Queer as Folk: Third x's a Charm.

So, I hadn't a clue this existed until literally today and forgot a lot of Peacock shows end up on Stan here. I'm giving it a go based on the trailer giving me feels, and I'm already playing the "Who's the Brian?" "Who's the Justin?" "Who's the Lins and Mel?" And I was hoping at least we maybe drop some of the ageism that plagued the US/Canadian version. (Full disclosure, I tried watching the original but it was hard to get into, I just have a nostalgia for the US one, which got too much credit for having a mostly straight cast).

Much like the pending Degrassi reboot, this show stands to have a chance to make up for the lack of trans and bi representation, plus it had an opportunity to dump the ageism, but there's already been a "love it while you're young, because your pretty ass won't be pretty forever" throwaway line. We're making it up with Juliet Lewis and Kim Cattrall showing up looking age appropriate for the most part. I like to think Kim blew off the new Sex and the City umpteenth nobody asked for it reboot/movie for this, Sam's retired and she wants to be a grey seeing all the gays have theirs. And there's much more cultural/racial representation which was sorely lacking from both originals, including taking the bother to depict sex with two disabled characters, including an amputee. I get the networks were full of coked up bigots 20 years ago and you had to sell this stuff to really niche markets with the least amount of contentious actors as possible, but shit has finally changed.

They've kicked off with an amazing drag tribute to the Craft that flips in to a rendition of Kill vs Maim by Grimes, only for Babylon (Yes, that Babylon, this may be the only through-line) to turn into the Pulse nightclub shooting. A throwback also to the night Babylon had a bomb go off. I think this aspect sucked me in. We have a tragedy in conjunction with a birth, rather than Brian just being a pain in the ass with Justin. The trans is having the baby with a nonbinary, the young new queen on the block NB Mingus (the Justin, who channeled our Lady Fairuza {don't worry, she loves being a drag icon} in that great drag number, complete with black wheelie boots). The Brian is now Brodie. Ruthie's channeling more Mel energy than Lindsey. Mingus has already been rejected by Brodie, who doesn't want a third kid after having twins, but a little nod to the original has Mingus naming the twins. The energy in this is rawer right now than the last iteration. I think there's major scope after we get past the net-speak. We have a Mama Drag queen looking out for her flock, too, she takes too long to come back. We have actual representation, which does fucking matter. Plus broken characters matter, too. This is basically the original series was all fun and games until the end, this one starts with all the PTSD and goes from there. I feel like they could get it right this time, but I'm only up to the second episode. I'll give it its due once we know more.

Update: They go to the bother of bleeping the trans girl's dead name to the point it's blurted out in an argument and used to momentous effect. And you get a rather hilarious Charlie Hunnam throwback. 

I think it did tick all the right boxes but in a very dour, dramatic way. The levity was there but not the vibrancy, if that makes any sense. Remember the big strobes that acted as epiphanies and grand moments, Peacock have chosen to be grittier about it, maybe to remind society it ain't all sunshine and rainbows under that pretty pride flag.

How Super Mario Bros. taught me how to love.

I think the convergence of puberty and music and movies can profoundly affect a forming brain. I was 11 and on the cusp of so many problems, mostly emotional, which were crystalising and cementing my psychology. I remember really feeling miserable, uncertain and anxious. My body was just ready to be a hormone factory. And there's a point where you might attribute feelings of love, something like a romance or longing, for someone. Only I didn't connect with a someone, it was a something. Not like a wall or particular object. I felt a longing for a movie. And for some insane reason, that movie was Super Mario Bros.

I didn't get to see it in the cinema for what seemed like months. I think I had the novelisation before seeing it, I'd stacked up the collectable cards I was going to (or already did) fish out my doubles and send them to someone. I even made a small model dinosaur in art class with a blown egg body, which I liked the colour I painted. I later painted him green and put a cardboard head and feet and tail on him to make him look like the game Yoshi, but he was always Yoshi. I even made a Lego Yoshi, and kept a little picture of the movie Yoshi in a jewelry box. I don't know why.

I was in love with Daisy and Luigi's romance. Just recently I got into a podcast of How Did This Get Made? Everything they said of the movie brought back so many memories, but I still don't know if I could sit through it now. I came home and my brother had a making of on, I was so into Roxette's Almost Unreal, even though it makes me cringe. It was just an obsession that gave me a melancholy of unrequited love. I saw it with my "best friend" who'd moved away and we met up in the city to go watch it. But when I was older, I didn't fall over myself to get it on DVD. It's tough to find but it's coming out on Bluray. I still can't say whether I want this. You can rent it on YouTube but I won't give them my money.

But Jesus H this is not a kids movie. Did they think kids wanted to see Mario grinding with a big momma just to get a rock off her. It's an utterly insane movie that never got a sequel. Like it's a hot mess but for some reason it got into my brain the way a crush kind of worms its way in until you have nothing left. Then it just died away, like most crushes, I guess.

Falling...

