Tag: classic literature

The Misselthwaite Archives: A Secret Glade in Portland

Posted on by Amethyst

We had a trio of Frances Hodgson Burnett’s books on the shelf from as early as I can remember – A Little Princess, Little Lord Fauntleroy, and The Secret Garden. I read all three when I was pretty young, and saw at least two movie adaptations of each one. All three books feature child protagonists who’ve lost at least one parent. In A Little Princess, Sara Crewe is known for her brave forbearance and her devotion to princessly virtues throughout her riches-to-rags story. In Little Lord Fauntleroy, Cedric Erroll remains the sweet-natured, charismatic apple of his mother’s eye as he goes from being a street urchin in Brooklyn to an English aristocrat.

The Secret Garden stands out among Burnett’s works (and classic children’s literature in general) in that ten-year-old Mary Lennox, orphaned while overseas with her parents, is a total bitch. She’s unlikeable, and I love her for it. Mary has the kind of behavioral issues you’d expect from a kid raised by neglectful narcissists whose idea of “parenting” is giving the kid whatever it takes to shut her up. Not to mention this child has gone through the trauma of finding her parents’ disease-ravaged bodies and being the only one left alive in her home.

So, when I was asked to review The Misselthwaite Archives, I was pleased to see that #MisselArch’s Mary is traumatized, depressed, and a total bitch. Though, as you can see, she’s not ten.

Sophie Giberson as Mary Lennox. Image via The Misselthwaite Archives.

In this adaptation, 17-year-old Mary is sent to live at her widowed uncle’s home in Misselthwaite, a small, preppy town somewhere in Oregon. Teen angst and Portlandia snark suit this character beautifully.

As does the series’ framing device. Most of Mary’s talking-to-the-camera videos are letters to Dr. F.H. Burnett, the therapist she left behind when she moved to Misselthwaite. Others are study exercises with her perpetually cheerful tutor, Phoebe Sower (Martha Sowerby’s counterpart). Phoebe is the one who first introduces Mary to the legend of The Glade. She also introduces Mary to her little brother, Declan.

Dickon Sowerby was one of my biggest “How is a modern webseries going to handle this character?” characters. With his entourage of enchanted woodland creatures, Book Dickon is pretty much a boy Disney Princess. It’s easy and predictable to take him in a Manic Pixie Dream Guy direction. The 1987 film went full Purity Sue/Too Good For This Sinful Earth, telling us in an epilogue that Dickon died in the first World War. (I like to imagine that version of Dickon actually ran away with Walter Blythe and they lived feyly ever after, but I digress.)

#MisselArch goes the opposite way with Declan Sower. He’s a wildlife sanctuary intern who’s brilliant at ecology and animal care, but shy and awkward with humans. He’s as good-natured as his perky sister, but quiet and thoughtful in a way that connects better with Mary’s withdrawn snarkitude. In fact, Declan connects so well with Mary that every video he appears in is inevitably followed by “I ship it!!!!” comments. I have to agree. I’ve always loved Mary for feeling like a real kid, and for once, Dickon feels as real as she does.

Bryce Earhart as Declan Sower. Image via The Misselthwaite Archives.

My biggest question, though, was how #MisselArch would handle Colin Craven. I can’t tell you the answer without a ton of SPOILERS. You’ve been warned. Continue reading “The Misselthwaite Archives: A Secret Glade in Portland” →

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The March Family Letters: Little 21st Century Women

Posted on by Amethyst
Click to go to the official website

I was eight years old the first time I read Little Women. I fell in love with the Marches and identified with all four sisters in different ways. I was a writer and loved adventure and couldn’t manage to do what was expected of me like Jo. I was the oldest and could be too cautious and practical for my own good like Meg. I was quiet and withdrawn and loved music like Beth. I was artistic and used words people didn’t understand and was never taken as seriously as I took myself and totally had a thing for Laurie like Amy.

