#But there's a way to do it that's not condescending and pandering and they failed so hard to hit that mark

[thessaralka]

literally every dragon age game has led to the solavellan ending for me. i just replayed the entire series this year and i now want to do it again 😂 they all had deep impact on veilguard. morrigan, varric, the inquisitor. bioware did such a good job.

I'm extremely critical about taash's line where they literally say "I'm a person not a woman". That was a disgusting way to phrase that and the fact that it went through so many hands and made it to the final game without one person going "wait this sounds bad" is very weird to me. Taash also equates womanhood with wearing dresses and whatnot which is very strange bc women and femininity are NOT the same thing. I do understand what message was being sent, that taash believes they are neither man nor woman, but a neutral actor (I was on Tumblr in 2014 I lived thru and helped craft the forging of non-binary identity politics, as a former sjw, and briefly identified as nb before I realized it was based in me equating womanhood with femininity and that me being a woman has nothing to do with me being feminine or masculine or both), but that was straight up pandering and insulting. there was also another message being sent that women and people are different that went over the heads of the writers and devs and I'm very surprised that even made it in the game because it is vile.

But it wasn't enjoyment breaking for me and thankfully I was able to give the devs grace citing ignorance, and still enjoyed taash's character a fuck ton.

[utilitycaster]

The above actually serves a great example of why I think it sucks. As you say, there are ways to have the players learn of a distant pirate ship through in-game means that allows them to act. If you say "by the way, your characters can't see it but there's a pirate ship 5 miles away" then that's absolutely useless. It is a waste of your players' time. If you say "a watchtower above the city focusing on the sea raises an alarm" that gives your players something to do and builds far more tension in a much more elegant manner - they don't know what's happening, so they have to find out. There are exceptions to "show don't tell" but fewer than people think.

If one cannot set tone in an actual play through a third person limited POV, then I believe one's focus should be on learning how to do so effectively rather than breaking out of it. I find this takes me as an audience member further out of the story. I feel simultaneously condescended and pandered too at worst; or as if the storyteller is being lazy at best.

Similarly, the problem with Otohan is that she's not a real person. She's a pretend person. I care about real people even if they aren't interesting, because being boring to me isn't a reason to want a real person to die. In narrative? It 100% is. If you do not make a character's motivations clear - and you can do this in a single scene, and Matt frequently does - I have no reason to give a shit. This isn't a charity case and this isn't a 7th grade writing project, and Otohan was a character who was executed exceptionally poorly on a narrative level. I used the examples I did specifically because I know that both Matt and Brennan are capable of establishing character motivations or narrative tension with incredible skill, and these are cases where they very much failed to do so. Which is fine, to be clear, because we all make mistakes, but I do very much consider these missteps, and I as always find that when I'm writing an extensive piece about something I felt was poorly executed, little makes me more assured in my opinion (already one I feel pretty firmly, if I go to the effort to write this much) more than some bland and generic platitudes in favor of the benefit of the doubt.

(the owl example is fine as a broad scene-setting for the audience and because it's just flavor to introduce the story. The second your PCs enter the stage? it's their POV or bust. Run an interlude with different PCs if you want to expand the world, or have your characters pick up a broadsheet or something. If they don't see (or hear, or otherwise sense it) neither does the audience.)

I listened to the WBN Fireside on my way to work and there were two things Brennan said, one of which stood out to me as something I really agree with and one of which I really disagree with so I figured I'd make this post (the disagreement one) first and then the agreement one.

The latest episode of WBN had a scene that the characters were not present for nor viewing in any way. It was recorded without their knowledge, though they did listen to it when the episode came out, and on the Fireside Brennan said that such scenes should be used quite sparingly, given the nature of actual play, but (and I apologize, I haven't relistened and the transcripts aren't out) because the antagonists aren't present where the PCs are, it's useful at times to have a scene to keep them in the narrative for the audience.

I firmly disagree. I think that while it's true that actual play has a limited POV (if the characters don't see it, you don't see it), I have, in a lot of actual play fandom, never once seen a situation when it added to the story. Granted, WBN is ongoing, so I may eat my words here, but I am doubtful for a number of reasons.

Speaking as one small fraction of the audience, I am in possession of narrative object permanence. I do not in fact assume that when the PCs are in one part of the world, the rest of it grinds to a halt. In fact, something that skilled GMs do (including, frankly, Brennan himself most of the time) is quietly advance the plans of people who are offscreen. This is also not abnormal for the genre. Lord of the Rings has multiple POVs at different times, but never that of an antagonist; we learn of this through rumors, espionage, and Gandalf's retellings. Sprawling epics like A Song of Ice and Fire or the Stormlight Archives or the Wheel of Time make use of a wide range of third person limited viewpoints as well, not all aligned, but we don't see every move by every faction (and frankly, as a fan of that kind of book...I still think most of them could leave a bit more on the cutting room floor). Limited third person POV is not a weakness of Actual Play; I'd argue it is both a strength and a requirement. The story is driven by the player characters, and they cannot act on something they do not see.*

I'd also add that in this very specific situation, the audience saw the subject of the cutscene, The Man in Black, literally three episodes ago, which was a day ago in-game. He was brought up extensively in the discussion two episodes ago. If someone forgot? That's on them. We have not gone months and months without him making an appearance. I do think it's possible for villains to be poorly developed because they do not cross the paths of the characters enough (this is, as many of the people reading this likely know, a blog that loves to dunk on the cardboard-like nature of Otohan Thull's virtually nonexistent personality and motivations) but The Man in Black is sufficiently a banger of an antagonist as to not be so easily forgotten.

Finally, and this might just be me, but because I know how Actual Play and D&D work, I must admit the second I realized this was a no-PC cut scene I found it pretty hard to pay attention. In fact, it did the opposite of what was intended. Instead of eagerly awaiting news of how The Man in Black was waging war, filtered through whatever information Suvi, Eursulon, and Ame could obtain, I was zoning out while he talked. I think part of why I like Actual Play is that it usually leaves me, even with 4 hour episodes, wanting more. Cut scenes leave me wishing the cut scene hadn't happened.

*brief tangent: this doesn't, in my opinion, apply to the scenes in Downfall that the viewer sees but which weren't captured in the Occultus Thalamus. The story of Downfall is ultimately a story about the gods - they are the PCs - and the dramatic irony enhances the story-within-a-story aspect. It's important to the audience understanding of the gods to see the whole thing, and it's a valid choice that Bells Hells only see what occurred while the avatars were physically in Aeor. It does, however, apply to contemporaneous happenings in Worlds Beyond Number.

**This also doesn't apply to long DM monologues in the presence of players. The C3 solstice scene has been compared to a cut scene, but actually it's important that Bells Hells sees it. If one of the Wizard, Witch, or Wild One had managed to find a way to, even at a low level, scry or similarly learn of the Man in Black's doings? I wouldn't have minded it. I adore the Hakea vision scene. It's specifically that I'm in fact here to see what the characters see.

[sokkastyles]

Something I've been thinking about lately is people talking about abuse in atla and pointing to Zuko's scar as the most obvious example, but as someone who is required to know quite a bit about child psychology and abuse, Ozai burning his son was never what made me recognize the relationship as abusive.

I've seen (and engaged in) a lot of discussions about how atla shows different kinds of abuse, and how some of it is more subtle than others. And as much as I do enjoy analyzing the show from that perspective, I think we forget sometimes that this is a show meant for kids, and although I have seen some criticism in that regard that some of the abuses are portrayed too subtly, (e.g., the endless discussions of Azula's abuse vs Zuko's) we forget that children aren't necessarily watching the show and seeing it through that lens. Even the most obvious example of Ozai scarring his son, though called out as wrong, is not called abuse in the narrative. I'm not saying it isn't meant to be interpreted that way, but I don't think it's necessarily meant to be interpreted that way by the kids in the audience. Ozai scars his son, but he's also the bad guy. A child watching the show is likely not going to interpret this event the same way as an adult.

I think the writers did intend for the adults and older kids watching to recognize it as abuse, but for me, what makes it abuse isn't necessarily the violence, which, though extreme, is typical for the fantasy setting, even normalized in-story within the bounds of Fire Nation culture.

What makes me recognize it as abuse was always what was behind the actions. The power dynamics at play, the way Ozai talks to and about his son, the way he manipulates him and puts him into a position where he cannot fight back but also blames himself for being hurt. The way he makes him believe in his own worthlessness and internalize the abuse. I also recognize these things in the way Ozai treats Azula, who is a victim of her father's abuse as well. And that's also why I say Azula abuses Zuko, not because they fight each other in a fantasy setting, but because of the way she talks to and about him vs the way he talks to and about her, the way he interacts with her, and the way she makes him feel. The way she constantly puts him down in a way that renders him helpless to fight back in the same way, and uses that to manipulate him, especially when we have those echoes of how their father treated them both.

Kids aren't necessarily going to pick up on that because they aren't meant to, but atla was also written with adults in mind and that's one of the things that gives it such universal appeal. Just because you maybe didn't pick up on things the first go around doesn't mean that the show is engaging in abuse apologism. It's a sign of multilayered writing.

