onsdag 23 februari 2011

The mystery of the BBC

So now it's official: there won't be a new "David Copperfield" adaptation either. The BBC axed "Dombey and Son" for a "David Copperfield" that isn't going to happen. Nice. Well, I can live with the disappointment when it comes to DC, because as I've mentioned before, the BBC has already made an excellent adaptation of the book. Maggie Smith as Betsey Trotwood, Bob Hoskins as a Micawber even I liked - except in That Scene, kept mercifully short, when he squeals and is self-righteous about it - how do you top that? But for axing Dombey, there is still not a shadow of an excuse.

But let's be fair. There are two Dickens adaptations forthcoming for the bicentenary: a new "Great Expectations", and "The Mystery of Edwin Drood" on BBC Four. And I'm glad, I really am.

Although, honestly, "Edwin Drood"? They're not doing "Dombey and Son", but they're doing "Edwin Drood"!? It wasn't even finished, and did not promise to go anywhere interesting. As has been gently pointed out in the Literary Life column in the Sunday Telegraph, we already know who dunnit. It was John Jasper - and believe me, I'm not giving anything away. What's more, we know what he did - murdered his nephew. We know why he did it - because he's inexplicably in love with Edwin's fiancée Rosa Bud, who is just as ghastly as her name suggests. We know how he got rid of the body - he buried it in quicklime. We can even be pretty sure - yes, we can - who Dick Datchery is. He's a private detective hired by the lawyer Mr Grewgious to clear up Edwin Drood's disappearance. Dickens is always Dickens, so the book is far from rubbish, but it's really not much of a mystery. As for Jasper, yes, he's interesting in a way, but his willingness to be trampled under foot by the beastly Rosa is dispiriting. I preferred Dickens's villains in the pre-Headstone days when they wanted to be the masters in erotic relationships, not slaves.

"Great Expectations", though, that I can understand. True, the BBC has done an adaptation of GE in the not too distant past (the one with Charlotte Rampling as a neurotic Miss Havisham), but it was more than ten years ago now, and it wasn't that successful. Good actors struggled with their parts, for which they were often miscast, and with a script with singularly little Dickens in it. Yes, if you're an adapter of course you have to prune, cut, add and maybe put a personal stamp on your adaptation, but why, for pity's sake, replace Dickens's marvellous monologues with your own efforts? The adaptation's pro-Orlick bias, if odd, was rather sweet, and seems to prove my theory that there really is no Dickens villain - with the possible exception of near-invisible heartbreaker Compeyson - who doesn't have a fan club somewhere. I can't see the point of Orlick myself (too oafish and not very clever), though he has a case of sorts: when he says that Pip "was always in Old Orlick's way", he is speaking nothing but the truth. Then again, Pip has reason to believe (and proves to be right) that Orlick brained his sister.

So, yes, a new adaptation of "Great Expectations", although woefully short of interesting male villains, will be welcome. "Great Expectations" is a masterpiece, after all, and there's always Jaggers, who walks like a villain, talks like a villain but is a goodie in disguise. As for "Edwin Drood", yes, OK, bring it on. Maybe an inventive adapter has found a way of framing someone else than poor Jasper for Edwin's murder - Rev. Crisparkle (as in an enjoyable short story I once read - sadly the motive was not convincing), the irritating Mr Grewgious or, best of all, Rosa Bud herself.

söndag 13 februari 2011

The Mouse rules OK

I recently went to see the latest animated Disney film "Tangled", and - no surprises there - it was excellent. Not quite as good as films from the Disney Golden Age like "The Little Mermaid", "Aladdin", "The Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King", but just as good as those Disney films which have a very high quality indeed but stop just short of greatness, like "The Hunchback of Notre Dame" and "Tarzan". "Tangled" actually shares one plot strand with "Hunchback" (more of this later). A drawback is that the film is computer-animated. I enjoy computer-animated films, with those from Pixar in a league of their own, but for the real Disney fairy-tale magic I prefer good old two-dimensional animation. Yes, the settings are spectacular - especially, I reluctantly have to add, if you have those pesky 3-D glasses on - but the character animation still lacks the personal touch. The heroine Rapunzel's eyes are enormous while her mouth is small and rosebud-like: I think both she and the mutton-dressed-as-lamb-villainess Mother Gothel would have benefited from a classical-animation makeover.