I’d go on to revisit Little Women  and its sequels throughout the years. I learned more about the historical context of the book. The Alcott family’s involvement in Transcendentalist, bohemian circles. Louisa May Alcott’s first-wave feminism. All of this just made the book more fascinating to me. Age and distance have made some of the book’s imperfections more noticeable, but it’s one of those childhood loves that will always have a special place in my heart.

Despite all this, somehow the existence of The March Family Letters escaped my knowledge until this month. To be honest, I was more apprehensive about this one than any of the literary webseries I’ve watched. There are so many ways a modern Little Women could go horribly wrong. Would Jo be a straw feminist or a misogynist? Would Meg be an unsympathetic killjoy in the tradition of grouchy sitcom wives? Would Beth be a Purity Sue, canonized by virtue of disability? Would Amy exist to remind the audience that being a girly girl makes you a terrible person, or at least a really shallow one?

Don’t worry, my inner voice whispered as she wrapped me in a blanket and brought me some hot chocolate. It’s being distributed by Pemberley Digital. Click the playlist.

OMG I CAN’T EVEN TELL YOU HOW OBSESSED I AM WITH THIS SHOW. Continue reading “The March Family Letters: Little 21st Century Women” →

So, I finally binge-watched Carmilla

Posted on by Amethyst

This was supposed to be my Halloween post. I’ve actually gotten a few requests to review this literary vlog series. I kept putting it off because I knew once I got started, I’d want to watch the whole thing in one sitting. I was right. First, a little background on the source material.

Funeral, illustration by Michael Fitzgerald for Carmilla in The Dark Blue, January 1872. Image via Wikipedia.

Carmilla is a vampire novella by J. Sheridan Le Fanu that predates Dracula by twenty-six years. Aside from its place in the history of the horror literary genre, it’s noteworthy in that it features a tragic romance between the eponymous female vampire and the human female narrator. This isn’t subtext speculation or revisionist history. It’s right there in the 1871 text.

She used to place her pretty arms about my neck, draw me to her, and laying her cheek to mine, murmur with her lips near my ear, “Dearest, your little heart is wounded; think me not cruel because I obey the irresistible law of my strength and weakness; if your dear heart is wounded, my wild heart bleeds with yours. In the rapture of my enormous humiliation I live in your warm life, and you shall die–die, sweetly die–into mine. I cannot help it; as I draw near to you, you, in your turn, will draw near to others, and learn the rapture of that cruelty, which yet is love; so, for a while, seek to know no more of me and mine, but trust me with all your loving spirit.” And when she had spoken such a rhapsody, she would press me more closely in her trembling embrace, and her lips in soft kisses gently glow upon my cheek. – Carmilla, Chapter IV

So, yeah. Basically Carmilla was Twilight for Victorian girls if Edward was a woman and died at the end. It’s one of my favorite classical guilty pleasures. Laura’s intense attraction to Carmilla coupled with her fear and frustration at having these feelings in the first place is written as effectively as any Austen heroine’s. Although Carmilla meets the tragic end that all monsters must in classic Gothic horror, she’s a remarkably sympathetic character. One easily gets the impression that, contrary to Proto Van Helsing’s slander, her feelings for Laura become true love, not the inhuman lust she’s accused of. The end leaves it nearly certain that, despite Laura’s participation in Carmilla’s death, Carmilla’s forbidden love was returned:

It was long before the terror of recent events subsided; and to this hour the image of Carmilla returns to memory with ambiguous alternations–sometimes the playful, languid, beautiful girl; sometimes the writhing fiend I saw in the ruined church; and often from a reverie I have started, fancying I heard the light step of Carmilla at the drawing room door. – Carmilla, Chapter XVI

Carmilla the webseries replaces the Gothic castle of the original with a modern-day college campus. If you think “lesbian coed vampires” sounds like a great premise for a porno, you’re going to be disappointed. If you think it’s a great premise for a modern update that keeps all the elements that made the original novella awesome while updating the elements that have thankfully changed with the times, you’re going to love this webseries as much as I do.

carmilla and laura
Natasha Negovanlis as Carmilla, and Elise Bauman as Laura.

