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chudleycanonficfest · 3 years

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Rewrite the Stars

Day 7, Post #1 is by @adenei

Title: Rewrite the Stars

Author: adenei

Pairing: Ron/Hermione (Romione)

Prompt: Songfic

Rating: PG

TW: Depiction of blood purity/discussion of prejudices against Muggleborns, Violence/Murder mentioned (but not graphic)

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*This fic is inspired not only by the song, but also Anne and Philip's relationship in the movie The Greatest Showman.*

Summary: AU In a world where there’s no Voldemort, but blood purity is strictly enforced, Ron and Hermione must navigate their budding relationship, and all the trials and tribulations that come with it.

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“Are you sure this is alright?” Hermione asks as she smooths the front of her dress, checking for wrinkles for the fifth time in as many minutes.

“Yes, it’s fine! You look beautiful,” Ron assures her.

He places a warm, comforting hand on the small of her back as they enter the grandiose ballroom where the Auror department is hosting their annual dinner. A handful of Aurors are honored for their achievements, but over the years, it’s turned into an event for the upper classes and Purebloods.

Hermione knows she doesn’t belong here, amongst the men and women whose wealth and social status put them leagues ahead of anyone else, and it’s rare to receive an invitation to such an event even as a Halfblood. But as a Muggleborn, Hermione braces herself for an onslaught of jeers and slurs. If Ron wasn’t being honored for his success on a case he’d worked six months to solve, she wouldn’t be here at all.

Ron has always encouraged Hermione to follow her dreams, even during their Hogwarts days. Though they were sorted into different houses, the two shared many Prefect rounds together. Being named Head Boy and Girl also brought them closer together, where they began seeing each other in secret . Neither had intended to break things off upon graduation, but when Hermione received rejection after rejection for potential jobs within the Ministry, she pushed him away too.

There was a time years ago when she hoped to be working within the Magical Law Department with dreams of making the magical world a more accepting place for every witch and wizard, no matter their blood status. But those bright-eyed and bushy-tailed dreams have long since dissipated. The rules are archaic, and there’s no chance of overturning something so set in stone until there’s a new Minister of Magic who would be open to the possibility.

So, for now, Hermione tends to a job that gives her equal satisfaction. She teaches young Muggleborn students in a special school that she founded with the help of Professor McGonagall. Hermione earned her certification to teach the primary levels at University after graduating from Hogwarts, and now works with Professor McGonagall to teach those students between the ages of five and eleven how to prepare for the world they’ll enter when they’re old enough to go to Hogwarts. This is in addition to all of the regular courses that Muggle England expects them to study.

The prep school is what reconnected the pair, when Ron was assigned to work the case of an eight-year-old that disappeared last year. It was determined that the child was abducted by Fenrir Greyback and turned into a werewolf. Ron found the boy’s body deep in the Forest of Dean, where it was determined that Fenrir became too bloodthirsty on that particular hunt.

Hermione was distraught over the outcome and took comfort in Ron, who was equally shaken by the case. As the weeks following the case progressed, Hermione found herself spending more and more time with Ron. Slowly but surely, they found their way back to each other and had only just rekindled their relationship a couple of months ago.

Since their relationship still feels so new to Hermione, they’ve kept things quiet. But she knows how important tonight is for Ron, and she wants to be there for him. To support him the same way he supports her. Hermione knows he will be by her side through it all, and has assured her that no one will make any comments.

Ron leads them around the room, exchanging pleasantries and mingling with people Hermione’s only heard stories about. Thus far, everyone she’s encountered has been polite. They are about to make their way to their table when a voice calls out to them.

“Ron! There you are, dear! We’ve been looking everywhere for you.”

Hermione turns to see a plump woman with hair the same shade of red as Ron’s. A man follows in her wake who peers at them through half-moon spectacles with the same cerulean eyes that she’s so familiar with, only they’re attached to a different face. They’re much colder than the warmth Ron’s eyes emit, and that’s when the dread begins to expand from the pit in her stomach.

“Oh, I didn’t realize you were both attending tonight,” Ron attempts to hide the surprise as he greets his parents.

“And miss the opportunity to see our son receive an award for his hard work? Don’t be silly,” his father responds with a wave of his hand.

Hermione has yet to meet Ron’s parents. A chill crawls up her spine as they talk to their son as if he is standing by himself. Suddenly, all of Ron’s promises become emptier than the desk of her former student.

“Er, right. Mum, Dad, I’d like you to meet someone.” Ron gestures toward Hermione.

She can see his mouth moving, but no sound comes out, at least not that she hears. The blood drains from her ears, causing momentary deafness as she stands under the scrutinizing stares of his parents. Hermione holds her head high as his mother admonishes his choice of a date. There’s no empathy for them whatsoever.

“...What will everyone think? You come from a certain class of people, and we need to uphold our status. At least go for a Halfblood, darling.”

Years of following the mantra ‘hold your head high, don’t let it bother you, stay in your lane’ have still not prepared Hermione to endure this moment. She is a strong-willed woman, she fights for what is right, and she refuses to stand here and take this woman’s judgmental words all because of the family she was born into.

This is the exact reason why Hermione insisted on keeping their relationship private. Her feet move on their own accord as Hermione tears herself away from Ron’s side and weaves in and out of the clumps of people. She manages to find the visitor’s entrance and exits to the bustling streets of London. Refusing to cry, she rushes along the cobblestone sidewalk and down a deserted alleyway.

Hermione forces herself to forget the sound of Ron’s voice calling after her as she disapparates away from the Ministry of Magic. She finds herself in her classroom, staring at all the empty desks in front of her. Desks of students who would be forced to meet the same unfair limitations that she lives day to day. She feels so helpless, not knowing what to do in an effort to make their lives easier.

Looking down at the elegant maroon ball gown she’s still wearing, she feels dirty. This isn’t the life she’s meant for, no matter how many assurances Ron can give her. She doesn’t belong in his world. Thank goodness she keeps an extra outfit in her coat closet, which she rushes toward before shedding the expensive formalwear from her body.

Once she’s changed, Hermione sits down at her desk, staring at the piles of papers left to be graded. Ron insisted she leave them there so they could spend their weekend together. A heartbreaking realization enters her mind as she thinks of his name.

We can’t be together. This is never going to work.

It’s as if he knows that she’s thinking of him as the floo lights up and he stumbles out. Ron sheds his dress robes, leaving him in his starched white dress shirt and pressed black trousers. She refuses to look up even though she can feel his gaze boring into her as he stands at the head of her desk.

“Hermione.”

She says nothing because what is there to say?

“They’re small-minded people. What do you care what they think?”*

He reaches for her hand, but she tugs it away as she sits back in her chair.

“It’s not just them, Ron. You haven’t lived this life. You don’t know what I’ve been up against. You’ll never know what it feels like to be looked at the way your parents looked at me tonight. The way they spoke down about me to my face. I can’t—I can’t be subjected to that. The way people will look at us because we’re together. I don’t deserve to feel that way.”

Hermione stands up and exits the classroom, stepping into the abandoned hallway. She can’t do this anymore— it’s too painful. She’s learned to pick and choose her battles. It’s better to let people like the Weasleys think they’ve won while she keeps fighting on her own.

You know I want you, it’s not a secret I try to hide.

I know you want me, so don’t keep saying our hands are tied.

You claim it’s not in the cards, that fate is pulling you miles away and out of reach from me,

But you’re here in my heart, so who can stop me if I decide that you’re my destiny?

“Hermione, don’t do this. Please. I don’t care what they think. I want you, and nothing else matters.”

She stops and only turns her head slightly to see him leaning out of the doorway, his hand gripping the door jamb as he calls after her.

What if we rewrite the stars, say you were made to be mine

Nothing could keep us apart, you’d be the one I was meant to find.

It’s up to you, it’s up to me, no one can say what we get to be

So why don’t we rewrite the stars, maybe the world could be ours tonight.

“Please, love, don’t let them dictate what our life looks like.”

The desperation in Ron’s voice is what makes Hermione turn all the way around to face him. She begins to walk a few paces toward him before the voices in her head get a hold of her. He’d become an outcast if she stayed with him. She can’t let him risk everything he’s gained by choosing her.

You think it’s easy? You think I don’t want to run to you?

But there are mountains, and there are doors that we can’t walk through.

I know you’re wondering why because we’re able to be just you and me within these walls

But when we go outside you’re gonna wake up and see that it was hopeless after all.

“You know it’s not that easy. We can’t just run away from everything so we can be happy. Your family would never forgive you, or me for that matter! Everyone will do everything in their power to tear us apart. It’s not worth it.”

“So, what? You’re saying we’re not worth it?”

No one can rewrite the stars. How can you say you’ll be mine?

Everything keeps us apart, and I’m not the one you were meant to find.

It’s not up to you, it’s not up to me, when everyone tells us what we can be.

How can we rewrite the stars? Say that the world can be ours tonight.

Hermione reaches out and clasps his hands with her own. “No, you’re not listening to me. You’re worth so much to me that I have to let you go.”

“But what if I don’t want to let go?”

All I want is to fly with you.

All I want is to fall with you.

So just give me all of you.

It feels impossible (It’s not impossible).

Is it impossible? (Say that it’s possible.)

“I don’t want to let go, either, Ron, but I have to. You mean too much to me.”

She knows it’s better to be hurt on her own terms than to let someone else hurt her instead. Ron will see reason eventually. He has to. Hermione wraps her arms around him, tighter than ever before, putting all her feelings into one single embrace, hoping that he can understand.

How do we rewrite the stars? Say you were made to be mine?

Nothing can keep us apart, cause you are the one I was meant to find.

It’s up to you and it’s up to me, no one can say what we get to be

And why don’t we rewrite the stars, changing the world to be ours…

There are many things she can change, but her blood status isn’t one. Above all else, she’s proud of being a Muggleborn, and she’ll keep teaching her students to be proud of their roots as well. She’ll keep her memories of Ron and how wonderful he is locked up tight as she finds a way to navigate this world without him. Hermione has made her decision as she kisses his cheek and lets go. Perhaps in another lifetime, they’ll be able to be together with nothing standing in their way.

You know I want you.

It’s not a secret I try to hide.

But I can’t have you.

We’re bound to break and our hands are tied.

“I’m sorry.”

Her voice leaves the faintest echo among the abandoned halls. Before she loses her nerve, she turns on the spot and apparates away, leaving the hurt look that is etched on Ron’s face burned into her mind as she leaves him alone.

#chudleycanonficfest2021 #HP fest #hp canon pairings #canon fest romantic #submission #romione #ron x hermione #tw: blood purity #tw: prejudice #tw: violence (non graphic)#tw: murder (non graphic)

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chicagoindiecritics · 5 years

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New from Every Movie Has a Lesson by Don Shanahan: EDITORIAL: Movies and the 9/11 effect

(Image: pathtoparadise.com)

EIGHTH EDITION: UPDATED SEPTEMBER 11, 2019– In an update to my annual editorial (after the original post on the 10th anniversary in 2011), I’ve got new movie inclusions in several sections, including the most recent section of faded and relaxed sensitivity in films. I plan to make this an annual post and study for at least until the 20th anniversary in 2021. (All poster images are courtesy of IMPAwards.com)

Never forget. There’s no doubt that every American over the age of 25 won’t soon forget where they were 18 years ago at 8:46AM on September 11, 2001. The world and our American lifestyle changed forever that day in more ways that we can measure. I know movies and cinema are trivial pieces of entertainment compared to the more important things in life, but movies have always been two-hour vacations and therapy sessions from life, even in the face of immense tragedy. Sometimes, we need movies to inspire us and help us remember the good in things, while still being entertained. In seventeen years, they too have changed.

I’m here for an editorial research piece on the anniversary of 9/11 to showcase a few movies, both serious and not-so-serious, that speak to that day whether as a tribute, remembrance, or example of how life has changed since that fateful day. Enjoy!

MOVIES THAT WERE OPENING THAT FRIDAY EIGHTEEN YEARS AGO

Call this a time capsule, but these were the notable movies that opened Friday, September 7, 2001 and Friday, September 14, 2001, the two Fridays surrounding 9/11. Such a different time, huh? Needless to say, few people were in the mood for a movie in those first weeks and the fall 2001 box office took quite a hit until the Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone showed up in November 2001, followed by Ocean’s Eleven and The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring that December.

The Musketeer (September 7th)

Soul Survivors (September 7th)

Rock Star (September 7th)

Hardball (September 14th)

The Glass House (September 14th)

All were box office bombs at the time. The Musketeer garnered a good bit of overseas earnings and Hardball got some of the best reviews of Keanu Reeves’s post-Matrix career and grew to be a DVD hit. Still, talk about bad timing.

EXAMPLES OF 2001-2002 MOVIES CHANGED BECAUSE OF 9/11

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Spider-Man— Many of you may remember seeing this teaser for the big comic book blockbuster before it was pulled post-9/11. (New remastered video in 2019)

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Donnie Darko— Suggested by Feelin’ Film Facebook Discussion Group contributor Josh Powers. Released months before 9/11, few remember how much this film was somewhat buried and forced to become an underground cult favorite due to a pivotal moment involving a horrific plane crash.

Lilo and Stitch— See a side-by-side video clip of differences in Imgur. The trivia notes behind it are explained on IMDb.

Collateral Damage— The Arnold Schwarzenegger terrorism movie had its release date bumped and terrorist overtones mellowed down. (trailer)

City by the Sea— The production on this Robert DeNiro/James Franco thriller was moved from New York to Los Angeles in July 2001, dodging the terrorism attacks that would have threatened their home Tribeca studios. (trailer)

Sidewalks of New York–– Edward Burns intermingled love story movie was bumped to November and had to have its posters changed. See right here on the left for an example. (trailer)

Men in Black II— The original scripted ending of the movie was scripted to have the World Trade Center towers open up to release a barrage of UFOs. (trailer)

Serendipity and Zoolander— Both movies had shots of the WTC digitally removed from the skylines of their finished films before they hit theaters that fall.

The Time Machine— Had its December 2001 release bumped to March because of a potentially sensitive scene of meteor shower over New York (which it cut). (trailer)

Big Trouble— It too had its nuclear bomb-centered plot cause a release delay well into 2002. The delay didn’t help this already awful movie. (trailer)

MOVIES ABOUT 9/11 ITSELF

September 11 (2002)– International directors from around the world, including Ken Loach, Mira Nair, and future Oscar winner Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, made a two-hour anthology of short films showing creative expressions of other cultures and their reactions to the tragedy.

United 93 (2006)– Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum director Paul Greengrass took an unknown cast and directed a harrowing real-time account of the flight that fought back. Hard to watch, but undeniably powerful without exploiting the tragedy. (trailer)

World Trade Center (2006)– Conspiracy specialist Oliver Stone turns off the urge to dig into his usual musings and delivers an incredibly humble, respectful, and understated (words that hardly ever describe an Oliver Stone movie) true story of the last two men (Nicolas Cage and Michael Pena) rescued alive at Ground Zero. Worth every moment to see and a great tribute to the first responders and their families. (trailer)

9/11 (2017)– I think we all knew a day would come where some hack film was going to come around and exploit the tragedy that is the 2001 terrorist attacks. That award goes to Charlie Sheen, Whoopi Goldberg, and director Martin Guigui’s straight-to-VOD trash heap. Sheen, a noted conspiracy theorist on 9/11, took it upon himself to make a glamour project stepping on history. Do not waste your time with this film.

MOVIES WITH PROMINENT 9/11 CONNECTIONS

The Guys (2002)– One of the first reactionary films to 9/11 came from Focus Features in 2002 and starred Anthony LaPaglia and Sigourney Weaver. Based on Anne Nelson’s heartfelt play, LaPaglia plays a fire captain who lost eight men on 9/11 and Weaver plays the editor who helps him write eulogies for the fallen. The film is only available on disc from Amazon. (trailer)

WTC View (2005)– Gallows humor bubbles to the surface in this off-kilter indie romance from Brian Sloan about a SoHo man who placed an ad to find a new roommate and September 10th and now lives through a more difficult and trying landscape. (trailer)

Reign Over Me (2007)– In a rare dramatic turn, Adam Sandler plays a fictional wayward man who lost his wife and daughters on 9/11 and tailspins through life fiver years later when an old college friend (Don Cheadle) tries to help keep him from being committed to a psychiatric care. (trailer)

Remember Me (2010)– Billed as a coming-of-age film starring Twilight star Robert Pattinson, it features a fictitious family affected by the tragedy, including the fall of the WTC. Most critics found the 9/11 connections exploitative and offensive. (trailer)

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Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2011)– Speaking of exploitative, the Tom Hanks/Sandra Bullock Oscar nominee from this past year definitely rubbed more than a few audiences the wrong way in using 9/11 as a backdrop to a fictional family tragedy. Critics (including this one) clamored that if you’re going to bring 9/11 to the big screen, use a real story. (trailer) (my full review)

September Morning (2017)– Independent writer/director Ryan Frost crafted a small drama about five college freshman staying up all night after 9/11 weighing the impact it will have on their present and future. The film won a youth jury award at the Rhode Island International Film Festival. (trailer)

MOVIES ABOUT THE WAR ON TERROR

In the decade since September 11, 2011, our largest response as a nation to the terrorism of that day has been a pair of wars overseas in the countries of Iraq and Afghanistan. The “war on terror” has quickly grown into a ripe orchard for possible movie storylines.

