I have been watching Dollhouse at a remarkable pace. Halfway into the second season (or 3/4 through what would have been a regular season of another show) I come to a question that has been asked many times before.
Why would Fox keep cancelling Joss Whedon's series?* I have heard the theories. The suits at Fox are idiots, the common theory runs. With Firefly, and then Dollhouse, their increasingly atrophied senses of taste responded to masterful storytelling as the deepest of cave fungi respond to the light of the sun. It was terrible and incomprehensible to them, so they sought to extinguish it.
Well, that theodicy satisfies some geeks, but in my paranoid ramblings I've come to a theory of my own. And I'm going to lay it on you after the jump.
Warning: This is probably going to contain vague spoilers for Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, Firefly, Serenity, and the first season of Dollhouse. But then, if I'm right, it could contain spoilers for everything.
Showing posts with label villainy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label villainy. Show all posts
Tuesday, September 3, 2013
Saturday, June 15, 2013
Cyborg zombies are still the best cyborgs, and the best zombies
I feel like I should apologize for last week's weaksauce post. I've actually felt a little guilty about every non-robot pageview I've gotten this week; I'm sad because I disappointed all the humans and wasted their time. Not that I should get into the habit of apologizing to the internet.
As I said before, I've gotten back to watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I haven't been exercising the kind of arc discipline that I would have used watching Buffy or The Walking Dead, but ST:TNG doesn't enforce that kind of linearity the same way, either. It's actually kind of weird going back to an older show like this, after watching so many more recent dramas driven by season-long plot arcs, and find it of little consequence what order I watch the episodes in. The show's cozy status quo is as quaint as its 4:3 aspect ratio.
We skipped to Season 2, and skipped some of the lamer episodes there (though we blundered headlong into The Child, perhaps the lamest episode of them all!), and then on a whim jumped a season from the Borg's first appearance to "Best of Both Worlds."
It was interesting to watch the show face down futility, in light of the bleak, modern fare I've been watching. The relentless pressure of the apocalypse makes for good television, but not varied television. When TNG put the human race in danger, or seriously threatened a main character's life, it was special. (Though it occurred to me that if Joss Whedon had been at the helm, he would have had Jonathan Frakes re-record "Space... the final frontier" for Part 2.) TNG may only have visited the place where Battlestar Galactica lived, but I appropriately get the sense of the Enterprise actually flying around the galaxy from one kind of adventure to another.
I loved the Borg as a villain when I was young, and the way they were on TNG will always be the way they "really" are to me--before the Borg Queen deflated the ominous hivemind, before they got demystified and played out and tenderized. Looking back, it's actually interesting to see how much of what defined them wasn't there in their first appearance in "Q Who?" The words "Resistance is futile" were yet to be uttered. Assimilation was not mentioned or hinted at--I didn't even realize until Girlfriend pointed it out, but when [spoilers], that's actually the first indication that they have that ability. It makes me wonder if the writers knew what they had back in Season 2, or if they even had it, or if they only came up with the most important elements later.
The contrast between "Q Who?" and "Best of Both Worlds" is informative. Perhaps most importantly, the former spends about half its time telling us how scared we should be of the Borg. The latter spends its time better by having them do progressively scarier things, and giving the characters some time to be scared. It's a lesson I hope I can remember if I ever have as good an idea to work with.
As I said before, I've gotten back to watching Star Trek: The Next Generation. I haven't been exercising the kind of arc discipline that I would have used watching Buffy or The Walking Dead, but ST:TNG doesn't enforce that kind of linearity the same way, either. It's actually kind of weird going back to an older show like this, after watching so many more recent dramas driven by season-long plot arcs, and find it of little consequence what order I watch the episodes in. The show's cozy status quo is as quaint as its 4:3 aspect ratio.
We skipped to Season 2, and skipped some of the lamer episodes there (though we blundered headlong into The Child, perhaps the lamest episode of them all!), and then on a whim jumped a season from the Borg's first appearance to "Best of Both Worlds."
