Fuck This Show: Once Upon a Time – s03e02 – Part 2

So in the manner of trying out new things and playing with the format, I wanted to use each episode as a launch pad to talk about the issue or theme that had most caught my attention, the thing that I’d come away thinking about the most. Given what an enormous cluster-fuck Once Upon a Time usually is… this can be a tricky thing to narrow down. And if you read our break down of S3E1, you can get an idea of just how much there is that needs to be talked about.

But S3E2, despite its “Lost Girl” title and its pretensions to focusing on Emma Swan, left me with the sourest taste in my mouth over David Nolan. So without further ado…

David Nolan AKA Prince Charming: Fuck that guy in particular.

Hannibal and Top of the Lake: Violated Narratives

The exciting part of watching any crime show is waiting to see how those self-imposed genre rules are broken; you can break one or two, or you can break them all. But by removing the boundaries which enable people to identify a crime show as a crime show you run the risk of that show losing its identity. Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s a thing that happens when the focus shifts away from genre concerns and to a broader context. And when that happens a crime show becomes a drama show, and without genre expectations being held there is little to no effect when those genre rules are flouted. Because for broken rules to have an affect on a narrative, your audience needs to be aware that those rules are there in the first place.

There are some excellent crime shows on television at the moment; NBC’s Hannibal has won a lot of acclaim, it’s a tale many people are familiar with and it brings us face to face with the charismatic monster, Dr. Hannibal Lecter. Across thirteen episodes in this first season there is murder, the eating of people, and there are FBI investigations and gruesome body horror to boot. Visually it is slick and the scenes practically drip with the saturated red tones.

Top of the Lake, co-produced by BBC Two in the UK, UKTV in Australia/NZ and Sundance Channel in the United States, is a quieter affair. Gathering positive responses for its masterful storytelling and production. The seven episodes focus on Detective Robin Griffin and the twelve year-old Tui Mitchim, who happens to be pregnant. What it lacks for in body count, it makes up for in character studies and beautiful landscape. A near perfect natural landscape within which the horrors of mankind reign.

What we see with both of these shows are narratives regarding violation, and these narratives are then told through subversions of the crime genre. Whether, they be conventional subversions, or more challenging breaks from our expectations.

The Princess Paradox: Or my love-hate relationship with Adventure Time

It feels unkind to berate something for not being progressive enough but that is where I am at with Adventure Time. Mostly as a reaction to the way in online circles it is lauded as an ideal representation of gender and equality. Because when I initially watched the first series my reaction was, and still is, ‘But why are they all princesses?‘ And it is a question that has yet to be answered in the show. Largely because I do not think it could be. Adventure Time is a show of contradictions, with the A-Cast ladies the writers make some interesting choices and present some challenging points of view, however with the B-Cast ladies things become much more traditional, and princess-y. (Not to mention the C-Cast with nameless women such as the Bikini Babes – s5e20). And it is this contradiction, and it is the presence of the female characters inhabiting the traditional ‘damsel-in-distress’ roles that undermines what the writers are doing with the primary characters. For every challenge they make to our expectations using major characters, they are reinforced two-fold with minor characters.

I have seen remarkably few explorations of this princess paradox, it seems to be a trope that we are willing to accept either at face-value or because; “Almost every female character is a princess but the typical cliché Damsel in Distress and/or romance obsessed girly-girl are parodied and subverted for all they’re worth.” But the question is; does that make it okay? Because I do not think it does. I do not think it is enough to subvert a trope without also offering viable alternatives. Because by subverting a trope you are also expecting a level of literacy from your audience which may not always be there. This is especially true of Adventure Time, it is ostensibly targeted at children despite having a popular following of viewers in their twenties and thirties.

So, to be female in Adventure Time is to be a princess. Or in the case of Marceline the Vampire Queen or Lady Rainicorn, nobility of some variety (and there is a distinction to be made there, which I will touch on later). What this leaves us with is a female cast named largely for their function. They are ‘X-Y-Z Princess’ and are called by their honorific which acts to strip them of their individuality. (What do we know of Hotdog Princess aside from the fact that she’s a hotdog? Wildberry Princess? Turtle Princess? Ghost Princess? They exist for their function, for their role, not as individuals, and quite honestly it feels like a lot of their names are place-holder jokes. Which does not even begin to touch the distastefulness of Embryo Princess (and the subtle pro-life message therein)).