But enough carping: it's a great film. The heroine is feisty. The hero Flynn Rider accepts the fact that, though he is the debonair, wordly-wise thief, it is more often than not he who is rescued by the charm and inventiveness of Rapunzel rather than the other way around - and he does it more stoically than I think most men would in real life. There is a heart-warming scene where Rapunzel finds common ground with an inn-full of ruffians over the importance of having a dream. I nearly choked up at the interlude where the country's king and queen - deprived of their little girl from childhood - make themselves ready to face their subjects on her birthday. The horse with a Javert complex is funny, and there are nice touches throughout - the dashing Flynn's real name, for instance, is Eugene Fitzherbert.

So what's my point with this puff-piece, exactly? The Disney people know what they are doing. They've been doing it for decades. No-one compares to The Mouse when it comes to creating that special animated magic. Deal with it.

Some multi-million-dollar-companies are more sneered at and mistrusted than others. Maybe it's got something to do with what you market. If you sell oil, or cars, or armaments, you are expected to be tough, smoke cigars and preferably have a scar running all the way from your right temple to the left side of your chin. But if you sell kiddy-friendly stuff, toughness is seen as hypocrisy. Oh yes, parents fume, the films may be full of gush about following your dreams and being true to yourself, but all Big Bad Disney really wants to do is to MAKE MONEY, by brainwashing little tots into nagging their poor parents into buying stuff. McDonalds suffers from a similar PR problem: my theory is that comparable fast-food chains such as Burger King have escaped much of the hostility directed towards McDonalds by not stressing the child-friendliness factor too much.

One effect of the hostility towards Disney was the hyping of the Shrek franchise at Disney's expense. Aha, the critics crowed, here we have the real future of animation: smart, sassy, computer-animated, and a de-construction of those hoary old fairy-tale clichés. Disney doesn't measure up to this, Disney is past it!

Yes, the Shrek films are funny (though the third wasn't up to much, and I haven't seen the fourth one yet). But they are not better than Disney films because of their "de-construction" of fairy-tales. In fact, it can be argued that it's the knowingness of the films, and the mean-minded side-swipes at Disney, which stop them from engaging you the way a good Disney film does. As I've argued before, if you want to be moving, you musn't be too afraid of sentimentality, and the Shrek-makers were too careful of their street-cred to risk going all out with feel-good or sob scenes. As for the "de-construction" bit, the Shrek films don't really add a new dimension to fairy-tales, they just invert them. We're not given the fairy-tale baddie's point of view, because Shrek, uncouth ogre though he is, is not really a baddie. Instead, Prince Charming and his ilk are the baddies - and it's up to Prince Charming to make the point that fairy tales don't supply "happily-ever-afters" to everyone.

Meanwhile, The Mouse waited, and finally had the last laugh. Disney chose to meet the Shrek attack, very effectively, by standing by their brand. "Yes, we do like fairy-tales just as they are: got any problem with that?" was the defiant message of the film "Enchanted", and it worked. "Tangled" follows suit, and the scene at the inn has the same feel-good factor as Giselle's number "How Does She Know" in Central Park.

