Is that sufficient to excuse?

A bit of a serious post tonight after my recent entertainment related ones.

If you want entertainment recommendations, can I suggest Thor: Ragnarok or all twelve seasons of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia? I saw the former today and have recently finished on the latter (in my defence the episodes are less than half an hour, it is very addictive, and I started weeks ago), and the former is super crazy fun times and the latter is literally one of the funniest shows I've seen in years (if very on the dark side which is how I like them). So if that is what you came for you can now look away.

This post is instead mainly about the spiralling circus of Hollywood sexual assault allegations, and the #metoo campaign.

Unless you have been living in a cave, you will have seen in recent weeks that numerous women have come forward with allegations of sexual assault against Harvey Weinstein, who for those not aware is one of the most powerful film producers working in Hollywood fordecades now. The volume of women who have come forward is shocking and what is more shocking is that, as is always the case with sexual assault, these women may be a tip of the iceberg. It has caused ripples that have impacted into US politics as Weinstein was a prominent contributor to the Democrats- the Republicans shamed them for this but considering the fact that the current Republican president has a significant backlog of sexual assault allegations which were often settled out of court for large settlements, and that they took funding from several prominent contributors who have recently also been the subject to cases like Weinstein's, I feel it is a case of people in glass houses... 

The question I want to start with here is the appropriate reaction to case like this when it comes to paying money at the box office. There have been several prominent cases of men in Hollywood being accused as Weinstein has been, there have also been cases of domestic abuse, and tacit approval or turning a blind eye on these matters. The first reaction is to boycott but then people ask the question once again of separating the art from the artist- even easier in the case of the producer as they are the money man not the artist per se. 

This is where I have to be honest about my own inconsistency in this area. As you may or may not be aware, one of the best known cases of abuse or assault of a woman, or female child, by a Hollywood player is that of Roman Polanski. Polanski has lived in European countries without extradition to the States for decades now to avoid trail for the rape and drugging of a 13 year girl in the late 1970s, and it was not only about six years ago that he offered what was quite a feeble apology to the girl who is now 53. Polanski is also a much awarded and quite talented film director. His career significantly slowed after he fled the States- his first film was released in 1955 and about half of his output is between then and 1977 when the rape occurred, with the other half coming in the forty years since the rape- but his last Oscar, for The Pianist, was in 2002 only 15 years ago and he is still actively making films in France. Now here is my honesty on this director, the rape was committed before I was born so any exposure I had to him as a director was with that knowledge. My first Polanski film was, like most people's, his 1971 version of Macbeth at high school and as far as I know it remains one of the most used cinematic treatments of Shakespeare in schools. Now I had no choice in that one but I saw it several times both in class and then at home whilst I studied Macbeth. I remember people telling me the fate of the lead actress (I'll come back to that) but no-one told me about the rape case maybe because at the time I was only a year or so older than his victim. Even after I knew the whole story, I paid money to see The Pianist at the cinema and I purchased and still own the DVD of Rosemary's Baby (his very terrifying 1968 horror film). Polanski's skill as a director has lead him to be one of the most frequently mentioned cases of people attempting to seperate art from artist and crimes of artist. In addition to this Polanski's personal history has lead him to be seen as someone scarred by his past in an incurable way. Polanski grew up in the Jewish ghetto in Krakow in Poland at the beginning of the Second World War- if you read or watch, Schindler's Ark/List, the young girl in the red dress that Oskar Schindler sees is Polanski's cousin (her memoir The Girl in the Red Dress (if memory serves, I read it over a decade ago) is well worth the read). He managed to flee the ghetto and lived in hiding for the last part of the war but his mother died in the Holocaust. He then lived for a time in Soviet occupied Poland then moved to France, England, and ultimately Hollywood. In England he met Sharon Tate, an up and coming American actress, and they married- she was in a few of his films including playing Lady Macbeth. Then in 1969, Tate was murdered by followers of Charles Manson along with friends at the house she and Polanski were renting in Hollywood. At the time of her death, Tate was pregnant and almost full term with what would have been the couple’s first child- the unborn child died in the attack on its mother.  Now that personal history is overwhelmingly horrifying but does it excuse the rape and drugging of a 13 year old girl? Obviously it does not. For years, I have felt problematic about the few times I have given money for Polanski films in the knowledge of this, and I feel the guilt of the fact that crimes like this become easier to ignore (though they shouldn't never be ignored) when the person is skilled, the crime in the past, and the output of the criminal art of a genre that appeals to you.

The second guilt confession is an actor/director who I have actually boycotted, Mel Gibson. When I mention to people that I don't watch films that he has anything to do with, most people assume that it is because of the domestic abuse allegations from his last wife or one of the times he has shown himself to be profoundly sexist. The fact of the matter is though I boycotted Gibson because of his anti-Semitism, and his treatment of women was a secondary factor. It is as if I assumed that men in Hollywood were likely to have abuse allegations levelled against them, and then tacitly ignored this factor. When I realised that it was racism not sexism that had lead to my boycott of Gibson's work, I was troubled as to why not both.