Writing for both kids and adults is tricky, it's a market that a lot of writers aim for these days, because companies recognize that while marketing to kids gets money in the bank, it's keeping their parents hooked that is where the real profit is. But so many writers fail to understand how to maintain this balance. As an adult, I feel even more condescended to watching kids' media that is clearly trying to pander to me at the expense of their child audience than I do watching something made for kids that didn't have me in mind at all. Atla did something special though, and that's why we're talking about it fifteen years later, by entwining its darker themes with its kid friendly narrative.

Even with Azula, though her abuse narrative is subtle, even a more simplistic reading of her character doesn't render her unsympathetic. It's pretty clear that the narrative is building from her first introduction in "The Avatar State," where she is criticized by Lo and Li for having one hair out of place, and then declares that almost perfect isn't good enough, towards a realization that being on the side of the baddies is going to bring her unhappiness in the end. It's a pretty standard moral for a kid's show, but it makes her something of a sympathetic villain because we can easily pick up on that she's trying really hard to fulfill a role she thinks she has to fill, which also parallels her brother's narrative.

Kids don't necessarily have all the knowledge to understand abuse the way adults do but they do understand these things. And I think we do them discredit to assume that everything in the narrative has to hit as hard and unsubtle as a hammer, especially when it comes to adult topics that kids not old enough to pick up on the more subtle themes aren't going to appreciate anyway. That's not what they're watching for.

As an example, I've seen some pushback lately against Zuko confronting Ozai in Day of Black Sun, because as an abuse narrative, it's really a bad move to have Zuko try and force his abuser into a confession while he is not safe from him. I've even seen some suggestion that kids watching might get the idea that they, too, should confront violent abusers, when of course the best thing to do is to get as far away as safely as possible.

The problem with this is that it assumes that kids that young are watching the show thinking about it that way, when they're mostly thinking about the heroics of Zuko confronting the bad guy with swords in his hands before finally becoming the hero we want him to be.

Adults and older teens watching might think more about the abuse narrative, about a son confronting his father and possibly hoping for some recognition from the man he loved that he was hurt by him, will see Zuko's fear at confronting his father, his rage and sadness and tears, and recognize also that Zuko is not safe and that ultimately, Zuko does put himself in danger and doesn't get the true closure that he wanted, as his father only gloats and justifies and tries to play on Zuko's emotions before finally trying to kill him.

It's also worth noting that Zuko does take precautions to make himself safe. There's a reason he waits until the eclipse to have that conversation with his father, when his father is powerless, and counts on Aang and the others arriving as backup, and still goes armed and ready for a fight. For all that the abuse narrative is present, it still takes place in a fantasy setting, and the confrontation can only happen in larger than life circumstances.

I keep thinking about that post about how morals in kids shows tend to follow logic of what a kid could concievably do. Zim has to wear his seatbelt while he fires the death ray. Zuko confronting his father is an action that takes place and could only happen within the fantasy setting. Zuko doesn't kill his father because the moral is supposed to be that you should be the bigger person. The moral is not supposed to be that you should always confront abusers or that confrontation is necessary to get closure, and I think that's reading too much into the narrative from a perspective not intended by the show.

Similarly, the moral of Azula's downfall is not supposed to be that if your abuser makes you feel like you are a monster (as abusers often do), you can never get help. It's that behaving badly has consequences, that striving to be perfect often alienates you from others, and that no one is inherently better than anyone else and that everyone deserves compassion, and that manipution and control are not good ways to treat people around you and will ultimately leave you unhappy and unfulfilled.

[night-unfurls-its-splendour]

The Critique of Manners: Part III

~Or~

A Somewhat Indecisive Review of “Emma” (Miramax, 1996)

I have a feeling this review is gonna be a little harder for me to write. Everyone knows that recaps and reviews are most entertaining when the writer has an intense dislike (or intense feeling of any kind) for the drama they’re reviewing. It falls to other writers to pan or praise this film as they will, but I simply don’t have many particularly strong feelings about it at all. I have neither that repulsed dislike for this movie such as I did for Emma 1997, nor that disappointed frustration as for certain aspects of Emma. 2020, but neither do I have a deep, profound love and appreciation for it as I do for Emma 2009.  

Written and Directed by American Screenwriter, director and actor, Douglas McGrath, Emma (1996) is rather what one expects it to be: a 90’s romance film. Perhaps it’s because I had expectations due to the era in which it was made, but I think I have a tendency to excuse some of the problems with this film. There are many unnecessary additions (for comedy’s sake usually and often quite cringe-y) and one definitely can’t claim that the dialogue hasn’t been tampered with. I don’t normally side with the “I do so miss Austen’s biting wit” crowd but, by ‘eck I felt it this time. That’s because Austen’s Biting Wit™ just doesn’t suit a fluffy 90’s chick flick (which this film is in a way that other big screen Austen adaptations of the time just aren’t – and I think approaching this film from the 90’s chick flick perspective is probably the best way to digest it.) This version, more than any other (except perhaps 2009) brings the concept of Emma-as-Matchmaker to the fore with a particular emphasis precisely because it’s a concept that fits well with the rom-com style of filmmaking used here.

The bones of this review, like my review for the ITV version, were written six years ago following my initial viewing only a select number of portions survive from that review (which is still on IMDb).

As with all my reviews I'll be comparing the script, characterizations and plot to the book and commenting on the authenticity and attractiveness of the costumes, and suitability of the houses and sets.

Let’s dive in.

Cast & Characterization

Emma is arguably the easiest of Austen’s works to read because of Emma’s generally good (if condescending and overly self-confident) character, and Mr. Knightley’s sober, mature but exceedingly pleasant manner. I had my doubts about Gwyneth Paltrow playing an Austen heroine, but I at least had faith in Jeremy Northam’s ability to portray the mature Mr. Knightly. My expectations were not entirely disappointed in either case.

My prevailing feeling about this film is that it’s not so much set in Jane Austen’s Regency England, but in an American fantasy of what Regency England was like. Perhaps the biggest factor that reinforces this impression is (of course) the casting choice for our leading lady, Gwyneth Paltrow.

Freckled, ruddy and thin as a twig, Gwyenth didn’t quite, to my mind, fit the physical description of Emma, who is supposed to be “The picture of health” according to Mrs. Weston. Add to this the Regency beauty ideal of a soft and shapely figure with regular features. Fair hair was generally preferred (and I have always imagined Emma as blond, although I’m given to understand that Austen’s idea of pretty generally favored dark hair), so I can’t fault Gwynnie there. What I can fault though is her so-so British accent.

I recently learned that the reason McGrath thought Paltrow would be a good choice was because she’s the only Texan he’d ever met who’d managed to entirely throw off her native accent; I guess he decided that if she could do that she could do any accent work? I guess? Seems questionable to me.

You know Joely Richardson was considered for this part? Gorgeous, refined (British) GODDESS Joely Richardson was passed over because Gwyenth managed to shake an embarrassing accent.

I hate American directors.

I’m not sure if it’s just part of the accent, or her attempt to sound upper class, but on this most recent re-watch it hit me for the first time how very nasal many of her line deliveries are. She also has this problem with looking (and sounding) sort of vapid and… just what is happening here?

Is she having a stroke at the end there?

A bigger problem than Emma’s casting, however, is her characterization.

Part of the above mentioned script tampering is in lockstep with some of the issues with Emma’s characterization here. Her very teenager-esque swings from vowing to never make another match again to immediately trying to think of another guy to set Harriet up with, and her getting carried away in potential scenarios “But if he seems sad I shall know that John has advised him not to marry Harriet! I love John! Or he may seem sad because he fears telling me he will marry my friend. How could John let him do that? I hate John!” (Especially when you never even really get to meet John Knightley in this version? Ugh, pass me with this shit) is so bizarrely childish it’s a little hard to stomach. She spends the movie going back and forth between mature and manipulative to childish and naïve and it just… doesn’t work for me.  Emma can be all of these things but the transition from one extreme to another here seems a bit disjointed to me.

Knightley was a bit of a disappointment to me in this version. That’s not Jeremy Northam’s fault because I can’t think of a better choice they could have made. McGrath showed much better judgment with his choice for Mr. Knightley than he did with Emma.

My biggest problem with this interpretation was how laid back he was when he was supposed to chastising Emma. Their quarrels became more like mere disagreements so the proposal line of lecturing her and her bearing it as no other woman would have isn’t entirely earned. Even in the big scene at Box Hill where Knightley is really supposed to lay into Emma, he starts off pretty solidly, but by the end so doe-eyed and apologetic it fails to deliver the sting of rebuke that is Emma’s biggest learning moment in the story. Perhaps they were trying to go for a more disappointed feel (the kind that makes you feel worse than being shouted at because you really respect the person you let down) but it just didn’t come through for me.

Also of note is the fact that, (I assume) because John Knightley isn’t really allowed time to be a character in this film, McGrath took some of John’s introverted tendencies and transplanted them into his more convivial older brother (“I just want to stay home, where it’s cozy.” – I mean I feel that, but this isn’t something George Knightley would say.) 

Onto the less central characters

I question also the choice of Toni Colette for Harriet Smith. I mean I actually liked her performance more on this watch than previously but I just don’t think she’s pretty enough for Harriet, and she looks a bit clumsy (though that might have more to do with her costumes.)

I also noted that McGrath bumps Harriet’s comprehension skills up just a scooch. Emma never has to explain the “Courtship” riddle to her, Harriet figures it out on her own after a while, while she never manages to in the book.

