#for once we haven’t got the stereotypical Spanish looking woman ever playing her

[froggi-mushroom]

I saw your post on how much you hate the reign (XD) and wanted to ask what is a show you feel intensely about and why? 👀

Thank you for the ask!

I’ll be honest, I kinda play up my hatred for shows like Bridgerton and Reign because in reality I know they’re fantasy and not supposed to be historical (my only real gripe with them is that they use real historical figures but eh, that’s more of a nitpick though I do have some legitimate criticisms for bridgerton but I won’t get into those)

I suppose if there’s anything that I intensely dislike, it’s not really one particular show but a whole genre, I think I’ve mentioned it before, it’s those series’s that claim to be telling the real stories of women from history but miss the mark entirely and make them a caricature of an empowering woman (not to use a bit of a meme word here but I think the word ‘girlbossify’ is very appropriate here)

This is particularly noticeable with Tudor dramas (like any adaptation of Philippa Gregory’s works like The Spanish Princess, The White Queen, The White Princess, The Other Boleyn Girl, etc. which are already bad for this I’d like to mention, the recent channel 5 Anne Boleyn miniseries, the recent(ish) Mary, Queen of Scots movie, and a few more I’m probably missing) but I have seen it with other time periods as well

I could talk at length about how reducing an actual human woman to a caricature is not the win for feminism directors think it is, but why would I do that when I can aptly summarise my issue with a quote from one of my favourite history youtubers The Laughing Cavalier where he described one of these characters as ‘Joan of Arc on steroids’ 🙃

#ask #needcake #froggi rambles #i could honestly go on and on about why I dislike these shows #but I won’t cuz this is already enough #a lot of these are from starz which is pretty funny tbh #it’s also why I’m really reluctant to watch the new Elizabeth drama because that’s also by starz #honestly I’m more so pissed off cuz we haven’t had many decent Tudor dramas since the 70s which is pathetic #the only one I can think of is wolf hall which is amazing btw #The Tudors is good for history shit for costumes and everything else #Elizabeth the golden age isn’t bad it’s enjoyable #but it doesn’t hold a candle to Elizabeth R #i don’t think we’ve ever had a good Mary queen of Scots adaptation and we’re probably never going to #the Spanish Princess especially annoys me because for once. we actually have someone who somewhat looks like how Catherine probably did #for once we haven’t got the stereotypical Spanish looking woman ever playing her #and yet they fucked up everywhere else

[inhalingwords]

Monthly Wrap Up || October 2017

Henry IV, Part 2 by William Shakespeare || Henry V by William Shakespeare || The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare || A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare || Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare || As You Like It by William Shakespeare || Hamlet by William Shakespeare || Instrucciones para salvar el mundo by Rosa Montero || Kudottujen kujien kaupunki by Emmi Itäranta || Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay by Annie Proux, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana || Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë || The Gap of Time: The Winter’s Tale retold by Jeanette Winterson || Puhdistus by Sofi Oksanen

Henry IV, Part 2 by William Shakespeare

Disease, darkness, decay. 2 Henry IV is a sequel and it shows tbh. It’s boring, Prince Hal is obnoxious, there is not a thing in this play I much care for. The prologue is alright.

Henry V by William Shakespeare

Henry V continues and -- thankfully -- ends the story in the Henriad. Like 2 Henry IV, I didn’t enjoy this one either. I mean, it’s a fine play (and tetralogy) about war, kingship, honour, patriotism, etc., except that that’s precisely the problem. All of that presented as it is in the play(s) is directly opposite to my own values and morals. I don’t think it’s honourable that king Henry V wants to wage war with France only because of some titles and dukedoms to add to his name/”imperium” (+ to distract the populace with external unrest away from civil unrest) or that he threatens French towns with rape and pillaging if they don’t let them in so he can have them surrender “peacefully”, and that’s all supposed to make him out to be this great, amazing king because “band of brothers! we happy few! he totally gets down with the lowly commoners! wooo”, like, no thanks.

The entire concept of these plays is to bump up English/British nationalism/patriotism and be a reminder of these “”””glorious””” things done in the past “under God’s will”. lmao. It’s jingoistic propaganda and that doesn’t interest me.

The Winter’s Tale by William Shakespeare

Now, The Winter’s Tale is a severely underappreciated Shakespeare play imo. There are not sufficient words to explain how much I loved reading this play!

