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Desperate Romantics, disc one
Feb. 15th, 2013 02:14 pmI’ve been watching the most entertaining miniseries! It’s called Desperate Romantics and it’s about the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, a group of painters in early Victorian England who decided that Raphael had totally RUINED ART and they were going to go back to their early Renaissance roots - this background is from my art history class; the show is a little obscure about their artistic theories. Pretty much the only thing that would make the show even more awesome would be if Millais and Hunt and Rosetti had arguments about Art, in fact.
Oh, and if they had Christina Rosetti, which so far they do not. Boo! I want “Goblin Market” shoutouts!
HOWEVER despite these flaws, the miniseries is nonetheless full of awesome. Each episode starts out with this epigraph:
“In the mid-nineteenth century, a group of young men challenged the artistic establishment of the day. The ‘Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’ were inspired by the real world around them, yet took imaginative license in their art. This story, based on their lives and loves, follows in that inventive spirit.”
I like how they’re so upfront that sometimes they’re going to chuck history out the window.
So far, however, they seem to be following in the broad outlines of the pre-Raphaelite story. There is sooo much I could talk about here, and at some point I want to make a post about the models and how I love them (they are sassy redheads, of course I adore them. If they follow history and have Lizzie Siddal die of consumption there will be tears) -
But for now let’s talk about Millais, Ruskin, and Effie Ruskin, and the most dysfunctional love triangle in the history of forever!
John Ruskin and Effie have been married for five years, in which time Ruskin has not managed to consummate their marriage, a state of affairs that infuriates Effie. Ruskin, in an attempt to salvage his marriage by getting Effie the venereal gratification she desires from someone else, decides to set Effie up with Millais, by convincing Millais to use her as a model.
“I just hope the the three of us, you, myself, and Mrs. Ruskin, will be very happy together,” says Ruskin, handing Millais a wad of cash, at which point Millais, who is sweet and as dumb as a tree, begins to catch on that something is Not Quite Right here. Sadly, Millais does not say, “Mr. Ruskin, are you trying to seduce me?” but that’s basically the tenor of the scene.
So poor confused Millais goes to his pre-Raphaelite brothers and is all, “...so should I ask Ruskin if it’s okay if I sleep with his wife?”
(As a side note, I have no idea how Millais fell in with someone like Dante Gabriel Rosetti. He may have been so delighted to finally have friends, any friends - apparently the other academy students used to hang him off balconies by his ankles - that it overcame his nagging sense that Rosetti was a charming lazy pathological liar.)
Rosetti is like, “Of course not! Ruskin wants you to proceed on the basis of this gentlemanly understanding, which you will never explicitly discuss, because honestly talking things out like adults, GROSS. We’re early Victorians, Millais! Honest communication is clearly a no-no.”
As Effie and Millais are in love - it’s really rather sweet - they decide to sleep together anyway. Both of them are virgins. It is EXTREMELY AWKWARD. “I have found over the years of plentiful womanizing,” Millais stutters, “that it is better if the man undresses himself, thereby saving the woman the shock of freeing the member rampant.”
OH MILLAIS. And then, through the good sense of Annie Miller the model/prostitute, the other pre-Raphaelites realize that Ruskin is not trying to save his marriage but actually setting himself up to divorce Effie for adultery and embroil Millais in scandal (BOO RUSKIN) race to the house to stop their congress from occurring, and then hatch a counter-scheme: Effie will divorce Ruskin for non-consummation!
It would have been easy to make Ruskin a total monster, but they don’t go that route. While eminently less sympathetic than Effie, who is pretty much my favorite (Effie/Millais forever!), he’s not completely petty: even when he realizes Effie and Millais have end-run him, he continues to support Millais’s art, because where would we be if we only appreciated art from artists we liked?
The one thing this show does not have (aside from Christina Rosetti) is a lot of slash potential: the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was basically the most heterosexual artistic brotherhood in the history of forever. They basically spend all their time scheming about how to steal their model-girlfriends from each other. Even Ruskin’s issues, whatever they are, don’t seem to include secret gayness. He has a secret stock of het pornography sketched by Turner, and he burns pieces of it whenever they turn him on too much. Ruskin, this porn thing: I think you’re doing it wrong...
