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selenakA few things which didn't do it for me:
James Wilson: The Dark Clue. A decades old novel which got translated into German only now, hence my coming across is accidentally. I did like the premise; it's the execution that sucks. The idea: Marian Halcombe and Walter Hartright from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins start investigating the life of late legendary painter J.W.M. Turner (as he's referred to in the English speaking world, I was recently reminded, in Germany we refer to him as William Turner) when Walter (himself a painter, lest we forget that detail from TWIW) gets tasked with writing Turner's biography in competition to the guy who in real life did so. I was intrigued and charmed by the idea and suspected Wilson might have started out wanting to write a regular old biographical novel about Turner, then found it tricky because it's hard to get a traditional story arc out of his life, and decided on this charmingly 19th century framing device of two interlocking stories. Now I am a fan of (several of) Wilkie Collins' books and was both fascinated and disturbed by Mike Leigh's 2014 movie about Turner, so I was definitely in the market as the target audience for this book. Alas. The Turner parts of the book are sort of okay - our heroes get contradictory testimony about him reflecting various sides of his character, and there's even the sense of him as essentially a Georgian (time of his youth, when his character was formed) in the Victorian era. But the Wilkie Collins fanfic part of it is just plain terrible. Researching Turner works as an emotional catalyst of sorts for both Walter and Marian. Walter realizes he's been a sexually repressed Victorian and starts with the prostitutes. Marian also realizes she's been a sexually repressed V'ictorian and has been pining for Walter all this time, and when she's not self flagellating about this, she's pining, and the whole thing comes to a climax when Walter in a complete nervous breakdown rapes Marian, after which he's bonkers for good. What of Laura, you ask? Wilson keeps Laura off stage by letting her vacation with the kids and be increasingly worried as letters from Walter and Marian reach or don't reach her, but he's so little interested in her that the letters are identical "OMG' so worried!" utterings. Now I realize Laura isn't nearly as interesting as Marian in The Womnan in White, but you know, at this point, we're talking about a woman who has a forced marriage and an imprisonment in a mental institution behind her, and emerged from it sane and restarting her life. I think she might have had something to say in all of this. But then the way Wilson writes Marian - one of the most independently minded, pro-active and determined heroines of Victorian literature - didn't give me the impression he thought more about the Woman in White characters than "hey, I always shipped Walter/Marian, how about I write a Crueltide fic where all he goes bonkers and rapes her while she feels guilty because while she didn't want to be raped, she did pine for him before that! Aren't I deep!" And this is just so cheap. As for Walter: I never had strong feelings about him in TWIW one way or the other - he's a solid Victorian hero and plot device to get everything going, but like Laura, he's not where the narrative meat is (which is Marian vs Fosco, clearly). But he doesn't deserve that. As for the whole repressed V'ictorian thing - given Wilkie Collins' own life style (with two life time female companions, that is, married to neither), you'd think it would be more likely the trio from The Women in White would end up in a true menage a troi if you really assume Marian has a thing for Walter (which btw I don't, but to each their own), given they all adore each other passionately and that they already moved in together when Laura was technically still married to Sir Percival, so clearly aren't above flaunting convention. In conclusion, a depressing waste of what could have been a clever and intriguing premise.
