Angela Barrett: The Wild Swans

In dark times you have to seek out beautiful things: that which exists for the sole purpose of spurring contemplation, admiration, and tranquillity. This is a blogpost series I’ve been planning for a while now, in which I chose a particular illustration from a picture book by one of my favourite artists and look at it in more detail: the colours, the composition, the symbolism, all that jazz.

I have several illustrators in mind: Jackie Morris, Trina Schart Hyman, P.J. Lynch, Kinuko Craft, Jane Ray, Ruth Sanderson, and the plan is to work through all of their work as the mood takes me, looking at each of their published books and picking out the most impressive illustration in each one – or at least the one that speaks mostly strongly to me.

Lately I've been poring over the work of Angela Barrett, an illustrator I've loved for a long time now, though I've only recently been inspired to explore her back catalogue. One trip through the library records later, and I settled down to relax into her body of work, which largely consists of children's stories, with a particular emphasis on fairy tales.

Woman of the Month: Allison Hargreeves

Allison Hargreeves from The Umbrella Academy

The first season of The Umbrella Academy was not particularly kind to Allison Hargreeves, a.k.a. Number Three. Though she and her six siblings were all ranked by their individual usefulness, putting her near the top of the pecking order of their adopted father’s private school, the writers seemed a little unsure of what to do with her.

This was perhaps due to the fact her ability unmistakably makes her the most powerful of the seven students, with the ability to persuade people into doing her will by simply prefacing a statement with the term: “I heard a rumour…” Yet paradoxically this makes it difficult to place her at the centre of the story, for after all, she only needs to speak a command to solve almost any problem.

As such, the first season largely kept her on the outskirts of the main action: giving her a quasi-incestuous relationship with her brother Luthor, lightly delving into the abuse of her powers in how she handled her career and daughter, and finally silencing her when her sister Vanya slashes her throat.

That season wasn’t great anyway, but it was especially egregious in regards to Allison. It’s easy to compare her to Marvel’s Kilgrave, who had similar powers of persuasion but absolutely no moral compass whatsoever, and I felt the writers dropped the ball on exploring what it would actually be like to grapple with the profound temptation of knowing you could get whatever you wanted with only a whispered turn-of-phrase. Seriously, would it even be possible to remain uncorrupted with such a gift?

Because despite her shortcomings, Allison remains an essentially good person, even when she arrives in Dallas in the 1960s and finds herself in an environment that’s deeply hostile to a woman of her colour. If ever she had an excuse to unleash her power on a well-deserving public, this was it (and I know I would have been ordering every racist to jump off the nearest bridge).

Yet Allison decides to “go clean” and join the Civil Rights Movement without utilizing her abilities – showing far more restraint than I ever could have when she’s faced with abject hatred for simply entering a local diner and asking for a cup of coffee. The depiction of her calm and dignified staged sit-in is a surprisingly effective and respectful tribute to the struggle for social justice that clearly still resonates in our current climate – but when she’s finally had enough of the disrespect and unleashes the full brunt of her power… well, who can blame her?

But does lead me to wonder how much control Allison actually has over her abilities. In the lead-up to the sit-in she articulates her fear in ever using them, stating that they only bring trouble. Later she manages to mind-control one of the Swedish assassins that’ve been sent to kill her, but instead of simply ordering him to leave, she tells him to kill his own brother. Why the unnecessary sadism? Is she even aware she’s doing it? Do her abilities inevitably lead her to the cruellest possible solution to her problems?

The writers haven’t divulged this information yet, and they completely gloss over the interesting stakes that could have arisen from Allison’s presence in the 1060s. Could she have helped speed up the Civil Rights Movement? Did she have a moral obligation to do so? Or was her fear of what she could do and the subsequent risk to the time-line too great? Again, it’s not just that we don’t get answers, it’s that nobody even asks the questions!

With seven protagonists and a range of important supporting characters, it makes sense that no one should get to hog all the screen-time, but there’s so much potential when it comes to Allison and her abilities. Her power makes her the show’s most interesting character, mostly in regards to the ramifications it has on herself and the world around her, and going into season three I hope the writers aren’t afraid to really explore the effect it’s had on her daughter, on how Reginald raised her, and on whether it has an undue influence over Allison herself. Just who is really in charge when she utters the words: “I heard a rumour…?”

Reading/Watching Log #56

And so continues my year-long attempt to focus on female characters and their creators, though it’s a lot harder than I thought it was going to be back in January – not because there aren’t many of them out there, but because I keep getting distracted by new and shiny things coming into the library and dropping on Netflix. The Rise of Kyoshi has a male author, but the protagonist is female, so that counts right? And A Letter for the King is an incredibly male-centric story but was written by a woman, so that’s okay, right?

I’m not going to beat myself up over this, as my New Years’ Resolution was for fun and to encourage me to start reading/watching things that aren’t necessarily mainstream, and so far that’s working out for me... though there’s still a lot of franchise material under the cut. Vanya and Allison both get solid arcs on season two of The Umbrella Academy, and (despite some bad news on the live-action front) the Avatar franchise is spreading its wings with new stories about Korra and Kyoshi.

I finished up the third and final season of Disney’s Tangled series (with mixed feelings about how they handled Cassandra) and got started on the gloriously trashy Cursed, which shines the spotlight on the unsung heroines of Arthurian legend. On the movie front I saw Hustlers and 2011’s Jane Eyre, and allowed myself to watch Hitchcock’s Rebecca – hardly feminist, but unmistakably female-focused, which is sometimes better if the story knows what it’s doing. This one (mostly) does.

I even dipped my toe back into the Star Wars universe, being captivated by one Doctor Chelli Aphra, and (in a decision that feels very poignant now) read a younger reader’s Black Panther tie-in novel focused on Princess Shuri. That one still hurts.

Links and Updates

 Before we get to the pop-culture stuff, I just want to say that the March 15th shooter, who took fifty-one innocent Muslim lives last year, was sentenced yesterday for life imprisonment without parole. There were some stirring stories within the courtroom, and the survivors were permitted to address the terrorist directly – whether in anger, grief or (amazingly) forgiveness.

A small mercy was that he plead guilty and had nothing to say in his own defense. I have no idea what spurred this decision (and I don’t much care either) but at least it spared the families the pain of a trial. Now he has nothing to look forward to but a life of empty monotony; void of human companionship or love, and the rest of us can forget his worthless carcass ever existed at all.

However, I do want to say that the news outlets of this country have been exemplary. Refusing to indulge in sensationalism or in giving this monster the notoriety he craves, yesterday was the first time he made the front page of any publication – even then The Star deliberately pixelated his face, and The Press published a caption that explained they were demonstrating how pathetic and weak he was (sure enough, the unflattering picture emphasis his tiny stature and thinning hair).

I’m profoundly grateful that New Zealand journalism has handled this event with so much compassion and common sense; elevating the voices of the survivors and diminishing the stature of the terrorist. As was said so often throughout the victim statements: he tried to scare and divide us, and only succeeded in bringing us together.

Though it will never bring back those innocent lives, I hope at least that the day provided some closure for the families most affected.

I’m afraid the rest of this post isn’t going to be any more cheerful, though the subject matter will certainly be less grim…

Review: Anastasia (film and musical)

 I’m back on my Anastasia bullshit.

It’s hard to know why I love this movie so much. I mean, I’m the first to admit that it’s ridiculous to the point of offensiveness, seeing as it’s a lighthearted musical based on the real-life assassination of an entire family. Whatever you may think of Nikolai II Alexandrovich Romanov – or even monarchies in general – he was by all accounts a loving husband and father, and his five children (who at the time of their deaths were aged between thirteen and twenty-two) certainly did not deserve such a violent end.

Basing a children’s animated film around such an event, and adding talking bats, musical numbers and a happy ending is questionable to say the least. Yet watching this at age twelve, I hardly cared about any of that. I first learned of the film’s existence during the Golden Globe Awards of 1998, in which it was nominated twice for Best Original Song (Once Upon a December and Journey to the Past), and something about the clips just captivated me. The countdown began…

By the time it hit New Zealand theatres I had successfully hyped up my little sister and my best friend, and finally getting to see it was an Event in the way that going to the movies just isn’t anymore. And no, I’m not talking about the way Star Wars or Marvel films or any other big blockbusters are promoted as must-see big-screen Events, but rather the way you occasionally approach a film and just know that it’s going to soak into your psyche and become a formative experience.

I’ve only felt this way about three other films in my adult life: Pan’s Labyrinth (2006), The Illusionist (2006) and Song of the Sea (2014) and in revisiting any of them it’s not just the memory of the stories that appeal, but recalling the storm of emotions I felt while watching them for the first time. I’m sure we’ve all got books or movies or shows like this – ones that feel engrained in our subconscious either through having watched them at a very early age or by the way they cater so perfectly to our unique tastes and preferences that they feel like they were crafted for us personally.

