pep talk a nervous kid while fighting back a panic attack because they’re both stuck on a hot-air balloon and she’s terrified of heights.
All this means that when she finally gets a win – praise from Barbara, connecting with a student, or getting the class to promptly take their seats in the final episode – it’s a cause for celebration. And the most endearing thing about her is that she’ll never give up. We need more Janines in the world.
It’s the ass-end of winter down under, but while going for a stroll on my lunch break, I happened across the first daffodil of the season!
Spring is on its way, and I personally cannot wait. This has been an awful winter, not just grey and wet and dreary, but also filled with bugs and illnesses. I’m a generally fairly healthy person, but I had so many days off this year, as did many of my colleagues.
Throughout this year I’ve managed to have very set “themes” for each month: epics in March, eighties fairy tales in April, Shakespeare in May, teen movies in June, Robin Hood/Ivanhoe in July... but August was definitely “miscellaneous.” Aside from finishing up The Tudors, which has been part of my ongoing Plantagenet/Tudor dynasty viewing, and finally getting to The Dark Crystal movie after going through the novels, comics and prequel show, I really just went where the mood took me this month.
For this post, keep in mind that I usually write reviews for things as I read/watch them, and that usually doesn’t make much of a difference in what order they're read. But this month the way I format everything I’ve been reading/watching (stage shows first, then comics, then short books, then novels, then movies, then shows) didn’t always match up with the chronology in which I read/watched them – for instance, I had Little Thieves finished before reading The Goose Girl, the fairy tale upon which the novel was based, and so which therefore comes first in the ranking. Then I finished up with The Tudors before getting to Firebrand, even though the film is positioned in this post before the final season of that show.
So some of these entries will feel a little out of order based on what I have to say about them, and when I got around to watching them.
First of all, I have to express my excitement that Renn reappears in this episode! This came as a total surprise to me, as years ago on a message board I was informed he was never seen again after his first appearance in “Listener” right at the start of season one, and so I had assumed the character (like so many others) was a one-and-done.
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I’ve no idea if the person who told me this was lying on purpose or just misremembering the show in its entirety, but it made for an unexpected treat when he returned – even though he was an awful brat the first time around. Still, I love reappearances from previously-established characters, even more so when it comes as a surprise (or at least it would have been to greater effect if the “previously on” segment hadn’t given the game away).
Well, this episode was an odd little detour, and I’m not even sure how to describe it. For a while it almost felt like a Slice of Life episode for a character we’ve never seen before: Darken Rahl’s body double, a lookalike called Walter.
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With our usual quartet of Richard, Kahlan, Cara and Zed only appearing in the first five minutes and the final act of the episode, most of the runtime is taken up with the narrative of a D’Haran captain called Malray, who spins the tale of Walter as a comedic yarn in a public house, only for the whole thing to end with some rather disturbing implications, in which Rahl once again takes advantage of circumstances and claws his way back to the land of the living.
It provides a fun showcase for Craig Parker, who naturally gets to play a very different type of character this time around. Walter is everything Rahl is not (sans an ability to seize opportunities when they arise) and makes for a fun And Now For Someone Completely Different protagonist for the duration of this particular episode.
Which means that I told a lie way back when I did my review for “Denna,” stating that hers was the only episode named after a specific character – though Walter is about as far removed from Denna and the Mord Sith as you can imagine.
Also, KATRINA LAW! Despite never having watched this season before, I knew going in that there were going to be several familiar faces: Charisma Carpenter, Keisha Castle-Hughes, John Rhys Davies... but I honestly had no idea Katrina Law would turn up. And as a Mord Sith! Whew! This was before her star-making roles in Spartacus and Arrow, so this show is allowed to take credit for spotting her talent early. Damn, she’s gorgeous.
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Toda Mariko from Shōgun
Over the past couple of months my friend and I have been making our way through Shōgun, and it’s no secret that the female characters more or less steal the show – which is impressive considering they’re up against Hiroyuki Sanada as Yoshii Toranaga, Manipulative Chessmaster extraordinaire.
When English sailor John Blackthorne runs aground on Japanese shores during the Sengoku Period, he’s thrown headlong into a dangerous world about which he knows nothing. His only avenue of comprehension is the translator appointed to him by the daimyo Toranaga who sees his value as a political asset. This translator is astute and poised and observant, and also happens to be stunningly beautiful: Mariko.
Yes, we’ve seen this story before: the white outsider falls for the beautiful princess and is gradually accepted into her culture (probably becoming better at it along the way than those who’ve been raised within it). I confess to groaning when the two characters lock eyes for the first time, as the show couldn’t have been more obvious about what was going to happen.
But then we get the rest of the story, in which Mariko’s love affair with Blackthorne plays only a very small part, and is more about her than him.
As Toranaga’s translator, she’s in a unique position compared to the women that surround her. Although they hold different degrees of their own power and agency, Mariko is at the very heart of political discussion and intrigue, for as a result of her linguistic talent she is a necessary participant in private meetings between Toranaga and Blackthorne. All communication passes through her; all the men involved are dependent on her honesty and intelligence.
