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moonvoiceI've noticed this increasing trend to declare a show good without caveat, or bad without caveat, and while that's fine because people have subjective standpoints, I do think there are significant issues with Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance around concepts of heteronormativity, slavery and fridging, that are all not insignificant.
The artistic merits of the show alone are staggering and stunning, and I think it's very easy to get snowed by them. Even Glen and I want an art book for the series, though we doubt we'll watch the series again. It is transcendent art, helped along by incredible character and set design, and a lighting team that has used just about every trick in the book to create amazing ambiance in every scene. The puppetry is well done, and after an initial period of adjustment for me, I generally forget I'm watching puppetry except in the moments where I'm like 'wow this must have been really hard to film how did they achieve this.'
The voice actors are generally well chosen, though I think Taron Egerton was a huge mistake. He sounds non-committal and apathetic for the most part, which doesn't really suit a Jesus-style prophet knight-type character. And he seems to fill out that voice acting with a lot of passive 'ahh' 'uhh' sounds that actually make him sound forced and non-organic (the use of these noises are literally designed to do the opposite in voice acting). He just honestly sounds like he's sighing all the time, and over it. About the only time this isn't true concerns a spoiler I'll go into under the cut.
The Skeksis are incredible villains, though for me, aside from two or three, they all do tend to blend into one another with similar tones, voice acting choices, character design and names. But as gross, increasingly corrupt (which is saying something given where they started), gluttonous, irredeemable assholes, they're great.
Tonally, this show is imho, veering very close to grimdark as a genre (although I think it's outright grimdark). It makes sense, given it's a prequel to the movie. But I'm not sure how I feel about several perilously and generally nihilistic seasons of something sumptuously beautiful, but desperately amoral and grim.
The script does have its genuinely light moments, few and far between as they are. Also, some of the voice acting is remarkably organic. The characters Hup, Deet and Brea in particular, along with Celadon and Aughra, are probably the most well-realised and empathetic because of it.
I would give the show about a 6/10, with a good 3 of those points going to visuals alone, and about another 3 going to the story.
I'm going to look at several aspects of the show that really bother me:
Heteronormativity: The ensemble cast is HUGE, it really is, there's like - by the end of the series - at least 25 characters you could technically know the name of. Not a single one of them is recognisably queer in any way. The only nod to queerness is Deet referring to her queer fathers, and us getting to meet them (though we never learn their names). And while no one blinks an eye at her having fathers, Deet's race of gelfing - the Grottan - are considered the lowliest, stupidest, densest (and even extinct) race, so I'm not sure how I feel about the decision to have the *only* queer side characters be Grottan. It feels a little like 'oh well, of course Grottan gelfling have queer parents, because they're Grottan.' Be nice to get a check in with even just one other race of gelfling so it feels less throwaway and token.
In this day and age, in an adult-oriented series that is set off-world, with complete fantasy characters, I just expect better. And I'm right to.
Slavery: The gelfling are obvious slaves of the Skeksis, though they don't know it for some time (and those that do are maligned even by gelfling because the propaganda machine works pretty well). And so there's this really obvious sense of uprising and reclaiming freedom and individual freedom of choice, really, the whole show is about it.
However, alongside this, there is a 'lesser' race called the Podlings. They are presented as primitive peasants who must be 'looked after' by the gelfling, when the gelfling aren't utilising them as slaves. And while the gelfling are much nicer masters than the Skeksis, they're still masters. They are visibly and repeatedly disgusted and repelled by Podlings while still using them for their services, they NEVER try to learn their language.
Hup, a Podling, befriends Deet (and we're supposed to think Deet is super generous for this), but while Hup learns increasing amounts of gelfling/English, Deet never once learns any of his language or even thinks
this should be a thing. Not only that, but other gelfling react to him with varying degrees of just not noticing he's there, general disgust, or profound annoyance and irritation. Hup desires nothing more than to be recognised as a paladin by gelfling, and goes to ridiculous degrees to do this, and even by episode 7 he is still outright being called a slave by characters in the show. And while Deet shows discomfort at this, she never speaks out on his behalf, and she never actually seems to see that it's wrong for all gelfling to treat Podlings the way that they do.
The irony of these two storylines playing out alongside each other seems totally lost on the show. There's a really blatant double standard happening here which is honestly gross, and I have a horrible feeling it's going to end one day with Hup being crowned a paladin and getting to be 'equal to the gelfling or at least Deet' - while the rest of the Podlings are never emancipated. So while the gelfling fight an 'Age of Resistance' to no longer be enslaved, the Podlings are - all around them - enslaved...permanently???
I...??????
I mean even if not enslaved, they'll just forever be seen as...a lesser primitive joke people? And they're like blatantly compared to poor people, Italian peasants, and like animists? WHAT EVEN.
