In Light of My Last Post...

...I figured I'd better confirm the implications.
:)

How to Plan a Wedding, by the Ladies and Gentlemen of Period Drama

(I would have made a nicely formatted textual image with the words "How to Plan a Wedding, Period Drama Style" to head off this post but PicMonkey is now demanding money in return for their previously free services, and I am a cheapskate.)

Previously in this series: How to Get the Girl, How to Catch a Man, Hair Guide for Ladies, Hair Guide for Men

Muslin from India is a lovely choice for a bridal gown, particularly if one is to be a rectory bride. Make sure the fabric arrives on time, though, otherwise it may have to wait a generation or two to be used.

It's totally okay to marry a man you just met and have very little prior knowledge of! I mean, a courtship of 3-4 weeks is completely normal. As long as he saved your little brother and looks really great in a cape, you're probably golden. Don't talk too much about politics beforehand though. What if he ends up thinking you're a traitor or something?

If horrid, childish leeches from your past who have made life miserable for yourself and a lot of the people you hold dear show up uninvited and start picking at your cake, GET 'EM. Or don't. And just enjoy the day.

Beware of fainting on the big day as you march down the aisle. If you do, your elderly aunt might be forced to drag you to the rainwater hogs-head and drop you in!

On that note, for pity's sake don't march through the ceiling while practicing the wedding march!

Be very specific when choosing your dress size if you are ordering from a catalog, and make sure the store delivers the correct dress to your house. You don't want a mix-up on the big day! (Better yet, if anyone else in your tiny town happens to be getting married on the same exact day as you, choose different dresses, for heaven's sake.)

Do NOT let your gorgeous and incredibly expensive Gilded Age veil anywhere near hot curling iron lighter thingies. Or five-year-olds, for that matter. (THAT IS SO NOT HOW IT HAPPENED IN THE BOOK THOUGH AND HER DRESS WAS WAY PRETTIER IN THE BOOK. CORNELIA'S DRESS IN THE MOVIE IS FINE BUT I COULDN'T FIND A PICTURE.)

Do make sure the lecherous creeps who "raised" you as a child (read: took all the money your mother sent for your upkeep and spent it on themselves) to attend your wedding under any circumstances, even in disguise. Your new husband may be forced to bodily throw them out.

Double weddings, though difficult to pull off, can be achieved as long as you are having one with your sister, and if the two of you happen to be marrying guys who are best friends. Otherwise it's just kinda awkward.

Make sure the guy who's been pursuing you ever since you were a child is FAR away from the festive scene when you finally marry your beloved! You don't want to risk him bursting into the church and shooting you (mostly) dead before all assembled, after all.

Oh, and please do please marry the right guy. If by some trick of circumstance you find yourself standing at the altar with an evil prince, the day may be saved by getting a faltering priest to skip to the very end of the wedding ceremony, thereby saving you from having to actually say "I do."

Honestly, yeah, marrying the right guy ought to be #1. The rest are just details.

I hope you find all these helpful tips as useful as I will. ;)

Eight Reasons Why A New "Dark" Pride and Prejudice Isn't What We Need

I first discovered Pride and Prejudice in the summer of 2009. I was fresh out of eighth grade, gearing up for high school, starting to tire of the 101 books in the Saddle Club series and frustrated that the Mysterious Benedict Society sequel wasn't out yet. I read some Dickens novels here and there and felt grown-up about them, but though I called Martin Chuzzlewit my new favorite book, I still hadn't been "grabbed," as it were, by a book written for grown-ups. I was starting to think that maybe books for adults just didn't grip you the way kids' books did, and that I was going to be doomed to a life of reading classic novels so I could be an intellectual, stimulating my brain and increasing my vocabulary while being bored stiff.

BOY WAS I WRONG but that's a topic for another day.

Anyway, so then my mom suggested I give Jane Austen a try, and took me to Borders (yes, Borders still existed then) with a new birthday gift card, and I picked out a Modern Library Classics paperback edition of Pride and Prejudice, with a blond Lizzy and snooty-looking Darcy on the cover, and took it home and read the whole thing in less than a week. And I was hooked. And then we watched the 1995 A&E miniseries (the five-hour one with Colin Firth. Y'all know what I'm talking about).  And I was in love. (Not with Colin Firth, though. I mean, he's okay, but... yeah.)

Eventually I read all of Jane Austen's novels, watched almost every adaptation in existence, read all the novels again, started a blog about them (You Are Here), and... well, I have Opinions about the forthcoming newest adaptation of Jane Austen's most popular novel.

I'm not a fan, folks.

Here's what we know so far: the same producers in charge of Poldark and Victoria are spearheading a new P&P series. (Full disclosure: I haven't seen Poldark and can't offer an opinion on that. I do love Victoria, but it's not based on a book.) It's supposed to be "gritty" and "dark" and is supposed to showcase what the writer calls "Jane Austen's wit, which is sparkling like granite."

