Rewatching Hemlock Grove, watching new Hemlock Grove
Thinkin' a lot about sexism in Hemlock Grove. Serious spoilers for the entirety of season 1; warning for discussion of gendered violence/rape.
The narrative is sexist, of course. Letha's rape/mythical pregnancy/friding is straight up ick. Ashley Valentine's rape is slightly more complex: it's a by the book example of rape as cheap antihero/antagonist characterization, perpetuated by Roman for precisely that effect: he wants a quick and easy way to paint himself, to himself, as a Bad Guyinteresting to see a character as well as a narrative view the act in this way.
But what interests me most is Christina.
That the parade of female victims with sexualized deaths are killed by a young woman consumed by internalized sexism is fascinating. Inexperienced, shy Christina intentionally turns herself into a werewolf in order to be "free;" she identifies her physical transformation as sexual, and simultaneously desires (and provokes) it and is terrified of it and its effects; she believes the beast she becomes, her metaphorical growth and sexual awakening, is hunting her; she targets women she sees as sexually overt and murders them by first consuming their genitals, punishing them for their sexuality, enjoying their victimhood. The twins in particular she targets because, she says, their personal and memetic sexuality made her terrified of her own, "all the things they expected of her but filled her with so much fear she couldn't even dream about them."
Werewolf as metaphor for adolescence/sexual awakening is pretty common, even for female characters (see: Ginger Snaps); misogyny in female characters is pretty common, but that's largely the result of misogyny in media creators. Such an explicit exploration of the relationship between female adolescence and internalized misogyny is less common, and this is the whole cycle: the conflicting and numerous expectations of female gender identity and performance that are internalized as fear, desire, envy, intimidation, and self-loathing, and also externalized as misogyny and various forms of violence directed towards womenhere, obviously, blown up to an exaggerated scale. It's not an unproblematic representation, but it's surprisingly nuanced and resonant; Christina is every misguided, frightened, hurtful girl that doesn't want to be like other girls because everything she knows about being a girl scares herbut Christina grows teeth.
* * *
Hemlock Grove season 2 spoilers this time~
In fiction, men have interesting relationships with other men and normative relationships with women. Men are protagonists, they're better written, more complex; they grow because of one another, they provide each other with conflict and plot; their relationships are intimate. Women are supporting characters, objects rather than subjects, romantic subplots, burdened with all the baggage of heteronormativity. This is the fault of bad writing and bad society, and it's not the only reason that fandom ships male leads while sidelining female characters, but it seems to me that there's an obvious logic in focusing on the interesting relationship while ignoring the boring one.
Peter and Roman are an extreme example of this phenomenon, and Hemlock Grove does some interesting things with it. It does gross things, too, like using female characters to progress the relationshipI love Letha, but you have to admit she's treated more as plot point than person. But while the homoerotic tension is obvious, rather than using it as queerbaiting it spins it out into an actual sexual relationship in S2. The triad with Mirada isn't flawlesslike Letha, she's more a function of their relationship than her own person. But: a polyamorous relationship? in my tv show? It indicates a surprising self-awareness. Intimacy doesn't always mean sex, but neither are they unrelated; and with this trope, sex is the great debate, the unresolved conflict between compulsory heteronormativity and the desire to make interesting characters and dynamics in fiction which results in queerbaiting and fandom's warped viewsbut here resolves in the pair instead discarding at least some of the restrictions of heteronormativity; still a little queerbaity and restrained, but better than most.
So, yanno. That's neat.
There's a fine line with disability narratives: not engaging magical cures/throwing off a disability tropes which are unrealistic and erasing and toxic, while still allowing disabled people to sometimes not want to be disabled. Hemlock Grove's Shelley is hardly perfect, but I appreciate her season two arc. Some of the reasons Shelley wants to changeso dramaticallyher deformity/disability are socialized, internalized messages from her mother and her peers that the normative is acceptable and desirable; some are personal and logical complaints about how her body looks and behaves and changes her interactions; all of it is a valid aspect of her experience.
In media, where the options are: 1) inspiration porn, 2) magical cures, or 3) no representation at all, the existence of a character who regrets her disability resonates. Media doesn'tsociety doesn'tallow disabled people to be angry or sad or frustrated or wish they weren't disabled. That's hardly the only response to disability, but ... but I'd wish mine away too, if I could; seeing the desire represented is validating, an admission that the disability may be formative or definitive but it also, just, it sucks, and that it sucks is equally meaningful.
Or: things I think about when an episode of really bad back problems coincides with an episode of really bad brain crazies.
I am so proactively frustrated with Hemlock Grove S3.
The strength of Hemlock Grove is that Peter and Roman work togetherthey fuck up, they fuck up frequently, but between them they are greater than themselves:
"I've never been more scared of anything in my life. I could never have done it if I didn't know you where there too."
able to achieve beyond themselves because they have each other. The fucking up they do is sometimes between them, the natural consequence of a shared need so intimate and strong as to be frightening, they hurt each other, directly, they're young and stupid and Roman in particular is awful. But what makes the story successful, what makes it compelling and in any way enjoyable, is the fact that they persistently overcome that, come together, save each other.
In the book ending, they don't, of course; there are some things that even together they can't overcome, there's a wedge between them now, the partnership lost. But, in the interest in a direct sequeland sequels loves to do this, to return to status quo because they know status quo sellsthe show's first season ends differently and the second season is all about internal hurts and overcoming them, about that shared need, about being stronger together. And then, again, with what happens to Miranda: about limitations.
S3 isn't about shared need or its limits. I'm not sure what it is about. Roman and Peter operate on parallel paths, and when they reach for its other it seems to be only so that we can see how distant they've become, or how many inexcusably stupid things now separate them. This could be a narrative about flawed communication, but it's not. Instead, it's a narrative without communication, and it makes no sense that they repeatedly fail to turn to the one person they trust mostnot for good reason, but as pure narrative oversight, as an excuse to create drama. The reaction to the ongoing crapsack events is often empatheticfor Peter, especiallybut the way that events unfold is equally inexcusable, like Andreas's obvious unreliability: everyone's so glaringly stupid that it feels straight-up out of character.
There are certain story/consumer contracts which are or are not sacrosanct, like solutions to murder mysteries: they should be there, or they should be absent with intent and for good reason. The Hemlock Grove contract is Peter and Roman. Either maintain it, because it is the energy that the show depends on, or destroy it with intent, in order to make a statement (as the end of the book does). Frankly, the former is smarter, because that dynamic has been the heart of two seasons and so it is what your viewers are there for. But I get the draw of the latterI appreciate the end of the book, and this is after all the end of the show. S3 is doing neither. When the intimacy is there, it's magical
"He thinks he knows who we are. Funny."
but too often it's absent, and not because it's being intelligently destroyed. It's merely being overrun by bad writing and plentiful distractions.
(Olivia S3 arc is campy, as well as excruciatingly redundant given her S2 arc. Johann's misery comes at a bad time, too crapsack against excessive existing crapsack, and while his explicit homosexuality is lovely I could do without the tragic backstory without which no gay character is, apparently, complete. Shelley is the one shining exception, her character arc is phenomenal, although that it comes tied to a creepy first love is unnecessary. The larger plot I can take or leave; Annie, likewise.)
I want a rewrite with such passion as I have ever wanted few things. And all this comes as a surprise, because while S2 has its foibles it delivers, with intent, on the dynamics and investments built in the first seasonso much so as to almost feel overindulgent. If this is compensation, it's overcompensation. It hurts to watch, to see the glimpses of what I love trampled under such heavy, miserable, shoddy garbage.
I have two episodes left. Maybe there's a dramatic fix. I shan't hold my breath.
