#prairiechzhead gets on her soapbox

[prairiechzhead]

Poldark S3 Was A Huge Disappointment For Me and It All Boils Down To One Root Cause.

I had originally begun a draft of this post that devolved into everything that I cannot stand about how the show chose to move the character of Demelza into a different direction. That part of the post got really, really, really, really long.

Instead of sharing that really, really, really, really long post, I decided to write a new one. It’s also Sunday and the final episode of season 3 hasn’t aired yet as I begin this, but I need to write because for the past 10 weeks, I’ve been doing homework on Sunday mornings. I have no homework to type up because the summer term is finished. I find myself at a loss, so I began this post.

But I digress. You’ll find that I’m really good at that.

This is a really, really, really, really long post about the one reason why Season 3 was a disappointment to me. I’ve been able to distill my disappointment down to one root cause.

If you listen to the @poldarkpodcast​, you know that I regularly submit my opinions on the episodes that just aired. You probably also know that I’m not fond of the direction in which they took Demelza this season.

Actually “not fond” is putting it mildly.

I HATE what they did to her character. I hate, hate, hate it! The Powers That Be decided that Demelza wasn’t “strong” enough or “feisty” enough in the novels, so they had to make her more modern to appeal to modern audiences.

However, in doing so, they basically took a shit all over Winston Graham’s work and a character that was based on his own wife. They’ve taken the product of someone who is a very gifted storyteller and dumbed it down so much, I start to feel stabby.  

I’m glad he’s not alive to see this.

Feisty Demelza does not work in the Hugh/Demelza storyline. She doesn’t fit. She doesn’t belong there because Demelza’s inner conflict can’t exist with Show!Demelza as she has been written. An integral part of this story, Hugh Armitage’s basically taking advantage of Demelza’s kindness and turning it around on her through subtle manipulation, is missing. It cannot exist with Modern, Feisty Show!Demelza because of the trope that Modern, Feisty women can’t be manipulated. Internal conflicts only make one indecisive, and Modern, Feisty women, such as Show!Demelza can’t be indecisive.

As @mmmuses​ pointed out in an episode of the Poldark Podcast, when TPTB changed up Demelza, they neglected to change the other characters, too, particularly Ross. The two characters are foils for each other. In changing her, but not having him change in line with her change, the equilibrium is gone. 

Show!Ross is pretty much the same as in the novels, with a few exceptions. In Black Moon and Four Swans, Book!Ross has matured and grown from the events in the previous novel. In the show, Show!Ross has grown and learned from what happened in season 2. However, when, in E1, he doesn’t want to talk about Elizabeth, even though Demelza is poking at him to do so, I don’t see this as him pretending that a problem doesn’t exist. I see it as him avoiding creating more problems because Demelza will inevitably take whatever he says the wrong way and not give him a chance to explain what he means. Demelza on the show has a very bad habit of doing this. In this episode, I see his reluctance to talk as Ross trying to avoid an argument. Granted, he doesn’t handle this in the best way because he’s not a good communicator. 

Unlike her book counterpart, Show!Demelza seems to have regressed into a bratty teenager. Book!Ross describes Book!Demelza as “his conscience.”

Then there are all the inconsistencies in how her character is portrayed. The biggest and most egregious example of this for me (and this should not come as a surprise to you) is when, in Episode 7, she goes after Ross, who has just learned that his aunt Agatha died, is walking on the beach, trying to sort through his emotions, and then begins to tear him a new one about his decision to decline the offer of running for MP, because he “didn’t ask for her opinion”.

This scene STILL sticks in my craw because it is so out of character for Demelza to do this. Demelza is a kind and selfless person. She puts others before herself. Book!Demelza, when struggling with her attraction to Hugh, even puts the struggle into terms of her not wanting to see someone else suffer (this would be her tendency towards kindness) with her deep love for Ross and honoring her marriage vows. Book!Demelza and Show!Demelza from S1 and 2 would not do go to Ross and start screaming at him. Her first reaction would be to go to him and console him.  Her opinion on this MP issue can wait because her husband needs her more.

