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A random post about television
May. 6th, 2014 11:00 pmIt's likely not a secret that I watch too much TV. I tend to keep shows I like on in the background while I do other things, because that's one of the few times that I do get to watch TV. I'm lucky enough that I can watch TV at work on my night shifts, too, which helps to pass the time (that and the internet!). The net result is that I actually end up getting a lot of screen time in, even though I have next to no spare time outside of work. So I watch when I'm cooking or cleaning or getting ready for work before my night shifts, and while it means I often have to pause and rewind when I figure I've missed an important visual cue, it mostly works out.
I've been watching Hannibal, as I think I've mentioned before, and I think it's far and away my favourite show on the air right now. Once I set aside my objections to a roomful of brilliant FBI agents not noticing the cannibalistic serial killer under their noses (who'd invite them to dinner and make cannibal jokes the whole time), it became highly enjoyable. It's breathtakingly beautiful, and the creator has made serious efforts to include women and people of colour in major roles, where they didn't exist at all in the books (which I have yet to read, I'm ashamed to say). I particularly appreciate the promise that the series will never include sexual violence perpetrated against women. While I do love watching Criminal Minds, the unrelenting rape/violence against women gets pretty depressing after a while. I also love how unabashed the series is about making a huge part of the story about a very bizarre love affair between the two male leads. A platonic love affair, but a love affair nonetheless, directly acknowledged by the characters. Basically, canonical murder husbands, folks. ;)
My other recent discovery is Shameless, which is everything its title promises, except that it's incredibly well written and utterly heartbreaking. It's difficult to find, unfortunately, as it's a Showtime original production, but I've found a website that streams it for free, which is great. The site is glitchy but nothing too terrible, and I've been able to keep up with a number of shows that way. Anyway, Shameless is phenomenal, but it's incredibly hard to watch, in a similar way to how Breaking Bad was hard to watch, because the show makes you care a lot about the characters and then has them make stupid, terrible, awful choices. And the rest of the time you're watching all the other characters dealing with the fallout from these stupid, terrible, awful choices and your heart breaks for them because sometimes there really is nothing else to be done but put your head down and weather the storm until it passes. I'm at the mid-point of the second season, and I am told that it only gets worse and more heartbreaking from here.
That's the thing about good television, like any good storytelling medium. There comes a point when it's not just a story. For as long as I've been a reader, the fictional characters I read about feel just as real to me as the people in my life. For the time the story lasts, I care as deeply for them as I care for my friends, and I want them to be happy. I want them to make the right choices, and I want them to prosper. The writer in me knows that there can't be a story without some kind of conflict, without wrong choices being made, without there being some sort of suffering on the part of these people and creatures I love, but it hurts nonetheless to watch them go through it. And the really good ones stay with me for a very long time.
All the people I know who are readers or who consume stories in any fashion are the same way. We all remember those books and movies and stories that moved us so deeply that they changed the way we interact with the world. We all remember those characters we loved, the ones we wanted to be like, the ones we wanted to befriend, the ones we wanted to love in real life, the ones who, if they were real, we would have followed right into the depths of Moria.
I keep forgetting to do the daily gratitude thing, but this seems like a good opportunity for it:
1- I am grateful for all the stories that have come to occupy my life, that have served to make it richer, to make me a more complete person.
2- I am grateful for all the storytellers out there: writers, artists, performance artists, composers, film makers, and all the others. Without them, my life would be the poorer.
3- I am grateful to live in an age where technology makes all these stories accessible to me in new and exciting ways, like podcasts and podfic, ebooks and fanfiction archives, livestreaming sites and downloading, as well as more "old-fashioned" media like books and DVDs and CDs and MP3's. (Not to mention all the technology that has evolved over the past century, which I won't bother listing here)
It's an exciting age for stories that we live in.
I've been watching Hannibal, as I think I've mentioned before, and I think it's far and away my favourite show on the air right now. Once I set aside my objections to a roomful of brilliant FBI agents not noticing the cannibalistic serial killer under their noses (who'd invite them to dinner and make cannibal jokes the whole time), it became highly enjoyable. It's breathtakingly beautiful, and the creator has made serious efforts to include women and people of colour in major roles, where they didn't exist at all in the books (which I have yet to read, I'm ashamed to say). I particularly appreciate the promise that the series will never include sexual violence perpetrated against women. While I do love watching Criminal Minds, the unrelenting rape/violence against women gets pretty depressing after a while. I also love how unabashed the series is about making a huge part of the story about a very bizarre love affair between the two male leads. A platonic love affair, but a love affair nonetheless, directly acknowledged by the characters. Basically, canonical murder husbands, folks. ;)
My other recent discovery is Shameless, which is everything its title promises, except that it's incredibly well written and utterly heartbreaking. It's difficult to find, unfortunately, as it's a Showtime original production, but I've found a website that streams it for free, which is great. The site is glitchy but nothing too terrible, and I've been able to keep up with a number of shows that way. Anyway, Shameless is phenomenal, but it's incredibly hard to watch, in a similar way to how Breaking Bad was hard to watch, because the show makes you care a lot about the characters and then has them make stupid, terrible, awful choices. And the rest of the time you're watching all the other characters dealing with the fallout from these stupid, terrible, awful choices and your heart breaks for them because sometimes there really is nothing else to be done but put your head down and weather the storm until it passes. I'm at the mid-point of the second season, and I am told that it only gets worse and more heartbreaking from here.
That's the thing about good television, like any good storytelling medium. There comes a point when it's not just a story. For as long as I've been a reader, the fictional characters I read about feel just as real to me as the people in my life. For the time the story lasts, I care as deeply for them as I care for my friends, and I want them to be happy. I want them to make the right choices, and I want them to prosper. The writer in me knows that there can't be a story without some kind of conflict, without wrong choices being made, without there being some sort of suffering on the part of these people and creatures I love, but it hurts nonetheless to watch them go through it. And the really good ones stay with me for a very long time.
All the people I know who are readers or who consume stories in any fashion are the same way. We all remember those books and movies and stories that moved us so deeply that they changed the way we interact with the world. We all remember those characters we loved, the ones we wanted to be like, the ones we wanted to befriend, the ones we wanted to love in real life, the ones who, if they were real, we would have followed right into the depths of Moria.
I keep forgetting to do the daily gratitude thing, but this seems like a good opportunity for it:
1- I am grateful for all the stories that have come to occupy my life, that have served to make it richer, to make me a more complete person.
2- I am grateful for all the storytellers out there: writers, artists, performance artists, composers, film makers, and all the others. Without them, my life would be the poorer.
3- I am grateful to live in an age where technology makes all these stories accessible to me in new and exciting ways, like podcasts and podfic, ebooks and fanfiction archives, livestreaming sites and downloading, as well as more "old-fashioned" media like books and DVDs and CDs and MP3's. (Not to mention all the technology that has evolved over the past century, which I won't bother listing here)
It's an exciting age for stories that we live in.