Home of the Brave (2006)–Rocky producer Irwin Winkler earns the credit for the first mainstream Hollywood movie depicting the Iraqi War and the initial soldiers returning home to re-acclimate to society. Starring Samuel L. Jackson, Curtis “50 Cent” Jackson, and Jessica Biel. (trailer)

The Hurt Locker (2008)– Of course, the best-of-the-best is the 2009 Best Picture winner from Kathryn Bigelow starring Jeremy Renner as a driven, yet dark Iraqi bomb specialist. Its quality needs no introduction. (trailer)

Grace is Gone (2007)– In the Audience Award winner of the 2007 Sundance Film Festival, typical gender roles are reversed when John Cusack plays a homefront father (in my opinion, the best he’s ever acted) who has to find the best way to tell his two daughters that their soldier mother was killed in Iraq. This movie is “guy-cry” level brilliant. (trailer)

Rendition (2007)– Jake Gyllenhaal, Reese Witherspoon, and Meryl Streep get together for a movie calling out the wrongs of detainment, interrogation, and torture. (trailer)

The Kingdom (2007)– Jamie Foxx, Jennifer Garner, Chris Cooper, and Jason Bateman investigate a bombing and throw down in the streets of Riyadh. (trailer)

Lions for Lambs (2007)– Robert Redford delivers a three point-of-view discourse on U.S. war affairs before home and abroad with the help of Tom Cruise and Meryl Streep. (trailer)

In the Valley of Elah (2007)– Crash director Paul Haggis leads Tommy Lee Jones (in an amazing Oscar-nominated performance) and Susan Sarandon as parents investigating with a local detective (Charlize Theron) the disappearance of their AWOL son returning home from Iraq. (trailer)

Body of Lies (2008)– Ridley Scott’s fictional take on the CIA’s involvement in preventing Jordanian terrorism starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Russell Crowe. (trailer)

Stop-Loss (2008)– Ryan Phillippe, Channing Tatum, and Joseph Gordon-Levitt play three young Texas schoolmates who are finally home from overseas but are forced back via the stop-loss clause. (trailer)

The Messenger (2009)– Woody Harrelson was nominated for an Oscar for his role as a U.S. Army Casualty Notification Team officer mentoring recent veteran (Ben Foster) on the uniquely difficult job of informing families the bad news. (trailer)

Taking Chance (2009)– Along the same bringing-bad-news-home lines is this gem of a HBO film starring Kevin Bacon (like Cusack earlier, in arguably his best performance as an actor) as a desk officer who never saw combat but takes on the duty of escorting a young fallen soldier’s body back to his old hometown. Even though this wasn’t in theaters, it is outstanding and worth your time on DVD. (trailer)

Brothers (2009)– Jake Gyllenhaal takes care of his older brother’s wife (Natalie Portman) while he (Tobey Maguire) is declared MIA in Afghanistan, from director Jim Sheridan. (trailer)

Dear John and The Lucky One (2010 and 2012)– These two adaptations of Nicholas Sparks romance novels briefly touches on the War on Terror through Channing Tatum and Zac Efron’s lead characters’ return home to romance. (trailer and trailer)

Green Zone (2010)–Director Paul Greengrass followed United 93 with his Bourne series star Matt Damon in this taut and marginally-dramatized account of the early unsuccessful searches and the possible cover-up of Baghdad’s supposed stores of weapons of mass destruction. (trailer)

Restrepo (2010)– The highly acclaimed National Geographic documentary film follows a one-year look at the real men of the platoon embattled in the deadliest fortified valley of Afghanistan. (trailer)

Act of Valor (2012)– Disney pumped up the military with this fictional anti-terrorism film using active duty Navy SEALs. Coming out after the death of Osama bin Laden, this was a welcome and well-promoted hero picture and recruitment reel. (trailer)

Zero Dark Thirty (2012)– The Hurt Locker director Kathryn Bigelow made a film about the SEAL Team 6 men and their story of taking down Osama bin Laden. The film was my #1 movie on my “10 Best” list for 2012. (trailer) (my full review)

Lone Survivor (2013)– Peter Berg (Friday Night Lights) directed an outstanding and patriotic film based on the Afghanistan saga of Marcus Luttrell starring Mark Wahlberg, Taylor Kitsch, Ben Foster, and Emile Hirsch that echoes another true-life story from the ongoing War on Terror. Very good movie! (trailer) (my full review)

A Most Wanted Man (2014)– Spy novelist John LeCarre’s multi-layered 2008 novel about the world of inter-agency espionage happening in Hamburg, Germany, the same city where the 9/11 conspirators hatched their plans, is an excellent and different post-9/11 film with an international flair and flavor. It will also be remembered as one of the last performances of Philip Seymour Hoffman, who was phenomenal in the film. (trailer) (my full review)

Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit (2014)– This modern reboot or update of the famed Tom Clancy character, now played by Chris Pine, roots his pre-spy origins in the aftermath of 9/11 and the War on Terror that followed. (trailer)

American Sniper (2014)– Clint Eastwood’s Best Picture nominee war drama about the real-life story of the late Navy SEAL Chris Kyle (played by Oscar nominee Bradley Cooper) went on to become the highest grossing film of 2014 (north of $350 million). Kyle’s journey from the heartland to the front lines was spurred by a sense of duty and patriotism that started from the attacks of 9/11. This is, by far, the most high profile movie to date to feature the War on Terror directly correlating 9/11. (trailer) (my full review)

Good Kill (2015)– On the smaller side, but just as solid with warfare and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is this under-seen film which had a limited theatrical release during the summer of 2015. Andrew Niccol (Lord of War, Gattaca, The Truman Show) shifted his focus to the War on Terror by showcasing a Las Vegas base of drone pilots dealing with the ramification of their actions and the war being waged on their screens and with their joystick controls. (trailer) (my full review)

13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi (2016)– Director Michael Bay’s slanted look at the September 11, 2012 embassy attacks that have become a political firebrand since certainly qualifies to make this list. (trailer) (my full review)

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot (2016)– Tina Fey shed her comedic image for a heavyish war drama loosely based the true story of Afghanistan/Pakistan television journalist Kim Barker. (trailer)

Snowden (2016)– Renowned politicized filmmaker Oliver Stone brought his brush of dramatic license to the story of whistleblowing former spy Edward Snowden, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt. The paranoia of the post-9/11 digital age was the mission field for Snowden and many other young men and women who sought the security and counterterrorism industries. (trailer) (full review)

Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk (2016)– A company of soldiers who lost their commanding officer in Iraq are making a victory tour of press dates and public appearances when the reflections of the title character (newcomer Joe Alwyn) fill the day. Ang Lee’s film felt ten years too late and was not well received. (trailer) (my full review)

Thank You For Your Service (2015) and Thank You For Your Service (2017)– This popular conversation sentence was the title of two different works. In 2015, Tom Donahue’s documentary opened eyes to the shoddy mental health governance for modern veterans and made waves that changed actual policies. The 2017 feature film borrows inspiration from David Finkel’s 2013 nonfiction bestseller dealing with the PTSD topic of returning Iraqi tour soldiers adjusting to civilian life. Miles Teller is the headliner and is joined by Haley Bennett, Beulah Koale, Joe Cole, and Amy Schumer. (trailer) (trailer)

Megan Leavey (2017)– 2017 was a busy year for War on Terror-connected films with five new entries. Taglined “based on the true story about a Marine’s best friend,” Megan Leavey stars Kate Mara as the soldier leader of a bomb-searching pooch on deployment in Iraq. Touching film! (trailer)

The Wall (2017)– Nocturnal Animals Golden Globe nominee Aaron Taylor-Johnson and emerging WWE movie star John Cena play two soldiers pinned down by an Iraqi sniper in a single-setting thriller from action specialist Doug Liman (Edge of Tomorrow). (trailer)

War Machine (2017)– Enough time has passed now in 2017 where the War on Terror has reached a point of being a target of satire. Animal Kingdom and The Rover director David Michod puts a witty spin on things creating a fictionalized account of U.S. General Stanley McChrystal with Brad Pitt in the lead. Netflix is the exclusive carrier of this one. (trailer)

Last Flag Flying (2017)– The last and best of the 2017 bunch is Richard Linklater’s dramedy about three old Vietnam veterans (Steve Carell, Bryan Cranston, and Laurence Fishburne) who come together when one of their sons is killed in Iraq and coming home for burial. The excellent acting trio and Linklater’s writing (adapted from Darryl Ponicsan’s novel, a spiritual sequel to his The Last Detail) deliver touching brevity and sharp commentary on the echoes of war across generations. (trailer) (my full review)

A Private War (2018)— Documentary filmmaker Matthew Heineman made his feature film debut with a biopic on British photojournalist Marie Colvin, who made her stops through the hellfire of Iraq and Afghanistan in her storied career. Rosamund Pike was snubbed for an Oscar nomination that year. (trailer) (my full review)

Vice (2018)— Speaking of biopics, writer/director Adam McKay brought his machete for satire to the life of former Vice President Dick Cheney. The film dove deep into the manipulated machinations from Cheney that engineered the War on Terror during the Bush administration. While not as good as The Big Short, Vice did earn eight Oscar nominations (winning one for makeup), including Best Picture and Best Actor for Christian Bale in the leading role. (trailer) (my full review)

Official Secrets (2019)— When invading Iraq was on the table to push the war to the ground, the United Kingdom and Prime Minister Tony Blair were lockstep next to the U.S. on seeking United Nations approval. The true story of whistleblower Katharine Gun unearthed secrets that led to questioning the war’s legality before it even began. This is a nice step-up for Keira Knightley. (trailer) (my full review)

The Report (2019)— Not yet widely released in 2019 after huge buzz at the Sundance Film Festival, frequent Steven Soderbergh screenwriting collaborator Scott Z. Burns made his directorial debut with this searing docudrama of the use of torture by American agencies during the War on Terror. Check out the film’s trailer:

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MOVIES ABOUT THE CHANGES IN AMERICAN LIFE (BOTH SERIOUS AND NOT-SO-SERIOUS)

25th Hour (2002)– New Yorker Spike Lee was quick to not shy away from the post-9/11 pulse of New York City following Edward Norton’s character’s last night of debauchery and unfinished business before going to prison. Filled with scathing social commentary and visual reminders of 9/11 and Ground Zero, its amazing opening credits sequence alone set the tone as only Spike can. (trailer)

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Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)– Documentary maverick Michael Moore’s slam at the handling of 9/11 and the war on terror became one of the most successful box office documentaries of all-time. (trailer)

Sorry, Haters (2005)– Robin Wright played a professional woman who receives conversation and unexpected interaction with an Arab New York cab driver in this IFC production. (foreign trailer)

An Inconvenient Truth (2006)– By contrast, in a small snippet and computer graphic on melting glaciers in this Oscar-winning documentary, Al Gore lets us know that half of Greenland or Antarctica’s melted ice would put New York, including Ground Zero, underwater within the next 50 years. (trailer)

The Terminal (2004)– Airports are now covered in bureaucratic red tape. Heaven forbids, you’re not from America. (trailer)

Anger Management (2003)– Showed us that you can get kicked off a plane now for just about anything. (trailer)

Soul Plane (2004)– Then again, come on, guys. Air travel can still be cool, even with the new security rules. (trailer)

Snakes on a Plane (2006)– OK, maybe not so much… (trailer)

Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (2008)– You’ve got to hate racial profiling as much as you equally love a good parody. (trailer)

Iron Man (2008)– Marvel’s steely hero had his Vietnam origin story conveniently and modernly flopped for an Afghanistan-connected one. (trailer)

Bridesmaids (2011)– Now, that’s how an Air Marshall gets down! (trailer)

Source Code (2011)– Our fear of catastrophes on planes can easily be translated to trains as well. (trailer) (my full review)

The Reluctant Fundamentalist (2013)– For a serious look at the warped view of Muslim citizens post-9/11, take a look at Mira Nair’s dramatic thriller about a young Pakistani man (newcomer Riz Ahmed) who is successful on Wall Street but viewed differently through profiling after 9/11. (trailer)

The Fifth Estate (2013)– The film story of the WikiLeaks of Julian Assange carry a loose connection to the changed post-9/11 landscape of security and more. (trailer)

Boyhood (2014)– Richard Linklater’s huge biographical opus was filmed over the course of 12 years with the same cast growing up and aging to tell their family story. The film starts in 2002, where the incidents of 2001 are fresh on the minds of the characters and discussed openly during the first year sequence of the journey. Later on, political mentions of Bush, Obama, and the War on Terror make it into a reflective conversation as well. (trailer) (my full review)

Won’t You Be My Neighbor (2018)– A key moment in the extraordinary Fred Rogers documentary chronicled when a retired Rogers was brought back for a special televised message to young viewers about reacting to the 9/11 tragedy that played on-screen for so many viewers. It’s a touching historical moment. (trailer) (my full review)

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MEMORABLE PAST IMAGES OF THE WORLD TRADE CENTER IN MOVIES

Sometimes, all it takes is the camera making a fleeting, yet memorable, glance at those beautiful and now-gone skyscrapers to immediately remind us of a different time. The WTC towers have been shown in innumerable establishing shots. We’ll highlight some great ones. Beginning with the closing credits to New Yorker Martin Scorsese’s 2002 film Gangs of New York, here’s a great montage of cinematic views of the WTC from various pre-2001 movies.

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Superman (1978)– Even a passing fly-by over “Metropolis” feels different.

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Home Alone 2: Lost in New York (1992)– Tell me this clip didn’t just go from cute to eerie to sad. Wonderful then, but different now.

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Godspell (1973)— Submitted by friend-of-the-page and larger-fan-of-musicals-than-me Josh Powers, enjoy this dance number from the summery musical filmed and completed before the skyscraper’s ribbon-cutting.

King Kong (1976)– While it may not match the iconic 1933 image of the original ape towering on top of the Empire State Building, the World Trade Center plays a big role in the 1976 remake starring Jeff Bridges and Jessica Lange. (trailer)

Independence Day (1996), Deep Impact (1998), Armageddon (1998), and The Day After Tomorrow (2004)– These all constitute the prominent disaster movies that leave New York (and, in three cases, the WTC) in destructive shambles.

HONORABLE MENTIONS: Godzilla (1998), Cloverfield (2004), War of the Worlds (2005), and Watchmen (2009). Kind of not so entertaining for few seconds anymore, huh? See for yourself. Here’s a montage of NYC movie destruction:

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MOVIES THAT FEEL DIFFERENT IN THE POST-9/11 WORLD

I don’t know about you but a lot of movies just don’t resonate or feel the same as they did before September 11th. We’ve changed and the perception has changed. For some movies, their message and impact is only made stronger (in good ways and bad) since 9/11. In other cases, what was entertaining then doesn’t feel so right anymore.

Airplane! (1980)– Farce or not (and still funny to this day), we could never get away with anything that happens on an airplane from that movie now. (trailer)

Passenger 57 (1992)–Let alone this movie… (trailer)

Executive Decision (1996)– …and this movie… (trailer)

Turbulence (1997)– …and this movie… (trailer)

Pushing Tin (1999)– …and probably this movie too… (trailer)

True Lies (1994)– Slammed even then for its depiction of Arab terrorists, it likely has picked up a little more egg on its face. Adding to its burial, the movie hasn’t been released on any physical media format since 1999, which includes zero Blu-ray editions in its history (factoid from Josh Powers). Do you think 20th Century Fox wants that movie to go away or what? (trailer)

The Siege (1998)– This frightening martial law thriller with Denzel Washington, Annette Bening, and Bruce Willis makes True Lies look like G.I. Joe starring Ken from the Barbie dolls toy line. Scary and eerily prophetic in its over-the-top terrorism and bombing scenarios. (trailer)

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)– Though fictional with Pittsburgh standing in as Gotham City, the New York imagery and parallels occurring during its terrorist takeover led by Tom Hardy’s Bane have eerie 9/11-inspired ramifications. (trailer) (my full review)

Syriana (2005)– George Clooney won an Oscar, but the touchy subjects of torture, terrorism, and the oil industry evoke a little dose of fear. (trailer)

Munich (2005)– The Black September assassination of Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics and the Mossad’s reaction was probably the last time before 9/11 that terrorism made worldwide live media headlines. (trailer)

Arlington Road (1999)– While this resonates more as a comparison to Oklahoma City-style domestic terrorism, the Jeff Bridges/Tim Robbins underappreciated thriller is no less scary now than then. (trailer)

Fight Club (1999)– Watching Tyler Durden (Brad Pitt/Edward Norton) destroy New York’s credit district is another example of domestic terrorism and destruction that rings a little louder post-9/11.

The Sum of All Fears (2002)– Many people found the Super Bowl bomb plot far too soon to see those images just a year removed from 9/11. (trailer)

V for Vendetta (2006)– Urban terrorism in London via a Guy Fawkes fan resonates a little different for a public scare on our side of the Atlantic. (trailer)

Courage Under Fire (1995)– Our first trip to Iraq foreshadows a lot of the equal futility, bravery, and loss experienced in our second trip… (trailer)

Jarhead (2005)– …especially when told from the true account of a disillusioned soldier who was there. (trailer)

Charlie Wilson’s War (2007)– The same foreshadowing can be made out of our 1980’s Cold War involvement on the side of Afghanistan versus the Soviet Union as outlined by a gem of a Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts, and Phillip Seymour Hoffman film. To think that we could have stuck around and cleaned the place up before they became our enemy. (trailer)

Rambo III (1988)– Speaking of an American fighting on the anti-communism side of the Afghans! (trailer)

Air Force One (1997)– Not that George W. Bush or Barack Obama ever channeled Harrison Ford here, but don’t you now root a little harder for a take charge President… (trailer)

The Patriot (2000)– … or a flag-carrying American hero from 230+ years ago… (trailer)

Pearl Harbor (2001)– …or the last great American tragedy that galvanized a nation and sent us to war. (trailer)

MOVIES SINCE 2001 THAT RENEW THE AMERICAN SPIRIT

These examples (as well as the aforementioned World Trade Center) will get your patriotic heartstrings going and boost your down spirit.

The Last Castle (2001)– Opening just over a month after the tragedy, the military and flag-waving patriotism of Robert Redford’s underrated drama undeniably stirs you. (trailer)

Behind Enemy Lines (2001)– Leave it to Gene Hackman and Owen Wilson (of all people) to win macho patriotic points for loosely re-enacting the famous pilot Scott O’Grady Bosnian prisoner escape story. (trailer)

Black Hawk Down (2001)– Released during the 2001-2002 awards season, Ridley Scott’s powerful depiction of the 1993 Battle of Mogadishu showed the uncompromising courage of U.S. Army Ranger and Delta Force soldiers at a time when our current soldiers were likely preparing for going overseas to similar urban warfare. (trailer)

We Were Soldiers (2002)– Mel Gibson may be embroiled in unpopular headlines now, but his 2002 action-drama from his Braveheart writer about America’s first official military action in Vietnam is as powerful and it is impressive. Like Black Hawk Down, it added to the heroic mystique of the American soldier, even if it was set in the past. If you don’t cry watching those wives deliver those first casualty letters, there’s something wrong with you. (trailer)

Spider-Man (2002) and Spider-Man 2 (2004)– New York’s #1 resident superhero always fights for a way for the citizen of the city to stand up together. I suppose you can throw in the pair from the reboot (The Amazing Spider-Man and The Amazing Spider-Man 2) for some of the same reasons. (trailer)

Gangs of New York (2002)– Martin Scorsese is a quintessential New Yorker and his mid-1800’s history piece (while definitely violent) was a love letter to the city’s great history. (trailer)

Elf (2003)– Will Ferrell put the Big Apple back in the Christmas cheer. (trailer)

Ladder 49 (2004)– Though it wasn’t set in New York, you can’t help but think of the 343 NYFD men and women that lost their lives on September 11th and ardent first-responders when you watch Joaquin Phoenix and John Travolta as macho Baltimore firemen. (trailer)

Million Dollar Baby (2004)– America loves a good underdog story and Clint Eastwood gave the public a heck of a good one that went on to win the Oscar for Best Picture. (trailer)

Miracle (2004)– What better way to boost American spirit than to relive our greatest Olympic triumph. (trailer)

National Treasure (2004)– How about a history lesson to make you feel good about our great country? Why not? (trailer)

Hitch (2005)– Will Smith brought popular romance back to the City That Never Sleeps. (trailer) He would capture hearts for a different reason the next year with The Pursuit of Happyness. (trailer)

We Are Marshall (2006)– Another real-life airplane tragedy sets the stage for an amazing story of athletic and community rebirth. One of the most underrated football movies out there. (trailer)

Live Free or Die Hard (2007)– Why not give NY’s best bad-ass cop a chance to save the nation’s capital? (trailer)

Captain America: The First Avenger (2011)– Last but not least, you can’t get more patriotic and underdog than this skinny guy from Brooklyn transformed into a red-white-and-blue super soldier. He followed it up this past summer saving New York in The Avengers. (trailer and trailer) (full review and my full review)

American Sniper (2014)– The tremendous reception Clint Eastwood’s film had to become the highest grossing movie of the year made Chris Kyle a household name and heavily amplified a previously dormant red-blooded (and “red state-d”) surge of patriotism and soldier appreciation. (trailer) (my full review)

Sully (2016)– Both the incredible true story of Flight 1549 from 2009 and Clint Eastwood’s respectful retelling featuring Tom Hanks as Capt. Chelsea “Sully” Sullenberger remind audiences of the strength of New York City. There’s a great line in the movie where someone is trying to thank Sullenberger and says that it’s been a long time since the city has had good news about anything like the “Miracle on the Hudson,” especially about a plane. (trailer) (my full review)

Patriots Day (2016) and Stronger (2018)– The way the city of Boston rallied from another terrorist attack on American soil during its marathon has key inspirational value. It’s too bad the film was the Mark Wahlberg show rather than a well-rounded ensemble approach. (trailer) (my full Patriots Day review) (trailer) (my full Stronger review)

Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017) and Avengers: Infinity War (2018)– Much like the Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield web-slinger movies that came before, Tom Holland’s take on Peter Parker is a born-and-raised New York kid that supports and protects his neighborhood and city from dangers foreign and domestic. His protection, joined by fellow New Yorker Doctor Strange, expands with the united effort with The Avengers when Thanos shows up in Avengers: Infinity War. One part down on that with one to go in the summer of 2019. (trailer) (my full Spider-Man: Homecoming review) (trailer) (my Avengers: Infinity War review)

Only the Brave (2017)– Just as with Ladder 49 thirteen years before it, you can’t beat the sympathy generated by the hard work, dedication, and sacrifice of firefighters. Forest fires aren’t terrorists, but the feels are all there. (trailer)

The 15:17 to Paris (2018)– Four years after American Sniper, Clint Eastwood dipped his filmmaking brush in the hero worship paint again to tell another true story. The wrinkle of this one is that Eastwood called upon the actual heroes that thwarted the 2015 Thayls train attack to star in their own movie recreation. Results were mixed, but the Eastwood prestige is there. (trailer) (my full review)

THE UP-AND-DOWN PULSE OF CONTINUED SENSITIVITY AND/OR CENSORSHIP TO 9/11 SIMILARITIES

For 2014 and going forward, this is a new section I’m adding to this study. Now that enough time has passed since 2001, I’m beginning to notice that movies are starting to go back to some of the images and themes of violence, destruction, and terrorism that were hands off for so many years after 9/11. Like all history, even 9/11 will fade. What we were offended by after the horrific incidents have returned, in some cases, to be more tolerated and even acceptable and celebrated again. Sure enough, there are plenty who vividly remember 2001’s events and images and are quick to point out when something is in possible poor taste. That shaky barometer has led to some allusions and reminders to 9/11 and some flat-out censorship changes and corrections. Some get flak and slaps on the wrist while some don’t. Here are some examples in recent years.