The Winter’s Tale is a lovely tragedy-that-turns-to-comedy about jealousy, family, time, redemption, rebirth, healing, and hope in the middle of darkness. There are some real kickass female characters (Pauline! what a woman! i love her! and Hermione, who is Great™), one of the most famous stage directions of all time (”Exit, pursued by a bear”), queer subtext, cute romance, and one of the most beautiful scenes in Shakespeare (that last scene with the “statue” Hermione, damn!).

A Midsummer Night’s Dream by William Shakespeare

This was actually my second reread of this play this year, I already reread it back in March. But because I recently bought the beautiful Arden edition of the play, I just needed to reread it once more. And I’m glad! This is one of my favourite Shakespeare plays (hence why I bought the separate edition). I love the whimsy, the fairies, and the aesthetic, but I also really appreciate the plot, the running away into the woods and all the love-magic shenanigans.

I greatly enjoyed the Third Series Arden edition’s emphasis on the theatrical staging history across the world. It was very interesting to read about (also: wtf I didn’t know there’s a history of female!Oberons, that’s my new favourite interpretations at the mo, so yess, thanks). The entire Introduction was top-notch and I found much to think about; my favourite things is how the play has very much a dreamlike quality with many alarming things bubbling underneath the surface that are never quite brought into focus and problematised.

Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare

Holy moral ambiguity and manipulation, y’all! There’s no clear villain in this play, everyone’s a bit sketchy, and the central theme is of political rivalry and machinations. My favourite thing about Julius Caesar (and other plays like this) are the many layers, like when you consider the historical time depicted in the play, the context of Shakespeare’s time when the play was written in, and also the context of present time when I myself am reading this play. 

I ended up liking this play much more than I expected to, and I’m looking forward to reading it again in the future (and seeing some great adaptations in the meantime!).

As You Like It by William Shakespeare

As You Like It is a wonderful pastoral (romantic) comedy that both brings the pastoral to life and parodies/critiques it. It’s absolutely charming and also very queer (thereby claiming it’s place on my list of fave Shakespeare plays pretty much automatically). It’s also the play with the female character who has the most lines out of all Shakespeare’s female characters (woop!). The characters are what really make this play for me: Rosalind, Celia, Orlando, Jaques, I love them so much, and I might even go so far as to say I even enjoy Touchstone.

Hamlet by William Shakespeare

I have to admit: this was my first time reading Hamlet, I haven’t seen a movie or stage adaptation of it, and, going into the play, I only had a very general idea what it was about (along the lines of “there’s a Danish prince called Hamlet, it’s a tragedy, people die”) and I knew a handful of quotes out of context.

That said, like for many others, my experience of reading Hamlet was that of recognition. I kept encountering quotes I knew and it proved super interesting to finally get the full context for them. I find Hamlet an intriguing play, (especially philosophically, psychologically and metatheatrically speaking) and I’m looking forward to seeing some stage/movie adaptations of it.

Instrucciones para salvar el mundo by Rosa Montero

Instrucciones para salvar el mundo is a milestone book for me: it’s the first book I’ve ever read in Spanish. Sadly, I can’t whole-heartedly recommend it for others. I like it... I think??

The problem I have with the book isn’t that it’s bad, it’s that I feel like I really love the theme and the central concept of the book so much -- there’s beauty in life, sometimes you don’t even realise how privileged you are and how much you have, how much life in itself is worth until you’re staring death in the face, that these darkness in the world but also so much goodness and beauty and happiness -- BUT something about the execution was just lacking. The characters felt a little bit too much like stereotypes (the two boring white male protags, one of whose wife is death so he’s grieving and the other who is cheating on his wife; the black sex worker who is Good and needs to be helped; the Moroccan suicide bomber, etc.). I did like two of the female characters (Cerebro, an old scientist, and Fatma, the sex worker) but they were more peripheral characters, just passing through the bigger plot of the two dudes, one of whom was so obnoxious I nearly put the book down because of him.

So, yeah. The book is good but not awesome, and I feel a bit let down.

Kudottujen kujien kaupunki by Emmi Itäranta

Kudottujen kujien kaupunki (UK: The City of the Woven Streets, US: The Weaver) is easily my favourite book of the month.

