"Looking" just wants to exist

You may know that I'm a huge fan of Girls, so much so that I wrote 85 pages on it. So when HBO slotted Looking into the Sunday night spot after Girls, I enthusiastically started comparing the two: "Looking is the gay Girls!" "Replace New York with San Francisco and Lena Dunham with Jonathan Groff, and it's the same series!"

Patrick and Richie have a pretty awesome date. 

But despite similar premises (a group of friends trying to make it work in love, career, and play), Looking and Girls are actually quite different. If Girls wants to alienate, Looking just wants to exist. After five compelling episodes, Looking has constructed a narrative for its protagonists (Dom, Patrick and Augustin) that feels decidedly OK--not alienating, problematic, or harsh in the way that Girls treats its characters with (empathetic) disdain. The boys have jobs that are just fine, relationships that are maybe a little lackluster, and designs for their futures that they may or may not execute--and therein lies the dramatic tension. Queer as Folk, the most similar series about a group of gay men, featured a hostile, homophobic outside world that the characters were constantly struggling against. That series went off the air ten years ago--and now, in Looking, the fact that there's not much homophobia or discrimination in the characters' world signals just how much has changed. Now, Patrick, Dom, and Augustin are just free to exist and figure themselves out. This banalizing force is refreshing because it means not only that queer lives are no longer problematic on screen, but also that the true character work to be done in the narrative will be internally, and not societally, motivated. For example, last's night's message-in-a-bottle episode spent a day with Patrick and his new boyfriend Richie on their first real date. The tone is meandering and explorative as the connection builds and subtle character differences arise. Tough topics are broached, like dating someone who's positive or coming out to family, but the real tension is in how, and to what ends, Patrick and Richie reveal themselves to one another. In Girls, those revelations usually lead to emotional explosions, but in Looking, they just happen.

I think this ease of story feels so different now because we are still in the age of the televisual male antihero: Walter White, Hank Moody, Don Draper, and newcomer Rust Cohle from True Detective, to name a few. These characters rage against their lot, both stunted and propelled by their deep character flaws and philosophical positions. It's the me-against-everything-else-including-myself pattern, but in Looking, perhaps it's more the me-with-everything-else story. And frankly, I'd much rather watch Patrick try to understand why his longest relationship is five months than see Walter White stagger into the monstrosities of his own making; the former just feels more authentic, somehow. Maybe it's because we all just want to exist?

Fangirling with Sherlock

Warning: Spoilers ahead about the new season of Sherlock! If you're being diligent and waiting to watch it on PBS, stop reading now. 

If you've been around me the past few months, you know that Sherlock's return has occupied a lot of my obsessive brain. Yes, I am a complete fangirl about Mr. Holmes-Cumberbatch, so I watched the first two seasons multiple times to prepare for season 3 (and my friend Vanessa and I are probably also responsible for the full view count of this rapturous video, made by a very talented fan).

Watching Sherlock feels to me like I'm 12 again and have just been to a Backstreet Boys concert - I'm energized and frenzied, yearning after the unattainable and god-like, but also melancholy that it's not possible to recreate the enthrallment of seeing it for the first time. Go ahead and roll your eyes, because I'm not ashamed of my past and present obsessions.

From the way that Sherlock buzzes about in the media, it seems as though many other fangirls and boys share my feelings. Not knowing how Sherlock fakes his death kept the interwebs a-puzzle for two whole years leading up to this past New Year's Day episode. When creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat gave us not one but three plausible scenarios, the third of which is revealed most likely to be the truth, it's clear that they are indulging the fans in a way that toys with and comments on two overlapping things: the immediacy of social media and the dedication of hyperfans.

This episode, "The Empty Hearse," generated 8,000 tweets at its peak, according to SecondSync. If you weren't watching it live, good luck if you were seeing it trend on Twitter; spoilers by the minute popped up like teenage acne. For example, in the graph above, the blip at 21:30 was most likely due to the Moriarty/Sherlock almost-kiss in scenario #2. This scenario, because of its complete ridiculousness, and because the hashtag trend #sherlocklives makes an appearance right afterwards, is a cheeky nod towards die-hard fans of the fiction; in other words, it's meta-fiction at its most social-media-driven.