A TV show having an impact on you five years before you ever get to watch the damn thing is significant. Falling by Julee Cruise was such a beautiful song that became so insanely popular, I bought a compilation album that included this but not until I was in my teens. I have a memory of hearing Falling when I was five, only I was actually closer to ten and I think I attached memories of my five-year-old self standing around outside our church by pencil pines pops up when I hear it. I also remember the  "Dead, wrapped in plastic." proto-memes (catchphrases from shows were basically our memes) and jokes you made at school. But then I didn't get the VHS tapes on rental until I was sixteen I think, so I could rent half the tapes then rent the other half. Watching Fire Walk With Me didn't help anything, (it was the first R rated movie my mother allowed me to watch in high school and I was 17) but by then I was basically too into the show to just forget I ever saw it, I was into the lore and making theories and just obsessed with Laura. I was living in Perth so I managed to get my hands on the soundtracks and an import copy of FWWM. We'd chatted with randos about theories. The DVDs came out, then the Missing Pieces, which didn't help. So, we though it was over. Then the Return happened and my emotions etc. But again, nothing could be truly saved. There was no bringing Laura back. There would be no righting of the wrongs.

I digress. I was here about Falling, how it was in my life before anything else Peaks related. Questions in a World of Blue is probably the song that sticks me in the heart every time, but Falling was just one of those songs like Caribbean Blue that I obsessed about having a copy of. It's such a beautiful song on its own. And it was sung by another unique, irreplaceable voice. A voice we lost today. She wasn't old, just suffering from lupus. There were a few souls lost after the Return. It really felt like a proper goodbye to the Log Lady. You don't think 60 is that old, then someone you admire passes around that age and it's still a shock. John F got in a crazy car accident, after all the COVID nightmares another one hits and more shows are cancelled. But you want these people to stick around. I've been lucky most of my favourite people are still around, but I wonder how bad I'll feel knowing they're gone. 

The Piano and Property

You'd be forgiven for finding Harvey Keitel's Baines in the Piano an off-putting cad for his command of Holly Hunter and the reclamation of her piano. I originally saw this without subtitles for Ada's signing or the Māori translations so I thought we were supposed to interpret what was being said via actions alone. On streaming, they give you the subtitles, which helps. Without them, it's more ambiguous as to what Ada is trying to achieve. Baines and Ada are far more complex characters than we're led to believe.

What she commands is power over the two men in her life, and what she will do for her beloved piano. What she suffers through is her husband's vile expectations, not Baines demands of her. The respect he shows the piano and the eroticism depicted in him cleaning it while completely naked expresses his desire of her, not necessarily a want to defile her. He appreciates the importance of the piano while Alisdair fails in his understanding, as much as her former lover and father of her child did, a man who was her piano teacher and whom she thought she could command with her thoughts.

And she's taken with Baines, she commands him through her expressions via her face, her body and her music. She won't simply yield. The daughter Flora is too innocent to understand the bargain made, or the affection developed by Ada that even Baines fails to see. Given to Alisdair without her consent, Ada has so little control, as much as he fails to command respect from the traditional landowners. His dispute they even have right to the land is an obvious attack on colonialism. Baines has taken time to befriend and assimilate, Alisdair meanwhile refuses and cannot bridge a gap between him and the Māori. Baines is his go between but they are not friends, particularly for how quickly Baines falls for Ada. What could've come across as a crass depiction of a man sexually controlling a woman is handled better in Campion's hands as a relationship between two strong people mutually falling in love. Even Ada beating Baines for refusing her doesn't feel like a romance novel cliche but a genuine expression of passion and love from Ada, for how dare he deny her now?

The matter of infidelity in movies is usually hinged on the one being cheated on as undeserving of the protagonist's affection, either through indifference or abuse. Ada giving herself to Baines even with Alisdair finding out, is purely her choice, a compensation for the choices stolen from her as a woman and property of her father. Baines lives in the wild and thus becomes her freedom from the repressed marriage she's been forced into. Baines gives her back her voice and speaks for her when it comes time to take her piano home.

Alisdair trying to win her over in his awkward way is unbecoming, and when he tries to steal affection from Ada, it's depicted as a genuine assault on her. He takes the land for petty prices and viciously exacts revenge on Ada for her refusal to cease seeing Baines. Before then, she has to trick Baines with a show of loyalty via affection that he cannot accept because of his own repressed desires, and in the end her muteness drives him mad enough to relinquish her, but by then she's disfigured. Her own sexual energy is so intimidating to him he can't accept it, he can't interpret her bizarre behaviour, even if some of it is faked for a ruse. Flora aids in some deception because she is commanded by Ada, but plays parent over Ada's misbehaviour with Baines, though it's hardly her fault Alisdair becomes violent in the end. Even the women in Alisdair's life see her as a strange creature whose playing is somewhat tawdry and not proper like theirs, a commentary on the repression of women through the command of how they must present themselves in society. Any woman seen to act in contrast to this makes them as equally uncomfortable.

What is represented in all this is sacrifice and forced ownership, and what cannot come between a woman and her passions. A woman who won't even scream when faced with disfigurement from a man wielding an axe at her piano.

 Weirdly Isabelle Huppert was considered for Ada's role and even went as far as having test shots taken, regretful she didn't fight Hunter for the role, who was already a passionate piano player. This is only weird for the fact Huppert eventually played a sexually repressed woman in the Piano Teacher.