Olympus Has Fallen and White House Down (2013)– Both competing White House takeover films from 2013, one from Antoine Fuqua (Training Day) and one from Roland Emmerich (Independence Day) had a bit of split audience reaction to their violent and terrorist content. Some rooted and cheered as if it was the 80’s again and America is always going to win. Others were not so keen or ready to see the White House become a target and battleground, even if it was just a movie. Between the two, Olympus Has Fallen, the R-rated and more severe one of the two, was the bigger hit. In a way, no one batted an eye. (trailer and trailer) (my full Olympus Has Fallen review)

Man of Steel (2013)– Despite being one of the most all-American heroes around, Zack Snyder’s Man of Steel gave Superman a very serious tone that, in a way, can’t be included on the category before this one of movies that renew the American spirit. Also, many people were not very pleased with the immense city-wide destruction scenes of Metropolis during the film’s climax. Even though Chicago was the filming location of a fictitious comic book city, there were staunch critics who had a problem with huge office buildings and skyscrapers in very 9/11-esque rubble. Its 2016 sequel, Batman v. Superman: Dawn of Justice mildly addressed that a city can’t be destroyed without consequences, even on Superman’s watch in a colorful comic book setting. (my full review)

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Transformers: Dark of the Moon (2011)– Much like Man of Steel, the third Michael Bay Transformers movie features a great deal of city-wide destruction (again, in Chicago) that rubbed a few people the wrong way. (trailer) (my full review)

Star Trek Into Darkness (2013)– Throw in the terrorist label for the villain and his bombings and the big San Francisco starship wreck during this film’s ending action that was clearly a larger scale to a passenger jet taking out buildings. (trailer) (my full review)

Godzilla (2014)– Add the King of the Monsters to the list of more city destruction that raised an eyebrow for some. (trailer) (my full review)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (2014)– Outside of this string of modern and accepted examples of urban attacks and destruction, is the minor amount of hot water the makers of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles got it for a promotional poster that had an exploding skyscraper that cut too close to 9/11 similarities. The study pulled the poster and had to apologize. Censorship and sensitivity won that argument and mistake. (trailer)

The Walk (2015)– A very big test to peoples’ memories of the World Trade Center will be coming in the Fall of 2015 with Robert Zemeckis’s film The Walk, the true story of the French high-wire artist Philippe Petit’s quest to tightrope walk between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974 (previously featured in the Academy Award nominated 2008 documentary Man on Wire). Starring Joseph Gordon-Levitt, the film will prominently display, thanks to Zemeckis’s stunning use of CGI, a tremendous amount of imagery of the two lost skyscrapers. Even though it’s a period piece to a non-turbulent time, no film since 2001 has attempted to show this much of those building. Public reaction was mixed and the film was not a box office hit. (trailer) (full review)

Independence Day: Resurgence (2016)– I guess it’s OK for patriotic mass city destruction again. London gets it worse than New York, though. (trailer) (full review)

Ghostbusters (2016)– Well, New York was safe for at least a month anyway between Independence Day: Resurgence‘s release and the new reboot (which conveniently made sure its city destruction in Times Square and other places be easy to erase). Not far behind was the fictional Suicide Squad and its over-the-city halo of supposed death. (trailer) (my full review)

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Rampage (2018)– Larger in size than the old World Trade Centers used to be, Chicago’s Willis Tower, the former Sears Tower and tallest building in the world, was the targeted collapsed skyscraper spectacle of choice in the Brad Payton/Dwayne Johnson live-action video game adaptation. Monsters aren’t terrorists, but the imagery hits close as the Willis Tower was one of many skyscrapers across the country evacuated on 9/11 out of fear of becoming another target. See the collapse clip above. (my full review)

I hope everyone enjoyed this little (OK, large) retrospective about the impact of 9/11 in movies for the last 18 years and counting. Take some time this coming weekend to appreciate the freedoms we have the people fighting to keep them for us. Support your troops and first responders and, again, NEVER FORGET!

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eddycurrents · 5 years

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BPRD: Being Human - “The Dead Remembered”

Story: Mike Mignola & Scott Allie | Pencils: Karl Moline | Inks: Andy Owens | Colours: Dave Stewart | Letters: Clem Robins

Originally published by Dark Horse in BPRD: The Dead Remembered #1-3 | April-June 2011

Collected in BPRD: Being Human

Plot Summary:

In 1976, Professor Bruttenholm takes Liz with him to investigate a haunting in Massachusetts that may have ties to the witch trials. While there, Liz experiences her first real crush, trying to come to terms with her powers and the ghosts that haunt her, both from the past and the present.

Reading Notes:

(Note: Pagination is in reference to the chapter itself and is not indicative of anything found in the issues or collections.)

pg. 1 - Interesting cold open, on the confrontation of a “witch” by a mob threatening to do her ill. The terror in her eyes is aptly captured by Karl Moline, Andy Owens, and Dave Stewart here in the art.

It’s also interesting in that in our current understanding and hindsight, witches as envisioned by witch hunters, priests, and such during the height of the Salem Witch Trials don’t exist. These women were generally falsely accused out of politics, jealousy, spite, etc. or in the rare case where they exhibited some natural or scientific knowledge. No magic powers. No communion with the devil. So, in general, we often find stories in which these women are accused, the women are given a sympathetic outlook, because we don’t believe they’re actually “witches”.

In a world like Hellboy though, magic witches and demons do exist. The women can actually be what the people accuse them of. As such, it adds a certain level of doubt as to the veracity of the claims that otherwise wouldn’t be there. So you wonder, is she really a witch? And, if so, is she a good witch or a bad witch?

pg. 2 - And we’re into the present of the story in 1976. I absolutely love Hellboy and Bruttenholm here interacting as adults. It’s an interesting dynamic, also when it comes to Bruttenholm getting nostalgic about young Hellboy. It is funny to see a kind of inversion of HB wanting to go on a trip.

pg. 3 - It’s also great to see Hellboy acting like a big brother.

pg. 5 - One hell of a nightmare to carry around with you as baggage. Compared to the somewhat neutral palette (other than the vibrant reds), it’s interesting to see this explosion of bright colour for Liz’s memory from Stewart. It gives a very nice impact to how overwhelming it can be to Liz.

Also, there’s an idea put forward here that her “minders” are terrified of her. That’s got to do one hell of a number on a kid.

pg. 7 - Hellboy’s probably the most human and humane of any person at the Bureau. You really get the impression that he wants Liz to succeed and be “normal” (whatever that normal may be).

pg. 8 - I hate this car game. I have a few friends who do it still, and I always see it as a kind of gatekeeping and flouting of knowledge rather than the sharing of information that I know at least one of them means it as. I’m probably guilty of it in some regards as well.

The song is “Loves Me Like a Rock”, by the way. Which is kind of interesting since it involves the devil and being fooled.

Though Liz’s response of ultimately diving into reading is the perfect teenager reaction, regardless of time period.

pg. 9 - The Father’s dilapidated house is interesting. Who puts a priest out to pasture in the middle of nowhere?

pg. 11 - The incorporation again of Henry Hood is nice, as is the possible ties to the Whittier family we met earlier in The Whittier Legacy. That gives further credence that Anne perhaps actually is a witch.

I like the simple purple wash Stewart uses for the flashback.

pg. 13 - I like that the priest is building the possibility here of Anne’s innocence throughout the terrible ordeal. It sets up the idea that this could be a revenge haunting.

pg. 14 - It’s somewhat funny that the witch, or whatever it is at this point, would use fire to spook Liz. It feels like something intentional that a spirit would utilize in order to sew doubt in Bruttenholm.

pg. 15 - Which seems to have worked. You get the impression that Bruttenholm thinks that Liz caused the fire.

pg. 18 - Why is it always smudging? There are other ways to cleanse and purify an area, especially when you consider that Bruttenholm is a stodgy Brit (even if he has been living in America for at least 30 years at this point).

pg. 19 - Liz is also downright mean to Teddy here. I mean, it’s understandable given what just happened with the professor, but wrong target.

pg. 22 - Now that’s just creepy. The bullet hole in the back of her head just makes it even more terrifying.

pg. 24 - You’d think that this happening in the woods would clue the professor and the priest that it’s not necessarily the house that’s the problem, but no.

pg. 25 - It’s also kind of sad that Liz is effectively being unheard, disbelieved, and denied here. It would only further her feelings of alienation.

pg. 28 - It ultimately didn’t seem to stop Teddy, though...

pg. 30 - Teddy emphasizes that it always does seem to be the kids who know the truth. Also, that adults tend not to believe the kids.

pg. 31 - There’s something about those shell wind chimes.

pg. 33 - I think it’s kind of weird that Bruttenholm is still pursuing the ghost as if it’s in the house and not tied somewhere else. Sure, there are manifestations within the house, but his previous attempt at purification didn’t even get a little bit of cupboard rattling.

pg. 34 - Being concerned about occult methods now is a weird quirk.

pg. 36 - It would have to be scary to find out that you’re developing pyrokinetic powers. Add that to the usual problems that any adolescent goes through and this is just a recipe for a firebomb.

pg. 39 - It’s a wonder that Liz didn’t go into a permanent state of shock from this. Actually seeing the full flashover event that caused the death of her family, friends, and more is just horrifying.

pg. 40 - Also the guilt from knowing that her mother knew about her lie is clearly eating at her.

pg. 42 - Awkward...

pg. 43 - More about those wind chimes. Also, regardless of whether Anne Caldwell was guilty or not, the mob “justice” is just nasty.

pg. 44 - The repetition of “Behold, I am against thee, saith the lord of hosts.” is interesting.

pg. 46 - I like the seeds of doubt planted as to who or what the ghost is, though Bruttenholm still seems to be looking in the wrong direction.

pg. 47 - This has got to be hard for a kid to understand. Also, Bruttenholm really isn’t great at interpersonal skills. He does at least seem to be trying.

pg. 48 - Third time’s the charm, right?

pg. 49 - It is good, though, that Bruttenholm seems to have finally clued in on what Liz really needs. Locking her up and treating her like a feral animal definitely isn’t good for her.

pg. 51 - I do like that the kids are taking the approach ultimately that the witch was the wronged party here.

pg. 52 - Or maybe she is evil.

Also, if this was what happened the first time I ever tried a cigarette, I’d never smoke. Ever. (I don’t and never have, but you get my point).

pg. 53 - The increasing severity of the storm is wonderfully depicted.

pg. 54 - Definitely evil.

pg. 55 - Just great art from Moline, Owens, and Stewart. The horror feel is intense.

pg. 58 - Liz being forced through the stages of Anne’s death in the present is very weird. It gives the impression that the witch wants her to experience something,

pg. 60 - There’s an interesting line here about power. Giving you the impression that maybe Anne wants Liz as a vessel.

pg. 62 - That’s an impressive column of fire.

pg. 64 - Poor kid.

pg. 66 - Good on them. This is sweet.

Final Thoughts:

Liz is probably my favourite character outside of Hellboy himself. For a character who was going to die because Mike Mignola didn’t know what to do with her, she’s come very far, suffered a lot of adversity, come to terms with her own agency, and become the fire. This origin story, delving further into what happened regarding the death of her parents and also some of the formative events that clearly imprinted on who she became, paints a complicated picture out of fear, self-doubt, and building an abrasive personality in response to it.

It’s also really nice to see more art from Karl Moline. His art on the Liz-centric issue of War on Frogs was wonderful and he, with inks here from Andy Owens, was the perfect choice to come back to flesh out this period in her life. Also, his witches are creepy fantastic.

d. emerson eddy does not want to burn the witch.

#Give 'em Hellboy #Hellboy #BPRD #Being Human #Mike Mignola #Scott Allie #Karl Moline #RaisingHellboy #151

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cinenthusiast · 5 years

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Previous Top Ten By Year lists: 1935, 1983, 1965, 1943, 1992, 1978, 1925, 1969 1930

Previous Top Ten By Year: 1949 Posts: Top Ten By Year: 1949 – Poll Results 100 Images from the Films of 1949 What I’ll Remember About the Films of 1949: A Love Letter #10. The Queen of Spades (UK/Dickinson) #9. Rendezvous in July (Becker)/Au royaume des cieux (Duvivier) (France) #8. Too Late for Tears (US / Haskin) #7. The Heiress (US / Wyler) #6. The Set-Up (US / Wise) #5. Caught (US / Ophüls)

For those unaware of my Top Ten By Year project: The majority of my viewing habits have been dictated by this project since September of 2013. Jumping to a different decade each time, I choose comparatively weaker years for me re: quantity of films seen/quantity of films loved. I use list-making as a way to see more films and revisit others in a structured and project-drive way. I was sick of spending too much time trying to decide what to watch, or watching films just to cross them off another dumb canon list. I wanted to engage. I wanted films to be enhanced by others, by looking at a specific moment in time. I wanted something that led me to seeing or revisiting things I might not have gotten to otherwise. Lastly, my lists are based on personal favorites, not any weird notion of an objective best.

This is the first year I’ll be doing separate posts for each film. #9 will go up Monday. After that, one will go up each day until the end. Then I’ll post them all together so they are gathered in one place. There are a lot of films I loved that did not make the cut. In particular, Flamingo Road, Such a Pretty Little Beach, On the Town, Inspirace, The Reckless Moment, Reign of Terror, The Rocking Horse Winner, and Samson and Delilah are all films I thought at one point would be on here. Of all of these, Flamingo Road was a sure thing until it wasn’t at the very last minute. Please go watch it.

#4. The Passionate Friends (UK / Lean) (first-time viewing)

Playing image association with David Lean’s The Passionate Friends conjures up an a jellyfish and its streamer arms, weightless in the ocean. Maybe it’s because I cast the image of Mary (Ann Todd) out on the balcony, billowing curtain in the foreground as she says goodbye to a different life once and for all, over the whole film. But there’s more to it than that. That wind and those floating curtains are just part of the visual language Lean uses to represent the life Mary doesn’t choose. There is the gentle ripple of the water, the outstretched tree branches that create particles of shadow, and the impossible majesty of the Swiss Alps. They are all part of the sensuality and openness of nature, the choice not made. The jellyfish is a clumsy descriptor, but maybe it’s fitting that I struggle to describe a film that seems to exist in the ethereal.

The Passionate Friends shows the ways time and memory play off each other in the psyche. Just as the properties of nature have the power to signal shifts in thought, atmosphere and objects can become tickets to elsewhere. The Set-Up uses time in the most confining of ways; the emotional lives of its characters are tethered to what is happening within those fateful seventy-three minutes. The Passionate Friends uses time as a structural and thematic bedrock; the subjectivity of its characters become inextricable from the past and the never-was.

The film confused some viewers when it was released (even for the flashback frenzy of the 40s, this was a lot to take in). We begin in Switzerland and travel back nine years, and then (for a brief time) another nine years. We then follow the same route back; nine years forward, and another nine to Switzerland for the final act. The structure recalls John Stahl’s The Locket, another 1940s film that uses to-and-fro flashbacks. The Locket gets more complicated by shifting perspectives as well as time. But The Passionate Friends not only forgoes most standard flashback cues, it even intercuts moments of imagined conversations and actions as characters traverse through humiliation and regret in the exact moments they are felt.

These forays into the internal both jolt and wash over the characters (and us), as inner lives and the autonomy of human emotion are wont to do. Lean always makes sure that the exterior communicates the interior. In an early scene, Mary sits in the carriage next to her husband, doused in darkness and boxed in by both the frame and the shroud of her veil. Barely visible, she is lost in reflections that hurt. Then we’re in the past, and we can feel the sensuality of nature everywhere. It is so bright; Mary and Steven are young and in love. Sunlight covers them, and branches shade them. Together they create a shimmering screen (seen above) that recalls the curtain of the first still (an image that comes much later in the film), and the veil that envelopes Mary in the carriage. In The Passionate Friends, images call back and signal to each other constantly. The veil is the curtain is the sun and shade. It is all of a piece.

All of a sudden there is a whistling screech as the carriage stops short. We are yanked back to the present the exact moment Mary is. There is no pomp and circumstance, no smooth transition. It is cruel, and we feel the loneliness of that carriage so much more. Compare this to how A Letter to Three Wives initiates flashbacks (also from 1949 with an advanced flashback structure); the autotune distortion of a repeated phrase hypnotizes us into and out of the past. There is the slow blur of the frame, a go-to sign that a flashback is coming our way. Lean doesn’t hand-hold. He wants to put you in the viscous of the emotional. The drift-in and shock-out of memory is faithful to Mary’s state of mind. We are with her — truly with her. The Passionate Friends is full of filmmaking that administers a psychic and emotional immediacy, a surprising early onset example of the discontinuous editing that would be en vogue in decades to come.

The Passionate Friends is a human drama rich enough for me to have seen drastically different takeaways on both its characters and its depiction of love and romance. The Passionate Friends is in that Daisy Kenyon class of “it’s complicated”, a sensual film about unsensual people. A film about repeating choices. There are no easy answers, just a lot of messy and contradictory feelings and desires. It’s not about the kinds of love we like to dream about, though it initially fools you into thinking it is. There is a different kind of love happening here, a sturdier love that sneaks up on both sides of the screen, borne out of epiphanies that have their own kind of beauty.

Mary knowingly gives up love for autonomy, money, and comfort with Howard Justin (Claude Rains). Their marriage is amicable, providing her with the kind of emotional freedom she needs and the finer things she wants. When we first meet her she’s on a plane to Switzerland. She sits in luxury, spoiled by “White bread. Butter. Cream!”. A big bowl of fruit even sneaks into the frame. She is, literally, in the clouds. One could argue this is the most openly passionate she appears in the entire film. This is the life she chose and the life she ultimately wants. There are no external forces preventing Steven and Mary from being together. Howard is not a tyrant. Freedom is always hers, including the choice to leave. She never does.