The second episode was a little less "social" by about 100,000 tweets, but the story itself nevertheless seemed to have its fans at its core. What we got in "The Sign of Three" was romantic in tone, whimsical in plot, and emotional in character study. With the characteristic crime framework taking a backseat to Watson's wedding, Gatiss and Moffat were pushing the scope of Sherlock in terms of genre by centering the episode on Sherlock's inner complexities and his relationship to Watson. This is what fans (and memes) love about Sherlock and Watson, which the writers have recognized and hence capitalized on, all the while pushing us to reconsider what we expect from the series in terms of story.

So how much of series 3 feels forced into existence by hyperfans? Some, I'd say, but luckily the people behind Sherlock are clever enough to run with the new landscape that is TV-watching these days. I'll call them the 4 S's: second screen, streaming, social. To keep viewers engaged, television has to offer simultaneous engagement on laptops and phones, be versatile enough for people to watch when they want, and appeal to social media by promoting trend-able stories. In a sense, then, it has to be both immediate and prolonged. Sort of an oxymoron, no? Lots of shows achieve the flash-in-the-pan trend status but can't keep the momentum going (The Blacklist on NBC, anyone?). And of course there's little direct correlation between the quality of a show and its corresponding twitter activity (sometimes it's an inverse correlation!).

But in the end, I think the key to success for social TV is as simple as this: keep telling a good story and you'll have your audience. Mad Men, Game of Thrones, The Walking Dead, and Homeland are just a few others that have theirs. 

Now, if you don't mind me, I'll go watch more #BenedictCumberbatch videos in preparation for the finale this Sunday. 

Leaving Denmark (on Medium)

I just wrote an essay about my decision to leave Denmark and return to Boston on Medium. Here's the link and blurb:

Leaving Denmark

I left a country with an exceptional health care system to return home to the US, a country with a maddening one. Why? An operation, of all things. 

Read it here!
https://medium.com/p/be9a4088987f

Linear Storytelling in Gravity

As the credits rolled at the end of Alfonso Cuarón's Gravity, my mom and I turned to each other, wide-eyed, and simultaneously said, WHOA.

The film is a complete thrill, as I'm sure you've heard. I could go on about the dazzling extraterrestrial special effects, 60 percent of which were shot in a 10x10 foot "light box." I could happily praise Sandra Bullock's performance ad infinitum.  I could also highlight the amazing feat of Cuarón's signature long takes - this time in space.

But instead I want to draw attention to the fact that Gravity is about the most linear story you can find, and it works. When the debris first comes flying towards Ryan and Matt within the first ten minutes of the film, I thought: how are they going to keep up this level of intensity and suspense for an hour and a half? Guess what - they did it, with strategically placed moments for us to catch our breath. But this is a film where nothing is wasted in the narrative (note: spoilers ahead).

First of all, what we learn about Matt and Ryan is only what's necessarily to drive the plot. Ryan is used to a laboratory and not zero-gravity; this could be seen as the 'call to adventure' in Joseph Campbell's theory of the hero's journey plot structure which ups the ante when her survival in space is on the line. Matt is a confident chatterbox, which perhaps reassures us when that crucial moment comes and they break contact - maybe he'll be alright with his words and the radio. Finally, the only other major character detail we learn about Ryan is that she lost her daughter, thus giving her a frame through which to understand her own death and her place in outer space (which, I would argue, then helps egg on her own striving for survival, and those moments of summoning strength are both character- and plot-based; again, no time is wasted in this film).

So, armed with purely the knowledge we need to have about these characters, we concentrate solely on watching them try to get home (live out the quest, in Campbell terms). Each obstacle that presents itself is a bigger 'uh oh' than before, but as the stakes rise and Ryan overcomes each danger, the suspense rises as well and each near-death (say, in the fire or when dream-Matt opens the pod door) feels less and less like a cheat. With the stakes so high, we hope Ryan makes it but even if she doesn't, either way we want to know how.

This spell-binding suspense is what sets Gravity apart from other linear stories, because while we crave a happy, victorious ending in keeping with the hero's journey, it seems so implausible that just watching a valiant struggle to whatever end there may be is enough. This is also why the actual ending is so satisfying, because there's struggle (against her own body) even in the last frames.


For those of you who have seen the film, what do you think of the ending and why?

P.S. After I wrote this I stumbled upon film scholar Kristin Thompson's fantastic and interesting analysis of the plot - hers both aligns with and departs from mine!

Inner Beauty in a Postfeminist Television Landscape?

