You'll go nuts
Apr. 10th, 2003 09:48 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
gwynSpoilers for Angel episode 4/9, Shiny Happy People — watch out!
It’s not hard to understand why people would bow down to the beauty of Gina Torres. That woman is smokin’, in the kind of way people of any sexual orientation can appreciate. I’ve been fond of her for a long time, but most especially after she engaged in some girl/girl smooching with Nikita on La Femme Nikita. That quality of beauty and mystique is what serves the storyline so well in Shiny Happy People — it’s absolutely believable that all of them are overwhelmed by the image Jasmine puts out, by the mojo she’s working on them.
All the more sad that poor Fred and whatshisname are the few who see through it. Fred’s rejection as evil by everyone she associated with, especially by Wes, very nicely mirrors what happened to Wes when he thought he knew something no one else did. The one person he thought would support him, Fred, didn’t. This time Fred turns to Wes hoping he will understand more than anyone, believe in her, but the tables are turned. They handled a lot of things with more subtlety than usual, and sprinkled in some wonderful little humor bits (I think my favorite was Fred insisting she wasn’t being called, then her phone ringing, with her little squeak of “that’s just eerie”) that made fun of the plotting of their own show. It was a bit slowly paced at first, but picked up by the middle.
One of those things they handled deftly is the idea of overarching love and what a powerful motivating force it would be for everyone on earth — many of the basic messages of most organized religions and certainly of most cults, and how easily corrupting that message can be when used as a total belief system. Fred becomes “evil” to everyone at AI because she sees through to the truth, Angel nearly pummels that guy to death because he does not share Angel’s beliefs and feelings, and violence begets violence. If you’re not one of us, if you don’t believe with us, you’re evil. There’s a nifty metaphor for what’s going on on the world stage right now, even though much of this was filmed far earlier. I also liked how subtly they wove in Angel’s fear of happiness, and what it could lead to. Beautifully done.
And see — if, say, Sauron just understood that it’s far more effective to coerce your enslaved masses with a false message of love and beauty, then maybe he’d have won in the long run. All of Middle Earth could have just been given a dose of, say, happy Elvish immortal love and elf-lighting, and then he wouldn’t have had to go to so damn much trouble! People don’t respond to darkness and fear, they respond to glowy lighting and happy messages. The title of the ep had a nice nod, too, to Firefly — aside from the obvious that they were all suckered into being shiny happy people, I loved the word shiny, thinking of all the times Gina Torres said that as Zoe… and it makes me wistful and a bit sad, too. (For those who didn’t watch Firefly, shiny was their version of cool.)
The cross cutting between Angel and Co. fighting in dramatic slow-mo with the sweeping music and poor Fred trying to wash the shirt with maniacal force, and the dramatic, almost hypnotic voiceover by Jasmine, was hysterically funny. I also loved the setup that they were going to change the world, by golly — and immediately they cut to a bowling alley (and how cool was it that the vamps were bowling with heads? Come on, like you never thought of it!). They’re going to save the world one bowling alley and restaurant at a time, dammit, and the prosaic quality of that made me howl with laughter.
And still I keep thinking of poor Fred. She’s often gotten on my nerves with Gunn, and I’ve liked her much more with the tension of Wes being back — but now I have more sympathy for her than I’ve had since Pylea. She’s a survivor, we know that, but she’s also a very fragile person who doesn’t fully comprehend her own strength. Her refusal to accept that she’s been called is completely understandable — I’ve often thought, when I watch shows like Buffy and Angel, if I would ever find the resources inside myself to do something so difficult that it might mean sacrificing myself. I think most people want to believe that if, say, evil Nazi types took over the world, we wouldn’t be little quislings working at a desk for the agenda, but rather underground fighters or trying to organize or protest something. (Just look at what’s happening in Oregon, where someone has tried to get a petition to make protest equated with an act of terrorism against the U.S.) But would we really? There’s the potential of prison, torture, suffering… even something as small as what’s happened to Fred, being exiled from her life, is still a painful and deterrent event. So I empathize with her in the extreme — I don’t know that I’d want to be called to see through Jasmine, either, and to risk everything when no one supported me just to fight against her.
Can’t wait to see next week’s — and what this arms of Angel thing is all about. At least WB won’t pre-empt if for a fucking baseball game.
