(no subject)
We watched the TV Mapp and Lucia last night, made in the 80s when ITV produced good things and I guess anything 20s/30s was so in vogue even obscure comic novels were snapped up for a TV treatment.
It's weird. I'm suprised to find I love it, and that Geraldine McEwan is amazing, but in a totally different way to the Lucia I had in my head. She's so excessive it borders on creepy. And Georgino Mio is about a thousand times as camp as he needs to be, though this too is weirdly not a problem.
The strange thing is, it opens the pair of them up - given that they are basically a bitchy fag hag and a deeply camp gay - to a mould and stereotype that was, basically, always there, but in EF Benson's hands seemed pretty lovely, there for you to discover and handle alongside a whole load of other delights. Now it's so overplayed they are almost acidly creepy, almost directly saying OH LOOK AT THE BITCH AND THE FAG THEY ARE UNNATURAL LET'S WATCH THEM.
For some reason I'm not uncomfortable with it, possibly because I have heterosexual privilege. But I also think it's because Lucia's such a strong character that she remains above those plain-to-see homophobic and misogynist comic devices, which are also very easily readable as reappropriations. Because Lucia always wins. Appropriately enough. Lucia is sublimely above everything. Time to read Notes on Camp again, I suppose.
[edit] Quaint Irene is a big disappointment though. Maybe all the gay jokes are spent by this time, but she's just set up as a common or garden pipe smoking lesbian who doesn't make much of her lines, and it does underline the 'gay men and fag hags are fabulous, butch lezzas are boring' stereotype. Whereas book-Irene has all this but also an air of the ridiculous and brilliant about her, embodying 'modern art' sensibilities (or whatever the reader fondly thinks that is), and she could cut through Mapp's insincerity in seconds. I think Quaint Irene is going to be my next online handle somewhere.
It's weird. I'm suprised to find I love it, and that Geraldine McEwan is amazing, but in a totally different way to the Lucia I had in my head. She's so excessive it borders on creepy. And Georgino Mio is about a thousand times as camp as he needs to be, though this too is weirdly not a problem.
The strange thing is, it opens the pair of them up - given that they are basically a bitchy fag hag and a deeply camp gay - to a mould and stereotype that was, basically, always there, but in EF Benson's hands seemed pretty lovely, there for you to discover and handle alongside a whole load of other delights. Now it's so overplayed they are almost acidly creepy, almost directly saying OH LOOK AT THE BITCH AND THE FAG THEY ARE UNNATURAL LET'S WATCH THEM.
For some reason I'm not uncomfortable with it, possibly because I have heterosexual privilege. But I also think it's because Lucia's such a strong character that she remains above those plain-to-see homophobic and misogynist comic devices, which are also very easily readable as reappropriations. Because Lucia always wins. Appropriately enough. Lucia is sublimely above everything. Time to read Notes on Camp again, I suppose.
[edit] Quaint Irene is a big disappointment though. Maybe all the gay jokes are spent by this time, but she's just set up as a common or garden pipe smoking lesbian who doesn't make much of her lines, and it does underline the 'gay men and fag hags are fabulous, butch lezzas are boring' stereotype. Whereas book-Irene has all this but also an air of the ridiculous and brilliant about her, embodying 'modern art' sensibilities (or whatever the reader fondly thinks that is), and she could cut through Mapp's insincerity in seconds. I think Quaint Irene is going to be my next online handle somewhere.