My first question about this update was how they’d handle the lesbian stuff. The answer is “Very well.” Although the mostly-female cast is certainly good-looking, the show obviously wasn’t shot or staged for the male gaze. The writing makes you care more about whether Laura and Carmilla will fall in love than whether they’ll make out. Laura’s queerness is taken for granted, not played for angst or drama. The same goes for the other queer characters. I say “queer” because the writing doesn’t specify whether any of these young women are lesbian or bi. No one in-universe seems to care. Nor does anyone find it shocking or incredulous that platonic friendships exist between queer women, or between queer and straight women. (Actually, I’m not sure any of these women are straight. But there are definitely women who are close to each other and don’t seem like they’re ready to make out the second you turn your back, something plenty of shows with supposedly all-hetero casts can’t get right.)

My second question was how they handle the vampire stuff. (SPOILERS AHEAD.) This Carmilla is indeed an actual vampire. Her backstory is nearly the same in this series as in the original novella. And, like any good postmodern monster, she can and does choose whether to use her curse for good or evil. In this incarnation, she’s covertly helping the young women she’s supposed to lure to her dark mistress. Which was always my theory about the original. Think Snape as a double agent for the Death Eaters. Now that I think of it, that’s a pretty good way to sum up this Carmilla. She’s FemSnape.

My third and most important question was whether Carmilla and Laura would live (or un-die) happily ever after in this version. I don’t have a definitive answer for that yet since the series is still running, with updates every Tuesday and Thursday. But the way the first 31 episodes have gone, I’ll be surprised and heartbroken if they don’t.

Want to check it out for yourself? Click here to go to the YouTube page, or watch the complete playlist embedded below. Click here to read the full text of the original novella on Gutenberg, available in-browser or as a free e-reader download.

Social media guilt: Speculation on the fall of Selfie

Posted on by Amethyst
John Cho as Henry Higgs; Karen Gillan as Eliza Dooley. Image via Variety.

Selfie, the ABC sitcom remake of My Fair Lady starring Amy Pond as Eliza Doolittle and Mister Sulu II as Henry Higgins, has already been canceled. I’m sad to see it go, because I feel like it never got a chance to meet its full potential. I’m not going to pretend to know why it’s being canceled. But what’s the point of having a blog if I can’t speculate on things I know nothing about? Here goes.

Hypothesis: Selfie failed because it was obsessed with shaming its target demographic for using what could’ve been its most effective marketing tool.

Now, it could easily be argued that the show was about Eliza’s misuse of social media, not social media itself. The possibility to take the show in that direction was what kept me watching. Unfortunately, though, it never quite got there. Each episode reinforced messages that we see everywhere: That our Facebook friends aren’t real friends. That we’ve lost the art of meaningful communication because of our communication devices. That using a digital platform to talk about yourself and your life is a sure sign of narcissism. That if you have EVER dared to take a photograph of yourself and utilize a platform that :gasp: allows other people to see it, you are a hopeless attention whore who thinks the world, nay, the universe, revolves around you.

To be fair, Selfie’s Henry Higgs is as lost as its Eliza Dooley. Although Henry prides himself on not being the type to settle for shallow digital connection, he’s as lacking in real-world connections as his insta-famous mentee. It’s obvious that Selfie wants to be a show about two out-of-balance opposites meeting each other in the middle. But this misses the entire point of the source material. My Fair Lady (like the non-musical play it was adapted from, Pygmalion) was a satire of middle-class manners. In the original, there was nothing wrong with Eliza. And Eliza didn’t substantially change over the course of the story. Her basic personality, which was fine to begin with, remained intact. Higgins simply changed the way she spoke, dressed, and comported herself so that she could successfully conform to upper-middle-class arbitrary social conventions. The guttersnipe became a princess just by putting on a pretty dress and pronouncing her consonants. The story mocked the society that accepted or rejected Eliza based on these shallow, arbitrary standards, not Eliza herself for playing their game and winning.

