What Even is Renaissance England and TNT's "Will"

I have resurrected this blog specifically to talk about how awful TNT’s Will is, and how much I love it. 

Will is the story of a baby-faced William Shakespeare (Laure Davidson) coming to London for the first time to embark on his great goal of becoming the greatest playwright of all time and accomplishing all of his secondary goals, like power, success, and freedom. What exactly a white male needs freedom from is debatable (possibly his wife and children, whom he leaves behind in Stratford, true to historical fact, and who also make it difficult for him to get it on with Alice, the theatre owner’s daughter who is an A+++ editor, 10/10, would hire), but he wants it and he’s going to get it. All of this glory is impeded by the very small problem of Will being a recusant Catholic and letting an urchin steal an incriminating letter meant for a Catholic priest cousin along with his Rosary after having been in London all of maybe half an hour. 

As you may already know, William Shakespeare was many things but a Catholic he was not. However, historical facts have never stopped anybody from believing what they want to believe, be it that humans did not evolve from a common ancestor with apes, or that climate change isn’t real, or that Shakespeare wasn’t Catholic, or that John Donne wasn’t secretly Catholic (Dr. Mattison, if you are reading this, I would like to repent of my badly written and argued essay). However I, frankly, am all about alternative timelines where everybody is secretly Catholic. Especially timelines where Will’s priest cousin has an underground anti-Elizabethan printing press that can run circles around Protestant inquisitors. Do I love Queen Elizabeth as much as anybody? Yes. Have I also thought about what it would be like to have my guts ripped from my body as a Catholic living in England under her rule? Yes, and Laura told me that was weird, but it doesn’t make it less true. 

This show is ostensibly named Will, but it is Jamie Campbell Bower (playing Kit Marlowe) that really takes the stage. His hair represents all of my hair goals. He parades around London wearing all black, with his shirt so low-cut that I can see at least two tattoos at all times. He once calls Will “William Shakeshaft” in front of hundreds of people and regrets nothing. In one scene, he kicks everybody out of his house after an all-night bacchanalia because it’s a writing day and he needs to write. 

He is also madly, badly in love with William Shakespeare. 

So much so, that he throws the Protestant Inquisitors off of Will’s trail and onto someone else’s (did I mention that Marlowe is A SPY FOR THE CROWN?!?! And that this is definitely something that happened historically??? You can’t make the really good stuff up, guys, it just is) and then tells Will that Will owes Marlowe his life, etc. etc. etc., and then follows Will around trying to make out with him at bad moments. 

Oh, did I mention that Kit is super gay? As he was in real life, if his plays have anything to say for it. Even if Will is a completely bumbled version of the Bard who keeps dropping quotes from Romeo and Juliet years before he’ll actually write it to make TNT’s audience feel literate, the authors have got Marlowe on point. If this keeps up, Will will have to cast Kit as Tybalt. He’s that fight-me-punk, kiss-me-gorgeous, and let’s-get-wasted. 

Also Jamie Campbell Bower is gorgeous and we share a birthday, so we’re soulmates now. 

I realize, of course, that the clothes that everyone wears are very inappropriate for the time period. And that the Catholics are depicted as slightly evil and grasping. And that it does not past the Bechdel test. And that it’s a very horrible television show that PBS would scorn to play on Masterpiece. And that Will Shakespeare was not a Catholic. 

But none of us are without sin, and TNT has created a show for us lawless, sinful people. 

The first six episodes are already streaming online. 

Is this Kit Marlowe? Because it looks like me.

Alien Art: An Off-the-Wall Reading of "The 5th Wave" and "Arrival"

Warning: Spoilers ahead. Read at your own risk!

This year America has been graced with two mainstream alien movies: The 5th Wave and Arrival. I didn’t go see The 5^th Wave in theatres, but I read the book and talked to one of my students who saw the movie, so I feel like an Expert. (Please refer all questions to my friend Kari, who has read the entire trilogy.) I did go see Arrival in theatres today, though (although I have not read the short story. So it goes).

Frankly, I do not think it at all interesting that America would start showing alien movies this year. Or that aliens have been spreading in the collective American (un?)conscious for the last few years, as the History Channel’s ridiculous series Ancient Aliens predicted.  Why? Because little green aliens share the same linguistic word as illegal immigrants. Aliens are other, and, in fact, movies often call aliens “other” instead of, you know, alien.

