It's distinctly rare that I watch something and immediately think, "I wish someone would remake this." But that is my exact reaction to American Horror Story: Coven. There is little about the show that is actually a bad idea, in fact a strange form of brilliance permeates the ideas the show is built upon. It's just that it was executed in the sloppiest and accidental way possible.
The season has a stake, and it is just one stake: who will be the next supreme witch of the coven. That is hardly a bad premise for a season of television. Placing a group of characters in a contest with a prize they all want is to see what they are willing to do to get that prize, is one of the oldest premises in the history of literature. But in order for that premise to work, the audience actually has to care about the outcome of the contest. The supreme is nominally the leader of the coven, which means we actually have to know who the best leader is and what they actually want to do with the coven. Over the course of the series, the minor character Nan says, "If I was the supreme, I'd only do good things," which is the total extent of any of the characters discussing what they would actually do as the supreme. Madison is clearly supposed to be the worst candidate, but she is not measurably worse than the current supreme Fiona and no one seems like they would lead in a particularly better way than she would. Perhaps that is the point, a group of girls is so focused on attaining power that they are completely blind to what they actually want that power for, but if that is the point, it is so buried, malnourished and indecipherable it never comes through.
Similarly, the existential threat to the coven seems to be that the members were willing to put their own selfish interests ahead of the coven as a whole. The ease with which the (unexplained) division between the voodoo practitioners and the witches was healed, and the simplicity with which the witch hunters were killed off, should have served to highlight that the only real threat was the membership's own ambitions and greed. But ultimately it never even came close to touching upon that blatantly obvious theme. Fiona murdered a witch she thought was the future supreme, and only a few episodes later everyone is sitting around, happily eating dinner, seemingly forgetting the incident ever happened. If the whole point of the series was that the various witches ambitions were out of control, then the events of the series needed to be painted as gross violations proper order when they languidly seemed like simply routine when the supremacy was being passed. If the characters do not seem to react as if killing each other is abnormal, then why should the audience assume it is?
Frankly, this story is incredibly compelling, but it was done in the least compelling way possible. A story about an apathetic leader who is going to extreme, extraordinary lengths to retain her position is a good one. A centuries old feud between two rival, marginalized groups being healed by an external threat to both, is a good one. A group of people so caught up in a contest they loose sight of themselves and their ultimate goals, is a good one. Two marginalized people who are credible, potential leaders of a largely traditional society, is a good one. But the show never actually followed any of these potential stories, even mildly. They introduced them, either intentionally or unintentionally, and allowed them fester like putrid corpses, while the season meandered slowly and stupidly and chaotically. Every major element of this season fundamentally works (okay, every element not Delphine LaLaurie, and even that had moments where it could have, potentially, worked), it is only in the hands of Ryan Murphy that it breaks into an incoherent mess. American Horror Story: Coven began as a poorly conceived knock off of the X-Men, and ended as a poorly conceived knock off of the X-Men, and squandered anything interesting or intelligent about itself in between.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
Monday, January 27, 2014
LoveFest: The Step-Up Franchise
Dance movies share a fascinatingly large amount of genre DNA with action movies. Each genre features archetypal characters kinetically and propulsively burning through plot, hitting large set pieces along the way. The difference between car chases and explosions, and dance contests and dance battles is of style and not actual plot mechanics. Indeed many scenes, from getting the gang together to planning the big heist, can be lifted almost entirely from one genre to the other. The Step Up series understands these similarities and patterns better than any other dance movie, which is why it is the dance franchise that keeps spawning sequel after sequel all of which have collectively grossed over half a billion dollars.
The original Step Up is unwatchable garbage. It is dry, dull, and unimpressive, particularly in light of its sequels. The most notable thing about it is that it has a young, and not particularly good, Channing Tatum in it. He comes out looking quite good in it, but that is simply because no one is given anything to do that could surpass him, his abilities and limitations are what set the bar of highest achievement for the whole movie. The film moves at an incredibly languid pace and takes itself far, far too seriously for a stupid dance movie. It is noticeable that its singular contributions the rest of the franchise consist of nothing more than the setting of the Maryland School of the Arts and the incredibly minor (in this film) character Camille.