The idea of the selecting the art in spite of the artist has come up for again in recent months and years with allegations levelled at creatives whose work I really enjoy or in the case of Weinstein, a man who funds the work of artists whose work I enjoy. First there were the allegations levelled by the ex wife of Johnny Depp which came out just over a year ago. I'm not a fan of Depp's recent work (the impact of his Captain Jack Sparrow character on every other character has become more than a bit much) but his earlier works especially with Tim Burton are some of my favourite films. When I saw Depp in Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (sorry that might be a spoiler but the film is a year old), I cringed simultaneously because I don't find his acting very undifferentiated nowadays and also because suddenly I was paying money for a film with a man who was currently under investigation for domestic abuse in it, and I knew that I would have to make the call on the sequels in part based on his presence. Second there was the shock of the piece published by the ex wife of Joss Whedon- she stated that Whedon had cheated her repeated and then gaslighted her about his infidelity. This one showed me why you should never have heroes because as those who know me at all know, I am a massive fan of Whedon's work. This left me and many others reeling because we are now in the position where one of the most feminist works of the late 20th/earliest 21st century, Buffy, was created by a man whose treatment of his ex-wife is under serious question. The impact of Whedon's work meant that in the week after this article was published, people did start having the separating the artist from the work conversation. Personally I don't know if I can watch Whedon's work in the same way now and I'm deeply saddened by that. 

Then finally we get to Weinstein. As I said Weinstein is a producer so is not the artist, however as one of the men behind Miramax and later The Weinstein Company, he is the producer who has nearly exclusively funded the works of some of my favourite directors. Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith, two of my all time favourite directors, have both had their works produced by Weinstein associated companies for decades. In the actor turned director space, you also have George Clooney and Ben Affleck working with Weinstein money on occasion. I single out these four because the represent (though not in order), the worrying responses, the good response, and the best response. The worrying responses were Tarantino and Affleck. Tarantino was one of the last of Weinstein's prominent collaborators to comment on the allegations and the delay wasn't the only issue. Tarantino clearly indicated that he had been aware of rumours about Weinstein for a while and in fact implied even that he knew that there was substance to them. Now he could have sought to help the women who were victims of this without bring things to light but it did sound like he had to a degree ignored the rumours. Affleck was in a similar boat to Tarantino- not that he was late but that has response was worrying. Affleck responded fairly early condemning Weinstein BUT Affleck's brother, Casey, was accused of sexual harassment a few years ago and Ben Affleck has never gone on the record about that. Now I won't be boycotting the works of Ben Affleck (though I have considered boycotting his brother's work for a while) or Quentin Tarantino for their replies being worryingly lacking but just to highlight I would have preferred if they had either condemned Weinstein early and directly with no room for question as Clooney did, or gone the extra step and declared that future profits from their Weinstein produced works would be in part donated to charities that assist victims of rape and assault as Kevin Smith did (his response was exactly what you would want and makes me want to pay additional copies of his films as I already own the ones I would want to own so my money did go to Weinstein). It is harder to boycott a studio but there needs to be a question whether in Weinstein's case we should.

That is a little all over the place but it was essentially just to raise the question of whether we can or should ever look to the art and not also see the artist (or in Weinstein's case the money) behind it.

Now I've written quite a lot and I haven't spoken about in length or even named the women who were victims of these attacks or this treatment. I want to be VERY clear that this is not to highlight the men who did these things over the women who were victim to them. It is to say that as we need to know these women are more than the victims we make them. Their names are important but because of the things that they did in their lives that make their lives meaningful not the incident/s in their life that made their life horrible. These men may have made them feel less than human so I feel it is not my place to repeatedly associate them with that dehumanising act/s.

This brings me to the victim side of things and the newest internet awareness campaign. Alyssa Milano who is one of the women who has accused Weinstein called last week for women to share on social media their own stories of sexual assault or harassment with the hashtag MeToo. 

What I found interesting about the response to the hashtag was not the volume of it, most women I knew (myself included) were of the opinion that sadly we live in a world where rare (if non existent) was the woman who could not use the hashtag, but more the shock that some men felt when they saw the volume and the slight push back (mainly around assault of men by women- no-one said it doesn't happen and it is horrible too but even in cases of male sexual violence or harassment, the perpetrators are usually male, cases of female on male sexual assault make up less than 10% of assault cases). I have said in the past that internet based awareness campaigns can be ineffective but this one might be the most effective thus far. I applauded the men who responded well on social media- owning times when their own actions might have been less than ideal and supporting the women there knew- but this isn't the big impact and I wanted to talk about that and about the women who didn't share the hashtag.

Being honest about assault or harassment isn't easy, and the way Western culture works means that women can feel shamed even when the harassment is not directed at them. For example, a woman sees another woman get cat called and then the same group of men do not cat call her when she walks past them and society encodes in the second woman the desire to question her attractiveness and to compare herself to the first woman instead of standing in solidarity with the first woman and declaring the actions of the men as demeaning and awful. Society says that women should not stand together but should be put at loggerheads over who is the more desirable. For thousands of women to come out on social media and declare in solidarity, that they all experienced similar acts is powerful. It helps break the stigma of victimhood. Sexual assault and harrassment can lead to massive psychological and emotional scars and women around the world were able to communally have a moment to work through those scars in a medium where rape threats are more common than female solidarity. I therefore want to say to those who like me shared the hashtag that I support you in coming to terms in whatever happened to you. To those who ask why not all women did say the hashtag I will offer some possible reasons:

1. They were not psychologically ready to do so. This does not make these women less brave (the word used for women who did share) or less strong. Some women may spend most of their lives fighting to process what happened to them and reaching a point where they can do so in private much less in public. It is one of the most horrible parts of sexual assault and harassment, that it can forever scar its victims.

2. Society tells them that it won't listen. Many women fear that they will not be believed and this is not uncommon, and not being believed can also be psychological scarring. Others think that they will be slut shamed or that the assault or harassment was in some way their fault. Finally if the assault was an incident where consent had been given at another time but not that time or where the woman felt that she was not able to say "no" as clear as she would want to, there is the potential for guilt on the part of the victim. 