What I find fascinating are the differences between The 5^th Wave and Arrival.

The 5^th Wave is the story of how aliens come to town in “waves.” In the first wave, which coincides with their dramatic arrival, the electricity goes. Then comes earthquakes. Then plague, spread by birds. Then the fourth wave, which is aliens appear among humankind. The premise of the first book is humanity preparing for the fifth wave, which is undetermined yet. The main characters are hampered in preparing for the fifth wave as the aliens look human, so there is no way to distinguish between good (human) and bad (alien). Everyone looks human! Even the hominids that aren’t. 

Look at those guns. 

Cassie, the main character, has a single goal: To rescue her younger brother from a military compound run by the “military” (really the aliens in human form that have taken over the American military) after the aliens kill her father and the plague kills her mother. She is aided in this by (guess who) an alien. Except this alien is an outlier from general aliens, because he has fallen in love with Cassie and has decided to betray his own kind.

Cassie’s boyfriend is the assimilated alien. Once part of a foreign other, he has accepted traditional American values and assists Cassie as she wages war against his own kind, the aliens.

I should probably mention here that, according to my student, in the movie the boyfriend is half-alien, half-human, which leads me to two conclusions: One, the aliens are going to be redeemed in the future (hard to believe after THEY’VE WIPED OUT HALF OF PLANET EARTH but you know what white people have done worse). Or two, we need to Americanize the boyfriend even more, so instead of wholly assimilating, he can tamp down his alien other half and focus on the stronger, purer White American™ blood coursing through his veins.

Let’s talk about Arrival now.

My new dream job is alien language interpreter.

                             

Unlike The 5^th Wave, which focuses entirely on America because, duh, the electricity has gone out and there is no way to phone Europe and see if they are good, Arrival focuses on the globe as a whole. Dr. Louise Banks is the main character, a linguist at an American university who has been contacted by the military (hello darkness my old friend) to come see if they can communicate with this strange spaceship that has appeared in Montana. The spaceship is, ironically, one of twelve (hello Jesus my Lord and Savior and all twelve of his sidekicks) that are situated randomly around the globe. There’s one in China, one in Denmark, and there is one that is located in the middle of the Indian Ocean, oddly enough. (The movie doesn’t really focus in on that spot, probably for obvious reasons.)

With the assistance of Ian, a mathematician, Louise makes contact with the aliens, which are very distinctively other in that they look, as one of my favorite students put it, “like a squid.”

(Other students said octopus but I think the winner is squid, because squids have some bonelike structure and aren’t just blobby inky things like octopi.)

(For the record, the aliens are called heptapod, which means “seven” so both octopus and squid are wrong but this is a digression of a digression.)

Louise’s job (and Ian’s, to a lesser extent) is to make contact with the aliens and to trade language. She must learn the heptapod’s language, which is circular (literally and figuratively: the heptapods do not see time in a linear fashion, which is reflected in their grammar, and their language looks like the circular mark left on a napkin after a coffee spill) while also trading her language with the aliens. Most of this is expressed in written language, as the heptapods cannot form human sounds and vice versa for the humans.

The heptapods have come to give humanity a tool, but they have come in twelve ships for a reason: Each country has only 1/12 of the puzzle (0.83 of the puzzle in case, like Ian, you like math) and so they must work together to put it together. The only problem is China wants to blow their spaceship up and start a global war (huh, I wonder what cultural fear this stems from!). Louise must use her language skills to A) Prevent China from blowing up half of the planet and B) Communicate with the heptapods.

Of course, people want to stop Louise. There is an unnamed soldier in the military compound who I referred to as The Silent One or The Expressionless One who is witnessed, as the general calls it, “watches too much TV”—or, there is a scene where we catch The Expressionless One watching Rush Limbaugh, which inspires him to try and commit violence against the aliens.

You’re starting to see my case here, aren’t you?

