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Weekend Update
Jan. 11th, 2021 10:40 am(Brief Break from Current Events):
One of the things I always appreciated about the 1950s SF/Horror novel A Scent of New-Mown Hay was that some thought had clearly been put into how the villain’s mad-science would actually work. TIL that’s probably because it was based on a real thing, although afaik the real-life “gamma gardeners” had more peaceful intentions.
Finally gave in and started binge-watching Twin Peaks – have now seen about a third of the original two seasons; I gather I should also see Firewalk With Me before starting the 2017 Return.
I knew from clips and fannish references that there was a fair bit of deliberate humour -- always the more conventional stuff that subverts itself through the introduction of awkwardly realistic details. The example that leaps to mind is a bit in (iirc) S2, where Coop and Sherriff Truman come to the hospital room of a witness who’s regained consciousness, in the hopes she can help their investigation – totally normal scenario for a police procedural, but when the two lawmen try to sit by her bedside, they find their seats are the wrong height and spend the next minute or so trying to adjust them before they can begin showing her sketches of possible suspects and the scene turns dramatic again. By contrast, Coop’s weird visions are perfectly serious.
I realized after a bit that what it all reminded me of was Kids In the Hall, if the Canadian sketch-comedy series had leant even one degree more towards drama. I suppose it’s also partly because the two shows date from the same era, but they definitely share a vibe in which conventional realism is ignored, but stripping it away exposes a layer of emotional realism – the weirder the situation, the more sincerity the actors bring to their performances. Googling the two titles together finds a number of posts by other fans who seem to have noticed this.
ETA— Other notes on stuff I’ve been thinking about: parodies that show familiarity with the original work or era being parodied vs. ones that are based on earlier parody of the subject. Some of this is me having been on Tumblr long enough that when people start making fun of Tumblr posts from Back in the Day, I know what they’re refencing, but I also find myself trying to recall if I ever *actually* saw anybody address their readers as “tumblypoos," and if not, was it just because I was lucky enough to avoid those, or are the modern posters exaggerating the cringe factor? See also – actual slang from any era vs. cliched depictions of that slang*, mid-20th-century depictions of 19th-century popular culture (in which the melodramas are dumbed way, way down, and all magazine cartoons have the punchline “collapse of stout party".)
ETA2 – Also started thinking again about a difference between North American and British folk-horror fantasy, which I think can be summed up as “Anglican Magic.”
*then there’s the subcategory “real-life teen slang vs. advertisers trying to imitate it, and the latter being what generally gets recorded for posterity." I can't recall anybody actually exclaiming RADICAL! in real life during my adolescence, though perhaps there were originally youth subcultures somewhere where it was common. I do recall seeing a serious tv news piece in the early '90s that described a bunch of supposedly common teen slang expression which I had never encountered before and have never read or heard since -- I suspect the teens they asked were just making stuff up to troll the adults.
One of the things I always appreciated about the 1950s SF/Horror novel A Scent of New-Mown Hay was that some thought had clearly been put into how the villain’s mad-science would actually work. TIL that’s probably because it was based on a real thing, although afaik the real-life “gamma gardeners” had more peaceful intentions.
Finally gave in and started binge-watching Twin Peaks – have now seen about a third of the original two seasons; I gather I should also see Firewalk With Me before starting the 2017 Return.
I knew from clips and fannish references that there was a fair bit of deliberate humour -- always the more conventional stuff that subverts itself through the introduction of awkwardly realistic details. The example that leaps to mind is a bit in (iirc) S2, where Coop and Sherriff Truman come to the hospital room of a witness who’s regained consciousness, in the hopes she can help their investigation – totally normal scenario for a police procedural, but when the two lawmen try to sit by her bedside, they find their seats are the wrong height and spend the next minute or so trying to adjust them before they can begin showing her sketches of possible suspects and the scene turns dramatic again. By contrast, Coop’s weird visions are perfectly serious.
I realized after a bit that what it all reminded me of was Kids In the Hall, if the Canadian sketch-comedy series had leant even one degree more towards drama. I suppose it’s also partly because the two shows date from the same era, but they definitely share a vibe in which conventional realism is ignored, but stripping it away exposes a layer of emotional realism – the weirder the situation, the more sincerity the actors bring to their performances. Googling the two titles together finds a number of posts by other fans who seem to have noticed this.
ETA— Other notes on stuff I’ve been thinking about: parodies that show familiarity with the original work or era being parodied vs. ones that are based on earlier parody of the subject. Some of this is me having been on Tumblr long enough that when people start making fun of Tumblr posts from Back in the Day, I know what they’re refencing, but I also find myself trying to recall if I ever *actually* saw anybody address their readers as “tumblypoos," and if not, was it just because I was lucky enough to avoid those, or are the modern posters exaggerating the cringe factor? See also – actual slang from any era vs. cliched depictions of that slang*, mid-20th-century depictions of 19th-century popular culture (in which the melodramas are dumbed way, way down, and all magazine cartoons have the punchline “collapse of stout party".)
ETA2 – Also started thinking again about a difference between North American and British folk-horror fantasy, which I think can be summed up as “Anglican Magic.”
*then there’s the subcategory “real-life teen slang vs. advertisers trying to imitate it, and the latter being what generally gets recorded for posterity." I can't recall anybody actually exclaiming RADICAL! in real life during my adolescence, though perhaps there were originally youth subcultures somewhere where it was common. I do recall seeing a serious tv news piece in the early '90s that described a bunch of supposedly common teen slang expression which I had never encountered before and have never read or heard since -- I suspect the teens they asked were just making stuff up to troll the adults.
