There is a tendency among Star Wars fans to assume that you came to it as a child, sitting wide eyed in front of worn out VHS tapes, soaring plastic x-wings through the air in chubby fingers. It didn’t happen like that for me. I watched Star Wars for the first time at the age of seventeen - my immediate family thought sci-fi and fantasy was a bit silly, a bit weird, and the nerd renaissance hadn’t happened yet so if you could reel off too many facts about lightsabers it was still a sign that you were dangerously unsocialised. But Star Wars saturated my consciousness. How could it not? It was Darth Vader advertising sinus-clearing gum, it was references in Spaced, it was a kind of proto-meme. It was too big to ignore, and so many people I liked seemed to like it, so it was time to do something about it. Accompanied by two of my best mates, I rented the trilogy from Blockbusters.
I can’t remember how exactly that instant love felt - I think I remember (though isn’t this how I feel ever time?) the swooping of my stomach at the crawl text, the first triumphant blast of the overture, the satisfaction of finally being part of this massive, culture-consuming thing. I think we watched all three films in one sitting, spurred on at my delight. I demanded that we talk Star Wars, exclusively, insistently, in the same way that we talked Harry Potter and Doctor Who and Lord of the Rings, with forensic exactness and affectionate mockery. We were, in 2007, just about touched by the internet as a daily part of our lives (no smartphones, this was get-home-and-log-on-to-Messenger time) and there was a definite net-inflected language to the way my shippy heart took to Han and Leia, the meme-ish smart-alecky snideness of the way we used the same Whiny Boy Voice to impersonate both Luke and Hamlet and their daddy issues (a school set text, plus we’d just discovered Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, and the notion you could get paid to do fanfic was properly life-changing). My Livejournal entry (haha, like I’m giving you the link) recording the momentous occasion is all “OMG”s and “made of win”. I was seventeen, and I was young enough to be delighted.
One of our regular rainy lunchtime chats was to ‘cast’ members of our friendship group as characters in a film; my friend turning to me and saying “You’re probably the most Leia-ish, sort of like, ‘why aren’t things happening? I have told them to be happening’” was, to my teenage self - fuck it, to my adult self - the most cherished of compliments. I was of an age where you begin to form Views About The World, and Leia provided a model for me: no-nonsense, smart but never dour, always open, happy to bestow a hug or a wounded comment. In retrospect, so much of that is Carrie Fisher’s performance. Leia as written is all of those things but a different actor - someone more guarded, more trope-aware - might have found them harder to synthesise. Fisher’s great strength in those films is her vulnerability, the way everything shines out of her face, and when coupled with her precise, scornful authority becomes a character that is instantly familiar, iconic for more than her hair. Leia was me, and she was who I wanted to be. In her publication of her teenage diaries that came out this year, Fisher wrote about knowing that she felt things too deeply, that there was something “too much” about her; she also writes about how carefully she cultivated a worldly persona, hiding how nervous she was through filming. It’s always tempting to apply new information after the fact, but I think it comes through in Leia, or I want it to at least - a public figure barely out of adolescence, fighting a war, falling in love: she’s all front and she’s all honesty, all at the same time.
The other thing that shines through, deliciously, is Fisher’s wit. She is undisguisably clever. She nails her comic moments, she gives a sense of wheels turning in her brain, all the time. Comedy was her forte, both as a performer (a minor appearance, but her episode of 30 Rock is a serious favourite) and as a writer. But others will eulogise her talents in these areas better than I can. I would come to learn more about her life later on, her honesty, her coolness, her charm, her openness both about her mental health and Hollywood’s sexism, and it would cement her as something close to a hero for me (by which I am not damning with faint praise - I find it very hard to use the term without feeling like a knob). Once again, she gave me a model to live by, not as Leia but as herself. She was a gadfly stinging away at the hide of a dinosaur, irritating the right people and refusing to shut up, and that is a great thing to be. As Harrison Ford told her, “You have the eyes of a doe and the balls of a samurai.”
But for now I am thinking of myself almost a decade ago at the age of seventeen, very much a child in very many ways. In the end, of course, it doesn’t matter than I never watched Star Wars as a kid - as though there’s only one way to love something. I watched it when I did, and it was shaped for me, as so much of my consumption of fantasy and sci-fi was then (god, it still is), by a desire to know how to achieve good in the world. How to take down the empire. Princess Leia was testament to that. Of course, real life rarely parcels the fight into handy quests, metaphorical colour-coded missions of good and evil, and Carrie Fisher was testament to that. In my mind, the two are inextricably intertwined, as I think they were for Fisher herself. Only last month, she wrote to a fellow bipolar sister, “We have been given a challenging illness, and there is no other option than to meet those challenges.” It’s a line that would do any heroine proud.
IT'S BACK. And this year the stakes are higher than ever, because I've managed to convince my partner to watch it from Week 1 instead of doing his usual thing of feigning disinterest while freshly made lemon drizzle cakes keep mysteriously appearing in the kitchen.
By now we have had a solid hour of getting to know this year's sacrificial twelve. I can say, with confidence, this is how this shit will go down:
Lee having dropped sweetly away like the body of a rocket falling gracefully back to earth to allow the elites in the shuttle to soar to new heights of human achievement, Val must be next. a) Her cakes are characterised by the sort of slightly shonky icing that goes unnoticed in grandma's house but when Paul Hollywood is staring down at it suddenly makes you feel a gnawing pity in the depths of your soul, and b) she defines herself by liking Ed Sheeran, and no-one who willingly submits that biog deserves an airing on national television.
Val: not long for this show but may live forever
I am spectacularly uninterested in the three remaining white men in the tent. They are a really bad representation of white men in general. Tom already believes he has his own cooking show and is providing faux-expert commentary whenever the camera comes near, which would be fine except that this is the sixth season of Bake-Off and we all know everything forever about baking now, and are watching like when you watch a football match roaring advice at world class athletes while your triple chin jiggles gently. Michael is doing a kind of sub-Blumenthal thing which resulted in him serving up green sponge that tasted like grass, baffling Mary Berry almost to the point where she looked personally hurt. Both of them should, and will, leave in the first half of the competition. Andrew is a more interesting one as he is, on the face of it, the candidate most likely to become Telly Boyfriend of 2016 (soft of face and voice, clad in sensible flannels, awakener of maternal lusts), but has been thwarted by a) displaying no real character thus far and b) the presence of Selasi.
