The Third Annual Serene Wombles

Sorry this is so late. I had, like, three significant life crises happen all at once, and I only had this half finished by 3rd October, which was my blog’s birthday. I really wanted to get this out on the day itself, but that’s life. Let the post begin!

Wow, we survived a whole ‘nother year, and for some reason you lot are still interested in what I have to say about various forms of speculative media and other awesome shit. Weirdos.

For the n00bs: The Serene Wombles are the awards I give once a year, on my blog’s birthday, for the stuff I liked best of all the things I have reviewed. The skinny:

Eligibility for a Serene Womble is conferred by being the subject of a review on In Search of the Happiness Max in the past year. There may have been better or more worthy things that came out this year, but if I didn’t find them relevant to my interests, or if I simply didn’t have the time to review them, they won’t be eligible for a Serene Womble. I make no pretense that these awards are significant or important in any way, but I enjoy having the opportunity to praise and draw attention to things I have loved.

The Serene Wombles are divided into two categories, those that apply to recent releases, and special Time Travelling Wombles for the most awesome things in my Reviewing Through the Time Machine posts. The division between the former and the latter may at times seem arbitrary – why should a film that came out in 2009 count as a recent release, whilst a TV Show that ended in 2009 requires a time machine? It’ll always be a judgement call, and the call is mine. At the end of the day, these are not the Oscars, they’re the highlights from a blog, and are therefore subject to my whim.

Due to illness and stress and stuff the pickings have been a little thinner this year than I would like. Nevertheless, there have been some really awesome and creative things out there, and I still want to praise them.

The Serene Womble for Best Film

Poster for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

Elligible films: Looper, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Star Trek: Into Darkness.

So… guess who hasn’t been to the cinema a lot this year?  There are a whole bunch of films that I wanted to go see this year  – summer of bloody superheroes indeed! – but illness and lack of funds have prevented me. As a consequence, this was basically no contest. Looper made me angry. Star Trek: Into Darkness was tiresome and disappointing. And I enjoyed The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey a very great deal. I said when I watched it at Christmas that it would be the one to beat, and, alas, nothing rose to the challenge.

This was an exceedingly pretty film that I found well-paced and which realised the story very well. I didn’t mind the extra stuff added in, and actually like that Peter Jackson took this once-in-a-generation-or-two opportunity to explore Tolkien’s world more fully. Bags of fun!

The Serene Womble for Best TV Show: Hemlock Grove

Eligible TV Shows: Hemlock Grove, Doctor Who, House of Cards, Game of Thrones, Hannibal, America’s Next Top Model, Sleepy Hollow.

For the first year, Game of Thrones is not the winner of this category! I still enjoyed it, and it had some of my favourite moments of the whole series, but the pacing was rocky, and for consistently good value there was some significant competition.

Hemlock Grove was original, genre bending, narratatively interesting, conceptually challenging, and thoroughly addictive. It wasn’t quite like anything I had seen before, in a good way.

Hannibal deserves an honourable mention, but although it was addictive, entertaining, and well-acted, I can’t say it was anything especially new or original, just very well done. House of Cards was well-acted and reasonably well-written, but fairly unoriginal and tiresomely another privileged white man plotting petty revenges that it’s hard to care for when he’s not really received any very great slights. Doctor Who is… Doctor Who. This really isn’t going to be a contender until Moffat leaves. If an episode doesn’t leave me wanting to scream, it’s a good sign. I thought there were a couple of somewhat interesting episodes this year, but that’s all. America’s Next Top Model, much as I am in the business of defending it, is not remotely in the same league. Sleepy Hollow snuck in as a last minute entry. I enjoyed the one episode I’d seen at time of review, but it’s basically entertaining fluff.

So, it’s a hearty congrats to Hemlock Grove. You seriously impressed me and I hope I can spread the love to my readers.

The Serene Womble for Best Novel – Null

There was precisely one entrant in this category: A Dance with Dragons. Given that this is just a couple of chapters from the longer Read Along with Rhube chapter by chapter review that I have been doing for the last year (two years?). It feels a bit cheaty to give it a free pass to a Serene Womble by default of multiple entries and the fact that I just haven’t reviewed any other (current) novels. Plus, it just isn’t that good. Entertaining, interesting enough for the time and attention I have devoted to it? Yeah, I guess. But it’s also deeply problematic and I doubt it would win against any competition it might have had in another year. (It did not win last year, for example.)