In conclusion, I am totally looking forward to disk two, and I think everyone else in the world should watch this. Because sassy redheads! And pre-Raphaelites!
Oh, and if they had Christina Rosetti, which so far they do not. Boo! I want “Goblin Market” shoutouts!
HOWEVER despite these flaws, the miniseries is nonetheless full of awesome. Each episode starts out with this epigraph:
“In the mid-nineteenth century, a group of young men challenged the artistic establishment of the day. The ‘Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood’ were inspired by the real world around them, yet took imaginative license in their art. This story, based on their lives and loves, follows in that inventive spirit.”
I like how they’re so upfront that sometimes they’re going to chuck history out the window.
So far, however, they seem to be following in the broad outlines of the pre-Raphaelite story. There is sooo much I could talk about here, and at some point I want to make a post about the models and how I love them (they are sassy redheads, of course I adore them. If they follow history and have Lizzie Siddal die of consumption there will be tears) -
But for now let’s talk about Millais, Ruskin, and Effie Ruskin, and the most dysfunctional love triangle in the history of forever!
John Ruskin and Effie have been married for five years, in which time Ruskin has not managed to consummate their marriage, a state of affairs that infuriates Effie. Ruskin, in an attempt to salvage his marriage by getting Effie the venereal gratification she desires from someone else, decides to set Effie up with Millais, by convincing Millais to use her as a model.
“I just hope the the three of us, you, myself, and Mrs. Ruskin, will be very happy together,” says Ruskin, handing Millais a wad of cash, at which point Millais, who is sweet and as dumb as a tree, begins to catch on that something is Not Quite Right here. Sadly, Millais does not say, “Mr. Ruskin, are you trying to seduce me?” but that’s basically the tenor of the scene.
So poor confused Millais goes to his pre-Raphaelite brothers and is all, “...so should I ask Ruskin if it’s okay if I sleep with his wife?”
(As a side note, I have no idea how Millais fell in with someone like Dante Gabriel Rosetti. He may have been so delighted to finally have friends, any friends - apparently the other academy students used to hang him off balconies by his ankles - that it overcame his nagging sense that Rosetti was a charming lazy pathological liar.)
Rosetti is like, “Of course not! Ruskin wants you to proceed on the basis of this gentlemanly understanding, which you will never explicitly discuss, because honestly talking things out like adults, GROSS. We’re early Victorians, Millais! Honest communication is clearly a no-no.”
As Effie and Millais are in love - it’s really rather sweet - they decide to sleep together anyway. Both of them are virgins. It is EXTREMELY AWKWARD. “I have found over the years of plentiful womanizing,” Millais stutters, “that it is better if the man undresses himself, thereby saving the woman the shock of freeing the member rampant.”
OH MILLAIS. And then, through the good sense of Annie Miller the model/prostitute, the other pre-Raphaelites realize that Ruskin is not trying to save his marriage but actually setting himself up to divorce Effie for adultery and embroil Millais in scandal (BOO RUSKIN) race to the house to stop their congress from occurring, and then hatch a counter-scheme: Effie will divorce Ruskin for non-consummation!
It would have been easy to make Ruskin a total monster, but they don’t go that route. While eminently less sympathetic than Effie, who is pretty much my favorite (Effie/Millais forever!), he’s not completely petty: even when he realizes Effie and Millais have end-run him, he continues to support Millais’s art, because where would we be if we only appreciated art from artists we liked?
The one thing this show does not have (aside from Christina Rosetti) is a lot of slash potential: the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood was basically the most heterosexual artistic brotherhood in the history of forever. They basically spend all their time scheming about how to steal their model-girlfriends from each other. Even Ruskin’s issues, whatever they are, don’t seem to include secret gayness. He has a secret stock of het pornography sketched by Turner, and he burns pieces of it whenever they turn him on too much. Ruskin, this porn thing: I think you’re doing it wrong...
In conclusion, I am totally looking forward to disk two, and I think everyone else in the world should watch this. Because sassy redheads! And pre-Raphaelites!
