The Death of Imagination

In her second HBO special, Wanda Sykes has a bit where she skewers respectability politics by talking about all the stereotypical things she's been avoiding doing in public that she's going to take up again now that Obama is in the White House. ("If he wins a second term, I'm going to Popeye's!") In it she mentions how her mother used to scold her for rocking out in the car by saying, "White people are looking at you!"

That was one of the first things that came to mind when I watched the Carpool Karaoke video featuring Michelle Obama. I'd already seen some of the racist blowback, so I knew that White people were looking at her, and condemning her "undignified" behaviour. But I'd also seen a slew of friends share the video already so I knew there were more people--of all races--who were looking at that video and thinking, "Damn I wish I were in that car!"

I know I was. And though I know she's looking forward to no longer being one of the most scrutinised and criticised women in the country, but selfishly, I really hope she maintains a presence in the public eye because I am going to miss her like crazy.

I was going to write a post on the curious language in Borstal boy, but I spent over an hour ironing table linens and now I just feel tired and sore. This used to be monshu's work and a year ago or so he simply stopped doing it without really saying why and we literally had nothing more to wipe our faces with at dinner.

I watched Wallender (the TV series starring Henriksson rather than the earlier one with Lassgård or the BBC remake with Branagh) while I did it and it was fairly unsatisfying. I know Ystad is a small town, but even by small-town standards the police force seemed pretty dumb and the plot relied on too many improbably coincidences to hold it together. So I think I'm done looking for methaBro(e)n.

One way or another, I'm done with Bron/Broen after this season. The departure of Kim Bodnia already made Season 3 a tougher sell, and the decline in the writing is helping not at all. Or maybe this was the standard in the first seasons as well and I didn't notice because of the novelty of the setting and the storytelling. Either way, the seams are showing and the payoffs are declining. This time around, the crimes seem more arbitrary, the villains more dumb, and the police response more implausible (not least of all because they're no longer newbies at dealing with a threat on this scale). At least the interplay between Helin and Bodnia is still there and they didn't have to jump through too many hoops to justify them being paired up again. Bodnia is on record as being dissatisfied with the direction they took his character in, which has me piqued to see whether I'll agree with him or not.

So, yeah, we're into full-scale winter Scandimania again. I didn't wait until the end of the Lagerlöf to begin the Laxness, which despite being set in the 18th century is strongly redolent of the old sagas. (Much more so than Gösta Berlings saga, ironically, which despite the title is full absolutely to bursting with pure 19th-century Romanticism.) The Old Man suggested I read it in tandem with Njáls saga (which it's already referenced two or three times in the first twenty pages) for a proper intertextual reading experience, but I may just return to The Kreutzer Sonata for the nonce. Or pick up something else entirely. (I did dip into Torgny Lindgren's Klingsor the other day but I'm not sure I have the stamina for even a short novel entirely in Swedish.)

In keeping with my ambition to see all of Hollywood's most talked-about performances at least ten years after they went big, I slotted in Far from heaven on my day off as well. Not sure what all the hype was about. Technically, it's a remarkable achievement. Ebert likens it to "a powerful 1957 drama we've somehow never seen before" and confirms its accuracy in terms of themes, technique, social setting, and the like. The big twist is supposed to be that it tackles head-on social issues which directors a half century ago could only address obliquely. Like Ebert, I appreciate that Haynes doesn't fall into the trap of ironic superiority, which is our default lens for viewing the past these days. But unlike him, I never got swept up into the story. If I had to sum it up in five words, I'd call it, "Rich lady has a sad." That's unfair, but there really isn't much more to it than that.

Neither of the two central romances resonated for me. Haysbert may have real acting chops, but all I see when I look at him is the voice of Allstate Insurance: warm, calm, reassuring, but at the same time reserved and distant. I can't buy how naïve his character is about seeking the friendship of a White lady from a different social class or how blithe she is about going off alone with a man who's not her husband and being surprised when there's talk. That would've been the case even with someone of her own race and background. And I really don't buy that Quaid's character is going to run off and set up housekeeping with another man. Yeah, he's intoxicated with love for the first time in his life. So keep your wife as a beard and maintain a love nest, just as all your colleagues are doing with their mistresses. Could be that his boyfriend doesn't have any interest in being a kept man, but there's zero characterisation of him beyond his general social background (UMC White, like Quaid's suburban salesman character), so who knows? The one thing that seemed true to period about it was that the White man has licence to seek fulfillment while the White woman and the Black man get to pound sand.