Domina (TV Series, Season 1): The Julio-Claudian one where Livia is the heroine. I definitely was in the market for this one, and it did provide a lot of things I liked and/or had missed in earlier takes. So we do get very young Livia's life on the run in the post Caesar's death/ pre her (first) husband making his peace with Octavian part of her life, and indeed lots and lots of emphasis on her Claudian background and the fact her father was Team Conspirators. (Speaking of Octavian/Augustus, the show decides to deal with the various changes his name goes through in rl during those years by letting everyone refer to and address him by his first name of Gaius. Fair enough, and makes life easier for tv watchers.) This is also the first tv take that uses Scribonia (aka Octavian's wife before Livia and the mother of his sole surviving cihild, Julia). And while we don't get all of the children Octavia was the mother or in charge of, we do get far more than usual (one of the two Marcellas, both Antonias, Marcellus, and Julus, Antony's surviving (well, surviving into adulthood) son by Fulvia. Still missing in this version: Cleopatra's three kids with Antony.) And just when I was about to complain that Livia's bff/slave/freedwoman is depicted only in relationship to her, even when traumatic stuff happens, the character got her own scenes and responses. I was also amused by the take on Octavian/Augustus rise and consilidation of power as essentially a Mafia story, which, yes, can see that. Though it severely undersells quite how bloody and chaotic things had been with the Republic for the entire century before young O made his moves, which leads into my complaints re: Livia's motivations, more in a second, but what I want to say here is that the appeal of Augustus and the Principate to contemporaries and thereafter wasn't just that he emerged on top after a few bloody years and thus put an end to (civil) war, but that he managed to stabilize a state which simply had not been working anymore and had gone from bloody crisis/war to bloody crisis ever since the Senate decided murdering Tiberius Gracchus was a good way to deal with his call for direly needed reforms.
Why is this important as to why I'm not a fan of the show? Because Domina is yet another case of a sympathetic main character's secret key motivation being the wish to reintroduce the Republic. Because, see, the whole reason why Livia Drusilla (in this version) masterminds the invention of the Principate - makes her second husband from a gangster into a ruler/tyrant, as one character puts it in the show - is that her plan is that one of her sons inherits this complete power from him, and then restores the Republic for real.
Head. Desk. Now, Livia, being the daughter of an actual Republican, is actually at least a more plausible candidate for this than, say, the centuries later Emperor Marcus Aurelius in a way, and she's just a teenager when Caesar dies, so wasn't old enough to have memories of the actual Republic pre-first Triumvirate and could believe it would have been fine if not for Caesar's rise for power. But if this show wants to have its cake and eat it by providing Livia with this noble motivation justifying her increasingly ruthless strategems, while simultanously insisting on her intelligence and refusing to let her to anything to actually set up a transition of power back to the Senate. (Which "restoring the Republic" would have to mean.) On the contrary. Whenever Senators show up, they're scheming to kill Augustus and/or Livia and her kids and mean and temporary obstacles to be defeated, except for Livia's father's old bff who is noble, but doesn't anything mundane like trying to assemble a faction. So how does the show's Livia imagine things would go if all her plans succeed and one of her boys upon being handed complete power nobly hands it back to the Senate? Would the Senate, after decades of being either evil schemers or sycophantic yes-men to Augustus, then suddenly reveal they're really all virtuous statesmen inside? You'd think she'd cultivate at least a few Senators with the potential of being future administrators, especially since if there's no more Princeps inter Pares, that means Rome has to be governed by two different Consuls each other again, and where are they supposed to come from? But no. Meaning: you have a series which on the one hand aims for a "gritty Mafia drama in togas" vibe, a morally ambigous heroine who starts out well intentioned but has to be not just smarter but more ruthless to remain on top once she's there, but on the other you give her this illogical central motivation that only works in a fairy tale world.
There's another structual problem. For Livia to have impressive struggles to achieve, she needs opponents who challenge her. Now, until she marries Gaius, this works well enough, especially since the show presents her first husband (hitherto described as a conservative nice guy in what few fictions he made it into) as an opportunistic, incompetent and increasingly evil louse. But once she's Mrs. Princeps, she's in theory on top of her world. The show gains some tension from the fact that Gaius-as-Augustus has of course no intention of giving up power and that he's smart enough to figure out one day why Livia really married him, but most of the outward menace/scheming Livia has to contend with is brought by either the aforementioned evil senators.... or Scribonia. As in, Livia's predecessor, Julia's mother, carrying an immortal grudge against Livia for being the cause of Gaius divorcing her. (Supporting Scribonia, though not with evil schemes, is Octavia, who in the first two eps actually comes across as the smarter of the two, but after the show goes through a time jump and change of cast so the kids can be nearly grown up teenagers is suddenly naive and gullible as opposed to scheming Scribonia) Scribonia, character wise, is something of a blank slate - I think basically the only things we know about her from the sources is who she was married to (like many a Roman aristocrat, she was so repeatedly, and indeed remarried after being divorced by Octavian), the scandalous way Octavian divorced her, and that when her daughter Julia eventually gets exiled by her father, Scribonia chooses to go with her. (According to Seneca, she outlived her daughter, but it's also possible she died with her at the start of Tiberius' reign.) So sure, you can write her as benevolent or malvolent as you like. But either way - she has zero political power. She is NOT married to the first man of Rome. So the series by shoving her into the female villain position hitherto occupied by Livia in I, Claudius on the one hand wants us to believe in Scribonia as Livia's Enemy No.1, but otoh doesn't justify why Livia doesn't simply get rid of her one way or the other. And then there's the fact the show's Scribonia is none too bright in her scheming. And it's not like Gaius was in love with her and thus would have a reason to keep her around in Rome. (He divorces her as cold-bloodedly on the show as he did in rl, i.e. basically the moment Julia is born and isn't a boy.) So why the show' s Scribonia is in Rome in a position to make trouble instead of being exiled or dead in the last half of the first season makes no sense.
