Points of View

Dear BBC,

I very much liked your recent TV series The Hollow Crown. I hope you will make more Shakespeare plays into Hollow Crowns and, as I am a cat who likes Shakespeare a lot, I have some suggestions for you.

I think it would be good if you made Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra and got James Purefoy to be Mark Antony in them. Also, any other actors reprising their roles from the TV series Rome would be a bonus.

What about getting Rowan Atkinson and Hugh Laurie to be Edmund and Edgar in King Lear?

If you think carrying on the series from where it left off is a good idea, then you could do Henry VI - Part One next. I would suggest Gareth Thomas and Paul Darrow would be very good as Gloucester and Winchester (come to think of it, Paul Darrow would be good in any Shakespeare play because he is great). I think Sean Bean would be a good choice as Talbot.

There are three Henry VI plays, and they are followed by Richard III, which makes four so they could be a whole second season of Hollow Crowns. I think this is a good idea. Can has more Hollow Crowns please?

Revolution: Duncan reviews Shōjo Kakumei Utena

Part Three - "The Akio Car Arc"

While researching this review (on Wikipedia, naturally - this is the blog of a cat made from socks, not an academic paper), I found that Revolutionary Girl Utena is usually divided into four story arcs, the first two of which I covered in my previous reviews. Personally, I would be happy enough to divide it into three because, while there is a very clear dividing line at the start and end of "The Black Rose Saga" separating it from the storylines that precede and follow it, I think the third and fourth 'official' arcs do not have a distinct boundary.

I have finally decided to split my review into four parts, corresponding with the usual four arcs, because I wrote up to the end of the third arc back in March and then left this post in draft form since then. Part Four will follow if and when I get round to writing it up.

In "The Akio Car Arc," Anthy's brother Akio emerges as the principal antagonist for the remainder of the series. He manipulates Saionji, Miki, Ruka (the boy from Jury's love triangle, and also a great fencer), Jury and Nanami into further duels with Utena, after first giving them a ride in his car.

The car is symbolic of the threshold between childhood/adolescence and adulthood, and goes with Akio's title of "End of the World" (referring to the "World" of Childhood). Once they have ridden in Akio's car they are - symbolically - adults, and are ready to face the still adolescent Utena.

One of the things that particularly impressed me about the series is that it justifies the ages of the principal characters, rather than the protagonists being adolescents simply because that is the age group of the target audience. The duelists have to be adolescents because... adults wouldn't act like that. It is probably not a coincidence that Neon Genesis Evangelion is the only other TV series (that I know of) which does this, and in both cases it adds strength to the series.

So is it really possible for something as simple as a 'magic' car ride to rid them of all their childhood hangups and emotional baggage, and allow them entry into the world of adults (represented by Akio)? Of course not.  They are all manipulated by Akio, fooled into thinking that one last duel with Utena Tenjou will solve all their problems and give them what they want.

The storyline involving Nanami is particularly well done, because it manages to turn her from the bullying comic-relief that we, the audience, can love to hate and laugh at when things go against her (which they inevitably do), into a genuinely pitiable character whom we cannot help but feel sorry for when her world is turned upside down by Akio's machinations.

Jury's plotline also has a strong conclusion, which I feel it ties in with themes of the series as a whole, and which are only obvious from the point of view of having seen the entire story. In brief - I see Jury as a failed Utena, whose betrayal by the one she was closest to has made her jaded and unable to move on emotionally. Utena has yet to face the same trial at this point in the series so I will say no more, though I may return to the comparison between their characters in the final part of my series review.

Utena wins all these duels, of course. But just when it looks as though there is only Touga and Akio for her still to fight and overcome, the series takes a different direction. This is "The End of the World Saga," and it begins when Akio seduces Utena - who is still completely oblivious that Akio is "End of the World" or even that he is involved with the Rose Bride duels at all.

After this... it gets weird.

Continued in Part Four.

The Hollow Crown

"For God's sake, let us sit upon the ground
And tell sad stories of the death of kings;
How some have been deposed; some slain in war,
Some haunted by the ghosts they have deposed;
Some poison'd by their wives: some sleeping kill'd;
All murder'd: for within the hollow crown
That rounds the mortal temples of a king
Keeps Death his court and there the antic sits,
Scoffing his state and grinning at his pomp,
Allowing him a breath, a little scene,
To monarchize, be fear'd and kill with looks,
Infusing him with self and vain conceit,
As if this flesh which walls about our life,
Were brass impregnable, and humour'd thus
Comes at the last and with a little pin
Bores through his castle wall, and farewell king!"

I have been watching Shakespeare on TV because there has been a lot of it on TV recently. Some of it has been documentaries with Jeremy Irons or Derek Jacobi in them - I still don't understand documentaries, even ones about Shakespeare; at one point I thought Derek Jacobi was saying that Shakespeare's plays weren't written by Shakespeare but that can't be right because that would be very silly indeed.
I am only a cat but even I know that this theory was only put forward by Horatio Smith in the film Pimpernel Smith to annoy the nazi baddy, nobody watching was supposed to believe him.

Anyway, not all of the Shakespeare on TV has been confusing documentaries. There was a new version of Richard II which didn't have Derek Jacobi in it. It was called The Hollow Crown and had Ben Whishaw as King Richard and Patrick Stewart as John of Gaunt. James Purefoy was wasted in a small role which meant he wasn't in it nearly as much as he should have been. He played Mark Antony in Rome and I hope he will be in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra one day.

The second part of The Hollow Crown was Henry IV - Part 1, which had Jeremy Irons in it as King Henry IV, but my favourite character in that is still Harry Hotspur, who was played very well by Joe Armstrong. Unlike the other version of this play that I have seen, the northern lords had accents. Duncan says this is because they are from The North, which is to the south of where we live. Confused cat is confused.

The internets tells me that there will be two more parts of The Hollow Crown, which I am looking forward to watching already.