Thoughts on Downton Abbey

Tags

Brideshead Revisited, Downton Abbey, Evelyn Waugh

 

I know. This isn’t Downton. It’s Brideshead, 1981 edition. More on that below.

My husband and I have been watching Downton Abbey these past weeks and we’re now partway through the second season (so, you know, here there be spoilers, at least up to part way through the second season–be ye duly warned). We both really liked the first season, and I found the first few episodes of the second season engaging.

There’s a lot to love–the beautiful setting, the beautiful characters; the fact that the good characters, aside from minor flaws (a temper, an impulsiveness, a peculiar blindness in the context of one’s lady’s maid), are very good; and the bad characters, aside from occasionally redemptive acts, are reliably awful. This means that as viewers, we can feel a kind of safety in watching. Bates will always be quiet, courtly and honourable, even to his own detriment; Lady Sybil will be reliably activist and progressive; and so on.

This reliability is something appealing about the show. Except when it stops being appealing, and starts to feel static.

Francis Underwood: Psychopath

Tags

Francis Underwood, House of Cards, Iago, Kevin Spacey, Macbeth, Netflix, psychopath, television

My husband and I have been spending the past several evenings watching the new, American edition of House of Cards. It’s a sinister but engaging series about the machinations of power at the highest levels, featuring an anti-hero protagonist. Francis (Frank) Underwood is a character of Shakepearean dimensions—a latter day version of what you might get if you were to cross Iago with Macbeth (indeed, some of the episodes are decidedly elegant and clever riffs on these).

He’s also a psychopath. The recent definitions of psychopathy do not require violent behaviours or any other such displays. Instead, the current construal of the condition has more to do with a lack of compassion or empathy, combined with a superficial charm or charisma. This juxtaposition means that the psychopathic individual is observant enough to be able to enact appealing behaviours that persuade others to do things for them—but in cases where the charm doesn’t work, such individuals are not burdened by conscience, guilt or regret.

This doesn’t automatically translate to violence, as most psychopaths are smart enough to know that violence isn’t always the easiest path to obtaining the outcome they seek.

In the case of Frank, he is possessed of an overweening ambition, combined with a keen intelligence and a complete lack of compassion—one gets the sense that he sees people with no more or less empathy than he has for the pieces in the chess game that he is occasionally seen playing.

I find him repugnant,* even as I am fascinated by his combination of cold brilliance, a willingness to cross line after line in pursuit of his ends, and an ability to strategize and manipulate as necessary, with what seems like an almost preternatural effectiveness.

Negative Reviews: Three Questions to Ask Yourself

When I was about eleven or twelve, I gave my mother one of my early efforts to read. When I asked her what she thought, she began telling me all the problems with it. I had expected lavish praise, and so I responded by growing sullen—and after a few moments she said, “Look I can tell you it’s fantastic and wonderful if you want. But if you actually want to become a better writer, then that’s not going to do you any good.”

I went away and thought about it and decided she was right. Newly humbled, I went back and asked her to tell me what was wrong with the chapter—and she did.

Thus began my long history with negative feedback. I’ve certainly gotten a lot of it over the years, and it is key to growth and development—but only if it’s in line with the direction in which you want to grow and develop.

These days, I deal with negative feedback rather differently, whether it’s a scathing critique or a negative review on my Amazon listing.

The End of the Computer Age

Tags

Age of the Cyborg, infernal devices, post-computers, room sized computer, technology

My husband and I were discussing today how phrases like “the Computer Age” and its variants have a kind of antiquated, outmoded feel to them. To me they conjure up visions of the past: room-sized computers with far less processing power than the average mobile phone, TRON-like mainframes and other such relics of the past. It was an age where anything seemed possible, artificial intelligence appeared to be right around the corner and the world’s problems would be solved by the new technologies (kind of like in the Victorian era, there was the sense that scientific inquiry would solve those same problems). It was hopeful, and every time the room-sized computer performed a complex calculation, it would be the subject of great wonder and accolades.

Nuit Blanche, 2012 Edition

Tags

nuit blanche 2012

Once a year, for the twelve hours between sunset and sunrise, key streets in downtown Toronto shut down, and a series of artistic visions transform the urban landscape into a dream- (or nightmare-) scape of sometimes banal, occasionally extraordinary and oft-haunting projections. This is Nuit Blanche, a street art festival.

Museum for the End of the World. Photo by Kathryn Anthony.

We look forward to it, but with each passing year, it has become more crowded, more chaotic and more clogged by lineups and the annoyances of having to navigate the thickly seething masses (which I generally find exhausting), many of whom are in various stages of intoxication.

Self-editing (the travel edition)

Tags

self-transformation, sense of self, travel

In my everyday life, I have a particular sense of who I am. In some ways, my routine defines me, as do my interactions with the world around me. Cumulatively, over time, the way in which we live our lives, day-to-day, builds up, to form a portion of our sense of who we are that is nuanced and intuitive. Facets of it are based on our impression of how we are seen by others, while other facets derive from how we see the world, and how we interact with and live in it.

