Woman of the Month: Deena Johnson

Deena Johnson from the Fear Street trilogy

SPOILERS

The best stories are the ones that take you by surprise and the Fear Street trilogy certainly achieved that. Although horror isn’t everyone’s cup of tea, there is something to be said for the genre’s Final Girl trope and how she’s evolved throughout the years, from the virginal distressed damsel who survives long enough for the police to rescue her, to the girl-next-door who grabs the nearest weapon, comes up with an on-the-fly plan of attack, and takes out the serial killer by herself.

Deena falls into the latter category, but along the way the trilogy also has something to say about the old Bury Your Gays trope. We’re now reaching a point where genre-savvy writers are aware of the unpleasant and wearying implications of any LGBTQIA+ characters biting the dust during the course of their respective story, but still not close enough to feel assured of their safety when they appear in horror/slashers films.

So when Deena’s ex, a character initially referred to ambiguously as “Sam”, turns out to be another girl, you’ll be forgiven for assuming that one or the other would be dead by the time the credits roll. And the trilogy certainly takes Deena through the ringer. Believing that Sam is being targeted by a range of supernatural serial killers on account of her disturbing the grave of Sarah Fier, a long-dead witch said to have cursed the town of Shadyside, Deena puts her own life on the line to protect her ex from a grisly end.

Then when Sam is possessed by the witch and attacks Deena, she seeks out answers from the sole survivor of another mass-murder, gaining the tools she needs to disappear into a movie-length flashback sequence to the year 1666 in order to find out the truth of how the curse that plagues their community started in the first place. In an ingenious touch, the actresses for Deena and Sam are also used for their ancestral/spiritual counterparts Sarah and Hannah, in which the Sapphic lovers meet the very fate that their modern equivalents are so desperate to avoid.  

Armed with the truth and some righteous anger, Deena uses the knowledge she’s accumulated to save her love and end the curse once and for all. Talk about a Determinator!

Ultimately it’s a story about how an indomitable teenage lesbian takes on the white male classist patriarchy in order to save her girlfriend’s life... and wins. And obviously, when I put it that way it sounds like the whole thing is going to be a heavy-handed tract on contemporary social issues, in which the message gets in the way of the story – but trust me, if you haven’t seen it already, this trilogy deftly integrates its plot-points across the action in a way I really didn’t expect from a trashy slasher based on pulp horror for teenagers from the nineties.

Reading/Watching Post #67

This month’s theme was crime dramas, though (as usual) a few holdovers from previous months didn't get finished until now. I also managed to go to the theatre twice, and though it was in a more amateur capacity than usual, sometimes seeing actors step on each other’s lines or struggle with their costumes makes for a more endearing audience experience.

Movie-wise it was more haphazard than usual, though I did make a slight effort to catch up on the careers of the BBC’s Robin Hood actors, along with two more vintage Robin Hood movies. And because I’ve been as sick as a dog this week, a surprising amount of books – though never as many as I would like.

Angela Barrett: The Hidden House

The plot of The Hidden House simplicity itself: a lonely old man carves three dolls for company, sitting them in the window of his cottage as he does the gardening. Then one day the text obliquely refers to his death ("he left and never came back") and the dolls remain on the sill as nature gradually reclaims the house. The illustrations tell most of the story: the tree that grows in the kitchen, the ivy that covers the walls, the lives of the frogs, beetles and other wildlife that take over the place, with the dolls as watchful guardians.

Finally a new family comes and restores the home and dolls to their former splendour, and although the expressions on the dolls’ faces remain unchanged throughout, Barrett somehow manages to capture their sadness and happiness with each change of fortune. The book is not without hope, but still infused with poignancy and melancholy given that it’s all about the inexorable march of time.

Legend of the Seeker: Bloodlines

The one in which Richard finds his mother and it’s completely meaningless...

I said way back when I reviewed Brennidon that this show’s weakest plot-points are the ones that have to do with the typical “foster child Chosen One” cliché that you find so often in fantasy. It really wouldn’t have made the slightest bit of difference if we had known from the get-go exactly who Richard’s biological family was, because the complete lack of narrative importance affixed to his mother (demonstrated via Richard’s muted reaction to finding her) only drives home how superfluous it is.

