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selenakGood question. It does influence my viewing habits somewhat, though not always in the way I anticipated.
The anticpated bit: would be being incapable again to watch shows like The West Wing. I couldn’t watch that show during the Bush years and marathoned it only during the tail end, the last months, December/January, when I looked forward to the Obama years. Though these days there’s the added complication that not only is the gulf between fiction and reality even larger, but the most vicious satirist who ever wrote could not have come up with something like the current creatures in charge. I mean, they make Bond villains look subtle. And even in dystopias, there are at least some people with spine and/or morals around who can’t stand supporting their vile leaders anymore after a brief time. Basically, political satire looks tame when faced with reality.
(This doesn’t just apply to US based media. Haven’t touched something like Yes, Minister recently, either, because watching Britain sink into the lunatic Brexit abyss in real time takes the fun out of that with a vengeance.)
Now, you’d think this makes me stay away from dystopias in general and seek out fun and/or fluffy shows/movies/books utterly divorced from the current day as a distraction. And sometimes this is how it works. For example, I suspect that’s why I was in the market for Versailles, say (trashy history is fun, too), and greet stories celebrating the virtues of kindness and decency with a big cheer. (Which reminds me, if Amazon Video still refuses to give me Call the Midwife, I suppose I’ll have to tackle Itunes instead. Not that Call the Midwife is divorced from reality, au contraire, it tackles the social problems of its day pretty well and has had its share of tragedies, but it has a (changing) ensemble of likeable characters who all in their way are driven to help others for six seasons now, and I need that in my fannish life.)
However, and this is the not ancipitated part, sometimes I’m driven to consume media set in a dystopia. Or awful period of history. Common wisdom would have that’s what you do when your reality is doing pretty well, and so I thought, but: last year my major book discovery were the Bernie Gunther novels by Philip Kerr. Set both during the Third Reich and after (with flashbacks), with the (German) main character at times a cop, at times a P.I., and „morally compromised“ is putting it mildly if you work as a policeman in the Third Reich and survive, no matter how much you loathe your bosses. Partly I fell for these novels because they’re clever spin on the noir formula of cynical hero (with hidden or not so hidden ethics under veneer) in a corrupt world, and because Kerr does his research (with occasional glitches, but these things happen). Partly, though, because in an odd way it’s a comforting reminder that yes, we live in The Most Stupid Timeline, with a lot of people in all nations (including mine) seemingly bent on repeating the worst mistakes of the past, BUT compared with the true horror, we’re still far better off, circumstances are partly so different that there’s hope those who want to repeat the past will not succeed. The Orange Menace may be awful, his twin in hair style who currentlly serves as British foreign secretary a greedy buffoon doing damage every tiime he opens his mouth, bloody Viktor Orban may be bent on turning Hungary into a strong man, regime even more than it already is, with the PIS party (so aptly named) doing much the same for Poland, Erdogan may have turned Turkey into a gigantic prison for journalists, and some of our leading conservatives may adopt right wing extremist rethoric in the most disgusting manner in order to court voters – but it was worse. It was far, far worse. Somehow, reading fictional Bernie Gunther bearing witness to The Darkest Timeline helped, believe it or not.
Incidentally, the way this works on me seems to have parameters excluding a certain type of, how shall I put this, self congratulatory historical fiction from British and US media? Because I haven’t watched Dunkirk and am staying away from The Darkest Hour, and last year when I had to check some MCU canon for a ficathon, I found I couldn’t bear to rewatch the first Captain America movie (so I only rewatched the relevant scenes I needed to refresh my memory on). Meanwhile, when Robert Harris was in Munich last November to read from his new novel named, well, Munich in which he makes his case for Chamberlain (as some historians now do, for example, here), I had no problem listening and afterwards buying the book. (Not Harris‘ best novel of those I’ve read, nor the worst, but that’s not due to the subject. It’s more a case of the OCs never really coming alive that keeps me from praising it. Incidentally, Harris‘ was the first fictional take on the Munich Agreement to remind me that that it happened while the Oktoberfest was in full swing, which made Munich incredibly crowded, and the contrast between that and what was going on was extra bizarre.)
In conclusion: I’m ready for The Most Stupid Timeline to end any time soon, please. Meanwhile, I’ll try my best to survive on a fannish diet of comfort by media praising human decency, media consisting of entertaining trash and/or fluff, and media showing how it could be far, far worse.
The Other Days
The anticpated bit: would be being incapable again to watch shows like The West Wing. I couldn’t watch that show during the Bush years and marathoned it only during the tail end, the last months, December/January, when I looked forward to the Obama years. Though these days there’s the added complication that not only is the gulf between fiction and reality even larger, but the most vicious satirist who ever wrote could not have come up with something like the current creatures in charge. I mean, they make Bond villains look subtle. And even in dystopias, there are at least some people with spine and/or morals around who can’t stand supporting their vile leaders anymore after a brief time. Basically, political satire looks tame when faced with reality.
(This doesn’t just apply to US based media. Haven’t touched something like Yes, Minister recently, either, because watching Britain sink into the lunatic Brexit abyss in real time takes the fun out of that with a vengeance.)
