Happy New Year!
This is the Mari Llwyd from the Chepstow morris side, which is traditionally taken from door to door in Wales on New Year's Eve.
Calennig means New Year gift.
Monday, 31 December 2012
Calennig
Happy New Year!
This is the Mari Llwyd from the Chepstow morris side, which is traditionally taken from door to door in Wales on New Year's Eve.
Calennig means New Year gift.
Sunday, 30 December 2012
Female Characters in Middle Earth
I've been thinking about The Hobbit - I could hardly avoid it at the moment, with the new film out - and what a very masculine story it is. A male hobbit, thirteen male dwarves, and a male wizard go on a quest. About the only woman in the film is Galadriel, and I'm not sure she's in the book.
And today I found that someone has actually worked out the ratio of male to female characters in Tolkein (there is only one dwarf woman mentioned, who is the mother of Kili and Fili - she's called Dis).
The original graph can be found at http://lotrproject.com/statistics/#raceandsex and it boils down to 19% female characters to 81% male characters.
And today I found that someone has actually worked out the ratio of male to female characters in Tolkein (there is only one dwarf woman mentioned, who is the mother of Kili and Fili - she's called Dis).
The original graph can be found at http://lotrproject.com/statistics/#raceandsex and it boils down to 19% female characters to 81% male characters.
Saturday, 29 December 2012
"Captain's Share! I Bespeak Her!"
I've been watching The Crimson Pirate over the holidays, and remembering why it is one of my favourite pirate films of all time. Burt Lancaster and Nick Cravat swinging on ropes and bouncing around all over the Italian fishing village that was standing in for the Caribbean, daring escapes and double crosses, and even a hot air balloon! It's all great good fun.
But.
Light-hearted or not, from the first moment Eva Bartok as the beautiful Consuela sets foot on the deck of Captain Vallo's ship, she is at risk of rape.
"Why did you bolt your cabin door last night?" Vallo (Burt Lancaster) asks her.
"If you know it was bolted, you must have tried it, and if you tried it, you know why it was bolted," she says, having already pulled a knife on two pirates who were leering at her.
And later, after a couple more twists of the plot, she and her father are the pirates' prisoners - so they put her in a swing, up in the rigging, and set up a greasy pole to it. Whoever climbs the greasy pole, gets the girl - whether she wants it or not.
Captain Vallo stops that, but it's all presented as "a bit of fun".
The Crimson Pirate isn't the only film with this attitude. Okay, it was made in 1951, and The Black Swan (one of my other most favourite pirate films of all time) was made in 1943. That's where the title for this blog post comes from. In the first scene where Tyrone Power meets Maureen O'Hara, he sees her only as part of the plunder from the castle his men have stormed to rescue him. He claims her for himself, knocks her out cold, and then dumps her on the floor like a sack of potatoes.
Later in the film, he attempts to woo her in a more gentlemanly way - but that doesn't stop him from kidnapping her when it appears she's about to marry the wrong man! The boyfriend turns out to be one of the villains of the piece, though, so that's all right!
Kirk Douglas was doing the same sort of thing in 1959, when he made The Vikings. Again, it's one of my favourite films of all time - Vikings storming a medieval castle by throwing axes at the gates and climbing up them! Wonderful stuff! Tony Curtis almost getting eaten by crabs while tied to a stake in a rock pool! And Einar (Kirk) capturing Janet Leigh, who he keeps aboard his ship while the Vikings party - and gets drunk, and rows over to the ship to have his evil way with her. It's fortunate that Tony Curtis is a gentleman, and manages to rescue her.
So, three films that I grew up with, and love dearly, despite their flaws when it comes to women. It would be nice to think that film makers have become more enlightened since the 1950s - but I'm not sure there's been all that much improvement, or we wouldn't have something like the Beschdel Test to see how fairly women are portrayed now.
But.
Light-hearted or not, from the first moment Eva Bartok as the beautiful Consuela sets foot on the deck of Captain Vallo's ship, she is at risk of rape.
"Why did you bolt your cabin door last night?" Vallo (Burt Lancaster) asks her.
"If you know it was bolted, you must have tried it, and if you tried it, you know why it was bolted," she says, having already pulled a knife on two pirates who were leering at her.
And later, after a couple more twists of the plot, she and her father are the pirates' prisoners - so they put her in a swing, up in the rigging, and set up a greasy pole to it. Whoever climbs the greasy pole, gets the girl - whether she wants it or not.
