make under
I started writing a blog post last night after a long day where Pippa had gotten up two hours early and not napped well and I was a wreck and so the blog post was pretty wreck-a-riffic as well, and I realized it was making me more depressed to keep writing it, so I gave up on it and went to sleep.
Today Pippa slept later in the morning and napped well and I'm feeling fantastic. But still tired. I want to go to sleep at 10:30pm, so about an hour from now.
I read the Agatha Christie novel The Moving Finger and then watched parts of two different TV versions of it, the older version on Miss Marple with Joan Hickson as the title character and the newer version on Marple starring Geraldine McEwan.
The newer version had better production values and was nicer to look at but that was the only point in its favor. The worst thing was that they got the romances all wrong in the new version.
Here's my query: why is that so few visual media productions get the "ugly duckling into swan" motif so wrong? It is really not that difficult to make even the most gorgeous of women look terrible if you really put your mind to it. Use makeup to make their skin tone uneven; make their hair misbehave or give them an unflattering cut; shapeless, mismatched and dull clothing; and one can't forget body language. Slumped shoulders and a shuffling gait do a lot.
The Marple version is quite typical, in that the ugly duckling before is never the slightest bit ugly, so that everyone's treating her as plain seems crazy to the audience; and the swan post-transformation remains awkward, which I believe is intended to make the audience think "oh, I see, it's the same person inside the new clothes and make-up", but it often makes the girl look worse in the supposedly improved version.
I find there's something embarrassing and off-putting when the clothes and make-up on someone say "look at me, look at me" but their body language is saying "don't, don't". I feel like saying "look, please change into jeans and a t-shirt if that'll make you more comfortable, you're making ME very uncomfortable with how awkward you're acting".
The worst part in particular in this adaptation is that in the original, while they take the duckling character out of her shapeless, torn, and dowdy clothing and put her in smart stuff, and cut her hair into a fashionable sleek bob, etc etc, the POV character specifically mentions that they don't really make her up, and that the key feature of her new attractiveness is a simple pride in looking nice--nothing arrogant or worldly, just the knowledge that for the first time in her life, someone has cared enough to help her look nice, and that she actually cleaned up well. And the POV character (who arranged for her to get all cleaned up) is quite pleased with the transformation but also with himself for helping her. It's all very "I look nice, don't I?" "Rather! Let's go eat." It's definitely a key part of their love story, but it's not that big of a deal; it's more of a sign that he was already falling in love with her.
The adaptation makes it all so much more cliche, in having another female character "makeover" the duckling (featuring tons of make-up and a ball gown) and surprise the male character, who has his breath taken away, and the duckling character sort of stumbles around awkwardly and then runs away when someone else says something catty, and it's done as that complete cliche "Gosh! She's a woman! It never occurred to me!" thing.
As an aside, it amuses me how you can see 1980s beauty standards dimly in the clothing and hair of the characters in the Miss Marple (1985) version, and ditto 2000s taste in Marple (2006). Here are some low-res screen shots of the same character doing the same thing in both adaptations (driving into the village in the very beginning):
Both attempts at 50s style, but one via Dallas and the other via Lady Gaga.
Today Pippa slept later in the morning and napped well and I'm feeling fantastic. But still tired. I want to go to sleep at 10:30pm, so about an hour from now.
I read the Agatha Christie novel The Moving Finger and then watched parts of two different TV versions of it, the older version on Miss Marple with Joan Hickson as the title character and the newer version on Marple starring Geraldine McEwan.
The newer version had better production values and was nicer to look at but that was the only point in its favor. The worst thing was that they got the romances all wrong in the new version.
Here's my query: why is that so few visual media productions get the "ugly duckling into swan" motif so wrong? It is really not that difficult to make even the most gorgeous of women look terrible if you really put your mind to it. Use makeup to make their skin tone uneven; make their hair misbehave or give them an unflattering cut; shapeless, mismatched and dull clothing; and one can't forget body language. Slumped shoulders and a shuffling gait do a lot.
The Marple version is quite typical, in that the ugly duckling before is never the slightest bit ugly, so that everyone's treating her as plain seems crazy to the audience; and the swan post-transformation remains awkward, which I believe is intended to make the audience think "oh, I see, it's the same person inside the new clothes and make-up", but it often makes the girl look worse in the supposedly improved version.
I find there's something embarrassing and off-putting when the clothes and make-up on someone say "look at me, look at me" but their body language is saying "don't, don't". I feel like saying "look, please change into jeans and a t-shirt if that'll make you more comfortable, you're making ME very uncomfortable with how awkward you're acting".
The worst part in particular in this adaptation is that in the original, while they take the duckling character out of her shapeless, torn, and dowdy clothing and put her in smart stuff, and cut her hair into a fashionable sleek bob, etc etc, the POV character specifically mentions that they don't really make her up, and that the key feature of her new attractiveness is a simple pride in looking nice--nothing arrogant or worldly, just the knowledge that for the first time in her life, someone has cared enough to help her look nice, and that she actually cleaned up well. And the POV character (who arranged for her to get all cleaned up) is quite pleased with the transformation but also with himself for helping her. It's all very "I look nice, don't I?" "Rather! Let's go eat." It's definitely a key part of their love story, but it's not that big of a deal; it's more of a sign that he was already falling in love with her.
The adaptation makes it all so much more cliche, in having another female character "makeover" the duckling (featuring tons of make-up and a ball gown) and surprise the male character, who has his breath taken away, and the duckling character sort of stumbles around awkwardly and then runs away when someone else says something catty, and it's done as that complete cliche "Gosh! She's a woman! It never occurred to me!" thing.
As an aside, it amuses me how you can see 1980s beauty standards dimly in the clothing and hair of the characters in the Miss Marple (1985) version, and ditto 2000s taste in Marple (2006). Here are some low-res screen shots of the same character doing the same thing in both adaptations (driving into the village in the very beginning):
Both attempts at 50s style, but one via Dallas and the other via Lady Gaga.