It was interesting to watch the show face down futility, in light of the bleak, modern fare I've been watching. The relentless pressure of the apocalypse makes for good television, but not varied television. When TNG put the human race in danger, or seriously threatened a main character's life, it was special. (Though it occurred to me that if Joss Whedon had been at the helm, he would have had Jonathan Frakes re-record "Space... the final frontier" for Part 2.) TNG may only have visited the place where Battlestar Galactica lived, but I appropriately get the sense of the Enterprise actually flying around the galaxy from one kind of adventure to another.
I loved the Borg as a villain when I was young, and the way they were on TNG will always be the way they "really" are to me--before the Borg Queen deflated the ominous hivemind, before they got demystified and played out and tenderized. Looking back, it's actually interesting to see how much of what defined them wasn't there in their first appearance in "Q Who?" The words "Resistance is futile" were yet to be uttered. Assimilation was not mentioned or hinted at--I didn't even realize until Girlfriend pointed it out, but when [spoilers], that's actually the first indication that they have that ability. It makes me wonder if the writers knew what they had back in Season 2, or if they even had it, or if they only came up with the most important elements later.
The contrast between "Q Who?" and "Best of Both Worlds" is informative. Perhaps most importantly, the former spends about half its time telling us how scared we should be of the Borg. The latter spends its time better by having them do progressively scarier things, and giving the characters some time to be scared. It's a lesson I hope I can remember if I ever have as good an idea to work with.
Sunday, February 3, 2013
On villainy
Last night I watched the 1996 movie version of The Crucible, which prompted me to read parts of the play. Girlfriend's edition of The Crucible has something that I think was missing from whatever edition I (think I) read back in high school: long digressions by Arthur Miller on the characters and his research. While my reading of plays is admittedly limited, I don't know of anything to parallel The Crucible for the length, depth, or digressiveness of its character descriptions. When Reverend Hale comes on the scene, for example, Miller dispatches the character's physical description in one sentence, his history and personality in four more, and then goes on for three additional pages about the idea of the Devil as a political tool.
But in the spirit of such digressions, I'm using this as an excuse to talk about something else. The very first character description in The Crucible set me thinking in this particular direction: it was the description of Reverend Parris, that "In history he cut a villainous path, and there is very little good to be said for him." (On the subject of that "very little good," the text is silent; we learn instead about the bad rest of him.) It got me thinking about the construction of good villains.
Parris isn't the villain of The Crucible, but he doesn't come off well, and Miller makes no effort to soften the blow. It is a problem, I think; I believe I am against the portrayal of evil people with no good at all in them. This isn't to say that a work of art should contort itself to show a glimmer of goodness in every evil character, but to look behind the curtain and see that Miller saw nothing positive in him gives me the sense that his conception of the character was lacking.
Oh, yes, pick a fight with Arthur Miller, why don't I?
Well it's not really about him, but this mostly reminded me that there has been something good, or at the very least pitiably human, in every villain who has really affected me. Sometimes it is a very small thing, but it creates depth--I would go so far as to say that it allows horror.
As is often the case, I go to movies for my examples. I first noticed this effect in the 2007 version of 3:10 to Yuma, in the character of Charlie Prince; he was violent, sadistic, thoroughly amoral, and loyal with a purity that touched on innocence. I thought at the time that it was the ability to be hurt that made him stick in my mind, and that was part of it, but not all.
As I said, it allows horror. A villain who is merely a force is immune to judgment, like a natural disaster. We need the glimmer of good in order to register that it is a human doing the villainous deeds in a story.
A good villain is both evil and imposing (with regard to the protagonists). The necessary opposite faces of these elements are good and pathos. Without them a villain is hollow from behind.
Hence we have Darth Vader's paternal impulses and physical disfigurement. Hence we have Heath Ledger's Joker unconsciously tonguing his scars. (I search my memory for some sign of good in him, and can only think of his rationalizations. He claims to be seeking after some sort of truth; contrast with Bane in the following movie, who accomplishes similar kinds of terror but with explicitly sadistic intent.)