You can read more about this here and here, so I won't bother recapping every single detail. They say you aren't supposed to write novels in blog posts because you lose your audience's attention (and with the sporadic nature of my blog posts, I need to keep my audience's attention whenever I can get it) so I'll get right to the point. Here are my eight reasons why I am not excited about this new production.

1. P&P is more than just a "bonnet drama."

It really grinds my gears when people refer to miniseries like Cranford and Sense and Sensibility as "bonnet dramas." It implies a note of condescension, that stories primarily told from women's viewpoints in bygone eras are somehow frivolous or unimportant. It's a bunch of ladies in bonnets! Visiting! Having tea! There's nothing deeper there than who's-going-to-marry-who! I will be the first to acknowledge that Jane Austen and Elizabeth Gaskell are not everyone's cup of tea, and I am okay with that, but I am not okay with entertainment critics patting Jane Austen on the head. Yes, there are bonnets in P&P, but there is a plot, too. P&P primarily deals with marriage, money, and morality, but it's not just about Mrs. Bennet howling over Mr. Bingley's ten thousand a year. It was the first novel in English literature to feature a truly independent thinker as a heroine-- a woman who chose her own future (yes, with a rich man, but not because he was rich) within the limitations of her time, who wasn't afraid to speak her mind yet still maintained the sense of propriety with which she was raised. It's a fascinating study in the deficiencies and strengths of human character, and to reduce it to Colin Firth in a wet muslin shirt is incredibly disrespectful to the impact it has had on literature in the Western world.

2. P&P is not a dark story.

This isn't a contradiction of the point above. P&P is serious and deals with some weighty matters. But at its heart, it IS light and bright and sparkling. Jane Austen did not describe Elizabeth Bennet as a melancholy, tortured heroine - she said that she "thought her the most delightful character that ever appeared in print." P&P is funny. It's clever. It's full of snark and sarcasm and you get the constant sense that the author is laughing in her sleeve at all this characters, while simultaneously loving them, and as she writes she's sharing a great inside joke with all her readers. The witty, down-to-earth fun of P&P is a large part of what draws most people to Jane Austen.  (I mean, she wrote some darker stuff, don't get me wrong. Check out Persuasion if you want a dark story! But P&P is not the place to go if you want dark.)

3. We don't need yet another P&P flick, really.

Really...
really...
really...
we don't.

You can go watch the 1940 version or the 1980 or the 1995 or the 2005 (except... ya know, don't) if you want a "straight" adaptation of the novel set in Regency England. (WELL EXCEPT FOR THE FACT THAT THE 2005 ABOMINATION TRIED TO PUT IT IN 1795 WHEN THAT WAS NOT THE RIGHT PERIOD but I digress and will leave that for another day). If you want a different re-imagining of the story, skip to Point #8. Are any or all of those adaptations perfect? NOPE. Not even the 1995 BBC/A&E miniseries which is one of my favorite Austen adaptations of all time. That one STILL didn't get everything right (though I still love it). But guys. We have a LOT of P&P out there to choose from. (And I am using a LOT of caps today. I AM SORRY.) There is a finite amount of movie-making money floating around out there, and a finite amount of TV air time, and wouldn't it be better to use that money and time towards an adaptation that we actually need? Like, y'know, Mansfield Park for example? (Hint hint hint hint hint. If Heidi Thomas or Sandy Welch are reading this, please take note.) We have a poorly-filmed and somewhat dry version from the 80's, a totally-not-like-the-book-what-is-even-happening-here chick flick from the 90's, and a scowling hour and a half of Billie Piper with her hair down from the 2000's. Please, please, please. Give us a decent Mansfield Park. Fanny deserves better.

4. We all saw what happened with Anne with an E.

Okay, those of you who were brave enough to watch the whole series saw what happened. To be fair, I haven't watched all of it - just clips here and there and read some horrifying reviews, my hair standing on end the entire time. Taking a beloved, classic story and trying to make it into something it's not will not go down well with that story's many fans. Anne with an E is the latest edition of What Not to Do in the period drama universe.  Let's learn from other people's mistakes.

Charles Dickens wrote his own stuff!

5. You want a dark, gritty story, write your own.

Which brings me to the old conundrum. If you replace a faulty plank in a ship, and slowly over time end up replacing ALL the planks in the ship, at what point (if at all) does the ship cease to be the same ship? Similarly, if you start changing everything familiar about an original work of fiction, is it even still the same work of fiction? Are you just slapping a title that you know will sell onto a hodge-podge, fabricated desecration of your own invention and loudly proclaiming that you know better than the story's original inventor?  Well, if you are... maybe don't. If Nina Raine really wants a complex television serial, maybe she ought to just come up with her own plot and leave well enough alone.

6. Jane Austen said herself that she could not write a serious romance to save her life.

If that isn't a good enough reason for you to accept that P&P is not meant to be a serious romance, then I don't know what WILL convince you. (Note that I'm drawing a line between "dark" and "serious" -- as I said in #2, I consider Persuasion to be dark, though not in a bad way.) She said this *after* writing P&P, I might add -- you cannot argue that she later changed her mind and decided to sparkle like granite.

