May Reading | Watching | Judging
I enjoyed some good, great, and some WTF stuff in May! And a few things that were all of the above!
Book: Yellowface by R.F. Kuang: If you are fan of historical fantasy, you already know and likely love Kuang for Babel and The Poppy War series - these are not my genre so Yellowface is my first exposure to Kuang, and it is so good! It’s both a thoughtful and easy read - a thriller, a book about the publishing industry, and about racism and representation and the ridiculousness of all the things. I highly recommend this and after seeing her at a book event this month, will likely be reading Babel soon.
TV: Somebody Somewhere (HBOMax): Season 2 ended this past weekend on HBO and HBOMax (or I guess Max which is the new brand - because HBO had the better brand, but whatevs. Pay your writers! #WGAStrong). I love this funny, quiet and honest show about friends, family, grief and home. It’s 30 min episodes, a dramedy, and worth your time- well acted, well written, and just good for the soul, even when it cuts you deep! As a recent Vulture recap said, “While the whole thing might be jokes between friends, isn’t that really the crux of the show? People with all of their baggage just doing their best with the help of those who care most about them?” I couldn’t pick between the two trailers so I’m sharing both!
Newsletter: Adam Johnson’s The Column: I found Johnson’s newsletter because of my interest in economic justice, corporate welfare and greed, abolition of law enforcement and how the media serves as an unquestioning mouthpiece for corporate entities and law enforcement. Recent pieces have focused on how media coverage of the unhoused and who “deserves” and who doesn’t “deserve” housing, food, mental health support, have actually impacted real lives including but not limited to the murder of Jordan Neely, an unhoused person in the NYC subway.
“As I’ve discussed elsewhere, the moral tier system of Deserved and Undeserved isn’t just a bizarre vestige of America’s frontier protestant past (though it is, in part). It’s also an essential element of disciplining the bottom rung of labor and keeping wages low…
People “fall through the cracks” because the cracks are deliberately created and maintained because people are supposed to fall through them. Otherwise, there’s nothing menacing those working for the lowest wages. Notice how the problem isn’t a society that’s designed to leave people to suffer on their own, but a mysterious, agency-free and unexpected shift in poor people.” - Adam Johnson, The Column
Documentary: Pretty Baby: Brooke Shields (Hulu): Brooke Shields was everywhere in pop culture when I was growing up, and this forthright documentary really made me understand that time period better. If you grew up knowing her, watch this. If you don’t know of Brooke Shields watch this. Her reflections on her mom, her work and her life, and her postpartum depression, was honest and heartbreaking, and a window into the deep and messed up ways our society and media treats young women then and now. Oh and fuck Tom Cruise.
Documentary: Still - A Michael J Fox Movie (Apple TV+): Another documentary about someone all around pop culture of my young adulthood! I loved Michael J Fox growing up from Family Ties, Teen Wolf, Back to the Future, Spin City to his arcs recently on The Good Wife and The Good Fight. Fox shares his personal and professional story and his diagnosis of Parkinson’s.
Documentary: Tina (Max): Well, basically May was me re-living my young adulthood with icons from that time. I watched this when it was released a few years ago and watched It again this past weekend in between dancing to Tina Turner’s greatest hits in my apartment. She lived a long life, protected herself and her joy while also giving us joy and I believe saving a lot of lives by telling her story. Nam Myoho Renge Kyo.
Diverting, Good and WTF?!
TV: XO, Kitty (Netflix): This is the spinoff of To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before, created by Jenny Han, the author of the books, about Lara Jean’s younger sister Kitty who is now a junior in high school and goes to the Korean International School of Seoul (KISS - get it?) just like her mom.
Good: This show is a high school series and has all the things I love about those - crushes, coming of age, and dances! It brings in lots of K-POP and well known Korean performers, and I don’t actually know any of that, and really liked the cast and music. I loved that it took place at an International school because it allowed for so many different types of teachers and students, backgrounds and languages. The Queer storylines are a very big deal especially for a show that is being marketed in South Korea. And there is a storyline that reflects the reality of hundreds of thousands of Korean children that were adopted by white parents across the world.
WTF?: High school series also bring the 🤷🏽♀️and 🤦🏽♀️. Teenagers are very extra! So much drama! The way they treat some of their teachers and elders?? So many love interests, a square, not a triangle, maybe next season a hexagon!!!
TV: The Diplomat (Netflix): Keri Russell and Rufus Sewell - so of course I watched, and they were as always, excellent. For me it hit the West Wing/Madame Secretary vibes - the good parts of both those series.
GOOD: The rest of the cast (specifically Ato Essandoh, David Gyasi, Nana Mensah and Ali Ahn), the locations, and some of the realness of foreign policy and politics, from serious to petty, and former empires/imperial powers, well, just being themselves.
WTF?!: Sort of a spoiler but also not, so I’ll just say, lazy storytelling of “OMG brown refugees might also be terrorists” and writers thinking they are being twisty but really it’s just white supremacy doing its thing for a “twist.”
Diverting: I am very into the potential romance that is happening.
