I got a Kindle for Christmas last year, and as a result I've started reading quite a few Project Gutenberg books. For the uninitiated, Project Gutenberg provides free ebooks, in particular those books where the copyright has expired. As my maternity money has really started to bite, I'm been downloading more and more of them. I've just finished reading Three men in a boat by Jerome K. Jerome.
Jerome K. Jerome, image in the public domain
via wikimedia commons
Although I have my issues with Victorian novels, I really enjoyed this one. Maybe because Jerome actually succeeds in being vaguely humorous, or because he's not trying to make any political points. As well as enjoying the writing what I liked the most was the beautiful little glimpse it provided into Victorian life. Just by writing from the point of view of the time he was in, the author gives a little anthropological study of a way of life that is now almost completely alien.
Things I found particularly fascinating:
The 'boys'. Every shop they visited had a 'boy' working there, and several turned up to watch when they were trying to hail a taxi.
Servants. Random housekeepers, washing ladies and charwomen turn up in what are clearly middle-class households. What's most interesting is that in an era of sexual inequality a large number of these random servants are women. Speaking of which...
Sexual inequality. Women are described as basically another species. It's not malicious, or degrading, just very alien. He devotes a full mini-chapter to the experience of having the boat pulled by 'girls'.
Entertainment. This stands out because while on the boat the guys are entertaining themselves by going to the pub in the evening and chatting, which is pretty much what most people would do on a boating trip nowadays. Whenever he goes off into an anecdote about home life though, you're suddenly plunged into a world of piano playing, music hall songs, and party games.
There's a wonderful blend of the familiar and the strange that make it so enjoyable to read. One minute it's packing a hamper with a dog (relatable) or the annoyance of that one friend who has to work the first day of the holiday and so decides to meet up downstream on the second day (very relatable - that friend was my husband!). Then the next sentence will be everyone lighting up pipes, or an anecdote that involves a household with at least six children in it. Sometimes I had to actively remind myself that the book was written over 100 years ago, other times it's impossible to ignore.
I enjoyed the historical anthropology of it so much that it almost tempted me into reading Dickens again. Almost...
"Stepford Wives" is a book by Ira Levin that was turned into a film in 1975 and then again in 2004. The basic premise is that there is a town in America (Stepford) where all the men are married to beautiful, docile, perfect-housekeeper wives. Joanna Eberhart, a young photographer, moves there with her husband and kids and gets increasingly disturbed by the wives behaviour and, to cut a long story very short, discovers that all the wives have been replaced by robots just before being killed and replaced by one herself. A longer summery can be found here.
The big mystery throughout the whole film is "What is up with the women in Stepford?" Joanna thinks that something is badly wrong, because these woman think about literally nothing besides carrying out tasks for their husbands, keeping the house clean, etc, etc. Joanna's husband just thinks that all those men got lucky. It is clear to the audience that something is wrong with them, the Stepford wives are just not behaving like normal woman. Like normal people.
Nobody is that excited about the weekly grocery shop
The mystery of "What is up with the Stepford wives" is answered by the end of the film. They have all been replaced by attractive Roombas. The mystery that never gets solved, the big massive hanging question that is never, ever answered during the entire film is this:
What the HELL is up with the Stepford husbands?
Why would anyone, seriously, want to be married to a robot? Some people may have a fetish in that direction and if so more power to them, but the majority of men tend to be more attracted to actual people. True, the women of Stepford still look and feel like real women, but they aren't, and they aren't in a way that is blindingly obvious to anyone who regularly interacts with them, like their husbands. They are slap-bang in uncanny valley, and it's hard to see what's attractive about them besides the (slightly fake) looks.
In the film, Joanna and her husband show all the signs of being happily married before they get to Stepford. She's a photographer. She talks about philosophy. She looks after the kids well enough and does enough housework to keep the place vaguely tidy. He seems OK with that. Yet a few weeks after moving into Stepford he's asking her to quit her job and complaining she never keeps the place tidy enough.
To be honest, I was starting to wonder at that point whether he'd been turned into a robot. That would have been a nice twist.