7. Fake P&P already messed up badly enough.

I realize I am stepping on some toes by saying this, and I don't mean to offend the sensibilities of those of you who enjoy that movie. As a film, it's lovely. As an adaptation of P&P, I feel that it does not measure up. Can't it be a cautionary tale to film producers at this point? We've seen what happened when a writer decided to stick the Bennets in a pigsty, introduce wild flouting of social convention, make Elizabeth Bennet (the delightful creature!) incredibly obnoxious, and rewrite everything that makes Mr. Darcy... well, Mr. Darcy. (If you want to read more bashing of what my best friend and I fondly call Fake P&P and understand more of the reasoning behind why I despise it, feel free to click here.)

8. You want a re-imagining? We've already got those!

May I recommend The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, for starters? (Viewer discretion advised-- a lot of the content in this web series adaptation is not for younger viewers.) I haven't seen it, but I've heard some good things about Bride and Prejudice. Death Comes to Pemberley, while not strictly a new adaptation of Pride and Prejudice, does a pretty good job of staying faithful to the original while bringing in a new storyline. We won't talk about P&P & Zombies, (although do check out some of the hilarious comics that some clever people have made in response to the Jane Austen/paranormal nonsense going on lately) but there are many, many more novels and films out there inspired by the original.

You may wonder why I seem to have a problem with this new BBC adaptation and not with things like The LBD. The reasons for this are threefold. First, that The LBD doesn't even pretend to be a straight page-to-screen adaptation of the novel -- it's a new version for a modern audience that creatively places new interpretations of the original characters in the digital age. It's very cleverly done, but it doesn't pretend to be "the" P&P. I love it when writers take an old, old story and make it
new again by putting the characters (or basic approximations thereof) in new settings. It forces the reader or viewer to think about the messages the original novel is sending, and why people behave the way that they do. But when a reader who loved a book goes to look for a film adaptation of said book, optimistically hoping for a faithful onscreen bringing-to-life of the characters she fell in love with in the novel, she's going to be very disappointed to turn on a movie that *looks* like it should be great (after all, the costumes look good! The famous people look pretty on the cover! The title is right!) and... isn't.

Am I being cynical?
Yeah, probably.

Am I willing to be pleasantly surprised by the new P&P, if indeed it turns out to be good?
Sure! In fact, I'll write a retraction of this post if that is the case.

But am I holding out much hope for that?
Well, unfortunately, not.

I look forward to your (civil) discourse in the comment section. :)

Our Past Matters.

This morning, I wrote something akin to a blog post on Facebook, and after a little consideration I decided to share it here as well. Political commentary doesn't generally fit in too well with the standard bill of fare on YAPDB, (and I promise, that Victoria review IS coming!) but I felt this needed to be said.

Several people over the last few months have asked me, at various times, why I am so interested in Civil War reenacting. Recently, someone expressed to me her frustration that historical reenactors in general seem overly focused on the Civil War, and that it seems unnecessary at this point when the United States has so much other history to consider and the CW was over 150 years ago. At the time, I wasn't able to articulate a proper response, but my introvert thought processes have finally run their course and I have something to say now.

Our history as a nation is incredibly important, and sadly many people in our country today (our president among them; yes, I went there) do not seem to take seriously the story of those who came before us or even to know the basic tenets of how and why our country came to be what it is today. The Civil War in particular, though a horrifically sad and devastating period of our history, was the culmination of an inevitable fallout that had been building since the Articles of Confederation (and maybe even before that time- one could argue it was in the works since the first slaves were brought to the Americas). The war itself is over, but the myth of the Lost Cause, the ugly lies of one race's supremacy over another, and the attitudes of hatred that were running deep at the time of the Civil War have not ended.

Why do I participate in living history events to try and bring the Civil War to life? Because of Charlottesville. Because of Minneapolis. Because of the Ku Klux Klan rallies in my own Yankee state. Because the concept of white nationalism didn't die with Nathan Bedford Forrest, and because the Confederate battle flag is still being flown from pickup trucks and apartment windows, simultaneously touted as "heritage" and used as a symbol of bigotry and cruelty. The Civil War stands alone in our nation's bloody history of conflict as the war fought by our country against our country over problems we still face today. Too many people are already forgetting or erasing why. Don't be one of them.

I attended a living history timeline event back in May, and had the privilege of meeting a historian who shows the public ironwork reproductions of slave chains and neck collars, tangible reminders of slavery that give most people pause. Ironically enough, his tent was set up directly across from a Confederate camp. (Not knocking Confederate reenactors here, by the way. Their impressions, when done for history's sake and not to perpetuate a tragic ideology, is valuable to our understanding of both sides, and I respect both that and them.) I had to wonder how much of an impact his chains and collars had on anyone who might have come to that event that day checking Richard Spencer's latest tweet and wearing a rebel-flag baseball cap. Could it have given that person a reality check, even just for a moment?