Captain Vallo stops that, but it's all presented as "a bit of fun".
The Crimson Pirate isn't the only film with this attitude. Okay, it was made in 1951, and The Black Swan (one of my other most favourite pirate films of all time) was made in 1943. That's where the title for this blog post comes from. In the first scene where Tyrone Power meets Maureen O'Hara, he sees her only as part of the plunder from the castle his men have stormed to rescue him. He claims her for himself, knocks her out cold, and then dumps her on the floor like a sack of potatoes.
Later in the film, he attempts to woo her in a more gentlemanly way - but that doesn't stop him from kidnapping her when it appears she's about to marry the wrong man! The boyfriend turns out to be one of the villains of the piece, though, so that's all right!
Kirk Douglas was doing the same sort of thing in 1959, when he made The Vikings. Again, it's one of my favourite films of all time - Vikings storming a medieval castle by throwing axes at the gates and climbing up them! Wonderful stuff! Tony Curtis almost getting eaten by crabs while tied to a stake in a rock pool! And Einar (Kirk) capturing Janet Leigh, who he keeps aboard his ship while the Vikings party - and gets drunk, and rows over to the ship to have his evil way with her. It's fortunate that Tony Curtis is a gentleman, and manages to rescue her.
So, three films that I grew up with, and love dearly, despite their flaws when it comes to women. It would be nice to think that film makers have become more enlightened since the 1950s - but I'm not sure there's been all that much improvement, or we wouldn't have something like the Beschdel Test to see how fairly women are portrayed now.
Friday, 28 December 2012
Women in Fandom
Women go to SF conventions.
Women have been going to conventions for a very long time - but over the past year, I've been hearing reports, mostly from the US, that women are not as welcome at conventions as they might be. The complaint, mostly from young white males, is that girls are "fake geeks" who only go to conventions and dress in skimpy costumes in order to get a boyfriend, and they don't actually know about the characters or the TV series or the comics.
This is an old refrain.
Thirty years ago, David Gerrold had a regular column in Starlog magazine, and in one of his columns he tackled the complaint that women were ruining fandom. Again, this was mostly in the US, and at that time it was mostly directed against Star Trek fans, who were overwhelmingly women. They weren't "real fans", and they were spoiling things for the true fans - who were all male, of course.
"Look, I'll tell you how women are 'ruining fandom'," David Gerrold said, and he filled the rest of his column with all the ways that women in fandom had improved things. It's a long time since I read the column (I kept it in a scrapbook for years, but all the scrapbooks had to go some years ago), but the main points I remember were that, because of women who were Star Trek fans, it had become normal for conventions to raise money for named charities, something that the old SF Cons had never thought of doing. They had also arranged blood donations in the US.
In that one column, he demolished any argument against women in fandom that existed at the time - and maybe someone should dig it out and repeat it, loudly, to this new generation of young men who don't like to see girls being interested in the same things as they are.
The "skimpy costumes" thing seems to be another problem for the complainers. But there's a point to be made here - right back into the dawn of SF history, costumes for women characters in comics and TV and film have overwhelmingly been designed by men, for men to look at. So the costumes available for women to dress up in are overwhelmingly skimpy and sexy if they want to portray certain characters. That doesn't mean that the women are making themselves available - it means that they are portraying that character, and that is all it means.
I remember going to Star Trek Cons in the 1980s, and the good thing about those Cons was that everybody felt safe. It was a place where a woman could wear what she liked, whether it was the green Orion slave girl or Starfleet Admiral, and she wouldn't be hassled. One man who tried to hassle girls, and took some girls in skimpy costumes to his room to "photograph" them, was quickly complained about, thrown out of the convention, and banned from all subsequent conventions that those organisers would put on. And the girls went up to his room, initially, because they felt safe - because that sort of thing wouldn't happen at a convention.
This is as far from "dressing up in skimpy costumes in order to get a boyfriend" as you can get.
Besides, do these men who are complaining really consider themselves to be so irresistible to women that they think a woman would spend quite a substantial amount of money to go to the convention, and time making a costume, just to get themselves a boyfriend? Could it not possibly be because they have an interest in SF, and want to have a good time, and meet other people with the same interests as they have? I'd like to know if any of these men doing the complaining have ever been approached by a girl in a sexy costume who wants him to be her boyfriend. I would suspect that it hasn't happened.