She’s defined by her composure, though some (such as her husband) would call it iciness, a persona that is explained as her backstory gradually comes to light. Her father killed a daimyo in an act of treason that led to him being ordered to kill his own family before committing seppuku himself. Mariko would have been amongst the dead, were it not for her husband forbidding her involvement.
Rather than being grateful for this reprieve, Mariko longs for death. Unhappy in her marriage, estranged from her son, ashamed of her family – she’s bereft on all sides, gleaning only the tiniest bit of happiness from Blackthorne, which of course, comes with its own expiry date.
Another interesting facet to her character is her conversion to Christianity, though sadly this isn’t explored in any real depth. What was it about the religion that drew her to it? How does she reconcile it with certain aspects of the culture she belongs to? Is she a true believer, or is it a ploy to get closer to the Portuguese missionaries?
Matters of faith fascinate me, and it’s a shame we learn relatively little about what the gospels mean to her, especially when contrasted with her Death Seeker mentality and her desire to commit seppuku.
Throughout it all, Anna Sawai’s performance is captivating, in which so much is conveyed through her eyes: longing, anger, regret, sadness. Her expression remains impassive, but her eyes are windows to the soul. Heck, this story could have been vastly improved by cutting Blackthorne entirely and making her the protagonist, giving the show more time to explore the fascinatingly contradictory parts of herself.
SPOILERS
I had decided to make Mariko the subject of this particular entry a while ago, and at the time was not aware of how her story ended. In the most recent episode I’ve seen, she perished in an attack designed to undermine Toranaga, by deliberately positioning herself against a door that is about to be blown up by explosives.
I’m not entirely sure how any of this plays out in either the book or the original miniseries, but the show takes measures to avoid the usual fridging clichés. Here Mariko takes the opportunity to go out on her own terms: to fulfil her lord’s mission, to try and shield the other women in the storeroom, and to protest what’s being done to her.
It is about her duty, her tragedy, her sacrifice – what it means to her and why she does it.
What do you do when you run out of Robin Hood related material? You watch Ivanhoe!
Having read Walter Scott’s famous novel last month, I was enthusiastic about tracking down the three most popular film and television adaptations (released in 1952, 1982 and 1997 respectively) especially regarding each one’s portrayal of Rebecca and Rowena, who are going to be the subject of a forthcoming post.
It also being a story that heavily features Robin Hood, I made the time to watch several old-timey Robin Hood films that have been lurking on my hard-drive for a while now – most of them downloaded from YouTube and therefore very low on quality. Though oftentimes, that’s what makes them so entertaining.
All this was perfectly timed with me finishing up The Adventures of Robin Hood (1955 – 1959) which I must have started sometime last year, as well as my concurrent rewatch of the BBC’s Robin Hood with a friend. We’ve just started the trainwreck that is series three, and at some point I WILL finish that retrospective on the show in its entirety. A lot of it has been written already, the problem is it’s not even remotely coherent at this stage.
Reading-wise, I ended up churning through many of the Apple paperbacks I read as a kid, simply because I felt like a trip down memory lane. However, many of them ended up being supplementary books to the overarching series, and therefore the ones that I missed while growing up: tie-in novels to stuff like K.A. Applecraft’s Animorphs, John Peel’s Diadem, Caroline Lawrence’s The Roman Mysteries, the Spirit Animals saga (though those latter two came a little later in life) and of course, my two usual Babysitter Club books. I’ll read some proper literature soon, I promise. Maybe.
And I played King’s Quest V: Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder over the long weekend, so there’ll be a writeup on that in the near future. It’s so good in some respects, and yet so terrible in others.
We’re back from India and into an uneven mix of two comedy episodes and single a dramatic one that features Najara’s return and Joxer coping with killing someone for the first time. It kind of reminds me of his introductory episode, which was also about Callisto’s big debut – remember how crazy that was? In this case, it’s Najara who gets the short end of the stick, making her the biggest case of They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character of the show in its entirety.
In the season of diminishing returns, the treatment of her character is a huge disappointment. It will not be the last.
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Behold: the pixelated visage of the first playable female protagonist in a computer adventure game. I’m cautious not to say the first playable female protagonist in a computer game ever, since that honour goes to Mother Kangaroo in the Atari game Kangaroo, or perhaps Billie Sue in Wabbit, both of which were released in 1982.
But they were considered arcade games, not adventure games with structured stories and developed characters. With those criteria in place, Rosella was undoubtedly first when she appeared in King’s Quest IV: The Perils of Rosella in 1988.
Yet even this wasn’t her first appearance; that took place back in 1986, at the end of King’s Quest III: To Heir of Human. It was not an auspicious start, as she was presented a standard Damsel in Distress who had been offered up as sacrifice to a three-headed dragon, saved at the last minute by her long-lost twin brother Alexander, who – as the textboxes are at pains to tell us – finds her super-hot.
