(no subject)
... aka, all my rant posts start out as emails to oddishly.
I've been thinking about Political Animals and how its politics are too soapy for my taste and now I've decided that I want fic that is really fic-disguised-as-policy. Issuefic, if you will, but issuefic that makes sense in the context of the show, which is basically issuefic. None of this bullshit 'international political crisis of the week which Elaine has to solve off the cuff', please! What I really want: if there has to be a political crisis I want to see it being, like, the direct result of racist US foreign policy over the past couple of decades or unwarranted intervention in the Global South or corporate manslaughter/human rights/environmental/labour blowup in Karachi by an American company which results in a diplomatic crisis. Instead of the VP whatshisface being, like, a level 2 double-faced Mean Guy villain I want to see him being fiscally conservative and/or right-leaning to balance out the president's ~youth and idealism~ (not that Biden is fiscally conservative or right-leaning in real life, I don't think) or see him rage with the impotency of his vice-presidency. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want this show to be smarter than its average tone reads, currently. Maybe all I'm saying is that I want this show to be The West Wing without being a Sorkin creation. It's so weird because Political Animals can be so smart about sexism &c when it isn't being soapy (getting felt up by a foreign diplomat, seriously?). I want to see less, 'the Chinese submarine has sent us a message! It's in code! It's gibberish!' and apparently only ~~Elaine Barrish~~ is smart enough/knows enough basic conversational (seriously, 101, i'm surprised xiexie isn't as widely known as 'ni hao ma?' but i guess that makes sense if 'xiexie' is not a useful weapon in the arsenal of racist assjerk street harassers) Mandarin to know what it means. On twitter summertea pointed out it was 'lol my govt', which I guess I can accept - I don't know enough about the ostensible insularity, or vaunted linguistic inability of senior US govt aides, to say for sure - but if it's realistic, it's realistic in a way that's uninteresting, and just dumb. It comes across in a way that feels self-congratulatory.
I still love Political Animals enough to keep up with it, and with my short TV attention span that's saying something, honestly it is, and I still love that The Kills' Future Starts Slow is in its opening sequence (you can howl you can wail you can swing you can flail you can fuck like a broken sail), how that shows - to me - what it wants to achieve, the way an obsession with politics runs through your blood like a virus; the broken-down cynicism of it. The idealism that is its flipside. That's the way all the best political AUs do it.
So, yeah, less fairytale politicking (in the first episode it was like, 'Iran wants to get rid of its nuclear programme!!!' and that was amazing - but seriously, 100 Chinese men on a stuck submarine and Elaine Barrish can't even stop to consider the costs and benefits of letting them lie versus sparking off a nuclear crisis? I love that she's the only one to say so, for sure, but the way the show even refuses to consider the moral equivalence of that is short-sighted, and narrow). Don't get me wrong, I want this show to persist in its idealism, I want fic where Elaine Barrish delivers Hilary's 'LGBT rights are human rights' speech. I think given the context - gay son whose drug troubles are the direct consequence of homophobia and being in the public eye (and seriously, this might sound rich given all I've said about Political Animals being 'soapy' but fuck you, reviewers who refer to TJ's drug troubles as 'soapy', actually fuck you) - it would be amazing and inspiring, and heartlifting. It really would be. But that's just the problem. I want this to feel earned.
This entry was originally posted at http://extemporally.dreamwidth.org/213597.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
I've been thinking about Political Animals and how its politics are too soapy for my taste and now I've decided that I want fic that is really fic-disguised-as-policy. Issuefic, if you will, but issuefic that makes sense in the context of the show, which is basically issuefic. None of this bullshit 'international political crisis of the week which Elaine has to solve off the cuff', please! What I really want: if there has to be a political crisis I want to see it being, like, the direct result of racist US foreign policy over the past couple of decades or unwarranted intervention in the Global South or corporate manslaughter/human rights/environmental/labour blowup in Karachi by an American company which results in a diplomatic crisis. Instead of the VP whatshisface being, like, a level 2 double-faced Mean Guy villain I want to see him being fiscally conservative and/or right-leaning to balance out the president's ~youth and idealism~ (not that Biden is fiscally conservative or right-leaning in real life, I don't think) or see him rage with the impotency of his vice-presidency. I guess what I'm trying to say is that I want this show to be smarter than its average tone reads, currently. Maybe all I'm saying is that I want this show to be The West Wing without being a Sorkin creation. It's so weird because Political Animals can be so smart about sexism &c when it isn't being soapy (getting felt up by a foreign diplomat, seriously?). I want to see less, 'the Chinese submarine has sent us a message! It's in code! It's gibberish!' and apparently only ~~Elaine Barrish~~ is smart enough/knows enough basic conversational (seriously, 101, i'm surprised xiexie isn't as widely known as 'ni hao ma?' but i guess that makes sense if 'xiexie' is not a useful weapon in the arsenal of racist assjerk street harassers) Mandarin to know what it means. On twitter summertea pointed out it was 'lol my govt', which I guess I can accept - I don't know enough about the ostensible insularity, or vaunted linguistic inability of senior US govt aides, to say for sure - but if it's realistic, it's realistic in a way that's uninteresting, and just dumb. It comes across in a way that feels self-congratulatory.
I still love Political Animals enough to keep up with it, and with my short TV attention span that's saying something, honestly it is, and I still love that The Kills' Future Starts Slow is in its opening sequence (you can howl you can wail you can swing you can flail you can fuck like a broken sail), how that shows - to me - what it wants to achieve, the way an obsession with politics runs through your blood like a virus; the broken-down cynicism of it. The idealism that is its flipside. That's the way all the best political AUs do it.
So, yeah, less fairytale politicking (in the first episode it was like, 'Iran wants to get rid of its nuclear programme!!!' and that was amazing - but seriously, 100 Chinese men on a stuck submarine and Elaine Barrish can't even stop to consider the costs and benefits of letting them lie versus sparking off a nuclear crisis? I love that she's the only one to say so, for sure, but the way the show even refuses to consider the moral equivalence of that is short-sighted, and narrow). Don't get me wrong, I want this show to persist in its idealism, I want fic where Elaine Barrish delivers Hilary's 'LGBT rights are human rights' speech. I think given the context - gay son whose drug troubles are the direct consequence of homophobia and being in the public eye (and seriously, this might sound rich given all I've said about Political Animals being 'soapy' but fuck you, reviewers who refer to TJ's drug troubles as 'soapy', actually fuck you) - it would be amazing and inspiring, and heartlifting. It really would be. But that's just the problem. I want this to feel earned.
This entry was originally posted at http://extemporally.dreamwidth.org/213597.html. Please comment there using OpenID.