osprey_archer: (window)
I am beginning to worry that Code Name Verity has ruined me for all other World War II related media. I couldn’t get into Bomb Girls at all (I know, what is wrong with me?) and while I liked The Bletchley Circle, it didn’t blow me away. And I wanted it to blow me away. It is a period piece! about women! solving crimes!!!, and therefore it is like they made it for me personally!

I did enjoy it, I just...I wanted it to blow me away. And it didn’t.

I thought it would have been better if...Spoilers for the end )
osprey_archer: (art)
The last two episodes of Desperate Romantics did not enthrall me quite as much as the others did. They're still quite splendid, mind (and they introduced William Morris and Edward Burne-Jones!!!! VICTORIAN ARTIST GEEKERY YAY) but they focus mostly on Dante Gabriel Rosetti and Elizabeth Siddal riding the True Love Train to destruction (hers), and that just doesn't enthrall me like "William Holman Hunt completely failing to treat Annie Miller like a real human being till she kicks him to the curb" or "John Ruskin and Effie Ruskin and John Everett Millais having the move awkward love triangle in the history of forever".

I mean, clearly the story does have to move on to someone else once the love triangle has been sorted and Millais and Effie have settled into marital bliss. They have the most adorable marriage ever. So Rosetti is having trouble with Lizzie Siddal, right - because Rosetti is pretty much the WORST husband ever; he's with someone else the night before their wedding - and Millais is trying to give him advice, and he says, "When Effie and I have a tiff, we make friends by devising new nicknames for each other. She likes to call me Mr. Crumpet..."

Oh, Millais. I have added you and Effie to the gallery of Married Couples Whose Relationship I Would Like to Emulate.

But marital bliss does not a story make, because a story needs conflict, so clearly Desperate Romantics had to focus its spotlight on someone else. But did it have to focus so intensely on Dante Gabriel "We don't have a love affair, we have an argument punctuated by sex!" Rosetti and Lizzie "Without your love I have nothing to live for!" Siddal?

She says this the first time she is dying of laudanum. Rosetti is like "I LOVE YOU LET'S GET MARRIED." I think he does sincerely love her in that moment. The problem is Rosetti's love like a puddle in July, shallow and swiftly evaporating; and Lizzie clearly needs something more than that.

It's just horrible watching Lizzie destroy herself over a man who isn't worth it.

I still highly, highly recommend the show. Trainwreck though Rosetti and Lizzie's marriage is, the show never bogs down in it: there's enough much going on with the other characters to buoy it up. But the last two episodes are definitely the weakest. Lizzie and Rosetti's relationship is far less interesting and unique than Hunt's Pygmalion project with Annie Miller, or the love triangle between Millais and the Ruskins, and of the three relationships, it is also the shallowest. Rosetti clearly can love no one but himself.

And I'm still sorry about the total lack of Christina Rosetti. She should get a movie of her own! It could be a deliciously gothic tale about her visit to the Goblin Market - I'm envisioning an aesthetic like Pan's Labyrinth, the same uneasy lovely terror, though like Rosetti's poem "Goblin Market," it would have a happy ending.
osprey_archer: (art)
YOU GUYS YOU GUYS. How is everyone else in the world not watching Desperate Romantics? It is amazing and full of art and Victorian England and beautiful redheads and cute guys and more art and EVERYTHING IN THE WORLD I WANT IN A SHOW. It is a show about terrible people, but it knows it's a show about terrible people and it calls them on their terribleness and it is so, so funny.

So many historical shows leap at the opportunity to indulge in sexism - and the Victorian art world in general and pre-Raphaelites in particular offer so many opportunities (I'm not sure Rosetti quite saw women as people) - and this show just avoids that so effortlessly.

I have even forgiven it for its lack of Christina Rosetti, that is how much I love this show.

And did I mention it's hilarious? Seriously. And it has the most complicated and convoluted and interestingly difficult take on heterosexual romance - and on friendships - and really just relationships in general - you can tell they thought about every single relationship in this show. What makes it go? Where are its weak points? How do these two people - these two particular people - fit together?

So there are three main pairings in Desperate Romantics. John Millais/Effie Ruskin (who is now Effie Millais), who are rather effaced in this episode, though Millais is enjoying married life so much that he enjoins all his friends to the joys of matrimony with the rapturous comment that "the course of our physical intimacy takes us daily through new and enchanting landscapes" - oh, Millais, ILU. I hope here is more Effie & Millais in the next episode.

Then, Dante Gabriel Rosetti/Elizabeth Siddal, who are riding the True Love Train straight to...well, presumably an early death from consumption on her apart, although I'm holding out hope they'll ignore that inconvenient bit of history.

(In this episode, Ruskin is all, "Miss Siddal, you are so talented! You are an untutored genius! I've decided to give you a stipend so you can devote yourself to your art. And Rosetti, you're clearly a great teacher, I've found you a teaching post!" Rosetti's look of horror, barely gilded with an attempt to look delighted and supportive - he's supposed to be the untutored genius, not her! - is priceless.)