Now we come to the crux of Jane Fairfax, played by Polly Walker. I don’t care for this choice. My issue is the simple fact that she just isn’t believable to me as a demure, wronged character like Jane Fairfax. Seriously she looks like she would sooner throw Frank across the room than take his cruel teasing, and not in the subtle way that Olivia Williams managed to. They never even utilized her by including some of Jane’s more pointed returns to Frank’s jabs, which they even managed to squeeze into the massively cut down TV movie.    

Speaking of Frank; Ewan McGregor, though generally delightful, was so under-used. Frank and Jane’s plotline always kind of gets shafted in Theatrical release adaptations of this story. It’s not as bad here as it is in say, the 2020 adaptation (they were in that version so little I actually forgot what their actors looked like), but it’s still pretty stunted.

I find it interesting that Ewan McGregor himself thinks his performance in this movie isn’t good; and I’ll agree it’s not his best (certainly it’s no Obi-wan Kenobi) but I thought he did a pretty good job with obviously unfamiliar material

Also if the Davies screenplay of ’97 made Frank’s character too caddish, I think this version didn’t make him caddish enough. I mean he’s hardly around enough to really develop his flirtation with Emma, and they merged Strawberry Picking and Box Hill into one sequence so we never see Frank’s ill humors. I can perhaps excuse this, since it seems like a nuanced story really wasn’t what McGrath was going for here, I think. This is a lite version of the story; schmaltzy fluff for teenage girls’ movie nights. Frank’s ill humors wouldn’t really have fit the tone of this version at all.

Interestingly enough, though it’s taken me a long time to make this decision, I think Alan Cumming might be the definitive Elton? He’s the only one who doesn’t immediately read as a slime ball from the get go. I mean he’s got all the warning signs that Austen wrote into him, but no more than that. He’s not slinking about greasily or obviously pandering (at first), so Emma’s uneasy realization of what’s really happening here isn’t a hundred miles behind the viewer’s (maybe just fifty).

There are as many Mrs. Eltons out there as there are adaptations of this story, and they’re all pretty great (funky accents aside), but other than the 1997 take, this one might be the least great to me. She’s not nearly pushy enough, because Mrs. Elton would never let Emma prompt the conversation when she could do it herself.

  Also, I think McGrath misunderstands Mrs. Elton’s brand of New Money vulgarity. He has her talking with her mouthful, clanking her utensils on her plate as she eats, putting biscuits which she’s bitten into back onto communal plates, which I think even Mrs. Elton would know not to do. Table manners are pretty basic; the couth that Mrs. Elton lacks is of a more nuanced social kind – for instance, what is and isn’t considered gauche to talk about (like how big one’s brother in law’s house is or how many horses he keeps.)

(A sudden thought has just occurred to me: is Mrs. Elton just a more mean-spirited Hyacinth Bucket from Keeping Up Appearances? “It’s meh sister, Mrs. Suckling! That’s right, the one with an estate in Warwickshire and the two barouche landaus!”)

Sophie Thompson’s Miss Bates is chatty and one of better takes on the character, but lack of necessary background hinders her impact on Emma’s story. The comedy in her scenes is some of the best and actually made me laugh, although I think she was just way too giggly.

Miss Bates’s mother, Mrs. Bates, is played by Sophie Thompson’s real-life mother Phyllida Law in a completely coincidental quirk of casting. (I noted in this film how very much Emma Thompson, Sophie’s older sister looks like their mother.)

My only other serious issue with characterization in this adaptation is the representation of Mr. Woodhouse. He is somehow simultaneously more cheery and more disagreeable than he is in the book. His chiding about the cake at the Weston’s wedding seems more like a scolding rather than an anxious admonishment. In one of the first scenes, during Mr. Woodhouse’s “Poor Miss Taylor” speech, he says he cannot understand why she would want to give up her comfortable life with himself and Emma, to have “mewling children who bring the threat of disease every time they enter or leave the house,” and he says this IN FRONT OF ONE OF HIS TWO DAUGHTERS.

Of course in the book, Mr. Woodhouse does lament Miss Taylor marrying, leaving and even having children – but this is all in the context of the danger childbirth presents to Miss Taylor (And the fact that he can’t stand losing a companion). These are his complaints – not the children themselves. In addition, his elder daughter has quite a fine number of children, all of them very young, of whom Mr. Woodhouse is very fond. He’s a character that needs to be carefully handled because, much like his daughter, it’s very easy for him to become unlikeable.

For the rest of the time, though, he just sort of cheerily laughs and is very at ease, when Mr. Woodhouse, as a chronic hypochondriac should be made anxious by just about everything.

Sets & Surroundings

One thing I find interesting about this adaptation is that the houses they chose to use are all of a very neo-classical Palladian style, which I believe (given her disdain for the contemporary trend of knocking down England’s great houses just to rebuild them in a more fashionable style) Austen may have disliked to some degree.

One such house is Came House in Dorset, which was used as the Woodhouse’s estate, Hartfield. Now Hartfield is, I think, described as a well-built modern house so this could be pretty accurate (although Modern could refer to the red bring, boxy style of Georgian architecture, such as the houses used in the 1997, 2009 and 1972 versions.)

Another, Claydon House in Buckinghamshire played the role of Donwell Abbey. I think this might be the worst exterior ever used for Donwell, from a book accuracy perspective. Utterly Georgian, with its’ square façade, Claydon house sort of directly contradicts Austen description of being “Larger than Hartfield, and totally unlike it, covering a good deal of ground, rambling and irregular…” not only is the architecture totally wrong, so is its’ situation, in Georgian fashion, perched on a hill, when Donwell (a very old building) is supposed to be “Low and sheltered”.

Mapperton House is maybe the grandest house yet used for Mr. Weston’s Randalls (I’ve already covered in my review of Emma (2020) why this is a problem – although in this version, as in the 1997 adaptation, there’s no full panic over the snow, so this is less of a problem, but a house like this is still too grand for the reasonably sized Randalls of the book), but it fits the usual 15th-16th century house type that always seems to be used for Randalls.

A myriad of other great houses were used for interiors, however other than Crichel House (Dorset), which was used for Donwell’s interiors, I can’t find information on which ones where used for what. They include Breakspear House (Harefield), Coker Court (Somerset), Stafford House (Staffordshire) and Syon House & Park (Middlesex).

I really appreciate the interiors which were all very colorful and even included doors and molding painted the same color as the walls which is a very Georgian decorating convention, although it looks odd to the modern viewer.

Costumes & Hair

As a rule, the costumes (Created by Ruth Myers) in this movie are pretty damn good, composition wise, but the arrangement leaves a lot to be desired. Myers talked extensively of wanting the costumes to be colorful and bright like the water colors of the time, which she achieved brilliantly. What I find funny is that she talked about using color as if it would be controversial from a historical accuracy point of view, which couldn’t be further from the truth.

The evening wear is generally excellent

My only question around evening wear here is… what’s up with the waistline on Harriet’s ball gown? Why is it going up in the middle? Toni Collette (who actually gained weight for the role, since Harriet was described as “Reubenesque”) verged on looking a little dumpy throughout the film and awkwardly bumping up her waistline in the middle really didn’t help.

I’m pleased to report that is is the one version where Miss Bates’s evening-wear is allowed to look like evening wear. Even Maiden Aunts wore shorter sleeves and lower necklines at dinner or balls. They fussed her up with some lace gloves and frilly fichus but it follows the conventions of the time. I appreciate that immensely, though I have the sneaking suspicion that it’s because of Sophie Thompson’s age.

At 37 Thompson was an unconventionally young choice for Miss Bates, a character who previously had only been cast as older than 50 (Prunella Scales, who would play the role later in 1996, was 64). Indeed, Douglas McGrath almost passed Thompson over for the role on account of her age, but reconsidered after seeing her in spectacles. It seems possible to me that since Thompson was considered young they dressed her “young” as well.

The daywear is where the costumes start to really fall apart. There are a lot of looks here worn in the day that are VERY not day/outerwear appropriate, especially on Emma, most especially the yellow dress she’s wearing while driving that carriage (which, btw is inappropriate on a whole OTHER level). Can we just talk aboutt he cognative dissonance of bothering to put a bonnet on her when her arms and boobs are just hanging out like that? Like, it would almost have been less egregious to just leave the bonnet where it was.

But then there are a lot of Emma’s day-wear looks that are perfectly suitable and appropriate. What I find ironic about that is that most of the short-sleeved, low-necked “Evening-gowns as day-wear” looks are worn OUTSIDE in the sun and most of the long-sleeved, sun protecting, day-wear appropriate looks are worn INSIDE.  She’s also got a profusion of dangling curls in day-time settings that are also more evening-wear appropriate (to match the dresses, perhaps?)

I’m also pleased to report that even in day-wear Miss Bates gets a break from brown in this version. Her clothes are nice, but not fancy like Miranda Hart’s in Emma. 2020, and I like to think that nice thick shawl with lace overlay is the one mentioned in the book that Jane’s friend Mrs. Dixon sent along home with her for her aunt.

My only problem with Mrs. Elton’s kit is that it’s all perfectly nice, but none of it is overly-nice. There’s no extra trim, no unnecessary lace, not even any bold colors. I hope Myers and McGrath didn’t take Mrs. Elton’s line in the book about her fear of being over-trimmed seriously.