3. They don't think what happened to them is significant enough to share. This one I heard from people online who were cautious about not sharing a hashtag of their own. It is one where maybe more people in this boat should have shared. We are told by society that assault and harassment need to be "serious" to be worth mentioning.

Trust me on this internet land, many of women you know who didn't share likely fell into these categories or fell into the "I shared on another occasion" boat- women has shared similar hashtags though not as broadly in the past, for example when the Trump Access Hollywood tape was reported on. 

I do want to say that the significance argument is so common that I feel the need to say that harassment and assault can take many forms that don't get reported to the people from the person who grabbed you arse in a crowded space but you never see who it was, to men who have conversations with your chest instead of your face, to cat calling, to internet based attacks based on gender, to any act or conversation that crosses a line and makes you uncomfortable or scared for your safety. I would suggest that we could or should take it further than strict harassment or assault to cases where women are made to feel their only worth is their looks and who are questioned when they do not function to the norms that society sets for women as pretty faces. That said if we took it that far the avalanche of comments on that hashtag might break the internet.

I was going to share one of my MeToo stories, but I've written enough on this so I will say that I've been able to say MeToo since I was very young and not by my broader definition. I would suggest that beyond every woman being able to say it, it is significant number that can say it of their high school years and even earlier (I'm thankfully not in that second basket so far as my memory serves).

These hashtags may not have smashed the patriarchy in the past but the volume of response to this one has received a response for men in support that makes me a little more hopeful if not much. 

I wanted to say beyond comments on assault and harassment. It might be worth always checking your privilege when you comment on anything that isn't your personal experience online. This means that for all my experience as a straight white cis gendered middle class woman I need to be always be mindful of the fact that only in my being female am I not privileged and I know that the internet I speak into also largely speaks with that privilege unless they also have the added privilege of being male. I have found that when you share something that could be controversial or presents a view that undermines or questions privilege, the bulk of those who engage in debate are white men whilst women are more likely to use the Facebook reacts but stir clear of comment. Maybe it is just the folks I know and not to say anything bad about white dude engaging in discussion (go right ahead as long as you are meaningful engaging and not just stopping after a few terse words- this is the internet so don't forget your lack of tone), but I have to say I was deeply impressed when a young guy I know the other day started a comment on such a post (an opinion piece- by a white dude in fact- about linkages between violence by men broadly and mass shootings that I had shared as a think piece) by acknowledging his discomfort with the fact that only white dudes were commenting and he was therefore not sure how he felt about adding to that (his comment was really good as a whole and ultimately prompted the only female comment on the post that wasn't me). Checking privilege welcomes engagement and in the world where people are trying to tell personal stories as the MeToo hashtag has encouraged, we need to support and encourage others in our online engagements and not shutting people down with privilege.

Just to end my post on a lighter note. Did you know that snow peas are also called mangetout? I discovered this earlier this evening and knowing I was sitting down to write male violence and harassment towards women, it made me laugh. My new joke, "what is the most feminist vegetable?" "Mangetout". Supposedly it is pronounced mange-tout but still could easily be man-get-out. 

Let's talk about crime

In my last post, I mentioned that I had just started on Mindhunter, the new Netflix series on the formation of the FBI's behavioural science unit, and that I might give supply a brief spiel on my opinions on that when I was done. I actually finished it the next day (yes ten episodes in two days, I am on holidays folks) and I figured I'd type up something on it combined with a movie I just saw, The Snowman. Mainly because one is amazing and one is, how to put this mildly, not.

As a caveat for those not fans of crime based entertainment, both of these fall into that basket but that is pretty much where the similarities end except with a small issue I have with one that is a massive issue in the other.

So first to Mindhunter (though I did see The Snowman a few days earlier) for which unfortunately the trailer doesn't seem to be on youtube, you may have to search on your Netflix to watch it. Here is the poster for the show:



 Plot summary as the trailer isn't forthcoming. Based on the true crime work, Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI's Elite Serial Crime Unit by John E Douglas (a former member of that unit) and Mark Olshaker, Mindhunter opens in the late 1970s introducing Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) a young (he is revealed to be 29) but skilled FBI hostage negotiator. After a failed negotiation results in the death of the hostage taker, Ford is moved to working at Quantico training new recruits in negotiation skills. Ford finds the new job dull and inspired in part by a sociological grad student he meets in a bar (Debbie played by Hannah Gross), with his boss' approval, Ford starts taking some psychology and sociology courses to build his skill identifying criminals and starts to question the FBI's classifications of why crimes occur. As Ford teaches at Quantico, he walks past other lectures being given on Charles Mason and the Son of Sam, and he starts to think that the FBI's previous methods will not work on individuals like these. Ford's restlessness ultimately results in his being moved from teaching at Quantico to work with Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) on a road school that is designed to teach FBI skills to local law enforcement and as they travel they often help local police with difficult cases. In this road school capacity, Ford sees the opportunity to start to meet with and study the new form of killers that were everywhere in the late 1960 and 70s in America. He initially plans to try and meet Charles Mason but on the advice of local cops that Mason is difficult to visit in prison, Ford meets instead with Edmund Kemper aka the Co-Ed Killer. As the episodes unfold, Ford and soon also Tench meet with Kemper and other killers who they initially term sequence killers. In analysing the psychology of these killers, they ask for the assistance of psychologist, Dr Wendy Carr (Anna Torv) who is intrigued by the research potential of why these killers committed their crimes.

