Articles in “Television”

So, Nick and I ended up eating dinner a little late, so we just turned The Simpsons on for the duration. I haven’t voluntarily watched The Simpsons in years, and this tends to make me not to want to watch it again.

This, it seems, was a Valentine’s Day special, with three, vaguely linked stories. This is something of a guess, since we came in halfway through the second story, a re-visioning of Lady and the Tramp with Homer and Marge as dogs.

But it was the last story that bothered me: Bart, compelled to choose a romantic story, selected Sid and Nancy.

I’ll say that again: Sid Vicious and Nancy Spurgeon.

In his version, heroin was replaced with illicit “chocolate”—so at one point, Sid (Nelson) and Nancy (Lisa) were cutting lines of chocolate milk.

By this point, Nick and I were staring open-mouthed at the television, while our neglected spoons slowly dripped soup into our laps.

But it was the end that made me write this entry.

Nancy, having made Sid quit The Sex Pistols, leads him to a career in a duo, where they dress in the archetypally “preppy” outfits of 1950s’ America. But this doesn’t work for the punk club they’re playing in, and they’re kicked out into the alley.

Never mind, says Nancy: why don’t we got back to the bedsit and get smashed (on chocolate)?

Sure, says Sid: after all, he loves her. And she loves him.

And they kiss in the alleyway, while Homer rains “confetti”—in the form of shredded rubbish from a wastepaper bin—down on them.

“Oh, sod off,” says Homer: “It’s Valentine’s Day.”

Um.

They died?

And it was fairly horrible?

In fact, it’s highly likely that he stabbed her to death, but doesn’t remember it because he was so heavily under the influence?

And then he died as well, after a heroin overdose?

I don’t know: I’d hate to think I was entirely humourless, but this? This seems just a little . . . off.

But then I have been rather cranky today.

I mentioned back during the second stage of my Magical Mystery Bookshelf Tour that I thought L. M. Montgomery was most interesting when she was exploring the darker side of late-Victorian provincial life.

I shouldn’t have anticipated that I would be the only one who thought that, but I hadn’t thought it would take such an odd turn.

You see, I was surfing through Wikipedia this afternoon—almost as dangerous an activity as surfing around on Amazon.com, and with a greater chance of unexpectedly coming across some examples of necrophotography—when I discovered that Emily of New Moon—one of my favourite Montgomery books, still—was made into a television series in the late 1990s.

(Honestly, I owe some my happiest television-watching hours to Canadian television. Unfortunately, Nick never enjoyed Degrassi Junior High, so I haven’t been able to rewatch that recently, but we both loved The Nero Wolfe Mysteries.)

So I would have been intrigued by this, anyway—getting, as I am, to an age where I find inaccurate adaptations of my favourite stories amusing rather than depressing, assuming that they don’t include random Nazis.

But then I stumbled across a review on the website of the L. M. Montgomery Reading Group’s website and, oddly enough, the stated inaccuracies only intrigued me more in this case.

I’ll quote:

[T]he series writers [. . .] added a number of elements and subplots that offered a record of 1890s Prince Edward Island that is radically different in tone and in topic from Montgomery’s. Emily’s “flash” and encounters with the supernatural are heightened in the television series, so much so that Ellen Vanstone refers to the production as “The X-Files meets Anne of Green Gables” (C1). As well, characters such as Aunt Laura (McCarthy), Aunt Thom (Janet Wright), and Margaux Lavoie (Jacqueline MacKenzie) [sic] all contribute to the series’ unflinching rejection of the Victorian idolization of courtship and its creation of situations that entrap women legally, sexually, and emotionally.

Now that does sound interesting.

As I mentioned at the beginning, Montgomery was well aware of the strictures on women in small communities in the late nineteenth century, so I can’t be sure how far away from the tone of her novels this has stepped. (The supernatural elements were certainly present in the original; Emily used what was called “second sight” to solve mysteries and prevent disasters in all three novels.)