Ah, Selasi. Selasi Selasi Selasi. Anything I could say about Selasi has already been perfectly summed up by his entry in this Vice article, which was written BEFORE THE COMPETITION EVEN STARTED:
"Selasi is the boyfriend of the girl you're lowkey in love with and he's better than you in every single way. "Hi," Selasi says, his handshake tight but smooth, strong but finessed. "Selasi." The girl you are lowkey in love with – your housemate, which makes this all the more uncomfortable – suggests you two will get on. "Selasi plays football too!" You invite Selasi to play with you all on Wednesday nights and he absolutely, yet modestly, outplays you. You're panting out of your arse and you're pretty convinced you're having a coronary. "Good game, mate!" he says, then jogs off the field. At the bar afterwards, Selasi gets a round in for 15 people without even blinking. "Please, lads," he says, "don't worry about it. I just got a bonus at work, they're on me." You were going to walk home because you don't have the bus fare but Selasi gets you both a cab. "I'm heading back to see Kate anyway." That night, you lay on your bed and listen as, there in the living room/kitchenette combo, he cooks a curry from scratch, bakes a cake, then plays her a subtle and beautiful saxophone solo. Later, you hear giggling and immaculate, fulfilling-sounding intercourse. You realise in the middle of the night that you are now low-key in love with Selasi as well. Your life really is a mess."
100% Vice. A fucking star. Every single thing Selasi did resulted in a chorus of shallow intakes of breath from me and my partner, a nominally heterosexual man.
Selasi: will make a fortune on an app where he just comes over and holds you in the middle of the night
The result of which is that I am now hardcore shipping Selasi/Candice, saving each other's cakes week by week. I can only assume the end result of this will be something like the end of the first Hunger Games, where they make it all the way to the final and rather than allow a corrupt Mary and Paul to keep the populace divided by claiming a single winner, they vow to end their own lives, possibly by drowning in a vat of soggy bottomed Victoria sponges.
Speaking of which, I love Candice. I regretfully feel she may not last long in the tent but her lipstick is on point, so I just need her to last through to Week 5, by which point she will have enough Twitter followers to be answering make-up questions and eventually land an endorsement deal with Benefit.
So who does that leave? Louise, who I like but I am wise enough not to get too attached to, as she has Week 4 Exit written all over her. Rav, alas, I feel may also not make it past Week 6, though I feel sadder about this as the world is not done seeing Rav and his family whose names almost but don't quite rhyme or alliterate. Perhaps Rav's House is the next great British sit-com, and we will laugh and cry and grow together in equal measure. Perhaps not. (Probably not. The Daily Mail is a thing that exists in the world, after all.)
Benjamina. Benjamina evoked an instant, uncomfortable stab of empathy for me as she is clearly a perfectionist who will never quite believe her work to be good enough, while turning out beautiful, understated high quality work. She will get to the semi-final and then inexplicably lose out to someone like -
Well, someone like Kate. Let's talk about Kate, shall we? Kate, who owns a farm, which was referenced not once but several times in the programme. Kate, whose children will grown up in the outdoors and actually be both hale and hearty and you will look at them and not know what those words mean but know they are it. Kate, who lives a life of incredible prosperity despite genuinely believing that blue icing will make a mirror glaze. Kate, who will almost certainly make it to the final through sheer absence of controversy. Kate, who forages. Kate, who is nothing and yet inescapable. Kate, who will always, always be fine.
Let's talk about Kate being, for the next ten weeks, someone who I will loathe joyfully and religiously. There is always one, and they nearly always make it to the end. It is almost my favourite part of Bake Off. Now, I understand that there are those who claim the programme's appeal lies in it being a gentle tea-time treat, a celebration of the diversity and talent to be found the length and breadth of This Great Nation, those who look on the dizzying heart-stopping pains of near-cake-drops and sliced fingers and say, "Ooh, it's a bit tense, isn't it?"
To these people I say, Fools. If you only choose, you too can live your life in a barely contained state of emotional instability, constantly teetering on the edge of tweeting all in caps while stuffing handfuls of raw cake batter into your grateful mouth. If you only choose it, Bake-Off can become the bloodiest arena sport since man first stumbled out of the sea.
My hatred of Kate is a beautiful thing, a poetic thing, and I shall nourish my blood-baby with the fury of a dying sun; the blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere the ceremony of innocence is drowned. It lives eternally, at least until October.
Also her whole swallows thing is, like, out of control twee.
I am so glad to have you back, Bake-Off. The scent of blood and icing sugar is in my nostrils once again. Morituri te salutant.
Like so many people whose words I’m reading, I’ve been carrying the shooting in Orlando around inside me for the last two days. It is only this morning, as I wake again to find that the weight on my chest has not shifted, that I start to put a true name to it: grief. Late to the party, I know, but what I see around me and feel is the endless sea of people grieving, for fifty lives, and for the loved ones left behind, for whom this will not be over when the news cycle moves on.
There’s so little to say that hasn’t been said. I wasn’t in Soho for the vigil last night; I should have been. I should have been there to lend my voice, instead of allowing myself to stay silent and choked, because silent and choked is the aim of every act of hate and act of terror. This morning my Facebook feed is flooded with photos and videos from the vigil, with words of tenderness, with the unbelievable, brave hope that love wins out in the end.
And I feel bitter. I feel bitter because I used to believe - still believe - that love is a stronger force than hatred, that love is a selfless thing, an inexplicable thing, that radical love for a stranger is one of the most powerful things in this world, that we cannot ever think that looking after our own is a substitute for being truly compassionate - but lately it has been harder and harder to believe this. Like so many others, I find myself slowing down, stumbling, ever more aware that that the onus is on us, on the LGBTQ* community, on anyone standing against hatred and injustice, to keep making our voices heard against global establishments, governments, and status quos that protect their own interests before all else.
Love Wins - but only when backed by sweeping gun law reform. That’s the thought that went through my head looking at those posters and placards on Old Compton Street. I am - I admit - weighed down by a profound despair, and all I can do is wade into it with the belief that at some point it will turn to anger, which will turn to protest.
