The Night Watch
This adaptation of Sarah Waters' novel aired last night, but tea_drinker77 and I saved it to watch tonight. And while I enjoyed it, overall it left me dissastisfied. It was well directed, beautifully filmed, well-acted. It really captured the "feel" of the book and made me want to read it again. But in the end, while it's not as bad as the Tipping the Velvet or Affinity adaptations, it's still another example of straight mainstream media really not getting it.
I was bracing myself for the fail in this one, since it's got a butch central character. The BBC can do lesbian dinosaur aliens better than actual butch women. I like Anna Maxwell Martin, who plays Kay, but this:
is not butch. That's just a woman with a bob. I like Anna Maxwell Martin as an actress, but she's horribly miscast as masculine, aristocratic Kay. The BBC seems unaware of the upper-class butch lesbian subculture that Kay comes from --- the world of Radclyffe Hall et al. --- she should look more like this:
The only convincing butch woman was a minor character --- old, ugly, unpleasant. Which is clearly what the BBC thinks butch is. What really irritates me is the elimination of Mickey, Kay's butch friend, replacing her with a straight housewife (!!). Like, sure, nice married housewives were bestest friends with stone butches all the time back in the 40s, duh!
The rest of my criticisms are just par for the course for BBC stuff; a general tone-deafness about queer culture as a whole. In a story with three central lesbian characters, the only sex scene is between the straight couple. The movie tries to "explain" butch identity to the straight viewer by inventing scenes --- which aren't in the book--- that imply Kay's gender presentation is a reaction to trauma and depression.
See, this is why I'm resistant to give Lip Service a try, not only do I dislike soap operas, I really don't feel like seeking out opportunities to be annoyed.
I was bracing myself for the fail in this one, since it's got a butch central character. The BBC can do lesbian dinosaur aliens better than actual butch women. I like Anna Maxwell Martin, who plays Kay, but this:
is not butch. That's just a woman with a bob. I like Anna Maxwell Martin as an actress, but she's horribly miscast as masculine, aristocratic Kay. The BBC seems unaware of the upper-class butch lesbian subculture that Kay comes from --- the world of Radclyffe Hall et al. --- she should look more like this:
The only convincing butch woman was a minor character --- old, ugly, unpleasant. Which is clearly what the BBC thinks butch is. What really irritates me is the elimination of Mickey, Kay's butch friend, replacing her with a straight housewife (!!). Like, sure, nice married housewives were bestest friends with stone butches all the time back in the 40s, duh!
The rest of my criticisms are just par for the course for BBC stuff; a general tone-deafness about queer culture as a whole. In a story with three central lesbian characters, the only sex scene is between the straight couple. The movie tries to "explain" butch identity to the straight viewer by inventing scenes --- which aren't in the book--- that imply Kay's gender presentation is a reaction to trauma and depression.
See, this is why I'm resistant to give Lip Service a try, not only do I dislike soap operas, I really don't feel like seeking out opportunities to be annoyed.