Let’s talk outerwear. There’s a lot of going into town with JUST a shawl on in this movie (usually over short sleeves), and I’m sorry but I don’t think that’s how outer-wear worked in this time period. A shawl is good enough when you’re taking a turn in the garden but not for going out in public into town, unless maybe you’re wearing long sleeves, or perhaps paired with a SPENCER.

Never mind Mrs. Elton’s line about a shocking lack of satin at the end of the movie, I’m more concerned about the shocking lack of spencers. There are precisely three in this film. I counted (and the sleeves on Emma’s look like maybe they’re too long for her?) Mrs. Elton sports the only redingote in the film.

Jane Fairfax is, as always, in her classic Jane Fairfax Blue™,

although she has some nice white gowns at some points too.

Now, onto 

Definitely a bit more colorful than the 97 adaptation. Mr. Knightley benefits most from the addition of colors other than green. He’s even got some smashing waistcoats and a very nice blue evening coat (I couldn’t get very good shots of them though). The problem is; those trousers? NOT. TIGHT. ENOUGH.

Also… you all see it, right? I circled it in red so you should. Yeah. Knightley is dancing in boots. WTF RUTH? Please! You’re better than this! Who dances in Prussians like that? I ask you! (Frank also wears boots to the Cole’s dinner party so that’s two strikes.)

I’m not sold on Frank’s looks. His day-wear is a bit sedate for such a confirmed dandy (I believe he’s called a “coxcombe” in the book?) and his evening wear… well he apparently only has the one look.

And speaking of Frank’s look in this film, I’d like to know at whose doorstep I should lay the blame for what Ewan McGregor himself has called “The Worst Wig Ever”; and why the hair designer in charge decided to model Frank’s aesthetic on a theme of “Chucky meets the Mad Hatter”.

This hairstyle not only looks dreadful, it’s not at all fashionable or authentic to this time period! Fashionable mens’ hair styles at this point were all relatively short. A Beau Brummel coiffeur, or a short Roman style, or a fashionable head of curls like Mr. Elton’s! Not this farmer chic. Robert Martin’s hair is more fashionable than Frank’s!

The tune they chose for Emma and Knightley’s dance is a baroque melody (so a hundred or so years out of fashion) called “Mr. Beveridge’s Maggot” and as is pointed out in the video linked above, and is the same tune and dance used for Lizzie and Darcy’s big dance in Pride and Prejudice (1995).

I get why it was used in P&P because, slow, stately baroque tunes are often used as on-screen short hand for snobbish character like Mr. Darcy. It’s not super intense either, like the baroque tune used in P&P 05, which was chosen for more romantic effect. So why use this kind of “stuck up” tune for what should be a romantic dance? Maybe because it was used in the 95 P&P which became, almost instantly, one of the most popular Austen adaptations?

Quick note on the dancing and music in this movie. I’m not an expert on English Country dance (I’ll outsource that by giving you the usual link to Tea with Cassiane’s analysis on YouTube) but I’ll add my two cents  - I know Cassiane gave this a pretty favorable three full dance slippers but I think the way all of the actors and dancers move looks very poorly rehearsed and kind of sloppy. I think everyone just spread out way too much.

Douglas McGrath’s Script

I have to say one of the things this film did very well and brought to the forefront is how insular Emma’s life is. The opening credit sequence brings this to our attention right away by showing a spinning globe which, once it slows down is shown to be, literally, Emma’s whole tiny world. Hartfield, Donwell, Randalls and Highbury. That’s it. It’s perhaps not a very subtle device, but it does get the job done and very succinctly too.

I would now like to talk about my issues with the script of this movie; I have some problems with it. Very different problems than it’s 1996 counterpart though.

 First let’s go over the comedic device that jumped out to me most in this movie: the awkward pause.

I think it’s only used twice but they both bothered me.

First there’s the pauses while Emma and Mrs. Weston grill Knightley on whether he considers Jane Fairfax romantically. It’s all written as very “OoOoOooo” with Knightley answering their interrogations and then sitting between them awkwardly as they stare him down as, none of his answers giving either Emma or Mrs. Weston satisfaction. This is one of the most teen rom-com moments of the film to me.

Next there’s all the quiet stretches while Emma and Mrs. Elton have tea at Hartfield. I don’t like the use of awkward pauses in this case because (as I mentioned in Mrs. Elton’s characterization section) it’s so ludicrous to me that there are pauses in this conversation at all. Surely the point of Mrs. Elton is that she loves to hear herself talk and her conceited obsession with the idea that everyone around her must only benefit from hearing her opinions. There should be no conceivable reason why Emma should have to prompt conversation like she does in McGrath’s version of this scene, except to derail Mrs. Elton’s constant self-important yammering.

Watching it this time around I found myself wondering exactly what McGrath wanted to do with this film. I mean I’ve been attempting to decipher exactly whether the changes made were conscious and based on artistic vision, or whether they were changed because the source material just flew over McGrath’s Hollywood Director head.

I mean he gets the important plot points across, but there were other scenes that I had issues with: namely, the Archery scene. This is a pretty intense part of the book because Mr. Knightly goes from astonished, to indignant, to truly vexed with Emma in a short period of time. But this scene in the movie is very casual. The part where Emma’s arrow goes wide and into the general direction of Knightley’s dogs, and he takes an opportunity to make a quip and says “try not to kill my dogs” particularly annoyed me. My issue is that this totally ruins the tension of the scene; and why are Knightley’s dogs sitting BEHIND THE TARGETS ANYWAY? Knightley is a sensible man, and one who knows better than to let his dogs rest in a place where stray arrows could hit them!

The dialouge is very jarring because it flips back and forth beetween being alright, and period appropriate and then it will just spring a very modern turn of phrase and pull you completely out of the setting. I know this is something that’s been brought up with the 2009 version as well but maybe it’s because the actors in that version have (in my opinion) better chemistry that it simply doesn't stick out to me as much.

The comedy in general in this movie just makes me cringe a lot of the time (Sophie Thompson’s “oh sorry, napkin” bit notwithstanding). Like the soup thing when Emma and Harriet meet Mr. Elton after visiting the poor, and the random kid that gets tossed into this scene with Emma… just doesn’t work for me.

Wikipedia describes McGrath’s tweaks on Emma and Knightley’s banter (which really weren’t changed that much, textually) as “Enlivened” to make the basis of their attraction more apparent, which… I’m sorry but nothing about the exisiting banter isn’t lively if delivered in a lively manner. And I wouldn’t exactly call Gywneth’s performance lively, because she has to concentrate to keep that accent up.

I mentioned already that what McGrath essentially did with Emma was take Austen’s story, and remove the nuance (Such as lightening Frank’s infractions in his relationship with Jane and, while not totally contradicting, but also not highlighting the economic commentary of the story that is thematic in Austen’s novel) in order to make a straight up 90’s comedic romance film (Which, if you doubt this, look no further than Rachel Portman’s Oscar Winning but very dated score).

My Question is why? Why bother when the SAME STORY had been adapted into a HIGHLY SUCCESSFUL, modernized rom-com THE PREVIOUS YEAR, which actually, even while being set in the 90’s, did the story greater justice, with far more insight and quality?

Emma (1996) was always going to be over-shadowed by Clueless. At the end of the day this whole movie was kind of a futile effort because despite excellent production quality, the actual contents are watered down and, in my own opinion, pretty roundly mediocre.

Final Thoughts

When I first watched both of these versions I came at it from a very one-or-the-other perspective. I forgave McGrath’s film because it was light and colorful and I’d heard Davies’ version praised so highly at that time as the only faithful, definitive version (only to be let down by it in almost every possible way). But coming right down to it now, it’s hard for me to really excuse McGrath’s effort because a version of Emma that doesn’t take itself seriously enough is almost as bad as a version that takes itself too seriously.

It never fails to jump out at me how diametrically opposed these interpretations are, from the characterization right down to the tone and lighting.

McGrath’s Emma is light in every sense of the word, where Davies’ is dark and ponderous. McGrath’s Knightley is laid back where Davies’ is aggressive and ferocious. Frank, in McGrath’s version, is let off easy by the narrative playing down his moodiness, while in Davies there’s an overshadowing dark-cloud of off-putting caddishness.

Ribbon Rating: Tolerable (58 Ribbons)

The more I watch the 1996 adaptations of Emma (invariably back-to-back) the more firmly I am convinced that Andrew Davies’ made for TV film was (in some ways) a direct response to McGrath’s motion picture.

Tone: 7

Casting: 7

Acting: 5

Scripting: 5

Pacing: 4

Cinematography: 4

Setting: 5

Costumes: 6

Music: 5

Book Accuracy: 6

[dewitty1]

Dissident

Constance1

Chapters: 24/24 Fandom: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling Rating: Explicit Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence Relationships: Draco Malfoy/Harry Potter Additional Tags: Creature Fic, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, nundu, Angst, Romance, Dubious Consent, Attempted Rape/Non-Con, Violence, Knotting, dark at times, but not really, Some fluffy moments too, Mpreg, Falling In Love, Omega Harry, Alpha Draco Malfoy, Drama, Claustrophobia, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Protective Draco Malfoy, Animagus, Christmas

Summary:

In a world of Alphas and Omegas, Harry is surprised to discover that he is a rare male Omega. He assumes his pull towards Draco Malfoy is because the Slytherin is an Alpha, but there is more at play here than even Harry knows. 