Already these events are being co-opted into narratives on all sides to suit all agendas. There are those on the right who have moved immediately to using the shooting to fuel their anti-Muslim beliefs, rejecting out of hand the notion that this has anything to do with access to guns and conveniently staying silent on the LGBTQ* lives taken. There will be those on the left who will not want to talk about the role extremism played in shaping this man’s actions, lest they be perceived as Islamophobic. The truth is that this is a story that belongs to nobody. It is a series of events of incredible complexity, set in motion by fear, enabled by a 225-year-old law.
It is a truth that this happened because LGBTQ* people were targeted, as they have always been, for centuries, and it is a truth that mostly frequently the purveyors of that violence in the US have been white men. It is the truth that you can die for loving who you love, fancying who you fancying, and we all today feel the chill of the target on our backs, the target we sometimes manage to forget.
It is a truth that this happened because a man legally had access to weapons with devastating killing power.
It is a truth that this happened because this man listened to religious extremists for guidance.
And now the latest news is that this man was a regular at the club and had a profile on Grindr. So it is also a truth that this man was driven to violence over desires and feelings within himself that he had learned were wrong.
It is easy, at times like these, to make a blanket statement condemning America. That vast, unwieldy nation that so much of the rest of the world looks towards, that young country restlessly seeking its identity, that place that uses words like “opportunity” and “freedom”, words that we over here blink and shuffle at, and find embarrassing, to our own detriment. A country of extremes, a country of will, a country that has been at the forefront of innovation, exploration and art, that houses some of the greatest cities in the world, a country of excitement. A country where the wheels of government turn crushingly slowly - too slowly for those who have died, too slowly for those who will die when this happens again, as it will.
A man will walk into a church or a school or a club, and open fire. And he will do so not because he is Muslim (for the majority of mass shootings in America are committed by white males), but because he purchased weapons legally. Because he went through the background checks, waited for his licence, handed over his money, and received a weapon capable of ripping fifty lives out of the world. When the Second Amendment was written, providing citizens with the right to keep and bear arms, those arms constituted inaccurate and unwieldy muskets. I cannot believe that the Founding Fathers - men who were, after all, trying to build a world of freedom, freedom from fear - would make that same amendment today were they faced with a world where members of the public could be given an assault rifle capable of gunning down 130 people in an instant. No citizen in the world should be able to carry that much death.
If America were to fulfil the promise they made to the rest of the world - to become, truly, the Land of the Free, they could be a beacon to us. In the UK, we bang our heads against an electoral system designed several hundred years ago to protect the interests of landowners - imagine a world in which the USA gives up its weapons and says “You know what? It’s not 1791. It’s 2016. The world has changed and we will change with it.” What couldn’t we do then? That would be an extraordinary world. But it didn’t happen when children died at Sandy Hook, and my belief in America isn’t so blind that I think they’ll do for the LGBTQ* community what they didn’t do for school kids.
I know that love will win, in so far as Orlando will come to back to life, that LGBTQ* people will continue to love boldly and brightly, that we will all drown ourselves in fucking rainbows to show our defiance, our lack of fear, that hate and terror have not sent us scurrying into dark corners. But I also know that more people will die in the doing of this. More lives will be lost as the gears grind slowly towards a less hateful world, and before long we will have to mourn again. That is the grief, and the heartbreak, of these few days: not only do we mourn for those who have been lost, but those losses yet to come.
QUICK NOW BEFORE I ACCIDENTALLY START BLOGGING GAME OF THRONES AGAIN:
1) "If I don't watch over you, father's ghost will come back and murder me." Just some light hearted Stark family bants. (Seriously though, when was the last time we had two Starks together in one room?)
2) "Oh, that was me, I totally did that," says Brienne, lightly fingering the hilt of her broadsword, wandering casually past Davos and Melisandre as they discuss Stannis' death.
3) If there was a time when we thought Olenna Tyrell might die of old age, that time is past.
4) The Lord of the Wandering Accent returns to the Vale from....well, who the fuck knows, eh?
5) The Lannisters deserve their own theme song and some kind of tooling up montage.
6) Major mistake to kill off Roose Bolton. Ramsay is no Joffrey. The most entertaining thing we can pray for now is ignominious surprise death at the hands of some rando having a bad day (which, in Westeros, is all days).
7) Tyrion "actually my best friend is a slave" Lannister.
8) Tyrion "12 Minutes a Slave" Lannister (idk, pick your favourite)
9) YES KHALEESI WALKING NAKED FORTH FROM THE CHARRED FLESH OF HER ENEMIES AS SHE PREPARES TO LEAD GROVELLING LEGIONS IN A BLOODY CAMPAIGN OF SLAUGHTER THAT IS WHAT DANAERYS' STORYLINE IS SUPPOSED TO LOOK LIKE
Bonus thought from last week: I am sure when we find out the reason why Hodor used to speak and now doesn't, it will be hilarious and heart-warming because there is NO NEED TO MAKE HODOR TRAGIC.
Captain America: The Avengers 2.5
Captain America: Actually Winter Soldier Though
Captain America: You Don't Need Another Spiderman Origin Story (Just Yet)
Captain America: Dad and Dad are Fighting Again
Captain America: Did You Know The Russo Brothers Also Directed Community, Pt 2
Captain America: We Know What You Came For: To See The Avengers Beat Each Other Up: Sigh, Here You Go
Captain America: Contains Minimal Captain America or America In General
Captain America: Bureaucracy Strikes Back
Captain America: Hey Remember Hawkeye Though
Captain America: No We Are Not Making Planet Hulk
Captain America: Sorry Your Dad Was Like Obsessed With Me
Captain America: Pew Pew Pew
and finally
Captain America: Take A Good Look Because You Literally Will Not See These Guys Together Again For Another Two Years While We Introduce A Whole Bunch of Randos You Don't Really Care About
I jest, but have you seen the Doctor Strange trailer? It looks dumb af.
Caitlin Moran is a powerful writer to have on the side of the feminism - she writes accessibly, entertainingly, and with frequent references to masturbation - plus her platform for airing her views is a national one. 90% of the time I find myself nodding in agreement with what she says and the other 10% making that noise that Tina in Bob’s Burgers makes. I won’t go and list past moments of stomach-clenchery because actually most of them aren’t relevant to the issue at hand; today I’m specifically addressing her article for Esquire published on International Women’s Day, “12 Things About Being a Woman That Women Won’t Tell You”.
