...for by many stories, And true, we learn the Angels all are Tories...

[selenak]

Worst researched article about scriptwriting (and novels) ever?

"It is Cromwell's goodness that corrodes him, his loyalty to Cardinal Newman that fixes him on the same tragic trajectory as both Macbeth and Michael Corleone."

First of all, John Yorke, this is not the Cardinal you're looking for. The Cardinal Thomas Cromwell used to work for is named Wolsey, Newman living a few centuries later and being the most prominent Anglo Catholic before becoming a Roman Catholic, which in the light of Thomas Cromwell's main claim to historical fame makes this sentence even more hilarious than it already is. Also, h ow you can read Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall and Bringing Up The Bodies and emerge with the conclusion that Cromwell's increasing loss of humanity is caused because of his loyalty to Wolsey is somewhere beyond me. (Unless, of course, you really think that Cromwell brings down Anne Boleyn & friends because they've been mean to the Cardinal, as opposed to treating the opportunity to pick men to frame as Anne's lovers as an occasion to pick those men who gloated over Wolsey as an added bonus, but hey, maybe Yorke read two different novels. Well read different books and watch different films & tv shows. (Something I was reminded again of this past week with my feelings re: the Being Human finale being the exact opposite of the reason I've seen a lot elsewhere, while what I loved about the most recent Once Upon A Time ep was not necessarily what some other reviewing watchers loved.) But the article really is badly researched, quite aside from the Newman/Wolsey gaffe. I mean:

We don't like Satan in Paradise Lost – we love him. And we love him because he's the perfect gleeful embodiment of evil. Niceness tends to kill characters.

Oh, good lord. Have you read Paradise Lost? Gleeful? This would be the fellow who spends most of the poem angsting about his enstrangement from God and railing against the injustice of Dad his creator, and going after the younger kids, speak: Adam and Eve because why should they be happy if he can't? (And I'll never go back, Dad, never mind you kicked me out, I'm so not coming back, dad, so there!) Seriously, though, if you want a gleeful devil, you can go for Goethe's Mephisto in Faust (though he, too, has the occasional two lines melancholic moment, but mostly he's witheringly sarcastic and enjoying himself), not for Satan from Paradise Lost. As for "niceness tends to kill characters", well, that depends. I love a shady anti hero(ine) or a good villain as much as the next media consumant (see my recent attack of love for the most evil villain to grace the Once Upon A Time screen on a semi regular basis), but I've long grown out of that teenage good = boring attitude. It depends on the situation you put your character in and on the types of relationships you give to him or her. Call the Midwife, which just wrapped up its second season, is full of nice, and I use the word unironically and not to mean the opposite which it often does in fandom, characters. An entire ensemble of them. And guess what? It's not boring.

In conclusion: grow up, John Yorke, do your research, and/or get a better editor. P.S. The quote in the title of this post is from The Vision of Judgment by Byron. That one has a good Satan in it, too, though not a gleeful one.

Comments

[legionseagle]

If you want to add another one, Yorke says

"We're not so very different, you and I," says Karla to Smiley in Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. "We both spend our lives looking for the weaknesses in one and another's systems."

The hyperlink goes to the recent film not to the BBC TV series, which I haven't seen (though I bet the same point is true of it), but the absolutely crucial point about the film is that Karla and Smiley never knowingly meet, and that when Smiley reminisces about having - with the benefit of hindsight - met Karla in India many years earlier, the reflections which Smiley makes about the encounter to Guillam are about Smiley revealing himself by projecting feelings onto Karla, not having a revelation from Karla, who is resisting being turned at the time, even though the alternative is near certain death in a Moscow purge.

[selenak]

Well, quite. (There is one knowing encounter between them in Smiley's People, but that's many years later and another book. And tv series.) The sentence about Downfall is also bewildering, because seriously, you needn't worry about empathy for Hitler in that one. The three characters the film builds up for the audience to connect with (and not uncritically) are his secretary, the boy who barely survives being one of the kids turned into soldiers in the last day of the war, and the doctor at the hospital. It's another case of "which film did you watch?"

[andraste]

... are we sure this man can read? And isn't just covering his tragic illiteracy by dictating reviews to a voice-activated word processor?

Or perhaps he comes from an alternative universe. One where Milton's Satan is gleeful. (Is Satan ever happy in Paradise Lost? I mean, it's been a decade and a half since I last read it, but all I remember is angst and Daddy Issues.)

[selenak]

Same here. Angst and Daddy issues all the way is what I recall. I assume he simply googled "famous literary presentations of Satan" and didn't bother to actually read the epic at all.

[legionseagle]

He also absolutely does not have a clue about The Long Good Friday which is about the fact that Hopkins consistently misreads the situation as traditional gang warfare which he knows he can win at, and where the drama is in the unfolding realisation (where, for once, the audience and, indeed, the Helen Mirren character are a jump ahead of the protagonist) that the situation he thinks he's in is completely different from that he's really in, and he has absolutely no idea how bad the shit is that's coming down. It's more like Bacchae than anything else.

[petra]

Having just read both the relevant Hilary Mantels, I am boggled that anyone who had also read either of them would be able to make those mistakes. Or, in fact, anyone who looked Thomas Cromwell up on Wikipedia, at least wrt the Cardinal.

[selenak]

I just googled the author, and it gets even more embarassing. He used to be the head of the BBC drama department (who's just quit and gone private).