Excerpt:

Draco noticed his discomfort and, without hesitation, unclasped his black cloak and held it out.

"Won't you get cold?" Harry asked uncertainly.

Draco shook his head and handed it over. "I don't tend to feel the cold."

Harry smiled gratefully as he lifted the expensive woollen garment and draped it around his shoulders. He was immediately infused with the warmth of Draco's lingering body-heat and the scent of the Alpha invaded his nostrils, making him want to sigh with contentment.

Harry hadn't realised that he'd actually closed his eyes in bliss until he opened them again to see Draco arching a questioning brow at him.

"Sorry," he mumbled, cheeks heating, "it smells like you."

Draco blinked, startled out of his mocking amusement.

Harry determinedly shoved away his self-consciousness in order to delve into what it was they needed to discuss. "How is it that you can… resist me, for lack of a better word, when the other two Alphas couldn't keep their hands off of me when we were alone?"

Draco swallowed and nodded, as though freely consenting to Harry's efforts at steering the conversation towards the crux of the matter. "Self-control?" he speculated.

"Really?" Harry replied with a sceptical frown. "So… are you employing self-control right now?"

"Yes."

As soon as the word was out of Draco's mouth, it occurred to Harry that Draco's inscrutable grey eyes had been fairly dilated for the entirety of their meeting, from the moment the door had shut behind him. The Slytherin had also been maintaining his distance up until he sat down, but still not close enough to accidentally make physical contact.

"What about you?" Draco asked stiffly, interrupting his musing. "What are you... feeling?"

Harry could tell Malfoy was uncomfortable with the line of questioning. "Full disclosure?"

"What does that mean?"

"It means we just forget that we're having the most awkward conversation of all time and agree that no question is off-limits."

Instead of appearing deterred, Draco actually looked a little relieved. "Agreed," he nodded.

Harry exhaled and dropped his chin onto his knees, eyes on Draco. "I... What I'm feeling is so hard to describe. I guess I should start by saying that since my inheritance, I've only ever felt drawn to you. It's as you said before, I want to be with you all the time - and not just in a ‘one night stand’ sort of way.”

Draco nodded in understanding.

"Full disclosure," Harry muttered, steeling himself before continuing, "and I want… I have this desire for you to take care of me."

Draco's lips parted and his eyes flashed silver in the weak light.

"And maybe that doesn't sound strange to you but I've always been a fairly independent person and I've never wanted someone to watch over me before," Harry tried to explain.

Draco swallowed before replying. "That… that is like music to an Alpha's ears Potter."

"Huh?" Harry blinked, astonished. "Alphas want me to be like that?"

"If it's your natural reaction, yes," Draco confirmed. "An Alpha lives to take care of his mate, and if that mate longs for their Alpha's presence and protection…"

"It's like an Alpha's wet dream?"

Draco's lips twitched into a smile as he nodded. "That and their mate wishing to start a family."

Harry smiled as he absently rubbed his chin in the soft fabric of Draco's cloak; stirring the scent of the Alpha up into his nostrils with a tiny sigh of pleasure. "So I'm not completely failing at this Omega thing then?"

Draco smirked. "Do you ever fail at anything Potter?"

Harry laughed outright and it felt good. "I guess the next question is… now what?"

Draco's easy expression turned troubled and he hesitated before finally replying. "The proper way of things is for you to register with the Ministry as an Omega so that any enquiring Alpha is informed of your existence and given the opportunity to meet with you."

Harry held his gaze. "And the un-proper way of things?"

Grey eyes searched his face intently. "The… un-proper way of things is to just give in to your urges and settle for the first Alpha that piques your interest."

Harry could feel the atmosphere in the room change as it thickened with a heavy, expectant tension that wasn't altogether unpleasant. "I think I prefer the second option," he replied, mouth suddenly dry and heart pounding wildly in his chest. "If you're interested."

Harry held his breath, feeling horribly exposed as he laid everything out and waited for a response. Yes Draco had his faults; he concealed his emotions, was relentlessly condescending, sarcastic, and was a bit of a ponce. But he was also intelligent, challenging, interesting, didn't pander to Harry's celebrity, and, truth be told, was rather easy on the eyes.

If they could just reconcile their past history, Harry didn't think he could find a more perfect match.

Draco's eyes, which had been positively blazing moments before, suddenly dimmed as he dropped his gaze to the floor, a slight frown creasing his brow.

Sharp and immediate disappointment filled Harry as he nodded mutely and pushed himself to his feet. He wasn't in the mood to hang around to hear the reasons why Draco didn’t want to pursue him as his mate.

Draco swiftly stood up as Harry unclasped the borrowed cloak from around his shoulders and held it out to him.

"Harry, wait," he said at once, ignoring the extended cloak in front of him.

"It's okay," Harry said, forcing a smile. "I just wanted to make sure you knew all the facts before rejecting me."

"No!" Draco exclaimed fiercely, reaching out with one hand to clamp around Harry's arm. "I'm not rejecting you. I want you. Very much," he said bluntly, breathlessly. "In fact, I was planning on approaching you until the idea of a love potion was put into my head. Beta or not, it was beginning to not matter to me anymore Potter. Now that I know you're an Omega and it isn't some sort of trick… I can't… there's just no way that I can let you walk away."

Harry's eyes widened as his heart soared with sudden joy - then immediately sunk like a lead weight. "There's a 'but' though, isn't there?"

Draco's gaze was penetrating as he stared back at him. "There is, however, it has nothing to do with me being uninterested you." He took a step closer, directly into Harry's personal space.

Harry had to tilt his head back to maintain eye contact. The urge to step back to keep some distance - and a clear head - was exceedingly strong, but he managed to resist as he waited expectantly for an explanation.

"There's something you don't know about me that you need to before consenting to be my mate."

Harry felt a shiver run through his body at the title and unconsciously swayed a little towards the Alpha. "What is it?" he asked roughly. A part of him suspected he'd agree to anything Draco said in that moment.

"I can't tell you here," he replied and Harry had never seen the Slytherin look so grave. "Tomorrow, away from the school."

Harry swallowed. "Why?"

Draco's gaze flicked about the room before returning to rest on Harry's questioning expression. "Someone may hear; this castle has eyes and ears everywhere."

Harry raised his brow, a tingle of apprehension suddenly running down his spine. "Is this thing something that will affect my decision?"

Draco's expression didn't change but Harry saw the brief flash of sorrow in his eyes. "It may," was all he said.

Harry frowned at the mysterious sadness he detected deep inside the blond. Without pausing to think about it, he slowly raised a tentative hand to slide trembling fingers across Draco's cheek. His thumb came to rest along one pale cheekbone as he cupped his face and stared intently into grey eyes; trying to discover the Slytherin's secrets and reassure him all at the same time.

Draco closed his eyes briefly and leaned into the touch before mirroring Harry's action by sliding a warm hand across the chilled skin of Harry's cheek. His hand continued sliding backwards into thick unruly hair and moulded firmly to the back of Harry's head.

Harry swallowed and allowed the Alpha to guide him forward, green eyes dropping to stare transfixed as Draco ran a pink tongue over dry lips, and then his eyes fluttered shut as those lips suddenly brushed against his own. It was just a light pressing of lips but it still sent shudders through Harry's body and made his stomach clench with want.

Harry carelessly dropped the cloak to the floor as Draco’s other arm wound its way around his waist and pulled him close. Draco tentatively deepened the kiss but he needn't have worried; Harry was only too happy to comply as he submitted completely.

(◍•ᴗ•◍)♡ ✧*。

[lastsonlost]

Say that three times fast....

No, misogyny is not to blame for the box-office woes of the new Charlie’s Angels film.

The new film reboot of the Charlie’s Angels franchise will be released in the UK next week. It is written, directed and produced by Elizabeth Banks, who also stars in it as the wisecracking Bosley. Maybe she did the catering, too.

Banks is a genuinely funny actor, and the Pitch Perfect movies she produced are highly enjoyable. But I was not excited to see Charlie’s Angels, and that seems to reflect the wider sentiment: the film bombed at the US box office. It cost $48million to make but only brought in $8.6million on its opening weekend.

There are several competing theories as to why this has happened. Some cite the film’s lack of star power. Others point to a ‘reboot fatigue’ among cinemagoers. Some of the more feminist reviewers have aired their disappointment that, while the film is a more feminist take on Charlie’s Angels, it doesn’t do enough to shake the ‘jiggle television’ of the original show and the two early 2000s films.

But the main factor here seems to be a lack of public interest in ‘feminist’ remakes. Recent films like Charlie’s Angels, Ocean’s 8 and Ghostbusters, all sold purely off the back of their female-led cast and (in some cases) female-led crew, failed to attract an audience. And some have inevitably claimed this is because we live in an inherently misogynistic society.

Indeed Banks had this excuse lined up before her film was even released. ‘If this movie doesn’t make money, it reinforces a stereotype in Hollywood that men don’t go see women do action movies’, she said in an interview. She even had an answer for why Wonder Woman and Captain Marvel, which both have female lead characters, were major hits:

[Men will] go and see a comic-book movie… because that’s a male genre. So even though those are movies about women, they put them in the context of feeding the larger comic-book world. Yes, you’re watching a Wonder Woman movie, but we’re setting up three other characters or we’re setting up Justice League.’