Fair? Unfair? It’s my blog, I get to choose.

The Serene Womble for Best Blog – Escher Girls

Eligible blogs: Myths Retold, Academic Men Explain Things to Me, Escher Girls

Oh man, this was a really hard one. I want to give the award to all of them and actually changed my mind a couple of times. One of the difficulties is that Myths Retold is a very different kind of blog to the other two, which are in turn very similar to each other in both content and impact. I considered making a separate category for ‘Best Fiction Blog’, so that I could honour Myths Retold as well, but then I couldn’t think of any other fiction blogs and it seemed like that would be getting needlessly specific. Basically, I’m saying that all three of these are very good and worth your attention.

I’ve picked Escher Girls for the win for the scope of its impact. Escher Girls is the creation of Ami Angelwings, an awesome Canadian woman who started the blog to ‘archive and showcase the prevalence of certain ways women are depicted in illustrated pop media’, namely: women are contorted into physically impossible poses for the pleasure of the male gaze. The blog functions as a demonstration that the way women are drawn in comics and other illustrated media is dramatically different to the ways that men are drawn, that we are sexualised to extremes and that this sexualisation is commonplace, and in ways that do not compare to the male power fantasies of ripped muscles in skin-tight costumes which are so often held up to minimise women’s claims of unfair treatment. The volume of examples that Ami has collected (both personally and from submissions) is staggering, and the comfort this provides to women (who have long been told that their experience of alienation by sexualisation in mainstream comics is a mere subjective impression) is extensive and powerful.

Academic Men Explain Things to Me serves a similar function, in providing a platform for women to voice their frustrations with the phenomenon of ‘mansplaining’, in which women frequently find that men explain very basic things to them, often in areas for which the woman is herself an expert and the man a novice. Again, this is an area in which women have often been told that they are imagining being treated in an overly patronising manner, that there are ‘know it alls’ of both genders, and that our subjective experiences are not as valid as men’s (who, of course, are privileged by a default supposition of objectivity that does not exist). By creating a venue to archive these experiences in detail and volume, Academic Men Explain Things to Me has provided a powerful vindication of women’s experiences – one which I genuinely believe is helping men to rethink their behaviour, as well as providing women with a sense of justification long denied.

In the end, I chose Escher Girls for its breadth of impact. I feel that there has been a palpable shift in comic and visual culture over the past year, where the misogyny in mainstream comics has come under increasing scrutiny from more mainstream critiques and fans. I don’t think Escher Girls have been the sole cause of this. Blogs such as DC Women Kicking Ass have also provided a sustained critique and made significant contributions, as have prominent critiques from individual women, such as Kelly Turnbull and Kyrax2. But to concede that a leading light is a part of a movement need not minimise the specific contribution. I think the impact of Escher Girls can be seen in the fact that it was able to spin off other projects, such as The Hawkeye Initiative, which highlights the discrepancies in treatment of men and women in comics by showcasing redrawings of sexualised female images with the male character, Hawkeye, in an identical pose.

Moreover, Ami’s blog is impressively organised in a way that facilitates citation and comparison from multiple angles – the tags page not only collates posts by trope, but also by artist, company, character, series, and Genre/Medium. And the blog integrates a Disqus commenting feature, allowing for debate and discussion of issues in a way that usually isn’t possible on Tumblr style blogs, and which Ami manages with great sensitivity.

It’s hard to compare a project like this with an artistic endeavour, like Myths Retold, which is not aiming at the kind of social change Escher Girls enables. Myths Retold demonstrates an artistry and poetic sophistication that simply doesn’t apply in assessing the other two blogs. All I can say is that whilst I recommend all three blogs to you, I felt that in this year, Escher Girls seemed most significant to me.