If the "hobby" of reenacting the Civil War can do that and change even one person's mind, give them the chance to step back and think about the direction our nation is going and where it has been before, then our efforts won't be in vain. We're not romanticizing the past. We're trying to prevent it from happening again, and we could use your help.

TL;DR version: Nazis and the KKK are bad, preserving history and educating people is a good way to help get rid of their influence. Civil War reenacting is awesome. You should get involved.

Summer Adventures, Book-Learnin', and That One Song From South Pacific

Once upon a time, there was a girl who wrote a blog, and she was very diligent in the writing thereof, and there were lots of posts, and lots of followers, and lots of comments, and lots of friends, and a lot of time spent in reading and writing things of great interest and some of not much interest whatsoever.

Then Life happened, and the blog took a backseat, and some of the blog readers went on their merry way and read other blogs, and some of them lacked the time for any blogs at all because Life was happening for them too, and yet more of them stuck around from time to time and checked the blog just in case there was anything new happening.

(For purposes of a disclaiming nature I must take this opportunity to note that I am not implying that the reading and writing of blogs signifies one's Lack of a Life. It is a good and righteous hobby if it does not constitute the ENTIRE WHOLE of one's life - though, indeed, if it does, it still does not signify that Life is lacking, but rather that it is being rather frivolously squandered. Ahem.)

This post is for those last few, and my great gratitude is also extended to them-ward, for their tenacity and loyalty and sticking with me even though I've written a big ol' pile of nothin' in the last year or so.

I did, however, finally get a little bit back into the swing of things earlier this week, and though I make no promises about the future regularity of my posting, I really do want to make a better effort at writing.  Because writing feels good! Putting words together and creating a (somewhat) cohesive whole at the end sharpens creativity! I become an unstoppable writing force, as one with the old masters of literature, the wordsmiths of the ages, the Austens and Miltons and Shakespeares and Wildes and whoever wrote the dialogue for the original Winnie the Pooh films! 

The thing is, carving out the actual time to write stuff is not as easy as it looks.

If you've been following my blog for a while, you may know that I formerly worked an 8-5 office job (from 2015-2017).  As of now, that is no longer true - I quit my job in May to focus primarily on obtaining a certificate in Administrative Office Management.  So now I'm taking college classes and working semi-part-time.  Emphasis on the "semi" at the moment, because I'm also spending the summer (well, most of it) with the very first person who ever followed this blog.

In other words... my best friend, Melody.  Pink goes good with green.  (She's on the right, I'm on the left, and no one was actually driving when this selfie was taken.  We were stuck in traffic and the car was in Park. Ease your minds.)

At the beginning of June, I packed my mostly essentials and headed... WEST. (I won't get more specific than that. Melody is entitled to her state's right to privacy. :P) I'm here until the first week in August, and we are having a blast. Because, obviously. We're best friends.

We've been having a fantastic time together that has included shopping (thrift stores for the win!), camping (twice!), swimming (quite a lot), babysitting (her nieces and nephews are all adorable but the youngest one is quite definitely and undeniably a bona fide Cutie Pop), reading good books (just finished A Portrait of Emily Price by Katherine Reay, which was better than The Bronte Plot but not as good as Dear Mr. Knightley), watching some movies and TV shows (yay for Poirot and Call the Midwife!) and working, too, believe it or not.  In our first couple of weeks together, we got a temporary job helping to move medical equipment in a hospital (a task that included good pay and sore muscles!) and then we spent several days temping at a local plastics factory (not-so-good pay and not great for breathing... we didn't like that one as well).

I've also been doing a great deal of HOMEWORK, which is not at all fun but bears mentioning, lest you think my so-called college classes are all in vain.  They are not. I will PowerPoint you to the death, if challenged. (Or to the pain. You choose.)

I could go off on a long and sappy tangent about what a great friend Melody is, and how blessed I am to have her in my life, and how much fun it's been, getting to spend an extended visit with her... but I don't want to take up TOO much of your precious time (since this is going to be a pretty long post ANYWAY), I'll just give you a short and sappy tangent.  We have been friends for nigh on six years now, which is pretty incredible (though seven years may be insufficient for some people to form a really close connection, seven days may be sufficient for others, or seven emails in our case...) and though we have had our ups and downs (some of them even during this visit!) our bond has only strengthened as time goes on, and there is really nothing quite like a best friend.  I was sniffling a bit over some of the tributes to Jane Austen's life earlier this week, on the 200th anniversary of her death, and the remarks Cassandra Austen made about her relationship with her sister stood out to me particularly. Obviously Melody and I are not sisters by blood, and we are both healthily alive and kicking, but if you change Cassandra's writing to present instead of past tense, it fits my thoughts about her very well.