Whether or not men are as simpleminded as Banks suggests, her explanation doesn’t account for why her film’s target audience – young, empowered women – have also stayed away from the cinema.

The more mundane truth here is that the whole concept of this feminist Charlie’s Angels reboot is fundamentally flawed. It wants to keep the silliness of the original TV show and be a modern high-tech spy thriller, and it wants to make feminist points along the way. Inevitably, the po-faced feminism of the film sucks the life out of the silliness and the thrills.

The 2000s Charlie’s Angels movies worked because the stars – Cameron Diaz, Drew Barrymore and Lucy Liu – made fun of themselves. They knew they were playing ludicrous characters and embraced this. The new Angels, by contrast, are humourless and woke – adept at lecturing, sneering and putting down unreconstructed men. And no one – male or female – wants to be condescended to during their afternoon out at the cinema.

This points to an underlying problem with today’s feminist identity politics. It tries to understand social relations almost solely through the prism of gender relations. And when this theoretical model oversteps its boundaries and starts to inform how culture is made, it creates untruthful, uninvolving and banal art.

The feminist call for more female representation in cinema has created a genre of what could be called the ‘female-voice’ film. The same could be said for films which are said to give ‘voice’ to racial and sexual minorities. To translate from the cultural-studies jargon, ‘voice’ here refers to films in which a particular identity group is front and centre. They star in these films and usually take a larger share of the writing, directing and production credits. These films are supposedly informed by the experiences of these identity groups, in contrast to all other films which, by default, are said to reflect a ‘white’, ‘male’ and ‘heteronormative’ experience.

In this schema, individuals are reduced to an identity – one based not on their totality, but on only a small part of who they are. This inevitably makes for shallow, two-dimensional films, in which identity, rather than busting ghosts or carrying out heists, drives the plot and motivates the characters. Reducing people to identities turns fictional characters into unrelatable caricatures.

Even films like the all-female Ghostbusters reboot – in which the individual performances are human, engaging and often hilarious – are in the end nullified by this reductionist framework. These films also tend to feature lots of clunking expositional dialogue, which expresses the filmmaker’s agenda rather than the characters’ inner life. People instantly recognise this as bad storytelling.

This is why people stay away from films that pander to ‘voices’, and why so many men and women do not enjoy self-consciously ‘female’ films. They present diminished caricatures of women, men and human relations, which people experience as untrue. Ideological point-scoring makes for terrible cinema.

Maren Thom is a writer based in London.

[theonion]

If last year’s election showed us anything, it’s that anger and resentment are on the rise. I hear it from small business owners and working-class families, from millennials and retirees. There’s a sense that we’ve lost our way, and that the blame rests squarely on our nation’s leadership. Simply put, Americans are sick of being patronized and sick of the same old ideas that we, as Democrats, are going to keep offering them over and over and over again.

The frustration is palpable. People are fed up with the status quo. Citizens from all walks of life are sitting around their dinner tables, talking about how they’ve had it with all the usual proposals that, once more, we will be repackaging and spoon-feeding to them in a way that’s entirely transparent and frankly condescending.

That’s something every American can count on.

It’s no wonder voters are furious. Politics-as-usual has failed them, and they desperately want change that the Democratic Party has no plan to bring about in any meaningful way. But let me assure you, when our constituents tell us they’ve had enough broken promises, when they say our actions haven’t addressed their needs, we listen. We hear your concerns—hear them loud and clear—then immediately discard them and revert back to the exact same ineffectual strategies we’ve been rallying behind for years.

It doesn’t take a genius to see what the polls are telling us. Voters by the millions dislike our cozying up to Wall Street, our hopelessly out-of-touch elitism, our support for never-ending military entanglements, our blindness to the plight of rural communities decimated by globalization, and our failure to expand opportunities for American workers. So what are we going to do about it? Well, after taking all this into account, after taking a good hard look at ourselves and doing some serious soul-searching, I’m pleased to announce that during next year’s midterms, Democrats will continue to run on the same set of platitudes we’ve been trotting out since at least the 1990s.

We will also be slapping a brand-new tagline onto our campaign, something that puts a fresh new gloss on our tired old tactics.

In 2018, with the entire House and a third of the Senate up for grabs, Democrats will be holding town hall meetings, conducting polls, and analyzing voter databases to find out what issues are most important to Americans. We’ll then disregard everything we learn, dole out all the usual boilerplate stuff that people are clearly sick of, and try to pass it off as a bold new direction for the country.

We now stand at a crossroads. People are angry, disgusted, and hungry for change. The Democratic Party understands these challenges and sees an opportunity to present the American people with a series of rehashed ideas that do nothing to address their concerns. We’re taking stock of our views on trade, criminal justice, economic inequality, and more. Because the time has come to double down on whatever sounds good to those of us in Washington, even though voter research, election results, and the actual words coming from the mouths of our own base tell us it’s not what anyone else wants.

If you would like to join us in this fight, I encourage you to donate at www.democrats.org.

[jonesdavid19-blog]

Significance of Art in Video Gaming

I've stood at the highest of a grass-blown mound dominating the ocean, a read that stretched to hide a land of sprawling islands traversed only by my sailing vessel and the American state. I actually have an instrument that controls the wind. I have been a sword-wielding teenaged adventurer, a ghostbuster, and a brief Italian craftsman in search of his kidnapped love.

Roger Ebert would say that none of those experiences was real or important as a result of they happened through video games like FortuneMobileCasino.co.uk. During a recent post, merely entitled "Video games will never be art" revealed on his Chicago Sun-Times journal, the noted moving picture critic shoots down one in all my favourite art forms as unable to meet his definition of 'art'. The critic reacts specifically to a Ted speaks given by freelance game developer Kellee Santiago of that game company, a game production firm referred to as a forerunner during a movement that takes with a pinch of salt that videogames are art. The trick, consistent with Santiago, is to create them nice art. I agree.

But let's hear Ebert create his argument for himself. The critic initial dismisses videogames as art on the grounds that they're foremost games, and games, having rules and objectives, maybe "won". ancient art forms, "a story, a novel, a play," he writes, "are stuff you cannot win; you'll solely expertise them." He measures video games against the Platonic definition of art as an imitation of nature and reality. Ebert writes, "art grows higher the lot of it improves or alters nature through a passage through what we would decide the artist's soul or vision." He concedes that he thinks art is "usually the creation of one creator," and doesn't believe video games, the merchandise of enormous groups area unit capable of getting a singular creative "vision" behind them.

But video games are nothing if not experiential. they're visuals and music and poetry all committed into one package. A game is not only a game—it could be a controlled passage through awesome aesthetic expertise. This can be also the idea for my very own definition of art as sensory aesthetic expertise that provokes an emotional response in its audience, be it marvel, anger, love, frustration or joy.

Video games allow the U.S., as painter says, as kids do, as Miyamoto will, to "hold eternity in the palms of your hand associated eternity in an hour." The question isn't if video games qualify as art, or if video games will get on my feet to the art of the past, rather, it's the way to notice a replacement language to talk of video games as art. During this Ebert fails entirely.

To conclude his post, Ebert writes, "No one in or out of the sector has ever been ready to cite a game deserve comparison with the good poets, filmmakers, [and] novelists." Here's my shot: the sailing sequences in the Legend of Zelda: WindWaker deserve comparison to Coleridge's sailor. Pokémon is a returning elderly story that does not pander or condescend to its young audience, a self-guided Catcher in the Rye. Miyamoto has the same that he came up with the first Zelda game as a "miniature garden that [gamers] will place in their drawer." Likewise, the endless castle of Super Mario 64 is definitely a "world in a grain of sand".

[awesomegamereviews]

Awesome Game Review #9 - BioShock (PC, XBOX 360, PS3, XBOX ONE, PS4)

BioShock is a first-person shooter video game that was developed by 2K Boston and 2K Australia, and it was published by 2K Games in 2007. A remastered edition of this game was released in 2016 as part of BioShock: The Collection. Set in the 1960s, BioShock is a game that lets you play as a man named Jack who survives a plane crash and somehow finds himself later on in the underwater city of Rapture where the populace consists of junkies and robots who are hellbent on killing anyone who isn’t a user and a loser. So far things sound pretty generic and mundane, right? That’s because they are.

How come we don’t get to explore the plane before it crashes? I hate having to sit through the opening  cutscene every single time I want to give this game another chance to redeem itself. I mean, what the hell! Who cares that you can smoke in an enclosed area while you’re high in the sky? I just want to interact with the stewardesses or eat some virtual peanuts before the inevitable happens. That’s a red flag to me already!

Also, why do you happen to land right where you can take a conveniently placed submarine that escorts you to Rapture? The game hasn’t already started, and it’s already holding your hand as if though you are some sort of baby. How condescending! It would have been much better if you had to find your way to Rapture on your own without having to rely on the guidance of the plot.

The fact that you can’t die in this game sucks. It’s like the game’s telling you “haha, we knew since the start that you’re gonna fail, so we set up a machine that’ll keep you on your feet, stupid!”, which I find utterly despicable. A classic game like Super Mario Bros. has a limited amount of lives you can work with, and when you run out of them, you’re out. BioShock simply panders to gamers who can’t embrace the concept of dying. Sad!