There has been a huge drive recently to make feminism accessible to men, which is basically A Good Thing. There are so many myths and misconceptions and straw feminists floating around on the wretched hive of scum and villainy that is the internet, that sometimes we need a little accessibility - sometimes you need to invite people in. But there’s a difference between opening the door and standing there clicking your fingers and cooing as though trying to coax an errant pet in from the cold.
The first six paragraphs of Moran’s article are dedicated to reassuring her male readers that she knows they’re all in favour in equality, that they’re big, clever boys who can tie their own gender pay gap and everything. She states that they’re basically all fine because they don’t hang off the back of buses shouting at girls or honk women’s boobs with wanton abandon. But doesn’t that essentially amount to saying that a man is a supporter of gender equality by doing the absolute bare minimum of not actively behaving like a prick? Moran frames her article as being “extra”, homework for the advanced class, and she knows they can all handle it because they’re “sophisticated, 21st century men”.
“You like women being equal to men,” she writes, “which is all that feminism means. Not all the penises being burned in a Penis Bonfire. Just women being equal to men.” Absolutely that’s what feminism means - but part of its process also means women sometimes needing space to vent about systems that privilege men, and sometimes men find that uncomfortable to hear (in fact, having space to vent is also not the Penis Bonfire but sometimes the two seem to get confused). Moran completely makes the point that when women complain about “Men” or “The Man”, what they are complaining about is the patriarchy, and this where a lot of Feminism For Men starts from, showing men the necessary distinction between an individual and a system:
One man = an individual, capable of acting with great grace or courage or compassion or selfishness or thoughtlessness or outright evil.
The patriarchy = a deeply rooted system of thoughts, behaviours and ideas that benefit and centralise men, in operation in most walks of life.
In other words, you may behave a certain way because of the patriarchy, but you are not the patriarchy. Thus, when feminists attack patriarchy, they are not attacking you.
Cool.
But. But. I worry that a consequence of re-branding feminism in a way that specifically appeals to men, even flatters them, will mean less space to vent. To just be angry. We’re so afraid of being angry now - those straw feminists on the internet have seen to that. And that’s just another form of being silenced, of not speaking out, only this time inside a space and a community that is specifically designed to give women a voice. The real, unpalatable truth is that if you are a man who is going to engage with feminism or feminist issues, you are going to hear some things that make you uncomfortable. It can’t be all about how cool you are for supporting feminism, even though you are very cool (see? I felt the need to add that last bit. I’m doing it too).
Moran writes, “We’re embarrassed when other women say, "Men can't be feminists!" We don't want to get into an argument, but we just can't see the logic in it.” I am not “embarrassed” by anything “other women” do. There’s enough judging of women’s choices going on in the world. I may not agree - anyone, of any gender, is welcome to call themselves a feminist. (In fact, please do! The more the merrier!) But if I were to talk to a feminist who firmly believes that men should refer to themselves as ‘allies’ rather than ‘feminists’, well, then fine. I’m not embarrassed by that at all - in fact, I see her point. And if a man spoke to her, my hope for that man would be that he would see her side of things and respect that, even if he too disagreed.
There’s another underlying assumption to this approach that is faintly patronising: not only that that men will only engage with feminism when being flattered but also when it directly impacts and/or benefits them. International Women’s Day also saw the #HeForShe campaign releasing its latest hashtag #ILoveMenButHatePatriarchy. Like #HeForShe, Moran also roots her piece in her male readers’ female nearest and dearest - “you’ve got sisters, mothers, lovers - female friends and colleagues”.
But what if they don’t? Isn’t it harder, more complicated than that? What if they never or rarely interact with women? What if a feminist doesn’t love men or patriarchy? Does the whole idea break down? Does feminism become worthless because there isn’t always an immediately obvious central position for men within it?
What if men aren’t actually central to feminism?
What if feminism is about women?
The end of result of feminism is a gender equality that benefits everyone, and without a shadow of a doubt issues that affect men are feminist issues, but feminism advocates getting there by aiming to redress a balance that historically and presently has women at a disadvantage. One of the beautiful, frustrating, foolish, optimistic, hopeful things about feminism is that it asks men to put women at the centre of a narrative, to put their name to a cause that has women at its centre - simply because it is the right thing to do.
If you have a problem with that, or would prefer to use the term “Equalist” or “Egalitarian”, maybe it’s time to ask yourself why. Do you really believe that men and women are starting from an equal playing field? That they face equal amounts of persecution, oppression, and discrimination on every level, from the systemic to the everyday? And I mean all women everywhere, not just women in Western or developed countries, because equality can only have been achieved when it is achieved for everyone.
So if I have an appeal to a specifically male audience, it is one that I want to say loudly, once, and then leave you to it. Here it is: take a deep breath and support your feminist sisters and allies because it is the right thing to do, and because one day it will result in a world with less fear, less violence, more love, and more freedom.
It’s an almost impossible world to imagine, because it requires work from all of us - the work of constantly challenging of our biases, conscious and unconscious. A world of true gender equality means re-making the way we look at gender, and no-one ever said that was easy or simple. Germaine Greer - whatever you think of her now - put it brilliantly in 1971. When asked to describe what a sexual encounter between a man and a women might look like in a world where equality had been achieved, she replied,“You ask me to describe a state of affairs which doesn't exist, it's a perfectly unreasonable demand. What makes you suppose that liberation has happened?”
So blogging didn't really work out for me for the last, ooh, all of 2015. But this is 2016, baby, and we're strapping the typing gloves back on and kicking things off with a good old-fashioned listicle, like what Ma used to make. There will be opinions, and there will be capital letters.
This latest triumphant return to the blogosphere came out of a pleasant conversation on the Docklands Light Railway, which is sometimes a magical urban safari skyline, and sometimes sweaty and crowded and full of people who haven't yet learned to take their backpack off and put it on the floor, just like any other tube line, and then what is the point of you DLR just be underground think you're so fancy all up in the sky but you're NOT.