This year two alien movies came out, and it both I am able to see two very different responses to the “threat” of illegal immigrants. In The 5^th Wave I see an illegal immigrant suppress his culture to help his girlfriend. The other illegal, alien immigrants are violent, with the end goal of wiping out humanity and taking over America for themselves. (Somewhere, a Native American is laughing. Wait, no they aren’t. Haven’t you been following DAPL?). Worse, though, is that no one can be sure who is an alien and who is not. In Arrival, Rush Limbaugh incites violence while others seek communication and inter-planet dialogue. The others look and sound alien, but they are not enemies. They have come bearing the gift of language and unity between America and China. Also, they talk about the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis, which made my little English major heart happy.

I’m also going to leave the fact that Arrival actually feints at diversity here (the top general is black, we have a Chinese man playing a Chinese general, pretty much everyone else is white white white), whereas as far as I can tell without having seen the movie, The 5^Th Wave didn’t even pretend to try. I am not going to say that having a whopping two PoCs makes Arrival any better, but it is a glance in the right direction. EXPECT AND DEMAND DIVERSITY IN MOVIES.  I have seen enough movies about the Travails of the White Man™ and I am ready for something new.

Now that our president-elect is Trump, art has become more and more important. We need art to comfort us and to challenge and to persuade. We need movies to tell complex and diverse narratives for a diverse and divided America.

I shared both movie trailers with my class on Tuesday. Any guesses as to which movie they preferred?

The Way Forward: Looking Back on Thirty Years of Jim Henson's "Labyrinth"

This month marks the thirtieth anniversary of my favorite movie, Jim Henson’s Labyrinth. Since David Bowie died earlier this year, the anniversary seems even more poignant.

Lo; in a cloud of glitter and synthesizers I come!

                             

Labyrinth is the story of a teenager who is still, at heart, a girl. Sarah loves playing dress up, reading stories, and her teddy bear. Her love of fairy tales, however, leads her to hate her stepmother and stepbrother, Toby. One night, when supposed to watch Toby, Sarah accidentally-on-purpose gives the child away to Jareth, the Goblin King. Realizing her mistake, Sarah attempts to outsmart Jareth and reclaim her baby brother by making her way through the Labyrinth, recognizing her independence, her impending adulthood, and, of course, the power of friendship along the way.

I didn’t watch a lot of movies when I was growing up. I had seen the entire repertoire of Disney movies, of course, and I could sing every word to “Barbara Manatee” from VeggieTales, but I didn’t really watch movies. So when my neighbor Jessica brought it home from the library one day and turned it on, I pointedly turned away.

Except, in the first five minutes of screentime, we see a girl in a beautiful white dress running around a park with Merlin, her sheepdog, and pretending to be a character in a play. This was my childhood in five minutes. I spent most of my time at my Aunt Connie’s 1) Wandering around dressed in a pink ball gown, 2) Pretending that I was Rebecca in Ivanhoe and threatening no one in particular that I was going to jump off of a tower, or 3) Reading. Sarah was, when I first saw Labyrinth, at least five years older than me, but she spoke to my middle-school heart. I still wanted to dream when everyone around me thought that was stupid; I wanted individuality when everyone else wanted to fit in.

But let’s focus on the movie.

Sarah immediately repents after selling Toby to the Goblin King, and is determined to right her wrongs. To rescue Toby, she makes a deal with Jareth—she must solve the Labyrinth in thirteen hours to get her brother back—Jareth tells her to “Turn back now, before it is too late.” Sarah refuses to listen to him, and makes her way to the Labyrinth, where she meets Hoggle, a sulky, sullen dwarf, at the very beginning of her time in the Goblin Kingdom. Hoggle is killing fairies when Sarah meets him, and Sarah is appalled by the cruelty until one of the little fairies bites her. Beautiful things, Hoggle seems to tell viewers, often hurt, and the beautiful Jareth hurts most of all. 

         

If "having friends" means I'm going to spend my Friday nights running for my life...

then no, not interested.

                               

Hoggle is not the kind of person who would win the Best Friend of the Year Award. He is secretly in the pay of the Goblin King, trying to make sure Sarah fails so she will stay childlike and timid throughout the movie. Yet Hoggle also learns to repent and in turn properly helps Sarah (even though his cowardice often wins out over his good intentions). Sarah also meets Ludo, Sir Didymus, and Ambrosius, who all help her reach the Goblin Castle with their own particular talents.

