Don't Blame Me
Dec. 9th, 2004 12:05 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
ellenkushnerI have discovered that is is now possible to blame George Bush for everything wrong with the world today, including the state of the arts.
I was doing fundraising on public TV the other night. In the green room backstage, a colleague expressed regret at having missed the recent BBC Masterpiece Theater co-production of “Henry VIII” (it turns out that she, too, was a Teenage Tudor Fan – she even still has her copy of Norah Lofts’ The Concubine – how’s that?!). Don’t worry, I said, it was the worst piece of crap I’ve ever seen. We only watched the first one, and we were so upset by its badness that we had to detox immediately by staying up way past our bedtime to watch most of the first episode of the original 1970’s BBC “The Six Wives of Henry VIII,” which I keep on the shelf for just such emergencies. Unlike the recent travesty, the old “Six Wives” has intelligent people moving in the real world with real 16c European politics in play. And its costumes do not look like a cheap high school production.
The new version was more like a made-for-TV movie: Henry’s entire motivation - for the first 3 wives, at least – comes from the opening scene: HVII’s deathbed, where dad tells little Henry, “The most important thing you will do as King is to Have a Son…aaagh. (dies)” That’s it. So sonnie spends rest of movie repeating to himself “I must have a son” while empires tumble and Catholics burn.
Delia & I could not believe the BBC would do something so d.u.m.b. – and then we found out it had been made specifically for the American market.
Ahh, said my friend in the green room. That explains it. It’s George Bush.
Huh?
Well, over there, they see how dumb our president is, and they think we’re all like that.
No, wait, I said; you can’t blame it all on him. They’ve been getting our cultural exports for years. They know what American TV looks like, and they’re just trying to tailor it to our tastes. And our tastes now seem, for the majority, to include . . . oh dear . . . well, he did win the election, didn’t he?
So now I read, in a BBC News article Greg Frost (Clipping-master to the Stars) has sent me
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/film/4077987.stm
that the script writers for “His Dark Materials,” the film based on Phillip Pullman’s stellar fantasy series, have been asked by the studio “to remove references to God and the church in the movie.” And that Pullman, Galileo-like, “has denied his books are anti-religious.” (Oy, Phil.) Pullman’s agent is quoted saying, "You have to recognise that it is a challenge in the climate of Bush's America."
* * *
Don’t blame me. I didn’t vote for him.
I was doing fundraising on public TV the other night. In the green room backstage, a colleague expressed regret at having missed the recent BBC Masterpiece Theater co-production of “Henry VIII” (it turns out that she, too, was a Teenage Tudor Fan – she even still has her copy of Norah Lofts’ The Concubine – how’s that?!). Don’t worry, I said, it was the worst piece of crap I’ve ever seen. We only watched the first one, and we were so upset by its badness that we had to detox immediately by staying up way past our bedtime to watch most of the first episode of the original 1970’s BBC “The Six Wives of Henry VIII,” which I keep on the shelf for just such emergencies. Unlike the recent travesty, the old “Six Wives” has intelligent people moving in the real world with real 16c European politics in play. And its costumes do not look like a cheap high school production.
The new version was more like a made-for-TV movie: Henry’s entire motivation - for the first 3 wives, at least – comes from the opening scene: HVII’s deathbed, where dad tells little Henry, “The most important thing you will do as King is to Have a Son…aaagh. (dies)” That’s it. So sonnie spends rest of movie repeating to himself “I must have a son” while empires tumble and Catholics burn.
Delia & I could not believe the BBC would do something so d.u.m.b. – and then we found out it had been made specifically for the American market.
Ahh, said my friend in the green room. That explains it. It’s George Bush.
Huh?
Well, over there, they see how dumb our president is, and they think we’re all like that.
No, wait, I said; you can’t blame it all on him. They’ve been getting our cultural exports for years. They know what American TV looks like, and they’re just trying to tailor it to our tastes. And our tastes now seem, for the majority, to include . . . oh dear . . . well, he did win the election, didn’t he?
So now I read, in a BBC News article Greg Frost (Clipping-master to the Stars) has sent me
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/entertainment/film/4077987.stm
that the script writers for “His Dark Materials,” the film based on Phillip Pullman’s stellar fantasy series, have been asked by the studio “to remove references to God and the church in the movie.” And that Pullman, Galileo-like, “has denied his books are anti-religious.” (Oy, Phil.) Pullman’s agent is quoted saying, "You have to recognise that it is a challenge in the climate of Bush's America."
* * *
Don’t blame me. I didn’t vote for him.
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no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 05:25 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 05:30 pm (UTC)Fairness to Philip Pullman
Date: 2005-01-11 07:15 am (UTC)http://www.philip-pullman.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=102
God bless him, and the ship he sails upon! A man who understands (and defends) metaphor is my kinda guy.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 05:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 05:45 pm (UTC)Ah, I see an opportunity here. The next time something goes wrong, I shall be sure to blame George Bush.
Hmmmm. Can this excuse possibly displace the "dog ate my homework" excuse? (And should I therefore not share this tidbit with my son? He hates Bush with all the passion of an eleven-year-old and would pounce upon the excuse with doubled-glee.)
Oh dear. I took your quote entirely out of context. *glyph of contrition*
no subject
Date: 2004-12-11 02:31 am (UTC)BLAME GEORGE! GWB as the Root of All Evil....
It could work.
It could really catch on!
Fun for the Whole Family. GWB Ate My Homework.
(And, re. joyeuse below: watch for Michael Moore's remake of STAR WARS, starring - guess who? "So y'know, Luke, a father is a very good thing to be when he's maternal....")
no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 06:37 pm (UTC)Fairness to Pullman
Date: 2005-01-11 08:36 am (UTC)http://www.philip-pullman.com/pages/content/index.asp?PageID=102
God bless him, and the ship he sails upon! A man who understands (and defends) metaphor is my kinda guy.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 10:06 pm (UTC)---L.
no subject
Date: 2004-12-10 10:30 pm (UTC)Weitz said he had visited Pullman, who had told him that the Authority could "represent any arbitrary establishment that curtails the freedom of the individual, whether it be religious, political, totalitarian, fundamentalist, communist, what have you".
So does this mean the story will be rewritten with the Authority portrayed as G. W. Bush?
no subject
Date: 2004-12-11 02:29 am (UTC)I Was a Teenage Tudor Fan
Date: 2004-12-11 01:03 am (UTC)MKK
Re: I Was a Teenage Tudor Fan
Date: 2004-12-11 10:21 pm (UTC)I'm also relieved that I wasn't the only one thoroughly disappointed with the most recent H8. What a waste of a great cast. I'm mortified to learn that it was made for the American market. But that explains Anne Boleyn's gory head being brandished before the audience. Blech.
Teenage Tudor fans
Date: 2004-12-14 09:33 am (UTC)Pity about His Dark Materials. Have you heard anything about the Earthsea TV movie? Is it worth getting on DVD when it comes out?
--Your Cable-less Coz
Re: Teenage Tudor fans
Date: 2004-12-14 09:07 pm (UTC)I watched a few minutes of Earthsea #1 last night. Mostly I laughed, and shouted loudly and obnoxiously at the screen. It's OK with the sound off - very pretty, and some of the right textures - but the script and actors are the stuff of nightmares. I imagine Le Guin on a cocktail of valium, ambien & prozac by now just to sleep at night.
I am moved by your question, however, to post a longish essay at EK LJ Central.