But I’m certainly keen to find out, which is a shame, really, since the series aired ten years ago and was cancelled because of poor ratings.

But I see, thanks to Amazon.com that it’s coming out on DVD later this year.

So now all I need to do is convince Nick that he really does want to watch a Canadian children’s television programme set in the 1890s.

In no particular order of importance:

I’ve always enjoyed Mars advertisements, but this new one, with the people sprouting dragons’ or bats’ wings, isn’t a patch on the old one with the aliens at the low-gravity pool party. That filled me with a deep sense of envy.

On a different note, though: you really shouldn’t fold your girlfriend up and stick her in your front pocket. That’s . . . in fact, that’s not a girlfriend: that’s an aid. Or a toy, if you prefer.

I also don’t understand the new QUT advertisement: it makes sense that they’re trying to promote the idea that attending university will give you direction, but the image of the boy pushing the trolleys? I don’t understand what they’re trying to suggest with that. Are the trolleys emblematic of your career, and his sharp control of them—mainly, his ability to stop them scraping the car—indicative of the skills that he will learn at university? Or is it a suggestion that if you don’t attend university, you’ll end up pushing trolleys for a living?

I think the strangest advertisement I’ve seen recently, though, is the ad. for V with the tortoise that works as a lifeguard. I assume it’s an American ad., based on the female lifeguards’ red swimming costumes. But I’m not entirely certain what it’s trying to suggest: that drinking V will somehow negate a large body mass and physical awkwardness? Actually, that could be useful. Still, if I’m ever in trouble in the surf (impossible: too many sharks), I hope I don’t need to rely on the services of a tortoise.

When was the last time that Eddie Murphy starred in a movie with anyone other than Eddie Murphy?

Don’t get me wrong: the more Eddie Murphies there are in a movie, the happier I feel about not going to see it.

But is this not the ultimate in narcissism?

I’ve commented on more than one occasion about the pit of sheer, unremitting horror that is Lynx’s advertising department’s gender politics.

It’s only fair that I redress the balance, since I’ve just seen the follow up to AAMI’s awful new advertising campaign.

When Nick and I saw the first one—with the woman directing a passive-aggressive appeal to her boyfriend to take out a personal loan so he could buy an expensive engagement ring and propose to her—we were . . . well, gob-smacked, I think is the only word.

I’ve never had any patience with the “I must be married to anyone, anywhere, it doesn’t really matter, as long as I’m married” attitude that so much chick-lit (and chick-TV and rom coms) seem to feel is the appropriate attitude for women . . . and I have even less patience now that I’m in my thirties and people keep asking me when I’m getting married.

Don’t get me wrong; plenty of people marry because they are in love, and that’s a different issue. I’m not mocking that. But I don’t know anyone who ever went into a jewellry store and recorded a message demanding that their significant other propose and, by the way, here’s the ring I want you to buy me.

But, now, I’ve just seen the follow-up ad. where she’s now “the new Mrs Todd,” but apparently the honeymoon wasn’t up to her standards, so could he take out another loan—but a bigger one, this time, because she’d like to go to Paris.

I don’t think I’ve been too hard on Lynx, frankly. But these ads—these are almost the girly equivalent of the Lynx ads.

If the idea that men will do absolutely anything—including transform sentient beings into automatons—in the pursuit of the opposite sex is the most degrading way of depicting men, then this is the equivalent for women.

Dear AAMI,

You insure my car. Thank you. But this ad. campaign is grotesque. Not all women are passive-aggressive harridans, you know. And, you know what? The marriage angle wouldn’t even bother me—this ad. would be awful under any circumstances—if it weren’t for the media’s increasing obsession with bridal porn, with the trappings of the wedding instead of the ceremony itself.

Dear Woman in the AAMI Ad.,

You might want to consider whether you should have brought up your honeymoon concerns prior to, I don’t know, maybe the honeymoon? Because at this stage, I’m assuming that the next ad. will be you suggesting that Todd takes out a loan because your alimony payments aren’t high enough.