Now quite a few people have commented that this show is a little slow initially but I think that in part is being driven by people who are familiar with the cases it discusses. Though I also fall in the familiar with these cases basket, I didn't find it too slow and I think those not familiar with the cases need the build. The show does take a few episodes to build up to full steam but the wait is worth it. As I mentioned in my last post, the show was in part directed by David Fincher who is no stranger to the crime genre even in cases where the build is slow- I love Fincher's work and if I want a solid crime film, he would be one of the first directors I looked to- and he does very well with setting the mood in the opening episodes and then returning to close out the series. The directors I'm less familiar with do a great job of expanding the mood Fincher has set, especially Asif Kapadia who picks up from Fincher in episode three which is also when the pace of the show builds. The script is for the most part solid and when it does lag, the actors pull it across the line. Again as mentioned in my last post I've long been a fan of Jonathan Groff and I was really unsure of how he would travel here as he is usually in much lighter material (I mean the man has been nominated for two Tonys for performances in musicals after all, and he was in Frozen and Glee, and he has a puppy like adorable quality to him that often does not work in crime drama) and the weight of show does fall predominantly on his shoulders as though Tench and Carr get expanded as the series goes on, Ford is really the main character. My fears of Groff's ability to play into this darker side were quickly quashed as he shines as the social awkward yet highly passionate Ford, and nails the line between fascination with the minds of killers and going a little too far in his enthusiasm for this. McCallany and Torv I am less familiar with- I know I've seen him in things in the past but I cannot recall exactly what and I think the last time I saw Torv in something was a Bell Shakespeare production over a decade ago (no I've not seen Fringe). Both of them also acquit themselves really well- McCallany hitting the right beat on the cynical older detective without making him a cliche and Torv in mastering the juggle of portraying the kind of strong woman who TV audiences don't tend to warm to (though this needs to change) with making Carr someone you sympathise with. The character development of the three main characters instead just focusing on crime is outstandingly done. I also would single out Cameron Britton for his work. All of the actors playing the killers that Ford and Tench interview do really well especially as these are real people after all and some of them are now dead, but Britton is the only one in multiple episodes and his portrayal of Edmund Kemper is chillingly brilliant.  As an aside, being set in 1977 also means that the music throughout the series is amazing.

Something I found interesting about the show was that the characters of Ford, Tench, and Carr are fictionalised versions of the real people who worked in the early stages of the Behavioural Science unit at the FBI. Ford is based on John E Douglas who wrote the book on which the show is based and also has been the basis of many fictional detectives in the past, Tench is based on Robert K Ressler another FBI agent in the unit who worked with Douglas, and Carr is based on Dr Ann Wolbert Burgess who worked with Douglas on works he published on serial killers. The reason it is interesting is that none of the killers are altered nor are their crimes, and the show is largely careful to avoid anachronisms- you may notice I limited my use of the term "serial killer" though that is what Edmund Kemper and some others featured in the series were, and that is because the series doesn't use it until quite late as the term was not coined until the late 1970s rumour has it by Robert K Ressler (in the show it is coined late in the series by Tench to replace the clunkier sequence murderer or killer and as a means to differentiate killers like Edmund Kemper from killers like Richard Speck who was a spree killer). I'm not sure why they opted to go down this route with the main characters, likely to enable them to take liberties with the characters, but I felt it was worth commenting on. I was also entertained that they named the main character after not one but two cars.

Anyhow that was Mindhunter, it is really good but I do have to call it out on the one thing that stops it being up with Handmaid's Tale, Big Little Lies, and Dear White People as one of my top shows of 2017, and that is the character of Debbie. Hannah Gross does work hard with the material she is given but she is the only character who appears in all episodes who seems half thought out and were it not for Wendy Carr showing up about three episodes in, I would have questioned the treatment of women based on this character. Where Carr is a total boss who is clearly more intelligent and to a degree more respected than her male colleagues, Debbie whose sociological study could make her an interesting partner for Ford is pretty much a cipher. In the later episodes the show does try a little to address this by having her call Ford out on his constantly work talk but it is too late after over half a season of her acting as an exposition tool for the audience. Normally I would go harsher on use of women as ciphers but as I said, there is a another strong female character front and centre, the character in question is in most episodes a side line character at most, and though late in the day, the show does seem to notice the issue.

I think this might be a show to watch for years to come- based on an Easter egg for true crime nuts which the internet is all about spoiling at the minute (the spoiler is even on Wikipedia for goodness sake), I will put it as a footnote so you can stop before you get there if you don't want to know- so you should get on the band wagon soon*. I will include a warning that there are descriptions of very violent crimes (for example, it doesn't shy away from description of Kemper's crimes which were revolting to say the least) and photographs of some of these and some fictional crimes are re/created, so this isn't one for those who aren't otherwise fans of the crime/true crime genres. Personally I'm suddenly keen to read the book on which it is based.

So that is Mindhunter and as I said up top that one thing I was speaking about was good and one was not so, you can already guess where I might be headed with The Snowman.

Firstly the trailer as Youtube has this one...