"[She is] a treasure, such a sister, such a friend as never can have been surpassed. She [is] the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow; I [have] not a thought concealed from her..."

We've both been reminded in various ways over the past year or so that life is changing and we must change with it; we're no longer the completely carefree teenagers we were when we first met.  Jobs and higher education and financial woes and health worries and family troubles and the joys of falling in love (ahem) have brought us into the world of adults since we first met, and I wouldn't change any of that for the world - but as the world changes, I'm glad I have a best friend to embrace that with me.

*end sappy tangent*

Anyway.  All in all, it's been a delightful summer thus far, despite my occasional bouts of homesickness and a great deal of... well, missing a certain person.  Who is not Melody. Because she's here. With me.

No, the person I've been missing so much is, in fact, someone who hasn't been mentioned on this blog until today.

Perhaps, just for fun and for the sake of maintaining the pseudonym I've used here for the last five and a half years, we'll call him Mr. Ferrars.

Let's rewind a tiny tad bit.  

It was in 2013 that I first became involved with Civil War reenacting, through a local historical house that was recruiting volunteers to give living history tours (an opportunity to get dressed up in old-fashioned clothes? YES PLEASE). That led me (and the rest of my family) to join an actual Civil War reenactment unit (Union forever, thank you very much), sparked my rabbit-hole-descent into making Victorian clothes, gave me quite a few opportunities to attend balls and parties and parades in historical garb, fueled my already-intense love of history... and, along the way, introduced me to my sweetheart. 

(If you follow me on Instagram, you're probably already well aware of his existence, but in case you don't, or in case you, unlike Flynn Rider, "do backstory," here's a bit more of the Detail.)

Technically speaking, we met in 2014, but neither of us can remember the particulars.  It was an outdoor encampment on the grounds of the house where I was volunteering (and where he had volunteered in the past), we were briefly introduced by a mutual friend, and that was about it. Later that year our paths crossed again at a Christmas Civil War ball, but except for a couple of partner-changing dances, we didn't interact much - until my sisters' and my GPS decided to die after the event had ended and we were stranded in an unfamiliar town with some uncertainty of how to get home.  So this gallant gentleman offered to let us follow him to the main highway before we went our separate ways.  I am still rather embarrassed about this (my sense of direction HAS improved since then), but clearly not so embarrassed as to stop me from writing about it on a public blog. I guess it serves as dramatic emphasis for just how nice that guy was.  

That was something I'd noticed, you see - I didn't know him very well, other than the fact that his name was Rob (there ya go, anyone who was dissatisfied with the vague "Mr. Ferrars") and his good manners and kindness to the people around him made a distinct impression on me.  That, as it turns out, was a very accurate impression indeed.

And then we started seeing each other at other events, and shyly talking a bit (okay, it was shy on my part...) and my sister teased me about him here and there but obviously that didn't mean anything, right? And then we became friends on Facebook. And then he innocently texted me asking for some information about an upcoming event in which we were both interested.  And, uh, we have not stopped talking since that day, which was nearly a year ago.  And then we started dating... and I fell in love with a wonderful guy. 

And now we're seven months into a relationship that's gone beyond anything I could ever have dreamed of, reinforced my belief in true love, convinced me that there really is another person out there in the world who understands my craziness, and given us both countless hours of laughing and crying and talking incessantly and baring our souls and telling of our most appalling secrets. 

Attempting to pose for a picture like civilized adults at a formal Victorian ball, and failing miserably.

I'm actually trying really hard not to make this overly sappy and starry-eyed. I'm not sure if you can tell.  Probably not.  But believe me, I could be a lot worse.

I wouldn't say that in the past I approached romance with a cynical eye, because I didn't. I loved reading books and watching movies about people who had found their soulmate, but deep down inside I wasn't sure I would ever meet that person who was completely right for me. I'd seen enough relationships and even marriages between people who seemed reasonably happy together, but who didn't always seem to "click" in the way that I wanted to do if I ever met my person. So I began to think that that person probably wasn't out there, that I wasn't going to ever meet someone I could truly love with my whole heart and know without a shadow of a doubt that he loved me back just as fiercely and understood what makes me tick.  Which was all well and good. I was fine with being single. In fact, I embraced it! And when God said, "No, My ways are higher than your ways, and My thoughts are higher than your thoughts," and brought along the person I thought couldn't exist, I actually resisted at first. Surely it couldn't be that easy. Surely we couldn't have just been made for each other... could we?

Yeah, turns out we could.

You want to know the real kicker? The clincher, one of (several) things that convinced me that this was Really Truly Love? Guys, he's not a Jane Austen fan. It's not his thing. And you know what? I love him anyway. 

