Good meta + Hamlet
May. 9th, 2014 09:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beer_good_foamyHere's a nice piece of meta I really liked:
Foz Meadows on Orphan Black, gender, "likeable characters" and the difference between male and female characters' redemption arcs
...with various examples from the Buffyverse, MCU etc. If you haven't watched Orphan Black yet, there are no real spoilers in this piece (but then again, you should have watched s1 of Orphan Black already).
Good women can redeem broken men, but good men can’t redeem broken women, because once we’re broken, we lose our virtue; and without our virtue, we’re no longer women, but monsters, witches and viragos. Which is why, to come full circle, I fucking love the fact that Orphan Black’s Sarah Manning isn’t always sympathetic; isn’t always traditionally likeable.
In other news, I got to see the Globe To Globe production of Hamlet yesterday. This is the small, stripped-down version of Hamlet that the Globe Theatre has taken on the road and plan to keep going for 2 years, visiting every single country on the planet, and I really hope they pull it off because this was AWESOME. No huge bells and whistles or deconstructions, just an energetic, timeless version of the play that, IMO, blows (for instance) Tennant's out of the water. Ladi Emeruwa and Amanda Wilkin are a brilliant Hamlet and Ophelia - Wilkin in particular steals the show when she gradually goes from infatuated young woman to pawn in a political game to crushing grief - but it's Keith Bartlett who really shines as Polonius, who arguably is the... if not villain, then prime mover in this production; he's a clown, a confused old coot who thinks he's wise, but everyone listens to him and it's his insistence that it's all about Hamlet/Ophelia that derails the situation beyond repair and gets everyone killed. (OK, arguably the point of Hamlet is that everyone dies and need to face that, but that's another matter.)
Oh, and great solution for how to do the "To be or not to be" bit too. As they pointed out in Slings and Arrows (another TV show you should also see if you haven't already), "To be or not to be" is hopeless: EVERYONE comes to Hamlet expecting to hear it, and whatever you do with it, whatever tricks you pull, you'll never live up to expectations. So the Globe To Globe production has Hamlet suddenly burst onto the stage just as Polonius and Claudius withdraw, with no build-up whatsoever, already in the middle of a train of thought, reasoning with himself, assured that he's faking insanity while oblivious to the fact that he's clearly letting the illusion take over. "We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be," to quote Vonnegut.
Foz Meadows on Orphan Black, gender, "likeable characters" and the difference between male and female characters' redemption arcs
...with various examples from the Buffyverse, MCU etc. If you haven't watched Orphan Black yet, there are no real spoilers in this piece (but then again, you should have watched s1 of Orphan Black already).
Good women can redeem broken men, but good men can’t redeem broken women, because once we’re broken, we lose our virtue; and without our virtue, we’re no longer women, but monsters, witches and viragos. Which is why, to come full circle, I fucking love the fact that Orphan Black’s Sarah Manning isn’t always sympathetic; isn’t always traditionally likeable.
In other news, I got to see the Globe To Globe production of Hamlet yesterday. This is the small, stripped-down version of Hamlet that the Globe Theatre has taken on the road and plan to keep going for 2 years, visiting every single country on the planet, and I really hope they pull it off because this was AWESOME. No huge bells and whistles or deconstructions, just an energetic, timeless version of the play that, IMO, blows (for instance) Tennant's out of the water. Ladi Emeruwa and Amanda Wilkin are a brilliant Hamlet and Ophelia - Wilkin in particular steals the show when she gradually goes from infatuated young woman to pawn in a political game to crushing grief - but it's Keith Bartlett who really shines as Polonius, who arguably is the... if not villain, then prime mover in this production; he's a clown, a confused old coot who thinks he's wise, but everyone listens to him and it's his insistence that it's all about Hamlet/Ophelia that derails the situation beyond repair and gets everyone killed. (OK, arguably the point of Hamlet is that everyone dies and need to face that, but that's another matter.)
Oh, and great solution for how to do the "To be or not to be" bit too. As they pointed out in Slings and Arrows (another TV show you should also see if you haven't already), "To be or not to be" is hopeless: EVERYONE comes to Hamlet expecting to hear it, and whatever you do with it, whatever tricks you pull, you'll never live up to expectations. So the Globe To Globe production has Hamlet suddenly burst onto the stage just as Polonius and Claudius withdraw, with no build-up whatsoever, already in the middle of a train of thought, reasoning with himself, assured that he's faking insanity while oblivious to the fact that he's clearly letting the illusion take over. "We are who we pretend to be, so we must be careful who we pretend to be," to quote Vonnegut.