It's not enough just to say "every man secretly wants that" because that denies ~50% of the population basic human feelings. Most people ( both men and women) marry because they genuinely want to stay with someone for the foreseeable future. Joanna's husband married her for who she was, not because he secretly wanted to marry a robot but couldn't find one in New York. When Joanna's friend suddenly turns from an outgoing woman into a perfectly-polished Stepford wife, her husband seems unfazed. More importantly, neither men seem to care about what affect replacing their wives with a well-programmed games-console in a frock will have on his children. No matter what people think "all men want" it's generally agreed that it's better for kids to be brought up by actual humans than computers that can only converse about washing-powder.
And bear in mind that the whole premise of the film involves the women being killed before they are replaced by their robot-counterparts. Which means that a whole group of men suddenly decided it was a good idea to murder women that they had been previously happily married too, often for many years.
The Stepford men are as unnatural as their pretty talking-Roomba wives. They all are happy to commit murder. They all completely change their ideas about what they want their wife to be about three days after entering the town. By the end of the film, they are all happy to be living in what is essentially a giant sausage-fest with some very pretty electronics - men and children are now the only humans in Stepford. They can never talk, laugh or enjoy time with their wives again without being constantly aware that the laughter is fake, the excitement is programmed and the woman that they pledged an eternity of love too has been murdered and buried under the patio.
There is something very, very, wrong with the Stepford Husbands.
So, the new Wall Street film came out, and before it did I got a chance to watch the old one (made in the 80s). I loved the 80s "Wall Street" film, the filming was good, the acting was great, the characters were interesting and the plot pulled it all together.
I enjoyed the new one as well, but for some reason it wasn't as good. I didn't enjoy it as much. And this morning in the shower I suddenly realised why I didn't enjoy it as much. Nothing to do with the plot, or the filming, or Shea Labeouf (although all of those could have been improved) but to do with character.
Heres the thing I realised: In the new Wall Street no ones character ever changes. No character arc, no character development, no character anything.
Spoilers Ahead
In the first film Charlie Sheen is the young upcoming Wall-Street-er. He gets a job with Gecko (who owns a whole wall-street based empire), goes flying up the social ladder, but realises somewhere near the top that he's about to sell out his dads buisness. He freaks, slams Gecko, then gets arrested for insider traiding. At the end Gecko has been arrested and Charlie Sheen is seen walking up the steps to his trial.
In the second film, Shea Labeouf is a young upcoming Wall-Street-er who wants to invest in alternative energy. He's dating Gecko's daughter, and Gecko comes out of prison. He talks with Gecko, and they hatch a plan to get the money Gecko left his daughter out of a Swiss bank to invest it in alternative energy. At the last stage, Gecko bails on them, runs off with the money and makes a huge pile of cash. At the end, however, he returns the (relatively small) amount he stole from them in order to be with his daughter, who has a child.
By the end of the first film all the characters have grown, changed and learnt something about themselves. By the end of the second film all the characters are exactly the same. Shea is still an enthusiastic alternative-energy nut who thinks he knows what his wife wants better than she does, Gecko's daughter is still a fairly likable young lady whose idea of what kind of future she wants changes depending on what Shea wants and Gecko is ... Gecko. Nobody learns anything, with the exception of Shea's mother, who learns that if you try to do fast housing deals you end up stuck cleaning out peoples bedpans. We never know how she feels about that though.
They try to spin it out like Gecko's redeption story, but it seems to pass over everyones heads that the end of the story isn't the triumph of the happy family, but rather the triumph of Gecko, who must be laughing all the way to the bank. He literally ends up with everything; a family, pots of money, clean energy, and he does this by simply giving a tiny amount back from his huge fortune. The moral of the first film was that climbing high on dodgy morals sends you falling hard. The moral of the second film is that it's OK to be greedy, as long as you do a few token good deeds somewhere near the end. Forget sacrifice, or self knowledge, the only thing required for this redeption is to give your daughter a couple a hundred and stare whistfully at a scan of your grandchild.