...Weird flex but okay.
Fridging: I actually don't hate fridging as much as most people? Like, sometimes, I think killing off a woman character to motivate a guy character can be done well. Certainly I think it's done too much, and there's very little excuse to do it these days, but overall I'm much more 'eh' about this one than I am about many of the other shitty tropes out there.
But Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance handled this in such an outright gross and exploitative way that it was hard not to have my stomach turned every single time Rian had a flashback to Mira's death, to make sure that he had his manpain to hang onto.
For a start, the relationship shown between Rian and Mira in the first episode feels extremely forced. The romance is shoved in our faces, excessively, I suppose to make us try and form a connection with Mira before she's killed. Mostly, her and Rian just flirt all around the place and he doesn't do his job and neither does she. A beautiful relationship. She's then killed (horrifically) and Rian witnesses this, and then her death kicks off so much manpain that he becomes the Jesus-Prophet who goes off to like, become a knight of gelfling or whatever.
For a start, they could have killed him, and made her the Jesus-Prophet. There were LOTS of ways they could have approached this (especially given how sensitively they actually handled Rian's reconciliation with his father and his father's death vs. Mira's.) And Mira is only brought back into episodes in the form of painful flashbacks (dreamfasting) where Rian has to explicitly remember how bad his pain is at losing her again.
Over and over and over again, we're reminded that a woman character is fridged in the first episode, and that's the only motivational force in Rian's life to get him 'going' so to speak on his path. This like, apparently poignant manpain makes it really weird when Rian is shown flirting with the two other women gelfling he meets later on in Egerton's sort of apathetic manner (Deet and Brea).
Given he's one of three main characters (four if you include Aughra), his storyline is the most tiresome and the most boring to follow for me.
There were aspects of the show I really liked up to a point. I really enjoyed Celadon's descent into villainy. I thought it was organised rather well, though her 'humiliation' at the hands of the Skeksis seems overdone, and the fact that this inspires no change in her character is...an interesting take and not one that I think was a smart take.
Brea and Deet are fantastic characters in their own right. Though Brea spends a fair chunk of the end of the show being basically non-existent. Deet is the idealist of the show, in a way none of the other characters are. Given how grim and nihilistic the show can be, this sometimes makes her a breath of fresh air, and sometimes a bit 'really? Even Hup is despairing at this point, Deet!' Lol.
Aughra is probably one of my favourite characters. I wish we had more 'grumpy ugly crone woman protagonists' more often. Apparently I didn't realise this was something I needed until I saw it, and pretty much fell in love with her, and her snarky, grumpy, angry way of dealing with the world around her that she has neglected to the point we've arrived at.
I hope they don't make a season 2, but they've set up for one, and I imagine they'll get one.
The fandom around this show has been incredibly wearying. I don't think anyone knows how to have issues with a show anymore unless they blindly hate it and think everyone else should too.
Anyway, tl;dr, very beautiful, but problematic and not insignificantly throughout. There are a lot of negative things I didn't bother touching on (and some positive things I didn't as well, like how cool I think it is that they basically use slater-beings as wheels).
The artistic merits of the show alone are staggering and stunning, and I think it's very easy to get snowed by them. Even Glen and I want an art book for the series, though we doubt we'll watch the series again. It is transcendent art, helped along by incredible character and set design, and a lighting team that has used just about every trick in the book to create amazing ambiance in every scene. The puppetry is well done, and after an initial period of adjustment for me, I generally forget I'm watching puppetry except in the moments where I'm like 'wow this must have been really hard to film how did they achieve this.'
The voice actors are generally well chosen, though I think Taron Egerton was a huge mistake. He sounds non-committal and apathetic for the most part, which doesn't really suit a Jesus-style prophet knight-type character. And he seems to fill out that voice acting with a lot of passive 'ahh' 'uhh' sounds that actually make him sound forced and non-organic (the use of these noises are literally designed to do the opposite in voice acting). He just honestly sounds like he's sighing all the time, and over it. About the only time this isn't true concerns a spoiler I'll go into under the cut.
The Skeksis are incredible villains, though for me, aside from two or three, they all do tend to blend into one another with similar tones, voice acting choices, character design and names. But as gross, increasingly corrupt (which is saying something given where they started), gluttonous, irredeemable assholes, they're great.
Tonally, this show is imho, veering very close to grimdark as a genre (although I think it's outright grimdark). It makes sense, given it's a prequel to the movie. But I'm not sure how I feel about several perilously and generally nihilistic seasons of something sumptuously beautiful, but desperately amoral and grim.
The script does have its genuinely light moments, few and far between as they are. Also, some of the voice acting is remarkably organic. The characters Hup, Deet and Brea in particular, along with Celadon and Aughra, are probably the most well-realised and empathetic because of it.