I refuse to call these guilty pleasures because to hell with the idea that a pleasure should be guilty, the mixing of high and low culture produces some of greatest cultural landmarks, namely The Muppets etc etc etc blargh blargh bleurgh starting listing the films already. What this is instead, is a list of films that I will openly admit to liking while a deep-rooted sense of shame coils around my lower intestine. I know they are not good films, either artistically or morally. I am not proud of myself for liking them. But somewhere along the way, something went very wrong in my cerebral cortex and I wound up with a bunch of DVDs* taking up space in my life of which, whenever someone stumbles across them, I have to say, "Oh, well, yeah, y'know, but like, actually it's got this one really good…" and then trail off into justly abashed silence.
And these aren't ironic either, or films I watch to make fun of, or films I think have an unfairly negative reputation. There are whole different lists for those. These are bad films and I really like them.
Have mercy on my soul.
5) Night at the Museum, and Night at the Museum 2: Another Night, Another Museum (or whatever) (2006/2009) Ok. Ok. I know. I just. Bear with me here.
I know it has a 44% Rotten Tomatoes score (and that's the first one). I know it has a scene where a monkey repeatedly slaps Ben Stiller in the face (actually, screw you, that's an entirely valid reason to enjoy a film). I know it has Ricky Gervais putting in a level of effort that is only visible on an atomic level.
But.
I think, quite simply, the reason either of these two films are on my rainy day playlist is that they occupy the perfect centre of the Venn diagram between two things I like very much: movies with gangs where the members all have different special abilities, and the past. All the members of the gang have special abilities, and they are all from the past. This is not rocket science.
And the sequel, while lazy and derivative, had more people in the gang who were more from the past, and one of them was Amelia Earhart, so...feminism?
Basically, Owen Wilson is a tiny cowboy and Steve Coogan is a tiny Roman Centurion, and they're enemies and then become unlikely friends. It's both heart-warming and hilarious. Leave me alone.
SO HEARTWARMING
(Honourable Mention: National Treasure, for exactly all the reasons you think.)
4) Down With Love (2003)
Ugh. Ok, so. Ugh. Yeah.
Down With Love, a 2003 'homage' to early 60s romantic comedies starring Renee Zellweger and Ewan McGregor…no, I can't even finish this sentence. There's already too much terrible. It's not that any of those things or people are terrible in themselves, exactly, but somehow when you combine them into one movie, it's a perfect storm of ugh.
Firstly, let's not forget that 2003 pre-dates the serious revival of interest in the feminist movement and things like the 'third wave' and 'post-feminism' were still grimly clinging on by their pink-painted-because-they-definitely-chose-it-themseves-and-it's-empowering-and-not-because-of-gendered-societal-norms fingertips. When you combine that with the sexual mores of the 1960s, in which the film is set, it's just a recipe for ugh, ugh and more ugh. Zellweger is Barbara Novak, plucky girl author of best-selling women's sex book about how to give up men and achieve equality in the workplace, and McGregor is Catcher Block (yep), the quickly-becoming-obsolete Don Draper-esque men's magazine journalist. Oh, but wait.
Between Renee's plan for workplace equality being 'replace sex with chocolate' (WOMEN LIKE CHOCOLATE, SOMETIMES MORE THAN SEX WITH MEN, THOSE CRAZY BROADS), Ewan's plan to nail Renee being 'lie about identity, emotionally manipulate woman into having feelings, bang', and the whole thing turning out to be an elaborate plan to ensnare Ewan into marriage, it could probably send the progress of women's rights back to the Sixties single-film-reel-edly if broadcast with enough frequency. In the name of feminism, we should be hunting it down and scouring its existence from the face of the earth.
But I really like it.
Why do I like it? It's super fun to look at and the design is awesome - it's Sixties, but it's our dumb idea of what the Sixties were like. Renee and chain-smoking best friend/editor Sarah Paulson (of Studio 60 fame) swish around Manhattan in capes and stupid hats and I want all the things they have in this film. Renee has a remote controlled fireplace. A remote controlled fireplace. Ahem.
And it's shot in a really fun way, with lots of split screen and simultaneous conversations and general badinage leading to the most inoffensive innuendoes a PG-13 certificate can muster. In other words, if you've ever seen a Doris Day/Rock Hudson vehicle, then it's pretty much that, only with not quite enough irony or commentary to make it smart.
There is a part of me that knows it's not really ok to switch off your values for the ninety minutes it takes to watch a stupid film. I know the 'Battle of the Sexes' stuff on show here is retrogressive and not handled smartly enough to be a 21st century take on 20th century attitudes. But I think we're smart enough to watch problematic things, know they're problematic, and enjoy them all the same. More on that later.
Also there's a remote controlled fireplace, and David Hyde Pierce** gets swallowed by a sofa bed. Some days, I don't need much more than that.
Also Ewan McGregor makes this face.
3) Treasure Planet (2002)
Let's be clear: this is not on the list because it's a Disney film. It's on the list because it's an utterly forgettable Disney film. As you may be able to tell from the super cryptic title, it's Treasure Island IN SPACE. That's pretty much it. It's fairly faithful to the original novel - obviously not a patch on the Muppets version, but what is? - with the minor tweaks of making the ship's captain female (good), voiced by Emma Thompson (bad), and making Ben Gunn a comedy robot sidekick voiced by Martin Short (BAD BAD VERY BAD).
I mean, objectively, it's just disappointing. It has a lot of individual things to recommend it but they never quite add up into a compelling whole. The animation is beautiful - Disney finally (in 2002) getting to grips with mixing CGI and hand-drawn animation (SPACE WHALES), plus doing this create-a-360-degree-virtual-set-now-manouvre-the-camera-like-it's-live-action thing, which means that the Outer Space in question has, well, space and depth and dimensions to it. It's pretty.
Basically, this feels like an animator's pet project, a really cool art school exercise and writers, what writers? We don't need writers. Get outta here. But the art, alas, is not why I like it.
So why do I like it? IT'S TREASURE ISLAND IN SPACE. Troubled-but-cute teenage protagonist Jim Hawkins is a junior delinquent with an Absent Father so it's also TREASURE ISLAND IN SPACE WITH DADDY ISSUES. It gives me feelings.
So yeah, if you mentally delete all the parts with the robot, it's basically Catcher in the Rye meets Star Wars, and that is just fine with me.
