Telly - same old, same old...

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

"Toulon, 1793..."
I may have mentioned this somewhere before, but it was on TV again this afternoon which gave me a chance to get angry and shout at the TV set (to the amusement of friends) all over again. And I've just found it online, so now you can, too, if you want to: http://en.sevenload.com/videos/jFzYVFP-Heroes-and-Villains-Napoleon (that seems to be the whole hour). Yes, the chappie gloating sadistically over the guillotine at the start is Fréron, the pantomime 'villain' of the title, and it was a nice surprise to find this obscure but horrible git the central baddie of the piece (a rare 'serious' (ahem) role for comedian Rob Brydon), but that's where the jollity ends, because, readers, viewers, despite the occasional positive role for the CSP in this little drama, nasty Fréron is here meant to incarnate the 'nasty' Revolution itself. Bummer!

(And no, Augustin Robespierre doesn't get a mention, 'cos if he did it would have to be in a 'positive' context that would screw up the whole 'revolutionaries are pervy little bureaucrats' line of the script...!)

It looks fabulous, though, damn it - why does the devil have the best cinematographers?

Comments

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

why does the devil have the best cinematographers?
Because he has all the money. >.>

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

It was the BBC, so technically I paid for it! (All British people who have a telly have to pay a compulsory TV License - I think it's about £130 a year - to pay for the BBC). Apparently,the BBC pulled out of making the Leveller drama that's on (commercial)Channel 4 at the moment, which I can't help thinking was done 'cos they read the script and said, hang on, sexy revolutionaries talking about wage maximums etc.? We can't have that!
Weirdly, when I posted a thing on here a few months ago about the Ian Hamilton Finlay BBC article that failed to mention the Revolution at all - whilst the camera swung over a Saint-Just speech carved in stone and followed a giant Saint-Just head being wheeled out - a BBC employee replied out of the blue to say they weren't biased in any way...

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

It amounts to the same thing, because they have *control* of the money. It doesn't really matter in the end where it came from, especially since they're evidently not accountable to the public.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

The sad thing about the BBC is that, whilst I've always found them to be on the right, the right-wing press (especially Murdoch-owned, which wants the BBC gone altogether)constantly hounds them for being 'left-wing' or 'liberal'. There's a big campaign at the moment by the rabidly right-wing Daily Mail (a paper that supported the Nazis in the 30's)to 'get' the BBC for 'immorality'(seriously!), and they actually got some people to resign last month...I think the Daily Mail looks at those Southern American Harry Potter bookburnings and thinks 'if only!'

[estellacat.livejournal.com]

I understand what you mean. I'm all too used to that kind of thing in the US--the "mainstream media" here are defintely right-wing on an absolute scale (though perhaps only more or less centrist for the US) and yet the far-right constantly attacks them for not being rabid enough. However, that doesn't change the fact that they are all in fact right-wing.

[trf-chan.livejournal.com]

Weirdly, when I posted a thing on here a few months ago about the Ian Hamilton Finlay BBC article that failed to mention the Revolution at all - whilst the camera swung over a Saint-Just speech carved in stone and followed a giant Saint-Just head being wheeled out - a BBC employee replied out of the blue to say they weren't biased in any way...

O_O I saw that. Very WTF.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

They must trace back when you do a link - the model guillotine bloke did the same, a few weeks after I posted about his website.
I think the BBC keep all complaints emails, too! I bet they laugh about them at social gatherings.

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

I admit, the depiction of EEEVIL!Fréron made me crack up. Yeah yeah, dude was a skeeze, but look! He was also EEEEVIL!

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Citizen Evil, great great great grandfather of Doctor...

Btw, have you eve come across the story that Tallien made a woman sit in the blood under the guillotine all day before killing her? I was wondering what the source was - I've completely forgotten where I came across it, and he is usually portrayed as the super heroic saviour of France, manly protector of damsel in distress and other such balls.

