on V, primarily
So I wrote a wee V ficlet for the Hand-Kissing Commentathon thingie and figured I would stick it here for archival purposes. anr's prompt was "Erica/Jack, this is a story about":
This is a story about love, but it is not a love story.
Jack thinks about how Hollywood will tell their story, as, now, Hollywood inevitably will. Once upon a time, a man and a woman sat on a roof, joined hands, and promised to save the world. The trajectory in the Hollywood film of their lives would be clear, with just a few minor details changed. At some convenient point in the story, fictional Jack would part ways with his vows, perhaps laicized against his will by a Church hierarchy sympathetic to the Vs. Or perhaps, depending on how much the director wanted to emphasize the love story, fictional Jack would voluntarily leave the priesthood in order to be with fictional Erica. In Hollywood, after all, the point of celibacy is its end.
It startles him a little bit to realize how minor the other alterations to the story could be. A few longing looks or heated moments here and there. The nights he spent on Erica's couch after Tyler's death transformed into nights spent in fictional Erica's bed. And the story would end, he thinks, at this very moment: after the final battle, a man and a woman sit on a roof, hands joined.
This is a story, Jack thinks, about many kinds of love, about its beauty, power, and terror. He has watched parental love motivate and destroy both Erica and Ryan. Tyler and Joshua loved the same woman, who ultimately loved her people more than either of them; Jack still wonders whether Lisa asked them to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, or for her. And Jack himself has come through the ordeal with a new appreciation for God's love-for all living beings.
Of course Jack loves Erica. Their experiences over the past two years have tied them together with an intimacy that sex could hardly improve upon. Not that he hasn't considered it. He's had more than a few dark nights of the soul in which he's considered taking comfort with her, vows be damned. And even in his more sober and faithful moments he's thought about it; men leave the priesthood because they've fallen in love all the time, and most of them, Jack feels sure, are walking in God's plan when they do so. But God has not released Jack from his vow. Besides, Jack knows, as Hollywood directors do not, that if his great loves are God and his best friend, Jack's life is no less fulfilled than if that best friend were his wife instead. If Jack has learned anything in the past two years, he has certainly learned that love is too vast, various, and complex to be reduced to any Hollywood template.
The power has been out in New York for three days, and this afternoon the V ships left. Jack and Erica sit on a roof watching that rarest of sights, stars over Manhattan. He remembers the night two years ago when he reached out for something solid in a world turned upside down and found Erica's hand.
"You've gone very quiet," Erica says, shifting a little so that her shoulder bumps against his. He's her solid thing, too. "What are you thinking about?"
He shrugs and lifts their intertwined fingers to his lips, kissing one of her knuckles. "About stories," he replies. "This feels like a beginning, and I was wondering what will happen next."
**
In other V-related news, remember when its biggest problems were being boring and lacking backbone? Well, you probably don't, since most of you seem to have had the good sense not to be watching. (But it still has such potential, argh!) Anyway, it's definitely improving in terms of plot, pacing, backbone, and character development. And apparently in order to do so it feels the need to fall down hard on race and gender. Why must you be this way, television? WHYYYYYY?
I've been trying to decide whether I was so bothered by last night's episode because it was truly squick-worthy, or if I'm just extra-sensitive about characters played by poor Rekha Sharma, who seems yet again to have found herself in the role of "woman of color cast as Evil Alien Other who will eventually be horribly punished in a racist and/or misogynistic way." Please, please, please, someone put the woman in some show where this doesn't happen to her character!
There was a lot of intentional mirroring in last night's ep: parents crossing lines for their children (both Erica and Ryan), children betraying their parents (both Tyler and Lisa), torture as a necessary evil in the greater scheme of things (both Erica and Lisa). And Malik wasn't the only character to be horribly tortured to death in a way that also included vaguely sexual overtones: the guy Lisa was forced to kill was a guy, and white, and mostly naked. Do these things balance each other out? Not particularly, no.
First, there's the part where random human dude is, well, random white human dude. He doesn't have a name, he's got a single scene, and he's tortured in a pretty abstracted way by the weird needle machine. Whereas Malik is a recurring character with a name and a familiar face. She's the A plot. She also gets strung up from the ceiling for scene after scene while male characters (yes, Erica is in charge, but it's only the guys who touch her) cut open the back of her clothes, unsnap her bra, and rip pieces of skin off her back. It was one of the more violent things I've seen on TV in a long while, and it's not really balanced out by Lisa pushing a few buttons while operating the V torture device.
Second, there's the part where this show is very obviously paying attention to what characters look like. V has done okay on the gender front. On one hand, the two protagonists (and three most interesting characters, by far, I'd say) are women, and these women are the leaders of their respective organizations. But there was also the whole plotline last season where the entire purpose of Val's existence was to have her reproductive choices taken away from her and then to die. She, of course, was one of two women of color in the cast (Rekha Sharma's character, who is now also dead, was the other). Because while V has done okay on the gender front, they're failing pretty hard, especially in these first three episodes of season 2, on race, and the worst part is that people on the writing and production end are making decisions on purpose based on people's hair color (at least) and complexions (quite possibly).