When I take into account my other favourite movies – The Neverending Story (1984), Labyrinth (1984), The Secret Garden (1993), Sleepy Hollow (1999), The Mummy (1999), and The Others (2001) it’s clear how Anastasia fits into my storytelling predilections. It’s a period drama with a strong female protagonist, beautiful animation, a complex love story between two people with genuine chemistry who have to earn their happy ending, some ethical dilemmas, and a fairy tale ambiance that’s tinged with loss and regret, but also a strong sense of enduring hope. Give or take a few of these elements, and that describes all my favourite films.

So I was perhaps always destined to be obsessed with Anastasia. Which, as I said, is absurd, because this movie is bonkers.

Woman of the Month: Claudia Kishi

Claudia Kishi from The Babysitter's Club

Growing up with The Babysitter’s Club, I was aware on some level that the profound differences in the girls – their backgrounds, personalities, interests – was a way to connect with a wider pool of readers. Just as today we ask Harry Potter fans what Hogwarts House they belong to, kids of the nineties would ask each other: “are you a Kirsty or a Mary Anne?”

I was a Claudia. It’s not that I didn’t connect with Kirsty’s tomboyish nature or Mary Anne’s shyness or Mallory's love of books, but Claudia was the one that pinged my deepest interests: junk food, Nancy Drew mysteries, and artistic endeavours. I didn’t have the difficulties at school or the overbearing parents/older sister, but I had my own version of Mimi, and will if not the courage to dress in a way that reflected my creative side.

Of course, there’s one big difference between myself and Claudia, and that’s that I’m not Asian-American. There is a fifteen-minute documentary on Netflix at the moment called The Claudia Kishi Club that features various writers, artists and creators of Asian-American descent that hold her up as a profound influence in their childhoods, at a time in which representation for Asians was borderline non-existent.

Of course, Claudia Kishi was invented and written by the very-white Ann M. Martin, and so the books contain little to nothing about Japanese-American culture (unless you want to argue that her overachieving sister and tiger parents are meant to be a specifically Asian problem). As far as I can recall, there’s no mention of Asian culinary dishes or family traditions – and certainly no indication that anyone’s shoes have to come off at the front door (this is particularly glaring in any cover art that depict the babysitters in Claudia’s room).

To my memory, only one book in the series ever overtly deals with Claudia’s race, and that’s Keep Out Claudia, the infamous “very special episode” anti-racism story, in which Claudia babysits for a new family and is confused as to why the children are so unpleasant to her (especially after Stacey reported having no difficulties from them). It’s heavy-handed, though there’s still something deeply poignant about seeing the girls wrack their brains trying to figure out what Claudia did wrong, and wondering if it was perhaps her outrageous fashion sense.

The recently-dropped Netflix show takes the opportunity to rectify some of these problems: people who visit Claudia’s house clearly put their shoes on a rack at the door before coming inside, the family eat meals with chopsticks and occasionally speak Japanese to each other, and Mimi’s stroke dredges up painful memories of how she was interred at the Manzanar Japanese American prison camp, where she had to sleep in a horse stall.

But Claudia herself, as played by Momona Tamada, is allowed to retain all the traits that make the character so beloved: her love of art, her hidden stashes of junk food, her struggles at school, her experiments with fashion…

You could make the argument that Martin’s ignorance concerning Japanese-American culture was what gave her the freedom to simply write Claudia as character, whose ethnicity was largely irrelevant to who she was as a person, neatly bypassing all the clichés and stereotypes that were usually attributed to Asian characters throughout the eighties and nineties. But by 2020, we’re aware that a person doesn’t (or shouldn’t) have to give up their cultural roots just because they don’t want to be defined by them, and the Netflix show does a beautiful job of letting Claudia be herself and the product of Asian-American culture. We can have the best of both worlds.

Reading/Watching Log #55

It was a month of fairy tales – it usually is – as well as revisiting books from my far-distant childhood and enjoying two theatre productions that have reaped vast amounts of effusive praise from those lucky enough to have the money and proximity required to see them (perhaps if there’s one thing the lockdown has been good for, it’s spurring drama companies to release more of their productions onto various streaming services).

There’s Emily Carroll’s most recent graphic novel (I love it), the most popular new genre film on Netflix (it’s okay), and the Oscar-winning Korean film that everyone’s been talking about (totally lives up to the hype). Stories are subverted in the best possible ways – you know, in ways that enhance the narrative and not just for their own sakes – and familiar stories are given exciting new updates, whether it’s feminist perspectives, diverse casting or darker insights into traditional tales.