There is plenty you can can criticise Disney for, but they know how to put heart into a film, and if this useful skill swells their pocket-books, then so be it. I for one am glad they haven't gone bust. A down-side to having such a dominating influence in animated pictures, though, is that they can become rather self-referential. The death of Tarzan's adopted gorilla-father in "Tarzan" didn't really move as much at it should, because we'd already had that kind of thing in "The Lion King". In "Tangled", there's a strong echo of "The Hunchback of Notre Dame": Rapunzel is kept in her tower with the same arguments as Quasimodo - that the world outside is cruel and dangerous - and when she later confronts her false parent figure, she is in just the same angry and defiant mood as Quasimodo in his similar confrontation with Frollo. Surely this was an opportunity missed: where's the sadness, where's the question "Did you ever love me?" And as for Mother Gothel, didn't she even feel a twinge of regret? It must be hard faking affection for years without ending up feeling at least a bit of it. But "Hunchback" never explored this issue, so "Tangled" doesn't either. Could do better, Disney. Remember your motto from "Meet the Robinsons": Keep moving forward!

onsdag 9 februari 2011

Wilkie Collins and women

I have neglected the historical studies lately. The reason is that, after having finished reading the satisfactory Jude Morgan regency romance "A Little Folly" (he really is just as good as Heyer, if not better, though the Austenesque moral message grates a bit - less painful self-revelation for the heroine, please!) I started yet another Wilkie Collins novel. I've read quite a lot of them by now and am constantly surprised at how good they are, even the unknown ones. The only one who has really disappointed me is, strangely enough, "The Moonstone". Whenever I've had problems with some aspects of the other books - the time it takes for the author to set the scene for the really thrilling plot in "Armadale" (though the pre-history is dramatic, it reads a little like a summary of a serialised novel in a women's magazine: you almost expect it to end with the words "now read on"), the disappointing ending of "The Law and the Lady", the seriously irritating lawyer-hero Sir Patrick in "Man and Wife" - I've always ended up thinking: "come on, it's still good, and way better than 'The Moonstone'".

I may have a good moan about "The Moonstone" at a later date, but for now I'd like to dwell on one of the things Collins does really well, and that is female characters. The novel I'm reading right now is "Poor Miss Finch", and though the titular heroine Lucilla Finch is charming enough, though a little missish, the most likeable female in the book is the strong-minded, honest, opinionated, loyal and affectionate Madame Pratolungo, her companion, who is the novel's chief narrator.

Like so many of Collins's admirable women, Madame Pratolungo is a "doer". She engages herself wholeheartedly for the welfare of Lucilla and shows endless initiative. She doesn't mince words either. When Lucilla's love Oscar acts like a poor fish (which one can't help thinking that he is, even though Madame Pratolungo has reason to revise her bad opinion of him as the story unfolds) she gives him an earful. When Oscar's twin brother Nugent starts to get uppity, she gives him an earful. Not that these earfuls help a lot, because the brothers are both in their separate ways pig-headed, but you love Madame Pratolungo for trying. In a way, she is a good version of the impressive female baddie Mrs Lecount in "No Name": they are both resourceful French widows, often reduced to bullying the weak-willed menfolk around them, and they both love and revere their late husbands. Madame Pratolungo memorably remarks regarding the aversion Lucilla (who is blind) has to dark colours and complexions: "This singular prejudice of hers against dark people was a little annoying to me on personal grounds [...] Between ourselves, the late Doctor Pratolungo was of a fine mahogany brown all over."

It is strange that Collins, who created characters like Marian Halcombe in "The Woman in White", Lydia Gwilt in "Armadale", Valeria Woodville in "The Law and the Lady", the two aforementioned French widows and many other fine female characters often speaks so slightingly and patronisingly about women in general. Granted, it is his characters who speak and not he personally, but you have the feeling you are supposed to agree when, for instance, Sir Patrick muses on the female sex and its weaknesses. But I suppose, as a woman, you have to take the rough with the smooth.

The disability lobby must feel equally ambivalent about Wilkie Collins's outlook. On one side, he includes a large number of characters with one handicap or another in his novels and enters feelingly into their situation. On the other hand, these characters are no better or worse than the others, and their particular disability is shamelessly milked for dramatic effect. The novella "The Guilty River" is a case in point: the baddie in this story is deaf, and he is not able to become a better person until his deafness has been cured. At the same time, the story contains a harrowing account of how his condition separates him from his fellow men. I rather like this - horrible word - unsentimental approach. It must surely be a "right" worth having to be depicted as a flawed or downright villainous character in a novel - they are so much more interesting than butter-wouldn't-melt goodies. But then you're talking to the girl whose favourite fictional blind character is Pew in "Treasure Island".

tisdag 1 februari 2011

The point of really annoying characters - is there one?