#the brainfog is intense today which means I am forgetting key moments which disappointed me #and also means that I can't essay and this is about five paragraphs too long #but this is so frustrating to watch that I can't but vent
For a while I wondered if the things destroying the show from the inside bothered me because they were poorly written or simply because I didn't want to see the show destroyed, wanted in particular to maintain the magical brotherhood that Peter and Roman share. But having talked with the boy, who is significantly less invested in these aspects but equally disappointed with season 3: nope, the writing really is just that bad.
Roman's singular weakness is his ability to harm others, accidentally, willfully, as a sort of pathetic self-punishment, in selfish shortsighted temper tantrums, in every which way. But we have some idea what he's like when he does stupid physically harmful thingsthey're either straight-up upir or they're short-lived physical scuffles. He's had time to mature, but his capacity for normal human violence has always been pathetic at best. The fact that he harms Destiny with such calculation, twice, once with the intent and ability to kill, feels wildly out of character. It only exists to engineer a fatal weakness in the Peter/Roman relationship.
(The potential for one already existed, in the truth behind Letha's pregnancy! Due to circumstances it's a forgivable act, but it may not be something that Peter can forgive: to investigate that dilemma would say much about the characters and relationship, it would be challenging and morally graynone of which we see in Peter's reaction to Destiny's murder.)
Establishing a canonically gay male character is fantastic. Giving him a tragic backstory and murdering him when he overcomes that tragic backstory is fucking tiresome and gross.
And that Miranda's story ends off screen, I just cannot even. (Why did Spivak go to such lengths to preserve her for so long if she was so disposable? Why did he recapture her unharmed? Why was her journey to the basement teased as a big reveal when it was just an offsceen fridging?)
There's something liberating about ending a seriesthe chance now to kill off anyone, to destroy status quoand that's what this feels like, deaths of characters and relationships as dramatic statements rather than convincing narrative progression. Traditionally, I have such tolerance for watching shows jump the sharkI can salvage bits of canon that I still find relevant even when the show flounders. And there are salvageable fragments, here; but not enough. I've never wanted so badly to just wish away a chunk of canon as I have the last season of Hemlock Grove. It doesn't just destroy what I love, it does so without reason and without effect.
Dreamwidth entry mirror. Comment count:
.
The narrative is sexist, of course. Letha's rape/mythical pregnancy/friding is straight up ick. Ashley Valentine's rape is slightly more complex: it's a by the book example of rape as cheap antihero/antagonist characterization, perpetuated by Roman for precisely that effect: he wants a quick and easy way to paint himself, to himself, as a Bad Guyinteresting to see a character as well as a narrative view the act in this way.
But what interests me most is Christina.
That the parade of female victims with sexualized deaths are killed by a young woman consumed by internalized sexism is fascinating. Inexperienced, shy Christina intentionally turns herself into a werewolf in order to be "free;" she identifies her physical transformation as sexual, and simultaneously desires (and provokes) it and is terrified of it and its effects; she believes the beast she becomes, her metaphorical growth and sexual awakening, is hunting her; she targets women she sees as sexually overt and murders them by first consuming their genitals, punishing them for their sexuality, enjoying their victimhood. The twins in particular she targets because, she says, their personal and memetic sexuality made her terrified of her own, "all the things they expected of her but filled her with so much fear she couldn't even dream about them."
Werewolf as metaphor for adolescence/sexual awakening is pretty common, even for female characters (see: Ginger Snaps); misogyny in female characters is pretty common, but that's largely the result of misogyny in media creators. Such an explicit exploration of the relationship between female adolescence and internalized misogyny is less common, and this is the whole cycle: the conflicting and numerous expectations of female gender identity and performance that are internalized as fear, desire, envy, intimidation, and self-loathing, and also externalized as misogyny and various forms of violence directed towards womenhere, obviously, blown up to an exaggerated scale. It's not an unproblematic representation, but it's surprisingly nuanced and resonant; Christina is every misguided, frightened, hurtful girl that doesn't want to be like other girls because everything she knows about being a girl scares herbut Christina grows teeth.