Oh, sure, we have lots of other shared interests and hobbies and nerdiness about books and geekiness about grammar and fascination with long-dead people and love of the outdoors and sense of adventure (well, okay, he has a sense of adventure and I remind him to wear his seat belt), and he'll sit and watch a costume drama with me (we blew through the first season of Victoria alarmingly fast) but Pride and Prejudice is not his cup of tea, and that is okay.  (For the record, Jurassic Park was not my cup of tea either. :P) 

Although once I get back from my trip, we are totally watching Sense and Sensibility together. ;)

So, uh, yeah. That is, in a nutshell, why my blogging has taken a backseat. Because the hours I used to spend researching and writing blog posts (and watching period dramas, too, let's be real) have lately given way to phone conversations and Skype conversations and hanging out in real life and spending time with each other's families and talking a LOT, did I mention that yet? The time I used to have for my Internet presence has dwindled drastically... and I am okay with that. I don't want to neglect this blog entirely (as I've been doing... cough cough) but, well, stages of life, people. Stages of life.  

I'm grateful to all of you who have stuck with me over the last year (with basically no content on here... heh) and to those of you who are reading this and will be sticking with me in the future.

Because now that I'm done with that first season of Victoria, it obviously needs a review.  

P.S. If you're interested in A Portrait of Emily Price, you can get your own copy on Amazon! 

....yes, that's an affiliate link. You don't have to click on it if you don't want to. ;)

Hidden Figures (2016): The First Movie Review On This Blog In Basically Forever

"There are twenty bright, highly capable Negro women in the west computing group, and we're proud to be doing our part for the country. So yes, they let women do some things at NASA, Mr. Johnson. And it's not because we wear skirts. It's because we wear glasses."

~Katherine Goble

The average lifespan of a raccoon in the wild is about three years, and I was going to open this post by saying that I haven't written a movie review in a coon's age, but then I thought that was probably a slight exaggeration.

In reality it's been two years and eleven months.  Um. Ahem.  (Yeah, even I couldn't believe it's been that long. I had to go back and check. And re-check.) Saving Mr. Banks was the last movie I reviewed on this blog, and if you feel like refreshing your memory, you can go here. For what it's worth, I did have a few drafts lying around that I poked at from time to time, but... yeah. I don't have much of an excuse beyond the general "well, life is busy!" Sure, life is busy. But if you want to write, you have to make time to write. 

(...I may make my next post an update on various things that have made my life busy lately, by the way.  If anyone would care to read about that. I have no intention of shoving my personal life down your throat, but I know I get curious about the lives of people whose blogs I read, so if you would find such a thing interesting, please give me a shout in the comments, because I do have a few updates that may be of interest.)

Oh, and when I started writing this post, I had also been sick for the last week and today {that is, the day I started this... in May... heh...} I am actually well enough to sit up and look at a laptop, but not well enough to go to work, and a blog post felt like a good idea since my brain is beginning to feel like little gray cells again, and not oatmeal. 

So here I am, writing about a movie that I actually saw on the big screen. WILL WONDERS NEVER CEASE.

Hidden Figures does not quiiiiiiite fit the bill of fare around here. It's a stretch to call it a period drama - my grandparents are around the ages of the characters in the film, give or take a few years, and some of the real women on whom the film was based are still alive today.  But there are pencil skirts and long-finned Cadillacs and an IBM computer that takes up an entire room... which means the movie portrays another world in the past, to some degree, so I'm letting it slide on my Historical Films radar.  (Not that that radar is particularly strict to begin with... I have a half-finished review of Sherlock's The Abominable Bride in my drafts, too. Ahem.) However, it's my blog, and my rules, and blah blah.

So here we go.  (Spoilers GALORE. Although if you didn't at least vaguely know that John Glenn successfully orbited the Earth in 1962 then maybe you need to go to back to school and stop reading movie reviews.) 

I knew I was going to love this movie from the very first present-day scene. (The opening with Katherine as a small child being a math whiz was fun, and set a good backdrop, but the movie didn't really get going until the story catapulted us into 1961.)  There were several factors - Mary's clothes. Mary's sass. Katherine and Dorothy's comebacks and bed-bath-and-beyond-done-ness with Mary's sass. Oh, and my dream car. Because yeah, that car of Dorothy's has been my dream car for YEARS. That may have been a silly reason to fall in love with the movie so quickly (especially considering I'm really not a car person... like, at ALL) but humans are weird creatures and reactions are visceral and sometimes you just KNOW you're gonna like something, you know? 

(This is a behind-the-scenes photo but I couldn't find another good shot with the car in it. :P)

Katherine Goble was one of those people I just knew I was going to like.  She's patient, she gets the job done, she deals with miles upon miles of setbacks and she just keeps pushing forward.  When she gets a position with Mr. Harrison's team, checking code for other mathematicians, and she puts her name alongside of Paul Stafford's report (rightly so, because she did just as much work as he does), he gets annoyed and refuses to let her take credit for the work she did.  And yet the next time she puts her name back again. And again. And the next time.  And every time he takes it off, destroys the cover sheet, tells her to do it over, and she doesn't get mad - she just puts her name right back the next time, and I loved that.  It's a simple gesture that says, "I know my work matters, and I know that you don't believe that it matters, but that doesn't change the fact that it does matter, and I will keep right on saying that just as long as you keep erasing it." 