I feel like Selfie could’ve been so much better if it had taken its social media farce in this direction. It could’ve subverted the platitudes of social media guilt that have become as ubiquitous as social media itself. Why aren’t Facebook friends real friends? They’re actual people. They aren’t computer programs. Isn’t it your choice if you’re adding people you don’t want to be friends with, or if you’re posting shallow or drama-filled statuses instead of using this neutral tool to cultivate real friendships? Why can’t phone apps be a way to enhance meaningful communication? That funny Pinterest pin you send your sister could spark a conversation that brings you closer than ever. Why can’t people read their family’s and friends’ posts because they’re sincerely interested in these people’s lives, and why can’t you post things about your own life with the understanding that this sincere interest is mutual? Maybe the real narcissist is the person who’s annoyed by their family and friends wanting to – OHMYGOD – talk about their lives! Why does taking a selfie have to mean that you expect the whole universe to stop what it’s doing and worship at your altar? Can’t it be just another chapter in humanity’s ongoing quest to document our existence? Part of a tradition that goes back to cave paintings?

But now back to my elephant-in-the-room hypothesis. Social media is an invaluable platform for promoting a work of entertainment. Especially for a generation that keeps finding new ways to avoid viewing paid advertisements. We Millennials will adblock our favorite shows out of existence, but we’ll check out that thing our BFF keeps livetweeting. Remember my post about The Quest, another ABC show? I didn’t notice a single commercial for it, even though, unlike most of my Millennial friends, I watch programming on an actual television set. I started watching The Quest because my sister sent me a text about it. On her phone. And then my sister and I joined thousands of other people who tweeted about the show on the hashtag #TheQuestArmy. It was by no means the first show I’d consistently livetweeted. But, although I tuned in to watch Selfie every week, I can’t say I was ever inclined to livetweet a show that kept telling me in the most anvillicious ways possible to put down my damn phone.

Ironically, I think Selfie might’ve had a better shot on a different platform. Since The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, YouTube has been flooded with modern adaptations of classic English literature. Most of them, it seems, star cute redheaded female leads. Selfie could’ve easily had a place among them.

But to do that, they would’ve had to cater to all those millennial narcissists on social media.

10 Books That Made An Impression On Me

Posted on by Amethyst

You’ve probably seen this challenge on Facebook already – list 10 books that have made an impression on you. When one of my friends tagged me last weekend, I decided to narrow it down to ten by focusing on books that I feel have influenced me as a writer. Here’s what I came up with, listed roughly in the order in which I first read them. All images link to listings on Barnes & Noble’s website. Continue reading “10 Books That Made An Impression On Me” →

Frankenstein, MD – It’s Aliiiiiiiive!

Posted on by Amethyst

I read Frankenstein about six years ago when I was discovering steampunk. I was expecting to like it in a so-bad-it’s-good way akin to the B-movie neckbolt cliches. I ended up loving it for its engaging characters (including the philosophical, articulate Monster), its thoughtful exploration of enduring themes like familial responsibility and ethics in scientific research, and its legitimate, well-written horror.

So I was ecstatic when I found out about Pemberley Digital’s plans to follow Emma Approved with an adaptation of Frankenstein. And that they were partnering with PBS. And that Victor Frankenstein (the creator, not the creature) was being rewritten as Victoria!

Anna Lore as Victoria Frankenstein, Steve Zaragoza as Iggy DeLacey. Image via Frankenstein MD (click to visit the official site)

Frankenstein, MD premiered last Tuesday with three episodes, followed by a fourth on Friday. It’s ostensibly a PBS science vlog hosted by two promising almost-MDs, Victoria Frankenstein and Ludwig “Iggy” DeLacey. Like The Lizzie Bennet Diaries and Emma Approved, the writers are taking plenty of liberties with the source material. For example, the vlog does not open with its titular character stranded in the Arctic. It’s a reasonable alteration, I suppose. As is adding a stand-in for Igor the Hunchback Lab Assistant, a character who doesn’t appear in the book, but has become an inextricable part of Frankenstein mythos.