The Serene Womble for Best Webseries: Welcome to Night Vale

Eligible webseries: TableTop, Vlog Brothers, Welcome to Night Vale

I admit to using the term ‘webseries’ loosely. I reviewed quite a lot of things this year that don’t fit neatly into large categories, and although I might call TableTop a webseries, Vlog Brothers a vlog, and Night Vale a podcast, having each win a category for which it was the only entrant, I don’t think that’s a good use of my time and attention or yours. In any case, there is no question in my mind that Welcome to Night Vale outshines the other two, and I do not have the qualms I had for the previous category, in that I feel these compare fairly well, for regularly web-distributed entertainment.

TableTop is a nice idea, and if I were really into game mechanics I might find more value in it, but ultimately it fell flat for me. It’s basically just like watching other people play fun games. The games look fun, and maybe you like the people, but you can’t help but feeling that the whole thing would be more enjoyable if you were actually playing, too.

Vlog Brothers is entertaining, amusing, thoughtful, and informative. I recommend it. But it can’t hold a candle to Night Vale.

Welcome to Night Vale is one of the best, most enjoyable, most original shows I have had the pleasure to stumble across in a long time. The idea of using the podcast format as though it were a radio station for a fictional town is not one I had come across before, and it has been put to good purpose. Funny, strange, and more than a little bit dark, Night Vale is like a ray of sunlight that never fails to make me smile or to delight me with its unexpected changes in direction. It’s also surprisingly durable in terms of being something I can listen to over and over and still find new things to enjoy. I’ve had a hard year, especially the last few months, and being able to tune in to Night Vale any time I would otherwise have been alone with my thoughts has been remarkably soothing. It comforts me to know that wonderful, joyful, eccentric people are making such wonderful, joyful, eccentric works of art.

Not to mention that it manages to be progressive in terms of representation of gender, race, and sexuality without ever being po-faced. I can’t not give this an award.

The Serene Womble for Best Music: Stephanie Mabey

Eligible musicians: Garfunkel and Oates and Stephanie Mabey

Garfunkel and Oates are witty and entertaining, but occasionally problematic. By contrast, Stephanie Mabey’s music is pure joy. I’ve listened to her album, Wake Up Dreaming, again and again, often on loop, since downloading it, and I’m not sick of it yet. Her music is delightful, witty, and often beautiful – a real must for the geek music lover. I can’t recommend her work enough.

The Serene Womble for Best Webcomic: City of the Dead

Eligible webcomics: City of the Dead

OK, this one was the only entry in its category – I haven’t been reading as many webcomics this year, focussing, as I have been, on trying out different new media instead. Nevertheless, this comic is dynamic, atmospheric, and fun, making full use of the online medium to present a fast-paced and cohesively presented story. It’s no Romantically Apocalyptic (the winner from last year), but it’s certainly a cut above the average, and worthy of your time.

The Time Traveling Wombles

The Time Travelling Womble for Best Novel: The Count of Monte Cristo

Eligible novels: The Count of Monte Cristo.

A consequence of the sparse nature of this year is that the categories for the Time Traveling Wombles each has only one entry, but as each are stellar examples of exemplary works, this should not count against them.

I had no idea that The Count of Monte Cristo would be either such a rip-roaring adventure, or that it would be so progressive for its time (I ship Eugenie/Louise forever). Some classics are classics because they are fun as well as intelligent, and I can’t recommend this one highly enough.

The Time Traveling Womble for Best Non-Fiction Book: Wild Swans

Eligible non-fiction books: Wild Swans.

In my original article on this I wrote that this is one of the books I would say everyone should read before they die, so it should be no surprise that I honour it here, also. Wild Swans is a biographical and autobiographical work of heart-rending and exquisite expression of three women’s lives across turbulent twentieth century China. The tale is worthwhile and breath-taking in itself, but for people living outside of China – people for whom the ‘Cultural Revolution’ is just a term – this intimate, detailed, and thorough history is an absolutely essential piece of reading that will change your perspective in the world.

Time Traveling Womble for Best Blog – Inexplicable Objects

Eligible blogs: Inexplicable Objects.

Dating from a time before there was any such thing as a ‘blogging platform’ (the first was launched in October 1998), one can’t help but feel that Inexplicable Objects, which updated weekly from April 1998 to June 2001, would have made a phenomenally successful Tumblr. The archive is still active, more than ten years since it stopped updating, and it’s still one of my very favourite things in the world. Chocked full of delightfully strange objects, coloured by the witty commentary of Bill Young, this little website is a welcome piece of harmless absurdity to brighten your day. It may be the only entry in this category, but it is assuredly worthy of the Womble.

