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Jul. 13th, 2006 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
fajrdrakoOver lunchtime I read a fascinating graphic novel, How Loathsome by Ted Naifeh and Tristan Crane. It reads like a novel, though I suspect it's all based on real life and real people. And like real life, it's hard to see through the form to the structure and meaning. It's about people in San Francisco. Is it the transgendered scene, the drug scene, the goth scene? A bit of all of those. It's about people who know, more or less, what they're looking for, but when they find it, it rejects them.
The introduction is by a person named Danielle willis, who, one day when she was lying around waiting for her drug dealer, got handed a cop by her roommate. She read it, and said: "This is about my life." And so it was. When she contacted Naifeh and Crane, they said that seeing her in a San Francisco club had given them the idea for the story. Danielle finishes the introduction: "This book will help you understand. We are not definable. We are not straight. We are not gay."
So - did it help me understand? Well... I already understand the transgendered thing as much as someone who hasn't experienced it may. I find it more difficult to understand caring more for drugs than sex, or other people - or maybe the problem there isn't understanding, it's sympathizing. Danielle Willis talks about a roommate who "put crystals up his pee-hole and claimed to see demons. We believed him." My thought: eeu.
I wondered what the title meant. Was it to imply these people thought the rest of the world found them repulsive? Or that they found themselves repulsive? Or just - lost? The art made these people attractive, at least to my eyes, but I found myself impatient with their lact of perspective, not quite able to like them.
Good quotes:
S&M parties tend to be light on the alcohol, so Kelly and Nick had brought their own. By around 12:30 they had become quite popular.
[re two goths named Aaron and Ashley] They're easy to make fun of, but to be completely honest, I've always found them extremely attractive. In an embarrassingly perverse way.
Though fluidity (and ambiguity) of gender is the hallmark of these these people, and though they go to sex parties and pursue those they desire, there isn't much sex, but a lot of foreplay followed by passing out or leaving. These are stories without climaxes, just extended searching. The impression isn't so much of frustration as of vagueness.
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Date: 2006-07-14 12:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-14 12:20 am (UTC)Speaking for myself, I don't know much at all. I think it depends on how many of the TV shows with the earlier doctors you've seen - and I've basically seen none of them (not to remember well enough) so I really don't know about that. It also depends how many of the novelizations you read and whether you accept them as canon, if they say anything at all. I've hears strange rumours.
In the 2005 and 2006 season, which is what interests me, yes, it's mostly hints - he's a Time Lord who saw (or caused?) the destruction of his people and of the Daleks. Most of everything he says about himself is hints, when it isn't teasing, so you don't even know how much to believe. (Did he really play Father Christmas for Rose the year she got her bicycle?)
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Date: 2006-07-14 12:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-14 12:28 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-14 12:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-14 12:45 am (UTC)But the rest of the series isn't utter drek. It's amazing. It isn't just good acting, scripting, special effects, and so on, it's manipulating concepts and ideas in new ways so that it's funny and sad and insightful and wild and fresh.
I love it.
(Oh, maybe you noticed.)
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Date: 2006-07-14 01:15 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-07-14 01:25 am (UTC)Yes. If one had been watching the shows in the proper order... which I did after that... I can just imagine the impact. Sitting up and taking notice.
Most shows would kill for one scene that good anywhere in their seven season runs.
And most shows don't get it, either.
I love you for praising it enough to make me watch it.
And I love it that you listened to me, and actually watched, and that you see what I see in it.
I love the Doctor.
Yes.
I love whichever writer wrote that scene.
Robert Shearman. It's the only episode he wrote. I wonder why.
I love how he's scared and then completely awful and unhinged, but he's still, y'know, the Doctor about it: quick and manic, as easy with his cruelty as he is with his kindness.
Which is so much the key to his character. You see here how much more there is to him than he usually lets us see - and than the writers usually give us, but there are hints and nuances and then suddenly, whammo, a scene where you see what's there and it's all at a whole new level.
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Date: 2006-07-14 01:38 am (UTC)I had sort of imagined, and gleaned from the little glimpses we got, that he was very much a scarier person than we usually see, and this.... it's a weird thing to say, but it made me happy, partially 'cause it confirmed my suspicions. The minute I learned his people were gone, I actually yelled, "You're bitter and twisted! You're bitter and twisted! Oh, please be bitter and twisted!" So pleased that payed off.
