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Oct. 31st, 2008 10:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
shark_hatSarah Brennan's being to-the-point and hilarious with it again- a post about not liking female characters.
("Yes, Sarah, you might say, but that was all in the olden days. We've wised up now, and I just tend to like male characters better, okay? Well, let's leave alone the fact that the world is not quite as wised up as I'd like it to be, because I tend to get obnoxious about that, and once a friend told me that she wasn't a feminist and I stole her credit card and wouldn't give it back because without feminism she wouldn't have had her own bank account, and I realise that was unacceptable behaviour.
"But let's talk a bit more about why.
"There's a reaction to the helpless heroine, the Heroine who is Made of Awesome, who is better than guys at everything, smarter, stronger, and often in a way that just builds on the traits of guy characters. And I at least don't tend to like that heroine any more than Little Miss Twit.")
Also, I went to see Bellini's I Capeletti E I Montecchi last night, and it was excellent (Opera North production, v. good singing, also interesting staging); the opera's based on Italian sources more than on Shakespeare, so there are some interesting differences, and also there isn't Mercutio or the Nurse- it just cuts straight to the tragic bits. Romeo's always played by a woman, and in this production, that led to the interesting problem of Romeo and Giulietta having no chemistry at all (until the death scene, for some reason), whereas Romeo and Teobaldo sizzled. They have a duel-cum-duet scene when they find that Giulietta has (supposedly) died and they're competing for who's most upset, and really if they'd had a recitative going "but actually, you know, we could run away and be warlords together," it would have been amazing. (And Giulietta could have married the doctor, who was sweet, and, you know, happy ending, not the point of a tragic opera.)
("Yes, Sarah, you might say, but that was all in the olden days. We've wised up now, and I just tend to like male characters better, okay? Well, let's leave alone the fact that the world is not quite as wised up as I'd like it to be, because I tend to get obnoxious about that, and once a friend told me that she wasn't a feminist and I stole her credit card and wouldn't give it back because without feminism she wouldn't have had her own bank account, and I realise that was unacceptable behaviour.
"But let's talk a bit more about why.
"There's a reaction to the helpless heroine, the Heroine who is Made of Awesome, who is better than guys at everything, smarter, stronger, and often in a way that just builds on the traits of guy characters. And I at least don't tend to like that heroine any more than Little Miss Twit.")
Also, I went to see Bellini's I Capeletti E I Montecchi last night, and it was excellent (Opera North production, v. good singing, also interesting staging); the opera's based on Italian sources more than on Shakespeare, so there are some interesting differences, and also there isn't Mercutio or the Nurse- it just cuts straight to the tragic bits. Romeo's always played by a woman, and in this production, that led to the interesting problem of Romeo and Giulietta having no chemistry at all (until the death scene, for some reason), whereas Romeo and Teobaldo sizzled. They have a duel-cum-duet scene when they find that Giulietta has (supposedly) died and they're competing for who's most upset, and really if they'd had a recitative going "but actually, you know, we could run away and be warlords together," it would have been amazing. (And Giulietta could have married the doctor, who was sweet, and, you know, happy ending, not the point of a tragic opera.)
Doctor
Date: 2008-11-01 09:31 am (UTC)Re: Doctor
Date: 2008-11-03 10:56 am (UTC)