Roxane, the Fortunate Mistress.

Defoe’s Moll Flanders set the realism of the novel higher and was one of the first one to use an original plot. Besides, the narrator is a rather interesting woman, which was pretty original too. Roxana shares all this with its predecessor. Nonetheless, though the novel has its defenders, Moll Flanders is considered a better novel.

This might be partially because some early messy editions eliminate the ending or change it to a more moral and factual one, or, related to this, because the story is much more repetitive than Moll Flanders, except for the beginning and ending. Nonetheless, Roxana is a very interesting work historically speaking, since it gives us an insight to marriage and women’s state in the XVIII century.

Marriage in the XVIII century was a very precarious matter, even with the passing of the Marriage Act of 1753, which fixed the legality of marriage in England and Wales, excepting the religious minorities. In spite of this and parental interest, a wise marriage was still difficult to get. A woman’s property could be spent by the husband with no repercussion, as it is the case of Roxana. She finds herself abandoned with five children and no means of subsistence, so she becomes a prostitute and cleverly seduces rich men. This story points out the insecurity of women’s life; Roxana’s situation is much better as a prostitute than in her legalised marriage, hence the title; she is a ‘fortunate mistress’ bur she used to be an unhappy wife.

Actually, marriage would degenerate during the last half of the XVIII century and the XIX century, partially because it didn’t adapt itself to the economic and social changes, but instead adopt the morality of the middle classes. A married woman could be more independent in the XVIII century, being part of the family business, than a XIX century woman, who had to be even more careful with her reputation.

In general, Defoe’s Roxana’s main influence seems to be A Serious Proposal by Mary Astell, considered the first English feminist, and therefore the story defends education for women as a way to prevent the fate of Roxana. Also, the protagonist is a lively woman who never loses her strength of character, instead of embodying the degeneration of the XIX century fallen women. It seems as if there could have been an earlier advance of the feminist cause, but somewhere all that was lost for a long time.

500 Days of Summer and unnecessary happy endings.

I liked it, I really liked this movie. What is not to like? It’s funny, and weird, and has two songs by the Smiths and two songs by Regina Spektor! What is not to like, seriously? Well, my tireless brain found something: the ending.

Of course, many people, even fans of the movie, have problems with the ending. They say (ehem! Spoilers!) that finding a girl called Autumn and starting a relationship with her only means that he will go through the same thing again. Others even point out that he is obviously not prepared for a relationship. The implications go further: he won’t find true love till at least he goes through two other girls, Winter and Spring!

I just feel the ending was unnecessary, both because it was a subversion of romantic movies’ clichés (though there are some with unhappy endings, sorta) and because the themes were the contrasts between dreams and expectations and also romanticism and realism. He is romantic (because he misunderstood The Graduate or something) and she is more negative toward relationships because her parents divorced. OK, the reasons are not important, what is important is that they seemed to be changing their views for the other's. She marries a guy she hardly knows and he is emotionally scarred from their relationship.

And I liked that, until the last ten minutes of the movie changed it. I quite like stories where protagonists are trying to change the other’s view and both get their objective, so they can’t be together anymore. And paradoxically, they have succeeded. I loved the structure and the realism of the story, I mean she has had a ridiculously romantic story with someone else and is very thankful to his ex and he is alone but trying to get a job he actually liked. Up until the end, when he also gets a new girlfriend. Just because.

But actually I’ve had this problem with other movies. It’s like the executives behind the movie or even the writers thought we would not accept that the protagonist doesn’t get love, even if it has to be at the end of the movie and with a new character we’ll never know. I guess that happens with so many movies I should have expected it, but they sold this movie as  something different.

This reminded me of Notes on a Scandal, though this case was much worse. The protagonist was a stalker who has befriended her crush, and throughout the film sets her traps to isolate her from her family so she would have to stay with her stalker, without even knowing it was her doing. I liked this plot, it was intriguing and it got me to understand the villain-protagonist, but that doesn’t mean I need her to have a happy ending or even want it. And, won’t you guess it, after all the shit she has done has been discovered and she’s alone again, she finds a girl sitting on a bench and invites her to the opera. And the girl accepts. I just don’t get it.

Anyway, I loved the rest of the movie, I’m listening to The Smiths again all the time and humming some of his songs when not, and I’ll rewatch 500 Days again. But next time I’ll stop it before the necessary happy ending. I’m not really angry with the movie, but it got me asking why? Why do they think viewers need a happy ending, no matter how implausible or unnecessary to the story? Especially in biopics, or movies based in real life events, like El laberinto del fauno. Yeah, makis, you’ve killed the fascist vicious villain, guess what, all of you are going to lose and be persecuted, so I tremble thinking about the future of that baby you’ve just kidnapped.

Gulliver's Travels (well, the original title is longer, but I couldn't be bothered).

When I was a little girl, I read Gulliver. A version that was adapted for kids, of course. It was in Spanish, it rhymed and the best parts were actually the drawings. Later I read the book in Spanish, I saw the 90s mini-series and finally I read it in English; merely because I still didn’t know what to do with the ending (it still bugs me).  