But every nine years she is destined to almost choose Steven (Trevor Howard), the pleasant professor of humble means. Mary’s trouble is the curse of knowing who you are, and knowing that the love you want isn’t the love for you (“I’ve always been a little hard”). Or thinking that you know that about yourself. Sometimes she seems to hold herself back, as if knowing this about herself has simply closed her off to what is possible. Mary and Steven can only exist in the “what if?”, but her self-assessment seems so absolute as to forbid any warmth in her life. For her, passion means first and foremost a loss of control and selfhood. She needs to belong to herself, an objective for a woman rarely understood today let alone then, and one that positions Mary as an outsider in the world.

How much is there really between Steven and Mary? As with so many romances, their feelings remain strong because they are left unprocessed. What could have been likely remains so much stronger than what would have been. Lean connects them metaphysically; dissolves erase the space between them as they think of each other in their respective solitude. Any time she is in the open air, the memory of Steven surrounds her (even if she doesn’t know it). Despite Lean’s lean (I’ll see myself out) into these romanticisms, The Passionate Friends is not a film about lost love. It’s more about mourning the type of person you long to be but aren’t (and can’t we all relate to that?!). Not being with Steven isn’t necessarily about not being with Steven; it’s about feeling passion and desire but not being able to live by that.

The juxtaposition between the life she chose and the life she didn’t can be seen at the New Year’s Eve ball (the scene always referenced in relation to Phantom Thread). On the ground floor she is seen catching up with her one-time soulmate. It is anarchy; they have to yell their pleasantries at each other, and there are Josef Von Sternberg amounts of balloons and streamers everywhere. In keeping with the spontaneous spirit of the event, they soon get split up. Soon after, we see her up in a box with Howard (Claude Rains is introduced looking like an old-school Count, beginning the film’s sly misdirect of his character). The prince and princess looking down on their subjects have such a different energy from the one below. Not cold, but congenial and removed. She looks down longingly, wanting to be part of the ruckus but knowing she wouldn’t know how. She defines herself as belonging to the lofty box that is lacking. It is not a longing that says “why didn’t I choose that?”. It is a longing that says “why can’t I be like them?”.

Steven may love Mary, but he doesn’t really know her. At one point Mary says to him “you don’t really know me at all”. At another point Howard says to him “you don’t know her”. Mary expresses this again later on, stating “we’re practically strangers to each other”. When he receives a letter from Mary in which she breaks off the relationship, he goes to Howard and accuses him of having made her write the letter. I mean, that’s how it always is in these love stories, isn’t it? The tyrant husband holds his wife prisoner or blackmails her into staying? Hell, that’s what Robert Ryan does to Barbara Bel Geddes in Caught! But there are no conventions of the Gothic or the Doomed Romance here. Just a woman making a choice — the same choice. It doesn’t mean she won’t think and dream of Steven on lonely nights. And it doesn’t mean she’ll never stop wondering about what could have been, and there will always be a sense of something lost.

But Howard does know her, and there are untapped waters between them. Claude Rains starts out as the cuckolded husband (we are teased with riffs on his Notorious character). Then, gradually, he emerges as the film’s true soul (Steven is never afforded much perspective while Howard increasingly is). Lean and Rains fully embody Howard’s intense humiliation and betrayal as he starts to reinterpret his own feelings towards Mary. As his pain turns to rage, hers turns to disorientation. He is driven to deliver two shocking speeches in opposition to each other. She is driven to the brink by no longer belonging. It all crescendos in a spectacular whirlwind of emotional agony where absolute vulnerability and fate intervened reveal the power to reset. Steven is gone. This isn’t what we expected with who we expected. But like I said, The Passionate Friends belongs in that Daisy Kenyon category of “it’s complicated”.

Top Ten By Year: 1949 #4 – The Passionate Friends (UK / Lean) Previous Top Ten By Year lists: 1935, 1983, 1965, 1943, 1992, …

#ann todd #Claude Rains #David Lean #Romance #the passionate friends #trevor howard

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corruptedspacecore · 6 years

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I'm gonna need a bigger shelf!

Over time, I’ve been slowly building up a collection of Titanic books. A few of them I’ve had for a long time. Once in a while, something about other ships or other subjects altogether would creep in, mainly science. Recently, I acquired a bunch of new books, expanding my “library” to 40 books and adding some new subjects as well as ships to the mix. Here’s my library so far:

From left to right, top to bottom shelf:

Inside the Titanic - Hugh Brewster & Ken Marschall A big, great book featuring cutaway paintings of Titanic, showing what was inside.

Titanic: The Ship Magnificent: Volume 1 - Bruce Beveridge A thick volume covering the construction and engineering of Titanic, such as engines, funnels, ventilation and heating, generators, boilers, the shipyard, hull and steelwork, and so on.

Titanic: The Ship Magnificent: Volume 2 - Bruce Beveridge A volume covering the fitting out stage of construction and Titanic’s interior design, going over many of the rooms and design elements. Both volumes are filled with hundreds of photos and plans.

Titanic: Triumph and Tragedy - Jack Eaton & Charles Haas (signed by Jack and Charles) A sizeable book detailing the life of the Titanic from construction to sinking and many of the details surrounding it.

Titanic: An Illustrated History - Don Lynch & Ken Marschall A nice coffee table book with lots of paintings illustrating Titanic’s voyage and sinking.

Exploring the Deep: The Titanic Expeditions - James Cameron A book detailing Cameron’s many dives to the wreck of Titanic, featuring tons of photos, renderings, accounts, and some extra goodies.

Ken Marschall's Art of the Titanic - Rick Archbold & Ken Marschall Another book featuring many of Ken’s Titanic paintings and his history and process for painting them. It also includes some of his other liner paintings.

Titanic in Photographs - Dan Klistorner & Steve Hall A good coffee table book of large reprints of many famous Titanic photos, detailing her journey from shipyard to sailing.

Report Into the Loss of the SS Titanic: A Centennial Reappraisal - Samuel Halpern A more technical volume going over the conclusions of the inquiries into Titanic’s sinking and many of the details and accounts.

On a Sea of Glass: The Life and Loss of the RMS Titanic - Tad Fitch, J. Kent Layton, & Bill Wormstedt (signed by Tad) A detailed and compelling read about Titanic’s life from her sea trials to her final plunge, with a number of interesting appendices, information, accounts, and photos.

RMS Titanic: A Modelmaker's Manual - Peter Davies-Garner A wonderful book to have for the Titanic modeler, if you can find it. IT’s chock full of detailed drawings and plans of many elements of the Titanic, including hull line plans and a profile view, as well as its text and photos documenting the construction of a huge scale model of the Titanic.

RMS Titanic: Owner's Workshop Manual - David Hutchings & Richard de Kerbrech A fun little book in the style of those car manuals you often see, with plans and diagrams and photos covering many aspects of Titanic.

Eyewitness: Titanic - Simon Adams A very simple and short book for the child or young person just getting into the Titanic. A favorite from when I was little, but not much to it.

882 1/2 Amazing Answers to your Questions about the Titanic - Hugh Brewster & Laurie Coulter A fun read for interesting little tidbits and facts about Titanic and pop culture surrounding it.

Draw the Titanic - Andrew Staiano & Jason Pederson A guide for drawing Titanic and related subjects.

Titanic: Triumph to Tragedy A magazine-type publication full of general information and a number of errors, but probably a decent read if you’re short on time and want to know a bit more about Titanic.

National Geographic: April 2012 An issue of National Geographic with an article for the Titanic centennial, featuring some wreck photos and a sinking simulation poster and some words from Cameron about his explorations.

Ocean Liners of the Past: Olympic & Titanic A book from the 70s featuring reprints of material from earlier period pieces about the Olympic Class Liners. It includes a bunch of great, high-quality drawings and plans of things like the engine and boiler rooms and other engineering elements, and lots of great information about the engineering of those ships.

On Board the Titanic - Shelley Tanaka & Ken Marschall A short little paperback for any child who wants to learn the basics of Titanic’s story, with some paintings by Ken.

Story of the Wreck of the Titanic This is my oldest book, an original printed in 1912, acquired for only $15. It’s full of first-hand, unfiltered accounts from the survivors and news of the time about the Titanic disaster and aftermath.

A Night to Remember - Walter Lord Written in the 50s, this exciting and compelling novel utilized what at the time was the best information available about Titanic’s sinking. Lord manages to use pure facts and accounts - nothing fictionalized and no fake characters - with a gripping writing style to tell Titanic’s story from the collision to the Carpathia. It’s still considered one of the best books about Titanic, and the move made from it one of the best films about Titanic.

RMS Olympic - Brian Hawley A small book telling the story of Titanic’s sister ship, Olympic, with tons of rare photos.

M.C. Escher: The Graphic Work A giant book of prints of Escher’s best work. I won it at an art show in high school.

Beau Voyage: Life Aboard the Last Great Ships - John Malcolm Brinnin A big book full of many photos of ships from the early to mid 20th century, the age of the last classic ocean liners.

Queen Mary - James Steele A wonderful and large book all about the Queen Mary in her heyday and beyond, full of period photos of how she looked pre and post Long Beach, and a set of deck plans.

Lost Liners - Robert Ballard & Ken Marschall A coffee table book about the sinkings and wrecks of several famous ocean liners, including the Titanic. Ken’s amazing artwork is again displayed, including detailed paintings of Titanic’s wreck.

The Story of the Unsinkable Titanic - Michael Wilkinson & Robert Hamilton A very general book about Titanic’s story with the usual photos and material, but still good for the person just getting into the subject.

Robert Ballard's Lusitania - Robert Ballard An amazing, must-have book for anybody interested in the Lusitania, the other great ocean liner disaster. The book tells the story of Lusitasnia’s final voyages and sinking, and details Ballard’s explorations of the wreck. It includes inromation and tons of photos of the ship’s interiors as well as the wreck, and Ken Marschall’s incredible paintings depicting the sailing, sinking, and wreck of Lusitania.

Hindenburg: An Illustrated History - Rick Archbold & Ken Marschall Another must-have, this book tells the story of the German (Nazi) airship Hindenburg, starting with the airships that came before her, the final voyage, and her fiery end. It includes more amazing paintings by Ken, with some of them being cutaway views showing the inner workings and layout of the Hindenburg.

Comet - Carl Sagan & Ann Druyan A detailed tome about the science and nature of comets.

Cosmos - Carl Sagan Like the related TV series, Cosmos delves into the history and nature of the universe, from galaxies and planets to relativity and Mars, and the human journey to discover more about the universe we find ourselves in, and our deep questions about it.

Anatomy of the Ship Hood - John Roberts A technical book about the British battlecruiser Hood, it features many, many super-detailed drawings, plans, and disagrams of the structure and workings of the Hood, including deck plans, hull plans, line plans, detailed structural views, and views and plans of many elements of the ship’s structure. If you plan on modeling the HMS Hood, this book is a must-have.

The Battleship Yamato - Janusz Skulski This one is of the exact same nature as the Hood book, only with the Imperial Japanese battleship Yamato. Al lthe ultra-detailed plans you’ll ever need to know the structure of Japan’s most imposing battleship and technological WWII marvel.

Unstoppable: Harnessing Science to Change the World - Bill Nye (signed by Bill) Bill Nye’s ideas and plans for how we can use science and engineering to help and solve many of the world’s problems, including climate change. I picked up my signed copy at an event in Philadelphia where I got to see him speak.

The Origin of Species - Charles Darwin The classic book laying out Darwin’s theory of evolution. Evolutionary theory has come a long, long way since this book was written, but it’s still a must-own for anybody interested in science or evolution.

The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark - Carl Sagan A wonderful and eye-opening book about science and skepticism, and how we can use those tools to cut through the nonsense and horrors and burning questions and fears of the world to improve the world and our own lives. Sagan discusses many things from a skeptical, scientific perspective, including UFOs, magic, religion, astrology and other new-age ideas and more.

The Klingon Dictionary - Marc Okrand Pretty self-explanatory. Want to know what a word is in Klingon: This book should help. Or Google, but a book is good, too.

The Martian - Andy Weir If you thought the movie was good, the book is better. Weird brings his intense attention to detail and science to tell a compelling and plausible story about an astronaut trapped on Mars. It’s full of science and humor, so what could be better?

Raise the Titanic - Clive Cussler A fun, action-packed thriller from the master of adventure novels, Cussler tells the story of a mission to raise the wreck of Titanic in a Cold War arms race that culminates in a showdown on the rotted decks of Titanic. Written before the wreck was found, it takes some liberties, but it’s a thoroughly fun read.

Contact - Carl Sagan A novel about an alien signal received by humanity with instructions to build a machine to send a group of humans to another part of space, and all the hardships and drama that come with such an event. It was, of course, made into a movie starring Jodie Foster and Matthew McConaughey.

That’s my library so far. I hope to expand on it in the future. You can never have enough Titanic books, or any books for that matter.

#personal #books #titanic #rms titanic #the titanic

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thecomedybureau · 7 years

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The 100 Best Things in Comedy We Were Witness to in No Particular Order of 2016

2016 is officially, finally, thankfully over (as long as you don’t think about time largely being a human construct, a new number of year doesn’t make things automatically better, and Trump becoming POTUS).

So, it’s time for our year end list, The 100 Best Things in Comedy We Were Witness to in No Particular Order of 2016.

For reference of how we do our year-end, best of lists, which is a far cry from most other comedy best of lists anywhere else, check out our lists from past years: 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014, and 2015.

Got it? Great.

Here’s 2016′s edition:

1. Jake Weisman's Send Up of Peter Travers Reviews-Rolling Stone has gone through so much recently, you might have forgot this amazing NSFW parody that Weisman made of Travers movie reviews.

2. Rory Scovel’s set on Conan Where He Went Into the Crowd-Rory Scovel pushes the envelope in stand-up in the best ways imaginable and this latest Conan set is evidence of his juggling of being fearless and silly at the same time.

3. Conan Without Borders-Conan O'Brien's trips overseas to Berlin and South Korea highlight every single comedy gear that Conan can shift into and proves that he can almost make any situation hilarious.

4. "Killer" by Matt Kazman-Kazman achieves one of the best comedic payoffs on screen in 2016, including film and TV, with this incredibly crafted short film.

5. The Jackie and Laurie Show-Jackie Kashian and Laurie Kilmartin found a way to make a podcast where comedians talk comedy and have it be original, damn funny, and crucial.

6 Hebecky Drysbell-Reigning all time UCB Cagematch champions Heather Anne Campbell and Rebecca Drysdale showcase such virtuosity as an improv duo that is as hilarious as it is, when we think about it, beautiful.

7. Chris Estrada-If you’re looking for diamonds in the rough right now, we’d say catch Estrada’s next set and you’ll see how great his jokes are drawing from his life growing up in LA.

8. Cool Sh*t/Weird Sh*t's Neighborhood Walking Tour-the LA outfit of the experimental comedy show brilliantly took its audience, one night, around the block and staged such moments as a couple fake fighting in a real Food 4 Less, a woman crying trying to explain the plot of a movie in a Walgreens, and running into an adult orphan waiting to be adopted off the street.

9. Womanhood with Aparna Nancherla and Jo Firestone-Nancherla and Firestone compliment each other so well in being goofy on this show that goes through absurd explanations of “womanhood” that it should be the next web series that gets made into a full fledged TV show.

10. Fleabag-Phoebe Waller Bridge has the UK's fantastic, epic answer to You're The Worst.

11. Giulia Rozzi's True Love-Rozzi’s hour achieves what a good rom com achieves by skewering love and all of its faults as much as it celebrates it.

12. Mike Leffingwell's 12 Angry Men: The One Man Show-The concept of a single man doing a solo show adaptation of the classic courtroom drama 12 Angry Men is funny enough, but Mike Leffingwell then pulled off performing it perfectly.

13. Josh Sharp doing an hour while dipping in and out of singing D'Angelo's Untitled (How Does It Feel?) with a live band-Sharp's stories are wonderfully crafted and told, and then, accentuated by his lovely voice singing D'Angelo’s most well known song like there's no tomorrow.

14. Not Safe with Nikki Glaser's Remote Segments-Glaser fed porn stars lines for scenes, visited a foot fetish convention, and highlighted sex in such a fun way that wasn’t attempted by any other TV show.

15. Last Week Tonight with John Oliver's Make Donald Drumpf Again-Oliver and company's take down of Trump was one of the best researched, strategized, written, executed pieces on Trump during this whole election cycle.

16. Disengaged-Jen Tullock and Hannah Utt's web series following a lesbian couple rushing into marriage was one of the best pieces of romantic comedy we saw in 2016

17. [F*ck This] Late Night Show with David Brown-In a way, David Brown sees Eric Andre’s rebellion against the traditional late night format and raises it some more chaos. He has a separate creative team ruining his talk show as it happens via flashmobs, waterboarding, etc.

18. Baron Vaughn’s Blaxisential Crisis-Baron Vaughn’s latest album oscillates perfectly between deep and crucial issues of race, class, purpose and flights of imaginative fancy putting Vaughn almost in a class by himself.

19. Crabapples with Bobcat Goldthwait and Caitlin Gill-the odd couple pairing of Goldthwait and Gill is unlike anything comedy has seen before. Because it lives in truth (they really are roommates), it’s one of the best hosting duos in comedy today.

20. Megan Gailey-Gailey, with her stand-up, is simultaneously an undeniable delight and a force to be reckoned with, which only doubles up how delightful she is to watch.

21. Liartown USA-When it comes to parodying covers for books, magazines, Netflix menus, etc., Sean Tejaratchi might just do it better than anyone as you can see above.

22. This Bill Burr joke: “How many Toyota Camrys do you have to see before you realize most people’s dreams don’t come true?”-We usually refrain from transcribing jokes out of context and in print, but we haven’t stopped laughing at this searingly honest joke from Burr since we first saw him work on it several months ago and felt it imperative that it be on this list.

23. Sing Street-The 80s, Ireland, young love, and diegetic musicals get married perfectly in this film by John Carney that spent far too little time in theaters.

24. Derek Sheen's Tiny Idiot-This album made it clear that Sheen could be an heir apparent to Patton Oswalt, bu very clearly has his own, unique comedic take on the world today.

25. Stephen Colbert's Close to His Election 2016 Live Special-For once, the world got to see the real Stephen Colbert who is so intelligent, well spoken, caring, and one of the only people that could pull of dealing with immediate aftermath of an impending Trump win on TV.

26. Will Hines' A Soundly Defeated Man-Hines, in a series of sketch vignettes, takes the comedic self-deprecation to a new level of artistry by showing how defeated one man really can be.

27. The Lobster-Yorgos Lanthimos might have made the best dystopian rom com in recent memory and, possibly, for several years to come.

28. Jena Friedman's American C*nt-Friedman is unrelenting in her dismantling of the patriarchy amongst other several other controversial issues. She handily deals with them in this special, placing her in a very important position in comedy going forward in 2017.

29. Jamie Loftus-Loftus is that amazing rare breed of comedian that blends dark, absurdist humor with genuine vulnerability and she can do so in her stand-up or through own self-styled animation (ex. doing her own animations for old tapes of how to tell children about someone dying).

30. Chris Duffy's You Get a Spoon-Duffy’s NYC based, curated variety show is filled with so much positivity from celebrating the favorite things of his favorite performers that you almost can’t leave the show without a smile on your face (or winning a prize).

31. Bear Supply-The quick, music fueled scenes of Mike Castle, Shaun Boylan, Joey Greer, Jordan Bull, Morgan Christensen and James Heaney is impeccable improvisational comedy.