Earlier this year, in April, I read Itäranta’s first book Teemestarin kirja (engl. Memory of Water), which I loved, so I was expecting to like Kudottujen kujien kaupunki, and it honestly still managed to blow me away and even exceed my expectations. Once again, there’s a dystopian setting, environmental themes (this time, water pollution), beautiful writing, and fascinating worldbuilding, but with explicit wlw main pairing this time. My heart soars. Itäranta has definitely landed a spot on the list of my fave authors.

Brokeback Mountain: Story to Screenplay by Annie Proux, Larry McMurtry and Diana Ossana

Proulx’s writing style isn’t necessarily my fave -- it’s quite sparse, unornamented and to the point -- but the story is beautiful and touching in all of its horror and it definitely packs a punch. It’s about rural homophobia, internalised homophobia, love and desires, repression, and life.

This edition also featured three short yet insightful essays about adapting the short story to the big screen.

Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë

I…. like Wuthering Heights?? I’m baffled because I was pretty much prepared to dislike it due to so many people talking about how the relationship is really unhealthy and shouldn’t be romanticised, so I was expecting some sort of 1800s version of Twilight/50SoG, but… that’s not what this is?? 

Wuthering Heights is not a love story, it’s not a romance, and it’s not supposed to be. It’s not written as such. The relationship (between Cathy and Heathcliff) is not in any way portrayed as a romantic, healthy pairing you’re supposed to root and strive for (like in Twilight/50SoG) with the expectation that the reader is supposed to be sighing about how romantic and thrilling everything about the romance is. In Wuthering Heights, the abuse is portrayed as abuse, as negative and abusive, and the narrative does not support the reading of Heathcliff as a romantic hero and “Mr. Perfect”.

So, yeah. I like Wuthering Heights. In terms of the locale and characters, the scope of the novel is very small and almost claustrophobic, but the emotional magnitude is astonishing. Some of the characters are vile, selfish, and repugnant much of the time and yet I was so swept up in the story and invested in knowing what was going to happen, that I really enjoyed reading about them and I couldn’t help but symphathise with them because of the masterful storytelling. The portrayals of passion and revenge are so vivid I got chills. And I enjoy the double nature of the book; we have the one half (Catherine and Heathcliff) and the other half (Cathy and Hareton), and I love how it’s one of those hopeful stories about breaking the cycle of abuse, the younger generation doing better than the older.

The novel is also highly atmospheric. The moors, the nature, the wilderness. It all reflects the characters and the fact that the novel is so pointedly not about high society and social niceties.

The Gap of Time: The Winter’s Tale retold by Jeanette Winterson

My first venture into the world of Shakespearean book adaptations -- and I am so glad it was with such a great one!

The Gap of Time is a remix of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale (a tragedy-turns-to-comedy that I read for the first time this month and love a lot!), and to me it’s a very successful one. There are so many things brimming with insight (I feel like I marked up at least 2/3 of the book!), some nice winks at the source material and Shakespeare in general, and tbh I gotta love anything that takes the queer subtext in Shakespeare and makes it explicit. I really enjoy the way Winterson modernised the story and dived a bit deeper into themes like time and family, which were already present in the original play.

However, The Gap of Time did feel a bit rough and unpolished at times, although I wonder whether it was intentional and meant to reflect the way reading one of Shakespeare’s (or anyone’s) plays feels like (since obviously they are meant to be seen and not read per se, and consist of nothing but dialogue).

Puhdistus by Sofi Oksanen

In February, I read the first book in Oksanen’s Kvartetti series about Estonia’s recent history and the East/West dichotomy of Europe. This month, I finally picked up the second novel (and the most well-known of the three books that have been published in the series). I was much impressed reading it, and I can see why it became such a sensation.

Puhdistus is a story about shame and sexual violence from the PoV of two women of two different generations set against the backdrop of Estonian history (from 1940s to 1990s, mostly preoccupied with the occupations of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, deportations, the Forest Brothers, and surveillance). The novel is at times brutal and sad, you might even call it a psychological thriller (though I myself wouldn’t go that far), but there’s also a constant thrum of hope of survival persisting throughout an the ending is hopeful. I find Oksanen’s writing a joy to read and I think I’m going to pick up the third book in the series sooner than I picked up this one.