But within hours of this ordeal, Rosella gets the chance to take an adventure of her own. Delighted at her safe return, her father King Graham decides to pass on his trademark adventurer’s cap to his children, only to keel over with a heart attack before it reaches their outstretched hands. Seizing the opportunity to be magically transported to a faraway land where grows a rare fruit that could cure him, Rosella is given twenty-four hours to save her father’s life and rescue the land of Tamir from an evil fairy.
Rosella only cameos in the next two games, not appearing until each one’s conclusion, but in King’s Quest VII: The Princeless Bride, she once against takes centre-stage. Here she’s reintroduced as a Rebellious Princess who chafes against the restrictions of her royal standing, instead longing for excitement and adventure. She even gets an “I Want” Song in which she conveys her disgust at the idea of marriage. So like Alice down the rabbit hole, she barely hesitates before leaping into a magical portal that opens before her during a walk in the forest, though which she can glimpse a castle in the clouds...
Eight years after the release of her first adventure, the graphics and sound engines had improved exponentially, granting Rosella a level of characterization (largely due to the voice-acting and animation) that could only be hinted at earlier – though in saying that, it’s amazing how much personality a collection of pixels was able to convey in The Perils of Rosella. But The Princeless Bride depicts her as something of a Disney Princess: brave, kind, impulsive, curious, stubborn...
There is a perfect blend of femininity and gender neutrality at work within Rosella’s story: on the one hand, she’s clearly a Proper Young Lady, who kisses frog princes, befriends the seven dwarfs, rides a unicorn, and visits the island of a fairy queen, but also someone who gets swallowed by a whale, steals the hen that lays golden eggs, finds Pandora’s Box, and goes graverobbing in the dead of night in a zombie-infested cemetery.
It’s difficult to understate the importance of her existence, or the impact she had on me as a child – namely, that I took it as a given that girls could have their own virtual adventures. It seems odd that things have gotten both better and worse since then, for as creator/designed Roberta Williams said in an interview: “I knew the female lead is just fine for women and girls who play the game, but wasn’t sure how it would go over with some of the men. And you know what? It wasn’t as controversial as I expected.”
If only that were still true today!
This month was all about the teen rom-com drama, which sounds like a weird follow-up to last month’s Shakespearean splurge, but at least three of the films I watched were based on a Shakespearean play, so it was actually quite a fitting theme. (This also meant I ended up watching a lot of YouTube clips from Not Another Teen Movie).
Furthermore, I’ve continued with my journey through The Dark Crystal franchise, with two of the four YA novels, and a rewatch of the gone-before-its-time Netflix series (so now I’m grumpy all over again at its cancellation).
More girl detectives, more of The Tudors (as well as an unrelated Anne Boleyn-centric miniseries) and ... wait for it ... Ivanhoe! I’ll be watching the most famous film/television adaptations in July and doing my promised deep-dive into Rebecca and Rowena.
Back to it! I’ll admit I’ve been a little distracted by my Buffy the Vampire Slayer rewatch over on Tumblr, but I always planned to return to Legend of the Seeker, especially since we’re so close to the finish line.
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It’s all kicking off! It seems like I posted one of these Links and Updates just recently, and yet since then, a ton more stuff has been announced... not all of it good, though at the same time I’m feeling surprisingly upbeat about what’s on offer.
Djaq from BBC’s Robin Hood
This month my friend and I finished the second season of the BBC’s most recent take on Robin Hood. I say “most recent,” even though it ended in 2009, because as far as I know there has not been another live-action television show based on the Robin Hood legends since – on the BBC or any other network.
This was the first time I’ve seen the show in many years, and it wasn’t a binge-watch, but something that was spread out over the course of many months, with an episode viewed after a movie or something like Shōgun, almost as a garnish to the more involved stuff. There was a lot of enjoyment to be derived from poking fun at the myriad of anachronisms and bewildering storylines, but also in wallowing through the lukewarm waters of nostalgia, given that this show comprised my very first fandom.
I say “lukewarm” waters, because to this day, I’m still haunted by many of the show’s inexplicable creative decisions in the final episode of season two, foremost among them being the brutal murder of Maid Marian at the hands of Guy of Gisborne, but also including the abrupt termination of the Black Knights arc, a one-episode foray to the Holy Land, the blink-and-you’ll-miss-it death of a popular guest star, and the permanent exit of supporting characters Will Scarlett and Djaq the Saracen.
Yes, the conclusion of season two also brought about the end of Djaq’s story, she not appearing in the third and final season of the show. And yet she still holds a fascinating place not only in this retelling of the legend, but in the ongoing progression of the Robin Hood mythos and its ever-growing number of adaptations.
Her genesis can be found in ITV’s Robin of Sherwood (1984 – 1986) which was the first of its kind to add a Saracen character to the traditional lineup of Merry Men. As it happened, the character of Nasir was meant to be a one-shot bad guy, but the cast and crew liked the actor so much they kept him on.