32. The Cooties-Musical comedy is alive and well with the satirical power pop songs of The Cooties.

33. Aparna Nancherla’s Just Putting It Out There-Aparna’s album is proof positive that her wondrous version of self-deprecation can be ultimately uplifting.

34. Hunt for the Wilderpeople-Taika Waititi continues his film streak with a charming-as-can-be film about a troubled youth surviving in the wilds of New Zealand.

35. Don't Think Twice-Mike Birbiglia gets really close to hitting too close to home for some people in comedy, but that draws out one of the best depictions of life in comedy (or attempting to do so) that has ever been put into a movie.

36. The Opening of The Pack Theater-The DIY, punk rock, spirit that runs in the veins of much of LA comedy got a new, wonderful outlet at The Pack Theater.

37. Jetzo-Chad Damiani and Juzo Yoshida mash-up improv, clowning, kimonos, dramatic live musical accompaniment, and breaking the fourth wall to make the marvelous whirlwind known as Jetzo.

38. DJ Real (Nick Stargu)-SF comedian Nick Stargu’s alias DJ Real mixes an uncanny command of musicianship with an über-clever style of comedy that dazzled and had us doubling over laughing at the same time.

39. Daniel Webb-Hailing from Austin, TX, stand-up comedian Daniel Webb is a splendid rush of charisma that probably has a better Obama story than almost anyone you know.

40. Laurie Kilmartin's 45 Jokes About My Dead Dad-Kilmartin’s special, born out of jokes she tweeted while her dad was passing away, is so darkly funny and has an unmistakable humanity, which has us rethinking that maxim of comedy equals tragedy plus time.

41. Kristin Rand-LA got a brief glimpse of the unstoppable charm of Rand when she moved here from Denver and was all the better for it.

42. James Fritz's Still Together-The way Fritz exquisitely channels rage and bleakness into this debut album is magnificent.

43. Roast Battle-What started as two open mic’ers fighting in a parking lot has now earned its way to a March Madness style tournament shown on Comedy Central and we’re betting that Roast Battle still has much more potential ahead of them.

44. Josh Fadem-Fadem made a return to performing more regularly in 2016 and his magnetic positivity and pure, unabashed goofiness (complete with impromptu costumes) definitely got us through the whole of last year.

45. Sam Jay-Jay moved to LA from Boston and took her insightful, brash, unfiltered comedy (that happens to come through the lens of being a newly married lesbian) and has become a the LA scene favorite almost instantly.

46. Dave Waite's Dead Waite-Dave Waite's latest hour takes being a goofball to new heights of brilliance.

47. Of Oz The Wizard by Matt Bucy-Absurdity doesn't get more pure than Bucy's re-editing the classic film version of The Wizard of Oz and alphabetizing the entire thing, start to finish.

48. This Friday Forty-Most other quiz shows can’t compare to Scott Gimple and Dave Holmes' This Friday Forty that not only has topical trivia, but fantastic sketch characters to introduce said trivia.

49. Jay Larson's Human Math-Few comedians so deftly explore the minutia of human nature like Larson does on this album.

50. Josh Gondelman's Physical Whisper-Gondelman's craftsmanship in observational humor is exceptional on this album and accentuated nicely by his sunny stage persona.

51. Kyle Mizono right after the election-There was a lot of raw nerves exposed in comedians right after Trump's win and few did it so purely and well as Mizono. For a whole set, she screamed her jokes with legitimate fury, but without being off-putting (well, if you’re not a Trump supporter that is).

52. Lady Dynamite-Maria Bamford’s truth and Mitch Hurwitz’s wildly imaginative way of making episodic television combine for a comedy series that is blazing its own trail at a time where that gets harder and harder to do in a show about the life of a comedian.

53. Hail, Caesar!-The Coen Brothers’ latest comedy set in Hollywood’s Golden Age is one of their sharpest and most beautiful works that has plenty of scenes that could be amazing short films on their own.

54. Moses Storm's Sweater-Moses Storm never ceases to amaze us as he, this time, wore a sweater that had several strings attached to it for audience members to grab so they could literally be connected to him while he's telling a story.

55. Full Frontal with Samantha Bee-Samantha Bee has cemented a legacy in her short time on the air with her take-no-prisoners-and-then-some style of satirical news coverage.

56. Gene Wilder and Fidel Castro's New Year's Rockin' Eve (in Limbo)-UCB’s Beth Appel and Rose Marziale put a hell of a show to end 2016 with as they used the whole of the UCB Sunset complex to have an immersive comedy show (a la Sleep No More) that included karaoke with dead celebrities, a fake newsroom, and the woods where Hillary Clinton is living.

57. Morris From America-Chad Hartigan’s refreshing coming-of-age story following an American black kid trying to grow up in Germany with his single father hit a very sweet, feel-good note that everyone needs to see (especially since it had a short theatrical run).

58. Britanick’s “The Foul Line”-Though BriTANick had gone a few years without a new video, this absurdist folly makes up for all that time lost.

59. 20th Century Women-Mike Mills' latest is a great follow up to Beginners and is an award worthy comedy that might actually be able to compete with heavily favored dramas this year.

60. Three Busy Debras-The comedy trio of Three Busy Debras got to play Carnegie Hall through this devilishly fun crowdfunding campaign.

61. Paul F. Tompkins' on Political Correctness-One of comedy's best gave one of the best explanations of political correctness' necessary role in comedy.

62. The Dollop-Shining a light on the dark corners in American history is as important as it has ever been and Dave Anthony and Gareth Reynolds do so with a devilish laugh and their effortless riffing up comedy gold.

63. Floor Knobs-This AOK sketch from Heather Anne Campbell is one of our absolute favorites and, rather than spoiling anything, we'll just leave it at that.

64. David Gborie’s Late Night Stand Up Debut-Gborie takes an unexpected move in his opening to this performances that sets up a truly wonderful late night stand-up debut.

65. Cholofit-Frankie Quinones' cholo exercise guru is done so well that it leaves you wanting it to be a real exercise program.

66. Oh, Hello-John Mulaney and Nick Kroll took two characters from just being a small bit to the heights of Broadway. George St. Geegland and Gil Faizon are just so fully realized and funny that it doesn’t matter if you miss one of their references or not.

67. Chris Garcia's Laughing and Crying at the Same Time-Garcia meshes deeply personal stories and utter silliness that do the album title justice.

68. Cole Escola-Escola’s solo show follows him playing several outrageous characters (switching wigs and costumes while on stage) allowing for another fun layer in between the cavalcade of delightful, short monologues.

69. Catastrophe season 2-Sharon Horgan and Rob Delaney have kept their devastatingly funny look into an unplanned family up to the very high standard they set in season 1.

70. Triumph the Insult Comic Dog's Election Watch 2016-Robert Smigel might have not known that having a dog puppet on his hand roasting people to their face for years would be the perfect preparation for covering the 2016 election (on both sides of the aisle), but, as the handful of Hulu specials prove, it really was.

71. Joel Kim Booster’s set on Conan-Just telling the story of being adopted by a Midwestern white family from Korea and being gay is fascinating enough, but Joel Kim Booster made that story blisteringly funny on late night.

72. Angie Tribeca-Physical comedy and sight gags would almost seem out-of-turn in comedy these days, but the proudly silly Angie Tribeca on TBS is thankfully changing all of that.

73. Trump vs. Bernie-While ‘Trump vs. Bernie’ will probably be a presidential candidate match-up that more people will long for than ever, Anthony Atamanuik and James Adomian's Trump vs. Bernie will go down as one of the best bits (that includes the live tour, the Fusion series, and album) of comedy to come out of one of the worst elections in U.S. history.

74. Joe Pera’s Set on Seth Meyers-Pera’s weirdness is one-of-a-kind in comedy as it’s very warm and inviting. He got to share that with the world with his set on Late Night with Seth Meyers.

75. Vice Prinicpals-When Danny McBride and Walton Goggins’ diabolical teachers one-up, in the best way, any other teachers in any other comedies that go off-the-deep-end in this HBO series.

76. Brad Neely's Harg Nallin' Sclopio Peepio-Neely's latest creations seems to offer up bits from the weirdest corners of Neely's mind and this animated sketch show is all the better for it.

77. Hari Kondabolu's Mainstream American Comic-Much is deservingly said about Kondabolu’s expertise in talking politics, class, race, etc. in his comedy, but this album also shows that his comedy is stellar no matter where you fall on the political spectrum.

78. Jon Glaser Loves Gear-Glaser does meta comedy better than almost anybody else working right now and his new show on TruTV is proof of that.

79. How to Win at Feminism by Reductress-This whip-smart manifesto about feminism solidifies Reductress’ place in modern satire next to The Onion and Clickhole.

80. Great Minds with Dan Harmon-Harmon getting to spend time with some of history's most notable figures ended up being one of the best shows that the History Channel has done in years.

81. Derrick Brown-Very few poets can reach the point of being laugh out loud funny and still deeply emotive quite like Brown, both on stage and in his book, Uh-Oh.

82. Natalie Palamides' solo show Laid-Palamides makes a solo show that's so absurd and funny, it might almost be in a unique category of its own.

83. W. Kamau Bell’s Semi-Prominent Negro-Bell explores all of today’s hot button issues (racial inequality, transgender identity, gentrification, etc.) comedically, as he is very skilled at doing, but does it in such a jovial way that they don’t seem so controversial anymore.

84. Other People-Chris Kelly’s hilarious and heartbreaking movie based on his own life in dealing with the passing of his mother from cancer is one of Kelly’s finest work, which is even more impressive as his first feature done while being an SNL writer.

85. Emo Philips improvising with Jason Van Glass-Emo's comedic prowess is so great that he can improvise with Van Glass like they're a veteran improv duo.

86. Return of MST3K-Of the things from our childhoods that are being brought back, Mystery Science Theater 3000 returning with a sweeping mandate in the form of a record breaking Kickstarter campaign is one that deserves to be revived.

87. Wyatt Cenac’s An Angry Night in November-Cenac’s EP captures lightning in a bottle (it’s his set from his weekly Night Train show) of immediate post-election comedy that is pure, raw, and biting.

88. Justin Sayre’s Gay Agenda-Sayre makes a compilation of his “meetings” as ‘Chairman of the International Order of Sodomites’ that give a hysterical look into the many great, complex layers of LGBTQ life.

89. Ahamed Weinberg-Both as a stand-up and a filmmaker (watch Rasberries), Weinberg is on a path to being another great modern comedy multi-hyphenate.

90. Jon Dore Gets a Bad Backstory-Dore once again shows how to toe the line when entering the darkest territories of comedic material and do so successfully while being utterly absurd.

91. Ron Babcock videos-A dying reel and an ad for his old CRV really showcase the cleverness and ingenuity of comedy’s Ron Babcock.

92. Reggie Watts’ Spatial-Watts’ latest special is his best and most ambitious one yet as it includes his beatboxing, a faux sitcom, tap dancing, and way more.

93. Alex & Jude-Alex Hanpeter and Jude Tedmori have figured out how to give slapstick, physical comedy the proper twist for 2016 audiences, which includes a literal bit of audience participation of making Jude a target.

94. Conner O’Malley-O’Malley takes satirical field pieces to a whole new level as he plays and wholeheartedly commits to dark, fully realized characters inspired by vaping, Alex Jones, and Cubs fans. He interacts with real people at Trump rallies, vape conventions and outside of Wrigley Field and goes along with whatever happens.

95. Doug Stanhope’s No Place Like Home-Stanhope has an amazing take on mental illness in this special and opted to shoot it in his own hometown of Bisbee, AZ. Overall, No Place Like Home ranks high up in Stanhope’s extensive catalog of stand-up.

96. “Tond” by Kelly Hudson-Hudson’s short film is one of our favorite bits of existential absurdity of 2016, a year seemingly saturated in nothing but questioning ‘what it all means’.

97. Brett Gelman's Dinner in America-Gelman's last special on Adult Swim is one to remember, especially for how searing the satirical commentary on race relations are in it.

98. Miguel Marquez-Marquez bridges a gap, almost literally, between art and comedy as his wry art installations are way funnier (intentionally that is) than nearly anything you’d see in an art museum.

99. Chris Fleming's Silver Lining-The week following the election seemed as hopeless can be if you voted for Hillary and Fleming offered up a powerful, albeit one with a bit of tomfoolery, message of hope.

100. Norm MacDonald on Conan-Not only is there the expected long, winding roads of Norm’s jokes and stories in this particular appearance, but Conan does an impression of Norm out of frustration that’s spot on.

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aion-rsa · 4 years

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Devil’s Road: Judy Spera Details Life Growing Up As A Warren

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When a child grows up with famous parents, it means dealing with overly eager fans, and invasive reporters. But for Judy Spera, the daughter of Ed and Lorraine Warren, arguably the most well-known paranormal investigators ever, growing up with famous parents also meant dealing with dark forces, and one notoriously haunted doll.

Spera was an adult in her twenties by the time her parents gained mainstream attention for their work with the paranormal in the mid-70s. But before the Lindley Street Poltergeist case in Bridgeport, Connecticut, in 1974, or the Amityville Horror, and long before The Conjuring film franchise, Spera’s parents sold Ed’s artwork, and carved out a decent life for their daughter. Ed grew up in a haunted house, and Lorraine was a clairvoyant, and though they had explored unexplained phenomena for years, theirs was a normal existence compared to the talk show appearances, lectures across the globe, and attention that was to come.

In the new Travel Channel documentary, Devil’s Road: The True Story of Ed and Lorraine Warren, Judy Spera opens up about life with her paranormal investigator parents. Airing Sept 7, at 9 p.m., the special is the first installment of the network’s “Shock Docs” series, and includes rare audio and video from Warren cases. But Spera’s involvement is likewise rare due to her reluctance to be involved with most projects about her parents.

Ed died in 2006, and Lorraine in 2019, so Judy, along with her husband Tony Spera, are the caretakers of the Warren legacy—although it is a legacy she is hesitant to continue. In the following interview, Spera discusses what it’s like to grow up haunted. Along with responding to critics of her parents, she opens up about “that doll” Annabelle (safely contained in the since-closed occult museum her parents left her), her own potential psychic abilities, and what might be next for the Warren name.

What was it about this documentary that made you want to get involved in a bigger way than perhaps you had been previously?

Well, because it involved my mother, and I felt I owed it to her to get on there and speak because I never do this. In the beginning, I was told that it was about my mother. And I don’t know if it evolved to being about my mommy and dad. They were interviewing people that I didn’t know or I hadn’t met. I thought, “Well, who knew her better than I did?”

Were you ever a skeptic about your parents’ pursuit?

Not at all. I was so afraid of it. As I got older, I could see proof of it or proof enough for me.

Did you ever want more of a normal, traditional life with a typical mom and dad?

No, I never wanted them to stop. And when I was quite small, they were artists and that’s what they did. They traveled and sold their paintings, and they did art classes. It wasn’t until I was getting older when this ghost thing happened. As a little child, I didn’t know they were doing that. I knew they were always interested. My father always talked about ghost stories in my family, so we had fantastic Halloween parties, and my father would make these witches and things, and paint them. It was fun. And we spent a lot of time walking around in cemeteries, which I still enjoy doing.

Did your parents ever want you to follow in their path or follow with the family business? No, they never mentioned that. I guess they knew that I would never do it. They spent most of their time telling me not to give any recognition to these things that would upset me. There are certain things that upset me. Some statues they had at one time — and then that doll.

You mean Annabelle. I always found the Raggedy Ann doll version of Annabelle way scarier than the porcelain doll that they used in the movie. Me too. The eyes, the eyes are just dead. It’s not like the eyes on the movie doll at all. I had heard in the beginning they felt that the Raggedy Ann people would be upset or something, but I don’t think there’s many little girls that want Raggedy Ann dolls anymore.

Movies

A Short History of Creepy Dolls in Movies

By Sarah Dobbs

Movies

Annabelle: Real-Life Haunted Dolls to Disturb Your Dreams

By Aaron Sagers

What were the cases they talked about around the dinner table? Well, first of all, I lived with my grandparents. Because they traveled so much, and I had to go to school. I lived with them briefly. I was terrified there, in their house, so I just didn’t sleep there. I couldn’t sleep in a room by myself. And I was young, I was very young. The one case that I was older that they were talking about the most was The Devil in Connecticut case.

Was that case, the Arne Cheyenne Johnson trial, the scariest one for you personally? And the Raggedy Ann doll, and these other artifacts that are in the museum, necklace that strangled somebody and all that.

Your mom was known as a gifted clairvoyant and your father had the role of the demonologist. But did your father have his own psychic or sensitive abilities that people don’t know about? Not that I ever knew of. Things happened to him. I mean really. But he went at things in a more logical way. My mother was the one that would go in and discern what was going on. He could tell from all the facts what the people were talking about in the house.

How about you? Do you think that you have any abilities that perhaps you inherited from your mom? Well, I had incidents happen, but I don’t pursue it. I back away from it. I had things happen that I’ll say, “Oh, my gosh. How did that happen?” I don’t know if you want to attribute it to being anything to do with my mother’s gifts, but I have had some things happen. It’s a lot of dreams that are very strange, and warnings—from my father. I’m not going into those houses to look for anything. I’m concerned when my husband goes. He has crosses and holy water, rosary beads, and my father’s cross because I make him take them all with him. I don’t want anything coming back here.

Are there any details about those premonitions? The one that I can’t talk about because it was about a family member that died, so that would cause a lot of pain for the other relatives, so I won’t talk about that. But I did know at the beginning of the week that someone was going to pass.

Your mom sadly passed away last year and your father died in 2006, but what do you think they would think about the current genre of paranormal investigators?

He’d think it was a lot of baloney. He’d say, “They’re going off on tangents.” He really wouldn’t have tolerated these people that are doing these shows that they go in, they don’t have an outcome. They don’t get rid of what’s there. It’s almost more like just for the TV, like you have to have a ghost a minute. And you have to have something happening and, “ooh, what’s that, and what’s that?” They would be in a house for days. They’d stay up all night and sometimes nothing happened at all.

Your father unfortunately never saw their work depicted on the movie screen, but your mom did…

He would have been thrilled about the movies, and my mom, she knew about the first movie. Unfortunately, she had dementia. She went to the first premiere, and we took her to the second premiere. She wasn’t too good then, and she was having trouble walking, but she was still there for it. They all loved her. She wasn’t intimidated by actors, or wealthy people, or anything like that.

Is there a special memory of your mom being recognized as “Lorraine Warren” where you saw her interactions with fans?

One time we were coming from England or going to England, I don’t remember. An entire soccer team was in the middle of the airplane, all these men. My mother was standing there with her arm on the back of the seats and talking to all these guys, and they loved it.

What would you like to dispel about your parents? Something that people get wrong about them? That they were in it for fame, or money, or anything like that. I think that was one that came up probably a lot, and I had a hard time with that criticism. They were really, really trying, and they always tried. After my dad collapsed, he was a full-care patient for five years, so he wasn’t even “there.” He was in the house, but you know. My mom, she would take these calls in the middle of the night and sit and talk to people. We wanted to change the house number so many times, but she wouldn’t let us. She’d sit and talk to people until they were comfortable enough to go to bed and go to sleep, or if they felt, “Okay, this will work,” or “We’ll talk to you in the morning.” Then she’d get back to them.

Because you don’t want to be involved with the paranormal, where does the Warren legacy go from here?