As always, the weapons are extremely disappointing. The game tries to copy Half-Life by giving the player a wrench as their only melee weapon, and the amount of arms you can find are very limited. Sure, you can upgrade them and increase the level of damage they do, magazine sizes, and other goodies, but it’s just not enough! The game also copies The Elder Scrolls by giving the player the ability of firing electrical bolts, fire, and other magical hoohah from their left hand. Talk about originality, am I right?

The story isn’t that captivating either. Do this, do that, failed city here, mediocre rebellions there. Blah, blah, blah! It would have been amazing if you could play as Andrew Ryan or as a Little Sister, but no, you’re stuck with a white man who can’t talk. It doesn’t even feel great when you dress up as a Big Daddy near the end of the game, so way to go, developers!

But, to be fair, I do like the underwater theme they went for, so I’ll rate the game 6.3/10 solely for that.

Thanks for reading!

[theconservativebrief]

As allegations of sexual assault and misconduct swirl around Supreme Court nominee Brett Kavanaugh, many conservatives are deeply concern that Kavanaugh is being “Borked” — a reference to the failed 1987 nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court.

According to Merriam-Webster, “to Bork” means “to attack or defeat (a nominee or candidate for public office) unfairly through an organized campaign of harsh public criticism or vilification.” And as conservative pundit George Will (who served as an usher at Bork’s wedding) wrote in his Sunday column for the Washington Post, the allegations against Kavanaugh are a perfect example of a “Borking” in progress:

Hence, the confirmation process has followed the crumbling, descending path the rest of American politics has taken into the depths of cynicism, faux outrage and pandering to the parties’ hysterical bases. The utter emptiness of everything is an intellectual vacuum into which have flooded histrionics.

To a generation of Republicans, the legacy of Bork was one in which, as the Wall Street Journal described in August, “character assassination proved an effective tactic” and “special interest groups” discovered “they could demonize judicial nominees based solely on their worldview.”

The political polarization that came to epitomize Bork’s nomination remains just as visceral, if not more so, as Kavanaugh’s nomination is debated. But Bork’s legacy, and the idea of “Borking,” has been misconstrued.

In Bork’s case, there were real and valid reasons for many Americans to not want him on the Supreme Court, based on his rulings in cases as a Circuit Court judge, his views and actions as solicitor general, and his past statements and writings. In his writings, he argued that only political speech was protected by the First Amendment; as a circuit court judge, he ruled against the right to privacy and in favor of a company whose employees had undergone sterilization procedures to keep their jobs. He wrote extensively in opposition to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and even argued that a poll tax struck down by the Supreme Court was just a “very small tax.”

And today, Brett Kavanaugh is facing serious questions about his history with women, which is incredibly relevant to the work he’d do on the Supreme Court.

Plus, Bork’s failed nomination to the Supreme Court was more than even these factors. He was one of the first Supreme Court nominees to endure televised hearings that gave senators the chance to speak to the American people en masse, and he was the subject of heavy (and involved) questioning — questioning for which he was woefully unprepared.

Robert Bork wasn’t the victim of “character assassination.” Robert Bork was the victim, ultimately, of Robert Bork.

On July 1, 1987, Ted Kennedy, then a senator and a leading light within the Democratic Party, took to the Senate floor to denounce Robert Bork, whom Ronald Reagan had just nominated for the Supreme Court. In his remarks, Kennedy said that adding Bork to the Supreme Court would force women into back-alley abortions and black Americans back to segregated lunch counters, adding that with Bork, “the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is — and is often the only — protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.”

At the time of Kennedy’s speech, Bork was a circuit judge for the United States Court of Appeals for the DC Circuit (where he served from 1982 to 1988). Before serving on the court, Bork, a graduate of the University of Chicago and a former Marine, had taught law at Yale Law School, where his students would include both Bill and Hillary Clinton, as well as Anita Hill and future California Gov. Jerry Brown. Suffice it to say, he was very well known in the upper circles of American conservatism.

And in stark contrast to Kennedy, many of those conservatives were thrilled about Reagan’s choice. To many Republicans, particularly religious Americans who leaned right, Bork’s rulings in cases like Dronenburg v. Zech — a case in which Bork and future Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had ruled that there was no “Constitutional right to engage in homosexual conduct” and thus no right to privacy for it — provided hope that putting Bork on the Court would move the Court further in their direction (though Reagan himself pitched Bork as a “moderate,” which in turn enraged conservatives at the Justice Department).

But many on the right, including those who laughed at Kennedy’s doom-and-gloom portrayal of the nominee, widely underestimated just how much liberals would fight back against Bork’s nomination; to them, the mere idea of Bork on the Court was a terrifying one.

In their view, this was not just a man who had ruled against a constitutional right to privacy for gay people — raising concerns that his views on privacy would lead to the overturning of Roe v. Wade — but also the man who ruled in 1984 in favor of a lead pigment company whose employees had undergone voluntary sterilization in order to keep their well-paying jobs. (Bork ruled that making sterilization a policy for a job didn’t violate the Occupational Safety and Health Act.)

He also believed that government-sponsored school prayer did not violate the First Amendment, and in 1985, he said in response to a Baptist minister who referenced a Jewish friend who had been required to engage in Christian prayer in a public school, “So what? I’m sure he got over it.”

During his confirmation hearing to be solicitor general, Bork had also seemingly argued in favor of a Virginia poll tax that had been struck down by the Court in 1966, saying, “It was a very small tax, it was not discriminatory, and I doubt that it had much impact on the welfare of the nation one way or the other.” That same year, he also wrote in opposition to the Court’s ruling against the use of literacy tests in voting.

And there was more: Bork described the Civil Rights Act of 1964 as state coercion, writing in 1963 that the law would cause a loss of “personal liberty” and put forward “a principle of unsurpassed ugliness.” On the First Amendment, Bork wrote in 1971 that the Constitution only protects political speech, adding, “There is no basis for judicial intervention to protect any other form of expression, be it scientific, literary or that variety of expression we call obscene or pornographic.”

Liberal groups including the AFL-CIO and People for the American Way responded with an outpouring of direct advertising aimed at stopping Bork, like this ad, voiced by actor Gregory Peck. “If Robert Bork wins a seat on the Supreme Court, it’ll be for life. His life, and yours,” Peck intones.

[embedded content]

The reasoning behind Bork’s judicial rulings and viewpoints is straightforward and, to many conservatives, extremely logical: Bork was a constitutional originalist who believed that the Constitution and the laws it set in place should be interpreted the same way they were when the document was first written. And had Bork been able to adequately explain his viewpoints to the Senate Judiciary Committee, and to America, through that lens, perhaps his nomination would have been successful.

But that’s not what happened.

Until 1955, it wasn’t unusual for Supreme Court nominees to not answer questions from the Senate Judiciary Committee about their views or rulings, or to not even show up for their hearings at all and still get on the Court. Televised Supreme Court nomination hearings only began in 1981. And in 1986, the year before Bork’s nomination, the Senate finally agreed to televise its proceedings.

Why does this matter? Because only with televised Senate hearings did the American people see Sen. Ted Kennedy call Bork a danger to American life, and only with televised Supreme Court nomination hearings did Americans see Sen. Joe Biden, then the chair of the Senate Judiciary Committee, perform what the New Yorker called “a meticulous dissection” of Bork’s career.

Before his nomination, Biden had said that he would support Bork, seeming to reject Kennedy’s rhetoric (he also refused to subpoena Bork’s video rental records to see if he’d rented any pornographic films). That gave many conservatives a great deal of confidence about Bork’s chances of getting on the Court, though, worryingly, a committee within the American Bar Association announced that while it would give Bork its highest rating, its members were split on his qualifications for the role. But Sen. Orrin Hatch, one of Bork’s biggest defenders, said that Bork would do “very well” in televised hearings, adding that “I think those who have been vilifying him are going to have to eat a lot of words.”

Perhaps the most confident about his chances for the Court was Bork himself, who did very little preparation for his hearings. Typically, Supreme Court nominees go through a process known as “murder boards,” where they are put through extensive questioning similar to what they’ll face from the Senate Judiciary Committee. But Bork didn’t, partly because his allies, like his old friend Antonin Scalia, told him he was so qualified for the position that he wouldn’t need the preparation. One friend who helped Bork through the process would later say, “It was a mistake not to make him do more murder boards. I should have rolled him on that. But he was a genius, the Einstein of the law.’’

And arguably, that’s where everything went wrong for Bork and his allies. Before the hearings, a majority of Americans polled by the New York Times and CBS had no opinion of Bork one way or the other. But the hearings, which began on September 15, 1987, were an absolute disaster for Bork, whom Tom Shales, the television critic for the Washington Post, described as “cold-hearted and condescending.” He added, “He looked and talked like a man who would throw the book at you — and maybe the whole country.” (You can watch Bork’s Supreme Court nomination hearings in full on YouTube.)

In response to a question about the sterilization case, Bork said of the women who had undergone sterilization in order to keep their jobs, ‘’I suppose that they were glad to have the choice.’’ And when asked about the poll tax case, he said, “It was just a $1.50 poll tax.”

When asked why he wanted to be on the Supreme Court, Bork responded that such service would be “an intellectual feast.” But what concerned many people watching the hearings was that Bork seemed to argue that the viewpoints and ideas he’d espoused for decades wouldn’t apply to his judgment on the Court, that what he said in 1971 about free speech didn’t apply anymore in 1987 when he just so happened to be asked about it.