His inclusion was handled so organically that when the screenwriter of Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (1991) was perusing relevant material to inspire his own script, he assumed that a Saracen had always been part of Robin Hood’s band and wrote one in accordingly, though having to hastily change the name from Nasir to Azeem when it became apparent the former was an original creation. Or so the story goes.
Technically, the tradition of Saracens in the Robin Hood legends started even earlier, from around the time the first ballads were moved from the reign of an undefined King Edward, to that of King Richard the Lionheart and his brother Prince John, which not only provided a rich historical backdrop for the story (the Good King versus the Evil Prince) but which necessarily made the Holy Land and the Third Crusade an intrinsic part of any retelling. As far back as 1922’s Robin Hood with Douglas Fairbanks, or the 1950s’ Adventures of Robin Hood, there have been Middle-Eastern people mingling with the Anglo-Saxons – though granted, most of them were white actors in brownface.
But since Nasir and Azeem, there has hardly been a Robin Hood story that hasn’t featured a Saracen outlaw in some capacity, whether it was the jokey additions of Archoo and Barrington in Robin Hood: Men in Tights and Maid Marian and Her Merry Men, or Jamie Foxx playing Yahya, a Character Composition of the Saracen and Little John, in the 2018 film.
Smackdab in the middle of these portrayals came Anjali Jay as Djaq, who played the part between 2006 and 2007, and to this day is the only female iteration of the Saracen character.
In many ways, her presence was a stroke of genius. With only one other established female character in the cast, it made sense that the writers would be eager to introduce an Affirmative Action Girl to the proceedings, and gender-flipping the role of the Saracen, an “unfixed” character who had already gone through several different names and characterizations over the years, was an elegant way of achieving this.
In saying that, there’s also no escaping the fact that there’s a certain sense of deliberation to Djaq’s inclusion, not only as a more tomboyish foil to Marian’s femininity, but also to add some diversity to the otherwise all-white cast. In the decades before “woke” was widely in usage, those that are currently being driven to insanity by that particular term and its perceived threat to the art of storytelling would have been thrown into apoplexies of rage at the existence of Djaq.
In many ways, she does embody what’s known as a Flawless Token, and I definitely recall plenty of commentators back in the day throwing around accusations of her being a Mary Sue (along with Marian). At first glance, it’s not difficult to see why: she’s beautiful and wise and can hold her own in combat just as well as any of the men. She's a trained physician, is highly educated, can speak and read several languages, is an expert in the STEM fields of knowledge, and comes across as more sensible and emotionally intelligent than most of the menfolk that surround her.
In keeping with the prerequisites of the trope, she’s also given a tragic backstory involving the slaughter of her entire family during the Crusade, including her twin brother whose identity she assumed in order to fight in the guise of a man before she was captured and brought to England as a slave. It's a traumatic history that doesn’t seem to faze her in the slightest when she joins up with the outlaws, who have among their number two former soldiers that fought under King Richard in his invasion of her homeland. She... doesn’t have a problem with that?
There is a fear, prevalent to this day, to giving a minority character any overt flaws, and you can understand the logic at work (“we owe them” or “we’re too afraid not to make them perfect”) even if it robs them of some degree of humanity. So no, Djaq is not going to express any sort of anger or resentment or even basic introspection about the fact she’s now taking orders from a former Crusader, even though that would have made for a fascinating angle for the story to explore.
In many ways, Djaq feels like a character who was cooked up in a boardroom by a focus group, as opposed to the brainchild of a singular writer with a vision as her predecessors Nasir and Azeem were – an assumption borne out by the fact that once she had been conceived and cast and introduced to the show... nobody seemed to have any real idea of what to do with her.
Despite the implications of her presence, the wide array of skills she brought to the team, her rich backstory, and the potential she had in becoming a player of the wider political landscape this particular retelling was so interested in, she’s given no arc, no character-centric episode, and by the end of season two, she essentially Quits To Get Married, never to be seen or heard from again. She just completely ceases to exist!
In many ways, she's a perfect example of the clumsy preoccupations of networks in the early noughties. They want to have a heroic Muslim character to demonstrate how forward-thinking and progressive they are, but said character is played by an Indian actress, will be kept firmly on the periphery of the story, and will never get the chance to have her perspective or background explored in any great detail. That's representation in 2006, down to a tee.
Djaq might be given tantalizing lines, such as when she tells a prisoner that "on that journey [to England] I learned every way there is of trying to talk my way out of bondage," but such dialogue is never examined further. There are moments of cultural significance, such as when she insists on the quick burial of a corpse, but they're never given any context. We get to see her bathe for prayers, but never actually pray. And finally, she falls in love with a Christian man, with no thought given to how they're going to negotiate their differences in religion, language, culture, family, or the fact their countries are currently at war with each other.