As far as where it’s going after this, I would like to see it carried on, of course. We’ll see where it goes. I don’t foresee anybody in our family. I just thought my grandson would be interested, but I guess he’s had his problems with it too. He spent a lot of time sleeping in a closet, but he’s a grown man now. I know my husband will take it from here, and he inherited the museum because I certainly didn’t want it. He’d better stay around longer than me, and take care of that place!

The post Devil’s Road: Judy Spera Details Life Growing Up As A Warren appeared first on Den of Geek.

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ciathyzareposts · 5 years

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Prophecy of the Shadow: Won! (with Summary and Rating)

Prophecy of the Shadow

United States

Strategic Simulations, Inc. (developer and publisher)

Date Started: 24 June 2019

Date Ended: 10 July 2019

Total Hours: 19

Difficulty: Easy-Medium (2.5/5)

Final Rating: (to come later)

Ranking at Time of Posting: (to come later)

Summary: Prophecy of the Shadow is a “lite” RPG that takes inspiration from Faery Tale Adventure and recent Origin Systems games. A sole character, presented throughout the game from an axonometric view, is thrust into the world when his mentor is assassinated as part of a political purge of mages. As he grows in power and skill, he learns of a prophecy that foretells the return of an ancient enemy named Abraxus. In his quest to counter the prophecy, he kills an evil regent and restores a princess to her rightful throne. The world is small and easy to explore. RPG elements–including combat, inventory, and character development–are simplistic but effective for the scope of the game. Graphics are mediocre in quality but are thoughtfully drawn to create interesting scenes and scenarios. ****

Prophecy managed to pack a lot of stuff into its small continent, but the full game took less than 20 hours regardless. I had the most fun exploring the game’s 10 indoor areas, all of which managed to accomplish some fun things graphically. It’s still relatively rare to find a game in which the environment is hand-designed instead of rendered as “textures.” Aside from notable pioneers in this area, like the Ultima series (and particularly Ultima Underworld), we typically see it in adventure-RPG hybrids like the Quest for Glory series.

It’s taken me a lot of games and time to understand how I feel about graphics. I’m not impressed by them just because they’re good. Textures, no matter how advanced, can only take me so far. Even well-designed monster graphics, like the ones in Crusaders of the Dark Savant, fail to impress me if their appearance and animations are all abstract–that is, when they jump and dance around the screen, they’re just following an animation pattern and not specifically responding to my characters in the moment.

I consider these good graphics–not because of the raw quality, but because of what they clearly depict. Such “scenes” are uncommon in RPGs even in the early 1990s.

I want my graphics to be functional in some way. I want the monster animations to tell me something about their reactions to my attacks. Most important, I want environmental graphics to set a mood, to tell a story, to offer a certain ambiance. If they do that, my bar for what constitutes “good” graphics is very low. Most people probably wouldn’t think that Prophecy’s graphics are anything special, but they establish their environments better than any game I can imagine recently. As I walk through a castle, I can clearly pick out the kitchens, and the guard barracks, and the torture chamber without any titles specifically announcing those places.

Assaulting my way into Granite Keep.

In the first two sections, my orphaned character found the titular prophecy and brought it to the Guild of Mages, which was soon slaughtered by the forces of regent Cam Tethe, ruler of the land in absence of the missing princess. As I loaded, there were five major places I hadn’t visited:

The city of Jade

The Fell Swamp

Granite Keep

The abandoned Silver Mine

The city of Malice and its temple

Abraxus’s Castle (I didn’t even know about this one until I teleported there for the endgame)

I visited them in roughly this order, albeit with a bit of backtracking. The City of Jade was mysteriously purposeless–just another city with a few services at the southeastern tip of the continent. I don’t think a single NPC had anything new to say.

North of that was the Fell Swamp. I probably forgot to mention in previous entries that if you walk into a swamp in this game, you don’t get very far before an animation shows you drowning.

Entering the Fell Swamp at my own risk.

For that reason, I had been circumventing the Fell Swamp, but I decided it must be there for some reason, so I took the time to experiment and soon realized that you could walk through the swamp on squares that depicted foliage. Following paths of these squares, I reached a hut at the center of the area. It was occupied by a powerful witch named Esme who said that she’d killed Tethe’s mage hunters.

As by now I was wont to do, I tried giving her my various objects. She had an immediate reaction to Larf’s head, saying that if she could assemble the ingredients for a potion of “Necrotelecomicon,” she could learn from him the secret of the resurrection spell. Fortunately, I had already picked up all the ingredients on her list: the fruit of the Desert Pango, the tongue of a Torlok chieftain, some spider venom, and a vial of acid, which apparently every “black potion” is.

I give the ingredients to Esme, who looks like a young Anne Ramsey.

With these ingredients, she soon learned the “Respirare” spell and then immediately attacked me. I killed her in a few blows. I spent much of the rest of the game wondering what I would do with a resurrection spell since the game is single-player. I went back and tried to cast it on Larkin’s grave, but I got a message stating that I didn’t have a powerful enough catalyst.

I next headed for Granite Keep because I didn’t want to deal with the eye tyrants up near Malice. The keep’s front door had blocked me in the past, but some NPC had hinted at a side door, and sure enough, I soon discovered one. Using my Death Warrant got me inside, and I had to kill two guards right next to the entrance, a fight that occasioned about five reloads. The entire castle was very hard, with enemies whacking away 25 hit points per blow, and I began to wonder if there wasn’t some armor I might have missed. I had to rest frequently and gulp as often as possible from my “Everfull Flask,” a healing potion that regenerates every five minutes or so.

If the penalty for everything is death, then you leave me with no incentive not to kill you.

There were multiple levels to the castle, including a dungeon with a large locked door as well as two locked doors on the second level. Eventually, I found a servant sympathetic to the Resistance who gave me a key to Cam Tethe’s chambers, one of the doors on the second level. He attacked as soon as I entered, and he killed me with his “ebon ax” in about three hits.

Killing Cam Tethe on my fourth trip.

To defeat him, I had to “door scum”: enter, attack him a few times, leave to rest and heal, save, and enter again. It’s worth mentioning that I had a “Time Stop” scroll that you’re almost certainly supposed to use in this fight, but I had forgotten about it. When Tethe died, he dropped a copper key and his ebon ax–a magic axe that returns when thrown.

The copper key opened the door in the dungeon, which released Princess Elspeth. I thought this would be the end of the game, but I realized I’d forgotten about the city of Malice. Elspeth gave me a key (that she’d palmed) to Tethe’s torture chamber, then fled to reclaim her throne. It’s worth pointing out at this time that the game world is not dynamic, and after Elspeth left, she was nowhere to be found. All NPCs reacted to her name as if she was still missing and as if Tethe was still alive.

The young princess, looking a little worse for the wear. She is played by an actress enigmatically named only “Kelly.”

The torture chamber held a set of “evil accoutrements,” which turned out to grant me access to the temple of Abraxus in the city of Malice. Tethe himself wasn’t the shadow of the prophecy but merely the high priest of Abraxus’s cult.

After I left the Granite Keep and sold my excess equipment, I finally had enough money to purchase “acrobatics” training from Chester the Great and increase my agility. I also bought a potion that permanently increased my strength. Between these upgrades and the ebon ax, no combat in the game was really much trouble after this. Maybe some players manage to save enough money to get the agility increase earlier.

I admit, this guy looks like a “Chester.” Sometimes, I wish I’d picked a better pseudonym.

On the way to Malice, I remembered the silver mines. I had a much easier time this time, and after some combats with gnomes, I found the Shadow Sword. The weapon negates magic when in your inventory and wipes your spell points if you wield it, so from the moment you find it, you have to go through an annoying process of dropping it and picking it up again every time you want to cast a spell.

Finding the Shadow Sword on the gnome king. This is not a weapon that you want any earlier than necessary.

Malice had a handful of NPCs who praised Lord Abraxus and whatnot. The focus of the city was a large temple, where I killed a number of evil priests and walked out with a mysterious “Fan of Shadows” and a gold catalyst. I should mention at this point that from the various dungeons, I’d assembled several other spells, including “Cremare Magnus” (volcanic eruption), “Lamia” (steal life force), and “Umbra” (invisibility), none of which I ever found a reason to cast. I almost always needed to save my spell points for “Curare” (healing). I also never got much use out of the “Oculorum” spell or the redundant crystal ball, which shows your position in the context of a larger area. The larger area wasn’t really large enough to be useful.

The final area was reached via a teleporter north of the temple in Malice. I’d learned to watch for those pairs of rocks. They’re scattered all over the main island, but most of them just warp you a short distance from the origin. This final pair sent me to an island somewhere. A new monster called a “morgoth” attacked a few times, but it wasn’t very hard.

This is one mean-ass morgoth.

The island housed a large keep with four corner rooms and a pedestal in each room. Each pedestal had a riddle that discussed a certain element and prompted me for a particular object. I hadn’t realized I was saving the objects for this purpose, but it wasn’t hard to figure out where they went. The “Fan of Shadows” went on the air pedestal, the “Everfull Flask” on the water pedestal, the “Eternal Lamp” on the fire pedestal, and the “Wand of Earth” on the earth pedestal. When all four were placed, a door opened in a northern wall, taking me to the catacombs.

Interpreting one of the pedestals.

The catacombs had a brief battle with spectral priests before leading me to a bier on which the body of Abraxus lay in state. Even though it seemed like an absurd thing to do, since I couldn’t do anything but cast the “Respirare” spell on him, that’s what I did. The ancient sorcerer awoke, laughed at me, and attacked me.

I love how the hero’s one dialogue option for the insane resurrected sorcerer is “hello.”

My hit points had been reduced by the ritual to 30, and as I fumbled about with my ebon ax, Abraxus swiftly killed me and, I supposed, took over the world. On reloads, I both discovered that only the Shadow Sword could damage him and remembered that I had two “Time Stop” scrolls. Through trial and error, I settled into a pattern of action: drop the Shadow Sword, resurrect Abraxus, use a “Time Stop” scroll, gulp all my healing potions, use another “Time Stop” scroll, pick up the Shadow Sword, and start hacking away. This sequence ultimately brought me victory over the sorcerer.

Conserving those “Time Stop” scrolls was key to defeating Abraxus.

The endgame was slightly reminiscent of Questron as the game showed my character marching through the halls of Granite Keep, NPCs arrayed around me, before I finally came to Princess Elspeth. She named me her Champion, Hero of the Land, Savior of the People, and announced a seven-day celebration. The ending text, cribbing from Casablanca, suggested even more rewards to come for our hero.

Lord British never offered to marry me. Just sayin’.

All in all, a satisfying ending that leaves me feeling positive about the game. Prophecy won’t rate nearly as high as an Ultima, but in adopting Ultima as its model, the game provides a perfect example of the adage that if you aim for the moon, you’ll at least get over the fence.

In a GIMLET, Prophecy of the Shadows earns:

5 points for the game world. It tells a story commensurate with its scope, has a few moments of originally, and does a good job drawing you into the world graphically and textually.

2 points for character creation and development. Definitely not a strong category for the game. With only three attributes, each serving multiple purposes, there wasn’t much to develop, and there was virtually no creation process at all.

4 points for NPC interaction. While you do learn a lot about the land and its lore from NPCs, the system was very mechanical and featured no one with memorable personalities.

Um . . . where did that last line come from?

4 points for encounters and foes. Enemies are mostly unmemorable, excepting perhaps the fireball-spewing gazers. But the puzzles were pretty solid, and I liked the large variety of what I call “contextual encounters”–when you’re given a clear reason for the combat to follow, even if you don’t get many role-playing choices in those encounters. I wish some of the lesser creatures had respawned because the economy is otherwise very tight.

3 points for magic and combat. I’m being generous here because I feel I should have probably experimented more with the spells. I did particularly appreciate the “Mark/Recall” pair. Aside from spells, the combat targeting system works fine but doesn’t give you very many tactics. Enemies rush into range so quickly that missile weapons are particularly useless.

Fighting a row of guards in Granite Keep.

2 points for equipment. It’s hard to countenance at title that gives you nothing to wear or equip except a weapon. But there are a few additional potions and scrolls, and lots of items useful for exploration and quests.

4 points for the economy. Between regular equipment, food, potions, and agility training, you have plenty to save up for, and finding silver never becomes useless. You have to make some tough choices for most of the game.

2 points for a main quest with no options, alternatives, or side quests.

The victorious champion walks past rows of NPCs on his way to his knighting.

4 points for graphics, sound, and interface. The sound is nothing special–a few scattered effects–but as I’ve indicated, I like the graphics and the interface is top-notch, with redundant mouse and keyboard commands for everything. My only quibble is how using any other object un-equips your weapon.

5 points for gameplay. It gets half credit for nonlinearity. The game is mostly linear but not completely. I don’t see it as replayable, but the level of difficulty was pitched about right. Some individual combats seemed awfully hard, but in the context of a short game they weren’t too bad.

That gives us a final score of 35, right on the “recommended” threshold–a good score for a modest game of modest ambition.

Given what actually transpires in the game, the box seems to be depicting me waking up Abraxus.

Almost every contemporary review of Prophecy seems to be patting it on the head, marking it as an interesting direction for SSI–the first single-character title from the publisher, a game clearly for new players, and so forth. Jeff James’s review in the January 1993 issue of Computer Gaming World praises it repeatedly for its simplicity: “no equipment to buy, no spells to memorize, and only one character to keep track of . . . no need to fumble with bizarre ingredients . . . byzantine game mechanics take a back seat to ease-of-use and an engaging storyline.” Similarly, from the Malaysian newspaper (who knew that they were reviewing RPGs?) that I quoted in a previous review: “[A]ctions are simple to execute . . . Gameplay could not be better. It’s just a question of taking things and bringing them somewhere.” The review concludes, however, “Just don’t give us any more recycled trash like Dark Queen of Krynn,” which shows that this source can be excluded from future consideration.

Almost everyone praised the full motion video, but I’ll let that go–it was a delusion that affected nearly everyone in the 1990s.

More recently, my colleague Saintus (who hasn’t commented in 3 years–hope he’s okay) completed the game in January 2012 on his “CRPG Revisiting Old Classics” blog. His review aligns with mine nearly perfectly. He liked the game world, the balanced economy, the short completion time, and the generally casual nature of gameplay. He didn’t find any more combat tactics than I did, nor any use for the crystal orb, nor much use for a lot of the spells. He defeated Cam Tethe the same way I did. The game kept his interest to the end despite simple mechanics.

A lot of contemporary reviews suggested that Prophecy was a new direction for SSI, that we’d be seeing a lot more single-character role-playing adventures from the publisher in the coming years. Scanning ahead, I can’t quite tell if this forecast comes true. SSI certainly offered a diverse variety of RPGs in its prolific 1992-1996 period, including the last of the Gold Box titles, the third Eye of the Beholder, new Dungeons and Dragon series based on the Spelljammer, Ravenloft, and Dark Sun settings, and a handful of one-off titles generally developed by other companies. But judging from screenshots and summaries, it’s hard to find any that feature quite the same simplicity as Prophecy or that even make use of a similar engine.

Whatever else Dave Sayers went on to accomplish in life, he played “Lord Bitchin'” in a 1992 RPG. How do you follow that?

Although I suggested in my opening entry that Prophecy was part of a deliberate SSI plan to dominate all corners of the RPG field, it turns out that the game’s development was less master-planned than that. It began as a project by independent developer Jaimi R. R. McEntire called Merchant’s Quest, in which the character would be a merchant in a traditional RPG setting. EA rejected it but SSI agreed to publish it. Ultimately, McEntire, working with an SSI team, significantly changed the original conception. Friends and a local theater group served as models for the FMV characters.

An Amiga version of Prophecy was planned and made it all the way to the alpha stage, but the team had problems working out several bugs, and just about then, the Amiga market began to collapse. Rather than finish the port, they turned their attention to the sequel–which would have brought the son of the original protagonist to a larger continent–but unfortunately never finished that, either. McEntire turned his attention to developing a raycasting engine called 4DX, used in a MMO called Underlight (1998) and several other titles. A new engine called 6DX was used to develop a title that would have been based on L. E. Modessit’s Recluce series, but it was never finished. Game development seems to have always been a sideline for McEntire: his c.v. shows primary employment in corporate software development, including banking software. Nonetheless, he told me in an e-mail exchange that he is working on a new RPG now, and making good progress. I trust he’ll visit to let us know when it’s ready.

It’s time now to wrap up Darklands and then head into the predictable comfort of a Gold Box game. But first–a surprise!

source http://reposts.ciathyza.com/prophecy-of-the-shadow-won-with-summary-and-rating/

#retro games #dos games #retro #crpg #adventure #amiga #oldcomputers #8bit #16bit #blog #repost

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newssplashy · 6 years

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Opinion: Scarlet letter in the emerald isle

DUBLIN — My parents chose my middle name, Brigid, as an homage to a beloved Irish saint.

My dad had a devotion to St. Brigid of Kildare, and growing up in Ireland, he often visited a gurgling well named after her near his home in Clare to say a prayer and bless himself with the water.

According to legend, Brigid had some cool miracles in ancient times. She was a brewer who turned water into beer. She was a virginal abbess who conjured a comely maiden for her disappointed suitor to marry.

But surely my parents didn’t realize that one of her miracles was reputed to be performing Ireland’s first abortion. She helped a young woman who had slipped up and gotten pregnant by making her swollen belly disappear with no pain.

That may have been the last time the subject of abortion did not evoke pain in Ireland.

This country is in the midst of an excruciating existential battle over whether it should keep its adamantine abortion statute, giving an unborn baby equal rights with the mother. Under the Eighth Amendment, abortions are illegal, even in cases of rape or incest. The only exception is when it is believed that the mother will die. Anyone caught buying pills online to induce a miscarriage faces up to 14 years in prison.

The Eighth Amendment was added in 1983 to the Irish Constitution, a document drawn up in 1937 that was so steeped in Catholic principle, it was submitted to the Vatican for review. Ireland’s prime minister, Leo Varadkar, and other opponents of the amendment want to repeal it and craft a new law that gives women and doctors more options, perhaps allowing abortions for up to 12 weeks, and beyond in certain cases.

The national referendum on Friday is a fractious vote, dividing families and friends, as the two sides thrash out a subject that was long hidden. Even as Ireland has leapt into modernity, growing more European and becoming the Silicon isle as Britain lurches backward with Brexit, women have been left in the past in some ways, absorbing the shame of old stigmas.

In 2015, Ireland became the first nation to approve same-sex marriage by popular vote. But this is much harder. So far, the repeal “Yes” side is leading, but the gap is narrowing.

Posters with graphic depictions of fetuses compete with “Stop Shaming Women!” posters on lampposts in cities and on country roads. At an anti-abortion rally in Dublin’s Merrion Square last Saturday, a small girl handed out flyers that read “Stop the Slaughter of Babies for Body Parts.”

It is a measure of the draconian views of the “No” side that they refer to pregnancies where there are fatal fetal abnormalities as “hard cases,” and most other abortions as “social abortions.”

Maria Steen, a barrister who stopped practicing and is home schooling her four children, works at the conservative Iona Institute and is a prominent voice on the “No” side. At a fiery dinner I attended with key players from both sides, Steen said her position was simple: “Don’t kill unborn children.” To which Una Mullally, an Irish Times columnist who edited a book of essays and poems called “Repeal,” riposted: “The mind boggles at how you seek to uphold a system where women are not allowed to make choices for themselves.”

Condoms and spermicides were allowed to be sold without a prescription only starting in 1985, the year after Ann Lovett, a 15-year-old girl, died, along with her baby, during childbirth at a religious grotto in County Longford.

“Ireland is obsessed with punishing women,” said Niall O’Dowd, the founder of Irishcentral.com.

