Attempt at a Proper Post
Feb. 20th, 2012 09:19 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ricardienneSo. This past weekend I obsessed about a couple of small points of grammar, but today I cornered Professor D. and geeked out at her about obscure syntax issues and Rules and text-editing, and now I think I have some of it out of my system. The other half won't be gone until after my presentation on Wednesday, though. The other thing that dominated my life this weekend also converged into a Thing, because I read Death Comes to Pemberley, a couple of the Victorian-Steampunk short stories in the Kelley Link and Gavin J. Grant Steampunk! anthology, and watched the finale of Downton Abbey. The result may have been that when I dragged myself away from JSTOR around 12:30 and fitfully fell asleep, I had dreams about the Dowager Countess and the pluperfect subjunctive.
I shall cut as soon as there are spoilers -- no worries. But first I would like to draw your attention to this article from the NY Review of Books (spoiler alert), which is, naturally, doing it's "critical takedown of overrated pseudo-intellectual television programming" thing. I think it's incredibly entertaining that so serious a publication as the NYRB has an essay whose first third is basically a shipping manifesto/plea for Lord Grantham/Bates* I always like to say that I learned how to do close reading by discovering the Harry Potter fandom in high school (back when…only 4 books had come out) and that fandom is basically an exercise in criticism of a sort; here the lines are definitely getting blurred!
I will say one thing about P.D. James's P&P sequel-cum-murder mystery: it was successful as a mystery: combining interesting period procedural details with red herrings and a not-too-obvious denoument. But I was expecting more Lizzie and Darcy tease each other and solve mysteries, and in that, I was disappointed…in this respect it is very like Downton: a noble, proud, and distant gentry obsessively caring for their dignity and their estates. Elizabeth and Darcy barely had any page-time together (she being busy bring jellies to the tenants and dealing with the housekeeper, while he was off doing the sorts of things that a magistrate of the county has to do when his estranged brother-in-law is found over a dead body on his estate.) I mean, Jane Austen characters are always more than paragons of social virtue! The best character by far was the eccentric and crochety fellow-magistrate Sir Selwyn Hardcastle, who got all the best one-liners and occasionally even provoked Darcy into being a little bit sardonic (obviously, Elizabeth was given no opportunity to indulge in such things.) [Also: aren't the Selwyns an old Harry Potter family? I'm just saying that Sir Selwyin's being a wizard would explain a lot.] I would say that it was a bit of a dystopian, Haha, You Thought It Would Be Happily Ever After Did You?, ironic sequel, but it wasn't. James obviously felt a great deal of affection and respect for Austen's characters. Too much respect.
Insofar as I read Pemberley between the 6th and 7th episodes of Downton, I was rather impressed, in reading and in retrospect, at how well P.D. James anticipated the dramatic plot. Or maybe I just don't read enough murder mysteries or watch enough Law and Order. Because having just read a long and excruciatingly-detailed account of Mr. Darcy's agony as the time to trial draws near and again on the witness stand, as his upright nature is reluctantly compelled by a clever prosecutionto testify against the defendent. I was able to call every. single. thing. that happened in the Bates trial. Well, except that in P.D. James's novel, a dramatic confession was brought in at the last minute, whereas presumably we shall have to wait until next season, although, seriously, they had better get him released soon enough, because how much can you really do with TheTragic Wife Loyal To Her Husband Falsely Imprisoned? And I don't really think our favorite family of aristocrats has the attention span to care about their plight for long. There's part of me that thinks the AU where Mary and Anna go off to New York would have been pretty amazing.
Which reminds me. Again, I don't know whether I'm just not used to (British?) soap-opera practice, but wasn't there an awful lot of Victorian-style saccherinity? William being mortally wounded so he can come home and die slowly and tragically, and surrounded by flowers with a choir of angels etc etc etc; pale and delicate and angelic Lavinia bidding Matthew be happy with his true love as she conveniently succumbs to a Sudden Relapse. Anna and Bates in what they think are their last moments together in this world? The perfect and poignant set-up whereby poor Mr Mason and poor Daisy realize that they each at last have someone to care for? [I'm going to go praeter this in general, but isn't it interesting that most of the really bad stuff happens to the servants, whereas all of the hardships faced by the gentry more or less get solved within an episode or so?] Anyway, I would watch actors in those beautiful costumes recite the phone book, especially with Maggie Smith doing the snarky commentary.
*Let's be honest: this probably would have been much more interesting than the awful Lord Grantham's Midlife Crisis With the Widowed New Maid subplot and the increasingly ridiculous can-we can't-we of saintly and long-suffering loyalty that Anna/Bates devolved into. On the other hand, is it likely that either Anna or Jane would have gotten as (even) much screen time/minimal development as they did if they hadn't been at the center of romantic sub-plots?
Also: these paper dolls are pretty amazing.