Oh, and remember how Zed revealed to Kahlan that he was Richard’s maternal grandfather? It’s okay if you forgot, because again – it really doesn’t matter. Richard accepts it with a shrug, and it has no further bearing on his character or the plot going forward.

Frankly, it’s all quite bizarre, especially in a genre in which hidden parentage and secret lineages are SUCH a big deal. I might have been tempted to say it was refreshing for Legend of the Seeker to not treat any of this as all that important, but the fact that Richard is meeting his mother for the first time SHOULD have been important... and it just isn’t.

Even Jennsen, the only relevant addition to Richard’s family tree, didn’t strictly need to be his sister for any of this to work.

Almost as if they know that none of this lands, the writers bring back Denna, their most interesting and popular guest-star, in order to liven things up exponentially.

Links and Updates

Some interesting stuff on the horizon...

Legend of the Seeker: Conversion

The one where Kahlan gets a power upgrade...

One of the best things that can happen in fantasy-based stories which feature an intricate set of magical rules is the story itself growing out of this fictional groundswell of world-building that the writer has established.

Of course, it can also go in the other direction, in which random MacGuffins and Deus Ex Machinas are pulled out of thin air in order to get a plot resolved, basing it on the idea that “hey, this is fantasy, anything goes!” This episode of Legend of the Seeker takes a little from column A and a little from column B: they’ve got a fantastic setup that utilizes the power-set of the Confessors and how it can be manipulated, but once our heroes are backed up against the wall, the day is saved by a new super-ability that’s never been mentioned before.

Conversion is very much the second half of Chase’s story, following on from Hartland, even though he only features in the first act of it. Now they’re in search of his family, who have been taken to Keep of Edron for unknown but clearly ominous reasons. We know and like his family (first seen in the show’s premiere) so it’s a suitable level of stakes to hang this episode upon, even when things eventually escalate to our first face-to-face meeting between Richard and Darken Rahl.

Woman of the Month: Catherine Cawood

Catherine Cawood from Happy Valley

Sergeant Catherine Cawood sums up her own characterization within the first few seconds of the premiere of Happy Valley, telling a young man threatening to light himself on fire that: “I'm forty-seven, I'm divorced, I live with my sister who’s a recovering heroin addict. I've two grown up children, one dead, one who don't speak to me and a grandson.”

That’s quite a spiel, but it’s one that instantly tells us what kind of person we’re dealing with. What Catherine doesn’t mention is that her daughter killed herself soon after giving birth, presumably because her child was the product of rape. This led to the fracturing of Catherine’s family: her divorce, her son’s estrangement, and taking on the task of raising her grandson. Oh, and Ryan’s biological father has just been released from prison.

Dark stuff. I binged the first season of Happy Valley within a single night, which lead to a rather exhausting time at work the following day, but it was impossible to reach a cut-off point once the ball started rolling.

In many ways it’s a story about those who take responsibility for their actions, and those that try to deflect blame onto other people. To my reckoning, only two people in the show (Catherine being one) refuse to wallow in self-pity or recriminations, choosing instead to step up into whatever role is required of her. When a kidnapping goes wrong and events start to spiral, Catherine seems to be the only one with a handle on the situation – following leads, trusting her instincts, and throwing herself into danger to save an innocent.

That’s not to say that Catherine is perfect: she’s impatient and abrasive and overly stubborn, but she’s also one of those rare people that you can trust absolutely to always do the right thing, no matter how difficult it is.  

There’s an extraordinary scene about halfway through the season in which the boyfriend of a deceased colleague tries to pin the blame for her death onto Catherine, insisting that her reprimand the previous day put the dead woman into a vulnerable frame of mind that led her to make a bad professional decision. Catherine quietly refuses to accept that burden (despite having floated the idea to herself the night before).

I often get exhausted with the repetitiveness of characters taking the blame for things that aren’t their fault (usually as a lazy way of establishing that they’re “good” people via guilt complexes/self-mortification) and so to see a woman – especially in a story where everyone is constantly flinging blame at each other – refuse to take someone’s death on board her conscience is genuinely gratifying.

Catherine is clearly the inspiration for Kate Winslet’s Mare in Mare of Easttown; both women are middle-aged, no-nonsense, and burdened with responsibilities that the rest of the world choses to ignore. They may not take on these duties with a smile, but it’s with more dignity and compassion than they themselves even realize, without any expectation of recognition or reward.

Like George Eliot once wrote: “For the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs.”