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

I've heard that story attributed to assorted people. I'm even linking it to Eulogue Schneider in my brain, but I think that's just because he used to sentence people to exhibition on the scaffold as a punishment. Honestly, I'm going to say that unless someone can come along and cite that properly I'd be inclined to say that that's one of those stories that has just grown up about the Terror. Which is not to say that it never could have happened, but I don't remember any definite source for it. As much as I dislike Tallien, I can't attribute that to him.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

I don't think it was Schneider, though the only detailed account of him I've read is in Newton-Curtis' Saint-Just book (and he sounded like fun - apart from the arbitrary killing...!) I suppose the counter-revolutionary regions have a lot of word-of-mouth tales of sadistic repression, like that guillotine story - and I daresay some may be true: warzones do seem to release some people's previously hidden inner sadist/perv/psychopath, regardless of the flag they supposedly march under.

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

Ooooh man, I'm watching this and this is HILARIOUS! I am a big fan of child molestor!Fréron. And the random "Your families were seen having a baby baptized. DIE!"

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

And this authentic dialogue! "We are not men you will ever screw with, Bonaparte! I am not a man you will ever screw with!" The canon blowing the dude's head off- straight out of the The Patriot! Somehow they manage to throw in the Good And Noble Barras. Bad foreshadowing! I'm sure Lucile would love to know that Rabbit was slutting it up in Toulon and Marseille while writing her pining love letters. And lots of dramatic slow motion!

Oh man. That was a quality hour of entertainment.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

And the conclusion! Napoleon's greatest achievement - to marry his siblings into royalty!
Gaaaah!

[livviebway.livejournal.com]

I can't get over how awesome child molester!Rabbit was. And then he cheated on her! Ohhh snap! Man, those revolutionaries sure were EEEVIL!

[maelicia.livejournal.com]

All right, so I watched the first minute and I was thoroughly disgusted. Mostly because I could feel the moment I saw the bugs that: "Oh, dear. Those bugs are in a basket where a head is gonna fall, isn't it?" And, oh, how good I am. Déjà-vu? I saw that view in a past life? I actually feared we would see the gory head falling.

This is just gross. Scoring right next to all the equally gross images of the Terror/guillotine I've seen, such as the opening image of a dead dog half-eaten by worms (with a zoom in) in Jacquot's Sade. Are they forced to be terribly macabre, Gothic and Sadean in their filmmaking? What, exactly, has gone so terribly wrong with our period? UGHHHH. I wish neoclassicism could still exist. And I don't care neoclassicism is propaganda. Schama can go fuck himself somewhere, with Gueniffey. Le Beau et le Sublime!

When are they going to censor the guillotine? Thermidorian imagery is pissing me off.

[victoriavandal.livejournal.com]

Unfortunately, I don't think we can blame that on the Thermidorians. I think it's just human nature to be obsessed with death - 'a skull is more interesting than a naked woman', as the painter observes in 'The Seventh Seal', and Public Relations-wise it's incredibly unfortunate that the Revolution adopted a very novel execution device and stuck it in a very public and prominent place. Even without the political element, it remained popular: you could get package holidays to see a guillotining in the 19thc, just as people in the 1970's would go to Spain to watch bullfights - I think the Eiffel Tower was invented to make people think of something else when they thought of Paris!

I think the lesson is, if you are going to kill your political enemies (and personally I wish they hadn't, I wish they'd abolished the death penalty), do it using firing squads - no one ever remembers deaths by firing squad!

[hanriotfran.livejournal.com]

Don't worry, people. It happens in ALL television channels of the world. Here in Argentina, we have similar problems. Not to mention French Television itself, which some months ago aired a TV serie named "Charlotte Corday" (whose introito could be seen at youtube). Of course, in "Charlotte Corday", Jacobins are bad and she was the absolute heroine. I'm used to it..

The only god movie I've ever seen about our dear French Revolution is "La Terreur et la Vertu". They said that "Saint-Just ou la Force des choses" is worth enough to watch, but it'0s hard to me t get it here. *sigh*

HanriotFran (Vanesa)