Two of the most harrowing “hard cases” were the 1992 “X case,” when a 14-year-old girl who was raped by the father of a friend and became suicidal was barred from leaving the country to get an abortion, and the 2012 case of Savita Halappanavar, first reported by Kitty Holland in The Irish Times.

Savita, a 31-year-old Indian immigrant and dentist who was married to an Indian engineer, went to a Galway hospital in distress the day after her baby shower. She was told that her 17-week-old fetus could not be saved.

Over several days, she begged the medical staff to remove the baby to save her life as she developed every symptom of septic shock. But, because the staff members could still detect a heartbeat, they would not do it because, as one midwife told her, “This is a Catholic country.” Savita died four days after her baby girl, whom she named Prasa, was stillborn.

The turbulent debate about the government’s control over women’s bodies may be affected by yet another unspooling scandal about women’s health. The Irish Health Department outsourced cervical cancer smear tests to a lab in Texas, and at least 209 women were at first mistakenly cleared between 2010 and 2014; at least 18 have since died. And the number could balloon.

The government is in trouble for scrambling in secret, once it learned of the shoddy lab testing, to come up with a strategy to save itself. Newspapers and TV are full of anguished interviews with husbands of women who died, never realizing they should have been treating their cancer, and with women who have had to tell their kids they will soon die.

In the 19th and 20th centuries, “fallen” or “errant” young women, as they were labeled, were hustled away to the Magdalene Laundries or mother-and-baby homes, which were essentially prisons for unwed mothers run by nuns. As Dan Barry wrote in The New York Times, many young women were “sent to work, and sometimes die, in guilt-ridden servitude”; hundreds of bodies of young children were discovered in an unmarked grave in Tuam in County Galway, placed there by nuns.

In the 1930s, my grandmother spirited my father’s older brother out of Ballyvaughan in the middle of the night to a nearby village after he impregnated a neighbor. The young woman was sent into exile in America. She put the baby up for adoption in New York and killed herself a year later. My uncle went on to be a landowner, the pride of the village.

In some ways, things have not changed that much. Women who want to terminate a pregnancy for almost any reason except imminent death still face a Scarlet Letter in the Emerald Isle; they have to leave the country and fly to England if they can afford it (3,265 women went in 2016) or order sketchy pills online and risk a prison sentence.

“The Eighth Amendment has never actually stopped abortion,” said Dr. Ross Kelly, a Dublin physician on the “Yes” side. “We’ve just been exporting Irish women abroad to deal with the reality that women access termination. Women are taking the abortion pill at home on their own, unsupervised, and that is unsafe. Hard cases, like the fatal fetal anomaly cases, are meant to mean rare cases. But we still have two women a week traveling to the U.K. to access termination for these types of cases.

“All the cases are hard cases. Women who have become pregnant, including victims of rape, we force them to leave the country or risk a prison sentence — that would likely be longer than what the rapist would receive — if they get caught taking the abortion pills.

“We hear stories of women who sell their cars or take money from loan sharks to get the money to travel. It also means that those women tend to have later abortions because you have to arrange all this travel and time off from work and child care, and that’s not a good thing, either. We’re talking about an awful lot of women who are going through deep, psychological trauma because their country is turning their back on them.”

This article originally appeared in The New York Times.

source https://www.newssplashy.com/2018/05/opinion-scarlet-letter-in-emerald-isle.html

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vitalmindandbody · 7 years

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14 Women Show Off Wrinkles To See A Potent Statement About Aging

Wrinkles. Laugh courses. Crow’s paws. No matter what you call them, the crimps on your look deepen as you age. But whereas numerous people look in the reflect and, with a collective rustle, deplored the excerpt of time that’s left its trace on their faces, others cuddle the changes, and accept the idea that germinating older is an integral — and even beautiful — part of living.

HuffPost photographer Damon Dahlen took portraits of 14 females, aged 52 to 90, who roll their eyes at ageist( and sexist) standards of glamour. Rather than fight the inevitable effects of aging, they accompany the lines on their faces as a road map of “peoples lives”. They are the etchings of many years fully lived — and each and every one of them has been earned.

So why not show them off? Take a look at their dazzling likeness below and read what each female has to say about hugging the attractivenes of every age.

Roz Halweil Sokoloff, 90

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I’m a person — not an age. The best stuff about my being 90 is that I’m not recognizing also that I’m old. I do everything the method I used to do it. Perhaps I get tired quicker but I haven’t been saved back from doing anything I want to do. I don’t play singles tennis any more. But I do tai chi and yoga, and I swim laps. When it comes to my wrinkles, well, I stand back from the reflect at least two feet and I don’t assure one wrinkle and that’s the truth. I don’t even know that I have wrinkles. I’m proud of my the expected accomplishments and I don’t am worried about the wrinkles. I haven’t done any Botox or any facelifts. That stuffs not important to me.”

Mary Ann Holand, 59

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“When I look in the mirror, I still ascertain the “girls ” that I was and that I still am. I don’t appear 59. I have grandkids now, so I guess that constructs me believe I’m 59. But that’s about it. I adoration the TV show ‘Grace and Frankie.’ I think we need more pictures like that, that depict stunning older persons who hold their own. We have for too long glorified youth instead of beings. We’re all on the same excursion. After my breast cancer diagnosis, I consider each year a endowment. I want to live into my 90 s.”

Julieth Baisden, 62

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I am happy at this age. To me, my photographs of me examine the same now as years ago. Not much different. I like the style I search. I put on some load but my appearance remains the same. Aging are honoured. Some people freak out when they accompany grey-haired hair or wrinkles. I don’t. I experience young. I feel very young. When I tell people my age, they don’t think it is. I experience that.”

Iris Krasnow, 61

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I’ve had gray hair since I was in my early 30 s. I learned early on to not get my self-esteem or my gumption of glamour from my exterior but from my heart and my passions and my engaged in life. The happiest parties I know are the most fulfilled. They have a sense of anger and purpose and are surrounded by beings they enjoy. Very rarely do I sounds ‘oh, I’m so happy because I am the same weight I was in high school.’ The message I like to share is don’t count on your reviews since they are change. Discover an inner source of energy and fulfillment that has everything to do with your body and soul and little to do with your exterior. One thought for sure in life is that your exterior is going to change. I believe strongly in find beautiful without the spear. For me, wrinkles are … they are a delineate of “peoples lives”. I have four children. I have a husband of 28 times. I’ve experienced my life.”

Maria Leonard Olsen, 52

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I tried 50 new happens the year I returned 50. After I rotated 50, I ultimately lived their own lives authentic to me for the first time. Regrettably that also involved rehab and getting a divorce but I detected who I truly am … and I am absolutely comfortable with myself. Lastly at 50. I got my motorcycle license. I hiked the Himalayas and I conjured fund to help build a library for impoverished children placed in Nepal. I learned to horseback trip. I got my first book produced. I ultimately know who the genuine Maria is. I lived the first half century of “peoples lives” trying to please others. But now I’m living for myself. I have a definite detect I’m on the downslope of my life and actually I predict I am and so I want to make it count. Wrinkles are a natural part of aging. When I was young, I detested my dark skin and examining different from my friends and classmates but now I revel in my uniqueness.”

Carole Paris, 83

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I paint and I like to do faces so whatever success I’ve had with photographs has had to do with the character parties had in their faces. Those faces and those wrinkles and texts tell a life story. You can see the essence of the person or persons by looking at their appearance. I learn faces and I receive a appraise in age. There is life there in those faces … the high-pitcheds and lows of life. You can see that the person has ridden the curves of life, both the ups and the downs. A faceshows the character of a person. I would never think of going a facelift. You face loses life that way.”

Leslie Handler, 56

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“Each new wrinkle tells me that I subsisted and became glad after every defy in my life. When I discover a brand-new one, it doesn’t bother me. After two newborns, my belly bothered me, but my husband said it reminded him that I had given birth to our two children. I think the 50 s are the best of all the decades in so far. You truly come into your own … no more questions about what to do with my life … all the anxieties. You’ve gotten over all that. I had cancer in my 30 s. I’m still here. Complain? I don’t complain.”

Lavada Nahon, 57

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I am roused about becoming a crone. We look at that negatively here … but in Africa, maidens move up in cachet as they go through menopause. It is all those times that play into your value. In Japanese culture and Asian cultures, elders are adored. I had a friend suppose lately that, as an elder, you don’t step out and away from people, but you take on more responsibility. You are responsible for training and teaching and helping others. The older women in my life were always the role model and they held everything together. I am looking forward to being that person that my mom was to me.”

Deborah Gaines, 55

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“Your vision of attractivenes is chosen when you are quite young. For me, my grandmother was heavy and had wrinkles and grey-headed whisker but she symbolized desire for me. She was 95 when she died. And I still thought of her as the most beautiful person I knew. Now I has definitely reconnected with that suffer. The people who are most important to me find me beautiful because of the adore I radiate and it has nothing to do with wrinkles or what is on my face. Until you have a babe, you worry about your form. But when you have a newborn you think your mas deserves an Academy Award. Being beautiful is about being present to those around you. I’m proud of the delineate of my face because it’s a delineate that pictures a long and joyful journey.”

Anne R ., 59

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“Wrinkles are a reflection of what happens to you as you age — they are part of who you are. Speaking the face wires is how to see a person’s know and resilience. They are a thought of having had to condition numerous tornadoes with house, sidekicks, drive. And for me the wrinkles are to be espoused and celebrated because they appearance you who I truly am inside. Wrinkles are not fatigues but preferably research results of a lifetime of all kinds of emotions.”

Barb Rabin, 67

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“Wrinkles are a natural part of aging. My forehead wrinkles are from are concerned about my teenagers and grandkids and my 95 -year-old mom. My favorite wrinkles are around my sees. They are from smiling and enjoying life and likewise sometimes weeping. Wrinkles to demonstrate that I am still alive and that acquires them absolutely worth it.”

Lisa Hirsch, 66

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“If i didn’t have my wrinkles I wouldn’t be this age. And a lot of people don’t make it to this age. Aging gracefully is — I imagine — something of a advantage. It’s a advantage that you are even here. My spouse is wholly against get undertaking done and he visualizes I’m beautiful and that women should age with grace. I accept that it’s precisely an integrated part of life. I repute women should age naturally and gracefully.”

Barbara Hannah Grufferman, 59

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I feel good because I exert. And that everything happened after I passed 50. I started wearing sunblock and trying to stay as health and fit as I can. We can seem and feel good as we get older if we take care of ourselves. Sleep, activity and eating well … all of this is important. Since I moved 50, I wanted to get my act together. What does this necessitate? What is aging all about? What should I be doing that is different now than what I was doing before? As I inch my acces toward 60, I’m looking at what adjustments I should stir. My adage is: we can’t see going older, but we can domination how we do it. I espouse wrinkles. I call them my gag line — and they are my life lines. Because they are part of who I am now. I’ve embraced the evolution entirely. At the same hour, I want to make sure I’m doing everything right for myself so that I can age with mercy and vitality and force. The purpose shouldn’t be to look younger. But you want to look the best you are able to at whatever age you are.”

Sandra LaMorgese, 59

Damon Dahlen/ Huffington Post

“I is certainly looking forward to turning 60. I still feel like I’m 30. I don’t feel any different than I did at 30. The mirror image is the only thing that’s changing — and that’s in a good way. At first I did not like what I understood when I started aging because it was new. But then I changed my mind about what seductive and beautiful is — and I didn’t thinker. The wrinkles did inconvenience me at first — but once I changed my perspective, they didn’t. I have a 60 -year-old face, which I should. I’m not supposed to look like I’m 25 any more. About 20 years ago, a woman said to me ‘I feel sorry for you because you are so beautiful that when you rotate older and ugly, you won’t be able to handle it.’ I told her, ‘I’m not going to get ugly. I’m just going to age.’We guess aging has to do with being ugly. But it’s not ugly. It’s beautiful.”

The post 14 Women Show Off Wrinkles To See A Potent Statement About Aging appeared first on vitalmindandbody.com.

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fictionchronicler-blog · 7 years

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Governess as Heroine

NOTE: Illustrations and gifs are not mine.

“May we read the selected works of Edgar Allan Poe please? I’ll be ever so good!”

“It’s 6pm. I get off at 8. Yeah. Mom and Dad will deal with the nightmares.”

It's a staple of Victorian life and nowadays a job title that implies magical shenanigans will follow—the governess. The 1851 England Census listed a whopping 25,000 women employed as governesses, women hired to teach the children of a household and see to their educational and moral needs, not to be confused with a nanny or nurse, who handled babies. One of the only ways a woman could support herself in Victorian times, real-life governesses are a regular who's who of famous people—Marie Curie, Mary Wollstonecraft, and all three Bronte sisters (Emily, Charlotte, and Anne).

Public schools and the ever-increasing demands of education have almost made the in-home governess obsolete, and yet stories still abound featuring a governess as the main character in every genre from horror to family musical. Why? I started thinking about this, and you know the face I make when the idea for a meta comes along.

The deranged hair, too.

So get ready for another history lesson that looks back at the position of the governess and the impact it has on pop culture.

Not Wanted: Plucky Heroine

Our image of a governess is probably a young woman, attractive, but not in a threatening or overly sexy way, teaching three or four precocious Victorian children in a cozy school room, bringing some whimsy into their otherwise repressed lives.

We know now that the Victorians weren't quite as stuffy as they presented themselves as (someday I will do a Top 11 Why Victorians Were Messed Up list), but they really liked acting like they had no more pressing obligations than letter-writing or, if they were feeling athletic, fox-hunting. I mean, these were people that hosted parties where unwrapping an honest-to-god mummy was the main event. They were not about hard labor in the slightest. Naturally, just as the lady of the house was not expected to do the cooking or the cleaning, she was not expected to take it upon herself to educate her own children. The family would therefore have to hire out, looking for an unmarried woman to educate the girls and the small boys (most boys went to a boarding school around 8).

Governess: You two! Go to the schoolroom and let your mother take her snuff in peace!

Mom: You’re hired!

How it would work is that mom and dad would put an advertisement in the newspaper to specialist employment agencies and girls schools. The governess would be expected to teach the three Rs of reading, writing, and arithmetic (and you have already failed as an applicant if you put “reading, riting, and rithmetic” on your application), as well as the “accomplishments,” which were the arts like foreign languages, painting (girls on watercolors only, oil's too manly), and the musical instruments of either the piano or the guitar because girls craning their necks or blowing into things is just a little too unseemly. They would also cover a little history and “use of globes” (what I am presuming is very rudimentary geography). A governess also had to set the moral example to the children since she would spend the most time with them. She had to share the same religious beliefs as the family, so hiring a Catholic governess in England at the time was pretty much out of the question. Also, it was an unwritten rule that you should hire a “plain” girl, lest the young men of the household become interested in slumming it.

“This sounds snooty. Why would anyone do this?”

Well, women didn't have a lot of choices in the early 19th century. The Napoleonic Wars had rendered Europe economically unstable, and that's just bad news for the middle class. A boy could quit school at 15 and go into a trade without upsetting the family since it was always assumed he could earn whatever they had spent on his education and his family didn't have to support him. A girl, though, could really only go into teaching or get married if she didn't want to be a burden to her parents. Since being a governess meant you lived in somebody else's house and ate food you didn't have to buy or prepare yourself, that was a lot better than taking a hit to your dignity and becoming a laundress.

If you met all these requirements, had nothing in your background that would make you seem to be anything less than a pillar of piety, and the family liked you, you would be hired on to teach their kids and follow their household's rules.

Sometimes that included going along with your Henry VIII delusions.

Constant OTJ Training

So now you're a governess, and you're going to learn pretty quickly that you're in for a lonely life with only rich people's kids for company. If you've ever watched the E! Entertainment Channel, you know where I'm going with this. Hint: you're not in for a lot of stimulating conversation and valid friendships.

Because most governesses came from middle class backgrounds in which they were educated, they were considered higher than most of the other service staff in the house. Cooks and maids were told to be deferential to the governesses, as well as the male equivalent, the tutor. And yet, you also weren't part of the family. You teach and entertain the kids all day long, but you don't get to sit down with them for dinner, for example.

“So who do you eat with?”

The mice in your school room, gentle reader. The mice in your school room. Depending on what genre of fiction you are in, you can make these mice your friends and sing to them about hoping for better days, or you can follow one up to the attic and find a dead body. Yes, the school room usually doubled as a sitting room for the governess, meaning that's where she was to hang out in the evenings after hours.

Naturally, this kind of lifestyle doesn't lend itself to forming relationships, at least not with adults.

“Couldn't you just invite the governess next door over for recess or something? Play date?”

Maybe, but if you were on a nice estate, the next-door neighbor was probably half a mile away or more, and if you are watching a lot of kids, you might need the carriage, which the dad has taken into town to talk with other dads about business and how silly ethnic people are while sipping brandy, so that's out. If the family had a party, you were not invited to attend since it was your job to keep the kids in line. Worst of all, even if the family was outwardly nice to you, you were being watched like a hawk.

Lady McHighpants: (offscreen) Sir McHighpants! Miss Drab is crying at the pianoforte because no one wanted to participate in music time! Shall I have the lash to whip her hands for displaying such vulgar emotions in public?

Sir McHighpants: (offscreen muttering) Business things, business things, business things...

Remember, sexual harassment awareness was not a thing, and you're in a very Madonna/Whore society where you need to live up to men's expectations of a woman being pure and saintly at all times. A book out there called Letters to a Young Governess instructed women on how to behave in order to keep their jobs and included this little gem:

“…if there are young men in the family where you reside, remember that your carriage will generally govern theirs; they will not presume, if you are discreet and unpretending.”

What this means is that if they made your life miserable, if they made personal remarks and you retaliated in any way, if they groped you, if they put you in a compromising position in any way, it was your fault. And if you were fired for this, you wouldn't get a job elsewhere because now you're a harlot. Anne Bronte entered the world of the governess in 1839 and eventually wrote an entire novel about her mistreatment in the field. Agnes Grey depicts children who torture animals, lie, steal, and are generally unruly. The parents blame the governess, of course, as she has not established control. On top of this is the wretched loneliness and lack of financial success. Anne Bronte ended up never being a governess anywhere longer than five or six weeks as a result. Things only got worse as she found a position for a male friend as a tutor who eventually had an affair with the lady of the house. That went about as well as you would think, and the poor guy became a drunk.

Original Stories From Real Life was a 1791 children's book by Mary Wollstonecraft about two girls and their fictional governess Mrs. Mason. It is rare in that it champions the role of the governess. Mary and Caroline, the two sisters, are orphaned and left to their governess, who slowly rids them of all their faults, the lesson being that proper education and care can create the balance between logic and emotions necessary for children to become rational, charitable adults. It's as dry as it sounds, but William Blake did the illustrations, if that helps.

Note this governess isn't the dark prude in the other paintings, but rather more like an angel, with her two devoted disciples on either side revering her.

“Sure they aren't just coveting that really sweet bonnet?”

I'm sure. Of course, this was 1791, though, and Mary Wollstonecraft was kind of a controversial figure, what with wanting women to be seen as equal to men and all. By the 1830s and on, governesses were painted in shadow, wearing drab, mournful clothing, and sort of being the buzzkill.

So it was a low-paying, tedious job that was mentally taxing and isolating, not to mention thankless.

When a governess' services were no longer required, she could stay on and be hired by one of the girls as a companion (read: ladies maid) or find another family. The loneliness of the job continued into middle age, however, due to most of the men a governess would come into contact with were of the upper class and wouldn't be interested in a woman considered beneath their class. So marrying out of the job was rare. Also, since it was low-paying and required a few moves, many were impoverished by the time they reached middle age, the Governesses Benevolent Institution set up in 1841 to at least ensure these women got a pension.