Katherine isn't one to immediately speak her mind the way Mary is (getting to Mary in a second), but she makes her voice heard when it needs to be heard.  The scene where she breaks down and loses her temper at Harrison over not having access to a ladies' room is one of the most well-played scenes in the whole movie, and the following scene where a chastened Harrison knocks off the segregation signs with a crowbar and tells the dumbstruck crowd, "Here at NASA, we all pee the same color," is one of the most satisfying.  (Yeah, you probably never thought you'd see that word on this blog, but guess what, it's in the movie, and though I try to be reasonably ladylike around here, I do not skip over a good pithy statement when I see one.)

One of the things I really liked about the movie's portrayal of Katherine is that it shows her first and foremost as a mathematician.  She is also a mother, and she also has a romance (that plays out in a very lovely way and I was delighted to find that it ended very happily in real life as well), but the story is not about Katherine's struggle to balance work and home life and find her real place in the world as a working mom. She has a job, about which she's very passionate, with which she supports her three girls (and presumably her mother, who doesn't seem to work outside the home as she appears to be in her upper 70's). End of story.  When one of her daughters brings up the subject of Katherine coming home late, she simply says, matter-of-factly, that she has to be both mama and daddy since their daddy's in heaven, and that's all there is to it. And while a movie based solely on Katherine's career is not quite what this is (getting to the romantical part in a moment), I appreciated the fact that the focus wasn't detracted from the work at hand by a spin-off on the whole working-single-mother thing. (Although if someone DOES want to make a spin-off of this movie, about Katherine's personal life, I would totally watch that.) 

I was not a fan of Jim Johnson's character at first, but he definitely grew on me. I was really happy to see how he interacted with Katherine's daughters and with Katherine herself in a relatively short space of time (that is, screen time), and the proposal scene was... well, adorableness. I'm already spoiling things right and left for anyone who hasn't seen the movie yet, but I also appreciated that the romance wasn't made the focal point of the movie.  It was a sweet side note, and historically accurate since Katherine Goble really DID marry Jim Johnson (and they were married for fifty-some years!), but it wasn't the point of the movie and I was pleased by the fact that the filmmakers didn't try to divert attention from the real story at hand with a sugar-coated Hollywood romance.

Quick note on Katherine's clothes--  because clothes are my Thing and you know I couldn't *not* talk about them-- aaaaaaaah, if it weren't for the Cold War and communism and racism and sexism and lack of central air-conditioning, what I wouldn't GIVE to live in the fifties/early sixties! I loved how her styles really set her apart from the other mathematicians, aside from her obvious gender and ethnicity - the pops of color she brought to that largely black-and-white-and-grey room were very visually appealing, and I enjoyed that. I basically just want all of her dresses. Yes? Yes. Please and thank you.

Moving on to Mary.

"I plan on being an engineer at NASA, but I can't do that without taking them classes at that all-white high school, and I can't change the color of my skin. So I have no choice, but to be the first, which I can't do without you, sir. Your honor, out of all the cases you gonna hear today, which one is gonna matter hundred years from now? Which one is gonna make you the first?"

~Mary Jackson

The only thing that kept Mary from being my favorite character in the movie was the fact of Katherine's existence. Seriously, if it hadn't been for Katherine Mary would have been my #1. She's hilarious, she's snarky, she gets stuff done, she has brilliant fashion sense and she's not afraid of anything.  I loved how she was constantly dressed in bright colors and sharp, clean-cut styles - it went a long way towards pinpointing her vibrant, edgy personality.

I wish Karl Zielinski, the older engineer who mentored Mary at the beginning of her assignment on the test rockets, had had a larger role in the movie, because I'd be very interested to know more of his story.  This exchange between them after Mary had identified the air-resistance problem with the wind tunnel is one of my favorites:

"Mary, a person with an engineer's mind should be an engineer. You can't be a computer the rest of your life."
"Mr. Zielinski, I'm a negro woman. I'm not gonna entertain the impossible."
"And I'm a Polish Jew whose parents died in a Nazi prison camp. Now I'm standing beneath a spaceship that's going to carry an astronaut to the stars. I think we can say we are living the impossible. Let me ask you, if you were a white male, would you wish to be an engineer?"
"I wouldn't have to. I'd already be one."

And then... she more than entertained the impossible. She went and did it. Because she is awesome.

We didn't see quite as much of Mary's relationship with her husband Levi as we did of Katherine and Jim, but I was pleasantly surprised by the realness in the portrayal of their marriage.  Again, I was afraid that we'd be treated to an angsty wrist-on-forehead agonizing on Mary's part - WHICH is more IMPORTANT? her HUSBAND and CHILDREN or her CAREER? and he will NEVER BE suPPORTIVE?!?!?!?!