***

Yesterday's weather was so cool and damp (actually, Cardiff was warmer and drier at the time) that it reminded me I still hadn't gotten around to watching Hinterland. I'd been holding out, hoping against hope that I might be able to get my hands on the Welsh-language version, but a Welsh-speaking friend who's seen both says he actually prefers the English-language one. I thought maybe that would include at least a few token conversations in the language, but nope. Its only presence in the series is on signage, confirming English suspicions that no one really speaks it and all that money for official bilingualism is a complete waste. *ochenaid*

Not to sound repetitive, but the show is technically very good without breaking new ground. It certainly shows off the countryside around Aberystwyth to fine effect and the level of acting is equal to what you'll find in other British dramas despite having to cast nothing but bilingual actors. I'm not sure how much the unrelenting grimness is simply in keeping with the current style for police dramas and how much they're overcompensating for the tendency of Limeys to start sniggering at the first sound of a Welsh accent. I'm going to stick with the series, at least for a while, so perhaps I'll find out.

Well, looks like I've been dragged onto the GoT bandwagon by monshu. If the episodes continue to be this beefy and beardy (and that certainly seems the way to bet), looks like I won't be able to get through one without at least a semi. I confess, though, that I didn't even recognise Mark Addy at first--which is good, actually, since he usually plays such nice guys.

The first DVD came with a detailed dramatis personae, including even characters which literally die in the first five minutes of Episode 1. At the same time, it was oddly coy about the relationships between several of them. (I quickly figured out that "close relationship" is code for "fucking".) There was a certain temptation to read some spoilers in order not to get too attached to the ones marked for death. Running down the cast list in the IMDb entry served the same purposes, though. (Only seven episodes? Nice knowin' ya!)

Today's follow-up to yesterday's freighted post is half in jest, 100% in earnest:

I understand that I come from a rather unusual background with regard to my interest in and knowledge of plant species. Dad grew up on a farm, gardened, and liked to take us on hikes. (Still does, in fact.) But still, although he's a naturalist, he isn't close to being a botanist and I'm even further away. Even so, I find myself amazed by how little most people seem to know about plants I consider pretty run of the mill.

The Christmas parodies have been out for a while, and "Fuck you, mistletoe" is one that's been posted and reposted by several Friends (for what should be quite obvious reasons). But, as the close-up starting about a minute in shows, the offending sprig clearly has berries which are bright red. I'm not aware of any species of mistletoe with fruits like that; they are generally pale pink at best. I'm not even sure what real plant (if any), that artificial one is designed to resemble.

Close on the heels of that came the inevitable Miley Cyrus parody featuring a topless Santa. The chorus prominently features the line, "What is holly?" Really? Who doesn't know what holly is? There aren't that many plants associated with Christmas--it's basically mistletoe, Christmas cactus, poinsettias, and a handful of evergreens. And only one of those has prickly leaves and red berries. Not to mention that while mistletoe was something we bought in little plastic packages, there was always a holly tree growing outside somewhere near our house. When I was a kid, I'd go out and swipe my own sprig for a buttonhole. To me, asking "What is holly?" is like asking, "What is a sleigh?"

Last year when I bought an Inspector Chen mystery for Nuphy, I never expected that the Old Man would end up reading the whole series himself. He'd never been much of a detective fiction fan before, and then this year...boy howdy! I've got a soft spot for Qiu Xiaolong because he's one of the only writers with much of a profile currently living in St Louis. (I sometimes wonder if I might've run into him years ago at the VP Fair when he was still a student at Wash U and hadn't yet been stranded over here by the events of Tian'anmen.) But the one book I tried to read by him, a volume of short stories originally serialised in the French press, left me dissatisfied.

In any case, it was in one of Qiu's books that he came across mention of the Manchu Han Imperial Feast and asked me about it. Since this plays a prominent role in The Chinese Feast, an old Tsui Hark film starring Leslie Cheung Gwok Wing, I thought I'd NetFlix it for Thanksgiving weekend. I hadn't remembered it as a particularly good film--Tsui's very hit-and-miss as a director, and it came out right during the time at which HK cinema was going into freefall. Stephen Chow Sing-Chi released a cookery duel film around the same time, and it was similarly disappointing and slapdash.

I thought monshu would enjoy the climactic competition with its over-the-top Iron Chef-style nonsense, but I hadn't counted on what a long slog it would be to get there. The middle section was even more slipshod and flaccid than I'd remembered. It was also a pretty bad copy (pirated, I would say, as someone who's had a lot of experience with Chinese videos) and the frequently white-on-white subtitles made it nigh-impossible for the Old Man to follow. At least they were old style, i.e. English and Standard Chinese side-by-side. Often with HK films the translations are so munged that only by comparing the Chinese text can I determine what the intended meaning was.