The new Robin Hood film is out by now, and I don't know why but I really don't want to see it. On the face of it, it looks like the kind of film I like; Big epic scenery, questy things, gigantic battles etc. The Prince of Persia film (which seems similar) I really do want to see, but somehow the very idea of going to Robin Hood makes me cringe a little.
Probably because every time someone says "Robin Hood" this is what I see in my head:
We're men, menly men, men in tights, tight tights!
Robin Hood has had the piss taken out of him so many times that you simply can't do a serious version any more. Not unless it's really, really good. To get Robin Hood taken seriously you need amazing action, Godfather-style drama, and a quick gripping pace. Which I'm not convinced Russel Crowe's version has. If it's not careful it'll just be a montage of scenes which have already been parodied interspersed with Monty Python Moments and the occasional Blackadder joke.
I think half way through watching the trailer for the third time I finally twigged why it wasn't grabbing me. It's not a fantasy epic. It's trying to be a fantasy epic, it's trying so hard it hurts but it isn't, it just isn't. It's historical fiction.
I'm all for breaking down previously defined boundries, but when it comes to genre some of those boundries are there for a reason. You can have thousands of evil foe being slaughtered to the accompaniment of a cackling evil overlord in fantasy because none if it is real. It's escapism. But you can't get away with that in historical fiction because everyone actually exists (or existed). There are no minions in Historical fiction (although you can get pretty close with Nazis) each dead enemy is a person with hopes, dreams, families and ideologies of their own.
The other problem that comes across is with the way of thinking. In fantasy your heros can have whichever moral leanings they want (such as in the rather hilarious case of Mal in Firefly, who happily kills people but is so utterly anti-slavery). In Historical fiction they are bound by the thoughts of the time, which means when you get Robin Hood standing up and vowing to fight for freedom, truth, justice, womens rights, anti-communism, and the American Way it all looks a tad contrived.
Historical films do not stand and fall on their battle and action sequences, they succeed on strength of character, plot and drama. Gladiator was a political intrigue with awesome acting, very memorable character scenes and Joaquin Phoenix. It was not 'epic' in the sense that it didn't rely on sweeping panoramas or battle scenes to exist. It had sweeping panoramas, of the awesome kind, but it didn't use them as a prop, just to help you sink into the atmosphere created by the narrative. The battles were close and personal and not gratuitous. The action was tight and slick and there was the occasional speech but none of the speeches sounded contrived. It was Historical Drama with a touch of the epic thrown in and it worked.
Robin Hood is a fantasy epic set in Medieval England. I'm not convinced it will work.
Also people are getting more cynical about heros nowadays; random strong-men just turning up, killing people and then talking about justice don't hack it the way it used to. People point out the families of the henchmen, the dubious moral double-standards (Stargate is the best for those). The more recent Star Wars episodes were laced with politics and moral messages, because young lads from the desert flying planes into large state-owned structures based on their own hokey religions just doesn't make such a good story as it used too. Robin Hood is hard enough as a hero anyway, given that he's no more than a glorified thug in a green hoody, and King Richard is hardly the epitome of goodness given that his illegal war in the middle east is the reason his brother keeps hiking the taxes up.
Robin Hood is the guy in the background. And King Richard is the guy in the front. And Nick Clegg is the Sheriff of Nottingham :p
It's very hard, while watching the trailer, to convince yourself that you're not watching Lord of the Rings. There are mistreated peasants being chased by human-looking Uruk Hai, and that obligatory bit where lots of people get mercilessly killed for no particular reason other than to show that the bad guy really is bad. There's a Woman In Armour (TM), Nazgul-type-things in cloaks, very atmospheric woods, the only difference is that the sweeping panoramas are several times more boring because it's England rather than New Zealand.