Making this show yet another example of one that learned all the wrong lessons from I, Claudius. I.e. adopt the "but he/she really wants to restore the Republic and is just faking harmlessness" gimmick, but ignore the fact that I, Claudius lets its villains be formidable - Livia herself first and foremost, of course; in that show, she's ruthless and a non-stop schemer, but she's smart and brilliant about it. That's what makes her so chilling. I somehow suspect the original pitch for Domina must have been along the lines of " I, Claudius, but Livia is the heroine, and also, they curse as much as in Rome" and then too late they realized if Livia is the heroine, you need another villain or villains, and landed on Scribonia because someone has to be the evil woman, clearly. Without bothering to think things through.
And then there's the minor irritation of Livia except for the last three episodes wearing her hair open instead of bothering with a Roman hairstyle (though all the other female characters have one). Why? But that's really just one minor detail.
In conclusion: oh producers of historical drama set in the many centuries of Roman Imperial history: you can actually do dramas where the main character does NOT want to restore the Republic.
James Wilson: The Dark Clue. A decades old novel which got translated into German only now, hence my coming across is accidentally. I did like the premise; it's the execution that sucks. The idea: Marian Halcombe and Walter Hartright from The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins start investigating the life of late legendary painter J.W.M. Turner (as he's referred to in the English speaking world, I was recently reminded, in Germany we refer to him as William Turner) when Walter (himself a painter, lest we forget that detail from TWIW) gets tasked with writing Turner's biography in competition to the guy who in real life did so. I was intrigued and charmed by the idea and suspected Wilson might have started out wanting to write a regular old biographical novel about Turner, then found it tricky because it's hard to get a traditional story arc out of his life, and decided on this charmingly 19th century framing device of two interlocking stories. Now I am a fan of (several of) Wilkie Collins' books and was both fascinated and disturbed by Mike Leigh's 2014 movie about Turner, so I was definitely in the market as the target audience for this book. Alas. The Turner parts of the book are sort of okay - our heroes get contradictory testimony about him reflecting various sides of his character, and there's even the sense of him as essentially a Georgian (time of his youth, when his character was formed) in the Victorian era. But the Wilkie Collins fanfic part of it is just plain terrible. Researching Turner works as an emotional catalyst of sorts for both Walter and Marian. Walter realizes he's been a sexually repressed Victorian and starts with the prostitutes. Marian also realizes she's been a sexually repressed V'ictorian and has been pining for Walter all this time, and when she's not self flagellating about this, she's pining, and the whole thing comes to a climax when Walter in a complete nervous breakdown rapes Marian, after which he's bonkers for good. What of Laura, you ask? Wilson keeps Laura off stage by letting her vacation with the kids and be increasingly worried as letters from Walter and Marian reach or don't reach her, but he's so little interested in her that the letters are identical "OMG' so worried!" utterings. Now I realize Laura isn't nearly as interesting as Marian in The Womnan in White, but you know, at this point, we're talking about a woman who has a forced marriage and an imprisonment in a mental institution behind her, and emerged from it sane and restarting her life. I think she might have had something to say in all of this. But then the way Wilson writes Marian - one of the most independently minded, pro-active and determined heroines of Victorian literature - didn't give me the impression he thought more about the Woman in White characters than "hey, I always shipped Walter/Marian, how about I write a Crueltide fic where all he goes bonkers and rapes her while she feels guilty because while she didn't want to be raped, she did pine for him before that! Aren't I deep!" And this is just so cheap. As for Walter: I never had strong feelings about him in TWIW one way or the other - he's a solid Victorian hero and plot device to get everything going, but like Laura, he's not where the narrative meat is (which is Marian vs Fosco, clearly). But he doesn't deserve that. As for the whole repressed V'ictorian thing - given Wilkie Collins' own life style (with two life time female companions, that is, married to neither), you'd think it would be more likely the trio from The Women in White would end up in a true menage a troi if you really assume Marian has a thing for Walter (which btw I don't, but to each their own), given they all adore each other passionately and that they already moved in together when Laura was technically still married to Sir Percival, so clearly aren't above flaunting convention. In conclusion, a depressing waste of what could have been a clever and intriguing premise.