And finally:

The People’s Choice Award 2013: Hemlock Grove, Season One

By far and away the thing you most wanted my opinions on that I reviewed this year was Hemlock Grove. Netflix’s original fantasy/horror/weird show, released as an entire season, all at once, in April this year has garnered nearly 2,500 hits, with over a thousand more than its next nearest rival, Looper. This should possibly give pause for thought, as my review of Looper garnered attention more because it was negative and controversial than because the film was well-liked, but I hope that those who came to read my review of Hemlock Grove came away with a more positive image and their interest was more than car crash theatre.

Incidentally, last year’s winner, The Guild, Season Five, still has more hits than any other page on my website (including the home page) at over 14,000. What do these figures mean? Who knows, but something captured a lot of people’s interest, and maybe that’s something that’s worthy of your attention, too.

And that’s about it for this year. I hope you’ve enjoyed my reviews (or at least found them interesting) and that those who have won Serene Wombles of one kind or another get something positive out of the experience. It’s amazing the volume of wonderful and engaging things out there to culturally consume  in this crazy internet age; I hope I can continue to provide some kind of useful commentary on the tiny section of it in which I partake.

Review: House of Cards (Netflix)

Disappointingly unsatisfying for something that’s also quite gripping.

Despite the enthusiastic promotions of Netflix (which is a company I generally approve of) and the presence of Kevin Spacey in the starring role (a man I find both oddly-attractive and an excellent actor) I was reluctant to click on the huge WATCH THIS NOW banner that suddenly appeared at the top of my Netflix homepage the day this launched.

It’s not really hard to fathom why, though. I mean, you couldn’t get a much more patriarchal image than the above: a middle-aged white man sitting on a marble throne that looks an awful lot like Abraham Lincoln’s colossal monument of Massive Marble Manhood and Political Domination. I mean, I’m assuming it’s meant to be ironic: a political schemer dripping blood from his fingers to stain the great man’s chair, but I wasn’t feeling it. No, what this image said to me was POWER. I knew exactly what the program was going to be about and I hadn’t watched it, yet. Clearly Kevin Spacey was playing a Magnificent Bastard in the US political arena. And that was the story. Right there. Wow, look at the middle-aged white man go. And, I’ll be honest, I didn’t expect it to be badly acted or badly written – I respected the team and the actors – I just expected to find it dull and utterly unsurprising. I am bored to tears with ‘dramas’ about middle-aged white men running circles around everyone else. They aren’t dramatic, anymore, they’re expected, tiresome, depressing.

But I ran out of Hemlock Grove and my interest was piqued by the large number of women in the supporting cast: Robin Wright, Kate Mara,  Sakrina Jaffrey, Kristen Connolly, and Constance Zimmer, and more!

Plot

Francis Underwood (Spacey) is a US congressman who at the start of our show expects to be made Secretary of State, but his ambitions are unexpectedly thwarted. Plastering a smile on his face, he begins to plot both his revenge and advancement to an even higher position.

Claire Underwood (Wright) is Francis’s wife. Ambitious and steely in her own resolve, she works in the not-for-profit sector, spearheading the Clearwater Initiative. She seems to genuinely care about her charitable work, but this doesn’t stop her from being uncompromisingly ruthless when she believes it to be in her or Francis’s interest.

Zoe Barnes (Mara) is an ambitious young reporter who thrusts herself into the fore by snapping a fortuitous picture of Underwood admiring her rear. Underwood enjoys her audacity and sees the value of using her to strategically leak stories.

Peter Russo (played by Corey Stoll) is a US Representative addicted to drugs, alcohol and prostitutes. He’s divorced and engaged in an office romance with Christina Gallagher (Connolly), but seems like his heart is in the right place.

Russo is caught drunk driving with a prostitute in the passenger seat and Underwood sends his Chief of Staff, Doug Stamper (Michael Kelly), to sweep the matter under the carpet, giving him a hold over Russo, upon whose unstable shoulders many of Underwood’s plots will turn.