If this out-of-character behavior wasn’t bad enough, there is a sub-section of the fandom who defend her behavior in that scene.

First of all, you don’t rip into someone who just learned that one of their few remaining relatives has died. You don’t do that. Period.

Second, why does Ross need her opinion on not running for MP? Now if he decided to run for MP without consulting her opinion, she has a case, because that would involve upheaval in their lives that would affect her, their children, the mine, and all the other day-to-day things that happen at Nampara.  But for someone who has been very vocal in the past about her wish for Ross to be at home more, it makes zero sense for her to be upset with him for turning down something that would require him to be away from home for months at a time.

The writers also have Show!Demelza gift her brothers the use of a storage barn on Nampara land to use as a Methodist meeting house. (In the books, it was Ross who gifted them a building of some sort. Which one specifically escapes me at the moment.) But the thing is, Show!Demelza did this out of spite and behind his back because she was pissed off at Ross for being in France longer than he said he would be. He had good reason to: he was waiting for his contact to give him a list of the prisoners at Quimper and then he would know where Dwight Enys, a friend of the family, was.

It’s not like he decided to stay in Roscoff because he wanted to go out and party or anything like that. Her reaction was out of proportion to the event that supposedly triggered it. That is not the sign of an emotionally mature and strong person.

Strong people don’t do things out of spite. Weak people act out of spite. Immature people act out of spite. Perhaps if Show!Demelza had done this without being motivated to do so by her anger at Ross, it would come across more as an act performed by a strong person because a decision had to be made and there was no one around to make it except her. The writers want us to believe this, but I’m not buying it. Her anger and spite is clear when she makes the decision to gift the building to her brothers. 

Because of the inconsistency in her characterization, the struggle that Book!Demelza went through in Four Swans over her attraction to Hugh Armitage is not there. I don’t sympathize with Show!Demelza. I’m not even sure if she is struggling emotionally, because given her past, inconsistent behavior on the show and how TPTB decided to not have Ross and Demelza fully reconcile, they have set up the climax of this storyline and Demelza’s motivation as to get revenge or to do it out of spite.

Again, emotionally mature, strong people DO NOT do things out of spite or to get even.

The characterization on the show then becomes problematic in scenes that are played out as they are in the novels. The best example is in episode 8 when Demelza makes the “I wish I could be two people” speech. In the novels, it comes off as her being honest and conflicted and it is set up to be confessional. On TV, it just comes off as her informing Ross that she’s probably going to make the Beast with Two Backs with Armitage and that if he doesn’t like it, too bad. In the same scene, she also tells Ross that he’s the one she belongs with. The scene is also blocked in a way where the two of them are sitting across from each other, which gives it a confrontational feel. It also makes Ross’s honesty about beginning to doubt his wife’s feelings for him even more painful to watch. Modern, Feisty Show!Demelza tells him to “be patient. As I was patient with you.” She’s referring to the aftermath of Ross’s Very Bad Thing with Elizabeth in season 2.

Which brings me to another point about Show!Demelza’s characterization in S3. TPTB have basically ignored what Show!Demelza did and said in S2. She wasn’t patient with Ross. She was angry, and rightfully so. She was ready to leave him because he couldn’t seem to make up his mind on who he really wanted. She was fed up waiting for him to get his head out of his ass. Ross can be thick sometimes, particularly when it comes to emotions. Ross is an emotionally stunted man who has difficulty expressing his emotions, AND expressing them in a way where he is not putting his foot in his mouth and making things worse. He certainly did plenty of that in S2 after his transgression.

But the main difference between him asking her to be patient and her asking him to be patient is that when Ross asked this of Demelza, the deed had already been done. When Demelza asks this of Ross, the deed has yet to come.

But now, when the shoe is on the other foot, she expects Ross to sit back and wait for her to get her head out of her ass and figure things out. Except this doesn’t work because Demelza is better at expressing her feelings than Ross is, MOST of the time. When she does not, she goes full passive-aggressive, which just makes things worse. Then there are times when she loses her temper and reacts to things that Ross says or does and she doesn’t give him a chance to explain further or clear up any confusion. This seems to happen when he says something in the most asinine and garbled way possible. As a result, Ross becomes reluctant to share things with her because he doesn’t want to anger her or hurt her.