Step Up 2 The Streets is the movie where the franchise really starts to shine. If all the individual pieces were present in the original film, it isn't until the sequel that they actually congeal into the incredibly winning formula that transverses the rest of the series. It also introduces what is the franchise's most indelible character, Moose. Step Up 2 The Streets immediately sets itself apart from the original with an opening scene of dancers in masks engaging in performance art in a subway. It is both more visually interesting and more ambitious than anything in the original, and announces this film will be a brighter, louder, more kenetic experience. The film follows street dancer Andie, as she is admitted into the prestigious world of MSA. After failing out of highschool, thanks apparently due to her spending all her time with her dance crew. If she does not manage to make MSA work, she will be shipped off to Texas. She winds up befriending the local tech geek, Moose, who just happens to be an amazing, undiscovered dancer. She also finds her bland, white leading man (every Step Up movie features a pair of bland, white leads), an advanced dance student who is frustrated with all the pomposity of MSA and wants to street dance. Which is good because there's a huge underground street dance contest. Cut to putting together a crew of freaks and weirdos, which provides much of the comic relief. This movie also distinguishes itself from the original by being funny on both an intentional and unintentional level. The major conflict of the film is that the MSA crew are de facto banned from the dance contest because they are not "from the neighborhood." Yes, this is a movie about how rich, (mostly) white kids attending private school are discriminated and oppressed by poor black kids. But you don't really have to ruminate on that theme, as the movie is propulsivlly pushing you through dance breaks, training montages, and romantic tension. All of which culminates in an explosive final performance in the rain. After which, everything sort of magically is all right, all sins forgiven, and everyone lives happily ever after.
If Step Up 2 the Streets was a leaner, more kinetic movie than the original Step Up, Step Up 3D is even more pared down to exactly what works: massive dance scenes, wacky characters, and bland romance. It is also the movie most willing to directly lift from action movies, in the most hilarious way possible. It opens with Moose and Camille, Channing Tatum's little sister from the original movie, going through freshmen orientation at NYU. Moose almost immediately gets into a dance battle, which he obviously wins, and one wacky police chase latter he is recruited by dancer/club owner Luke to be a part of his secret dance crew, as Moose unintentionally beat the leader of the Samurai, the most dangerous dancers in New York. If this movie has a flaw, it is that it sets itself up as a Moose movie, because, duh, he's only the most developed, most interesting character in the series, when really Moose plays the exact same role to Luke that he did to Andie. Once more, though, he manages to outshine both leads of the film by miles. Well Luke and all his dance friends live in a secret club house on the the second floor of a dance club, but they are six months late on the mortgage and about to loose it and all be homeless. Fortunately there is a dance battle which will award its winners $100,000, so all is not lost. Complicating matters is the fact that Luke's girlfriend is actually a spy for the dreaded Samurai! BETRAYAL! It's all just a bunch of silly plotlines designed to propel the characters into a series of fun, visually arresting dance battles, culminating in Step Up's typically insane and over the top final dance number, this one deliberately emulating a shootout to the point where dancers are miming shooting each other with guns. It throws heroes, villains, plots, and set pieces into one magnificent movie.
Step Up Revolution abandons everything the series has established previously, and relocates to Miami. On top of dispensing with the characters and settings of the franchise, it even eliminates the typical dance contests and dance battles. Instead the dance crew is made up of performance artists, and fittingly the dance numbers here are the most focused on aesthetics, over technical skill out of all the movies. It regurgitates '80s movie plots, an evil real estate developer has bought up a small, coastal Hispanic community and is evicting all of them to build a resort. But not if the dancers have anything to say about it. There's something delightfully naive about the idea that the forces of capitalism can be stopped simply through the power of dance, as if the movie missed out on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There is also a bland white romance between the developer's daughter and the leader of the dance crew, but that's insignificant compared to just how gorgeous the cinematography is. It is the best shot of the Step Up movies, and with the most ambitious choreography.
The Step Up movies are not great movies. But they are fun movies. They are fun on a level that few movies can compete with. A Step Up movie makes you feel good. It makes you want to get a bunch of friends together and go out dancing. There's nothing deep or dark about them, just consistently entertaining movies that never drag, filled with visual spectacle. Step Up 3D is probably the best, but you can watch any of the three sequels and just enjoy the experience, laughing with (and occasionally at) the movie. They're like big, dumb action movies, pushing the viewer through the movie to look at the next cool thing.
The original Step Up is unwatchable garbage. It is dry, dull, and unimpressive, particularly in light of its sequels. The most notable thing about it is that it has a young, and not particularly good, Channing Tatum in it. He comes out looking quite good in it, but that is simply because no one is given anything to do that could surpass him, his abilities and limitations are what set the bar of highest achievement for the whole movie. The film moves at an incredibly languid pace and takes itself far, far too seriously for a stupid dance movie. It is noticeable that its singular contributions the rest of the franchise consist of nothing more than the setting of the Maryland School of the Arts and the incredibly minor (in this film) character Camille.