I recently finished the novel "The Confessions of Edward Day" by Valerie Martin and was relieved. This might seem strange as the book has a lot to recommend it. It's well-written and draws you in from the start: the first sentence is: "My mother liked to say Freud should have been strangled in his crib". Its main characters are actors, and I've been stage-struck since I was a girl. What's more, the setting is New York in the Seventies. It could easily have been a pleasant read roughly in the same genre as Helen Dore Boylston's "Carol" books - though with higher pretensions and less compulsive readability - if it had not been for the hero Edward Day's loathsome nemesis Guy Margate.

And when I say loathsome I really mean it. This is a man who, whenever he enters the scene, makes your heart sink a bit. Edward can't easily get rid of him as he owes him his life, but even the life-saving is done in the most ungracious way possible. Afterwards, Guy demands money of Edward when he can ill afford it; belittles him in front of his friends (who mercifully don't pay that much attention); makes a play for his girl and, the worst part in my opinion, claims he's a bad actor. It's true that Edward is not someone you feel a great deal of sympathy for: at one time when he's working at a summer theatre in the country he falls in love with the primadonna, sleeps with the ingénue, reacts to the news that his girlfriend Madeleine is pregnant by sending her money for an abortion, and still expects her to be waiting for him when he comes back to New York, minus the kid of course. And yet, I wholeheartedly shared Edward's distaste for Guy: I gritted my teeth when the bastard was doing well and felt profound satisfaction when he was doing badly. This is quite an achievement on the author's part. But there's no denying that Margate mars the pleasure of one's reading experience more than a little bit.

What is the function of characters like this, the kind I call "please-go-away-characters"? What can they do that a charismatic villain can't? What's the point of tormenting the reader as well as the hero/heroine/other luckless person the p.g.a.-character chooses to pick on? Well, there is the achievement bit. My theory is that a lot of juicy villains started out as potential annoying characters, and then the author inadvertently made them more and more fun until they became the person we root for when we're tired of a priggish hero or virtuous heroine (which in my case would be pretty much all the time). It's hard not giving into the temptation of making the hero's arch-enemy someone it's a guilty pleasure to read or for that matter write about. So if you pull off creating a real pain in the neck, then yes, it's impressive. But then what?

There aren't that many p.g.a.-characters around, it's true. There's Raffles in "Middlemarch", and Rigaud becomes one at the end of "Little Dorrit"; up until then, he has only been one of Dickens's tamer villains, albeit one with a funny Frenchified speech-pattern. He is truly repulsive in blackmailer-mode, though. Maybe one thing these characters can do that colourful villains can't is to make us understand what a strong temptation it can be to kill someone, or at least what it feels like to want someone dead. If you put the question "Would Lady Deadlock be justified to kill Mr Tulkinghorn?" (and he is just as much a menace to her as Raffles is to Bulstrode) the answer, at least from a villain-lover like me, would be "NO, are you kidding?" If, on the other hand, the question is "Would Bulstrode be justified to kill Raffles?" the answer, in my book, is "Probably not, but do it anyway. Please, just do it. Or Will can do it. Or Casaubon. What do you mean he's dead and doesn't have a motive?"

In the case of Guy Margate, his ghastliness is probably unavoidable given the theme of the novel. But what is the theme exactly? That it's not that great being saved? In that case, isn't it cheating making the saviour a d---head? Or is the theme guilt, something poor Edward is saddled with anyway as he feels responsible for his mother's suicide? Guy makes things worse: Edward wishes him gone, although he saved his life, which can't be good for that guilt complex. Yes, all right, that kind of works. But am I glad to be reading Jude Morgan's latest and not having to spend any more time in Guy Margate's company.