* * *
Hemlock Grove season 2 spoilers this time~
In fiction, men have interesting relationships with other men and normative relationships with women. Men are protagonists, they're better written, more complex; they grow because of one another, they provide each other with conflict and plot; their relationships are intimate. Women are supporting characters, objects rather than subjects, romantic subplots, burdened with all the baggage of heteronormativity. This is the fault of bad writing and bad society, and it's not the only reason that fandom ships male leads while sidelining female characters, but it seems to me that there's an obvious logic in focusing on the interesting relationship while ignoring the boring one.
Peter and Roman are an extreme example of this phenomenon, and Hemlock Grove does some interesting things with it. It does gross things, too, like using female characters to progress the relationshipI love Letha, but you have to admit she's treated more as plot point than person. But while the homoerotic tension is obvious, rather than using it as queerbaiting it spins it out into an actual sexual relationship in S2. The triad with Mirada isn't flawlesslike Letha, she's more a function of their relationship than her own person. But: a polyamorous relationship? in my tv show? It indicates a surprising self-awareness. Intimacy doesn't always mean sex, but neither are they unrelated; and with this trope, sex is the great debate, the unresolved conflict between compulsory heteronormativity and the desire to make interesting characters and dynamics in fiction which results in queerbaiting and fandom's warped viewsbut here resolves in the pair instead discarding at least some of the restrictions of heteronormativity; still a little queerbaity and restrained, but better than most.
So, yanno. That's neat.
There's a fine line with disability narratives: not engaging magical cures/throwing off a disability tropes which are unrealistic and erasing and toxic, while still allowing disabled people to sometimes not want to be disabled. Hemlock Grove's Shelley is hardly perfect, but I appreciate her season two arc. Some of the reasons Shelley wants to changeso dramaticallyher deformity/disability are socialized, internalized messages from her mother and her peers that the normative is acceptable and desirable; some are personal and logical complaints about how her body looks and behaves and changes her interactions; all of it is a valid aspect of her experience.
In media, where the options are: 1) inspiration porn, 2) magical cures, or 3) no representation at all, the existence of a character who regrets her disability resonates. Media doesn'tsociety doesn'tallow disabled people to be angry or sad or frustrated or wish they weren't disabled. That's hardly the only response to disability, but ... but I'd wish mine away too, if I could; seeing the desire represented is validating, an admission that the disability may be formative or definitive but it also, just, it sucks, and that it sucks is equally meaningful.
Or: things I think about when an episode of really bad back problems coincides with an episode of really bad brain crazies.
I am so proactively frustrated with Hemlock Grove S3.
The strength of Hemlock Grove is that Peter and Roman work togetherthey fuck up, they fuck up frequently, but between them they are greater than themselves:
"I've never been more scared of anything in my life. I could never have done it if I didn't know you where there too."
able to achieve beyond themselves because they have each other. The fucking up they do is sometimes between them, the natural consequence of a shared need so intimate and strong as to be frightening, they hurt each other, directly, they're young and stupid and Roman in particular is awful. But what makes the story successful, what makes it compelling and in any way enjoyable, is the fact that they persistently overcome that, come together, save each other.
In the book ending, they don't, of course; there are some things that even together they can't overcome, there's a wedge between them now, the partnership lost. But, in the interest in a direct sequeland sequels loves to do this, to return to status quo because they know status quo sellsthe show's first season ends differently and the second season is all about internal hurts and overcoming them, about that shared need, about being stronger together. And then, again, with what happens to Miranda: about limitations.
S3 isn't about shared need or its limits. I'm not sure what it is about. Roman and Peter operate on parallel paths, and when they reach for its other it seems to be only so that we can see how distant they've become, or how many inexcusably stupid things now separate them. This could be a narrative about flawed communication, but it's not. Instead, it's a narrative without communication, and it makes no sense that they repeatedly fail to turn to the one person they trust mostnot for good reason, but as pure narrative oversight, as an excuse to create drama. The reaction to the ongoing crapsack events is often empatheticfor Peter, especiallybut the way that events unfold is equally inexcusable, like Andreas's obvious unreliability: everyone's so glaringly stupid that it feels straight-up out of character.