Step Up 2 The Streets is the movie where the franchise really starts to shine. If all the individual pieces were present in the original film, it isn't until the sequel that they actually congeal into the incredibly winning formula that transverses the rest of the series. It also introduces what is the franchise's most indelible character, Moose. Step Up 2 The Streets immediately sets itself apart from the original with an opening scene of dancers in masks engaging in performance art in a subway. It is both more visually interesting and more ambitious than anything in the original, and announces this film will be a brighter, louder, more kenetic experience. The film follows street dancer Andie, as she is admitted into the prestigious world of MSA. After failing out of highschool, thanks apparently due to her spending all her time with her dance crew. If she does not manage to make MSA work, she will be shipped off to Texas. She winds up befriending the local tech geek, Moose, who just happens to be an amazing, undiscovered dancer. She also finds her bland, white leading man (every Step Up movie features a pair of bland, white leads), an advanced dance student who is frustrated with all the pomposity of MSA and wants to street dance. Which is good because there's a huge underground street dance contest. Cut to putting together a crew of freaks and weirdos, which provides much of the comic relief. This movie also distinguishes itself from the original by being funny on both an intentional and unintentional level. The major conflict of the film is that the MSA crew are de facto banned from the dance contest because they are not "from the neighborhood." Yes, this is a movie about how rich, (mostly) white kids attending private school are discriminated and oppressed by poor black kids. But you don't really have to ruminate on that theme, as the movie is propulsivlly pushing you through dance breaks, training montages, and romantic tension. All of which culminates in an explosive final performance in the rain. After which, everything sort of magically is all right, all sins forgiven, and everyone lives happily ever after.
If Step Up 2 the Streets was a leaner, more kinetic movie than the original Step Up, Step Up 3D is even more pared down to exactly what works: massive dance scenes, wacky characters, and bland romance. It is also the movie most willing to directly lift from action movies, in the most hilarious way possible. It opens with Moose and Camille, Channing Tatum's little sister from the original movie, going through freshmen orientation at NYU. Moose almost immediately gets into a dance battle, which he obviously wins, and one wacky police chase latter he is recruited by dancer/club owner Luke to be a part of his secret dance crew, as Moose unintentionally beat the leader of the Samurai, the most dangerous dancers in New York. If this movie has a flaw, it is that it sets itself up as a Moose movie, because, duh, he's only the most developed, most interesting character in the series, when really Moose plays the exact same role to Luke that he did to Andie. Once more, though, he manages to outshine both leads of the film by miles. Well Luke and all his dance friends live in a secret club house on the the second floor of a dance club, but they are six months late on the mortgage and about to loose it and all be homeless. Fortunately there is a dance battle which will award its winners $100,000, so all is not lost. Complicating matters is the fact that Luke's girlfriend is actually a spy for the dreaded Samurai! BETRAYAL! It's all just a bunch of silly plotlines designed to propel the characters into a series of fun, visually arresting dance battles, culminating in Step Up's typically insane and over the top final dance number, this one deliberately emulating a shootout to the point where dancers are miming shooting each other with guns. It throws heroes, villains, plots, and set pieces into one magnificent movie.
Step Up Revolution abandons everything the series has established previously, and relocates to Miami. On top of dispensing with the characters and settings of the franchise, it even eliminates the typical dance contests and dance battles. Instead the dance crew is made up of performance artists, and fittingly the dance numbers here are the most focused on aesthetics, over technical skill out of all the movies. It regurgitates '80s movie plots, an evil real estate developer has bought up a small, coastal Hispanic community and is evicting all of them to build a resort. But not if the dancers have anything to say about it. There's something delightfully naive about the idea that the forces of capitalism can be stopped simply through the power of dance, as if the movie missed out on the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. There is also a bland white romance between the developer's daughter and the leader of the dance crew, but that's insignificant compared to just how gorgeous the cinematography is. It is the best shot of the Step Up movies, and with the most ambitious choreography.
The Step Up movies are not great movies. But they are fun movies. They are fun on a level that few movies can compete with. A Step Up movie makes you feel good. It makes you want to get a bunch of friends together and go out dancing. There's nothing deep or dark about them, just consistently entertaining movies that never drag, filled with visual spectacle. Step Up 3D is probably the best, but you can watch any of the three sequels and just enjoy the experience, laughing with (and occasionally at) the movie. They're like big, dumb action movies, pushing the viewer through the movie to look at the next cool thing.
Saturday, January 11, 2014
On Premium Cable Boobs
The Penis-to-Breasts-to-Vagnias ratio for Game of Thrones season 3 is: 1-11-4.