Overall, I’m impressed by how many elements I’m recognizing from the book. The silent cameraman/editor, Robert Walton, is a nod to the book’s framing device of Frankenstein relaying his story to an Arctic explorer of that name. Victoria’s mentor, Dr. Abraham Waldman, was a prominent character in the book. Victoria’s childhood friends Eli Lavenza and Rory Clerval are gender-flipped versions of Elizabeth Lavenza, Victor’s love interest, and Henry Clerval, Victor’s best friend. Victoria and Iggy’s university, Engle State University, takes its name from the book’s Ingolstadt University.

Most of all, there’s Frankenstein herself. Victoria mirrors Victor in that she’s passionate about pushing the limits of medical science. Nothing gets in the way of her research. Don’t tell her something’s impossible. “Impossible” just means no one’s figured out how to do it yet. Petty things like her subject’s clinical death are no impediment to her. She’ll just shock that bitch back to life. Drug-induced paralysis causing a panic attack? No prob. She’ll bring the subject out of it with MOAR DRUGS! Sure, the higher-ups may question her ethics (and her sanity), but genius and determination will triumph if Victoria has anything to do with it.

In short, Victoria Frankenstein is a mad scientist.

And she is the most adorable mad scientist you will ever see. Great writing, great comedic foiling from the rest of the cast, and a great performance by Anna Lore combine to make Victoria’s megalomaniacal superiority complex come across as hilarious and endearing.

The story has been light-hearted and upbeat so far. I’ll be interested to see how Frankenstein, MD handles the book’s heavier material. The book is full of murder, arson, identity crises, and like I said earlier, legitimate horror. The book closes with (SPOILER) anticipation of both creator’s and creature’s death. In the end, the reader is left contemplating which was the true monster. Pemberley Digital did an impressive job handling the more serious, uncomfortable issues in Pride and Prejudice and Emma. I’m confident that they’ll do the same for Frankenstein, and curious to see how they manage it.

Click here to watch Frankenstein, MD on the official website, or watch the playlist embedded below. If this has inspired you to read Mary Shelley’s original book, click here to get a free ePub, Kindle, or browser ebook at Project Gutenberg.

Green Gables Fables: Anne Shirley, Vlogger

Posted on by Amethyst

It seems The Lizzie Bennet Diaries has started a trend. Vlogs based on classic literature and starring cute redheaded girls seem to be popping up everywhere. The latest one to suck me in is based on the series that pretty much defined my adolescence, Anne of Green Gables.

Anne Shirley, 17-year-old Canadian foster kid and vlogger

It’s remarkable how very little about the original story is changed in Green Gables Fables. Anne is an orphan who’s spent most of her life in neglectful foster homes. She’s just been taken in by Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, a middle-aged brother and sister who’d asked for a boy and got Anne because of a clerical error. Anne clashes with Marilla’s best friend, Rachel Lynde. She goes to a new school and meets lots of new friends and frenemies, including a boy named Gilbert Blythe. She bonds quickly with Matthew and slowly but surely with Marilla. And she’s obsessed with her BFF, Diana Barry.

It all translates really well with a few modern updates. The series, of course, is ostensibly Anne’s vlog. Her epic fight with Rachel Lynde happens over an insensitive tweet. Diana meets Anne through Tumblr, a setting which makes their occasional lapses into Victoriana and referral to each other as “bosom friends” seem oddly believable. The infamous slate broken over Gilbert Blythe’s head is a magnetic locker board (thank God it wasn’t a tablet!).

What really sells this webseries is that it keeps the heart of the books. Anne Shirley is exactly as Anne Shirley should be. She’s a charming, talkative, nerdy, melodramatic, imaginative kid who’s been dealt some really bad luck, but who continually rises from the depths of despair to find kindred spirits who will love her as she is and to make the world a little more like she imagines it.

And she prefers to be called Cordelia.