#booklr #bookblr #october wrap up #reading wrap up #monthly wrap up

[kbunny10]

My Spoiler Filled Thoughts on the New Power Rangers Film

I have so many feelings about this movie, but I’m going to mention so many spoilers so all of that is under the cut.

So I saw Power Rangers 2 days ago and I just need somewhere to let all my thoughts out. Let me preface this by saying that Power Rangers is one of the first shows I remember watching as a child. For a long long time we didn't have cable at my house (my parents didn't want me watching mind poisoning cartoons like Ed Edd 'n Eddy) so the only place I could really watch Power Rangers was at my grandparents house. That's fine, I was literally there everyday until I was 5 anyways. In Kindergarten I had to go into a morning care program where there were a small collection of video games and board games to play with. One of the board games was a Power Rangers game. The game had you choose which Ranger you would play as and it had their names on it. My name is Kim, the Pink Ranger was Kim, pink is my favorite color. This was the only time I could get exactly what I wanted in school because kids would be like "well does it have your name on it?" As a matter of fact it does fucker. I was even the Pink Ranger for halloween that year. There are other things I remember about my time with power rangers (like how when I marathoned In Space with my mom and my cousin I threw a tantrum when Karone didn't become the purple ranger and I ended up stomping in dog vomit) but none of those things really relate to the Rangers portrayed in the film, so let's move on. I think the first thing I was extremely pleased about can be summed up in a line from Alpha 5 "Different colors, different kids, different colored kids." This movie is everything I've been hoping for in remakes, it's oozing in diversity and it didn't stick to how things were set up in the original show. We have a white kid, a half Indian girl (Naomi Scott did a wonderful job as my favorite Kim), a Latina, a Chinese-Canadian, and an African American. But to top it all off the Asian character and the Black character weren't the yellow ranger and black ranger respectively. They were more than just their skin colors. Billy is never called "too white" for how he acts, on top of it not only does he exhibit autistic like symptoms but he even says he's on the spectrum. A black autistic superhero, I'm so glad. Zack is bilingual, and we only ever see him speaking in Mandarin with his mother, no English in their scenes, I love it. I haven't been this thrilled about another language since I saw Assassins Creed in theaters. (Which as bad as the film was, props to having everything entirely in Spanish in the flashbacks. I loved that.) I did have some complaints. I went into the movie thinking that Trini was going to be a lesbian. What I got was Zack asking her "boyfriend troubles?" and her sarcastically saying "yea boyfriend troubles." His eyes grow wide and he says "girlfriend troubles?" She's silent. I can see they were trying to show that she's struggling with her sexuality, Trini realized that she's not straight but she's not sure if she's gay either. I cried myself to sleep for years back when the teachings I got at Catholic school and Church had me thinking that I was horrible and sick if it turned out I was a lesbian, but as much as I liked guys they never interested me as much as a woman's cleavage or the scent of perfume in a girl's hair. Of course now I realize I'm pansexual and I'm much more happy and secure. But what bothers me is that right after all of that Trini goes onto talk about her family issues and says "they like labels." Hold up "labels"?! LABELS?! No, you did not. Come on guys you already said Billy was on the spectrum, why are you backtracking to the stereotypical "labels" shit that they do with bisexual people on tv instead of just saying they're bi?! Ugh. Part of me thinks that maybe, just maybe they thought saying "labels" was the same thing as saying "I'm on the spectrum" instead of having Billy straight up say "I'm autistic." Maybe they thought it could be inferred and people would be happy? But they really fucked up there. I wish they had shown us more of Trini's mom too, the way she talked to Trini, asking rapid fire questions and slamming her hands down on the table while screaming "say something" just made me think about how maybe her mom is abusive to her. She does give Trini a cup to pee in when Trini makes a comment about how she thinks she's a super hero and that's kind of funny, but coupled with what she had done moments before...I think at the very least she and her mom have an emotionally abusive relationship, but the fact that questions weren't asked about the holes in the wall Rita left behind while beating the shit out of Trini...makes me think its progressed past that. One thing I noticed in the film is that we know that Trini and Zack go to school with Kim, Billy, and Jason; yet we never actually see them in school with the other 3. A lot of scenes are in detention and Trini and Zack aren't there until the very end of the film, but I feel like Trini and Zack never get as much development as the other 3. I mean we know their names are Kimberly Hart, Billy, Cranston, and Jason Scott, but