Her abrupt departure is insulting to the point of offensive, especially when she’s promptly replaced by a white woman that fills much of her role in the gang dynamic, but who the new team of writers were mysteriously capable of keeping at the forefront of the storylines, letting her command twice as much narrative import despite not having any of the useful skills that Djaq was endowed with. (As an aside, all those commentators who complained Djaq and Marian were Mary Sues now found themselves desperate to get them back after the onset of Kate).
All these years later, and I’m still angry about it. I will always, always be bitter that we didn’t get a third season with her.
Where am I going with all this? To my point, which is this: that even though the writers failed her miserably, even though these days a certain segment of viewers would be screaming about "woke agendas" (back then they called it "affirmative action"), and even though she's by any admission a rather underwritten character that was almost certainly conceived to be the perfect box-ticking team minority – none of this necessarily leads to the formation of a bad character. Because I LOVED HER.
Loved her not only as a fascinating stepping stone in the evolution of the Saracen in the Robin Hood mythos, but as a character in her own right, as played with humour and panache by Anjali Jay, and as an inspiration to my own fledging attempts at writing. The show gave me a character prototype born out of a seemingly genuine desire (at least at first) to add diversity to the mix and I ran wild with it, as she is to this day the only fictional character I’ve written reams of fanfiction about, exploring the details of her past and future, and diving into material that the show never bothered with. There is the Djaq that exists on the show, and the one that lives in my imagination, and I have spent hours thinking about the latter.
I’m still a little stunned we never even got a flashback episode to her life as Saffiyah prior to meeting Robin Hood, one that explored the death of the real Djaq, her time as a Sweet Polly Oliver in the army, and the circumstances of how she was captured/sold into slavery, and I'll be forever bewildered that on formulating such a rich and interesting character, the entirety of the writers’ room was at a complete loss with what to do with her afterwards (that's another hallmark of 2006-era representation).
But she also stands as a testimony to the fact that despite the obligatory feel of her inclusion, and the slapdash way with which she was removed, there is nothing stopping a determined viewer from utilizing their imagination and making a character their own. None of this "she's just not interesting enough," bullshit please. That attitude is entirely up to you.
This post has ended up an essay, and I’m annoyed that most of it feels like I’m justifying her presence, or examining her role in the early days of the internet culture wars. In the midst of all this discussion, Djaq herself is practically obliterated. Yet she is genuinely one of my favourite characters of all time: her wit, her intelligence, her potential, and her role in the ongoing Robin Hood canon.
One day I’m going to tell her story and do it justice.
This month was all about The Dark Crystal and Shakespeare, though thanks to having a fortnight of annual leave, I also managed to churn through several shows that I’ve been meaning to get to for ages (the first season of The Terror, the third season of A Discovery of Witches, and The Tudors).
Altogether, I got through a huge range of stuff, from my usual Babysitter Club instalments, to long-gestating Dark Crystal supplementary material (most of which was in graphic novel form), to a couple more girl detectives, to all the drama and tragedy and comedy that the Bard has to offer.
In short, a good reading/viewing month, and if it took ages to post this one, it’s because I’ve been nursing a head cold that just won’t go away.
It’s been a long time since I lasted posted some Xena Warrior Princess reviews, as my newish DVD player doesn’t read my considerably older discs, which means I have to go elsewhere to refresh my memory on how these episodes played out, and that depends a lot on whether assorted family members are willing to let me veg out on their couches for an extended period of time. (These reviews were written years ago, but I still like to have some recollection of what I’m actually posting about).
For this entry, I’ve decided to feature four rather than the usual three episodes, as this quartet neatly encompass the entirety of the India arc. Plus, there are twenty-two episodes per season, so at some point I always have to add an extra episode to a post so everything fits.
The India arc is arguably what season four is best known for, and I’m pretty certain there were some recreational drugs being passed around the writers’ room while they were being conceptualized. Shit gets weird. Furthermore, when it comes to the show’s treatment of India’s culture and religion... holy cultural appropriation Batman! In particular, “The Way” is filled with apologetic official disclaimers, for even back in 1998 there was pushback against using other people’s belief systems as a backdrop for your cheesy fantasy series.
Let’s get to it...
The fourth instalment in the King’s Quest series feels like a natural follow-up to its predecessor. If King’s Quest III made former protagonist King Graham’s son Alexander its playable character, it makes perfect sense for King’s Quest IV to focus on his daughter, Princess Rosella, introduced at the very end of the previous game in which she's rescued from a three-headed, fire-breathing dragon by her long-lost twin brother.
Indeed, it’s such a no-brainer for the focus to move to Rosella, that The Perils of Rosella literally picks up seconds after the previous game’s conclusion, with Graham deciding to give up his adventurer’s cap (a symbol of his glory days) and pass it onto his children, flinging it through the air towards them as his wife Valanice looks on.