Domina (TV Series, Season 1): The Julio-Claudian one where Livia is the heroine. I definitely was in the market for this one, and it did provide a lot of things I liked and/or had missed in earlier takes. So we do get very young Livia's life on the run in the post Caesar's death/ pre her (first) husband making his peace with Octavian part of her life, and indeed lots and lots of emphasis on her Claudian background and the fact her father was Team Conspirators. (Speaking of Octavian/Augustus, the show decides to deal with the various changes his name goes through in rl during those years by letting everyone refer to and address him by his first name of Gaius. Fair enough, and makes life easier for tv watchers.) This is also the first tv take that uses Scribonia (aka Octavian's wife before Livia and the mother of his sole surviving cihild, Julia). And while we don't get all of the children Octavia was the mother or in charge of, we do get far more than usual (one of the two Marcellas, both Antonias, Marcellus, and Julus, Antony's surviving (well, surviving into adulthood) son by Fulvia. Still missing in this version: Cleopatra's three kids with Antony.) And just when I was about to complain that Livia's bff/slave/freedwoman is depicted only in relationship to her, even when traumatic stuff happens, the character got her own scenes and responses. I was also amused by the take on Octavian/Augustus rise and consilidation of power as essentially a Mafia story, which, yes, can see that. Though it severely undersells quite how bloody and chaotic things had been with the Republic for the entire century before young O made his moves, which leads into my complaints re: Livia's motivations, more in a second, but what I want to say here is that the appeal of Augustus and the Principate to contemporaries and thereafter wasn't just that he emerged on top after a few bloody years and thus put an end to (civil) war, but that he managed to stabilize a state which simply had not been working anymore and had gone from bloody crisis/war to bloody crisis ever since the Senate decided murdering Tiberius Gracchus was a good way to deal with his call for direly needed reforms.
Why is this important as to why I'm not a fan of the show? Because Domina is yet another case of a sympathetic main character's secret key motivation being the wish to reintroduce the Republic. Because, see, the whole reason why Livia Drusilla (in this version) masterminds the invention of the Principate - makes her second husband from a gangster into a ruler/tyrant, as one character puts it in the show - is that her plan is that one of her sons inherits this complete power from him, and then restores the Republic for real.