"What about Iago?" a certain sort of person might challenge. "He is evil without good or pathos, and considered to be the greatest villain ever set down."
"I disagree," I would say to this imaginary person who I created for the sole purpose of disagreeing with him. I would patiently explain how it is the mystery of Iago's motivation, not its absence, that seizes the imagination. Iago has values, he has a grievance, and he has a motivation. We are interested in him because we know these things; if we discovered that he wasn't, in fact, human, I suspect that we as an audience would lose interest.
(Meanwhile, as I write this, the Superbowl has apparently stopped because the lights went out. Speaking of losing interest.)
A last point on the subject is that I don't think the ideas of "good" and "evil" are very useful in creating compelling characters. Not to say that I prefer a grey-and-grey moral universe to a black-and-white one (not least because the greys tend to darken until the morality is black-and-black). But perhaps it is better to regard characters as "virtuous" and "vicious." The question of virtue and vice shouldn't be wholly detached from what side of the story the character falls on, but it represents a whole lot of continuums.
But in the spirit of such digressions, I'm using this as an excuse to talk about something else. The very first character description in The Crucible set me thinking in this particular direction: it was the description of Reverend Parris, that "In history he cut a villainous path, and there is very little good to be said for him." (On the subject of that "very little good," the text is silent; we learn instead about the bad rest of him.) It got me thinking about the construction of good villains.
Parris isn't the villain of The Crucible, but he doesn't come off well, and Miller makes no effort to soften the blow. It is a problem, I think; I believe I am against the portrayal of evil people with no good at all in them. This isn't to say that a work of art should contort itself to show a glimmer of goodness in every evil character, but to look behind the curtain and see that Miller saw nothing positive in him gives me the sense that his conception of the character was lacking.
Oh, yes, pick a fight with Arthur Miller, why don't I?
Well it's not really about him, but this mostly reminded me that there has been something good, or at the very least pitiably human, in every villain who has really affected me. Sometimes it is a very small thing, but it creates depth--I would go so far as to say that it allows horror.
As is often the case, I go to movies for my examples. I first noticed this effect in the 2007 version of 3:10 to Yuma, in the character of Charlie Prince; he was violent, sadistic, thoroughly amoral, and loyal with a purity that touched on innocence. I thought at the time that it was the ability to be hurt that made him stick in my mind, and that was part of it, but not all.
As I said, it allows horror. A villain who is merely a force is immune to judgment, like a natural disaster. We need the glimmer of good in order to register that it is a human doing the villainous deeds in a story.
A good villain is both evil and imposing (with regard to the protagonists). The necessary opposite faces of these elements are good and pathos. Without them a villain is hollow from behind.
Hence we have Darth Vader's paternal impulses and physical disfigurement. Hence we have Heath Ledger's Joker unconsciously tonguing his scars. (I search my memory for some sign of good in him, and can only think of his rationalizations. He claims to be seeking after some sort of truth; contrast with Bane in the following movie, who accomplishes similar kinds of terror but with explicitly sadistic intent.)
"What about Iago?" a certain sort of person might challenge. "He is evil without good or pathos, and considered to be the greatest villain ever set down."
"I disagree," I would say to this imaginary person who I created for the sole purpose of disagreeing with him. I would patiently explain how it is the mystery of Iago's motivation, not its absence, that seizes the imagination. Iago has values, he has a grievance, and he has a motivation. We are interested in him because we know these things; if we discovered that he wasn't, in fact, human, I suspect that we as an audience would lose interest.
(Meanwhile, as I write this, the Superbowl has apparently stopped because the lights went out. Speaking of losing interest.)
A last point on the subject is that I don't think the ideas of "good" and "evil" are very useful in creating compelling characters. Not to say that I prefer a grey-and-grey moral universe to a black-and-white one (not least because the greys tend to darken until the morality is black-and-black). But perhaps it is better to regard characters as "virtuous" and "vicious." The question of virtue and vice shouldn't be wholly detached from what side of the story the character falls on, but it represents a whole lot of continuums.
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