By October, a majority of Americans polled by the Washington Post opposed his nomination to the Supreme Court. On October 6, Bork was rejected by the Senate Judiciary Committee, and on October 23, he was rejected by the Senate itself, by a vote of 58-42.

But there was even more to Bork’s story, which came up during his nomination hearings and played into both how Bork was perceived by the public and the ultimate failure of his nomination: his involvement in the Watergate scandal.

From 1973 to 1977, Bork served as solicitor general of the United States, arguing cases before the Supreme Court on behalf of the federal government. (If you’ll recall, it’s during the nomination proceedings for this role that he made his comment about poll taxes.) On October 20, 1973, President Nixon ordered the firing of Archibald Cox, the special prosecutor investigating Nixon’s knowledge of the June 1972 break-in and attempted bugging of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Complex in Washington. More specifically, Cox wanted 10 hours of Oval Office tapes, which included Nixon’s discussions of the break-in, and rather than give up the tapes, Nixon wanted Cox gone.

Both Attorney General Elliot Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus refused to fire Cox, and both resigned from their positions in protest, leaving Bork as acting attorney general. Bork did fire Cox, and though he had planned to resign immediately after doing so, he said that Richardson and Ruckelshaus had urged him to stay for the good of the Justice Department. According to Bork, Nixon promised him the next open spot on the Supreme Court if he fired Cox. The firing of Archibald Cox became known as the “Saturday Night Massacre” and helped to seal the end of the Nixon administration.

To Bork, the decision to fire Cox was one he made as a means of protecting the Justice Department and, in effect, the country. In 1987, the day he was nominated to the Supreme Court, he told the New York Times, “I had, I thought, to contain a very dangerous situation, one that threatened the viability of the Department of Justice and of other parts of the executive branch. … If that had happened, the Department of Justice would have lost its top leadership, all of it, and would I think have effectively been crippled.”

But Bork’s decision to follow Nixon’s orders had consequences. Althea Simmons, the chief lobbyist and director of the Washington bureau of the NAACP (which opposed Bork’s nomination), testified at the nomination hearing in 1987, and said:

Judge Bork’s writings about constitutional or judicial philosophy are not the only issues of concern to this organization. We have grave reservations about his firing of Archibald Cox. This was an illegal action according to the court and yet, during his confirmation hearings, Judge Bork contended that his actions were lawful.

And she wasn’t alone. Alan B. Morrison, co-founder of the Public Citizen Litigation Group (which had sued Bork over his decision to fire Cox), submitted testimony to the Senate Judiciary Committee, saying in part:

… the most disturbing thing about Judge Bork’s firing of Archibald Cox is what it shows about his views of executive power and his willingness to disregard a solemn compact made between the President of the United States and his Attorney General nominee, on one side, and the Senate of the United States on the other.

Bork would go on to become a widely admired stalwart within conservative circles. He wrote books on morality and virtue and what he viewed as declining moral standards in America. He also argued extensively for a constitutional amendment to ban same-sex marriage, saying in the conservative religious journal First Things in 2004:

By equating heterosexuality and homosexuality, by removing the last vestiges of moral stigma from same-sex couplings, such marriages will lead to an increase in the number of homosexuals. Particularly vulnerable will be young men and women who, as yet uncertain of and confused by their sexuality, may more easily be led into a homosexual life.

And though Bork died in December 2012, the memory of his failed Supreme Court nomination would remain, specifically in the term “Borking.”

In 1991, a woman named Florynce Kennedy told a National Organization for Women conference that with regards to then-Supreme Court nominee Clarence Thomas, “We’re going to bork him. We’re going to kill him politically. … This little creep, where did he come from?” And since then, “Borking” has expanded. In January 2001, the New York Times even featured a chart of “likely borkees and their probable score on the bork-o-meter,” referring to potential nominees for high-level positions within the Bush administration (John Ashcroft, for instance, received nine Borks).

“Borking” is now viewed as a widely used practice for both Republicans and Democrats, though now it generally means attempting to bring down a high-level candidate with “personal attacks” on something seemingly irrelevant to their jobs. For example, Bill Clinton’s first choice for attorney general, Zoe Baird, was “Borked” in 1993 when news that she had hired an undocumented immigrant as a nanny for her children came to light (her nomination was withdrawn).

And in August of this year, Sen. Hatch — the same senator who had so fervently defended Robert Bork’s nomination — wrote in USA Today, “In their zeal to portray Judge Kavanaugh as the embodiment of our greatest fears, Democrats have gone borking mad.”

But what happened to Robert Bork wasn’t a tragedy. Rather, it was the result of the Supreme Court’s increased importance in American life, and a wild miscalculation by Republicans and Bork himself of how his viewpoints on laws and statutes that, for instance, desegregated American schools and public institutions — and his work on behalf of the only president to resign from office — would be perceived by the American public.

William T. Coleman, a black Republican attorney and a prominent supporter of Ronald Reagan, was a longtime colleague of Bork. But in September 1987, he wrote an op-ed for the New York Times titled “Why Judge Bork Is Unacceptable.” In the piece, he detailed how he believed Bork might overrule landmark cases that hinged on the idea of personal liberty beyond simply not being physically restrained, and curtail the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. “When it has counted,” he wrote, “Robert Bork has often stood against the aspirations of blacks to achieve their constitutional rights and to remove the vestiges of racial discrimination.”

But most importantly, Coleman emphasized that the information Americans already had about Bork’s views on the law should matter more than whatever Bork said during his hearings:

In the days ahead, we may hear that Judge Bork has modified long-held positions or that he will not necessarily follow those positions once he becomes a Supreme Court Justice. Such claims will lack credibility. Judge Bork has told us again and again what he believes Justices should and should not do. With an acerbity that brought him notoriety, he has denounced as unsupportable dozens of landmark Court cases, and he has also repeatedly said that Justices should be free to overrule prior decisions they believe are unsupportable. It simply defies common sense to think that Justice Bork would not effectively do what he has built his career saying should be done.

It is possible of course that, invested with the robes, Robert Bork would move within the mainstream of constitutional law. It is against the public interest, however, to take the chance that he will not.

In short, Bork was “Borked” not by Democrats or liberals, but by Robert Bork.

Original Source -> “Borking,” explained: why a failed Supreme Court nomination in 1987 matters

via The Conservative Brief

[americashealthcareadvocate]

A Millennial’s ObamaCare Lament

Only 28 percent of millennials are enrolling in ObmaCare.  Why?  Could it be the cost of coverage versus the $695 penalty?  In The Wall Street Journal article below you will get a clear understanding of why millennials aren’t enrolling and its impact on the cost of health insurance for everyone else.

By

DAVID BARNES

Sept. 25, 2016 6:15 p.m. ET

ObamaCare won’t work without young Americans like me, and the Obama administration knows it. That’s why the president is holding a Millennial Outreach and Engagement Summit focused on the Affordable Care Act at the White House on Tuesday. But no matter what the president says, many young Americans simply aren’t buying what he’s selling—mainly because we can’t afford it.

The administration has targeted my generation to sign up for ObamaCare for one reason: We’re healthy. The health-insurance companies selling plans on the law’s exchanges need us to pay a pretty penny in premiums without using much medical care. We’re supposed to subsidize the system so that it stays afloat. That was the plan, anyway. It fell apart when we didn’t sign up in droves like the White House expected.

Since ObamaCare’s implementation three years ago, the percentage of enrollees under 34 has remained steady every year at about 28%. According to the Census, some 16% of Americans between 25 and 34 have opted to remain uninsured, which is 71% higher than the uninsured rate for 45- to 65-year-olds.

But without our premiums, health insurers can’t turn the profit they were counting on. Their only options are to raise premiums on everyone else or abandon the ObamaCare exchanges. That’s why premiums are skyrocketing almost everywhere and why more than 40 insurers have abandoned the law in the past two years.

Hence the White House’s new sense of urgency to sign us up. Tuesday’s summit is supposed to kick off this campaign. The goal, as Mr. Obama recently explained in a letter to health insurers, is “to enroll more youth in the Marketplace” this fall. The administration is also taking its message to social media—using the condescending hashtag #HealthyAdulting—and pandering to us by signing up private companies and celebrities to push its message.

Then there’s the administration’s June announcement that it would use confidential taxpayer information to target young Americans who haven’t signed up. The details haven’t been released, but it’s hard to see how this doesn’t cross an ethical line. Our personal information at the Internal Revenue Service is supposed to be private.

Either way, the White House is doomed to fail. Young Americans are avoiding ObamaCare because it isn’t a good deal for us.

Last week I visited Healthcare.gov to scout out the most-affordable health-insurance plans I could buy for next year. In Arlington, Va., where I live and work, the cheapest option is $200 a month with a $6,850 deductible. Across the Potomac in D.C., the premiums are slightly cheaper but the deductible is still sky-high.

My experience isn’t unique. ObamaCare is plainly unaffordable for many young Americans. We’re at the start of our careers—and the bottom of the income ladder—so paying so much for something we likely won’t use makes little sense. The IRS penalty of $695 or 2.5% of our income is often cheap by comparison. We may be young, but we can do the math.

Nothing the White House says at the summit on Tuesday can change this reality. Young Americans aren’t looking for “outreach” and “engagement” from President Obama. We’re looking for affordable health-insurance plans—and ObamaCare doesn’t offer them.