One of the interesting things about travel–which some find liberating and others find terrifying–is that it takes us out of the bounds of that daily routine, and that set of self-definitions.

In other words: travel provides the opportunity to redefine who you are.

Ten things I love about Toronto

Falconer Hall, one of the two buildings of the law school, taken on my last day, just after I handed in my final, written assignment.

In a few months, I’ll be moving back to a smaller town, having spent much of the past several years in the wonderful city of Toronto. I’m really going to miss this place. It’s been a fantastic city in which to live and to study. I’ve loved exploring the different neighbourhoods and taking in the urban experience. Of course, it’s not perfect–like all urban centres, Toronto has its share of poverty and homelessness, a little bit of which I glimpse on a daily basis. But it also has a caring and passionate citizenry, friendly people, an amazing transit system (which I have used for the past 5 years for all my commuting within the city–I hate city driving), and a vibrant scene that includes all different styles of visual and performing arts, music… the list goes on.

Though the city where I’m moving is not far up the road, visiting the T-dot is simply not the same as living here. So, as part of my process of saying goodbye, I’ll be writing a few posts featuring the spaces and facets of this city that I love. And, how better to kick off the series, then with a list (in no particular order) of some of my favourite aspects of the city–just a small list of the places and characteristics that I’ve come to love about this place, during the time that I’ve been lucky enough to live here:

5 things I liked about the Hunger Games Trilogy

Tags

Catching Fire, Mockingjay, The Hunger Games

A little while back, I found the time to read The Hunger Games Trilogy, by Suzanne Collins. It helps that they’re relatively short and are fast reads. Collins mixes character and action well, and they certainly are page-turners, as we become more deeply invested in the fates of the main and secondary characters she has introduced.

They are also dark–with each book getting progressively darker and more disturbing. There are a lot of things I liked about the books. Here are five:

Kindle: the Unexpected Game-Changer

Tags

kindle, kindle touch

A few stolen moments, sitting on a smoothed out piece of driftwood by the lake, reading my kindle and thoroughly enjoying the sunshine--particularly since the device's display isn't competing with it, but is instead clear and easy to read.

Okay, so the title of the post makes it seem like it’s about five years too late. We all know the Kindle has changed all kinds of games and–for now, at least–is keeping up with the game-changing action, in ways that are sometimes more freeing for authors (in relation to gatekeeper/publishers) and in other ways more restrictive and monopolistic (in relation to choice of distribution channels and options for selling).

Such topics have been discussed exhaustively. So instead, I propose to add to the large body of posts about the personal process of acquiring and using an e-reader–and in particular, a Kindle.

Why the Kindle?

As a Canadian, I did feel a little disloyal. The Kobo touch is a pretty slick little device, and was at the vanguard in its particular form factor. But none of my research (including exploring the device itself on a couple of occasions) seemed to reveal a function that would allow me to make annotations and highlights and then export them and use them elsewhere.* For me, this was important, because I wanted to be able to load up my writing on the device and read it on the kind of interface a consumer would experience–but with the added ability to mark it up so that if I found typos, or wanted to delete things or make notes to self about revisions, then I could do that easily and quickly. Kindle could do this, and nothing I could determine about the Kobo allowed for it (nor Sony etc.).

Five Things I Love About BBC’s Sherlock

Tags

Asperger's Syndrome, BBC, Cumberbatch, Martin Freeman, moral ambiguity, Sherlock

There’s a lot to love about the breath of fresh air that is the BBC’s redux of the Victorian classic. Here is a short list of why I am all over this latest incarnation of the tactless SuperSleuth and his entourage:

5. Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman

The two play their respective roles with conviction. Freeman’s Watson is grounded, polite, and tactful–a fantastic foil for Cumberbatch’s abrasive but charismatic Holmes. As an updated version of the pair, they are simultaneously credible, likeable, and intriguing–in a fascinating kind of way. The pair of them also have fantastic chemistry. Which leads nicely into the next the next thing I love about the show…

4. Bromance… or something more?

The running gag of the show is that everyone assumes Watson and Holmes are a couple. On such occasions, Watson feebly asserts that they’re just friends, and yet… there’s clearly something that runs deep, between the two of them, in a way that you don’t really see in the usual run of “buddy” films and shows. It’s an intriguing undercurrent, abetted by the aforementioned chemistry, that keeps everyone guessing about what, precisely the two of them share, even if it is exclusively at the emotional, rather than the physical level.

Sherlock’s emotional distance from the rest of the word makes his swift and deep attachment to Watson–and the early, instantaneous rapport that somehow, believably springs up between two such differing personalities–all the more fascinating.