When you wish upon a wachowski

Various and sundry pop culture passion and obsessions: Sense8, Hannibal, Orphan Black, A Song of Ice and Fire, and Mad Max are currently much on my mind. Fixed and eternal interests include alternate history, science fiction, and comic books.

[whenyouwishuponawachowski]

Some spoilers for Season One of Amazon’s The Man In the High Castle

Something that has annoyed me to no end in the response to The Man in The High Castle has been the idea that the characters are somehow slight, or drab, or uninteresting. I’ve seen this even in some professionally written reviews.

For the life of me, I don’t know how people can miss the simple notion that Frank, Juliana and Joe do not crack jokes like characters in a sitcom or toss off one-liners like bullshit action heroes because of the world in which they live. 

These are people who have come of age in a world where every day has taught them to escape notice, to skirt under the radar, to conform. In the case of Frank, it’s plain that he’s learned the inevitable result of behaving otherwise is death.

So let’s put to pasture this notion these characters are the way they are because they’re just dull, or that they are the way they are unintentionally, or that the characters’ psychologies are not as integral a part of the way this world is constructed as the costuming and set design. 

Instead, their struggle--for freedom, for integrity, for life--is stunning. When Frank brings himself just to remain in the room as the prayer is sung, and cannot even bring himself to join in, but just weeps, is breathtaking. 

It shows the depth of the brutality done to this man’s soul. And it shows how mightily he has to struggle to break free, even this little bit. 

Likewise, Juliana’s journey to the mass grave is done in silence. But in a society that is based entirely upon the avoidance of omnipresent horror, it is brave. A quest for truth 

So no, these characters are not underdone. Not uninteresting. 

What they are, is quiet. It pays to listen to them closely.    

[whenyouwishuponawachowski]

About THAT scene

I mean, you can’t really talk about Sense8 without talking about THAT scene.

But it’s fascinating, isn’t it, that there are several scenes that could qualify as THAT scene. It could be THAT one, or THAT other one, or even something else. But let’s just proceed under the notion that we all know what we’re talking about, just for kicks.

Now, the first tiresome question some poor benighted critic might want to ask is whether THAT scene, whichever one it might be, is necessary. 

To which I really want to say “I’m sorry,perhaps you didn’t realize it because you paid no attention to the signs which led you here, but this is the Wachowskis. You are now in the land of displaced space princesses cleaning toilets in Chicago and fetish-wear clad rebels fighting a global conspiracy to deceive humanity about the nature of reality. Strictly speaking, none of it is necessary. Now run along and watch Shark Tank, or maybe that nice Rachel Ray.”

Of course, the next soul-killing question we might entertain about THAT scene is whether it advances the story.

 And to that I really want to say, “Well it depends on what you want from the story, doesn’t it? If you think of a story as merely a kind of puzzle, a sudoku of events, from which you derive a kind of pleasure from its mere complexity and the process of watching problems emerge and disappear, then it probably does not add appreciably to that process. Alternatively, you might choose to experience it as if you were an actual human being endowed with the capacity to interact with creative work in an emotional way. But if you don’t know why particularly you would want to, there’s really no sense in having a debate about it, is there?.”

At which point, our imaginary interlocutor, perhaps a critic for a large-circulation newspaper, a writer for an entertainment website, or one of the mole-men from The Fantastic Four, might ask about THAT scene, “then why?” 

To which I would say, “Because lyricism. Because splendor. Because glory. Because of the need of us all occasionally to be reminded of the most essential, universal and beautiful circumstances of human life. Because the ‘edgy’ aesthetic that shapes American pop culture today, grounded as it is in the glorification of death and pervasive sexual violence, dedicated as it is to inculcating cynicism and an atomistic refusal to look outside ourselves or to have faith beyond ourselves, cannot brook the true provocation that is actual humanism, actual embrace of our commonalities of experience across circumstance, and actual renunciation of fear.

Because if Benioff & Weiss tried to write something half as awe-inspiringly beautiful as THAT scene, their heads would explode, and a million little Ramsay Snows crawl out.

[whenyouwishuponawachowski]

Fannibal heresy, I know...