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The twins reach up to snatch it from the air, when all of a sudden Graham grabs his chest and lurches over in pain, the victim of an apparent heart attack. He’s taken to his bedchamber, and overcome with grief, Rosella flees back into the throne room, where a voice from the magic mirror tells her there might be a way to save him. In the glass, Rosella can see a beautiful fairy, who tells her of a magical fruit in the faraway land of Tamir which could restore her father to full heath.
Rogue from X-Men
When I hear the words “X-Men,” I think of Rogue. No, she wasn’t in the original line-up of Professor X’s student body/private militia, and she isn’t the most iconic character in the team (you know full-well who gets that honour, as it’s one so pronounced it coined its own TV Tropes page).
But for me, Rogue embodies what the X-Men are all about as a concept and a symbol better than any other carrier of the x-gene in that ever-growing array of mutants. Her powers and personality make her the quintessential X-Man (or Woman), exemplifying how a mutation can be both a blessing and a curse. She’s capable of absorbing the strength, memories, personality traits, or – in the case of mutants – abilities of others, with just a touch of her hand.
It has the potential to make her one of the most powerful mutants of all, though the downside is that her touch can be fatal to whoever’s on the receiving end. This means she’s entirely without the ability to enjoy physical relationships: no hand-holding, no kisses, no... you get the gist.
I’m not a comic book reader, so I can’t tell you much about her origins. I tried looking it up on Wikipedia, and to be honest, it read like complete gibberish. Apparently, her first appearance was in an Avengers comic? And then in something called Rom the Space Knight? I’ve never even heard of that. She was raised by Mystique, absorbed her flying and superstrength powers from Carol Danvers (yes, that Carol Danvers), spent some time as part of the Brotherhood of Mutants, and embarked on an extremely fraught romantic relationship with fellow team-member Gambit.
Since then, she’s become a permanent fixture of the X-Men franchise, appearing in nearly all of the cartoons and live-action films that have been adapted over the years. Though I have no clear memory of it, I would have been introduced to her through the 1992 – 1997 animated series that I watched as a kid. And though I can’t truthfully called her a “revelation,” since you take everything for granted at that age, she definitely imprinted herself on me.
She flew. She was superstrong. The skunk stripe in her hair? The bomber jacket? The accent? I wanted to be her so badly, I didn’t even care about the whole “you can’t touch people” thing. That moment in the opening credits in which she flips a sentient over her head is still one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen a female character do in a superhero show.
There’s another scene I recall in which the team is attempting to escape a ship through an automatic door. The combined strength of Beast and Wolverine can’t keep it open, but Rogue flies up and holds it above her head until everyone can get out safely. No fuss, no commentary, no embarrassed looks or self-deprecating comments from the menfolk – she just hauls it out of the way and they get on with the job at hand.
These days, half the audience would have an absolute conniption at such a scene.
Adaptations that followed demonstrated the versatility of Rogue as a character: in the Fox live-action movies she was depicted by Anna Paquin as a vulnerable teenage runaway. In X-Men Evolution, she’s reimagined as a Goth girl whose clothing and makeup project the physical barriers between herself and others. In the short-lived Wolverine and the X-Men, she’s (excuse the pun) gone rogue, and infiltrated the Brotherhood in order to get intel on their goings-on.
A southern belle, a moody Goth, a frightened teenager, a double-agent – Rogue could be any and all of these things, and it’s a testament to the strength of her character that each of them works on-screen.
Also notable is that for a long time, her real name went unmentioned in the comics; almost twenty years in fact, until the live-action film in 2000 called her “Marie,” and the comics followed suit by finally revealing her name as “Anna Marie” (though her surname remains a mystery). Then there’s her on-again, off-again romance with Gambit, which surely comprises the most iconic couple in the entire franchise, barring only the whole Jean/Scott/Logan love triangle fiasco.
According to my research, the two of them have finally gotten hitched in the comics and are enjoying married life together. I’ve no idea how they’ve gotten around the whole “I’m an energy vampire who can destroy people with a touch” thing, but given that I shipped them before I even knew what the term meant (heck, before the term had even been invented) this makes me very vicariously happy.
And seeing her again in X-Men ’97, complete with her original voice actress, is a complete mind-melt. For all my issues about reboots and remakes and legacyquels, I have no complaints when properties I enjoyed as a child are brought back and made better. And as ever, Rogue embodies my favourite kind of female character: completely badass exterior, soft and vulnerable on the inside.
From about the age of six, if you asked me who my favourite superhero of all time was, I would say Rogue all the way.
It is now autumn, daylight savings has finished, and I’m officially in my cold and miserable state of mind.
Because I still have a surplus of annual leave that I have to take, I have another two weeks break coming up – and I’ve decided to use them by turning this month into Dark Crystal May. I have a ton of graphic novels from the franchise that I haven’t had a chance to crack open, so now’s the time to do it (I keep seeing those Tumblr posts circulating that warn people not to save the good stuff but to USE it as soon and as often as possible – that goes for books as well as soaps, candles and other luxury items). So I’m looking forward to my return to Thra.