Erica and Jack are Good Guys. We know this because they're blonde. Anna, the evil lizard queen, is a brunette. Erica's son, Tyler, has dark hair, while Anna's daughter, Lisa, is blonde. In case it wasn't clear enough whose loyalty is supposed to lie where, last night's ep ended with Tyler betraying Jack to Anna and Anna expressing maternal feelings toward him, while Lisa had a bonding moment with Erica about the strain that torturing people to death can cause (hug, blonde on blonde). There have been three actors of color cast in main or recurring roles (not counting the kid playing Ryan's daughter): two Vs and one human, two women and one man, and as of the end of last night's episode, both women are dead and the man has apparently betrayed the Fifth Column (humans, Good Guys, etc.) and returned to the evil lizards. And it's a little shocking to me how this has all gotten SO much more obvious in these first three episodes of season 2. I feel like we ought to start pulling out white hats and black hats.
And while they're getting a little more successful at blurring the morality line, it's still not anywhere near as gray as it ought to be. Erica should have said to Lisa, "I did exactly what you did today"; after all, they both killed someone they would rather not have killed because the bigger picture compelled it. But she doesn't say that because she doesn't think that (well, okay, we didn't see the part where she learned what Lisa did, either, but even if we'd gotten that scene, it's pretty clear that neither Erica nor the show as a whole sees their actions as equivalent). Random white human dude was an innocent victim (and human, and white, and a dude); Agent Malik was an evil lizard (and a woman of color) who probably deserved to die, however horribly.
If this show has any chance of not going completely off the rails (and I may give it another episode or two to see if it improves, but I'm not sure), it's got to deal with the question of the value of V life versus human life, whether or not there's something terribly wrong (as I, anyway, think there ought to be) with the Fifth Column's idea that killing humans is terrible but killing Vs is not so bad. And guess what? They've got a built-in way to address this: they've got a character who's a priest! It's his job to think about things like morality and the value of life and to raise these questions, whether or not we agree with his answers. But he was conveniently absent for all of the torture, and besides, they're doing a shit job writing him anyway, because if there's one thing this show desperately needs, it's a religious advisor. (Or really, anyone Catholic would be a good start, because I'm not sure what that service in last night's ep was supposed to be, but it wasn't a Catholic Mass. I know this, and I'm not Catholic.)
Anyway. I've written a good, long rant that very few people will care about, I'm sure, but it seemed worth putting out there. This show could have done some really excellent things, and in some quite concrete ways it's getting much better. But what are for me the deal-breaking kinds of things are getting worse, and that, ultimately, is the bottom line.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.
This is a story about love, but it is not a love story.
Jack thinks about how Hollywood will tell their story, as, now, Hollywood inevitably will. Once upon a time, a man and a woman sat on a roof, joined hands, and promised to save the world. The trajectory in the Hollywood film of their lives would be clear, with just a few minor details changed. At some convenient point in the story, fictional Jack would part ways with his vows, perhaps laicized against his will by a Church hierarchy sympathetic to the Vs. Or perhaps, depending on how much the director wanted to emphasize the love story, fictional Jack would voluntarily leave the priesthood in order to be with fictional Erica. In Hollywood, after all, the point of celibacy is its end.
It startles him a little bit to realize how minor the other alterations to the story could be. A few longing looks or heated moments here and there. The nights he spent on Erica's couch after Tyler's death transformed into nights spent in fictional Erica's bed. And the story would end, he thinks, at this very moment: after the final battle, a man and a woman sit on a roof, hands joined.
This is a story, Jack thinks, about many kinds of love, about its beauty, power, and terror. He has watched parental love motivate and destroy both Erica and Ryan. Tyler and Joshua loved the same woman, who ultimately loved her people more than either of them; Jack still wonders whether Lisa asked them to sacrifice themselves for the greater good, or for her. And Jack himself has come through the ordeal with a new appreciation for God's love-for all living beings.
Of course Jack loves Erica. Their experiences over the past two years have tied them together with an intimacy that sex could hardly improve upon. Not that he hasn't considered it. He's had more than a few dark nights of the soul in which he's considered taking comfort with her, vows be damned. And even in his more sober and faithful moments he's thought about it; men leave the priesthood because they've fallen in love all the time, and most of them, Jack feels sure, are walking in God's plan when they do so. But God has not released Jack from his vow. Besides, Jack knows, as Hollywood directors do not, that if his great loves are God and his best friend, Jack's life is no less fulfilled than if that best friend were his wife instead. If Jack has learned anything in the past two years, he has certainly learned that love is too vast, various, and complex to be reduced to any Hollywood template.
The power has been out in New York for three days, and this afternoon the V ships left. Jack and Erica sit on a roof watching that rarest of sights, stars over Manhattan. He remembers the night two years ago when he reached out for something solid in a world turned upside down and found Erica's hand.
"You've gone very quiet," Erica says, shifting a little so that her shoulder bumps against his. He's her solid thing, too. "What are you thinking about?"
He shrugs and lifts their intertwined fingers to his lips, kissing one of her knuckles. "About stories," he replies. "This feels like a beginning, and I was wondering what will happen next."