we never once hear Zack Taylor or Trini Kawn. They're just Zack and Trini. I'm guessing Taylor and Kwan aren't even their last names now with the the ethnicity change. I've read a couple interviews from the people who worked on the film and I know a lot of the deleted scenes involve Zack's back story. Even looking at the trailers I know they deleted the scene of Zack jumping over a house, Trini at her deface locker with the things "loser" "ugly" and "die" written on there, and a scene of Zack morphed and running around at night. So I hope the dvd is either an extended cut or includes these scenes. I'd like to make some comments specifically on Kim, I mean she's my love so I kind of have to. I thought that Kim's switch from gymnastics to cheer leading was arbitrary, but it still made sense so I won't complain. When she passes her former friends in the final fight and they get hit with rubble she says "serves you right" and then Billy's bully hops in the car to shield himself. This implies that Kim's friends are on the same level as the bully. But all they did was cut Kim out because she sent her friend's nude to her boyfriend and made fun of her. That's...extremely reasonable? Kim was actually really shitty there so they didn't exactly deserve anything. However, if we go back to how they cut out Trini's locker scene, a part of me wonders if they're the ones that are picking on Trini. Trini seems to have an unexplained amount of hostility towards Kim that I don't think can just be explained by Kim not knowing Trini well after a year of her attending the school. It would make sense, even though they cut Kim out for a good reason, they seem to have mean girl tendencies and I almost think they are the ones making Trini's school life hell. Also though, I'm not a popular person and never have been. Super popular girls in a bathroom stall together and then falling out giggling in a flirty way? A popular girl sending a nude to a friend in confidence? That doesn't make sense to me. Is Kim's friend bi? Did she send Kim the nude hitting on her? Was she making out with their other friend in the bathroom? These are all thoughts that come to mind that I feel weren't explained. I mean I've seen girls come out of stalls together giggling like that, but that was in a Barnes and Noble bathroom where I hid for the entire time they were having sex. I couldn't leave because it was embarrassing but it wasn't fun to sit there and listen either. Another thing that they cut from the film, which I'm actually glad they did, was the Jason and Kim romance. It's still partially there, you can see it, but without the kiss and any sort of declaration of feelings it can also be read as just close flirty friends. I hated the idea of a romance happening between them in the movie. I was so against it, so when they cut the kiss out of the film I was actually really glad. Now if they have Kim be with Tommy in the second film, hopefully there won't be a love triangle there. I don't really ship Kim with Jason or Tommy, I'd be fine if they cut the romance entirely, but she's bound to be with one of them at some point. We know that Tommy is coming because of the lovely mid credits scene, a zoom in on a green jacket while the teacher in charge of detention calls for "Tommy Oliver" who is not present. I hope, hope they do something with Tommy's ethnicity too. I would love if he was Native American or something like that. In all honesty I was hoping that maybe we'd get a female green ranger, I mean in the scene at the very beginning we see Rita in the full green ranger armor so we do technically get a green ranger, and she's in the corrupted version of the armor for most of the film. But I was hoping that maybe they would make Tommy a girl so the main green ranger would also be female? But Rita as female green ranger in the past is good enough for me..for now. Overall I loved the film for what it was, I am bitter there wasn't more character development for Trini and Zack, but I'm glad with how it turned out. I think one of my favorite scenes was early on in the film, after they first got their power coins and they were running away from the mine. I liked how all 5 of them ended up in the car together to try to escape. The whole scene just came off as so pure and I loved the way everyone moved around during it. Yknow right up until they were hit by the train and almost died. I guess if I had one last question to ask about the film it would be: what the fuck did Trini do to get put in detention at the end of the film? Jason is there because he broke into the rival high school to put a stolen bull in there, Kim is there because she sent her boyfriend a nude of one of her friends and then punched his teeth out, Billy is there because he blew up his lunchbox, and we can infer that Zack is there because he skipped so much school taking care of his mother/finding a way to cope with the idea that she might eventually die that he probably has to be there every weekend in order to graduate. But what did Trini do? She goes to school, does her homework, and flies relatively under the radar from what she told us, so why would she end up there?

#power rangers #power rangers 2017 #power rangers movie #kimberly hart #jason scott #billy cranston #trini kwan #zack taylor