I grew up watching Doctor Who, and Classic Star Trek and Gerry Anderson. I've read SF and fantasy by many different authors. I've watched SF films. I've written Star Trek fan fiction and made costumes. I used to go to conventions, and I may go again in the future - and I went because I had an interest in the subject, and wanted to meet other people with the same interests, and talk to them, and have fun with them.
I don't want to hear any sexist idiots telling me I have no right to be there.
Women have been going to conventions for a very long time - but over the past year, I've been hearing reports, mostly from the US, that women are not as welcome at conventions as they might be. The complaint, mostly from young white males, is that girls are "fake geeks" who only go to conventions and dress in skimpy costumes in order to get a boyfriend, and they don't actually know about the characters or the TV series or the comics.
This is an old refrain.
Thirty years ago, David Gerrold had a regular column in Starlog magazine, and in one of his columns he tackled the complaint that women were ruining fandom. Again, this was mostly in the US, and at that time it was mostly directed against Star Trek fans, who were overwhelmingly women. They weren't "real fans", and they were spoiling things for the true fans - who were all male, of course.
"Look, I'll tell you how women are 'ruining fandom'," David Gerrold said, and he filled the rest of his column with all the ways that women in fandom had improved things. It's a long time since I read the column (I kept it in a scrapbook for years, but all the scrapbooks had to go some years ago), but the main points I remember were that, because of women who were Star Trek fans, it had become normal for conventions to raise money for named charities, something that the old SF Cons had never thought of doing. They had also arranged blood donations in the US.
In that one column, he demolished any argument against women in fandom that existed at the time - and maybe someone should dig it out and repeat it, loudly, to this new generation of young men who don't like to see girls being interested in the same things as they are.
The "skimpy costumes" thing seems to be another problem for the complainers. But there's a point to be made here - right back into the dawn of SF history, costumes for women characters in comics and TV and film have overwhelmingly been designed by men, for men to look at. So the costumes available for women to dress up in are overwhelmingly skimpy and sexy if they want to portray certain characters. That doesn't mean that the women are making themselves available - it means that they are portraying that character, and that is all it means.
I remember going to Star Trek Cons in the 1980s, and the good thing about those Cons was that everybody felt safe. It was a place where a woman could wear what she liked, whether it was the green Orion slave girl or Starfleet Admiral, and she wouldn't be hassled. One man who tried to hassle girls, and took some girls in skimpy costumes to his room to "photograph" them, was quickly complained about, thrown out of the convention, and banned from all subsequent conventions that those organisers would put on. And the girls went up to his room, initially, because they felt safe - because that sort of thing wouldn't happen at a convention.
This is as far from "dressing up in skimpy costumes in order to get a boyfriend" as you can get.
Besides, do these men who are complaining really consider themselves to be so irresistible to women that they think a woman would spend quite a substantial amount of money to go to the convention, and time making a costume, just to get themselves a boyfriend? Could it not possibly be because they have an interest in SF, and want to have a good time, and meet other people with the same interests as they have? I'd like to know if any of these men doing the complaining have ever been approached by a girl in a sexy costume who wants him to be her boyfriend. I would suspect that it hasn't happened.
I grew up watching Doctor Who, and Classic Star Trek and Gerry Anderson. I've read SF and fantasy by many different authors. I've watched SF films. I've written Star Trek fan fiction and made costumes. I used to go to conventions, and I may go again in the future - and I went because I had an interest in the subject, and wanted to meet other people with the same interests, and talk to them, and have fun with them.
I don't want to hear any sexist idiots telling me I have no right to be there.
Thursday, 27 December 2012
Gerry Anderson
There's another chunk of my childhood gone.
Gerry Anderson has died, aged 83, the man whose various puppet series spanned the 1960s.
I was too young to remember Four Feather Falls or Torchy the Battery Boy - my first clear memory of Gerry Anderson's work was Supercar flying through the clouds. Which is all I can remember, and probably only because it was the title sequence, so I saw it every week.
Then came Fireball XL5, and I have some very clear memories of Fireball XL5 taking off along the long ramp, and Steve Zodiac and Venus riding on their floating mopeds, and Robert the Robot. I'm not sure why, but I loved Robert the Robot - I think partly because he was transparent, and he was always reliable.
Stingray was even better, with the Aquaphibians under the sea, and "Anything could happen in the next half hour!". It even had a couple of decent female characters, Marina and Atlanta. Though Marina wasn't able to speak, she was very brave.