Want to check out Green Gables Fables? Click here to go to the YouTube channel, or watch the playlist below.

Peter and Wendy: Millennials in Neverland

Posted on by Amethyst

I’ve seen the first four episodes of The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy, and I have no idea what to make of it. It’s a lot of fun. I’m just not sure what it is yet.

Top: Kyle Walters as Peter, Paula Rhodes as Wendy. Bottom: Graham Kurtz as John, Brennan Murray as Micheal, and Lovlee Carroll as Lily. Image via The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy.

Here’s the description from the webseries’ official site:

Everyone has to grow up, right?  Well, not if Peter Pan has anything to say about it!  Peter, a late-twenties man-child and comic book artist living in the small town of Neverland Ohio, has three life goals: 1)  NEVER GROW UP.  2) Have as much fun as humanly possible while doing as little work as possible.  3) Win the heart of his best friend, Wendy Darling.  With his friends John, Michael, Lily and his fairy, Tinkerbell, Peter is nailing goals 1 and 2.  Goal 3, however, is a bit trickier. Wendy Darling, an advice vlogger and overall go-getter, is tired of the never-changing small town of Neverland Ohio and wants to see the world, to become… an adult.  It’s Peter vs Growing Up in the battle for Wendy! But is growing up really the enemy? Or is it the solution?

I heard about Peter and Wendy through Socially Awkward Darcy, a Facebook fanpage for Pemberley Digital’s projects. Producer Jenni Powell also produced The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, and lead actor Kyle Walters played Edward Denham in last summer’s webseries/RPG Welcome to Sanditon. This has a different feel than Pemberley Digital’s canon, though. It’s like comparing USA Network to Comedy Central.

And I like Comedy Central. Peter and Wendy made me laugh. A lot. This is exactly how you’d picture Peter Pan and the Darlings if they were fifteen years older and living in modern America and literally nothing else was changed about them. Peter is goofy, cheeky, and goes back and forth between charming and infuriating. John takes everything too seriously, but is really no less childish than Peter or Michael. He’s essentially Dwight K. Schrute, right down to being Assistant [To The] Editor-in-Chief of his father’s newspaper. He’s contrasted and complemented by Michael, who is Michael Scott as played by Michael Cera. In the fourth episode, Michael and Peter skip work to play video games and share a “magic” brownie. (Yeah, it’s that kind of show.) Wendy, mature to a fault and surrogate mom to her brothers, could’ve easily be written as the resident shrewish buzzkill. She isn’t. She’s quirky, sweet, and fun, and when she tells the boys (and us) that everyone has to grow up sometime, we sympathize with her and want to see Peter and her brothers reach this epiphany, too. So far she’s my favorite character.

Lily Bagha, Tiger Lily’s counterpart, has only appeared in the series trailer and opening credit sequence so far. I’m especially interested to see how the series handles her character. I’m very happy to see that they cast a woman of color, which is more than I can say about another Peter Pan reimagining in the works. This “Indian princess” appears to be of the East Indian variety. I’m not sure how I feel about that. As hugely problematic as Tiger Lily’s portrayal has been in various incarnations, she’s always had a special place in my heart as a female fantasy character whose appearance and ancestry were similar to  mine. I can’t help feeling like Peter and Wendy changed Lily’s background as a cop-out, like it was easier to avoid portraying a Native American character poorly by just not portraying one at all. But I can understand and respect the choice to err on the side of sensitivity. And, like I said, at least she’s still brown. I’m withholding judgment and willing to be convinced.

The weirdest part of this wonderfully weird show is Tinkerbell. We never see her. She’s always on the other side of the camera in Peter’s videos. And she’s a fairy. An actual fairy. A tiny glittery creature that flies and communicates through chiming sounds. And no one sees this as odd or remarkable in any way. At first I was like, “Does this mean the show is set in a parallel universe where everyone knows fairies exist and is cool with that? Does it mean there’s a deeper reason none of the characters have left Neverland, OH? Is Neverland like The Village? Or The Truman Show? Is Tinkerbell a mentally challenged human that everyone pretends is a tiny glittery fairy? Is Peter a mentally challenged human whose friends refuse to contradict his pet delusion?” Regardless, I loved the fact that Tink’s personality is exactly what it was in the Disney cartoon: a catty, jealous bitch who adores Peter and is possibly plotting against Wendy’s life. She cracked me up then and she cracks me up now.