Now, you’d think this makes me stay away from dystopias in general and seek out fun and/or fluffy shows/movies/books utterly divorced from the current day as a distraction. And sometimes this is how it works. For example, I suspect that’s why I was in the market for Versailles, say (trashy history is fun, too), and greet stories celebrating the virtues of kindness and decency with a big cheer. (Which reminds me, if Amazon Video still refuses to give me Call the Midwife, I suppose I’ll have to tackle Itunes instead. Not that Call the Midwife is divorced from reality, au contraire, it tackles the social problems of its day pretty well and has had its share of tragedies, but it has a (changing) ensemble of likeable characters who all in their way are driven to help others for six seasons now, and I need that in my fannish life.)
However, and this is the not ancipitated part, sometimes I’m driven to consume media set in a dystopia. Or awful period of history. Common wisdom would have that’s what you do when your reality is doing pretty well, and so I thought, but: last year my major book discovery were the Bernie Gunther novels by Philip Kerr. Set both during the Third Reich and after (with flashbacks), with the (German) main character at times a cop, at times a P.I., and „morally compromised“ is putting it mildly if you work as a policeman in the Third Reich and survive, no matter how much you loathe your bosses. Partly I fell for these novels because they’re clever spin on the noir formula of cynical hero (with hidden or not so hidden ethics under veneer) in a corrupt world, and because Kerr does his research (with occasional glitches, but these things happen). Partly, though, because in an odd way it’s a comforting reminder that yes, we live in The Most Stupid Timeline, with a lot of people in all nations (including mine) seemingly bent on repeating the worst mistakes of the past, BUT compared with the true horror, we’re still far better off, circumstances are partly so different that there’s hope those who want to repeat the past will not succeed. The Orange Menace may be awful, his twin in hair style who currentlly serves as British foreign secretary a greedy buffoon doing damage every tiime he opens his mouth, bloody Viktor Orban may be bent on turning Hungary into a strong man, regime even more than it already is, with the PIS party (so aptly named) doing much the same for Poland, Erdogan may have turned Turkey into a gigantic prison for journalists, and some of our leading conservatives may adopt right wing extremist rethoric in the most disgusting manner in order to court voters – but it was worse. It was far, far worse. Somehow, reading fictional Bernie Gunther bearing witness to The Darkest Timeline helped, believe it or not.
Incidentally, the way this works on me seems to have parameters excluding a certain type of, how shall I put this, self congratulatory historical fiction from British and US media? Because I haven’t watched Dunkirk and am staying away from The Darkest Hour, and last year when I had to check some MCU canon for a ficathon, I found I couldn’t bear to rewatch the first Captain America movie (so I only rewatched the relevant scenes I needed to refresh my memory on). Meanwhile, when Robert Harris was in Munich last November to read from his new novel named, well, Munich in which he makes his case for Chamberlain (as some historians now do, for example, here), I had no problem listening and afterwards buying the book. (Not Harris‘ best novel of those I’ve read, nor the worst, but that’s not due to the subject. It’s more a case of the OCs never really coming alive that keeps me from praising it. Incidentally, Harris‘ was the first fictional take on the Munich Agreement to remind me that that it happened while the Oktoberfest was in full swing, which made Munich incredibly crowded, and the contrast between that and what was going on was extra bizarre.)
In conclusion: I’m ready for The Most Stupid Timeline to end any time soon, please. Meanwhile, I’ll try my best to survive on a fannish diet of comfort by media praising human decency, media consisting of entertaining trash and/or fluff, and media showing how it could be far, far worse.
The Other Days
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no subject
Date: 2018-01-19 10:19 am (UTC)Also, I couldn't watch the last season of the US House of Cards after the election. Now, of course, that's pretty much off the table, anyway, though I might watch the revamped final season with Spacey out and the focus shifted entirely to Robin Wright.
I have found myself more and more reverting to reading and watching things set in the 19th c, whether Victorians, Westerns, whatever. The era had more than its share of its own problems, but at least it's distanced somehow.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-19 01:59 pm (UTC)I would so love to live in the universe of The West Wing. So very much. Failing that, I'd go with Stephen King's The Dead Zone, because at least there the populist scumbag candidate who is destined to cause the world to end is eventually stopped (and not via an assassination) before he ever becomes President...
no subject
Date: 2018-01-19 02:11 pm (UTC)Sigh. A few times over the past year, I’ve replayed that bit of the movie in my mind, and concluded that if Trump were ever to seize a baby to use as a human shield, the Republicans would just claim that (a) he’d been trying to protect the baby by holding it out of the way, or (b) the baby had attacked him. Few people would believe either explanation, but he’d escape consequences anyway.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-19 02:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-19 11:30 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-19 01:56 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-19 07:40 pm (UTC)Yeah, I think I missed the window on The West Wing. I didn't watch it originally for the same reasons and now I don't think I could cope.
Somehow, reading fictional Bernie Gunther bearing witness to The Darkest Timeline helped, believe it or not.
It makes sense to me. I was watching a lot of noir even before our national-global politics took a hard right into the toilet, and for personal reasons that was both compelling and useful to me, but my interest in the genre hasn't slacked off just because it might be technically depressing to watch characters keep confronting ethical questions in a sideways world.