I can't help thinking though, that if they'd set it in Generic-Fantasy-Olde-England and made it about some guy called Jack Cloak fighting evil King Mark whilst secretly supporting Mark's older brother who was fighting the Romulans or whatever I might be able to enjoy it. That would be pure fantasy escapism, with very little associated moral worries (like - if King Richard is all that good why is he taxing people dry to invade a country that isn't his and try to get all the inhabitants to convert to his religion?) You also wouldn't be worried about all the historical inaccuracies, or be sniggering every time someone inadvertently invokes a Holy Grail joke ("help, help I'm bein' repressed!") because the whole setting is made up and rather ridiculous. You can just enjoy.
I'd appreciate the thoughts of anyone whose actually seen it though. Was it that bad? Or did it manage a passably good story?
Scientists like to use suitably antiquated literature quotes in their work, because it makes them seem intelligent, and fully rounded people rather than just sad little scientists who spend all their time wrapped up in one organism or pathway. Speaking as a sad little scientist myself (whose knowledge of anything other than Streptomyces is currently a little hazy) I approve. The more literature quotes there are in the world the better and who knows, some people might be encourage to go and read the original poem or text, and experience the true awesome beauty of it.
The problem is, of course, when quotes get used out of context, or with twisted meanings. The one quote that gets pushed into service very frequently with science-writing, and is almost always hideously misued, is That Keats Quote:
Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know
The usual meaning the writer is trying to convey with this quote is, "Look at this thing. This thing is beautiful. It must be true!" or occasionally, "Look at how this true thing is beautiful. Poets and scientists both have the same view of how the world is!" Occasionally it's just shortened down to just the first line, or the first few words "Beauty is truth, truth beauty"
Which takes the quote completely out of context and, what's even worse, completely destroys the beautiful subtlety of it. In fact it completely destroys the entire point of the quote in the first place, which is to question the connections between truth, beauty, reality and desire.
The poem the quote is taken from is "Ode on a Grecian urn" which is slightly too long to be reproduced in full, but can be found here and is highly recommended, along with most of Keats. As the title suggests, it's a poem about a Greek pot, more specifically the patterns and pictures around the pot. Examining the frozen scenes (which show a man playing the pipes under a tree, two lovers about to kiss, and a procession of villagers with a calf for sacrifice) allows Keats to return to one of his favourite themes; which is more preferable, a passion that is everlasting but will never reach fulfillment? Or the experience of true and complete fulfillness which must then pass away into decay and death. Basically the Keatsien version of "is it better to have loved and lost or never loved at all?"
The urn represents agelessness, the unchanging and fixed scenes. The lover's cannot kiss and the piper cannot go home, but will be "for ever piping songs, for ever new". In the second and third stanza (paragraph) Keats seems rather wistfully jealous of this state of affairs. The lover's might not be able to reach fulfilment, but they've been locked in their embrace for several hundred times his lifetime. In the forth stanza however, he briefly touches on the downside of changelessness, namely that everything remains unchanged. The villagers will be in continuous procession, but likewise their village will always be empty, for the rest of eternity.
The final stanza, brings it all together, but it ends it with a big question, not an answer. Keats has no more answers than we do as to whether the timeless yet unfulfilled nature of the Grecian urn is preferable or not. All this of course, leads up to the final quote:
The final quote! Which isn't even said by Keats. It isn't even what the poet thinks, it's a final summery of the point of view of life from the Grecian urn. Keats is still teased out of thought, but he takes some comfort in the fact that the urn will always be there. No matter how crazy or insane life gets, the world of the Grecian urn will always be beautiful, and always be truthful. Not the real world, the real world is changeable, ugly and false, that is why the urn remains a source of comfort. Preferable or not, the "Cold pastoral" of the Grecian urn will by its very nature embody the truth, beauty and permanence that the rest of the world does not.
If those last two lines are a comment about anything, it's the nature of art, rather than the nature of reality. Art, or at the very least things that are pleasant to look at because they make you forget the uglyness of reality (Keats = proto-emo), should be things for which beauty and truth are equal. A piece of work which is both true and beautiful. The definition of truth at this point is another matter entirely, in the case of the Grecian urn my view is that 'true' means 'revealing some deep truth about the world' in this case the struggle between permanence and fulfilment.
Either way, it's certainly not "Keats on the nature of reality". Which is how it's so often used.