I would give the show about a 6/10, with a good 3 of those points going to visuals alone, and about another 3 going to the story.
I'm going to look at several aspects of the show that really bother me:
Heteronormativity: The ensemble cast is HUGE, it really is, there's like - by the end of the series - at least 25 characters you could technically know the name of. Not a single one of them is recognisably queer in any way. The only nod to queerness is Deet referring to her queer fathers, and us getting to meet them (though we never learn their names). And while no one blinks an eye at her having fathers, Deet's race of gelfing - the Grottan - are considered the lowliest, stupidest, densest (and even extinct) race, so I'm not sure how I feel about the decision to have the *only* queer side characters be Grottan. It feels a little like 'oh well, of course Grottan gelfling have queer parents, because they're Grottan.' Be nice to get a check in with even just one other race of gelfling so it feels less throwaway and token.
In this day and age, in an adult-oriented series that is set off-world, with complete fantasy characters, I just expect better. And I'm right to.
Slavery: The gelfling are obvious slaves of the Skeksis, though they don't know it for some time (and those that do are maligned even by gelfling because the propaganda machine works pretty well). And so there's this really obvious sense of uprising and reclaiming freedom and individual freedom of choice, really, the whole show is about it.
However, alongside this, there is a 'lesser' race called the Podlings. They are presented as primitive peasants who must be 'looked after' by the gelfling, when the gelfling aren't utilising them as slaves. And while the gelfling are much nicer masters than the Skeksis, they're still masters. They are visibly and repeatedly disgusted and repelled by Podlings while still using them for their services, they NEVER try to learn their language.
Hup, a Podling, befriends Deet (and we're supposed to think Deet is super generous for this), but while Hup learns increasing amounts of gelfling/English, Deet never once learns any of his language or even thinks
this should be a thing. Not only that, but other gelfling react to him with varying degrees of just not noticing he's there, general disgust, or profound annoyance and irritation. Hup desires nothing more than to be recognised as a paladin by gelfling, and goes to ridiculous degrees to do this, and even by episode 7 he is still outright being called a slave by characters in the show. And while Deet shows discomfort at this, she never speaks out on his behalf, and she never actually seems to see that it's wrong for all gelfling to treat Podlings the way that they do.
The irony of these two storylines playing out alongside each other seems totally lost on the show. There's a really blatant double standard happening here which is honestly gross, and I have a horrible feeling it's going to end one day with Hup being crowned a paladin and getting to be 'equal to the gelfling or at least Deet' - while the rest of the Podlings are never emancipated. So while the gelfling fight an 'Age of Resistance' to no longer be enslaved, the Podlings are - all around them - enslaved...permanently???
I...??????
I mean even if not enslaved, they'll just forever be seen as...a lesser primitive joke people? And they're like blatantly compared to poor people, Italian peasants, and like animists? WHAT EVEN.
...Weird flex but okay.
Fridging: I actually don't hate fridging as much as most people? Like, sometimes, I think killing off a woman character to motivate a guy character can be done well. Certainly I think it's done too much, and there's very little excuse to do it these days, but overall I'm much more 'eh' about this one than I am about many of the other shitty tropes out there.
But Dark Crystal: Age of Resistance handled this in such an outright gross and exploitative way that it was hard not to have my stomach turned every single time Rian had a flashback to Mira's death, to make sure that he had his manpain to hang onto.
For a start, the relationship shown between Rian and Mira in the first episode feels extremely forced. The romance is shoved in our faces, excessively, I suppose to make us try and form a connection with Mira before she's killed. Mostly, her and Rian just flirt all around the place and he doesn't do his job and neither does she. A beautiful relationship. She's then killed (horrifically) and Rian witnesses this, and then her death kicks off so much manpain that he becomes the Jesus-Prophet who goes off to like, become a knight of gelfling or whatever.
For a start, they could have killed him, and made her the Jesus-Prophet. There were LOTS of ways they could have approached this (especially given how sensitively they actually handled Rian's reconciliation with his father and his father's death vs. Mira's.) And Mira is only brought back into episodes in the form of painful flashbacks (dreamfasting) where Rian has to explicitly remember how bad his pain is at losing her again.
Over and over and over again, we're reminded that a woman character is fridged in the first episode, and that's the only motivational force in Rian's life to get him 'going' so to speak on his path. This like, apparently poignant manpain makes it really weird when Rian is shown flirting with the two other women gelfling he meets later on in Egerton's sort of apathetic manner (Deet and Brea).
Given he's one of three main characters (four if you include Aughra), his storyline is the most tiresome and the most boring to follow for me.