Game of Thrones became famous for its sexposition scenes, scenes where one character has to give long pieces of expository dialogue and the show decided to spice up the narrative by inserting sex so you'd really pay attention. Sex became a particularly delightful window dressing upon which to hang a scene, and little more. Game of Thrones certainly has quite a lot it wishes to say about sex, sexuality, and gender, but those themes have become unmoored from the actual sex the show presents.
Obviously, what sex the show presents is both what the show is interested in and what the show perceives its audience is interested in. And that sex is the objectification of women. This is no more apparent then in a baffling scene where Robb Stark's wife tells him she is pregnant. The scene begins with the pair having just completed the act. Robb immediately gets up and gets dressed, his wife, however, remains on the bed, naked. She reveals this exciting and personal news in the middle of coyly posing as if she were shooting a Playboy cover. It is indicative of the way the show treats the genders, in a way far outside the scope of the fictional world they inhabit. Twice in the third season (first with an unnamed woman and Theon Greyjoy and then again with Melisandre and Gendry) a woman manages to have sex with a man while his genitalia are completely covered by pants. It is rather stunning since both scenes are entirely about the man's penis (as in the actual plot point involves the man's penis), and yet both make incredibly obvious cuts to make sure the penis the entire scene is about never appears (hence the impossible sex). I am bringing all this up just to prove the extreme disparity of the treatment of males to females, and how far out of its way (for seemingly no reason) the show goes to maintain that disparity. For some reason the sexual objectification of men is the singular line in the sand the show dares not cross.
Game of Thrones lacks the subtlety of walking the fine line of serving titillation while also criticizing that titillation. The show can make very cogent points about the social constraints placed upon Cersei or Arya, but the show lacks conviction and immediately washes those points away. Actions superseded beliefs, and the show's actions are that women are objects of sexuality. The show can not both be critical of patriarchal hegemony, while also having a relentlessly patriarchal hegemonic perspective.
All this would be fine if the nudity had thematic purpose, but mostly it does not. It remains simply what the show is interested in and what the show perceives its audience is interested in. This creates a circle around the audience, a delineation between who is a member and who is not. If you fail to find women's breasts titillating, it becomes frustrating. The show becomes alienating, as you have to sit through all those window dressing scenes lacking the prop that the show created to carry the audience through them. It is rather hard to enjoy a show that aggressively (if unconsciously) rejects your personhood and perspective.
Of course this is hardly specific to Game of Thrones. This is a truth of basically all premium cable dramas (outside of a few notable exceptions). Creators were given great creative freedom, and virtually all of them chose to use that creative freedom to show lots and lots of breasts. Hung was a TV show entirely about a penis that somehow never managed to show any penis at all, but lots of breasts. Sometimes this illuminates a basic principle of the show. The strippers populating The Sopranos acted as an externalization of Tony's perspective. But mostly they simply act as audience titillation. Gratuitous audience titillation given how the shows precisely cut around male nudity.
But it does not have to be this way. Spartacus was a show overflowing with nudity, sex, and sexuality, but Spartacus managed to handle those elements in a way that no other premium cable drama managed. Nudity always had a thematic point. Spartacus was a show about power and how those with power abuse that power. Sex was a tool of power and slaves sexuality were controlled, which applied just as much to men as to women. Varro was just as much a victim of the society as the slave girl he is compelled to have sex with. Nudity alternately functions as vulnerability, control, power. Lucretia might be naked in front of her slaves because they are not really people, and thus there's no reason to feel shame. Or Naevia might be naked to show how little control she has over her life.
There is an equality to Spartacus. It embraces all people. Spartacus's army is made up of all races, genders, sexual orientations. Even, shockingly, classes. And from the show's perspective, all those are equal. It does not single out one particular perspective to privilege, nor one group of people to objectify. It is liberating, rather than restrictive. Agron's male homosexual gaze is the equal to Gannicus's male heterosexual one is equal to Illythia's female heterosexual one. And because of that, the show embraces an egalitarianism that most premium cable shows staunchly reject.
The solution is not eliminate nudity or sex, or to hit some imagined quota, but to reassess and reevaluate. To find thematically appropriate moments for them, and to eliminate those unnecessary moments. Law & Order found ways to maintain audience interest through hundreds of interrogations without any nudity at all. It shouldn't be this difficult for the writers of premium cable shows to use the props of nudity and sex when appropriate from a plot or thematic perspective. It also should not be this difficult to have an open minded, egalitarian approach to nudity, one which embraces the many possible perspectives and desires humans have.