 The first two episodes are the ones that get adapted the most, and that is not only because they can easily be bowdlerised into a children’s book, but because they are the best written parts and also the most easily understandable for a modern reader.  

Even though I didn’t know anything about 18th century British politics, I understood Swift was parodying petty political and religious differences. For example, when the Lilliputians fight against their neighbours because they have a disagreement over which end to open a boiled egg, I understood he was talking about Protestants and Catholics, though I didn’t know the details of the real conflict, and I enjoyed the story too; it was satirical but not so satirical as to distract me. I even liked Gulliver at that stage, even though he wasn't showing any emotions. 

Obviously, there are more correlations to the political situation of Swift’s time: Gulliver’s pacifism (what I most liked about him) is actually the reflection of the Tory government’s withdrawal from the Spanish Succession War and thus Swift defends his political ideals. Again it’s good for the story as well. 

Brobdingnag is a bit less memorable, but still enjoyable. In it, Gulliver and the European society are judged by that country’s standards, and since is a bit of a Marysuetopia, both are seen as “pernicious” and unnecessarily aggressive. Again, political satire that is comprehensible without ‘invading’ the plot and Gulliver develops as a character and becomes more thoughtful and mature. 

Also, for the moment the anti-feminism of the book is not too jarring (though I doubt if a book that was written before the feminist movement can be called anti-feminist; I think that misogynist or just misanthropic are better). There are a couple of female characters that are interesting, though undeveloped: the queen of Brobdingnag and Gulliver's nurse. Gulliver worships the queen (just imagining her 'graciously' letting Gulliver kiss her pinky was a very funny image when I first read the book) and adores her nurse (who even gets a name!), but he's merely considered an amusing toy by both. Also from that part of the book: 'I must confess no object ever disgusted me as the sight of her monstrous breast’. Well, I suppose it makes sense in context.

In the last two parts, Swift turns the satire to eleven. The third part is a bit funny sometimes, but most of the time I was thinking ‘but I like the scientists’. Or at least, I couldn’t see what was so wrong with them. There were no poor people suffering because they were all dedicated to interesting but useless experiments, though their wives were unable to be faithful to their silly husbands (and of course, of participating in the experiments). I know now that Swift was parodying the Enlightenment, which he loathed. Pity we normally agree is a good thing. No, actually it’s not a very good parody. What I mean is that, though Gulliver’s attitude toward the Laputians is very unsympathetic, most readers now won’t agree. Now the satire is completely lost, then.  

In the fourth part, the anti-colonist message, which has been implied in the other parts, is fully developed. The Houyhnhnms are super intelligent horses that have enslaved the yahoos, a race of primitive humans. The Houyhnhnms exploit the yahoos, and later decide to exterminate them, and rationalise both the exploitation and the extermination, using a very similar language to the imperialistic one. In fact, the yahoos are clearly established as ‘untouchable’ evil and as the ‘other’, as a matter of fact the word means “evil”. They finally decide to sterilise all of them, as Gulliver suggests (thank you, idiot. Oh, well by this point he is very unlikable). As you can see, Gulliver has completely fallen for the horses’ way, as opposed to Lilliput (too similar to the real England, I suppose) and Laputa (nice bilingual pun there). He ends up mad as a result, not knowing what he is and convinced that all humans are Yahoos and the horses’ way is the one true path. 

Some have commented that that happens when someone comes in contact with an imperialistic society, they try to identify themselves with the ruling class, no matter that they don’t belong to it, and can lose their identities in the process. Maybe that happened to Swift when he was first living in England, but later changed his attitude and decided to parody this behaviour. I don’t know, maybe it happened to Anglo-Irish like him. Therefore, I think that it is an excellent satire, but the novel’s aspects of the book suffer at the end. Or at least when I read it I thought it was too bitter a message, though maybe it was necessary. So at the end, Gulliver is back home, but can’t stand his family and past friends and only talk to the silent horses.  

Frankenstein, the 90’s movie.

Apart from the family and friends reunions, I’ve been relaxing on my own. I watched a movie I‘ve wanted to see for a long time, and finished a book in five days, something I haven’t been able to do since summer.

First, the movie I watched was Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein, though you better don’t think about the novel while watching it. The movie tries to be what Coppola’s Dracula was: a visually appealing film with a romantic story and a classical monster as its core, but utterly fails at it.

Actually a vanity project by its director, Kenneth Branagh, it shows. He casts himself as the young Victor Frankenstein, a young medicine student who immaturely decides to ‘conquer death’. I’ve mentioned his youth so often because Branagh seems to be too old to cast himself as Victor, a character whom he turns into an all-perfect, Marty Stu, bombastic hero, and just like that we’ve lost our protagonist. I, at least, couldn’t take him seriously, and his life is always serious: his mother dies, has a romance with his sister, searches for the secret of life and creates a monster. Without a moment of calm, in all that rush, I hardly know him and the beginning of the movie is boring when it’s not inadequately hilarious.