There are certain story/consumer contracts which are or are not sacrosanct, like solutions to murder mysteries: they should be there, or they should be absent with intent and for good reason. The Hemlock Grove contract is Peter and Roman. Either maintain it, because it is the energy that the show depends on, or destroy it with intent, in order to make a statement (as the end of the book does). Frankly, the former is smarter, because that dynamic has been the heart of two seasons and so it is what your viewers are there for. But I get the draw of the latterI appreciate the end of the book, and this is after all the end of the show. S3 is doing neither. When the intimacy is there, it's magical
"He thinks he knows who we are. Funny."
but too often it's absent, and not because it's being intelligently destroyed. It's merely being overrun by bad writing and plentiful distractions.
(Olivia S3 arc is campy, as well as excruciatingly redundant given her S2 arc. Johann's misery comes at a bad time, too crapsack against excessive existing crapsack, and while his explicit homosexuality is lovely I could do without the tragic backstory without which no gay character is, apparently, complete. Shelley is the one shining exception, her character arc is phenomenal, although that it comes tied to a creepy first love is unnecessary. The larger plot I can take or leave; Annie, likewise.)
I want a rewrite with such passion as I have ever wanted few things. And all this comes as a surprise, because while S2 has its foibles it delivers, with intent, on the dynamics and investments built in the first seasonso much so as to almost feel overindulgent. If this is compensation, it's overcompensation. It hurts to watch, to see the glimpses of what I love trampled under such heavy, miserable, shoddy garbage.
I have two episodes left. Maybe there's a dramatic fix. I shan't hold my breath.
#the brainfog is intense today which means I am forgetting key moments which disappointed me #and also means that I can't essay and this is about five paragraphs too long #but this is so frustrating to watch that I can't but vent
For a while I wondered if the things destroying the show from the inside bothered me because they were poorly written or simply because I didn't want to see the show destroyed, wanted in particular to maintain the magical brotherhood that Peter and Roman share. But having talked with the boy, who is significantly less invested in these aspects but equally disappointed with season 3: nope, the writing really is just that bad.
Roman's singular weakness is his ability to harm others, accidentally, willfully, as a sort of pathetic self-punishment, in selfish shortsighted temper tantrums, in every which way. But we have some idea what he's like when he does stupid physically harmful thingsthey're either straight-up upir or they're short-lived physical scuffles. He's had time to mature, but his capacity for normal human violence has always been pathetic at best. The fact that he harms Destiny with such calculation, twice, once with the intent and ability to kill, feels wildly out of character. It only exists to engineer a fatal weakness in the Peter/Roman relationship.
(The potential for one already existed, in the truth behind Letha's pregnancy! Due to circumstances it's a forgivable act, but it may not be something that Peter can forgive: to investigate that dilemma would say much about the characters and relationship, it would be challenging and morally graynone of which we see in Peter's reaction to Destiny's murder.)
Establishing a canonically gay male character is fantastic. Giving him a tragic backstory and murdering him when he overcomes that tragic backstory is fucking tiresome and gross.
And that Miranda's story ends off screen, I just cannot even. (Why did Spivak go to such lengths to preserve her for so long if she was so disposable? Why did he recapture her unharmed? Why was her journey to the basement teased as a big reveal when it was just an offsceen fridging?)
There's something liberating about ending a seriesthe chance now to kill off anyone, to destroy status quoand that's what this feels like, deaths of characters and relationships as dramatic statements rather than convincing narrative progression. Traditionally, I have such tolerance for watching shows jump the sharkI can salvage bits of canon that I still find relevant even when the show flounders. And there are salvageable fragments, here; but not enough. I've never wanted so badly to just wish away a chunk of canon as I have the last season of Hemlock Grove. It doesn't just destroy what I love, it does so without reason and without effect.
Dreamwidth entry mirror. Comment count:
.