MUCH EARLY 00'S SUCH ANGST SO HAIR WOW
2) Sliding Doors (1998)
I actually used to hold this up as an example of romantic comedy done well. Smart, I would say. Funny and charming, I would say. John Hannah, I would say. But I watched it again and ah jeez, it's just terrible.
The 'smart' 'thought-provoking' conceit that Gwyneth Paltrow's life diverges into two distinct timelines (Gwyneth Prime and Gwyneth Beta is how the film does not refer to them) depending on whether she catches a tube or not is, let's face it, the most first year philosophy undergraduate idea ever, and isn't quite rescued by the eleventh-hour magical realism of the timelines converging. It's aged very badly, sort of an unintentional period piece, from the weird-looking London Underground trains to brandy being the casual tipple of choice for partying yuppies. Forget every BuzzFeed article you have ever read, the most 90s thing to ever happen is Gwyneth Paltrow smoking in a bar while John Hannah tells her she can easily get another job. (As if to compound this, she does. She finds it in a printed newspaper.) And whatisthedeal with the bizarrely heavy-handed product placement for Grolsh? In my twenty-five years of living, I have yet to encounter anyone who says, "Let's go out for a [brand name here]", rather than just "a beer", if they weren't being paid to do so. Not so in the world of Sliding Doors. In the world of Sliding Doors, they drink Grolsh. And they want you to know about it.
So why do I like it? Well, mostly John Hannah. He's lovely, and your mum probably fancies him. But on further consideration, even he makes a move way too soon after Gwyneth Prime has discovered her boyfriend in bed with another woman, and actually a lot of his hilarious quips come off like someone who sits alone in a darkened room all day desperately trying to emulate human warmth. So, a screenwriter, I guess.
What could be said, interestingly, is that he represents an early male version of the Manic Pixie Dream Girl trope - he drops into over-worked, straight-laced Gwyneth Prime's life through a series of seemingly magical coincidences, takes her boating and shows her how to laugh/love again. What's also interesting is that this proves the MPDG apparently doesn't work in any iteration ever, not even as a male character, since - as with John Hannah's Manic Pixie sisters from others films - the quirkiness is incredibly forced. He quotes Monty Python! He makes hilarious gags about trying to give Gwyneth Paltrow cellulite! He quips to his sick mum about moving somewhere she can buy better crack! HE'S NOT LIKE OTHER GUYS!
And re Monty Python, if such a study could ever be done, it would be interesting to find out whether the percentage of conversation made up of endlessly quoting comedians/films/television shows until you actually have to kill one of the members of your group to put an end to it has risen since pre-internet days. Whatever the answer, today John comes over like a cross between that Daniel Radcliffe interview where he thinks he's the only person in the world to have discovered Tom Lehrer and the tedious mate of a mate that you met in the pub who, for fuck's sake, won't shut up about Monty Python, like, we've all seen the Spanish Inquisition sketch SO MANY TIMES I KNOW HOW IT GOES.
And despite all this, I still like it. I will watch it again. What can I say? It affects me. It actually (there I go) does go to a darker place than most standard rom-coms, and it's painful to watch anyone slaving away to support a partner who's "writing their first novel" while in actuality copping off with their ex. Even Gwynnie Beta. It captures the humiliation of infidelity really well and, for what it's worth, does it while avoiding lazy demonisation of the cheating boyfriend, who has several scenes talking candidly about his conflicted feelings to another male chum. I mean, he's still the worst. But that's why there's John Hannah.
The message is that sometimes we get haircuts that don't work out for us and that's ok.
1) Seven Brides for Seven Brothers (1954) Hahahahahahahaha you guys it's a musical about rape. I mean, basically. It starts when rugged tight-trousered woodsman Adam strolls down from his 1850s Oregon wood-house into town to find himself a bride (maybe made of wood). Surprisingly Awesome Milly decides she's plucky and spunky enough to make a go of it, and weds him on the spot. So far, so consensual.
Then it all goes to shit.
S. A. Milly ends up keeping house for Adam's six younger brothers too, all of whom are also tight-trousered woodsmen. She eventually implements a regime of starvation and occasional ladle-based violence until they begin to say "please". They learn to dance, put pomade in their hair and meet some nice local girls, and it's all set to be lovely until Adam - who got his bride in matter of hours and thus is crushing it on the Man Leaderboard - tells his brothers the story of the Rape of the Sabine Women. In song. The song is called "Sobbin' Women". It is equal parts insanely catchy and horrifyingly misogynistic. It is the Blurred Lines of 1950s musicals. He then encourages his brothers to follow the fine example of the Ancient Romans and erase the word "consent" from their vocabulary.
Thus, the titular forest-dwelling Seven Brothers set out to abduct the titular (hee hee, titular) Seven Brides from the town - really abduct, there are blankets over heads - blindfold them and carry them off to their wooden shack, causing an avalanche on the way so that the boyfriends and families of the kidnapped girls can't mount a rescue until the snow melts in spring. They are only thwarted in their plans by the fact that a) they forget to also kidnap a preacher (see, it's fine, because they just wanted to marry the women against their will), and b) Surprisingly Awesome Milly kicks them all out of the house and makes them live in the barn all winter, while she and the women form a happy matriarchal commune wait for heteronormativity to reassert itself. Which it does. The brothers come to see the error of their creepy ways - except for Adam, who storms off to have a patriarchal huff and only realises he might be in the wrong when the news comes through of his newborn baby daughter, thus suddenly forcing him to reassess his worldview that women are objects - and the town girls start doing things like walking past the window in their underwear and throwing snowballs with rocks in them (the traditional mating displays of 1850s Oregon), and it all ends happily if you don't think about it too hard.
But oh gosh, it's SO CHARMING. There are handsome beard-men wearing plaid and dancing while they raise barns. They jump over axes. I don't know what the point of jumping over axes is, but it seems to prove something to them. They sing "I'm a Lonesome Polecat", which is approximately exactly as ridiculous and wonderful as it sounds. The backdrops are so obviously, unapologetically fake, you can see the brushstrokes on the trees. It has that haze of garish 1950s still-overexcited-about-technicolour innocence to it that makes it extremely possible to turn off the sensible, up-to-date bit of your brain, and enjoy it for what it is.