For what it's worth, I found Dunkirk much less rah-rah than it had the potential to be, certainly much less than I had worried from the fact of its making at all, but I understand that everyone's mileage varies.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-20 11:41 am (UTC)*nods* It has its flaws, but it's very much worth watching. Just... not when the reality is what it is right now.
re: Dunkirk, I'll bear that in mind.
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Date: 2018-01-19 11:20 pm (UTC)I have to say that the mirrorverse in Discovery is hard to watch as none of the imperials seem to have any redeeming features, but the speculation is fun.
A friend wrote a DW/Jane Austen crossover story in which this time is referred to as "The Great Stupidity". At least we're finally bucking the trend here.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-20 11:44 am (UTC)Some here, but I can't look away. Well, that's not true, sometimes I can. But I'm too much imprinted by being born in a country where "what did you see, what did you know, why didn't you say/do something?" was a question for an entire generation by the two subsequent generations to be able to isolate myself from the news.
The Great Stupidity is a good name for the current era. Alas.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-20 09:03 pm (UTC)I can only make a difference here, and we got a Labour/Green government in after years of rampant greed from conservative pigs at the trough, selling our country off, creating poverty, and ruining the ecology.
I am involved and informed here, but I'm happier not knowing about the sheer arrogance and insanity of rogue nations like the US, North Korea, and assorted Muslims. I want to enjoy life, not spend too much of it being afraid for it.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-20 01:58 am (UTC)I particularly like your point about consuming some historical fiction for escape, some for its sense of decency in difficult times, and some to point out how much worse it could be. I know I went into a deep plunge into all things 18th century US/UK this year in my free time (an odd choice for a medievalist), and that was definitely provoked by a need to find a way to still feel connected to my country. I bought the Hamilton soundtrack (unoriginal but very therapeutic), binge-watched Harlots, and at the end of the year Golden Hill, Charity & Sylvia: A Same-Sex Marriage in Early America, and Jane Austen: The Secret Radical all made my list of favorite reads.
I also like your point about the appeal of the right type of dystopia, which a lot of people seem to share right now. And your discussion of the Bernie Gunther novels reminds me that someone recently recommended Lavie Tidhar's A Man Lies Dreaming to me--evidently it's a noir mystery set in a timeline where the Nazis lost in 1933 Germany and many of them fled to London, where Owen Mosley is gaining power.
Anyway, you've made me think about what I'm consuming and why and whether it helps, and that in itself is much appreciated.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-20 11:46 am (UTC)Huh. Okay, that's new, versus the 1001 "what if the Nazis had won?" scenarios. And here I was complaining some months ago no one ever writes "what if one of the plots against Hitler had succeeded?" AUs. "What Hitler had lost the elections?" never occured to me. Must check out at some point.
Also, 18th century setting fiction sounds like a good thing to get involved in. I'm still hoping
no subject
Date: 2018-01-20 02:10 pm (UTC)On the one hand, fascism is awful but on the other tens of millions of people who in our reality were killed, survived. It was an interesting premise, though not a very good story, because it couldn't be classified as either a utopia or a distopia really.
There's also a particuarly infamously bad book written by an ex slovenian politician in terms of what happens if hitler died in 1939 after munich and Goering took over. In which France and the UK ally nazi germany and support them in their invasion of eastern europe and the world is a beautiful paradise in which the true enemies of communism and anti colonialism are kept down by a strong alliance of right wing imperialist europeans. The bad guy is Winston Churchill who has been accepting jewish gold to try and start a devestating european war against Germany which noone sensible wants.
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Date: 2018-01-20 02:57 pm (UTC)I am actively surprised there aren't more of those. On the other hand, World War II AUs tend to be something I mostly don't interact with (it's not categorical, but I have read too many that are either easy reassurances or interested in amplifying horror; they mishandle the weight of history), so it may just be that I've missed them.
no subject
Date: 2018-01-20 02:15 am (UTC)Been watching a lot of comfort television. Current favorite is The Good Place.
[Of course I live in it -- a day doesn't go buy in which something the Doofus aka 45th has done doesn't hit the news or affect me in some way. My church is a sanctuary site for illegal immigrants, my city is, my state is -- and we're all being targeted by the Doofus. I think they just shut-down the federal government, because they couldn't agree on the budget. It's as if we're being ruled by the offspring of Goldfinger and Cruella Du Ville.]
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Date: 2018-01-20 11:50 am (UTC)That is a brilliant description. :) I will steal it and use it forthwith.
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Date: 2018-01-20 01:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2018-01-20 02:30 am (UTC)Obviously, this is not something you have to answer unless you're up for it -- it feels like a prompt for a whole other day at this point!
no subject
Date: 2018-01-20 12:40 pm (UTC)I read an Armando Iannucci interview a while ago where he said that there's no point in him doing more The Thick of It right now because the reality is more absurd that anything he could ever come up with. He used Theresa May's British Dream speech as an example that if it had been a script, he would have cut out the falling letters because it would have been just too over the top...