And then there was Thunderbirds. I went to see Gerry Anderson speak at WorldCon 87, which was held in Brighton (Doris Lessing was in the same audience!) and once he started talking about Thunderbirds he could have talked all day! I liked Virgil and Thunderbird 2 best - and Thunderbird 2 had the best take off sequence, with the palm trees folding back and the ramp going up.
When I lived in Norwich, around 1990, I went to see two mime artists doing a show based on Gerry Anderson's shows. They wore the uniforms, with the Thunderbird rockets as their hats, and when Thunderbird 2 came on stage for the first time, the actor was holding two tiny palm trees in his hands (and had a big grin on his face as he bent them back during the take-off sequence!). They mixed Captain Scarlet into it, too, and their encore was Stingray chasing a Terror Fish.
I think I started growing out of Supermarionation after that, though I watched Captain Scarlet and Joe 90 and even Secret Service with Stanley Unwin. At the time, we spent our school holidays in Blackpool, and on the way in we used to pass a large building in Lytham St Anne's which had a porch that was exactly the same shape as the building in Joe 90. I think it was really something to do with Premium Bonds, but we imagined the Big Rat being in there. It was almost as exciting as being the first one to see Blackpool Tower!
We used to make Mysterons with our torches (while checking the back of Mum's wardrobe for the way through to Narnia), too.
When John Sims as the Master in Doctor Who took them to his floating aircraft carrier - and when the SHIELD aircraft carrier took off in Avengers Assemble - like many others of a certain age my first thought was "Cloudbase!"
And then Gerry Anderson started to produce live action shows, which were also more grown up - UFO and Space:1999, though Space:1999 got a bit silly. The moon managed to travel awfully fast, and though I liked Maya, the shape-changing alien, at the time, some of the plots started getting maybe a touch too fantastic towards the end. I'm afraid I wasn't too keen on the lead actor, either. Martin Landau never looked as if he was enjoying himself! Commander Straker was much more my cup of tea, especially as Ed Bishop had also done the voice for Captain Blue!
(The less said about Terrahawks, the better, I think!)
I have gone back to re-watch some episodes of all of these as an adult - and I kind of wish I hadn't. I can see huge plot holes that I didn't notice as a child - and the sexism is appalling! There's one episode of Fireball XL5 where lava is lapping round the legs of the space ship, and Venus is unable to take off because she forgot to flick one of the switches (Steve Zodiac was busy being heroic somewhere else). In Thunderbirds, International Rescue tackle a terrible fire, and they all have a little chuckle, back at Tracy Island at the end of the episode, when they discover it was caused by a woman driver!
I don't think Gerry Anderson ever lost that view of women, either - I remember an interview he gave when he was trying to bring Thunderbirds back. He said he wanted to include a woman pilot, but then described her as being pushy and annoying and wouldn't it be funny if one of the Tracy boys pushed her in the swimming pool? Back in the 60s, that sort of attitude was unexceptional, but it would be nice to think we've moved on since then.
It's the space ships and aircraft and submarines that remain in the memory, though. There's never been anything else quite like them - and nothing done today could beat Thunderbird 2 taking off, with the little palm trees bending back as the ramp goes up, could it?
And isn't it nice to think of an entire series in which being heroic isn't taking up a gun and shooting at people, but going out to rescue people trapped during disasters, using sophisticated hi-tech equipment?
FAB, Gerry Anderson. Spectrum is Green.
Gerry Anderson has died, aged 83, the man whose various puppet series spanned the 1960s.
I was too young to remember Four Feather Falls or Torchy the Battery Boy - my first clear memory of Gerry Anderson's work was Supercar flying through the clouds. Which is all I can remember, and probably only because it was the title sequence, so I saw it every week.
Then came Fireball XL5, and I have some very clear memories of Fireball XL5 taking off along the long ramp, and Steve Zodiac and Venus riding on their floating mopeds, and Robert the Robot. I'm not sure why, but I loved Robert the Robot - I think partly because he was transparent, and he was always reliable.
Stingray was even better, with the Aquaphibians under the sea, and "Anything could happen in the next half hour!". It even had a couple of decent female characters, Marina and Atlanta. Though Marina wasn't able to speak, she was very brave.