Whether or not you're a fan of the show, you probably have something to say about TLC's What Not To Wear. "Oh, the makeover show?" you ask. Yes, it's the one where they transform women from 'drab' to 'fab' by throwing out their clothes and helping/forcing them to shop for a new wardrobe.

The same thing probably goes for Orange Is The New Black, Netflix's outstanding new drama. "Oh, the one about the women's prison," you say. Well, I have a lot to say about both--especially because despite a divide in genre and form (reality vs. fiction, episodic vs. serial), much of the content overlaps when it comes to women's inner beauty.

What Not To Wear aired its series finale a few weeks ago, and I'll admit, I binge-watched the entire last season leading up to this finale. I guess I found it hard to resist the temptation to watch what hosts Stacy and Clinton call 'fashion disasters' clean up their look.

But I found myself getting more and more uncomfortable with the premise of WNTW as I went along. The setup--where Stacy and Clinton surprise their contestants with intentionally embarrassing hidden camera footage of them in 'bad' outfits--seemed designed to sabotage and humiliate as much as possible so that the episodes can set up for the narrative of transformation we've come to expect from reality TV. Then, they dump the contestants' entire wardrobe in a trash can, but not before ridiculing it, sometimes before a 360-degree mirror.

(Ok, I admit, some of the outfits are pretty weird...Megumi, right, thinks this is a normal outfit and not a costume)

Finally, Stacy and Clinton take the contestant out shopping and POOF! Two days later she's a changed woman. Or is she? It depends on which context we're using to define changed.

During the finale, Clinton says, "it's really not about the clothes." And to some extent, the show does concentrate on bringing out the confidence, strength, and beauty that these women already have but aren't displaying on the outside, perhaps because some personal demons are hidden under or exacerbated by the bad clothes. My problem is that their vision of beauty is so incredibly narrow. I can't count the number of times the hosts have dressed their 'fashion victims' in the same iteration of jeans, blouse and blazer or flower print dress. Yes, they teach the women to dress for their body type, but does everyone have to dress in some combination of Stacy's trademark "color, pattern, texture and shine"?

More irritating still is the proclamation of transformation and success that the clothes will bring (and they often do). It seems that by adhering to a certain standard of femininity and fashion, these 'remade' women will better navigate their careers and personal lives. Whether this change happens because of a legitimately rediscovered confidence or rather just an easier time conforming to class indicators through clothing (and hair and makeup), who knows, but I'm inclined to say the latter. Maybe I'm just bitter because I hate the pressure of looking 'just right' or having a 'personal style' - why can't my personal style be comfy sweaters and no makeup? I mean, it can be, but maybe not if I want to get ahead in the urban, media-saturated landscape where I live my life.

Rosalind Gill, feminist critic, points out how the fascination with women's bodies in our current postfeminist media culture makes the body into our singular identifier:

"In today's media, possession of a 'sexy body' is presented as women's key (if not sole) source of identity. The body is presented simultaneously as women's source of power and as always unruly, requiring constant monitoring, surveillance, discipline and remodeling (and consumer spending) in order to conform to ever-narrower judgments of female attractiveness." (1)  

Agreed! So, where does television go from here?

The remedy could be something like Orange Is The New Black (yes, I also binge-watched), which takes the same narrative of transformation/facing demons and puts it in a humanistic and complicated light. I'm not saying OITNB doesn't have its own problems of representation (especially queer, class, and racial ones), but it's a start, because the show exists in a woman's space, mostly devoid of the male gaze (with the exception, of course, of 'Pornstache'). The women come in all sizes and colors in their mono-color jumpsuits, so we get to know them through their personalities and actions, not what they're wearing. If there ever were a show about real female inner beauty, this one's it in my opinion. Talk about Sophia - what a gorgeous character, whereas Pennsatucky is portrayed as an ugly person from the inside-->out.

So, what I'm saying is this: I think this narrative of transformation happens in both shows, but in directly opposite manners. The 'way out' to a better place in WNTW is through exterior fashion, but in OITNB on other hand, it's through self-investigation while the inmates endure their sentences, biding their time on good behavior. Depending on how you look at it, both are uplifting stories, but OITNB is just more realistic, in my opinion, because accepting yourself from the inside is much more complex, difficult and ultimately rewarding than just slapping on some new clothes to feel beautiful.