I may be the only person in the world who thinks this way, but I believe NBC’s Hannibal actually worked better when it still had its police-procedural elements. Yes, I know detective shows are the bane of TV. Yes, I know we need more depictions of serial killers in this culture at this point like we need a beehive in the head. And yet somehow I really Hannibal needed that cop show structure in order to perform the peculiar magic it did the first two seasons.

-Chasing/mentoring/befriending/consuming other serial killers actually gave the show’s main characters a way to develop and express themselves indirectly and subtly. It added a complexity to the proceedings that’s missing when there are fewer moving parts to the story and the show’s title character seems like the only subject of conversation. Think about it: in the past few weeks Will Graham has actually had to learn critical information by talking to other living people, which is clearly a sign something has gone badly wrong in the show.

-Hannibal’s killers of the week were actually quite good. First, they created the opportunity for some really interesting performances from the guest stars. True, Lance Henriksen was a bit of a bust, but Molly Shannon and Amanda Plummer both gave great performances in their respective parts. And even when a lesser known actor played the misunderstood artist or cave-bear enthusiast in question, these characters could be compelling enough to rival Hannibal himself in their charisma. Remember Tobias? Ah, good times.

-Hannibal’s second string FBI-centered supporting cast (Beverly, Jimmy and Bryan) provided the sorts of social interaction that helped define Will, if for nothing else but his inability to really participate in it. Without their presence, it seems like the normalcy the show needs to present as a contrast to the operatic inner life of the major characters is gone. That seems to throw the whole show off balance. Without their banter the primary voices we hear are now Will’s prophetic utterances, Hannibal’s snide self-referential humor and whatever it is you call what’s going on with Bedelia. It doesn’t take much of that to become overblown, leaving the show teetering on the brink between gothic and (unintentional) camp.

Or, to put it simply: as of 3x04 I am past ready for a few mordant Jimmy Price jokes. Hopefully we’ll see the show shift gears once we start into the Red Dragon arc, but I hate the idea that Hannibal might go out this way.

[whenyouwishuponawachowski]

Wish-list for Sense8 Season 2

**Spoilerrific**

1. Of course, that there is one.

2. That the various characters keep their respective arcs in situ, dealing with the various problems in their lives, rather than find all their individual stories subsumed within the war against Whispers. Lito’s very public coming-out, Capheus’s ambivalent relationship to the Nairobi criminal underworld, Sun’s Shakespearean conflict with her brother, and Kala’s situation with the religious extremists involved in the assassination attempt on her maybe-future father-in-law are all far more interesting than yet another paranoia-conspiracy struggle against a shadowy international organization. More of that please, and less of the stuff that really could be interchangeable with the X-Files or any of a dozen dull-as-dishwater hour-long dramas on the major networks.

3. That the Sensates face shared threats other than Whispers. Even asides from what I say above about the balance between the individual arcs and the overarching story, there is a benefit to facing multiple threats rather than just exhausting the suspense of the one primary, ever-present villain. One of the keys to the way Orphan Black has maintained momentum over three seasons has been by focusing not just on the primary evil corporation but giving us a real rogues gallery of enemies (Neolutionists, Proletheans, and Project Castor) that have evolving relationships to our protagonists and to each other but at the same time all come out of the same basic science fiction concept of the show.

So, while obviously Whispers will be with us for a bit, I would love for us to see other threats. I would especially love for us to encounter other clusters. Think about how amazingly our guys and girls switched in and out of Will as they made their way through enemy HQ in episode 12. Now imagine the terrifying efficiency with which a cluster would operate if it had perhaps ten years’ experience on our heroes and heroines. And imagine that group against ours. Thrilling stuff.

4. That the basic mode of dealing with physical conflict (basically, keeping Will, Sun or Wolfie on speed-dial) gets seriously fucked with. While part of the fantasy fun of Sense8 is, yes, being able to dial-up your personal internal Jean-Claude or Arnold, beyond a certain point that should create its own really interesting conflicts and issues within the group.

I really wanted by the end of season one for there to be a moment when Sun had a moment on the order of “You know what? I’m on the toilet now, and do not particularly feel like saving you the fifth time today. If you want to learn martial arts I’ll be glad to teach you, but we’re not going to keep doing this indefinitely. Best of luck handling the guy with the machete. Over and out.”

