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Keeping very carefully to I-statements, because if you’re having a good time then I support you: When I read recaps or listen to people talk about True Blood, I never understand what the motivation for anything is supposed to be. Is it Lost with vampires? Or did Lost end up having vampires and I missed it?
Also, I couldn’t help but giggle when Jensen Ackles delivered this line on Dark Angel: “Well, for starters, he doesn't act like any brother I've ever seen.” Oh, honey, if you only knew.
Naomi Novik, Tongues of Serpents: Temeraire and Laurence in New South Wales, exiled and having a hard time of it. Captain Bligh! Politics that take six months to react to developments! There is a stolen egg and a long grueling journey across the continent, and a surprise at the end. And some more dragon-versus-ship. Roland has a small but satisfying arc and I want her to be much more part of the next three books.
Philip Furia & Laurie Patterson, The Songs of Hollywood: The book for you if you want a detailed catalog of the use of singing in 20th-century Hollywood movies, either in performance (let’s put on a show!) or more integrated into the narrative, but otherwise not the book for you. I did learn a bit about the different types of words/rhymes that work well with a mike versus sung unmiked from a stage, but that’s really it.
Susan Anderson, High Glitz: The Extravagant World of Child Beauty Pageants: These photos are both beautiful and disturbing: children made up as adult women, their hair teased and extended in ways that are both so formal that they aren’t quite sexual but also highly reminiscent of adult sexual display. One opening essay defends child pageants as a way to actualize the fantasies/desires of young girls, who are too often imagined as blank slates incapable of agency. I agree with the agency point, and I’m sure the girls often enjoy the competitions (especially when they win), but I found these pictures unconvincing as expressions of that agency. Spending $2000 on a couture gown for your four-year-old (the contestants photographed range from 2 to 11), more for other outfits, hundreds more for hair extensions and accessories, thousands more for coaching, and hundreds for photographs for a portfolio has to involve a lot of parental decisionmaking for the child. I love it when my daughter puts a napkin around her shoulders and declares that she’s Batman (her older brother has been assigned the role of Robin), but I’m not going to go out and buy her a custom Batmobile. Obviously parents make a lot of different choices and most of these girls probably wind up no more screwed up than anybody else marinating in a culture that fetishizes beauty and competition and spending money, which is something you don't escape by not participating in beauty pageants. And yet.
These pictures did not suggest an equivalence, as the essayist argued, between beauty pageants and Little League and cheerleading, because neither of those are about winning beauty pageants based on whether or not you’re not just a cute 6-year-old but on whether you’re cuter than the others. Among other things, these pictures are static, not dynamic, and as the photographer commented these girls were well-trained in the art of keeping still and making a face for a photographer. The picture of a score card at the end is actually probably the creepiest photo (facial beauty is worth 1-30 points, while pose, personality, and “over-all package” were allowed up to 10 points each), though the little girls in cutout swimsuits and dresses specifically designed to create an hourglass shape were competition. Blonde was the rule—one of the desired looks is known as the “Barbie”—and Southern belle in particular; there were two or three nonwhite faces. As a record of the concentrated expression of a number of features of American society, the book is fascinating. I wished I could have heard more from the girls, but that doesn’t seem to be what High Glitz is for.
Also, I couldn’t help but giggle when Jensen Ackles delivered this line on Dark Angel: “Well, for starters, he doesn't act like any brother I've ever seen.” Oh, honey, if you only knew.
Naomi Novik, Tongues of Serpents: Temeraire and Laurence in New South Wales, exiled and having a hard time of it. Captain Bligh! Politics that take six months to react to developments! There is a stolen egg and a long grueling journey across the continent, and a surprise at the end. And some more dragon-versus-ship. Roland has a small but satisfying arc and I want her to be much more part of the next three books.
Philip Furia & Laurie Patterson, The Songs of Hollywood: The book for you if you want a detailed catalog of the use of singing in 20th-century Hollywood movies, either in performance (let’s put on a show!) or more integrated into the narrative, but otherwise not the book for you. I did learn a bit about the different types of words/rhymes that work well with a mike versus sung unmiked from a stage, but that’s really it.
Susan Anderson, High Glitz: The Extravagant World of Child Beauty Pageants: These photos are both beautiful and disturbing: children made up as adult women, their hair teased and extended in ways that are both so formal that they aren’t quite sexual but also highly reminiscent of adult sexual display. One opening essay defends child pageants as a way to actualize the fantasies/desires of young girls, who are too often imagined as blank slates incapable of agency. I agree with the agency point, and I’m sure the girls often enjoy the competitions (especially when they win), but I found these pictures unconvincing as expressions of that agency. Spending $2000 on a couture gown for your four-year-old (the contestants photographed range from 2 to 11), more for other outfits, hundreds more for hair extensions and accessories, thousands more for coaching, and hundreds for photographs for a portfolio has to involve a lot of parental decisionmaking for the child. I love it when my daughter puts a napkin around her shoulders and declares that she’s Batman (her older brother has been assigned the role of Robin), but I’m not going to go out and buy her a custom Batmobile. Obviously parents make a lot of different choices and most of these girls probably wind up no more screwed up than anybody else marinating in a culture that fetishizes beauty and competition and spending money, which is something you don't escape by not participating in beauty pageants. And yet.
These pictures did not suggest an equivalence, as the essayist argued, between beauty pageants and Little League and cheerleading, because neither of those are about winning beauty pageants based on whether or not you’re not just a cute 6-year-old but on whether you’re cuter than the others. Among other things, these pictures are static, not dynamic, and as the photographer commented these girls were well-trained in the art of keeping still and making a face for a photographer. The picture of a score card at the end is actually probably the creepiest photo (facial beauty is worth 1-30 points, while pose, personality, and “over-all package” were allowed up to 10 points each), though the little girls in cutout swimsuits and dresses specifically designed to create an hourglass shape were competition. Blonde was the rule—one of the desired looks is known as the “Barbie”—and Southern belle in particular; there were two or three nonwhite faces. As a record of the concentrated expression of a number of features of American society, the book is fascinating. I wished I could have heard more from the girls, but that doesn’t seem to be what High Glitz is for.
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It helps, I think, to be a fan of the Vampire Genre in general, as True Blood has (I think) an interesting take on what might happen if the existence of vampires became generally known; this is something that I, as a Vampire: The Masquerade roleplayer, have thought about at length. There is a bit of Vampires=Queers parallel, but not too much for me, and there is LOTS of pretty. Plus there's huge ongoing plot arcs and character development. But I've never watched Lost, so, uh, I can't comment on that.
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...basically, I like the worldbuilding a lot, and I think it's a very good ensemble - even the actors with fairly minor roles are well cast, and get to shine. The characters are all flawed and engaging in different ways, and I really do appreciate that kind of warts-and-all writing, which balks at making good guys into paragons, or bigots into cardboard cutouts of evil. The writing is variable, but there have been some great narrative arcs, and they do make use of vampirism as a metaphor for race, and for homosexuality, and at least do a little bit towards examining white privilege, and heterosexual privilege.
So - what I'm saying is that it's engaging in the same way that soap operas tend to be (this is a more respectable genre in the UK than in the US, I think?), via various different ongoing plot threads and interesting characters, rather than in a monster-of-the-week/mission-of-the-week kind of storytelling.
Also, I like me a show where the vampires do not sparkle, and monsters may be attractive, but still be monstrous.
But mostly, I must come back to the fact that Lafayette is made of unbridled win
(...Sorry - Long!Answer is long!)
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