---
1. Quoted in Rosalind Gill, "Postfeminist media culture : Elements of a sensibility," European Journal of Cultural Studies 2007 10: 147.

Danish Television has me hooked!

You might know that I love me some Danish drama. I recently wrote an article on why Danish television is fantastic over at Scandinavian Standard, a new site dedicated for 'scandis and scandi-philes' run by my good friend Rebecca.

Read it here! http://www.scandinaviastandard.com/get-hooked-on-danish-television/

I will have used to live here

I'm departing today from the 'film' side and emphasizing the 'feelings' side, because I'm soon departing from Copenhagen, going back to live in Boston.

Last year, when I moved into shared housing, I wrote an application for acceptance. I titled the Powerpoint presentation "The Road Ahead," in which I detailed how the travel bug had brought me from Boston to Paris to Bretagne to Denmark and finally, I hoped, to Egmont Kollegium. In the application, through my enthusiasm for Danish canals and Carlsberg, I hinted at a sense of hope that Denmark would be my home, indefinitely. A year ago, my future did look that way.

the road ahead, one year ago. 

But I think, even then, something was nagging at me that I didn't want to acknowledge. Now, four days away from my transcontinental move, I'm finally able to embrace what two years of learning Danish, studying film, making great friends, and writing a thesis have pointed to.

I am American.

When I lived in France, I tried my hardest to rid my French of any trace of an American accent, lest strangers, upon meeting me, inquire, "Bush ou Obama? MacDonalds ou freedom fries?" I hated being associated with those stereotypes and instead tried to carve out my own sense of identity, away from cultural impositions. But the truth of the matter was, I came to France in the first place because of all the romantic cultural lore about France that I had soaked up as a teenager, so I was also guilty of generalizing. And at a certain point the lore no longer stuck, so I moved, but I didn't yet consider myself any more American than before.

I came back to Boston briefly, then went on to Copenhagen. I didn't give Boston a chance that year because I was dead set on coming back to Europe, thinking that maybe in Scandinavia I'd feel a true sense of home-away-from-home.  And I have, for these two years, mostly because I was studying something I love and made incredibly deep, lasting friendships (with Danes but mostly with other foreigners who have showed me that where you come from is just part of the equation, but a part nonetheless).

But this sense of home is fleeting, falling away, and when I projected myself into the future, I couldn't see myself marrying, having kids, or growing old here. I've dated only casually here; perhaps my wavering commitment to this country is why. I learned Danish with the prospect of finding a job after graduation and staying, but I found myself not trying very hard to look for those jobs, thinking that it was starting to get exhausting to have to get by all the time in a language and culture that makes me feel always slightly uncomfortable.

Because I am American. And finally, I know that this isn't a bad thing. It's what I make of it. Jason Farago articulates it well on the eve of his thirtieth birthday: "America isn’t like other countries; you can’t escape it, you don’t ever get to start again. Wherever you go America will find you." So why not mold it to your own standards instead of making sweeping judgments of it. It's like I've been ignoring my cultural identity not in name but in spirit--people here in Denmark have told me that I'm the least American American they know. I no longer treat that as a compliment, but rather something to puzzle over.

I've been reading a lot about sustainability (partly because climate change terrifies me, and partly because I want to get involved in the fight against it). And I've come to associate it with this conclusion: Kate in Denmark is not sustainable. If I were to stay, I would be burning up all my resources in trying to create the circumstances needed to be happy, whereas a more (emotionally) sustainable life in Boston does not impede the potential path to that happiness that may result in wasting fewer resources. Which in turn will hopefully help me focus on the stuff that matters: family, love, meaningful work. For example, if I am to invest in writing, trying to write convincingly in Danish is a frustrating impediment.

So I'm excited. To be able to watch Homeland on TV, not streamed on my laptop. To hug my parents and my puppy and not have to think about leaving them again. To exclaim over the variety of yogurt products in the grocery store. To engage with film and media in my own language and culture.

Of course readjusting to being an American in America will have some difficult moments, especially when I know I'll miss my friends immensely. I also know I'll try (to my chagrin) to transplant my European habits--biking, drinking in parks, and taking up less space--onto my life in Boston. But for once, I look forward to this challenge. Instead of bolting and running, I'm going to put my long-standing restlessness to work by living an intentional life, not a transitory one.

Because I am American, and so for Copenhagen, I can presently say, with both sorrow and joy: I will have used to live here.