fifty frenchmen can't be wrong (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
some_stars) wrote2012-01-07 04:17 pm
some_stars) wrote2012-01-07 04:17 pm
more television, only television
not that anyone cares, but I think I've figured out why Kings is rubbing me the wrong way--the show has absolutely no idea what form of government it's supposed to be depicting. It claims to be an absolute-power divine-right monarchy, but titles aside it bears very little resemblance. It's obviously not totalitarian, except for occasional moments. It's got all kinds of bizarre and inexplicable commonalities with contemporary capitalist democracy, all with a thin veneer of monarchy. Nobody acts like they're living in an absolute monarchy, that's what confuses me. I mean--complaining that the king (divinely appointed with supposedly absolute power) doesn't care about transparency? That does not parse in my brain, okay, it just...no. I can't keep track of what the stakes are or what the limits are that all this scheming is working within, because there's no single coherent notion of what the government is. I mean, can the king order political executions or can't he? Does he have absolute control of the media or doesn't he? Why would he have to go to any effort to keep things out of the news when he could just have anyone killed who disobeyed the censorship? Why does he have to worry about people knowing he has a mistress? In what the hell kind of absolute monarchy do you have to "push for" the death penalty for someone convicted of high treason, and why would this be a surprise? ...basically, Silas makes no sense to me, so the whole show kind of collapses.
I think the whole thing would just work better without the monarchy aspect, which is really just for show and doesn't mesh with the way anyone behaves. Make it a corporate oligarchy, or a corrupt pseudo-democracy, or any of the dozen different governmental/social structures they keep tossing around. Just PICK one.
Also I want all of Michelle's screen time to go to Thomasina. I realized recently that a big part of what draws me to characters is that I need their essential character- and story-defining struggle to take place within themselves. Michelle--and a disproportionate number of female characters in general--never seems to have any doubts or uncertainties about who she is and what she should do. Her plot is just fighting against external forces to be able to do those things. I like characters who are terrible at feelings, who don't always have their shit together, who do the ridiculous stupid shit that other characters roll their eyes at, who can be really terrible people but we always see inside them, their motivations and conflict and pain. So many female characters, even when they're not horribly underwritten like Michelle, don't seem to have any terrible twisted uncertainty inside. They all have their shit together and their problems are caused by other people. And they are so very, very rarely bad at feelings.
(Okay, a little further, and now Michelle is experiencing conflict. Of the most insipid and confusingly bland sort, of course. If they would just give her a personality this would all be so much less annoying.)
--and, to get back to the beginning of that paragraph, Thomasina is fucking awesome. I'm always 100% interested when she's onscreen. Therefore she should replace Michelle, who actively repels my interest.
Anyway all that said, of course I'm going to finish it, it's only thirteen episodes and I'm almost halfway through. Hopefully things will happen to improve my opinion, but this doesn't seem like the kind of shaky start a show can really recover from. But whatever, there's Jack and Rose and Thomasina, so I'm happy.
I think the whole thing would just work better without the monarchy aspect, which is really just for show and doesn't mesh with the way anyone behaves. Make it a corporate oligarchy, or a corrupt pseudo-democracy, or any of the dozen different governmental/social structures they keep tossing around. Just PICK one.
Also I want all of Michelle's screen time to go to Thomasina. I realized recently that a big part of what draws me to characters is that I need their essential character- and story-defining struggle to take place within themselves. Michelle--and a disproportionate number of female characters in general--never seems to have any doubts or uncertainties about who she is and what she should do. Her plot is just fighting against external forces to be able to do those things. I like characters who are terrible at feelings, who don't always have their shit together, who do the ridiculous stupid shit that other characters roll their eyes at, who can be really terrible people but we always see inside them, their motivations and conflict and pain. So many female characters, even when they're not horribly underwritten like Michelle, don't seem to have any terrible twisted uncertainty inside. They all have their shit together and their problems are caused by other people. And they are so very, very rarely bad at feelings.
(Okay, a little further, and now Michelle is experiencing conflict. Of the most insipid and confusingly bland sort, of course. If they would just give her a personality this would all be so much less annoying.)
--and, to get back to the beginning of that paragraph, Thomasina is fucking awesome. I'm always 100% interested when she's onscreen. Therefore she should replace Michelle, who actively repels my interest.
Anyway all that said, of course I'm going to finish it, it's only thirteen episodes and I'm almost halfway through. Hopefully things will happen to improve my opinion, but this doesn't seem like the kind of shaky start a show can really recover from. But whatever, there's Jack and Rose and Thomasina, so I'm happy.
no subject
When I watched JERICHO, I had the same problem of deficient world-building, except in that case was that they kept presenting me things I knew to be wrong -- mostly about Kansas, which you would think wouldn't be hard to research and get right...
Are the problems in KINGS really going to effect the story, or are they hewing closely enough to the Biblical story that it can just be taken as a weird variant, like a modern-dress version of Shakespeare?
no subject
The problems are deeply affecting the story, because they render the story in large part incomprehensible. No matter how good some of the actors are, if I can't understand why they're doing what they're doing, what the consequences of their choices are, then the story just can't grab me. Also, I suspect I'm hardly alone in being not excessively familiar with the Biblical story (except the David and Jonathan parts, naturally). A good story stands alone, even if it's an adaptation. Plus I'm pretty sure they're not hewing that closely at all.