TV: Queen Charlotte-A Bridgerton Story (Netflix): I’ve written about Bridgerton TV series in the past. This is a spinoff - and it has a different tone - more drama than swoony romance! It’s a big swing because it’s about an actual real life monarch, Queen Charlotte and her husband King George III (yes, that King George), and Shonda Rhimes created it because of the popularity of the actress, Golda Rosheuvel, who portrays Queen Charlotte in the other series. Frankly I’d love to see more of anything with Rosheuvel. Spoilers do follow (if you consider history a spoiler, which I do not) Shonda Rhimes is much more involved in this series than she was in the other series, specifically she wrote many of the episodes here.
GOOD: The actors who play the young Queen Charlotte (India Amarteifo), Lady Danbury (Arsema Thomas) and Brimsley (Sam Clemmett)- it’s not mimicry of the older actors, but great acting and charm on their own! With so much serious content, rage, mental illness, grief, sexual desire as we age, and friendship - these actors did a great job.
WTF?!: The choice to use multiple sex scenes, not love and longing (which is what the other series is known for) but marital rape, again and again, and in some cases later used those experiences as a joke. This was totally unnecessary. Related, they chose to portray Lord Danbury, who was a jerk and evil, with very minstrelsy makeup and hair. SMDH. It’s a choice.
GOOD: There were robust scenes and storylines on mental health, aging and sexual desire, and friendship. Queen Charlotte: A Bridgerton Story is more serious and has many more quiet and sensitive moments, than the Bridgerton series. Don’t come to this if you want fun and frothy romance and some lusty sex scenes. I do like the “meet cute” between King George and Queen Charlotte and the romance between some other characters.
WTF?!: The problem with historical fiction is when you focus on actual real life people and history, well you will be held accountable when you don’t follow actual history. Queen Charlotte was not black in the way that Shondaland has portrayed and as a non-lead character in the other series, it’s irritating historically but not a huge issue mostly because Rosheuvel is brilliant, and the main storylines are fictional swoony romance. But this entire series is about Queen Charlotte. There was no “great experiment” where non-white folks were given major titles and land because the King married a Black woman. Charlotte may have had an ancestor who was a Moor (which at the time meant Muslim whereas now Moor is used to convey blackness), and that ancestor was 600 years before Charlotte, if that’s the case, then the current King Charles is Black…This is not Harry and Meghan inspiration/aspiration, and lest we forget, Harry and Meghan had to LEAVE!!!
And it has to be said that plenty of historical and period pieces in the past have been inaccurate, and I acknowledge that I expect more when it comes to race and class than I used to. I should expect more from all creators, not just Shonda Rhimes as well.
GOOD: THE COSTUMES AND HAIR AND SOUNDTRACK!!!! Just brilliant and beautifully designed created and shown/performed!
WTF?!: There are few scenes filmed in existing castles/buildings where King George and Queen Charlotte walk by huge portraits of the fully grown Queen Victoria….their grand-daughter who wasn’t even born yet. Yes yes I know, who cares?? but come on - when you do real life characters, expect these issues!
GOOD: IRL King George loved Charlotte, and reportedly never had a mistress which is shocking for monarchs of the time (and since). There were many many children, and yes a real crisis when the only heir died and Queen Charlotte desperately worked to get her children married and have legitimate heirs - eventually resulting in Queen Victoria. George’s mental illness was real; historians and doctors believe it was bipolar disorder.
WTF?!: This new spin off has its own book, that Julia Quinn, the author of the Bridgerton series, was given the opportunity to write and make even more money off of. An author who frankly has a questionable view of what writing black folks in history might mean. Another Shonda Rhimes choice I ponder!
“Even though the real Charlotte was, at best, ludicrously removed from Blackness, Queen Charlotte leans heavily into representational politics while still making egregious errors of substance. It’s especially hard to feel good about shallow representation when we spend three episodes watching Lady Danbury be raped by the husband she was forced to marry as a child, sometimes multiple times in a single episode….If Netflix and Shondaland wanted to portray Black people being happy during the Regency era, Beverly Jenkins is just one example of an author of steamy, loving Black romances set in the 17th-20th centuries. Why do studios not invest in developing her stories for the screen?
The answer is clear, if depressing. Queen Charlotte was never about representation for Black people or telling Black stories. It was about money, and about reifying empire and wealth, and placating Black people by claiming that we too can have a place among the most powerful. To recast a queen who — whether she was sympathetic toward enslaved people or not — presided over a vast empire and lived a life built on genocidal labor as a Black woman fighting for her people is a coherent and abhorrent neoliberal political statement. It seeks, above all, to protect the institution.” - The real history of Queen Charlotte, and the problem with Netflix’s Bridgerton spinoff: Shonda Rhimes’s new show imagines an interracial romance that remakes Regency England. That sure didn’t happen.
So in conclusion, I’d rather watch a real historical series about Queen Charlotte, and have separate stand alone series about the fictional, but awesome, Lady Danbury. I look forward to season 3 of Bridgerton, where for love and swoon and ridiculous drama, I can more easily “ignore” the challenges to history and very random approach to race and class they take.