(no subject)
books lost in a broken friendship that i suddenly find myself wanting to re-read.... Tania Blixen, 'Out of Africa', Elizabeth v. Arnim, 'Elizabeth and her German Garden' and 'The Adventures of Elizabeth in Rugen'. mostly 'Out of Africa', though, i'll have to re-buy that one at least...
also i'm considering (again) buying a digital camera. birthday? hmmm.. i'd like to do some sort of 'picture of the day' thing here...
|facepalm|
|sigh|
it's getting frustrating on entirely too many levels. if it were simply bad televison it'd be easy to just let go, but there's all that potential being wasted, with just enough of the occasional glimpse of what might have been to (sadly) keep me taping & watching.
they tackle a lot of (basically) big issues, from the twisted greek tragedy that is the Luthor family life to the doomed lex/clark *cough* friendship. the ambiguities of good and evil, use & abuse of power, fate & destiny, you name it... problem is, i only ever saw this explored fully in fanfiction. either the sv writers/producers are unaware of the potential, or realised they'd bitten off more than they were prepared to swallow, got scared of what they had, and decided to bury it beneath glossy, sugary colours, pseudo-moralistic platitudes, a dose of teen angst & a defeat-the-mutant-of-the-week plot. bury it very, very deep indeed. acting? the less said the better... the only redeeming feature right now is Michael Rosenbaum.
the concept of the show is somewhere between tragic and a scriptwriter playing a very malicious kind of god. redemption? ha. you can try. (and try. and try.) but we know better. it's just an impossibly sad situation, two people thrown together by a perverse twist of fate and despite the best intentions unable to give each other what they really need, because c. for all his secrets is too young, too self-centred, still too certain in his convictions and believes about good and evil, thinking in terms of black and white, while l. is too grown up, too involved in the complexities of his live, too tainted maybe. he might want this kind of (fake) innocence, never having had this sort of childhood, but he knows it's not for him.
c. doesn't want to see l.'s ambiguities and therefore can't really appreciate when l. is trying to do the right thing, either, l. can't see c.'s ambiguities because c. doesn't let him. they set up false ideals of each other rather than see the person, and all the frustration and strain just continues to build up.
so we're having two main characters who are supposed to have some kind of 'friendship' despite major differences in about everything possible, are lying to each other about extremely central issues, and, if that weren't strain enough already, the sv writers decided to add the gay barely subtext. enough to tease, while at the same time making very sure it's not even going to be a possibility. (the odd g/f and, maybe more to the point, an age difference that'd make any sexual relationship illegal for quite a few seasons to come.)
so while the viewer can hardly ignore this, everyone on the show is supposed to be unaware, only it's one pink (pun possibly intended) elephant too many. this so-called friendship is avoiding so many forbidden topics already that there's barely anything *there* at all, even allowing for a different definition of friendship, because the sv definition of the term (apparently everyone you've met & exchanged a few meaningless phrases with) is somewhat different from mine....
as it is i find the attraction / lust / love angle a much more convincing explanation for this weird whatever-you-want-to-call-it-ship than the friendship angle....
and all we can do is watch it go slowly to hell...
and really, it's entirely Michael Rosenbaum's fault that i haven't already...