Nov. 22nd, 2010
Yuletide and other fannish things
Nov. 22nd, 2010 03:15 pmYuletide assignment: hmmm. One of my oldest fandoms, so I'm comfortable there. Two relationships I'm neutral about (i.e. I don't love them but neither do I have anything against them), though luckily I love all three characters in question. It'll mean writing something I haven't before, stretching my muscles, as it were, which it all of the good. It'll probably also mean I'll have to rewatch some specific canon since these relationships were never my focus. Okay then.
Merlin: great meta on Morgana by![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
zahrawithaz. What she said re: why the "Morgana would never have turned evil if Merlin had outed himself to her" complaint is insulting to Morgana.
There hasn't been a Wuthering Heights adaption I've been really happy with though the one with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche came closest (not least because it didn't ditch the second generation and didn't prettify Heathcliff - which the novel itself decidedly does not), so I'm intrigued about news from the latest adaption, in which a black actor plays Heathcliff. This actually works with the novel's emphasis on Heathcliff's dark skin and Liverpool (as in: slave port) origins and adds a whole new subtext for today's audience to lines like "it would degrade me to marry Heathcliff" and Edgar Linton refusing contact with his sister Isabella during her brief and miserable marriage to Heathcliff. Not to mention Heathcliff's own revenge issues. It could also backfire in terms of subtext because Heathcliff, as written, isn't some misunderstood brooding soul (the novel goes somewhat meta on us in the passages in which Cathy mocks poor Isabella for her original assumption Heathcliff is a Byronic hero to be saved by the love of a noble woman), but a cruel bastard in the not-biological sense of the word, and if he's likely to be the only black character... Still. It's one of the big Bronte roles, and now I'm looking forward to the film instead of thinking "oh, yet another one?".
Beatles: The concert the Beatles gave in Paris in 1965 is famous for a) the music and the singing actually being audible (by 1965, this wasn't the rule but the exception), b) the audience being mainly male as opposed to all their other concerts where it was mainly female, c) the fanboys being no less enthusiastic than the fangirls in their behaviour (thus giving the lie to 60s pop psychologists' theories about "female hysteria"). It's online now in its entirety here (i.e. half an hour - their concert sets at that point didn't last longer for security reasons) and great fun to watch, giving a true sense of what the Beatles must have been like for a live audience.
And here's another rarity I found on YouTube - the only song where all four Beatles sing (Ringo usually doesn't unless it's "his" song per album where he sings the lead; otherwise, it's John, Paul and George in various combinations), a cover of the Isley Brothers' Shout which they did on the British tv show Ready Steady Go:
Merlin: great meta on Morgana by
zahrawithaz. What she said re: why the "Morgana would never have turned evil if Merlin had outed himself to her" complaint is insulting to Morgana. There hasn't been a Wuthering Heights adaption I've been really happy with though the one with Ralph Fiennes and Juliette Binoche came closest (not least because it didn't ditch the second generation and didn't prettify Heathcliff - which the novel itself decidedly does not), so I'm intrigued about news from the latest adaption, in which a black actor plays Heathcliff. This actually works with the novel's emphasis on Heathcliff's dark skin and Liverpool (as in: slave port) origins and adds a whole new subtext for today's audience to lines like "it would degrade me to marry Heathcliff" and Edgar Linton refusing contact with his sister Isabella during her brief and miserable marriage to Heathcliff. Not to mention Heathcliff's own revenge issues. It could also backfire in terms of subtext because Heathcliff, as written, isn't some misunderstood brooding soul (the novel goes somewhat meta on us in the passages in which Cathy mocks poor Isabella for her original assumption Heathcliff is a Byronic hero to be saved by the love of a noble woman), but a cruel bastard in the not-biological sense of the word, and if he's likely to be the only black character... Still. It's one of the big Bronte roles, and now I'm looking forward to the film instead of thinking "oh, yet another one?".
Beatles: The concert the Beatles gave in Paris in 1965 is famous for a) the music and the singing actually being audible (by 1965, this wasn't the rule but the exception), b) the audience being mainly male as opposed to all their other concerts where it was mainly female, c) the fanboys being no less enthusiastic than the fangirls in their behaviour (thus giving the lie to 60s pop psychologists' theories about "female hysteria"). It's online now in its entirety here (i.e. half an hour - their concert sets at that point didn't last longer for security reasons) and great fun to watch, giving a true sense of what the Beatles must have been like for a live audience.
And here's another rarity I found on YouTube - the only song where all four Beatles sing (Ringo usually doesn't unless it's "his" song per album where he sings the lead; otherwise, it's John, Paul and George in various combinations), a cover of the Isley Brothers' Shout which they did on the British tv show Ready Steady Go:
