Friday random five
- It was gorgeous and sunny when I was running this morning, but now the fog is blowing in. Ah, summer in San Francisco.
- I just got an overwhelmingly positive performance review, which was nice (especially since there will be no raises this year--at least there aren't pay cuts), but I find that my ability to believe the feedback is tempered by an overwhelming sense that it's tempting fate. Hmmmm. The imposter syndrome has many offshoots.
laurashapiro's P. persuaded us to watch the first episode of Deadwood last night (no catching up on B5, for next week, C!), and it made a very strong impression on me. I have always disliked the Western as a genre, and I think the exceptions I make to that rule tell me something about why: because I find the myth of the American West, as presented in most media, too dissonant with what I know of actual history. In part, it's a problem I have with a lot of historical fiction (people were dirty when they couldn't bathe that often; cooking was a massive chore when you had to haul water; etc. etc. etc.) But it's also because most Westerns gloss over the brutality of the settlement of the West in one way or another, the real costs. That's why I like Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian, which is the anti-Western in a lot of ways, and that's what I liked so much about the first episode of Deadwood, which had no heroes, only people whose brutality was more or less directed, and had better or worse final goals. I usually need female characters with some agency in my TV, and as
laurashapiro pointed out, the era was full of strong pioneer women, but this is not their story. The women in this story are going to have very circumscribed and ugly roles, I sense. Rather, it seems to be about the short, brutal lives of the men who overran that land, the greed and violence that drove them. I didn't really like any of the characters by the end of the episode, but I want to know what happens to them. It's also a really beautifully made show, like Carnivale and has that same meandering storytelling pace, the focus on small actions that tell you everything you need to know about a character: Sheriff Bullock talking the man through his own hanging as a mercy; the emptiness in Al Swearengen's eyes when Trixie put that gun on his bedstand and curled up beside him. Also, this show is a who's who in everyone I've seen on TV in the past five years. It's refreshing to see Brad Dourif playing someone who is not (at least yet!) a psychopath, a serial killer, or a psychopathic serial killer. Hopefully I'll get a chance to watch the rest of it at some point.- What Jill said re: conservative reaction to the Sotomayor nomination. I'm actually not as shocked at the reaction itself as I am at the blatancy; usually they're a little more subtle and dog-whistley, but not this time!
- Uh, I have no 5. TGIF?
[X-posted to Livejournal and Dreamwidth]