Based on the best selling novel by Norwegian author, Jo Nesbø, The Snowman focuses on a series of disappearances of women in Oslo during the winter. The film opens not on the disappearances but on a single woman living alone with her son in a remote house. A man, apparently from his dress a police officer, appears at house and gives the boy a lesson in Norwegian history which is punctuated by him slapping the boy's mother whenever an incorrect answer is given. The boy flees from the house and builds a snowman. When he returns, he finds the police officer in bed with his mother and overhears her mentioning that the police officer is his father. Noticing the boy listening the police officer flees in his car and the boy and his mother follow him ending with the mother committing suicide by driving into a icy lake. Based on the clothing this is a flashback and the film then moves to Olso and the present day (or one assumes if the opening sequence was a flashback). Detective Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) is an alcoholic who often passes out from drink in parks, though he does still hold his role with the police department and based on comments by other characters, he appears to have once been a highly respected and competent investigator. Outside of work, Hole seeks to help ex-girlfriend, Rakel (Charlotte Gainsbourg), with her teenage son despite the fact that she has a new partner and he is not the boy's father. One day at work, he encounters keen young detective Katrine Bratt (Rebecca Ferguson) who has recently transferred from Bergen and she tries to get him interested in the mysterious disappearances of women on snowy nights. Hole also receives mysterious letters in child like hand that are signed with a drawing a snowman. The film also flashes back to nine year earlier in Bergen (this flashback does merit text on the screen to explain it) when a similarly alcoholic detective, Gert Rafto (Val Kilmer), was investigating the disappearance of a wealthy woman and the suspicion was falling on industry magnate Arve Støp (J. K. Simmons) (who nine years later is comfortably holding a prominent position in Olso and helping with the campaign for a major sporting event in the city).

Now you are going to have to excuse me on this one because I'm almost certainly going to stick spoilers in here but as my recommendation is that you not see it, maybe you can pardon me just this once. If you have read my posts in the past, you know that my approach to crime fiction is be unpredictable or be well written or I'll have none of you. Rare is the work of crime fiction where I don't pick the killer (For example, I picked the first season of Broadchurch a few episodes in which many take as the yardstick for unpredictable) so the writing needs to be amazing to keep me interested. This one I picked early on and the writing did not help at all nor did anything else especially as I have not read the book. I know The Snowman isn't the first book in the series that feature Harry Hole which seems an odd choice as it seems to rely on past exploits that aren't portrayed to make me want to side with the character at all.

First to get the silliness out of the way, does Harry Hole sound different  with a Norwegian accent because with an English/American/Australian one it sounds like a poor conceived far too crass drag name. I can just imagine her fellow drag queens talking Harry Hole aside and explaining that puns made funny names but this was a little on the nose.

Anyhow inappropriate jokes aside, back to the film. If the summary above sounds choppy that is because the film is. I know that the film had a switch of directors and didn't film all of its scenes but even so I would have thought that the editing could have been cleaner. The film jumps without transition between the present day to the random nine year earlier scenes in Bergen, the link to which takes a LONG time to pay off (I suspected correctly what the link was aside from the disappearance of women but due to the editing I did struggle initially). They could have clearly indicated that the initial scenes were in the past. As I said the clothes suggested that but you couldn't be certain and so might have really struggled to determine this and to see it as the too obvious signposting that it was if you knew it was the past.

The cast is full of actors I normally love. I would normally watch Michael Fassbender in anything, and I have plenty of time for Charlotte Gainsbourg, Toby Jones (who plays the senior detective in the Bergen flashbacks), Chloe Sevigny (she plays a victim and the victim's twin sister), and James D'Arcy (he plays another victim's husband), and that is before you get to J. K. Simmons who I think is amazing in most anything even if he does still carry terrifying associations from his character in Oz (over a decade has passed but he still scares me a little even when he is in comedies). This said there are so many issues with the acting that it makes me deeply worried for this cast. Firstly one of my pet peeves is mixed accents. If you don't know what I mean by this, I mean when a film is set in specific place and every character is from that place but every one has a different accent. Simmons seems to attempt a Norwegian accent and a few of the supporting actors, in particular Jonas Karlson who plays Mathias (the new partner of Hole's ex-girlfriend), are Swedish (not that this is Norwegian but it is closer than the others) but everyone else is all over the shop- posher English accents from Fassbender (who at least doesn't use his actual Irish accent and add another one to the mix), Ferguson, and D'Arcy, slightly less posh English from Jones, slightly French from Gainsbourg, American from Sevigny, and mumbled American with a side of what the hell from Kilmer. The bulk of the performance seem lacking direction and almost bored- this is particularly the case with Fassbender, Ferguson, and Gainsbourg. The chemistry between Fassbender and Gainsbourg is non existent and their one love scene very mechanical. Jones, Sevigny, and D'Arcy are highly unused only appearing a small number of scenes, particular Sevigny considering she is not European or English, and is a big enough name to normally warrant more screen time. Simmons seems to try the hardest of the cast but even he appears bored in some of his scenes. Kilmer is alone in not ringing in it, that said I have no idea what he was doing as his performance is one of the strangest I've seen in many years as if he figured that as he was playing drunk the whole time, he could do whatever he wanted.

The script appears dumbed down to make sure a small child could understand it (the film is at times a bit bloody, please don't take your five year old). Fassbender and Ferguson as the leads have to deliver some terrible clunkers, and the every scene where Fassbender or Kilmer is drunk seems underwritten as if "act drunk" was just scribbled on the page and nothing else. The main dumbing down occurs around medical terminology with D'Arcy's character needing to spell out what he meant by sterile for some reason and Karlson's character being described as a plastic surgeon initially (sure that is fine) but then later been shown to be doing work with hormones (which is a plot hole and a half on its own because that career transition between specialities would take years and a lot of training not be a sudden whim as it appears here) which is kept super vague. Everyone has watched medical shows nowadays, you can be specific, and if they don't get it there is always google after they get home from the film. There are things set up as prominent set pieces, for example the new police recording system, that never pay off. There was also issues with the plot as a whole. Drunken slightly older male detective (granted Fassbender is not that old) with many past glories and a failed relationship who still loves his ex paired with young bright eyed, often female, keen bean new recruit...I think I've seen that before, only about a thousand or so times. Killer targeting women who have had affairs as vengeance on a single mother who he feels abandoned him...also a very familiar trope. Everyone has missing parents on the backdrop of the killer's motive is also something that has become familiar in recent years. Some originality of plot would have been nice even if it was just to strengthen the script.