Or, alternately, for the Sensate who gets called in to do something that really does not jibe with the ethics of the Sensate who placed the call. For example, imagine a hypothetical interaction between Nomi and Wolfgang: “Why did you think I would be okay with you using my body to kill all those people?” “I didn’t. But neither did I care.”  

Essentially, I would love by the end of season two for Nomi, Kala, Lito or Capheus to have to fight their way out of a situation just as themselves, without help from the other Sensates, and for that to be a serious character moment for them.

5. That the connections get used in ways other than physical conflict. This would have been a much bigger deal for me had Kala suddenly not become so crucial in both saving Wolfgang from his uncle and getting Will and Riley out of harm’s way. Likewise, Wolfgang using Lito to tell a lie that Wolfgang literally, psychologically, could not himself tell, was one of the storytelling masterstrokes of the first season. I would love season two to have more deployments of the Sensates like that. For Sun to be called on for the negotiation skills she learned as an executive in Seoul. Or, for example, to reverse a familiar trope in season one, for Sun to call on Capheus to charm someone, and to win their friendship, in a way she probably cannot. The more creative the deployment of a fellow Sensate and the reason why they are needed, the better, basically.

6. That at some point serious rivalries emerge within the Sensates, but that they do not play out in any way as an expected consequence of their racial, sexual,or class identities. I loved when Will did not get the Conan reference and Wolfgang took that as being somehow explanatory of Will’s character in a clearly uncomplimentary way (the opaqueness of that moment, and what specifically set Wolfie off, whether it was Will-as-American, Will-as-policeman, Will-as-do-gooder, or all the above, was pure splendor, script-wise).

As they progress further into the fight against Whispers, let’s see differences of opinion arise as to how to proceed and who should decide. That needn’t dominate the story, and needn’t play out like Stark Trek: Next Generation-style bridge debates, but it could make for some fascinating character moments. Let’s see when, and under what circumstances, Kala ceases to be the group pacifist, what it takes for the group to understand that Capheus actually has a better sense of interpersonal strategy than Sun, and which one figures out first that calling in Wolfgang to deal with crushingly violent situations all the time actually verges on a kind of abuse.

7. Yes, I’ll say it. More psychic-domino cluster sex. Or even them figuring out ways to put the Sensate necktie on the door, so to speak, to keep other members of the cluster out. Think about it: Riley and Will are getting into it for the first time, aaaaannnd, without even consciously wanting to, Lito shows up. And then Kala. And then Sun. “We gotta get a system in place!!!!”

8. Last but not least, don’t forget the practical stuff. The worst weaknesses of Sense8 are the lapses in its realism about practical things. People in a hospital room do not argue over who is going on whose insurance like they argue over a restaurant check because health insurance does not work like that. When negotiating with a fence over stolen diamonds, you decide to turn and leave in a display of your impatience, you do not leave the diamonds in his possession. When on the run from a super-secret organization that literally wants your brain, you do not return to the apartment where it knows you live, even if the plot provides a convenient, if not quite believable, fig leaf explanation. And said super-secret organization, when it is in possession of your loved ones (like Amanita, or potentially Riley’s father) would probably be inclined to keep them for leverage rather than just letting them go with no evident purpose. Seriously, there should be zero tolerance for this sort of thing.

So this is a lot of “I want” “I want” “I want”, I know, but the fact that I am now so obsessed about the future of this TV show and where its stories go is, entirely, a measure of its success. I love Sense8. I want more. And I cannot wait to see what happens.

[whenyouwishuponawachowski]

What’s going on?

So for a little over a year now I’ve been exploring Tumblr. My primary blog (”Et in Arcadia Ego”) has served as a bank of images to feed my creativity. And for that reason it has focused on medieval, renaissance and baroque-era art and architecture. My other geeky interests (and I have more than a few) were kept to the likes section rather than reblogged. 

Increasingly, I’ve been realizing this is insufficient. I’ve been wanting a way to blog about my geekery, and otherwise engage with it more actively than I could while remaining true to my other blog’s primary purpose. The breaking point came when I binge-watched Sense8 over the past week. 

I literally cannot not talk about this amazing show. Hence the title of this blog, which is meant as the fondest and most respectful of praise.