**
In other V-related news, remember when its biggest problems were being boring and lacking backbone? Well, you probably don't, since most of you seem to have had the good sense not to be watching. (But it still has such potential, argh!) Anyway, it's definitely improving in terms of plot, pacing, backbone, and character development. And apparently in order to do so it feels the need to fall down hard on race and gender. Why must you be this way, television? WHYYYYYY?
I've been trying to decide whether I was so bothered by last night's episode because it was truly squick-worthy, or if I'm just extra-sensitive about characters played by poor Rekha Sharma, who seems yet again to have found herself in the role of "woman of color cast as Evil Alien Other who will eventually be horribly punished in a racist and/or misogynistic way." Please, please, please, someone put the woman in some show where this doesn't happen to her character!
There was a lot of intentional mirroring in last night's ep: parents crossing lines for their children (both Erica and Ryan), children betraying their parents (both Tyler and Lisa), torture as a necessary evil in the greater scheme of things (both Erica and Lisa). And Malik wasn't the only character to be horribly tortured to death in a way that also included vaguely sexual overtones: the guy Lisa was forced to kill was a guy, and white, and mostly naked. Do these things balance each other out? Not particularly, no.
First, there's the part where random human dude is, well, random white human dude. He doesn't have a name, he's got a single scene, and he's tortured in a pretty abstracted way by the weird needle machine. Whereas Malik is a recurring character with a name and a familiar face. She's the A plot. She also gets strung up from the ceiling for scene after scene while male characters (yes, Erica is in charge, but it's only the guys who touch her) cut open the back of her clothes, unsnap her bra, and rip pieces of skin off her back. It was one of the more violent things I've seen on TV in a long while, and it's not really balanced out by Lisa pushing a few buttons while operating the V torture device.
Second, there's the part where this show is very obviously paying attention to what characters look like. V has done okay on the gender front. On one hand, the two protagonists (and three most interesting characters, by far, I'd say) are women, and these women are the leaders of their respective organizations. But there was also the whole plotline last season where the entire purpose of Val's existence was to have her reproductive choices taken away from her and then to die. She, of course, was one of two women of color in the cast (Rekha Sharma's character, who is now also dead, was the other). Because while V has done okay on the gender front, they're failing pretty hard, especially in these first three episodes of season 2, on race, and the worst part is that people on the writing and production end are making decisions on purpose based on people's hair color (at least) and complexions (quite possibly).
Erica and Jack are Good Guys. We know this because they're blonde. Anna, the evil lizard queen, is a brunette. Erica's son, Tyler, has dark hair, while Anna's daughter, Lisa, is blonde. In case it wasn't clear enough whose loyalty is supposed to lie where, last night's ep ended with Tyler betraying Jack to Anna and Anna expressing maternal feelings toward him, while Lisa had a bonding moment with Erica about the strain that torturing people to death can cause (hug, blonde on blonde). There have been three actors of color cast in main or recurring roles (not counting the kid playing Ryan's daughter): two Vs and one human, two women and one man, and as of the end of last night's episode, both women are dead and the man has apparently betrayed the Fifth Column (humans, Good Guys, etc.) and returned to the evil lizards. And it's a little shocking to me how this has all gotten SO much more obvious in these first three episodes of season 2. I feel like we ought to start pulling out white hats and black hats.
And while they're getting a little more successful at blurring the morality line, it's still not anywhere near as gray as it ought to be. Erica should have said to Lisa, "I did exactly what you did today"; after all, they both killed someone they would rather not have killed because the bigger picture compelled it. But she doesn't say that because she doesn't think that (well, okay, we didn't see the part where she learned what Lisa did, either, but even if we'd gotten that scene, it's pretty clear that neither Erica nor the show as a whole sees their actions as equivalent). Random white human dude was an innocent victim (and human, and white, and a dude); Agent Malik was an evil lizard (and a woman of color) who probably deserved to die, however horribly.
If this show has any chance of not going completely off the rails (and I may give it another episode or two to see if it improves, but I'm not sure), it's got to deal with the question of the value of V life versus human life, whether or not there's something terribly wrong (as I, anyway, think there ought to be) with the Fifth Column's idea that killing humans is terrible but killing Vs is not so bad. And guess what? They've got a built-in way to address this: they've got a character who's a priest! It's his job to think about things like morality and the value of life and to raise these questions, whether or not we agree with his answers. But he was conveniently absent for all of the torture, and besides, they're doing a shit job writing him anyway, because if there's one thing this show desperately needs, it's a religious advisor. (Or really, anyone Catholic would be a good start, because I'm not sure what that service in last night's ep was supposed to be, but it wasn't a Catholic Mass. I know this, and I'm not Catholic.)
Anyway. I've written a good, long rant that very few people will care about, I'm sure, but it seemed worth putting out there. This show could have done some really excellent things, and in some quite concrete ways it's getting much better. But what are for me the deal-breaking kinds of things are getting worse, and that, ultimately, is the bottom line.
Crossposted from DW, where there are
comments. Comment here or there.