Finally the place where I said this was similar to Mindhunter but worse. The worst treatment in this film is reserved for its female main characters. Gainsbourg comes off the easiest of the two as it appears that they have just written her as generic love interest with a few complications and she basically has to go between that and sudden screaming at the end of the film when she is targeted by the killer (yes I did warned there would be spoilers).  She is one of the film's most underwritten characters but better that than the fate reserved for, only slightly less underwritten, character played by Rebecca Ferguson. Much like the character of Debbie in Mindhunter, we have another cipher on our hands and this time no-one seems to notice or care! Ferguson's character is described in synopses of the film online as a "brilliant new recruit" but all she does in the bulk of her scenes is parrot Fassbender's character or wait for him to do the bulk of the investigating. On the few occasions where Ferguson's character takes initiative, what would have been seen as foolish but brilliant from a male character is seen as deeply stupid. Ultimately (spoilers) her taking initiative results in her death or serious injury- near the end of the film, she loses a hand and is left in a freezing car in the snow BUT as we obviously don't care what happens to the women, the film opts for a massive plot hole around whether she is alive or dead. For a film about violence towards women, it does a great job of making sure to also undermine them with the plot, script, and character development.

Anyhow not sure The Snowman will be the worst film I see in 2017 but it will be up there. I did check the plot of the book online and it seems that clearly a lot of the plot was cut but that said unfortunately I don't know that the remaining plot would have added much.

Also stop now to avoid Mindhunter spoiler...










*Mindhunter spoiler... The mysterious character who appears at the beginning of nearly every episode and was identified by the show as AT&T employee is almost certainly Dennis Rader or the BTK Killer. In addition the case the police discuss with Ford and Tench in the first episode which isn't solved closely resembles a BTK victim. John E Douglas worked on the BTK case and wrote about it. The reason this indicates that the show might be around for a while is that the BTK Killer was active for a LONG time and was only caught in 2005 so nearly 30 years after 1977 when the show is set. I doubt that means close to 30 seasons but I would anticipate that whenever the final season occurs, it will feature that investigation and likely a time jump and aging makeup for Groff.

Life after death in sitcom land and new true crime in podcast land

Hi again folks, still from Scotland. Whilst I've been away I've been able to catch up on old pop culture things or start on new popular culture things, and I have two big recommendations (granted I started writing this a week ago and I think everyone got the memo on the second recommendation in the interim). Following this I have a few words on something else that just started a new season which I have been a semi-reluctant fan of for a while to tie in with the fact that last week was World Mental Health Week.

TV show wise, thank goodness for Netflix and its automatic transfer to the country you are in (please take note spotify (I'm very disconnected from music right now) and Amazon Prime (to get the third season of Outlander on UK Amazon I had to try everything I had and much mucking around to sort it out as I was previously a Prime subscriber back home, and this was despite having a UK Amazon account for many years- before I had US and Australian ones in fact)). I'm not sure what UK prime time looks like nowadays (I have a TV at my AirBnB but I've not turned it on as yet) but my previous experience has been wall to wall soap operas and reality TV. I'm sure that isn't all that exists as I watch a lot of good British made TV and also this was coloured by my staying in hostels previously and therefore not having control of the TV. Maybe it is because this that I will be recommending a US made show which is on Netflix.

The show I have been watching recently dropped on UK and Australian Netflix. The show was on other channels earlier as the first season was aired in 2016 originally and Netflix just got the rights and dropped the first season in one hit along with debuting the first episode of the second season in September. The show is the newest sitcom from Parks and Recreation and Brooklyn Nine-nine creator Michael Schur, The Good Place. Check out the first season trailer...

That gives you the plot to a degree but just in case you didn't watch or the link messes up, the summary is as follows. Eleanor Shellstrop (Kristen Bell) finds herself in a office setting where she is greeted by Michael (Ted Danson) who advises her that she has died and is now in the afterlife. Michael tells Eleanor that due to the good works she did whilst alive, she has been placed in "the good place" for her afterlife. As she is welcomed, Michael walks her through the neighbourhood of the good place in which she is to live, and to her very small and insanely quirky (for want of a better word) cottage in the neighbourhood. He puts on a video of the work she did in Africa for human rights and talks about her work as a death row lawyer, and introduces her to Chidi Anagonye (William Jackson Harper) a Senegalese professor of ethics and moral philosophy who is supposed to Eleanor's soul mate (in the good place everyone has a soul mate). After Michael leaves them, Eleanor reveals to Chidi that the video of her life is not her life and that she was not a lawyer or that good a person at all. Eleanor is sure she is not supposed to be in the good place and asks Chidi to help her with this. In the course of the first episode, you are also introduced to Tahani Al-Jamil (Jameela Jamil)- a wealthy British philanthropist of Pakstini descent, Tahani's soulmate Jianyu Li (Manny Jacinto)- Taiwanese Buddhist monk who has taken a vow of silence, and Janet (D'Arcy Carden)- the information system and assistant for those in the good place that takes human form.