But there is actual comic relief of course, and the actor is fine, but the jokes are old and the friendship between him and Victor is showed in such a rush it’s like he’s never really there. In fact, he disappears from the movie in the last half hour, shouting a big NO in a house that few minutes later the monster burns (should we assume the worst?). But don’t worry; there are some emotions in the movie, some genuinely creepy emotions, too. Victor has an adopted sister, portrayed by Branagh’s real girlfriend, and though Helena Bonham Carter does all in her power, is still unpleasant to watch her snogging with Victor. Probably, it they wouldn’t mention constantly that they ‘used to’ be adoptive siblings and that they would love each other anyway. Seriously, they make a very big deal of their romance, though it becomes an important conflict at the end.    

The Monster, played by Robert de Niro, is barely in the picture. Which is a pity, because it could have saved the film. De Niro is wonderful, you can clearly see the effort, he could have changed the perception of the monster if given more time and better antagonists. But at the end, he falls for the hammy performance of Branagh in the too dramatic final scene.

If I watch this movie again, it will be with friends and for the laugh. I have even prepared a drinking game:

-        Take a shot every time Victor and his “sister” make out and an extra shot if they have recently discussed their sibling status.

-         Every time Victor does his laboratory job shirtless.

-         Every time someone shouts a big NO. every fucking character does.

-       Finally, take a shot for every scene Robert de Niro appears and almost redeems the film. Believe me, there aren’t many.

Merry Christmas!

I'd like to share this with you; it's one of my favourite Christmas "carols"; Bill Nighy sings a cover of Love Is All Around á la Robert Palmer for the film Love Actually. It's probably the only good thing in that film, but it's totally worthy. Love the way Bill Nihghy acts, like he's thinking 'Can I handle all these hot ladies? I'll try, it's Christmas'. Enjoy and remember, silly Christmas songs are the best!

Censorship in the XVIII century British theatre.

It seems that censorship was common since the XVI century; way before the Licencing Act, and opposition to it was almost non-existing. However, this early auto-censorship disappeared gradually and plays became bawdier and more explicit until the imposition of the Act in 1737.

After the Restoration, theatre became a very important business controlled by a few, at first friends of the king who didn’t know anything about the management of theatre. Of the two existing companies, the Duke’s company was more innovative and had less difficulty in keeping actresses and young actors and paying the playwrights; finally it absorbed its rival, the King’s company.

Prior to the Act, self-censorship was enough for a time, but in the 1670s sex comedies became the fashion. Before that, political plays had been often performed but the audience was scarce. However, the government started to practice censorship against the pro-Whig ones, closing companies and banning scripts.

After the Glorious Revolution, the United Company produces mainly ‘operas’ with impressive stage effects that, though successful, were too expensive for the company. The United Company changed management which reignited the split and rivalry between the two companies.

The resulting chaos and the political changes made the two companies stage new bawdy comedies of manners, very popular among the public. The damaging competition, problems with patents of old plays and the lack of new public tried to be solved with additional attraction: young attractive actresses with sexy outfits and slutty characters were included in many plays, acrobats and ballerinas in the entre-acts, … in the midst of all this, some voices against the immorality of theatre began to raise again. Censorship by the Lord Chamberlain was mildly tried, but it was ineffective. Writers like Congreve and Vanbrugh were very successful and the monarchs were very much against the closing of any theatre, though not because they liked it especially. Something to do with some Puritans in the past century, I guess…

Anyway, by the turn of the next century the rivalry between the two companies was almost over and translated Italian operas were the new trend. The Lord Chamberlain was now simply mediating between the actors and the management. In 1714, theatre managers got complete control to decide what plays to stage. But this wasn’t going to last.

In the 30’s, political satire became fashionable, due in part to the success of the Beggar’s Opera in 1728. The Walpole ministry became a bitter enemy of theatre’s right of choosing what to represent, especially because the playwrights tended to kill the Walpole-like character. Walpole tried to pass a bill in 1735, denounced satires and probably secretly staged a play attacking the king, The Golden Rump. This play was never staged and is now lost, if ever existed. However a cartoon of it was showed by Robert Walpole in the House of Lords, after the bill had passed through the House of Commons. The Act closed all non-patent theatres and required all plays to be approved by the Lord Chamberlain before being staged.

And thus, British theatre was changed forever. It also had the consequence of leaving actors at the mercy of the two main companies and led some playwrights to become novelists in order to avoid censorship. Both companies became predictable and new plays were hardly encouraged. Melodramas and pantomimes became the main representations and English theatre was extremely mediocre for a long time.

It seems that His Majesty had a huge ass in real life too.

Un pequeño poema.

Es un pequeño poema satírico que escribí basándome un poco en Pope y por haber tenido que ver Twilight dos veces. No es nada, pero el par de personas a las que se lo leí se rieron. Es más gracioso interpretado.

Pálida doncella sin pensamientos,
Guapa sin conocerlo, delgada
Que no anoréxica, delicada.
Al verle comienzan sus sentimientos.

Por las montañas de Forks va gritando:
"Oh, Edward! Oh, Edward!"
Y a lo lejos él le va contestando:
"¡Oh, Bella! ¡Oh, Bella!"

"¿Te casarás ya conmigo?"
"Sólo si me haces vampiro
Y conservo mi apellido."

En verdad creo que es más que de entender
Que Señora Cûllen no quiera ser.