And most shows don't get it, either.
Hahahahahahaha.
No.
And I love it that you listened to me, and actually watched, and that you see what I see in it.
I honestly don't see how I could not love it. It seems to be like Firefly: either you've seen it and you love it..... or you haven't seen it. The characters are appealing, the premise is appealing, the writing is appealing, the exact right mix of spectacular actors and total camp is appealing (Chris Eccleston! Choking himself! With a PLASTIC HAND. I love it).... I could go on.
Which is so much the key to his character. You see here how much more there is to him than he usually lets us see - and than the writers usually give us, but there are hints and nuances and then suddenly, whammo, a scene where you see what's there and it's all at a whole new level.
And, from a continuity level, very nicely placed, too: first Cassandra: impersonal God-like judgment, "Everything has its time and everything dies." Then, the Dalek: personal vendetta, hatred, venom, but they could have so easily had him become hard about it, unflinching.... Richard-like. And, I don't know how much was C.E. and how much was the writer, but no, it was the crazed, profligate sort of meanness... as savagely enjoyable, in a sadomasochist kind of way, for him as his giggling episodes. It was so perfectly in character.
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Date: 2006-07-14 02:00 am (UTC)Yes ... of course! All my favourite heroes are, one way or another, bitter and twisted. They just put different faces on it. The show is like... um... chocolate-coated ginger: it's all sweet on the outside but inside there are huge deep dark chasms of reality, like genocide, loneliness, war, risk-taking, loss - particularly loss - and the way a person deals with it all - sanely or otherwise. Look at the lines about how 'the Doctor and the monsters always come together' and how he is always followed by death and destruction. Yhere's so much duality, and yet so much humanism.
The Doctor fits the same metaphor, it's the metaphor of the Tardis, bigger on the inside than the outside because there's really more ginger in life (or in his psyche) than chocolate. So the Doctor looks like a man but he contains multitudes and sometimes we're brought up short at that wall between him and us, to think: demi-god? Trickster? Lonely Angel? (I don't know if you've seen The Girl in the Fireplace yet, I just watched it again tonight. The phrase is from there.) "Magician" is still my favourite word for him, if you give it its full dimension of not just a person who meddles with supernatural forces, but who encompasses great powers of both creativity and destruction.
I love the way he can do a total about-face, from ferocity to frivolity, or vice versa, in a split second. Or playful to authoritative.
Um... am I babbling?
It seems to be like Firefly: either you've seen it and you love it..... or you haven't seen it.
I know people who do not like one or both of these shows. No, I don't understand it either. Well, maybe I understand it a little, as I used to dismiss Doctor Who as a show for kids, full of plastic-headed aliens. And I can see (even though they're wrong) why some people might glance at Firefly and think 'cowboys in space, how dumb', but what it really means is that they haven't looked at it properly, they don't see what's there.
he exact right mix of spectacular actors and total camp is appealing
Some of the acting is so good it's just... hard to believe that acting on TV is this good.
(Chris Eccleston! Choking himself! With a PLASTIC HAND. I love it)
That was wonderful. Classic!
I don't know how much was C.E. and how much was the writer, but no, it was the crazed, profligate sort of meanness... as savagely enjoyable
That gave it so much power. Nothing had led us to expect this except that everything we knew should have led us to expect this. Except that a lifetime of watching TV leads us to have no expectations like this whatsoever.
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Date: 2006-07-14 02:45 am (UTC)(Is Billie Piper the only pop-singer-turned-actress to be any good at it in the entire history of the world? I think she very well may be.)
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Date: 2006-07-14 03:30 am (UTC)Me too. Hence the babbling.
I AM OFF TO FIND THE NEXT EPISODE.
Which one is that? How many have you seen? (Hmm, if you're watching in order, you would be watching the Long Game next.)
Is Billie Piper the only pop-singer-turned-actress to be any good at it in the entire history of the world?
As far as I know.
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Date: 2006-07-15 04:18 am (UTC)By the way, I am also rewatching them all with my mum, who loves them as well, and she thanks you, too. :D
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Date: 2006-07-15 07:30 am (UTC)I must confess that Van Statten and Goddard are two of my favourite Doctor Who villains too. And Adam's role is interesting, even though I don't like him. I do like Rose's way of picking up strays.
I'm glad your mother's enjoying them too! And I hope you get The Long Game soon.