But today! Today I'm going to talk about William Holman Hunt and his disastrous relationship with his protegee Annie Miller, a prostitute/model who he has decided to raise out of the gutter and turn into a lady because...well, he's not clear why he's doing this, which contributes to the terribleness of their relationship. Hunt is forever saying things like "I admire your working class spirit, but until we change your voice and your walk and everything about you really, I can't possibly introduce you to my mother."

Annie is torn between being gratified to get a chance in life she never expected to have, and being insulted by the fact that Hunt claims he's in love with her while not seeming to actually like anything about her. "I am sick to death of being your experiment," she snaps at him, when yet again he's broken off their relationship; and he's so infuriated that he tries to convince Annie to move out of London, because he can't stand to be in the same city as her anymore, apparently, and obviously that's her problem.

He sends Fred to take the message. Fred is the only one of them who isn't based on any particular historical person, and his main role is to provide a sort of buffer so it's not all pre-Raphaelites trying to steal each other's girlfriends all the time. Mostly he's pretty dull; not in a way that detracts from the story, but in a "someone needs to be boring around here to make everyone else stand out all the more brightly" kind of way.

But Fred - Fred reaches his apotheosis in this episode. He tears Hunt a new one - and it's not even because Fred's in love with Annie; he's not, but he recognizes that she deserves better. I nearly fell out of my chair.

"I will no longer carry messages to a woman you are not worthy of, carry messages to a woman who has done everything you have asked of her, yet whom you still reject. A woman who deserves to be loved, and if not by you then by some other manm who will not demand of her that she be anything other than her loving and lovable self.

"You wronged her. It is your pride, not hers, that is the issue here."

And Hunt runs off to apologize to her - finally finds her in a tea shop - rather fails to do justice to how sorry he is (he should have just quoted Fred, but he was still too proud, perhaps) - and she tells him, gently but firmly, that's it's over. Years from now, they'll see each other, and he'll be a great artist and she'll be a matron with seven children, and they'll look back at this and laugh.

And he loses her. He acted like a complete jerk to her - and she doesn't forgive him: she half wants to, but she can't, because he's betrayed her trust too many times. They cry over the tea table, and it's sad and necessary and beautiful.

(And then the episode finishes off with Millais unveiling his sketch for Bubbles, which sends the pre-Raphaelites into hysterics. Always leave 'em laughing.)

...everyone should watch this. I plan to buy a copy just to make all my RL friends watch it. Hopefully they won't be too alarmed by the amount of sex in it.
osprey_archer: (art)
I’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!
osprey_archer: (fandom!!!!)
I've been watching State of Georgia. I think there is a lesson here, and it is this: when [livejournal.com profile] entwashian recommends a TV show, I should watch it STAT.

It is awesome. The eponymous Georgia is an aspiring actress who is constantly pulling her best friend, Jo the physics grad student (PHYSICS GRAD STUDENT, people!) into adventures, which Jo accepts long-sufferingly but secretly thinks are awesome! And Georgia is fabulous and has enough self-confidence to sink a ship! And there are hijinks and hilarious banter!

This may be the only show I have ever seen which has enough female friendship.

And also two of the three series regulars are black women: Georgia and her aunt Honey, with whom she and Jo are living. And many of the recurring characters, or bit characters, are characters of color as well. (Jo's physics study group for the win!)

YAY I HAVE A NEW TV SHOW. Sadly its only 13 episodes long. Just like Wonderfalls! And Firefly! All the best TV shows get canceled early!
osprey_archer: (Default)
Hello hello! It's been a busy week. My friends came up to visit because my roommate is not here yet, and then they left and I was behind on all my classes. Particularly Russian. I stand next to the blackboard, chalk in hand, as the teacher airily informs us that we need to translate such and such a phrase, and it contains three different declensions and an irregular verb...

However, my hands seem to remember the case endings, so at the moment I stand back and let them write. Evidently that miserable month at Beloit paid off! (And not just in a muscle memory sort of way. I look at the length of my Russian homework assignments now and I'm like, "Really? Just five exercises? HUZZAH!")

Also also! I watched a peculiar but oddly compelling miniseries earlier this week with my friends from home (...hence the fact that I'm behind). It's called The Lost Room and it's about a bunch of objects that have weird powers (there's a watch that hard boils eggs, for instance), and cabals that have formed around the Objects (you can totally hear the capital slipping into place as the characters talk. By the end of the miniseries, you can no longer say the word Object without great portentousness), and Epic Quests.

It's got a number of flaws. The ending doesn't quite make sense, there's a totally random sex scene in the middle (not only are they not in love, there's no evidence that they're even attracted to one another), some of the main characters remain ciphers throughout the series... but at the same time, it's a compellingly weird tale, and it's impossible to stop watching once started. Has anyone else seen it?

Also, I baked lemon bars. I have the recipe for the Most Delicious Lemon Bars EVER, and I can't wait to eat them. Yay for culinary skill!

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