It’s not hard to understand why people would bow down to the beauty of Gina Torres. That woman is smokin’, in the kind of way people of any sexual orientation can appreciate. I’ve been fond of her for a long time, but most especially after she engaged in some girl/girl smooching with Nikita on La Femme Nikita. That quality of beauty and mystique is what serves the storyline so well in Shiny Happy People — it’s absolutely believable that all of them are overwhelmed by the image Jasmine puts out, by the mojo she’s working on them.
All the more sad that poor Fred and whatshisname are the few who see through it. Fred’s rejection as evil by everyone she associated with, especially by Wes, very nicely mirrors what happened to Wes when he thought he knew something no one else did. The one person he thought would support him, Fred, didn’t. This time Fred turns to Wes hoping he will understand more than anyone, believe in her, but the tables are turned. They handled a lot of things with more subtlety than usual, and sprinkled in some wonderful little humor bits (I think my favorite was Fred insisting she wasn’t being called, then her phone ringing, with her little squeak of “that’s just eerie”) that made fun of the plotting of their own show. It was a bit slowly paced at first, but picked up by the middle.
One of those things they handled deftly is the idea of overarching love and what a powerful motivating force it would be for everyone on earth — many of the basic messages of most organized religions and certainly of most cults, and how easily corrupting that message can be when used as a total belief system. Fred becomes “evil” to everyone at AI because she sees through to the truth, Angel nearly pummels that guy to death because he does not share Angel’s beliefs and feelings, and violence begets violence. If you’re not one of us, if you don’t believe with us, you’re evil. There’s a nifty metaphor for what’s going on on the world stage right now, even though much of this was filmed far earlier. I also liked how subtly they wove in Angel’s fear of happiness, and what it could lead to. Beautifully done.
And see — if, say, Sauron just understood that it’s far more effective to coerce your enslaved masses with a false message of love and beauty, then maybe he’d have won in the long run. All of Middle Earth could have just been given a dose of, say, happy Elvish immortal love and elf-lighting, and then he wouldn’t have had to go to so damn much trouble! People don’t respond to darkness and fear, they respond to glowy lighting and happy messages. The title of the ep had a nice nod, too, to Firefly — aside from the obvious that they were all suckered into being shiny happy people, I loved the word shiny, thinking of all the times Gina Torres said that as Zoe… and it makes me wistful and a bit sad, too. (For those who didn’t watch Firefly, shiny was their version of cool.)
The cross cutting between Angel and Co. fighting in dramatic slow-mo with the sweeping music and poor Fred trying to wash the shirt with maniacal force, and the dramatic, almost hypnotic voiceover by Jasmine, was hysterically funny. I also loved the setup that they were going to change the world, by golly — and immediately they cut to a bowling alley (and how cool was it that the vamps were bowling with heads? Come on, like you never thought of it!). They’re going to save the world one bowling alley and restaurant at a time, dammit, and the prosaic quality of that made me howl with laughter.
And still I keep thinking of poor Fred. She’s often gotten on my nerves with Gunn, and I’ve liked her much more with the tension of Wes being back — but now I have more sympathy for her than I’ve had since Pylea. She’s a survivor, we know that, but she’s also a very fragile person who doesn’t fully comprehend her own strength. Her refusal to accept that she’s been called is completely understandable — I’ve often thought, when I watch shows like Buffy and Angel, if I would ever find the resources inside myself to do something so difficult that it might mean sacrificing myself. I think most people want to believe that if, say, evil Nazi types took over the world, we wouldn’t be little quislings working at a desk for the agenda, but rather underground fighters or trying to organize or protest something. (Just look at what’s happening in Oregon, where someone has tried to get a petition to make protest equated with an act of terrorism against the U.S.) But would we really? There’s the potential of prison, torture, suffering… even something as small as what’s happened to Fred, being exiled from her life, is still a painful and deterrent event. So I empathize with her in the extreme — I don’t know that I’d want to be called to see through Jasmine, either, and to risk everything when no one supported me just to fight against her.
Can’t wait to see next week’s — and what this arms of Angel thing is all about. At least WB won’t pre-empt if for a fucking baseball game.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2003-04-10 09:51 am (UTC)Thank you.
Hi
Date: 2003-04-10 10:53 am (UTC)"This is a page for reviews and essays about the TV shows, movies, and sundry other things I'm watching. It's spoilerific if you're not keeping up with current American airings, and I'm not cutting away the spoilers, so watch out!! Beware!"