I would strongly recommend not investigating the show at all online due to spoilers. Just start on it. I'm a big fan of Michael Schur's shows (the ones he created- he also wrote for the US version of The Office which I'm not a fan of due to my love of the original UK version but I know many folks are fans), and I love to see here like Brooklyn Nine-nine a diverse cast, and like both Brooklyn Nine-nine and Parks and Rec very cynical humour of the kind you don't often get in US sitcoms and some solid roles for women. I am also a long term fan of Kristen Bell and Ted Danson, and the presence of either on their own without Schur in the creator's chair would likely have resulted in my watching the show. Bell takes the sass she honed many moons ago as Veronica Mars and adds to that an adult cynicism and still manages to make the potentially unlikable and selfish Eleanor into a very likeable character. Danson in the element he has perfected over decades is amazing, and the continual cheerfulness and odd naivete he gives to the character of Michael is delightful- yes naivete despite Michael being a hundreds of years old being. The actors I was not familiar with (Harper, Jamil, Jacinto, and Carden) are also really amazing- Harper in making the straight man to the chaos not boring, Jamil in nailing the pretentiousness of Tahani, Jacinto for spoiler reasons I won't go into, and Carden for making Janet definitely more than the robot that she keeps being called, I feel like Janet is the public servant of the afterlife. The guest cast is also good especially Adam Scott who should be in everything and is very different here from Ben in Parks and Rec. In addition for guest cast, there was much confusion of me trying to place Amy Okuda who plays a background character late in the season (only super nerds will potentially twig to this and they will likely just recognise her but it took me a while to realise she was Tinkerballa from The Guild). The premise is also quite novel which adds to the quality of the show. The whole idea of someone who is in the good version of the afterlife trying to qualify for her position there is something I've definitely not seen before. The writing is hilarious and along with Schur one of the main writers is Drew Goddard who worked on Buffy among other things. The mechanics of the afterlife in the show will likely lead to many comments by folks of various religions who watch the show especially in terms of a merit based afterlife and what that suggests for the moral philosophy that Hollywood proposes. This show is definitely a new favourite for me, and makes me think of the words "fork", "shirt", and "bench" very differently.

Onto podcast land... I am a late comer to the whole podcast vibe only joining in just over a year ago, and cliche dictates there is no-one more zealous than a convert, I feel I'm always talking people's ears off about some podcast or another. From initially cautiously investigating one podcast about a beloved TV show (The West Wing Weekly if you are curious), I now listen to over twenty different ones. I listen to a bunch on US politics (all by the same media company), a few fiction based story ones, a bunch of comedy ones on various themes, a few on cults (though all of them do have a habit of hitting my bugbear of adding an 's' to the biblical book of Revelation which drives me a tad nuts), and a bunch on true crime. There are ones that I never get behind on (the previously mentioned West Wing Weekly, My Favorite Murder, and Pod Save America in particular) and some that I'm still trying to binge to catch up on (I think I listened to about twenty old episodes of The Guilty Feminist, a new favourite, on a recent speed trip to London) and some I binge every few weeks to catch up on. Now there are some podcasts that seem to oddly have a universality of appeal which a few years ago would have been unheard of, except for everyone's old back up This American Life. Then came Serial and I remember being at my job at the time and half the people I worked with were listening to it constantly, and then I'd catch up with friends and many of them were listening to it, suddenly podcasts were the norm and everyone seemed to be in on it (just to confirm, I have listened to the first season of Serial now- people told me not to bother with the second). Also fascinating was that Serial was true crime which many people don't warm to but here were people I knew would not normally be interesting in true crime listening along and talking about it with fascination. Suddenly podcasts were a thing everyone was into (except me for some reason) and then as everyone picked their particular poison and the Serial excitement died down, it seemed there weren't podcasts for everyone, there were just podcasts for certain groups. But then the suddenly another one emerged in S Town- I was on the podcast train when it came out and binged it in two days and ended up emotionally drained for about a week afterwards. I think S Town was helped by its connections to Serial and This American Life but it was very different from either of these so if it was just their drawing power I would have expected numbers to dip and people not to finish it, but I remember the weeks after when people I knew would walk up to me with a knowing look in their eyes and a look of emotional exhaustion and I knew S Town had claimed another victim. So that is the lead in to say my new recommendation appears in the last week (literally since I started typing this post last Tuesday and now (Monday night of the next week)) to have become the next one of these universal buzz podcasts.

That recommendation is Dirty John.



It starts with the description of a coroner's examination of a body and then shifts to the story of a woman called Debra who meets a man, John, through a dating site, and he seems to be exactly what she is looking for. Debra has been married four times previously and has three adult daughters from those marriages (Terra, Jacqueline and the middle daughter whose name is only mentioned a few times and therefore I cannot recall). Debra is a successful and wealthy interior designer living in Orange County California who the podcast mentions uses her business to help single mothers by seeking to hire them and train them. John tells her he is also divorced and has kids from that previous marriage and that he is a doctor who has recently been working for Doctors Without Borders in Iraq. John seems odd but after a failed first date, they give it a second try and the relationship speeds ahead at an insane rate and soon enough John meets Debra's daughters. Jacqueline, who is the eldest and lives and works with Debra, meets him first and takes an instant dislike to him and tells her mother that sometime is off about this man. Terra, the youngest, is more trusting of new people than her big sister gives him a chance but then she starts to be wary when a few odd events occur and John is very unpleasant to her boyfriend, and she ends up terrified of him. With all of her daughters (the one whose name I can't remember as well- I'm really sorry to this woman but unlike both her sisters she was not a large part of the podcast nor was she interviewed for it) warning her against a man with whom she has had a very fast moving relationship, Debra has to pick between her family and John.