I mean, just do yourself a favour and take three minutes to watch this:
Did you watch it? Do you see now? Do you understand how much joy this brings me? The flawlessly timed petulant axe swings? The almost heartbreakingly simple insight that "a man can't sleep/ when he sleeps with shee-eep"? The one guy out to the side going full Dream Ballet? The fact that it's done in a single take?
No, I cannot, in all good conscience, hate on Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. It is a part of my psyche, and a part of my soul, and you too are not above it. You simply have yet to surrender.
Also there's this unintentionally hilarious bit when the girls are starting to soften towards the boys over the winter and the boys start making excuses to come into the house to fetch blankets and things to catch a brief glimpse of their sweethearts and there's one girl who just looks delighted whoever comes in from the barn, monogamy be damned.
Basically, Seven Brides is - our favourite overused word - problematic when viewed in the above terms (it's maybe not actually as bad as I suggested, the movie makes it pretty clear that the girls are into the guys too, both prior to and once they get over the whole kidnap thing). But it's also joyous and stunningly made and excitingly danced. It stands apart from all the others on this list because it is, actually, a great film that maybe I think I shouldn't like. But I'm also a thinking human person with a brain, and I'm not going to go and kidnap anyone to get them to marry me because of it. I might sing Bless Your Beautiful Hide as a form of courtship though. I can make no promises otherwise.
*cunning code for 'illegally torrented files on my hard drive'.
**That marks two entries on this list that feature DHP in a supporting role. Come on, man. You were Niles Crane.
Friends, I've been thinking about the Bible a lot lately. Not in any kind of way that might make me a better person - that would be ridiculous - but as source material. In my continuing quest to slaughter as many cultural sacred cows as one person can fit into a lifetime of poverty and self-doubt ("making theatre"), I seem to have somewhat overlooked the Bible as a potential source of old, familiar stories to mangle beyond recognition. Which is foolish, because there is a bit when God sends two bears to maul forty two children to death because they mocked an old man's baldness. Straight up God-murder.
Now, the reason this is on my mind is that I am approximately halfway through the first and only season of NBC's cancelled 2009 series 'Kings': a kinda sorta modern-day-but-not-actually-the-world-as-we-know-it retelling of the King David story. (David's not king yet though, he's just hanging around being inconveniently Chosen by God while Ian McShane - who is king - Ian McShanes his way through some speeches about butterflies.) It's set in a fictional kingdom (Gilboa) with a fictional monarch (Silas, who in the Bible is Saul-no-not-the-Damascus-one-a-different-one) but all the clothes and technology and what have you are contemporary. It's pretty neatly done, the problems of the shows (and there are problems) aren't really with the world-building element of it. In fact, it's the kind of conceptual approach that you could easily see being theatrical: it's what you might do with a Shakespeare play or a Greek tragedy to keep it, y'know, not dull as fuck.
(Quick sidebar: Why don't we do more Bible plays? Western theatre tradition practically evolved out of them, what with the Medieval idea that the only thing better than a play was a play on a cart.* And yet Bible stories are pretty much screen adventures only these days - in fact, it's one of the first things Hollywood did once they figured out they could do picture and sound and colour at the same time. The new technology came in and Cecil B. DeMille said, "Charlton, go up on that rock, talk to God, and make it sexy."** And I guess that got into our heads somewhere along the way because, with the exception of nativity plays, I'm far more familiar with the idea of the cinematic Bible epic than the theatrical one. (Of course, now I've written that I can think of at least three examples of Bible stories being done onstage but screw you brain, you came up with this lame idea for a blog, have the courage of your convictions dammit.))
ANYWAY. The problem with 'Kings', I think, is that it starts the story in the wrong place. It's ok. Lots of people do it. It happens to the best of us, George Lucas, with our insistence that we meet Anakin at the age of ten and... and that is a different blog. Basically, 'Kings' would be much, much better with the same world-building, some of the same actors, and a totally different plot. This is the biggest trick that 'Kings' misses: making David a pre-kingship blond-haired big-eyed innocent Luke Skywalker type. Biblical David? HUGE DOUCHEBAG. The second biggest trick is not only the de-gaying of the David/Jonathan relationship, but the turning of Jonathan into a standard jealous, scheming villain.
A lot has been made out of the Biblical are-they-boning relationship between David and Jonathan, son of Saul, the king that David is nominally serving - Oscar Wilde cited them alongside Achilles and Patroclus as an example of "the love that dare not speak its name", and there was an awful lot of Medieval "THIS IS WHAT A HOMOSOCIAL RELATIONSHIP LOOKS LIKE AND THERE IS NOTHING ELSE TO BE SEEN HERE" wrangling. My personal position is that you can explain away David and J-Dog kissing and telling each other that they love each other so much more than they love women as an extreme product of a patriarchal society that prized bonds between men above heterosexual relationships but why would you? It's not like there hasn't been enough queer erasure over the centuries, and no-one's going to prove it definitely one way or another, so yes, I am all for it: David and Jonathan, Bible Boyfs.
EXCEPT. Except for David's aforementioned douchebaggery. Really, the story of David and Jonathan resembles less Achilles and Patroclus, and more 'The Giving Tree'. David turns up post-Goliath slaying, and Jonathan is so overwhelmed that he, on the spot, strips off and gives David his armour which, as well as being a real example of a Biblical striptease, symbolically gives David his position as heir to the kingdom. That is how much he loves him. David's response is something along the lines of "Oh thanks bro, yeah, did I ever tell you about how I killed a giant just now?" This continues, with David falling out of favour with Saul and running away, at which Jonathan immediately ups sticks, abandoning his father and people, to follow David into exile. David's response, again, is, "oh hey, um... Jason? Jonathan. Yeah, no, I knew that." The rest of the time it's Jonathan professing his love and David going, "Well, I am better than you and everyone else, Jonathan." In the end, there's a big battle and both Jonathan and Daddy Saul are killed. Then David expresses some affection, composing one of his trademark psalms on the lyre - but then again, maybe he was just the world's first douchebag to pick up a lyre at a party and say, "This is an original composition."
And through all of this, by the way, David is married to Jonathan's sister, Michal. Whom he bought for two hundred Philistine foreskins. (The asking price was a mere one hundred, but David knows you get what you pay for.)