Hope this helps! I usually just skim over her review and ignore it until I watch the show.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-10 11:03 am (UTC)Deal.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-10 12:15 pm (UTC)I just don't see how using lj-cut to prevent accidental spoilers interferes with that right. Lj-cut doesn't edit your reviews to make them spoiler-free - it just means no one has to read your reviews unless they actively want to.
I would hate to have to defriend
no subject
Date: 2003-04-10 12:43 pm (UTC)I'm sorry. Not that this is my argument to get into, but how would defriending someone other than
Unless there's personal history going on here that I, the nosy outsider, know nothing about. Or unless you're practicing emotional blackmail, which, whatever.
[/buttinsky]
no subject
Date: 2003-04-10 12:49 pm (UTC)Obviously,
And she absolutely has a right to write reviews exactly the way she wants them.
And I'm beginning to feel like a bit of a berk for complaining.
So it's a simple question, which I just don't understand: why
Simple Questions
Date: 2003-04-10 12:57 pm (UTC)I think its OK to ask the universe, but I think it is unwise to insist on an answer. I have the fearful thought we may not like what it has to say.
Re: Simple Questions
Date: 2003-04-10 01:04 pm (UTC)Re: Simple Questions
Date: 2003-04-11 02:53 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-10 02:47 pm (UTC)Another benefit of having your own friends list is that you can create filters, and only read certain groups of people at certain times. So you could, for instance, have
Just tryin' to be helpful...
no subject
Date: 2003-04-10 02:50 pm (UTC)I'm not at all anxious to friend
I'm still wondering why she doesn't want to use LJCUT.
Well Let's Try This
Date: 2003-04-10 04:55 pm (UTC)I cannot decide if Gwyn should be flattered or bemused by the depth of your interest. It seems to me a lot of trouble to throw stones at every barking dog you happen to meet.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-10 08:13 pm (UTC)To emotionally blackmail people on your friends list for friending me is just absurd. If they're on your friends list, MY page does not come up on their page. If you're reading friendsfriends, then maybe you should realize that those folks' friends are not necessarily going to be to your liking. But to threaten Agnes and Destina and whoever else with defriending because they have me friended is just bizarre. Put them on your friends list, and add the friends of theirs you like reading, and stop whining and insulting people.
I don't know you. You're not a friend of mine (not the LJ meaning, but a real friend), you're not even an acquaintance, so why you demand an explanation for why I do what I do is baffling to me. What people agree to do or don't agree to do is up to them. If someone doesn't agree with some ephemeral standard set by some nebulous group of people who can't ever seem to agree on anything anyways, they are fully within their rights. I poked around LJ for a long time before I set up my page, and I discovered that media fans in this immediate community use cuts way more than just about any other community. I saw a lot of places where people did reviews -- and they didn't apologize for it. (And I simply can't believe that if you saw enough to see a spoiler of a show that just aired, you somehow also missed the boldfaced lettering saying it might contain spoilers.) Idon't expect others to write to my standards and say what I want them to say, and if I disagree with them, I disagree with respect. All you've done here today on my space is to disrespect me. Please go away.
I wanted to try to be polite. But you've been insulting and degrading to me, and I have no last nerve left to even discuss it.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-10 11:59 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2003-04-10 02:54 pm (UTC)Regarding surfing friendsfriends lists, I find that it's always dangerous. I don't do it often because I always find someone whose posts piss me off, spoil me, or just annoy the snot out of me. What I'm saying here is, friendsfriends lists should come with a warning: "Read at your own risk."
Regarding the LJ-cut, it's a technology that has been pretty widely accepted in the LJ world, but it's not required. It's a courtesy.
no subject
Date: 2003-04-11 02:52 am (UTC)'she's upfront about posting reviews' do you not understand? That's her choice. She likes doing it that way. You don't like how she does her journal? Shame it's not your journal, then you can actually have a say in how she does it.
Deep Thoughts
Date: 2003-04-10 10:47 am (UTC)In the end, I doubt many of us would have the courage to defy such a fate.
http://www.jlrweb.com/whiterose/
Re: Deep Thoughts
Date: 2003-04-10 11:08 am (UTC)Re: Deep Thoughts
Date: 2003-04-10 11:26 am (UTC)http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/1585870420/102-7359715-4370506?vi=glance
no subject
Date: 2003-04-11 02:13 pm (UTC)