Which brings me back to Episode 1 and the appearance that he’s pretending there is no problem in regards to Elizabeth.

This couple has very atrocious communication skills. The future therapist in me wants to sit both down and work with them on this.

So between what S2Show!Demelza did and the platitudes she threw in Ross’s face after Ross’s indiscretion now contradicts what S3Show!Demelza is about to do with Lord Byron aka Hugh Armitage. In this regard, Show!Demelza comes off as a hypocrite and Show!Ross now has some moral high ground. Making pronouncements works better if you make them after you did something wrong because you can always frame them as you messed up, but you learned from your mistakes. He messed up and he knows that what he did was wrong. He knows that he inflicted pain on her in the worst way possible. He regretted what he did almost immediately. She was hurt by what he did to her, but here she is, about to inflict the same pain on him. This is what gives Ross that bit of moral high ground. He learned. She has not.

One of the arguments that defenders of this Hugh/Demelza storyline in the show fall back on is this notion that Show!Demelza is being neglected by her husband. This is a line that’s been put forth by TPTB in the press. Having watched this show, I’m still waiting to see evidence of such neglect.

Ross was neglectful of her in S2. When it was pointed out to him that he had no clue that everything Demelza was doing to make sure there was food while they were going through a period of impoverishment, he tried to make up for it and as a result, we got that Stocking Scene. He also learned that she was starting to doubt his feelings for her, too. He showed her that he still loved her by the events in the stocking scene.

The one thing he doesn’t do in that moment and in that scene is brush off her concerns. In S3, when Demelza asks him to be patient after he confesses he’s begun to doubt her feelings for him, it comes across as if she’s brushing him off.

However, in S3, the couple are seen regularly sitting together and talking. Or they’re taking walks, hand in hand, I should add. Sometimes, the walks are just the two of them. Other times, their children are along. They work together in the garden. They are intimate.

So I am a tad confused as to where this argument that Show!Demelza is being neglected comes from.

TPTB have set up this tryst with Hugh Armitage based on non-existent evidence that her husband is not paying attention to her. Riiiiight.

I’m from the old school in that if you’re going to make a claim, it is your responsibility to back up that claim with evidence. Maybe the people in the back don’t require supporting evidence of this so-called neglect, but the people in the front do and I’m one of those people sitting up front. 

Spousal neglect is one of the reasons why my first marriage fell apart. This neglect had ZERO to do with—

Again how exactly is Demelza being neglected? Dammit, I can’t even finish that sentence now.

The kind of emotional neglect that can destroy a marriage includes not standing by and supporting a spouse when that spouse is going through something very difficult. In my case, I had just been formally diagnosed with Major Depressive Disorder that I’d been living with undiagnosed for half my life (I was 29 when I received my diagnosis) and my ex refused to support me because I’d decided to start taking anti-depressants and he “didn’t believe in taking pills for such a thing”.

THAT is neglect. His refusal to stick by me was one of the reasons that man is now my ex-husband. The man I am married to now (I refuse to call him my current husband because that suggests that there might be a future husband, which there will never be) has taken the time to learn about my depression and my anxiety. He goes with me to therapist appointments when I ask him to go. When I had a nervous breakdown four years ago and was contemplating suicide, I voluntarily checked myself into a psychiatric hospital. That man was there during visiting hours every single day. When I am going through an episode of depression or anxiety, he is the one who urges me to get up and do something. Anything. He may not always do the right thing, but that’s not the point. He is standing beside me and he is there when I need him. And that is why we’ve been together for almost 18 years and married for 15.

And after writing all of that, I’m still having trouble finding exactly in what way Ross is neglecting her during S3. Saying stupid things or insensitive things in the heat of the moment is not neglect. That’s just being a horse’s ass. At least he’s talking to you, Demelza. 