There were aspects of the show I really liked up to a point. I really enjoyed Celadon's descent into villainy. I thought it was organised rather well, though her 'humiliation' at the hands of the Skeksis seems overdone, and the fact that this inspires no change in her character is...an interesting take and not one that I think was a smart take.
Brea and Deet are fantastic characters in their own right. Though Brea spends a fair chunk of the end of the show being basically non-existent. Deet is the idealist of the show, in a way none of the other characters are. Given how grim and nihilistic the show can be, this sometimes makes her a breath of fresh air, and sometimes a bit 'really? Even Hup is despairing at this point, Deet!' Lol.
Aughra is probably one of my favourite characters. I wish we had more 'grumpy ugly crone woman protagonists' more often. Apparently I didn't realise this was something I needed until I saw it, and pretty much fell in love with her, and her snarky, grumpy, angry way of dealing with the world around her that she has neglected to the point we've arrived at.
I hope they don't make a season 2, but they've set up for one, and I imagine they'll get one.
The fandom around this show has been incredibly wearying. I don't think anyone knows how to have issues with a show anymore unless they blindly hate it and think everyone else should too.
Anyway, tl;dr, very beautiful, but problematic and not insignificantly throughout. There are a lot of negative things I didn't bother touching on (and some positive things I didn't as well, like how cool I think it is that they basically use slater-beings as wheels).
no subject
Date: 2019-09-09 04:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-09 06:13 pm (UTC)I was hoping they'd do a bit better than that, but I'll probably keep it on the back-burner as 'something I might like to see some day' anyway.
In particular, the double standard you mention with the Gelflings' enslavement being an obvious evil but the Podlings' parallel enslavement being played for laughs is irritating. Having a major character arc bore you also isn't a good thing. >.<
That said, I'm a big sucker for a visually gorgeous piece of media.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-12 01:24 pm (UTC)It IS visually gorgeous though, and honestly, if that's all you pay attention to you'll love it, lol.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-12 02:29 pm (UTC)Thanks! I have...trouble? turning the thinky off, even if something is extremely pretty, so I think I'll treat this one as an 'approach with caution.'
no subject
Date: 2019-09-12 02:32 pm (UTC)I found the thinky impossible to turn off, though it didn't kick in until the end of ep 1, and it didn't get truly sort of brain-breaky until ep 5-6 for me, at which point I had to force myself to watch the rest. BUT, take that with a grain of salt, I also couldn't get through Game of Thrones either (quit around episode 4) because of the misogyny and 'regular casual rape scenes' so like...obviously that doesn't effect everyone in the same way!
no subject
Date: 2019-09-12 02:35 pm (UTC)Oh dear. :v
Yeah, I read the first few books for Game of Thrones, got to the point where the author had killed or nerfed everyone I cared about, apparently just for kicks; and decided I don't have enough time to read boring/ragemaking fiction.
Boring or ragemaking nonfiction, sure, but it can't be both.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-09 09:57 pm (UTC)The slavery thing sounds especially irritating as just blatant hypocrisy.
Crone protagonists are the best.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-12 01:26 pm (UTC)I've realised upon reflection that the gelfling don't seem to use Podlings as slaves (the skeksis do), per se, they just seem to *ignore them completely* when they're not literally assigning other gelfling the horrible *punitive task* of looking after Podlings *for the Podlings own safety which the Podlings actually HATE.*
Which, imho, is worse. It's basic colonialism with no awareness of what's going on. It's not concluded in any useful way by the end of season 1 and I suspect it won't be ever addressed in any meaningful way lmao.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-15 07:19 am (UTC)Uuurgh, very White Man's Burden, yeah D:
no subject
Date: 2019-09-12 01:02 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-09-12 01:30 pm (UTC)2. I had no idea you'd ever posted a thing about Dark Crystal on Twitter before your response to my tweet, until this comment. I still have no idea what you posted.
3. I don't *use* Twitter to keep up with people, it's a hostile, aggressive, alienating space that doesn't lend itself to discussion or nuance (literally why I'm posting something more in depth about it here and not there). I read my feed once or twice a week where I'm mostly shown - through the algorithm - art and science posts, and Goodsmile Nendoroid figurines, and that's the way I like it.
4. There's literally a comment above yours which says: "Hm. This is the first piece of in-depth examination I've seen of the new series" This is obviously not just a 'me alone' issue. I've read at least 50~ fannish and professional pieces/reviews assessing Dark Crystal that have all lacked nuance. I don't think I'd ever base what I thought off Twitter, which is the least nuanced social media literally on the internet / in existence.
5. In my humble opinion, "I don't think anyone knows how to have issues with X anymore" sounds a bit harsh a statement even to me who tends to think most people aren't very perceptive.
Okay.
no subject
Date: 2019-09-12 04:12 pm (UTC)