Jane Eyre and a Rather Angry Fantasy

Rochester: Is this what existence is, Jane?

Jane: That’s the dog, sir.

The most famous fictional governess may very well be Jane Eyre, the titular heroine of Charlotte Bronte's 1847 classic. Jane Eyre could be its own college course, so it will be a challenge for me to keep it concise and applicable to our topic. The basic plot is that Jane grows up in a school from hell and instills in her two conflicting longings for kinship and independence (she's a passionate, thoughtful type). Can she gain purpose and love without sacrificing her integrity and who she is at her core? Thornfield Hall may provide the answer as she becomes a governess to Edward Rochester's French ward Adele. Rochester is a little weird—okay, he's very weird—but he falls in love with Jane, she falls for him, and that's only about halfway through the book. I can't tell you the big twist or how it's resolved, but the whole thing is very Gothic and you've got disembodied voices on the moors, beds on fire, out-of-nowhere family members—the whole thing's an intellectual trip.

Okay, now, first of all, Jane Eyre received very mixed reviews from both men and women. Those who hated it despised the idea of Jane not fitting the mold of the Victorian heroine. Most heroines in the time period were completely self-sacrificing and passive, being the moral inspiration for the rest of their family members and basically being beautiful, sweet angels rather than characters. If your heroine was smart and capable, she was also most likely an old maid, like Marion in The Woman in White. If the heroine had any sexual side at all, she was presented as a tragic figure like Nancy in Oliver Twist or Tess in Tess of the D'Ubervilles.

Jane was a more well-rounded character, very headstrong and independent, a firm believer that women should not be forced into the domestic life; this is fitting since Charlotte Bronte hated being a governess. But Jane also craves companionship. She is “plain and little,” a stark contrast from the unbelievably beautiful heroines who would always wind up just a wife, usually to a man not worthy of her. Jane, however, wants an equal, someone who will love her for who she is rather than what society has prescribed them to view her as.

Rochester: I've been standing in this position for hours waiting for you to come by.

Jane: I work here. And live here.

Rochester: Ah, Jane. There's that wood sprite's wit I so love. (seriously, read the book. He says things like this)

From a governess' perspective, this is both a fantasy and also perhaps a cautionary tale. While Jane is happy at Thornfield Hall and rather lucky to have a friend in Mrs. Fairfax, a well-behaved kid in Adele, and an employer that, well, doesn't think she sucks, she feels something is missing. She and Rochester are intellectual equals, but her low income and inability to properly socialize with the other women who visit keeps her at a lower status. She has to actually ask for money to be able to travel to visit her own family (even though they're assholes and she's only going out of obligation), and, since she is reserved about this kind of thing, Rochester sort of one-ups her whenever he can to get some kind of rise out of her, to include dressing up like an old gypsy woman at his own party. If you're like me, that's when he stopped being fun and a few red flags went up. So while Jane has meaningful relationships, she knows deep down she still isn't being all she can be.

I say it's a fantasy also, because, well, remember what I said everyone was afraid governesses would do with the men in the house?

Reenactment

The idea of your male boss falling in love with you might be flattering, hot, and an easy way to worm your way into high society if he's a widower, but no one would turn a blind eye to this kind of thing. Marriage was big news, especially when it came to the upper crust. There would be no way a rich gentleman could marry a governess and not cause a scandal.

“It's not exactly smooth sailing in the book, what with uninvited guests and what's in the attic.”

Well, Jane also discovers that having only independence and moral superiority is no life for her, either, as it deprives her of love and passion. Between a rock and a hard place, am I right? If you hooked up with a man in the household, odds are he was just using you, would brag to his friends, his parents/wife would find out, and then you'd be kicked out with no references or nest egg for these rainy-day occasions.

Jane Eyre was written at a time when a lot of what was considered common knowledge was seriously being questioned. Were women really better suited for the domestic stuff because of biology? Could the bumps on your head really give insight to your inner character? Are crazy people actually sick and in need of help? And, should we really be treating our governesses like crap when they have already suffered so much?

“Being a Governess Sucks” Lit

As people began valuing education more, the role of the governess changed from Debbie Downer to just an unfortunate turn of events for your average young woman. Little Women, Emma, and Vanity Fair all have characters who either hate being a governess or hate the idea of needing to become one. The latter, in fact, is kind of a humorous take on every respectable aristocrat's worst nightmare of a bitch in governess' clothing swooping in and just taking over. Becky Sharp, you magnificent bastard! I've read your book!

In 1898, Henry James decided that the loneliness and potential powerlessness a governess could have would be an excellent fit for a different genre of literature—horror. “The Turn of the Screw” is one of the best novellas EVER and has been adapted into one of the best horror movies period, The Innocents. This governess doesn't even get a name, and we don't even get a full picture of what's going on since this is one of those frame stories where someone else is narrating to us what happened to someone else. Is this a case of an unreliable narrator? Is the governess cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs? Are the kids possessed? Are the kids just clever little shits? We don't know!

The story is that a governess has been hired to care for a man's nephew and niece, Miles and Flora, the former having just been expelled from school for talking to the other boys about some very inappropriate things. The governess learns that their former governess and the gardener had a relationship, were jerks, spent a lot of time with the kids, and are both dead. The kids start acting weirder, the governess starts acting paranoid, and I can't even tell you the strangest stuff because that would be giving away spoilers.

You ever watch an old movie and think the set would be the perfect haunted house? And then come to find out it actually MIGHT be a haunted house? Welcome to The Innocents, folks. Popcorn and adult diapers both strongly recommended.

The film version spells things out just a little bit more than the story, but it in no way gives the viewer a clear answer that explains what is happening, if this is a haunting, a possession, or people losing their minds. Either way, the governess (played by Deborah Kerr, who we will also talk about later) is in way over her head here. That's the thing. Somewhere along the line, men decided that two things were incredibly easy—house cleaning and child care, and if you've ever had to do either, you know how wrong that is. But no, from the Victorian period on, there have been slogans for newfangled appliances being “So easy a woman can do it,” moms doing chores in their pearls, and cartoon animals helping out with dishes and sewing. Somewhere along the line, someone decided that people who look after children can work long hours and be given only the thinnest shred of authority, and yet pay them very little for it. This woman has no resources. She has an illiterate servant who can give her back story, but that's about it, the uncle she was attracted to at the beginning won't answer her letters asking for advice, and there aren't that many neighbors around. And when kids decide they're not going to listen to you, they're not going to listen to you.

One has to wonder if the story would be a little more clear-cut if it wasn't a governess in the position. If it was someone with a job that usually inspired images of competence and intelligence, like a doctor, would we be more inclined to think the events were real and not just someone going crazy?

“Um no, Deborah Kerr was a little off her rocker before even showing up to the house.”

Very true. The ambiguity is tantalizingly frustrating, and the movie just adds so much atmosphere that it's impossible not to watch it while on the edge of your seat. I don't think I'm spoiling anything, but here is an image of her seeing one of the supposed ghosts:

The black and white doesn't diminish the terror at all. Look how ambiguous and shadowy that looks! And there is this really neat scene where Flora insists she doesn't see the woman all in black staring them down across a field...

“It's governess vs. governess!”

That's another thing to touch on. Miss Jessel, the deceased governess, is implied in a few places to have taken part in things with the kids present that kids really shouldn't be present for, if you get my drift. Was she as depraved in life as she's purported to have been? Or was this a lonely, desperate woman who either sought out companionship or was forced/manipulated into something? How much do the kids actually know? Because they talk and carry themselves like little adults, let me tell you. You will not find creepier kids who do so little to come across as creepy. Any other scary-movie child seems to be putting an effort into it whereas it just comes that naturally to these two.

So this is kind of a worst-case scenario for the life of a governess?

“She gets plagued by ghosts???”

No, she has children with issues that extend well outside her expertise, has no support system to help her cope with that or help the children at all, and ends up suffering the consequences of said issue worse than anyone else. If Anne Bronte had little psychopath kids in her care, then others did, too, and if the parents wouldn't do anything and you have no friends to help you, you have one of two choices—quit your job and start worrying about how you will eat, or put up with it until something really bad happens.

Weapons of Magic or Song (Sometimes Both!)

Into the 20th century, people valued education more than ever before and began respecting educators more for it, although female teachers were still seen as intellectually inferior to men since they only taught little kids while men were learned professors. Oh, add another thing to things men think are easy—house cleaning, child care, and teaching little kids the right way to hold a pencil.

There was a resurgence of the governess as a heroine in the late 40s that extended well into the 60s, a time when people wanted more conservative messages and clearly-defined heroes and villains in their stories, but also when people were challenging the establishment. Rodgers and Hammerstein were those people. Their musicals might have some whimsy to them, but they deal with some very real subject matter, like Carousel addressing domestic abuse and South Pacific dealing with racism.

In 1951, they adapted the memoirs of Anna Leonowens into their stage musical The King and I, which became a movie in 1956. The real Anna did indeed go to Siam (now Thailand) to teach King Monkut's 39 wives/concubines and 82 children, keeping a correspondence with Prince Chulalongkorn, the heir to the throne, well into his adult years. However, there probably wasn't as much sexual tension in real life, King Mongkut known to regard Anna as difficult to work with, and since he was known to be a laid-back, nice guy, most Thai people find Yul Brynner's eccentric, temperamental performance offensive.

Once again, this is kind of a fantasy playing out. Anna, in the story, gains some political clout, is yet another governess who has the head male of the household crushing on her, and miraculously gets 82 kids to not only sit still, but participate in musical numbers.

But on the other hand, The King and I deals with culture clash, sexism, and racism. Anna and the King engage in as much sexual tension-laden situations as Jane and Rochester, but his inner conflict with sticking to tradition vs. branching out makes it an impossible relationship. Anna herself is portrayed almost without flaws, the epitome of grace and mental/emotional resolve, very similar to Disney's Belle. The Asian characters, well, most are portrayed sympathetically and the King and the supporting players are three-dimensional characters, so that's pretty progressive for 1951. Again, though, this is kind of an angry fantasy as Anna is influential and gets to go on this amazing adventure, but the women who would ordinarily be her peers are her students, there is a ton of pressure on her as the only representative of Western thought and ideals (that is portrayed as superior in most productions), and she and the King can never really act on what's sizzling between them.

So is this what the life of a governess is, wherever she may go, always stuck in an odd place between progress and repression?

Rodgers and Hammerstein made a governess their main character again in 1959 with a little show of theirs called The Sound of Music, in which yet again a real-life governess' life is slightly fictionalized. Again, a woman is brought in to teach a brood of kids (“only” seven this time, though), clashes with the dad, and ends up a heroine in a oppressive society. It's a little more in-your-face than The King and I, which purposely kept things vague or only in subtext, when your governess is pitted against freakin' NAZIS.

Maria's more free-spirited answer to goose-stepping was doing the Charleston in floral-print

Maria is an interesting character mainly because she's a slightly more somber free spirit type. She could fit right in with Lucy Ricardo or in a Katharine Hepburn screwball comedy, but she has an intensely spiritual side and can be both well-spoken and passionate when sticking up for her beliefs. She can relate to the children so well because she too knows what it's like to feel you're not good enough when you're a vivacious, outgoing person in a restrictive society that demands you be something you're not, and it's this refusal to just shut up and color that attracts Captain von Trapp to her in the first place.

“Where's MY brooding, handsome single dad who will eventually come to learn life lessons from ME?”

Alas, it's a lot more common for women to inspire men morally in fiction than the other way around, and this does seem to be becoming a trope, doesn't it—the governess having a relationship with the dad. It doesn't seem to end well in real life (see Jude Law and a couple of other celebrities), but these movies rarely focus solely on how the governess impacts the children, and she NEVER influences the mother, if there even is one. It's always the dad, and maybe that's just because most of us are suckers for a good romance, but there has to be more to it than that.

Cuz so many single dads out there really dig the top-button, long-sleeved governess apparel. Rrooowr.

Captain von Trapp's back story is that he was a Navy man and a musician in his spare time, but when his wife died and left him with seven kids, he decided no music and more marching would be his parenting style. Maria, who by now has struck up a strong bond with the kids, chides him for not being emotionally available to his kids, and it's when he hears them sing—which she taught them to do—that he realizes she was right. Now, fortunately the musical doesn't drag this out for longer than it has to and the couple will soon have Nazis to worry about, but what is the fantasy here? Did governesses desire marriage, and, if so, did they desire a marriage to their employer?

There's really no way to find out, but I can see it both ways. On the one hand, marriage was a viable way to escape bad situations back in the day. It's similar to the Cinderella situation. You're trapped in a miserable life until a guy with the right resources volunteers to take you away from it. Cinderella doesn't want to go to that ball so badly just because of plot reasons; she's looking for a way out of her terrible family life and has run out of all other options. A governess didn't meet that many men, she didn't have many friends, and if the strongest relationships she formed were with the kids that she was already mothering a lot more than their biological mother was, maybe it's not too much of a leap to assume that, if the dad was single, he might marry her and make her lady of the house so she is doing the same job of nurturing the kids she already loves, but now with the added perks of financial security and adult companionship.

But, then again, I'm certain just as many of these bosses were jerks and there is no way in hell the governess would want anything to do with them. There is that cliché of liking the bad boy so you can be the one that changes him, but...

Governess: Mister Smith, young Master Winthrop had these matches in his pocket.

Mister Smith: Goodness gracious, Miss Governess! How dare you stifle and coddle this young explorer of mine! The other boys will think he's a sissy!

Governess: But what if he burns the house down, sir?

Mister Smith: Then you're fired!

Governess: Mister Smith, young Myrtle was dangling her undergarments in front of the boy next door, and I thought I should bring it to your attention.

Mister Smith: Have you not taught her basic decorum? What books are you giving her? Not too many, I hope! I'm sure she saw you do that. You're the only one she could have learned that from. Her mother hasn't shown me her undergarments for the last six years!

Governess: Mister Smith, I've received a letter from my sister that our mother is on her death bed, my father is now crippled, and the pig ate my brother's hand. Could I have a week's advance on my salary and five days off to see them?

Mister Smith: Good God, Miss Governess! You can't leave at a time like this! Winthrop is a little arsonist and Myrtle's one step away from becoming a whore! We need you!

You see where I'm going with this? I get when the bad boy at the playground pulls your pigtails because he likes you, but even very young governesses would be able to pick up on the fact that the dad just never has her back. There is that stereotype that women like guys who treat them badly, but, come on. If you work for an asshole, you know it.

Not that Captain von Trapp is an asshole. He opposes Nazis, is a veteran, seems to be a decent fellow once he loosens up a little, and led his kids across the Alps so they wouldn't have to be in Hitler Youth programs (not in real life. They just got on a train). But what is it about changing the dad that makes for such a popular story? Certainly there is more going on with Maria than that as she changes the whole household.

One word: power.

Maria may not crave power in the conventional sense, but this is the one way the governess could legitimately wield a ton of power—influencing the family. She already influences the kids. They spend more time with her than with anyone else. But if she can influence the parents and maybe even befriend them, she's really got a good thing going. Jane Eyre doesn't fall for Rochester because he's rich, but rather because he likes having her around! They talk, they bond, they talk about each other's pasts and problems (albeit not all of them, at first). She has adult companionship, a friend. This means she isn't just the lowly governess. She's a valued member of the household, someone people would miss, not because of the services they render, but because of who they are.

Maybe that's why there are so many stories of a governess being able to do magic. Magic is power.

“I thought it was knowledge.”

Pretty sure if you can do magic, you're at an advantage, too. Bedknobs and Broomsticks and the more recent Nanny McPhee feature middle-aged, single women caring for children that aren't theirs, changing the kids' lives for the better, the former actually using her witchcraft to battle Nazis. They just can't get away from all the supernatural tomfoolery, can they? Miss Price, played to perfection by Angela Lansbury, wants to learn magic to help the Allies win World War Two. Talk about influence. Nanny McPhee (Emma Thompson) may have things on a smaller scale, but she plays just as pivotal a role in the lives of the family members she works for, her mantra, “When you need me, but do not want me, then I must stay. When you want me, but no longer need me, I have to go.”

Influence might just be what every governess wished she had more of, and so we come now to the governess of a story that allows her to change the very dynamic of the family she serves.

Originally a children's book series that lasted from 1934 all the way to 1988, it was adapted by the Walt Disney Company into a masterpiece of a film in 1964, and one that can and should be its own meta. It went through development hell, and one of the aspects Saving Mr. Banks got right was the importance and success of the movie hinging not on the character of Mary Poppins saving the children, but saving the father, who is too much of a workaholic to spend quality time with them.

This has kind of been done to death, the dad so wrapped up in his work that his family life is passing him by, but in no other movie I know of is it done so poignantly. Mary Poppins waltzes in with her no-nonsense attitude, basically hires herself, and when she is about to be fired, she actually masterminds a field trip for Mr. Banks to take the kids on that will have nigh-miraculous results.

I'm of the opinion Mary Poppins (and also Bert) is not quite human, but it doesn't really matter. The lesson of learning to take in life's simple joys is illustrated so beautifully in the haunting “Feed the Birds” song, an amazing scene between Bert and Mr. Banks when Bert sort of spells out what Mary Poppins has been doing this whole time, and a gorgeously-filmed sequence when Mr. Banks walks to the bank, expecting to be fired himself, and reflects on all that has happened. It's not really the kids learning life lessons from Mary Poppins, as they're in reality good kids who are just bored and in need of some attention. Mr. Banks is the one who is just a little too set in his ways and can't be bothered to give his own children any warmth. What stops this from being too cutesy or too preachy is Mary Poppins' practical attitude. She's not an ice queen, but a firm, stubborn woman who denies she does anything magical.

But she gives the kids cough syrup that tastes like rum and dates homeless guys.

The governess aspect of Mary Poppins may be the most believable. See, for all my snark, I find it hard to believe that every single governess suffered. Teaching today is underappreciated and underpaid, but people still do it because it is so rewarding. They are shaping lives. They are an adult kids can go to for help and look up to, maybe even emulate. The job of a governess was to nurture young people, and while some kids I'm sure hated their governesses, there had to be some out there who really loved theirs.

The “Let’s Go Fly a Kite” sequence never fails to make me cry because it's the whole point of the movie. As Mary Poppins watches as the happy family goes arm in arm to the park, it's a bittersweet moment, but isn't it also the best-case scenario a governess can hope for? She did what she went there to do—save this family by teaching them to make time for each other. Realistically, she's not part of the joy, but she is responsible for it. It has to be a little sad for a teacher to watch his/her students move on to the next grade, but it is what is supposed to happen. It's a sign he/she has done a good job. The entire scene is so moving because it really brings everything home. Mr. Banks gets his job back along with a promotion, proving you don't have to sacrifice your family to move up the ladder. Mrs. Banks puts her suffragette sash on the kite, literally making it “come out of the closet” and be acknowledged by her family as something she is passionate about. The kids can look forward to outings with their parents and a lot more warmth at home. All of it is done by Mary Poppins without a thank you, or even a goodbye.

That's why I think the governess as a heroine persists and is a popular choice for storytelling. There is a risk-taking aspect to this woman, no matter how prim and proper she may seem, for she is venturing out on her own with a specific purpose, and it's a noble purpose. The people around her in the story change because of her. She is making things happen, things that have to happen for children to mature. She might find love, she might fight off ghosts, but the woman is a hero for encouraging and persevering, all with very little expectation of credit. Just to give you a real-life example as my conclusion, here is a photo of Anne Sullivan with Helen Keller:

#meta; governesses; books; horror; jane eyre; brontes; Disney

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