The book version of Demelza, the one that TPTB decided wasn’t strong enough is actually a stronger person that the so-called Modern, Feisty Demelza. We, as a culture, have a serious problem with how we define strength and weakness in a person, particularly when it comes to emotions. Strong people, emotionally mature people are usually the quiet ones who take time to contemplate. Emotionally immature and weak people are the ones who throw tantrums and act out of spite. However, because we are conditioned to believe that strength is demonstrated by action, we view the person who has the outbursts and reacts based on their emotions as the strong ones. The person who takes the time to contemplate what they are doing is the weaker person, according to society.

It’s actually the other way around. It takes a tremendous amount of strength to make yourself take that step backwards, take those deep breaths, and not react viscerally.

TPTB have it backwards. Book!Demelza is the strong one. Season3Show!Demelza is the weaker character.

I’m sorry that the people in the back can’t wrap their heads around this, but that’s not my problem and those of us in the front should not be made to suffer for other people’s ignorance.

And this is why S3 is such a disappointment to me. 

As it is about 2 hours and 45 minutes until the show airs, I’m posting this anyway, because unfortunately, I doubt that there is enough that will happen in one last episode to redeem this season for me. 

[prairiechzhead]

What, to the American slave, is your Fourth of July? I answer: a day that reveals to him, more than all other days in the year, the gross injustice and cruelty to which he is the constant victim. To him, your celebration is a sham; your boasted liberty, an unholy license; your national greatness, swelling vanity; your sounds of rejoicing are empty and heartless; your denunciation of tyrants, brass-fronted impudence; your shouts of liberty and equality, hollow mockery; your prayers and hymns, your sermons and thanksgivings, with all your religious parade and solemnity, are, to Him, mere bombast, fraud, deception, impiety, and hypocrisy-a thin veil to cover up crimes which would disgrace a nation of savages. There is not a nation of savages. There is not a nation on the earth guilty of practices more shocking and bloody than are the people of the United States at this very hour. Go where you may, search where you will, roam through all the monarchies and despotisms- of the Old World, travel through South America, search out every abuse, and when you have found the last, lay your facts by the side of the everyday practices of this nation, and you will say with me that, for revolting barbarity and shameless hypocrisy, America reigns without a rival.

“What to the Slave is 4th of July?”, Frederick Douglass (1852)

Douglass is referring to slavery, and made this speech when slavery was still legal in this country, but the words and this passage resonate today, especially if you’re not rich, white, conservative, male, Christian, or a Trump supporter.  Substitute the word “slave” with words like “African-American”, “Muslim”, “woman”, “Latinx”, “LGBTQ”, or “Native American”, and the meaning does not change. 

I see the aforementioned White/Male/Christian/Conservative/Wealthy people and how arrogantly they proclaim how great America is. They do this every day, but on today of all days, it’s especially hypocritical.  

America is not great. Greatness does not come from taking things away from people. 

Greatness does not come from denying others their inalienable rights to life, liberty, or the pursuit of happiness. 

Greatness does not come from denying people their First Amendment rights. 

Greatness does not come from disenfranchising the already disenfranchised. 

America is not the land of the free. It’s the land of the Arrogant and the Hypocritical. 

America is a land of cowards. Selfish cowards. Because it is easier to buy t-shirts with flags on them and fly a flag and deck out your house in red, white, and blue stuff than it is to do the difficult things that humanity asks of us: like showing compassion for others and having empathy for others. For being brave and reaching out to others. Or consciously confronting some uncomfortable and inconvenient truths about the tough issues like race or religion and how we (as white Americans) were (and still are) really shitty to an entire group of people simply because they did not look like us. 

We are not great. We have the potential to be a great nation. We’re too afraid to do the difficult work to make it great. 

Six months ago, I was full of fight. Now, I’m just tired. Exhausted. Anxious. Hopeless. Ashamed of my country. Ashamed to call myself an American. I’ve begun to believe that the only way that we can fix what is broken in this country is to let the whole thing collapse and break. Then we can start over again and make something better, something that actually resembles all the words we like to say now. 

If we want America to be great again, we need to make it empathetic. Only then will we be great. 

Douglass’s speech in its entirety.