In this case, having the characters allowed me to solve a mystery that's bedeviled me since my first viewing. I noticed that whenever Cheung's character talks about the "Japanese girl" he's hung up on, the corresponding phrase in the Chinese is 山口百惠. This is the personal name of Japanese singing and television idol Yamaguchi Momoe. According to the Wikipedia article, even though she'd retired in 1981, the rebroadcast of her television work in China and HK during the following decade made her the most well-known Japanese celebrity there. This, in turn, explained a curious dream sequence which occurs early in the film; it's a parody of a scene from 伊豆の踊子 ("The dancing girl of Izu"), which came out in 1974 but was apparently still familiar enough in Hong Kong in 1995 to be a touchstone.

Even though it was a mediocre experience, it did make me nostalgic for the golden age of HK cinema (and for my stabs at learning Cantonese). It would be nice to introduce the Old Man to some of the classics. He said in passing that he'd be interested in watching an adaptation of Journey to the West, but I said that I didn't think there'd been one really worth considering. But then I found that there's a new version coming out of Hong Kong next year and featuring Donnie Yen Ji-dan as Monkey and Chow Yun-fatt as the Jade Emperor. I don't know anything about director Cheang Pou-soi, but Yen certainly knows how to wield a pole. (He's the Manchu general who battles Jet Li at the end of OUATIC II.) Could be another stinker, but it'll be worth finding out.

Okay, I think I'm finally done with Totally Biased with W. Kamau Bell. I had nothing but goodwill towards it when it started: the little I'd seen of Kamau's standup was encouraging; it was being produced and promoted by Chris Rock; and one of the staff writers was Hari Kondabolu, one of the few American comedians who I recognise as working in the Stewart Lee mould (i.e. combining political engagement with deep thinking about what comedy is and how it works). The first episodes were good, too, with vox pop segments about street harassment and Stop and Frisk which were pointed as well as entertaining.

So what went wrong? I dunno, I guess it's just difficult to do a weekly topical satire show and not get lazy. For a show that professes to condemn stereotypes, it sure does traffic in them a lot (but "ironically", of course). The rest of the stable of writers and performers doesn't really seem of the same calibre as Hari and Kamau (an impression only accentuated by Kamau's habit of saying everyone's name at least four times at the end their bits as if he's a supply teacher and there's going to be a quiz later); I found myself cringing at their performances more than I was laughing. Still, there was enough funny to keep me watching on and off.

Then this happened. It's sort of a microcosm of all that's wrong with the show. There's a short introduction of Sesame Street's new muppet with a dad in jail to set up an acrimonious exchange between Kamau and a muppet voiced by Dwayne Kennedy (doing his usual Cranky Old Negro routine). Kennedy segues into a short song whose punchline is--wait for it--prison rape. Really, guys? 2.3 million people locked up in this country and that's the best commentary you can muster?

Moreover, that's the best comedy you can do? A subpar Avenue Q routine mixed with a punch-and-judy version of police brutality? (The one gleam of humour: Kamau tells the victim "I got your back" as he whips out his phone and takes a picture. "I'm putting this on Twitter!") No wonder you're being sent down to FXX. (I honestly had to look that up to confirm it was a real channel and not just a jokey face-saving way of announcing the show was being cancelled.) I don't know if my cable even includes that channel and I'm not going to waste any time looking.

So Mann and Marsé are still taking a backseat while I ride this Irish kick for all it's worth. I even took Lotte out of my bag, though I'm still carrying around Embrujo on the off chance I'll need to impress some Spanish-speakers with my cosmopolitanismo. I'm not making as much progress with the written word because I've added a second front: Besides The Secret of Kells, we've NetFlixed The Guard, The General, The Snapper, In Bruges, and The Field. (Why yes, I do have a bit of a thing for Brendan Gleeson--as if you didn't know!) I've just come from watching the last of these and I'm a bit on the fence about it. It straddles a line between stark realism and Poor Mouth self-parody, not always successfully. (It was filmed only two dozen miles away from the Quiet Man, after all.)

Really, it's hard to imagine it working at all without the magnificent Richard Harris in the starring role. I've never seen Sean Bean so milquetoasty before--I mean, I understand that's his character, but it's done to the point where I found it hard to care what happened to him. Writing in a romance with a tinker girl doesn't help (and feels heavy-handed to boot given how Harris' old crofter is always banging on about the damn field). Similar problem with Berenger: one account said his character was made American rather than English to make him "more sympathetic", but it had the opposite effect on me. Even if that was actually the intention, there's a difference between disliking a character who acts like an asshole and disliking an actor who just sounds like one. Beautiful locations (though it does annoy me a bit how they keep rewriting properties set in Cork or Kerry so they can film them in Connemara) but lousy music--derivative and a bit cheesy. The ending is overdetermined and they seem to have upped the quotient of anticlericalism relative to the play as well.

We'll have a break for the weekend with a Korean film I've been wanting to see for simply ages and then it's back to...well, I don't know what given that the two films (Hear My Song and I Went Down) I really wanted to see aren't available. Any suggestions?