A Recent Conversation With Gary

When Gary gets enthusiastic about a movie he has seen, he tends to relate the plot with such detail that you could watch the damn move in less time it takes to get the Gary re-enactment. 

About twenty minutes in to his version of every damn detail of Warrior Nun, when I pointedly pointed at the bored expression on my face, he said, “Wait, be patient, I’m almost at the best part.” Then he talked for ten minutes more, until I said:

”And THEN Glencora goes to Europe with Plantagenet Palliser, even though he’s just been asked to be the Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

He went on. ” ... So then the one nun says, even though she’s been healed with the magic halo ... wait .. what?”

I continued, ”So she decides it’s better to be a Duchess than to be poor and in love with Burgo, but then she gets pregnant and it’s really cute how Trollope lets you know because it was serialized in the London papers and of course they couldn’t say someone was ‘pregnant’ and —“

And that’s how I got Gary to stop telling me about Warrior Nun.

Comments

[Arlene]

Ahh, Lady Glencora!
It amazes me how different tastes men and women can have in movies and books--not always, but mostly. The neurophysists/biochemists should look into this.

[TheQueen]

Arlene - I know. Many men seem to really delight in watching women “kick ass” and be violent. Why? Why is this appealing?

[Lisa]

We’re a few episodes into this and I think I’ll really like it when the main character stops being so annoyingly stupid. (But I get why what with coming back to life and no longer being paralyzed, but still.) Just before we started watching this I got the hubby hooked on Diablero (also involves demon hunting with lots of ass kicking) but we can’t watch both shows on one night or we get side characters confused with who’s on what show, lol.

[TheQueen]

Lisa - ha! I just can’t tolerate anything fantasy. Gary loves the fairies and nuns and the like. If it;s science fiction (like Phil Coulson dying repeatedly) I can almost tolerate it.

[KC]

I wonder if watching women be violent is simply a specific instantiation of enjoying watching violence? (I mean: WWF, action movies, demolition rallies, etc.) I could definitely see, if one had any feminist sparks in one at all, veering away from many films because of content that has dissonance with the concept of women being human at all, let alone having agency or intelligence, but nuns being violent? Sounds feminist! Maybe!

[TheQueen]

KC - I did a tiny little bit of research, and a scholarly article suggested it was another way to present the ideal “unattainable” woman. Who was that female character in Mad Max Fury Road? Not interested in love, not interested in the male lead, and on top it could kill a man if he tried to use his “superior” strength to have her. So, no one could have her.

[KC]

Interesting. I wonder what percentage of media sources depicting the ideal "unattainable" woman have her being finally attained by the male lead (or, as with the original Mad Max, apparently have that option opened up to the male lead) vs. what percentage leave her actually unattainable?

[TheQueen]

KC - I don’t know. My fear is that we’re I ever to enter the dating market again I would be expected to kick ass.

[KC]

HA! Well, maybe you can take it up as a hobby, if you do need to learn it.

[TheQueen]

KC - hilarious. I can see having a weekly post on the blog describing how I am able to kick increasing amounts of ass.

[KC]

I would love to see the illustrations of that, parallel to the Painting Progress Photos.

[TheQueen]

KC - it would be like a first person shooter.

[KC]

Duuuuude. While, because Gary, I hope this imagined project does not come to pass, it would be hilarious and fascinating. Sigh.