Upon my second viewing, I discovered the Kensington Chronicle’s website and had my questions answered. Fairies are a real thing in the Neverland universe. The Chronicle’s website describes Tinkerbell as the only fairy officially in residence, but that didn’t stop a number of roleplaying Twitter accounts for fairy characters from popping up. Yes, it looks like Peter and Wendy is going to follow Welcome to Sanditon‘s footsteps in incorporating a social media roleplaying game. I hope they do a better job than Sanditon at keeping the main story as the focus. I found Sanditon hard to follow without being involved in the RPG aspect, which I know is hypocritical since I was one of the first people to join Harriet’s Music Club in Emma Approved. (That reminds me, I need to record a “Breathe and Believe” cover this week.) (Update 6/30/14 – I did.) Anyway, click on the Kensington Chronicle even if you aren’t into RP. It has backstory info like the fairy stuff I just shared, Peter’s cartooning, John’s column, and links to Michael’s Tumblr and Wendy’s Pinterest. And, of course, all the characters are on Twitter.

Want to check out The New Adventures of Peter and Wendy for yourself? Here’s the series trailer:

And here’s the beginning of the full playlist:

I don’t know if I believe yet, but so far, I’m clapping.

Thug Notes Be All Up In Y’alls Librizzle. Word.

Posted on by Amethyst

Yo. This here Sparky Sweets, PhD. Join me as I drop some of da illest classical literature summary and analysis that yo ass ever heard. Educate yo self, son.

~ Thug Notes Facebook Page

Gentle readers, this week it is my pleasure to introduce to you a charming and insightful program devoted to bringing classic literature to the masses, aptly entitled Thug Notes.

Promo for review of The Hobbit. Image via Facebook.

Each episode of this webseries opens with a stately, elegant theme reminiscent of Masterpiece Theater. We join Sparky Sweets, PhD (played by co-writer Greg Edwards) in an elegant library filled with timeless literary classics. In the first half of the episode, Dr. Sweets summarizes the selected volume for his gentle viewers. In the second half, he delivers a brief yet impressively thorough analysis of the book’s themes and literary background, highlighting key quotes from the book and sometimes its literary influences onscreen. All of this is accompanied by delightful stick figure composite animated illustrations. The highlight, of course, is that with the exception of verbatim quotes, Dr, Sweets’ reviews are conducted entirely in the vernacular commonly associated with organized crime in urban America, i.e. “gangsta.”

Selected volumes may include  classic fantasy like The Hobbit, in which dwarves enlist the aid of Bilbo Baggins because “some dragon be shackin’ on their turf,”

Greek epics like Homer’s Odyssey, in which “[Bleep] be gettin’ real up in the kingdom of Ithica,”

Or even romances like Pride and Prejudice, in which Dr. Sweets says of Mrs. Bennet, “I ain’t sayin’ she a gold digger, but Bingley sure as hell ain’t no broke [bleep].”

You may recall me mentioning that the stereotyping of persons of Latin American ancestry as “thug” or “ghetto” is a cause of exceeding great displeasure to me. Such stereotyping is no less displeasing when applied to Americans of African ancestry. However, when a negative stereotype is satirized and subverted by a skilled comedian, that is quite another matter. Edwards and his co-writers are evidently people of excellent intellect, education, and refinement, a fact made all the more prominent by Sweets’ exaggerated thuggish persona. While the language and at times the subject matter of these reviews are unsuited for the workplace, Thug Notes are a worthy pursuit if one wishes to combine education with entertainment. Click here to peruse them at your leisure.