While such things certainly have happened, that didn't seem to be the case with Mary and Levi, and I was happy that the movie chose to show his initial opposition to her court case (pleading her right to take night classes at the high school to become an engineer) as only the first step in their story.  By the end, he was right there beside her, and she succeeded with his full support. Whether this is actually historically accurate or not (I did buy the book on which the movie is based, and am anxious to start it soon!), it was a nice thing to see. The filmmakers could easily have set up an ending in which Mary chose the scientific path despite Levi's protests (a "nevertheless, she persisted" type of situation that necessitated her persistence past her loved ones as well as the bigotry of strangers), which would have been somewhat depressing, but instead their mutual desire to see justice served and prove wrong the people who wanted to push them back made for a really satisfying ending.

Dorothy Vaughan had a little less screen time than the other two, I thought, and perhaps that was part of what made me a little less interested in her.  Her story is still intriguing, and her quiet push for the right, though not as sassy as Mary's or bold as Katherine's way of making their voices heard, is still inspiring. I'd previously seen Octavia Spencer in a more firecracker-type role, as Minny Jackson in The Help, but I think I liked Dorothy's character almost as much. 

I felt Dorothy's relationship with Vivian Mitchell (little Amy March, all grown up!), though somewhat fictionalized (both Mrs. Mitchell and Paul Stafford were composite characters, drawn from several different people, and did not have actual real-life counterparts), hit pretty close to home even for today. "Despite what you may think, I have nothing against y'all," Vivian tells Dorothy near the end of the movie.  "I'm sure you believe that," Dorothy replies. It's a seemingly innocent and quick exchange, but it called up so many similar conversations I've had and observed even in my own rather sheltered, white, Northeastern existence.  Sometimes bigots and racists don't come dressed in flowing white robes and pointed hoods, or goose-stepping brown uniforms with skulls and crossbones. Sometimes they're people you know, people you respect, people who think that they don't harbor any hatred in their hearts toward people who aren't just like them.  And yet the truth comes out in little snippets here and there-- "it's just the way things are" and "I don't make the rules," easily translate to, "I don't have any problem with the rules, and would rather allow an injustice to continue because I don't want the bother of admitting that the injustice goes on because of people like me." 

I was happy that Vivian's character had softened a bit by the end, though - and in keeping with the movie's use of the main characters' first names (and my own practice in this post), I'm trying to refer to her by her first name, though Dorothy always respectfully calls her Mrs. Mitchell.  She doesn't have a choice in the matter, but by the end of the film Vivian has called her Mrs. Vaughan. I'll admit to a couple of fist-pumps when that happened. :D 

As mentioned above, Paul Stafford wasn't a real person either, but I think his addition to the movie was a good storytelling choice. Every fairy tale needs a good old-fashioned villain, and though this was real life and not a fairy tale, every story needs a well-defined antagonist to let us know why the main character does not get The One Thing They Are Searching For right off the bat.  Paul's character was stuffy, narcissistic, incredibly smart, and maybe just a little too perfectly opposed to everything Katherine wanted (anyone else think he was the mind behind the separate coffee pot?).  Perhaps the mish-mashing of various people who made Katherine's job difficult was a bit heavy-handed, and Paul came across as two-dimensional at times, but again, I can't really complain. Poetic justice was served at the end when Katherine finally put her name alongside his in a report and he brought her a cup of coffee, and I for one wasn't complaining.  It feels good to see that the good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. Miss Prism in The Importance of Being Earnest would tell us that that is what Fiction means, but it's nice to think that it's what real life means sometimes too. 

Oddly enough, this movie isn't about writing.  There's a little nod to the creative/linguistic process in the recurring shot where Katherine types up Paul's notes and relentlessly adds her own name in the byline - she did just as much of the work as he did, and deserves credit for the effort it took to tie all their joint work into a cohesive and concise narrative.  Writing is important, and yet over and over Katherine's writing is discredited because Paul won't stand for a woman's name on the title page alongside his - but the movie still isn't about writing.

Yet I felt the familiar tug of writing-inspiration while watching the movie.  That's part of the highly subjective rubric by which I determine how much I liked a movie. Did I come away from it feeling a creative itch, a wanting-to-learn-more itch, a desire to imagine what could have happened next?  Hidden Figures is based on historical fact, and the blending of fiction and real events fascinated me (in much the same way that Saving Mr. Banks did a few years ago).  I love the way the story came to life through the imagination of the filmmakers - yes, they changed a few things to make the narrative flow more smoothly, but they brought a previously poorly-recognized scientific contribution to light for so many people who might not have known about it otherwise. That, to me, might be one of the highest forms of art achievable. I don't mean to deride fantasy or pure imagination, but in my mind, to take something real and make it seem more real with the power of the right words strung together... that's a feat. That's the kind of thing I want to write.

Someday, that is, when I actually take/find/squeeze out/contrive the time and discipline to sit down and write it. 

P.S. If you're interested in purchasing a copy of Hidden Figures on Amazon, you can do so below!