Game of Thrones became famous for its sexposition scenes, scenes where one character has to give long pieces of expository dialogue and the show decided to spice up the narrative by inserting sex so you'd really pay attention. Sex became a particularly delightful window dressing upon which to hang a scene, and little more. Game of Thrones certainly has quite a lot it wishes to say about sex, sexuality, and gender, but those themes have become unmoored from the actual sex the show presents.
Obviously, what sex the show presents is both what the show is interested in and what the show perceives its audience is interested in. And that sex is the objectification of women. This is no more apparent then in a baffling scene where Robb Stark's wife tells him she is pregnant. The scene begins with the pair having just completed the act. Robb immediately gets up and gets dressed, his wife, however, remains on the bed, naked. She reveals this exciting and personal news in the middle of coyly posing as if she were shooting a Playboy cover. It is indicative of the way the show treats the genders, in a way far outside the scope of the fictional world they inhabit. Twice in the third season (first with an unnamed woman and Theon Greyjoy and then again with Melisandre and Gendry) a woman manages to have sex with a man while his genitalia are completely covered by pants. It is rather stunning since both scenes are entirely about the man's penis (as in the actual plot point involves the man's penis), and yet both make incredibly obvious cuts to make sure the penis the entire scene is about never appears (hence the impossible sex). I am bringing all this up just to prove the extreme disparity of the treatment of males to females, and how far out of its way (for seemingly no reason) the show goes to maintain that disparity. For some reason the sexual objectification of men is the singular line in the sand the show dares not cross.
Game of Thrones lacks the subtlety of walking the fine line of serving titillation while also criticizing that titillation. The show can make very cogent points about the social constraints placed upon Cersei or Arya, but the show lacks conviction and immediately washes those points away. Actions superseded beliefs, and the show's actions are that women are objects of sexuality. The show can not both be critical of patriarchal hegemony, while also having a relentlessly patriarchal hegemonic perspective.
All this would be fine if the nudity had thematic purpose, but mostly it does not. It remains simply what the show is interested in and what the show perceives its audience is interested in. This creates a circle around the audience, a delineation between who is a member and who is not. If you fail to find women's breasts titillating, it becomes frustrating. The show becomes alienating, as you have to sit through all those window dressing scenes lacking the prop that the show created to carry the audience through them. It is rather hard to enjoy a show that aggressively (if unconsciously) rejects your personhood and perspective.
Of course this is hardly specific to Game of Thrones. This is a truth of basically all premium cable dramas (outside of a few notable exceptions). Creators were given great creative freedom, and virtually all of them chose to use that creative freedom to show lots and lots of breasts. Hung was a TV show entirely about a penis that somehow never managed to show any penis at all, but lots of breasts. Sometimes this illuminates a basic principle of the show. The strippers populating The Sopranos acted as an externalization of Tony's perspective. But mostly they simply act as audience titillation. Gratuitous audience titillation given how the shows precisely cut around male nudity.
But it does not have to be this way. Spartacus was a show overflowing with nudity, sex, and sexuality, but Spartacus managed to handle those elements in a way that no other premium cable drama managed. Nudity always had a thematic point. Spartacus was a show about power and how those with power abuse that power. Sex was a tool of power and slaves sexuality were controlled, which applied just as much to men as to women. Varro was just as much a victim of the society as the slave girl he is compelled to have sex with. Nudity alternately functions as vulnerability, control, power. Lucretia might be naked in front of her slaves because they are not really people, and thus there's no reason to feel shame. Or Naevia might be naked to show how little control she has over her life.
There is an equality to Spartacus. It embraces all people. Spartacus's army is made up of all races, genders, sexual orientations. Even, shockingly, classes. And from the show's perspective, all those are equal. It does not single out one particular perspective to privilege, nor one group of people to objectify. It is liberating, rather than restrictive. Agron's male homosexual gaze is the equal to Gannicus's male heterosexual one is equal to Illythia's female heterosexual one. And because of that, the show embraces an egalitarianism that most premium cable shows staunchly reject.
The solution is not eliminate nudity or sex, or to hit some imagined quota, but to reassess and reevaluate. To find thematically appropriate moments for them, and to eliminate those unnecessary moments. Law & Order found ways to maintain audience interest through hundreds of interrogations without any nudity at all. It shouldn't be this difficult for the writers of premium cable shows to use the props of nudity and sex when appropriate from a plot or thematic perspective. It also should not be this difficult to have an open minded, egalitarian approach to nudity, one which embraces the many possible perspectives and desires humans have.
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