Now obviously that is just the beginning and I did leave a few spoilers even from the first episode out intentionally. I know everyone is binging this podcast now or has in the last week. I actually listened to it as the episodes were still dropping a few weeks ago- they were released one every few days over a week and a half- so to those who binged the whole thing, imagine having to wait even just a few days on episodes (so stressful). I found it via another podcast, Sword and Scale (BIG warning that one isn't for the faint hearted as it includes audio recordings from crimes including emergency calls and other things). That said the intensity of the podcast I got the recommendation from should not deter you listening to Dirty John- it is true crime but not the same kind of true crime as most of the others in that vein, and it definitely isn't one to give you nightmares. You get sucked in by the mystery of it all- whose body is the coroner describing at the beginning of the first episode? who stabbed the body (not a spoiler- that is in the first couple of seconds of the first episode)? who will Debra listen to, her daughters or her boyfriend? what is the deal with John as clearly something is not above board with him?  It is very fascinating and in my case it made me want to go back and watch a TV show I gave up on after a dud season several years ago (no mention as to which one as that would be a spoiler).

A few minor cautions before you start on it though. Firstly the narrator is clearly a great reporter but he does not have the best "voice for radio" so I found that annoying to begin with- bear with it and you should get past it. Secondly, not the podcast but the events may tend you to accidentally victim blame as you listen, be very careful with this and maybe try and empathise with the women as you listen even if what they are saying sounds off.

Anyhow Dirty John is on all the podcast places now and all the six episodes of it are up.

 Moving on to a few words on a show that has recently returned for a new season, its third. Now I love musicals and I love cynical, offbeat, and at times inappropriate humour and I love unlikable characters, so this show would seem to tick all the boxes for me, and I do really like it but it also makes me at times deeply uncomfortable and as it returned in the week the world turned a small corner of its eye to mental health, it is worth a comment.  That show is Crazy Ex Girlfriend. I know what you are thinking well it does have "crazy" in the title what did you expect but having "crazy" (which many with mental health issues consider a highly offensive term) in the title isn't a blank slate to say anything you want on mental health. The show is camp and hilarious and the cast is amazingly talented though I'm not sure I forgive it for writing out one of my two favourite characters in the second season. It is also full of strong female characters, is racially diverse, and its only strong and stable couple are two men. It gets so many things right, and if you want a sample of this, have some songs as it is a musical after all- I cannot find my favourite from season one which is about having large boobs on Youtube but here are some of my season 2 favourites. Firstly spoilers if you haven't seen the show and want to on this one- this one is about the relationship between my erstwhile favourite character and the lead character as he leaves the show...

Secondly this one is what the main character, who is Jewish, envisions every Jewish gathering is about. It shouldn't spoil anything for you:

Thirdly, probably my favourite from the second season and definitely zero spoilers here, this is the personification of a particular wind that is supposed to blow through town and make everyone act strange.

So you are seeing, it is good, right?- assuming you like musicals. All the songs are in different musical styles but all of them work, and the humour is dark and irreverent. It seems brilliant.

OK so let's go to the problematic context. The premise of the show is that a successful property lawyer from New York has a breakdown due to the stress of her workplace which triggers her existing tableau of mental health issues, and in the midst of this she runs into a man who was her boyfriend at a holiday school camp when they were teenagers, he is in the process of moving back his small Californian home town and she follows him. In song form, her moving is covered below (mainly because I haven't really featured the main character yet):

Now gradually the main character, Rebecca, finds friends, settles into her new job, and on a few occasions seems to be working things out. The problem is that she doesn't listen to the help she is given, she doesn't work things out, and the bulk of the surrounding characters only briefly call her out on these issues before essentially enabling her and that is if they notice at all that there is an issue- e.g the man she follows to California, Josh Chan, is literally one of the dumbest humans ever and it takes him almost all of the first season to notice that she has problems. Even though another character clearly identifies a mental health issue in themselves early in the second season and seeks help and moves in the right direction, no-one stops to think of this woman who is spiraling out of control as essentially the breakdown she has in the first episode continues without break over two seasons. This may all seem a bit too serious as it is a comedy show and it does clearly portray to the viewer that there is something wrong both in the way she interacts with the world and also in the therapy that she attends and ignores (depression has been suggested on the show as has borderline personality disorder and anxiety- I would lean to bipolar 1 or something similar with a side of other things were I to try and diagnose her but that hasn't been suggested yet). Also I understand the urge to deal with mental health with comedy in a positive non mocking tone (the show rarely directly mocks Rebeca's issues) but it just irks me a little that there is a show with a main character with a clear mental health issue who is so strongly in denial about this as the world seeks to fight mental health stigma. As I said I really like the show, but at times I just can't shake how deeply uncomfortable it makes me. Supposedly the diagnosis of Rebecca's condition is coming in season 3 and hopefully that moves the show out of the space that rattles me. Until then, my favourite season 2 moment from the one of my favourite characters who remains, speaks to where I sit with the show at times:

Beyond that during the week after Mental Health week, I encourage people out there to be honest about their mental health and not to be afraid to see a doctor (and listen to one) when it is less than stellar. Also friends of folks with mental health concerns, love them well, listen to them well, and don't be afraid to be the person who at times has to say the hard words about seeking medical advice.

That is it from me for now. I'm off to watch this week's Outlander and then to continue on Mindhunter (new on Netflix, partly directed by David Fincher, featuring Jonathan Groff (such a big fan of his and no not from Frozen), so far good 70s tunes, and a fictionalised account of the formation of the FBI psychological profiling department that works on serial killers (the real people in this department coined the term "serial killer")...two episodes in and I'm loving it so a post on it might be forthcoming). Laters folks!