I shall cut as soon as there are spoilers -- no worries. But first I would like to draw your attention to this article from the NY Review of Books (spoiler alert), which is, naturally, doing it's "critical takedown of overrated pseudo-intellectual television programming" thing. I think it's incredibly entertaining that so serious a publication as the NYRB has an essay whose first third is basically a shipping manifesto/plea for Lord Grantham/Bates* I always like to say that I learned how to do close reading by discovering the Harry Potter fandom in high school (back when…only 4 books had come out) and that fandom is basically an exercise in criticism of a sort; here the lines are definitely getting blurred!
I will say one thing about P.D. James's P&P sequel-cum-murder mystery: it was successful as a mystery: combining interesting period procedural details with red herrings and a not-too-obvious denoument. But I was expecting more Lizzie and Darcy tease each other and solve mysteries, and in that, I was disappointed…in this respect it is very like Downton: a noble, proud, and distant gentry obsessively caring for their dignity and their estates. Elizabeth and Darcy barely had any page-time together (she being busy bring jellies to the tenants and dealing with the housekeeper, while he was off doing the sorts of things that a magistrate of the county has to do when his estranged brother-in-law is found over a dead body on his estate.) I mean, Jane Austen characters are always more than paragons of social virtue! The best character by far was the eccentric and crochety fellow-magistrate Sir Selwyn Hardcastle, who got all the best one-liners and occasionally even provoked Darcy into being a little bit sardonic (obviously, Elizabeth was given no opportunity to indulge in such things.) [Also: aren't the Selwyns an old Harry Potter family? I'm just saying that Sir Selwyin's being a wizard would explain a lot.] I would say that it was a bit of a dystopian, Haha, You Thought It Would Be Happily Ever After Did You?, ironic sequel, but it wasn't. James obviously felt a great deal of affection and respect for Austen's characters. Too much respect.
Insofar as I read Pemberley between the 6th and 7th episodes of Downton, I was rather impressed, in reading and in retrospect, at how well P.D. James anticipated the dramatic plot. Or maybe I just don't read enough murder mysteries or watch enough Law and Order. Because having just read a long and excruciatingly-detailed account of Mr. Darcy's agony as the time to trial draws near and again on the witness stand, as his upright nature is reluctantly compelled by a clever prosecutionto testify against the defendent. I was able to call every. single. thing. that happened in the Bates trial. Well, except that in P.D. James's novel, a dramatic confession was brought in at the last minute, whereas presumably we shall have to wait until next season, although, seriously, they had better get him released soon enough, because how much can you really do with TheTragic Wife Loyal To Her Husband Falsely Imprisoned? And I don't really think our favorite family of aristocrats has the attention span to care about their plight for long. There's part of me that thinks the AU where Mary and Anna go off to New York would have been pretty amazing.
Which reminds me. Again, I don't know whether I'm just not used to (British?) soap-opera practice, but wasn't there an awful lot of Victorian-style saccherinity? William being mortally wounded so he can come home and die slowly and tragically, and surrounded by flowers with a choir of angels etc etc etc; pale and delicate and angelic Lavinia bidding Matthew be happy with his true love as she conveniently succumbs to a Sudden Relapse. Anna and Bates in what they think are their last moments together in this world? The perfect and poignant set-up whereby poor Mr Mason and poor Daisy realize that they each at last have someone to care for? [I'm going to go praeter this in general, but isn't it interesting that most of the really bad stuff happens to the servants, whereas all of the hardships faced by the gentry more or less get solved within an episode or so?] Anyway, I would watch actors in those beautiful costumes recite the phone book, especially with Maggie Smith doing the snarky commentary.
*Let's be honest: this probably would have been much more interesting than the awful Lord Grantham's Midlife Crisis With the Widowed New Maid subplot and the increasingly ridiculous can-we can't-we of saintly and long-suffering loyalty that Anna/Bates devolved into. On the other hand, is it likely that either Anna or Jane would have gotten as (even) much screen time/minimal development as they did if they hadn't been at the center of romantic sub-plots?
Also: these paper dolls are pretty amazing.
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no subject
Date: 2012-02-22 08:41 am (UTC)It seems like a fair number of people are complaining that season two just got really soapy compared to season one... maybe they'll get it out of their system for next season, 'cos it was getting a little silly at the end. :/
We all know rich people don't have awful problems! I mean, really. Only poor people have big problems, and they bring it upon themselves. Because they're poor. Harumph.
(The dowager's doll is my favourite. Collect all the faces!)
no subject
Date: 2012-02-23 04:04 am (UTC)I thought that season 1 was pretty soapy (the Turkish ambassador blackmailing the gay footman and then dying mid-illicit-sex-act?), but season 2 just seemed to replay all the same ridiculous plot twists every single episode.
And, I wouldn't deny that being wealthy and aristocratic probably makes a lot of things easier (like midlife crises, for example), but the various parallel situations just played out so much worse for the lower-class characters (Matthew is in a wheel-chair and can't ever have sex. But William is dead. And evidently only maids get pregnant when they get seduced... And not to mention that the divers romantic angsts among the upper classes are balanced by the main downstairs couple being separated because one half of it on trial for his life...)