Here’s my essay about “Chosen,” everyone. I am hoping to do a wrap-up post in the not too distant, so I won’t say any much about the whole of the rewatch here, or at Tor, just yet.
The main takeaway might be: it was fun, and now it’s done. I hope you all dug it.
On February 27th I posted a general question to a bunch of social networks: What is the dumbest show you would happily rewatch in its entirety?
This came about as Kelly and I were contemplating rewatches of both Farscape
One of us: That was fun.
The Other: Yep.
1: Did any of that make sense to you?
2: Nope.
Anyway, the question spawned a lot of response, especially on Facebook. Many of the responses surprised me, and were a good reminder that dumb is one of those words that means a lot of different things to different people.
Some people mentioned shows I don’t think of as dumb: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Farscape (where you land on Farscape, I think, depends on your stance on Muppets) and Red Dwarf.
Others went for childhood nostalgia trips: Gilligan’s Island, Rocket Robin Hood, Lost in Space, The Monkees, Wild Wild West.
Another category was things I haven’t seen: Gilmore Girls, Married with Children, Full House.
The stuff I did think was dumb but likable included Stargate Atlantis, Xena, X-Files, Smallville. All of these are shows I began watching but didn’t finish out.
The Facebook discussion is here.
We have a tendency to be embarrassed by some portion of our TV viewing. I’ve heard people apologize for liking reality TV, or super-violent stuff, or slapstick comedy. The friend from university who mentioned Married with Children mentioned, regretfully, that it’s pretty sexist.
I think we tend to offer disclaimers when we know a show a) isn’t Shakespeare and b) isn’t something the person we’re talking to would much care for.
How do you define dumb TV?
This week’s Buffy essay is about “Empty Places,” a.k.a. The One Where They Kick Her Out of the House. Were the Slayettes and Scoobies wrong to do this? There’s a lively discussion unfolding here, in the comments thread.
This week I am actually writing the essay on “Chosen,” which will conclude the Buffy Rewatch. I may jump into another rewatch at some point, but I plan to take a few weeks off, maybe write a wrap-up post about rewatching Buffy, and then do some “That Was Awesome” columns for Tor. Don’t worry–whatever I’m up to, I’ll keep you posted.
Season Two of Hannibal
But geography aside, the show is about things that are dear to my heart: art, arts communities, and artistic critique.
The always-interesting serial killers in Hannibal are demented and horrifying artists. Or possibly, artistes. Hannibal is, of course, making food of his victims. In S1, we see killers making use out of human remains, over and over again, either sculpting the corpses directly or staging crime scenes around them. One makes throw pillows out of leather and hair; another prepares strings for musical instruments using his victim’s guts. There are body collages and mushroom farms.
Will Graham’s oft-repeated line as he assumes their point of view: this is my design.
There is an intense aesthetic sensibility to this show that pervades Hannibal the character and spreads outward, from him, to every element of the show.
Other crime dramas, of course, have put significant effort into creating disturbingly pretty crime scenes. Even some murder-of-the-week shows, like Life, did this. But Life would have been the same show, more or less, if the set dressers hadn’t bothered to take the occasional pre-Raphaelite extra, dress her in angel wings and crumple her beautifully all over the hood of a car. In Hannibal, this improbable design sensibility is integral to nearly every murder.
There is a degree to which these people are scrapbookers on a homicidal materials-collecting spree.
Within this entirely bent community, this fantasy circle of destructive creative spirits, artistic dialogs take place. Will Graham functions as a sort of critic, trying to understand what the killers are working to achieve and communicate. Interestingly, he’s an instructor when we first see him. It’s an interesting riff on that old saw: “Those who can’t do, teach.”
Killers imitate each other on this show, sometimes successfully and sometimes not. They embroider on each other’s themes. When they get called out for plagiarism, heads can literally roll.
The process begins in the very first episode of S1. When Hannibal takes on the role of copycat killer to the Minnesota Shrike, he stages a crime scene whose explicit intent is to show Will the Shrike… by demonstrating all the things he isn’t. He creates a corpse-sculpture that is a reverse image of the Shrike’s work.
It is the beginning of Hannibal’s obsessive fascination with Will Graham. As the person who is both an expert in the field and who stands apart from its practitioners, it is Will whose understanding Hannibal craves. He wants to hear what Will thinks about his “work.” He wants to draw him into participating more actively. He wants to be seen, even though courting Will’s comprehension is an immense risk.
It is a strange and compelling portrayal of monster as aesthete, demon as artist. It’s gruesome and scary and weird, and I don’t know, yet, what the show will ultimately say about the practice of art. I am incredibly excited, though, to see where they go next.
When I lived in Alberta, I hated winter. I hated waking up in darkness and leaving school or work in the black. I hated being wet of foot, dry of skin, and bone-chilled every time I came in from outside. I hated mushing around in heavy winds while snow accumulated on my forehead, melted its way down my face and glued my glasses to my nose.
I hated forty below for weeks on end and occasionally getting into cars that were iceboxes and shivering all the way across town in same, arriving–inevitably–five minutes after the crappy heaters had begun to pretend to kick in.
Here in Southern Ontario, we are reportedly having the worst winter in twenty or so years. It has snowed often. It has been twenty below three or four times.
Now, here, I have a warm feather-filled bag that covers me from crown to toe. I have sweaters, and thermal tights and toasty waterproof boots. Good stuff, none of which had to be bought by a parent who was weighing a certain amount of poverty against the general concept of Why buy quality for a kid who’ll outgrow this all in a year?
Even in the chill, it has been sunny, so sunny. The amount of light here is amazing. Hazy days seem few and far between.
And you may have noticed that I am nuts for icicles.
This isn’t a new thing. I would try to get good icicle pictures in Vancouver, or on our trips to the Prairies to see the kin. Opportunities were few and far between, but I tried. Here… ha! The old gutters on all these picturesque Victorian houses overflow, and ice over, and spill. Constantly! The resulting frozen structures are spectacular. They stay in place until the light’s good. You can get close to and atop them. You can get under.
Which would be how I’ve worked out that any patch of ground beneath a good series of icicles is also slippery as shit.
Anyway. It’s March. Nobody in Vancouver has sent me a crocus photo yet, though I did make a point of telling all my west coast loved ones that they should gloat. This winter, this unusually cold and terrible winter–as the locals would have it–I have been cold and miserable and sad to be outside all of twice.
It feels like I’ve gotten away with something.
I haven’t enjoyed everything. I am a bit tired of bundling up, which is a wearying chore. I have realized or remembered that the primary thing that I dislike about snow is the stage where it’s dirty and festooned in various types of dog waste.
I am also headed somewhere warm in a couple of weeks. And, in the meantime, here’s some ice for you all.