And then there was Thunderbirds. I went to see Gerry Anderson speak at WorldCon 87, which was held in Brighton (Doris Lessing was in the same audience!) and once he started talking about Thunderbirds he could have talked all day! I liked Virgil and Thunderbird 2 best - and Thunderbird 2 had the best take off sequence, with the palm trees folding back and the ramp going up.
When I lived in Norwich, around 1990, I went to see two mime artists doing a show based on Gerry Anderson's shows. They wore the uniforms, with the Thunderbird rockets as their hats, and when Thunderbird 2 came on stage for the first time, the actor was holding two tiny palm trees in his hands (and had a big grin on his face as he bent them back during the take-off sequence!). They mixed Captain Scarlet into it, too, and their encore was Stingray chasing a Terror Fish.
I think I started growing out of Supermarionation after that, though I watched Captain Scarlet and Joe 90 and even Secret Service with Stanley Unwin. At the time, we spent our school holidays in Blackpool, and on the way in we used to pass a large building in Lytham St Anne's which had a porch that was exactly the same shape as the building in Joe 90. I think it was really something to do with Premium Bonds, but we imagined the Big Rat being in there. It was almost as exciting as being the first one to see Blackpool Tower!
We used to make Mysterons with our torches (while checking the back of Mum's wardrobe for the way through to Narnia), too.
When John Sims as the Master in Doctor Who took them to his floating aircraft carrier - and when the SHIELD aircraft carrier took off in Avengers Assemble - like many others of a certain age my first thought was "Cloudbase!"
And then Gerry Anderson started to produce live action shows, which were also more grown up - UFO and Space:1999, though Space:1999 got a bit silly. The moon managed to travel awfully fast, and though I liked Maya, the shape-changing alien, at the time, some of the plots started getting maybe a touch too fantastic towards the end. I'm afraid I wasn't too keen on the lead actor, either. Martin Landau never looked as if he was enjoying himself! Commander Straker was much more my cup of tea, especially as Ed Bishop had also done the voice for Captain Blue!
(The less said about Terrahawks, the better, I think!)
I have gone back to re-watch some episodes of all of these as an adult - and I kind of wish I hadn't. I can see huge plot holes that I didn't notice as a child - and the sexism is appalling! There's one episode of Fireball XL5 where lava is lapping round the legs of the space ship, and Venus is unable to take off because she forgot to flick one of the switches (Steve Zodiac was busy being heroic somewhere else). In Thunderbirds, International Rescue tackle a terrible fire, and they all have a little chuckle, back at Tracy Island at the end of the episode, when they discover it was caused by a woman driver!
I don't think Gerry Anderson ever lost that view of women, either - I remember an interview he gave when he was trying to bring Thunderbirds back. He said he wanted to include a woman pilot, but then described her as being pushy and annoying and wouldn't it be funny if one of the Tracy boys pushed her in the swimming pool? Back in the 60s, that sort of attitude was unexceptional, but it would be nice to think we've moved on since then.
It's the space ships and aircraft and submarines that remain in the memory, though. There's never been anything else quite like them - and nothing done today could beat Thunderbird 2 taking off, with the little palm trees bending back as the ramp goes up, could it?
And isn't it nice to think of an entire series in which being heroic isn't taking up a gun and shooting at people, but going out to rescue people trapped during disasters, using sophisticated hi-tech equipment?
FAB, Gerry Anderson. Spectrum is Green.
Wednesday, 26 December 2012
The Doctor and the Snowmen (Spoilers)
"Good evening. I am a lizard woman from the dawn of time, and this is my wife."
The Snowmen would have been a marvellous Doctor Who Christmas special if this line had been the highlight of it - but there was far more to enjoy than that!
Strax and the memory worm....
Darkover House, where the family lived, (surely a nod to the works of Marion Zimmer Bradley, who wrote a whole series of books set on the world of Darkover - which had a lot of snow)....
The Tardis parked in a cloud with a spiral staircase leading up to it....
The one word answer that made the Doctor sit up and take notice....
The nod back to Patrick Troughton and the Yetis in the Underground (and the Great Intelligence!)....
And Clara. Wonderful Clara, who wouldn't go away and leave the Doctor alone, and trusted him to help, and argued with him brilliantly. And liked to make souffles....
And finally, Evil defeated by Love - the tears of the people who loved Clara washing the snow away.
And that's got the Doctor curious again - Clara is a mystery waiting to be solved - and he's off! And the next season promises to be glorious!
Tuesday, 25 December 2012
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