May also means the return of Interview with the Vampire and Doctor Who, and a couple of weeks ago I watched the first few episodes of both Shōgun and X-Men ’97… so I’ll press on with those as well.
I’m also continuing my “girl detectives” themed reading with a couple more titles in that genre, which will probably stretch out into June the way I’m going. Plus, the third books in Katherine Arden’s Winternight trilogy, and Philip Reeve’s Utterly Dark trilogy. So many things, so little time.
As it happened, I also rewatched Nimona and Enola Holmes 2 this month in order to write-up my Top Twelve list for 2024, but I won’t comment on them here. Ditto Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, which was the film chosen for our last movie night at work (bringing us up to a total of three films in a row that involved a. sticking it to the Nazis and b. a woman called Elsa (or Ilsa).
I’ve managed it at last: my final annual end-of-year post. This one was meant to wrap up the year by listing the Twelve Best Moments of Film or Television in 2023, but Covid and full-time work have delayed it until now.
What’s more, 2023 was a difficult year for me in regards to actually finding noteworthy moments to write about, and you’ll discover that the entries on this list often have more to do with “ideas” or “concepts” or “designs” than actual scenes.
The other reason this list may feel a little thin is because I didn’t watch much new stuff this year – I’m sick of starting things only to watch them get cancelled, so 2023 had me seek out entertainment from ten or more years ago, where I could be assured of a beginning, middle and end to any given story. To do otherwise is just a waste of precious time.
Which means that much of what is featured here are from projects released at the tail-end of 2022, though I’ve always allowed myself a bit of wriggle room on what constitutes “the year.” Anything from the nineties is way out, but anything released between 2020 to 2022 passes muster (provided I actually watched it in 2023).
So, here we finally are – the Top Twelve Best Moments of Film or Television in 2023:
Xiao Qiao and Sun Shangxiang from Red Cliff
You can usually be assured of one – but only one – decent female character in a historical epic, but anything more than that (agency, a relationship with another woman, an important part to play in the action, passing the Bechdel Test) is less of a guarantee. So, when a film gives you more than the bare minimum, it’s a cause for celebration. Say for example, two female characters.
But you know what writers and audiences love? Putting women in binary roles, and then pitting them against each other. The good girl and the bad girl, the Madonna and the Whore, the Dark or Light Feminine, feathers or flowers, Maidens and Crones. Usually if there are two women in a male-dominated story, they’ll be bland BFFs (Cecelia and Blanka), bitter rivals (Morgana and Guinevere) or have nothing whatsoever to do with each other (Rowena and Rebecca). Complex dynamics are completely out of the question.
Where am I going with all this? Xiao Qiao and Sun Shangxiang of Red Cliff manage to avoid many of the pitfalls of the gendered archetypes mentioned above, even as they embody others. Together, they very much form the two halves of the Tomboy and Girly Girl binary. Xiao is demure, feminine, soft-spoken and elegant, who is renowned for her tea-making skills and functions as a nurse during the war effort. In stark contrast, Shangxiang is argumentative, outspoken, determined and sometimes downright rude, who is an active participant in the combat that the entire film revolves around.
But the most important thing about both their characterizations is that neither depiction of womanhood is held up as superior to the other. Let’s be honest, modern audiences tend to prefer the scrappy tomboy to the prim little madame (say, Arya and Sansa) though in the times in which these stories are set, it would have been the Proper Lady who would have garnered the most respect. But in this case, Xiao and Shangxiang are portrayed as equals.
That in itself is worthy of commentary, but what fascinates me even more is that this balance is reflected in the structure of the film itself. In part one of the story, Xiao is positioned as the impetus for the war (Cao Cao’s lust for her is his primary motivation), but it is Shangxiang’s arrow which draws first blood from the invading enemy forces. In part two, both women play a crucial role in the final victory: Shangxiang’s undercover reconnaissance provides essential intel regarding Cao Cao’s forces, while the film’s emotional climax sees Xiao on a mission of her own, walking into enemy territory with the goal of distracting Cao Cao long enough for the wind to change and her husband's plan to work.
Basically, Shangxiang is Mulan (with a small dose of Éowyn when she finds out the hard way that war is not as glorious as she imagines it) while Xiao reminds me a little of Elinor from Brave, especially since Red Cliff finds a way to weaponize tea-making in the same way that embroidery was the key to breaking the spell over Elinor in Brave. It’s not just Xiao’s beauty, but her feminine skill with a brew that successfully stalls Cao Cao at a critical moment.
Between them, these women essentially begin and end the war. They are counterweights to each other across the film’s two halves, and the pivot is the scene – the only scene – in which they interact with each other. As it happens, it’s a warm and affectionate one, in which Shangxiang asks for assistance in removing her garments, and Xiao tries to protect her friend’s modesty by silently warning the men to turn around.
[Context: Shangxiang has concealed the large map of Cao Cao’s encampment underneath her armour, wrapped around her body, and is too excited to share what she’s learned to wait for any privacy].