So this should be a TV series in its own right, shouldn't it? It deserves at least a few seasons to let the tragic inequality of the relationship hit home before Jonathan dies in David's manly arms, plus you can set it during the time D&J are in exile together - throw in some kind of Biblical supernatural demon-fighting alongside the overarching plot and you've got a monster-of-the-week set up fuelled by potential slash. Jonathan is in love with David, while David makes it his mission to bone any man, woman or celestial being that looks at him sideways, along with the occasional implication that David's just scared of his feelings for Jonathan. Then the series is cancelled before we get anything more than an obligatory drunken kiss episode. There's nothing a network loves more than some good old queer-baiting, after all.
But it could be a fascinating study of unequal relationships: an opportunity to both loathe David and yet understand why Jonathan is so drawn to him, to empathise with Jonathan, to want him to break free of this toxic, unrewarding state of affairs, and yet still, with a tiny, terrible part of your soul, want him to hang in there because David might - might - one day love him as fully as he deserves.*** But while fighting monsters.**** As in 'Kings', Jonathan will be played by Sebastian Stan because he deserves a chance to do the character in a way that isn't horrible, and David will be played by Idris Elba, because we need to believe that we too would follow him to the ends of the earth on the off chance that we might get a snog.
Rest assured, there will be many such shots of Sebastian Stan crying.
Starting later in the story also allows us to visit the whole final-season Bathsheba debacle. This is where even the Bible has to start acknowledging David's douchebaggery. Now king, replete with many wives (many wives), he goes for a stroll on the palace roof and sees naked babe (Bathsheba) having a bath - I've never been quite clear whether the aptly named Bathsheba was also bathing on the roof, as Leonard Cohen would have us believe, or whether David was a massive creeper on top of everything else, and once he realised he could see into some girl's bathroom window, did not think the decent thing would be to look away. Either way, David's reaction is something along the lines of, "Damn, girl, let's get you impregnated." To this, Bathsheba says: WE DON'T KNOW BECAUSE THE BIBLE LITERALLY DOES NOT HAVE A SINGLE WORD ABOUT HER CONSENT IN THIS MATTER. NONE. IT JUST SAYS DAVID "WENT IN TO HER". LIKE, WOW. WOW, BIBLE. EVEN FOR YOU.
So anyway, Bathsheba gets all good and impregnated, the only fly in the adulterous ointment being her husband, Uriah the Hittite, who is off fighting for David in a war that he should be in too but, y'know, roof-bath-chicks to nail. So David calls him back home and does something along the lines of that Monty Python sketch, "Your wife, bit of a goer is she? Nudge nudge wink wink know what I mean maybeyoushouldgoandhavesexwithhersonobodywillknowthechildismine" until poor Uriah has to say, "Look bro, it's not that I don't appreciate the respite from the horrors of war and all, but don't we have this, like, incredibly sacred and ancient rule that soldiers on active duty don't sleep with their wives?" And David says, "Ugh, you are not making this easier for me. I mean, really you are bringing this on yourself." And he sends him to the worst bit of the fighting where he'll definitely be killed. And he is. And then David marries Bathsheba because hey, it's good to be the king.
The coda to all of this is that, as aforementioned, even God has to admit he might have not been totally on point when he decided that David was going to be his Super Special Bro on Earth, so - in the manner of people who hate being wrong - he totally overreacts. The prophet Nathan pops along and tells David that a) his child with Bathsheba will die, b) someone he loves will "take all his wives" and c) everyone is done playing happy families. Sure enough, the child dies (David, in one final defiant act of gold-medal douchebaggery, mourns while the child is alive and refuses to mourn after the child has died because he knew it was coming), and years later David's son Absolom starts a coup against him that is kicked off by Absolom having sex with all of David's concubines in public. (I feel like Game of Thrones could step up a little.) Bathsheba kind of does get hers in the end, as she makes the dying David promise that her son Solomon and not his actual heir can be king next, and I like to think she did it through pinching the tube on his morphine drip until he said yes.
So, obviously, this is the final season of, I would say, about five. Four seasons of David and Jonathan hunting demons and almost making out, then Jonathan dies, a lot of the original cast departs, and you get one of those slightly weird situations where the show limps on for another twenty episodes before a kindly network exec shoots it in the head. But what a glorious mess it would be.
Or, even better, a PLAY. A big non-naturalistic Greek tragedy style play, in which the first half leads up to David marrying Bathsheba, then there's a time jump, and the second half is Absolom's coup and a big fuck-off civil war, ending with Solomon becoming king. That's gold dust. That's the lost Shakespeare play right there. And someone clever and angry like Howard Barker should write it, it'll be staged in the Olivier, and the critics will say things like "powerful but overreaching" or "impressive in scale and ambition if ultimately unfocused". But I'll be happy. And that's what counts.
Bonus Bible: The Book of Revelation as arthouse film
Like any rational person, I love (the first season of) Sleepy Hollow. The Tim Burton film also, but specifically the current series starring my eyeliner idol Nicole Beharie, and the excellently-nosed Tom Mison. If you don't know what I'm talking about - you poor thing - the current Sleepy Hollow series takes the Washington Irving story of the Headless Horseman and says, "Yes but what if it was actually about the Biblical apocalypse?" It's great, trust me.
But as much as I love Sleepy Hollow and its attention to detail when it comes to translating the most whacked-out book of the Bible onto the screen, I cannot help but feel there is a better way of going about dramatising the Book of Revelation. Which is, essentially, not to bother with plot.
Revelation is the stoner's favourite for a reason. Most of the Bible is written like an over-excited child taking twenty minutes to describe going to the bathroom - "And then...and then...and then..." - but Revelation doesn't even bother with these attempts at incident. It just describes John of Patmos's big weekend on a vision quest (at one point a coyote voiced by Johnny Cash turns up). The easy joke here (that I just made a couple of sentences ago) is to say "stoner diaries" and be done with it. But it has too much structure and weird, terrifying logic for that. No, I am talking getting the heads behind Fantasia and A Field in England together and letting them have at it. It will feature only Tilda Swinton playing all the parts (probably), and will be so terrifying that the world will literally end.
Go in peace.
*Medieval Mystery plays: actually pretty interesting and often gross.
** Accurate.
***Just describing Sherlock now.
****Or Supernatural.
