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Wonderfalls: episode 9
Jul. 9th, 2008 12:55 amSo, themes of Wonderfalls. Number one: Get over your fears and connect with people. Number two: Try to be a good and compassionate person.
It’s quite impressive that this has become clear in the space of just nine episodes.
It probably helps that Wonderfalls, while wonderful in many respects, is not the master of subtlety. Sometimes this works out okay (episode 4) and sometimes, as in episode 9, it creates problems.
A whole host of things occur in episode 9. The one that bothers me is the scene where Jaye tells the zookeeper woman, Penelope, that she’s using her beloved birds as a way to keep the human world at arms length so it can’t hurt her.
As psychological projection this works fine, because Jaye clearly is using the birds (as she uses most of the world) to keep the world out. But it it isn’t at all clear to me that this piece of advice applies to Penelope. Some people just aren’t very interested in people. It’s entirely possible that Penelope is one of them.
The problem with Wonderfalls “connect with people” theme is that, in coming down so rock-solid on the side of opening up and letting people in, it pretty much pathologizes introversion. It’s not a big enough problem to ruin the theme, which is basically sound; I just wish that the show would acknowledge not connecting as an occasionally valid choice.
It’s quite impressive that this has become clear in the space of just nine episodes.
It probably helps that Wonderfalls, while wonderful in many respects, is not the master of subtlety. Sometimes this works out okay (episode 4) and sometimes, as in episode 9, it creates problems.
A whole host of things occur in episode 9. The one that bothers me is the scene where Jaye tells the zookeeper woman, Penelope, that she’s using her beloved birds as a way to keep the human world at arms length so it can’t hurt her.
As psychological projection this works fine, because Jaye clearly is using the birds (as she uses most of the world) to keep the world out. But it it isn’t at all clear to me that this piece of advice applies to Penelope. Some people just aren’t very interested in people. It’s entirely possible that Penelope is one of them.
The problem with Wonderfalls “connect with people” theme is that, in coming down so rock-solid on the side of opening up and letting people in, it pretty much pathologizes introversion. It’s not a big enough problem to ruin the theme, which is basically sound; I just wish that the show would acknowledge not connecting as an occasionally valid choice.