How was it?

Eh… I don’t know, really. I suppose it was much as I expected: well-written, well-paced, well-acted, and… disappointingly predictable. Not in the individual twists and turns, but in that it was about a white, wealthy, middle-aged man tying everyone else in knots. And watching privilege seek revenge for a comparatively minor slight is… not that satisfying?

Spacey was exactly what he needed to be. Robin Wright was completely spot on as the ice cool hard-ass who still  believes in making the world a better place and believably struggles with her love for the ruthless Underwood and her attraction for the more free spirited Adam Galloway (Ben Daniels). Corey Stoll is sympathetically a complete mess for whom you root to get his act together. Kate Mara is appropriately annoying in her ambitious forwardness, and carefully balances the line between being unlikability and hidden depths.

Robin Wright as The Princess Bride

The ingredients are right, but the recipe creates a dissatisfying result for the modern mouth. I kept thinking: this could have been awesome if they’d given the Francis Underwood role to Robin Wright. If you’re finding the name familiar, by the way, let me help you out. You may be recalling Robin Wright from all time classic satirical romantic adventure story, The Princess Bride.

Quite apart from it being a pleasure to see her again (took me about half way through the series to work out where I knew her from), this couldn’t be a more different role. Buttercup from The Princess Bride was all softness and sweetness and innocent belief in true love, barely concealed under a veneer of haughtiness which is really just another facet of her naivety. Claire Underwood, by contrast, is quiet spoken and beautiful and works for a good cause, but is self-possessed and a real force to be reckoned with. In the first episode she gets her manager to fire half her staff so that she doesn’t have to accept a donation that would compromise Francis, and then lets the same manager go herself. We instantly know this is a woman to be reckoned with, and Robin Wright’s performance is perfect. I would have been much more interested in her performance of a truly uncompromising role, like that of Francis.

Instead, her steely resolve is ultimately undermined. Despite what she claims, she isn’t quite as independent from her husband as he is from her. Not that either of them is fully so. One of the more interesting things about the show is their relationship, which is both open and governed by strict rules. Both Claire and Francis have lovers, and neither keeps this from their spouse; it is always understood that the affair is to be fleeting and useful. Despite the fact that jealousy does cause occasional tension, this seems to work for them. Nevertheless, whilst both partners show weakness, it is Claire who seems to truly reach out for love and for comfort in her lover, it is Claire who secretly longs for children and comes to regret accepting Francis’s decision not to have them, it is Claire who always returns to Francis – drawn by his power and security.

None of this is inappropriate for a character or wrong for a woman. But it’s part of that sense that this is always how women are presented. You can have a woman show strength on-screen, just as long as you undercut that strength in some way. Show that she does really want love, and to have children, and that, despite her protestations, she will endure subservience… maybe even likes it a little.

You could have believably gender-flipped this show, and seeing as they transplanted the original British concept to an entirely different political system, it’s not unreasonable to think that they might have experimented with the form some more as well.

But they didn’t. And whilst there are plenty of strong women, Francis Underwood gets the better of them all. Even when they do start to mount an attack on him, it is something they must band together to perform. And although the issues surrounding women using their sexuality to get ahead are touched on, I found the analysis one-sided and a little shallow. Yes, Francis uses sex to get what he wants, too, but it’s by assuming a stereotypical older-man-using-younger-woman role, which is questioned, but never really unseated. I kept hoping that the title was a hint that Underwood’s delicate plan was doomed to come tumbling down, but it never quite happens.

And… and it’s not enough to show the flaws of the patriarchy anymore. I’m bored with it. I know what those flaws are. Show me something new. At the end of the day a show about a patriarchal figure who abuses his power is still a show about a patriarchal figure. It’s not just that it’s sexist it’s that it’s… uninteresting. We’ve seen The West Wing, and Yes, Minister, and even House of Cards itself, before. If you wanted to remake a show, why not use that venue to propose something new. That would have been actually provocative and interesting.

So, yeah, if you’re looking for time to kill, there are worse ways to do it, but I’m not going to say this is Must See Television (or webivision, or whatever) because it’s not. It’s a very well-made version of something you’ve seen hundreds of times before.