That’s all we get from them, but somehow it’s enough – an interaction between two women that manages to be close and intimate despite occurring in a room full of men.
Neither woman could do what the other one does. Furthermore, no man could do what either of these women achieve (that goes without saying when it comes to Xiao, but the reason Cao’s men are so easily drawn into Zhuge Liang’s trap after Shangxiang fires her arrow is explicitly because the soldiers refuse to be intimidated by a girl). One is not braver than the other, for both walk knowingly into the enemy camp, albeit in profoundly different ways, and emerge victorious.
They are more than the archetypes they embody, for their opposing feminine energy makes them perfect foils to each other, and are intrinsic elements to the plot itself. Best of all, they’re not rivals but friends – this is made very clear, even if we only catch a glimpse.
It was historical epic movie month at my place. I don’t talk about this genre often, but I love a good historical epic, provided they capture the essential balance: deeply personal stakes set against a grand backdrop of historical import. Too many don’t realize that this is the secret ingredient, and it’s easy to pinpoint the great epics from the lesser ones based on this criteria.
The Woman King revolved around the relationship between a mother and her daughter. Arn has the love story between its leads. Red Cliff went for the genuine camaraderie between the allied forces. The emotional stakes of Gladiator were spread a little thin, with Maximus’s bond with his dead family, Lucilla, Caesar Aurelius and his fellow gladiators all vying for space, but the culminative effect does the job. Kingdom of Heaven... has none. I’ll have more to say below the cut.
If it looks like I managed to watch a lot of television this month, it’s more accurate to say I finished a lot of television this month. I started the third season of Elementary back in January (it went on hiatus for my three-weeks leave) and I’ve been watching one episode of The Gilded Age per week with mum since last year. It all just happened to conclude in March.
And I am slowly but surely plugging away at my stack of library books. Once they’re done I’m going to be concentrating on my own damn books for a change.
Oh, and look at that – this is my one-hundredth reading/watching log! I probably should have done something special to commemorate the occasion. Probably.
I know it’s been quiet on this blog for a while, but I really am trying to pull together my Twelve Best Scenes for 2023! Until then, let’s discuss the fact there’s been an insane amount of trailers for blockbuster material released in the last couple of weeks, including from the Big Three Franchises (Game of Thrones, Star Wars, MCU).
Let’s take a look...
Queen Margrete from Margrete: Queen of the North
Three months into 2024 and I’m already struggling to fill these posts. But luckily, I watched this film just last night and Queen Margrete more than met the qualifications for a worthy Woman of the Month.
There are plenty of stories out there concerning women who have to chose between their careers/personal ambition and their families/pursuit of love, but seldom has that conflict been placed in the context of a 14th century queen who rules subtly but firmly behind her adopted son, King Erik, and has worked her entire life to form a lasting peace between Denmark, Sweden and Norway.
Now at age fifty, her life’s ambition is about to come to fruition, with leaders of all three countries pledging support for the Kalmar Union. I honestly can’t think of another film that revolves around a woman of her age and power, in a (relatively speaking) accurate historical setting, grappling with a moral crisis like the one presented here. Because just as the treaty is to be consolidated, a young man returns to court, claiming to be Margrete’s long-dead son Oluf.
If true, this would make him heir to the Danish throne, and a threat to Margrete’s life’s work.
Should she act as a mother or as a queen? Emotional complexity is derived from the fact that after fifteen years, she barely recognizes the man claiming to be her son, and has since replaced him in her heart with her great-nephew Erik, who is himself starting to act on the resentment he’s long harboured against her for uprooting him from his childhood to become her heir, not to mention the power she still holds over the court.
Trine Dyrholm delivers a fantastic performance as Margrete: she’s authoritative but not overbearing; unsentimental but not cruel. Poised, self-contained, shrewd and charismatic, she walks and talks like a queen, yet interestingly, never comes across as ruthless despite what she’s called upon to do. She is a mother, but she is also a leader, and the struggle to balance the two states never ends.
Thankfully, she’s spared any anachronistic “girl power” moments in which she vents her frustration at the oppressive nature of the patriarchy – instead, the film shows us how she has to tread carefully so as to not emasculate her adopted son, to continually stroke the egos of the men that surround her, and to never come across as too weak or emotional during the public trial of her supposed son. The difficulties of being a woman in a man’s world is apparent in every scene she moves through, and it’s all demonstrated without being commented upon.
When she makes her final choice, it’s to protect her true child – not Oluf, not Erik, but the Kalmar Union. But there’s nothing triumphant or “yaas queen!” about it. The last words her son speaks to her are: “you weren’t strong enough,” to which she replies: “no, I was too strong.” Despite the conflict and regret in her heart, she’s uncompromising, and the film makes sure we’re aware of the aftermath: that the Kalmar Union lasted over one hundred years, and that the bond between the three countries that lasts to this day can be largely attributed to Queen Margrete.
But like a lot of rulers, she (or at least this fictionalized account of her) had to pay a bitter price for it.