Although Sarah makes friends who help her solve the Labyrinth, she also encounters enemies who echo Jareth, trying to make Sarah turn back. After Hoggle betrays Sarah by giving her a poisoned peach that catapults her into a fantasy dreamland, Sarah awakes to find herself in a desolate junkyard landscape without a clear memory of who she is or what she is doing here. It is there she meets a Junk Lady, who ushers Sarah into a carbon copy of her childhood bedroom, where Sarah attempts to convince herself that the Labyrinth was only a bizarre dream. The Junk Lady further attempts to trap Sarah in her past by giving her discarded toys to hold onto, placing them on Sarah’s back until Sarah is bowed with the weight of her past. Yet Sarah realizes that all of these valuable things the Junk Lady offers is simply junk, and that Toby, the thing of true value, still lies ahead.

There was something beautiful for me in watching Jareth offer Sarah all of her fairy tale dreams—the masked balls, the fancy white dresses, the handsome lover—and watch Sarah become independent enough to say no. And yet, the movie is careful to say, just because Sarah grew up enough to say no to harmful fantasies doesn’t mean she gave up her childhood dreams, either. Sarah was allowed to be a rational adult, to make powerful decisions, and yet also hold her teddy bear closely and jump on her bed.

While I was too young to appreciate it fully, I also loved how the movie portrayed Jareth. Jareth has been in love with Sarah for no one knows how long; he has been watching her in the same way Edward Cullen watched Bella Swan sleep. (No mention is made if Jareth actually watches Sarah sleep, but he does watch her play dress-up in the park, which is creepy enough.) Jareth represents unrealistic dreams. He will take Toby away and leave Sarah to the single-child life she thinks she wants. He will give Sarah puffy white dresses and masquerade balls. He also offers Sarah a damaged form of love. “Just fear me,” he tells Sarah at the end of the movie, “love me, do as I say, and I will be your slave.” 

Not pictured: David Bowie's two-sizes-too-small tights.

              

But this is not love. Perfect love, the Bible tells us, casts out all fear, and that Jareth wants Sarah to fear him and obey him is terrifying. It is the kind of relationship a battered wife has with her husband, or a slave with a brutal master. It is not the kind of relationship a young girl should have with an older man. In the beginning of the movie, Sarah struggles to remember a key line of the script she carries around in her pocket. It is the line that symbolizes her freedom and independence, and yet Sarah can never seem to remember, possibly because she is too entrenched in the fairy-tale of an older king marrying a naïve young girl. Yet when Jareth tells her to fear him, love him, and do as he says, Sarah has reached a part in her development where she is able to remember her lines, and say it with wonder and conviction: “You have no power over me.” 

               

         

There is something so incredibly satisfying about a young girl telling a man that he has no power over her.

However, Labyrinth does not place Jareth in an entirely bad light. At one point Jareth tells Sarah, “I am exhausted from living up to your expectations.” Being the fairy tale prince—even if they’re really a Goblin King, but it’s David Bowie, come on—is exhausting. Sarah comes to realize this by the end of the movie, deciding that what she has is more valuable to her than what she has lost, or what she never had but always wanted.

When Sarah remembers the magic line, “You have no power over me,” the illusion shatters. She and Toby return home, but it is an empty victory. Sarah is still alone in her bedroom. Her brother is safe, but she feels no different than before. As she lies there in her room, she sees the reflection of Hoggle in the mirror, telling her that should Sarah ever need them, they will be there.

Although Sarah has realized her independence and come into herself, she is still allowed to play make-believe, throw dance parties in her room, jump on her bed, and believe in fairy tales. That was the message I loved most of all. As I got older and my friends started to do “adult” things, they cast aside everything they considered childish. However, their idea of “adult” things were just as toxic as Sarah’s original fairy tale fantasy, where she spent all of her time in white dresses and daydreaming about what life would be like if Toby had never been born. Even though fairies were vicious and men promised love in exchange for fear and obedience, my friends refused to see that sometimes “adult” things are just as harmful as staying firmly rooted in the past.

For years I have watched Labyrinth on New Year’s Eve. I don’t remember what started that tradition. We would put the DVD in a few hours before midnight, and I would watch with my sister and one of my friends, but in recent years I have watched it by myself. And every year I am reminded: I am still allowed to be child-like. I can keep what I love about being a child while at the same time learning from my mistakes. I can be smart, and independent, and still have impromptu dance parties in my room. But most importantly, I am reminded that my will is as great as any man’s, my kingdom as strong as any king’s, and I owe men nothing. 