Head. Desk. Now, Livia, being the daughter of an actual Republican, is actually at least a more plausible candidate for this than, say, the centuries later Emperor Marcus Aurelius in a way, and she's just a teenager when Caesar dies, so wasn't old enough to have memories of the actual Republic pre-first Triumvirate and could believe it would have been fine if not for Caesar's rise for power. But if this show wants to have its cake and eat it by providing Livia with this noble motivation justifying her increasingly ruthless strategems, while simultanously insisting on her intelligence and refusing to let her to anything to actually set up a transition of power back to the Senate. (Which "restoring the Republic" would have to mean.) On the contrary. Whenever Senators show up, they're scheming to kill Augustus and/or Livia and her kids and mean and temporary obstacles to be defeated, except for Livia's father's old bff who is noble, but doesn't anything mundane like trying to assemble a faction. So how does the show's Livia imagine things would go if all her plans succeed and one of her boys upon being handed complete power nobly hands it back to the Senate? Would the Senate, after decades of being either evil schemers or sycophantic yes-men to Augustus, then suddenly reveal they're really all virtuous statesmen inside? You'd think she'd cultivate at least a few Senators with the potential of being future administrators, especially since if there's no more Princeps inter Pares, that means Rome has to be governed by two different Consuls each other again, and where are they supposed to come from? But no. Meaning: you have a series which on the one hand aims for a "gritty Mafia drama in togas" vibe, a morally ambigous heroine who starts out well intentioned but has to be not just smarter but more ruthless to remain on top once she's there, but on the other you give her this illogical central motivation that only works in a fairy tale world.
There's another structual problem. For Livia to have impressive struggles to achieve, she needs opponents who challenge her. Now, until she marries Gaius, this works well enough, especially since the show presents her first husband (hitherto described as a conservative nice guy in what few fictions he made it into) as an opportunistic, incompetent and increasingly evil louse. But once she's Mrs. Princeps, she's in theory on top of her world. The show gains some tension from the fact that Gaius-as-Augustus has of course no intention of giving up power and that he's smart enough to figure out one day why Livia really married him, but most of the outward menace/scheming Livia has to contend with is brought by either the aforementioned evil senators.... or Scribonia. As in, Livia's predecessor, Julia's mother, carrying an immortal grudge against Livia for being the cause of Gaius divorcing her. (Supporting Scribonia, though not with evil schemes, is Octavia, who in the first two eps actually comes across as the smarter of the two, but after the show goes through a time jump and change of cast so the kids can be nearly grown up teenagers is suddenly naive and gullible as opposed to scheming Scribonia) Scribonia, character wise, is something of a blank slate - I think basically the only things we know about her from the sources is who she was married to (like many a Roman aristocrat, she was so repeatedly, and indeed remarried after being divorced by Octavian), the scandalous way Octavian divorced her, and that when her daughter Julia eventually gets exiled by her father, Scribonia chooses to go with her. (According to Seneca, she outlived her daughter, but it's also possible she died with her at the start of Tiberius' reign.) So sure, you can write her as benevolent or malvolent as you like. But either way - she has zero political power. She is NOT married to the first man of Rome. So the series by shoving her into the female villain position hitherto occupied by Livia in I, Claudius on the one hand wants us to believe in Scribonia as Livia's Enemy No.1, but otoh doesn't justify why Livia doesn't simply get rid of her one way or the other. And then there's the fact the show's Scribonia is none too bright in her scheming. And it's not like Gaius was in love with her and thus would have a reason to keep her around in Rome. (He divorces her as cold-bloodedly on the show as he did in rl, i.e. basically the moment Julia is born and isn't a boy.) So why the show' s Scribonia is in Rome in a position to make trouble instead of being exiled or dead in the last half of the first season makes no sense.
Making this show yet another example of one that learned all the wrong lessons from I, Claudius. I.e. adopt the "but he/she really wants to restore the Republic and is just faking harmlessness" gimmick, but ignore the fact that I, Claudius lets its villains be formidable - Livia herself first and foremost, of course; in that show, she's ruthless and a non-stop schemer, but she's smart and brilliant about it. That's what makes her so chilling. I somehow suspect the original pitch for Domina must have been along the lines of " I, Claudius, but Livia is the heroine, and also, they curse as much as in Rome" and then too late they realized if Livia is the heroine, you need another villain or villains, and landed on Scribonia because someone has to be the evil woman, clearly. Without bothering to think things through.
And then there's the minor irritation of Livia except for the last three episodes wearing her hair open instead of bothering with a Roman hairstyle (though all the other female characters have one). Why? But that's really just one minor detail.
In conclusion: oh producers of historical drama set in the many centuries of Roman Imperial history: you can actually do dramas where the main character does NOT want to restore the Republic.
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Date: 2024-12-18 03:08 pm (UTC)