TV stuffs

[chocolatepot]

Howards End continues to be fantastic. What I like about it is that it goes slower than the Merchant/Ivory film, so the characters just get a bit more development. (The Schlegel sisters also share clothing, which is a subtle touch I love.) As I get older, I relate more and more to Margaret - I'm not sure how old she's supposed to be, I've pictured her as about 30 (maybe because of Emma Thompson) which was certainly not too old for someone to get married in 1910, but old enough that it was like, huh, you're still unattached, then? Which is how I feel people see being long-term single at 30 today, so. So I like having more time to get into her head. To me, the film is third person objective perspective, while this series is third person omniscient.

I want to enjoy Godless, because it really is filmed very well, but even beyond the "too many male characters" and "historical = bloody and sexually violent" issues, I just can't get over the way that "crappy, inaccurate female costuming" is for some reason a fundamental trope of Westerns. Why? Why why why? The costumes appear to be made well, but the people who love Westerns apparently just loooooove those 1960s-1970s Late Victorian Mishmash (with Lots of Hair) outfits and so the designers go out of their way to be ahistorical, and I just. don't get. it. Would it really be bad if the clothing was right? Would people be offended if all the sleeves were fitted or there were fewer loose blouses tucked into skirts?

Comments

[ktlovely]

I think people just can't imagine doing stuff while properly dressed. Like, if you dressed a woman in real Victorian clothing and set her out on the frontier, people would be like "nah she can't do that!" if she were being active. They're wrong, of course!

Joke's on them I trundle firewood and cast iron around in a corset just fine, thanks. It also doesn't keep you from shooting a gun or using your wit.

[starlightmasque]

I would be. I prefer lots of aquanet on my female frontier survivalists. /s

[chocolatepot]

Okay, I'll give you all the hair if we can burn all the bodices with princess seams.

[nuranar]

What Katie said. And also, the Western genre has had a pretty consistent female dress code since the 1940s. (Which, coincidentally, was a Victorian Revival in fashionable clothing.) So it's it's own weird animal. People wouldn't recognize it as a Western if the women didn't look like that. (It applies to men, too. The Western gunfighter look is a movie/TV creation that isn't supported by photography even of outlaws.)

[m_of_disguise]

That's one of the things I love about The Son. It's a Western, but it's a set a little later than most westerns, in the 1910s, and the costuming is really, really well done.

I remember watching the new 3:10 to Yuma and being happily surprised by a couple of ladies that run out of the hotel when the bullets start flying, because they both had on really nice 1880s outfits.

[danabren]

Sometimes it's the designer (there was a designer for Elizabeth(?) quoted in the NYTimes I think, who said that "people aren't interested in accuracy" ARGH). Sometimes it's a producer/director. Sometimes it's an actor (Elizabeth Taylor in Cleopatra, Emma Watson in Beauty & the Beast).

But it's ALWAYS distracting!

Heh, and now I am thinking of watching Penny Dreadful with the Cyborg, and he listening to me squawk about how female leads are never wearing bonnets or coats outside, while I listened to his gripes about the guns being 2-3 years early.