              

Also, in case you were wondering: Labyrinth is the movie that made me fixated on sheepdogs.  

And Forever Hail

A few days ago one of my favorite religious tumblrs posted a quote from an Elizabeth Stuart book. I have not read Stuart’s works, probably because she is not Catholic and I tend to read Catholic theology, and also because she writes about queer relationships, so Dr. Miller wouldn’t have mentioned her in Four Gospels.

The original quote was much longer, but here is the piece that stuck with me the most: “We have an unhappy urge to pin God, Christ, the Spirit down. When I look at a crucifix I am always reminded of what the Victorians did to butterflies. They caught them, killed them and pinned them to bits of wood. The resurrection, whatever else it is, is a message that you cannot do that to God” (Stuart, Just Good Friends, pg. 13).

When I read those lines I immediately looked up to the Crucifix I bought at the Wyandotte art fair during the beginning of the summer and have hanging by my desk. I saw the nails in Jesus’ hands, the glory radiating around his head, and I thought, She’s right. I have pinned my lord down.

It was out of love for us that Jesus submitted to the cross, but it is a sign of his power that he came down from the cross and emerged from a stone tomb three days later, bringing with him those who had waited for him and had died still waiting. The cross is only half of the equation.

But I tend to stick not only Jesus on the cross, but the dead in the grave.  

I have been carrying a lot of grief around this year, especially as it seems that so many people are dying. I have been mourning Chelsea Bruck, especially recently, now that someone has been arrested for her murder. I have also been mourning a childhood friend who died this winter. We weren’t particularly close anymore, but when she died everything shifted and I started crying all the time.

When my friend died, I grew angry. I was angry when Chelsea Bruck died too. These women were my age; who had the right to take them from me? I was angry at Danny Clay, although I didn’t know his name then, and I was angry at Dale Malone, and I was angry with God. :You rose again,: I told him, :but where are they? They will not come back.: 

Jesus came back three days later; Mary Magdalene saw him in the gardens—but he told her, of all things, Touch me not.

***

This is not really a blog about God. It is a post about mourning, and about death, and about dead women especially. If I believe that a man named Jesus rose from the dead, I cannot leave him on the cross. And if I believe in the resurrection, then I cannot leave these women in the earth.

So I have made a playlist, partially for Chelsea Bruck, partially for my friend, partially for all women my age who are murdered or who make a dumb mistake or whose bodies fail them. It is for the women who mourn them too.

But mostly, this playlist is for the people of a Baptist church down in Arkansas, for keeping a girl I once knew warm in the darkest part of the night.

Atque in perpetuum ave

A Light Shines in the Darkness, and the Dark has Not Overcome It

 http://8tracks.com/yesterdaystoday/forever-hail

1. I Will Never Die—Delta Rae

Wrap your roots all around my bones

And when they come for me, when they call my name

Cast my shadow like a bellow’s flame

2. In the Shadows—Amy Stroup

Silhouette against the wall

Lit up by the white moon

Will I run and wake at dawn

3. Chrysanthemum—Everclear

Five months gone and all I got

Pretty pink flowers on a chain link fence

And I don’t like what it means ’cause I know there is more to come

4. I Will Follow You Into the Dark (for Ashlie Gough)—Amanda Palmer (Cover)

The soles of our shoes are all worn down

The time for sleep is now

It’s nothing to cry about

’Cause we’ll hold each other soon

In the darkest of rooms

5. You—Keaton Henson

If you must mourn, my love,

Mourn with the moon and the stars up above

               . . .

And if you must die

Remember your life 

6. Saturn—Sleeping at Last

You taught me the courage of stars before you left

How light carries on endlessly, even after death…

How rare and beautiful it is to even exist

7. Remember Me—Thomas Bergersen

(Instrumental)

8. Dance in the Graveyards—Delta Rae

When I die

I don’t want to rest in peace

I want to dance in joy

I want to dance in the graveyards

9. Lost and Found—Katie Herzig

Oh, I’m afraid of the world I’m in

One day I will see Heaven’s reach

I’ll find the one who left me sleeping

10. I Believe—Christina Perri

Hold on—I am still alive

This is not the end of me

This is the beginning