Another special occasion...

To mosself -


Wishing you a happy, fulfilling and productive year!

A little Alexander chatter...

I've been browsing a little looking - I might as well be frank about this - looking fruitlessly for pictures of Francisco Bosch as Bagoas so I can make an icon. No luck. But I have found some interesting comments on Alexander in general and Bagoas specifically - apparently they had some sort of sex scene that was cut (though I'm not sure how steamy it got). Perhaps there will be an extended DVD edition with missing scenes added?

Invariably the references are to the male/male kiss and I can't help thinking that a kiss between Alexander and Bagoas is not exactly male/male, it's male/eunuch, though the movie doesn't bother to mention that Bagoas is a eunuch. Does it need to, when Bagoas is first seen resident in a King's harem? Yes, I guess maybe it does, except that the real point is that on some levels it doesn't matter: Bagoas is Alexander's lover and he isn't a woman. "Eunuch" is probably not a concept most modern moviemakers think audiences can deal with, and maybe they're right. Seems a pity to me, though, in terms of the connotations of the cultures we're looking at. Okay, okay, I'm nitpicking. But I reserve the right to be musing happily about the relationships of a eunuch born 2400 years ago. Why not?

Roxana strikes me as very interesting too. I don't know if she really made sense as a character - we weren't told enough about her, and I found myself curious. Did she really want to marry Alexander, and if so, why? For himself or his wealth? Or did she just have no choice, once he chose her? Why did she want to go back to Babylon? It wasn't as if she'd ever been there. And what a journey she had - she's the princess of some hill country, marries this Macedonian and then travels the world with him and few if any of her own people, neither speaking their language nor knowing their culture. Then to end up in Babylon, pregnant and widowed and surrounded by enemies, without many resources - it must have been terrifying.

I couldn't help thinking of parallels with Caesar. Of course Roxana was no Cleopatra, but the parallels hold: Caesar and Alexander both married foreign princesses to the east and each had a son who was young when they died, and then murdered when barely into his teens; that son being the only legitimate (or semi-legitimate) child of either. The big difference was, I suppose, that when the Caesar died, whatever the disputes over his empire, that empire held and survived for several hundred years. Alexander's empire broke up and lasted only days or weeks or months - but the cultural legacy was huge.

I wonder how history would read it if it had happened the other way, if an Indian prince had conquered Asia and Greece and had brought the culture of the Upanishads to Europe in 330 B.C. In the movie, of course each culture scorns the other and thinks everyone else is a barbarian - everyone thinks that but Alexander - but I was surprised that an Afghan princess would think the Indians were uncultured. Was it just me, but were the Indian characters in the movie given a more negative twist than the other nations? Their trappings were gorgeous, but they weren't individually handsome.

Come to think of it, Roxane didn't look Bactrian to me, though I suppose the only Bactrians I know to look at are camels. I would have pegged her as being from Africa. Mind you, I'd have pegged Alexander as Irish.... But Bagoas sure didn't look British, unless that was a stiff upper lip we were seeing in his impassivity?

Shaun of the Dead...

With some curiosity but with much less enthusiasm than with which I approached Alexander, the other night I saw Shaun of the Dead, which is "a romantic comedy with zombies". Right. I never saw a zombie movie before, and don't really care if I ever do again, but this one certainly did entertain. It was witty, clever, and had quite amazingly good performances by Simon Pegg as Shaun and Nick Frost as his deadbeat roommate. Kate Ashfield and Shaun's girlfriend was pretty good too, and it was a treat to see Bill Nighy again as Shaun's stepfather Philip, though it took me half the movie to recognize him. (He was the aging rock star in Love Actually).

Humble request...

Is anyone here able or willing to beta-read an Alexander/Bagoas story I have written?