The Tudors, Reviewed: Sartorial Snark, But No Spoilers

[akirlu]

How seriously is one supposed to be able to take a 16th C. England in which none of the women, including the very proper, very Catholic Queen Catherine, owns a single shift? Or a hood, for that matter? Many of them cannot, so it seems, even afford sleeves. As a result, we are treated to the spectacle of Tudor women routinely traipsing around the countryside, in public, with their hair, their shoulders, and even their entire arms bare for anyone to see.

This is not to excuse the men, who, in Tudor times, had an unquenchable penchant for vinyl doublets, tacky plastic jewels, and unbearably bad hats. Waugh! Honestly, I don't see how anyone is supposed to pay the least bit of attention to the supposed dramatic content with Anne Boleyn swanning about with her razor cut, sausage curled, peekaboo-parted, totally anachronistic haircut bouncing all over, and Cardinal Wolsey progressing from one spavined, polyester square cap to a worse one with every new scene. And what on Earth is Catherine of Aragon doing with a brass partrige stuck on her head? Yes, I fully recognize that Tudor headgear was eccentric- and comical-looking to the modern eye, but it doesn't follow that just any eccentric-and-comical-looking headgear will suffice to signal that These People Are Tudors, You Know.

Moreover, waving naked titties around isn't actually a substitute for story-telling. Even if you like naked titties, and indeed, who doesn't?

Comments

[smofbabe.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the warning. When I saw Ang Lee's version of Austen's "Sense & Sensibility" in a theatre with some friends from work, I thoroughly embarrassed them by inadvertently blurting out about 15 minutes into the film: "Their father just died and they're wearing colors?!?!?"

[threeringedmoon.livejournal.com]

I had a similar problem when I watched the recent Masterpiece Mansfield Park. I could have coped with Rose as Fanny, but I couldn't get past that hair flying all over the place.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Yes, I had the same problem with that version of Mansfield Park, though I was also less sanguine about Billie Piper as Fanny. Piper just doesn't have the subtlety and nuance to do Fanny sympathetically as she is written, so she just dispensed with the "as she is written" part. But Mansfield Park is one of the two most problematic Austen novels for translation to film. So far the best version I've seen was the 1983 miniseries adaptation by the BBC, which means it hasn't been done even remotely well in over 20 years.

[mrissa.livejournal.com]

Oh, Ulrika, Ulrika. Don't you know that the historical costumer's only job is to signal to the modern viewer whether they are watching something set in Historical Times With Sex or Historical Times Without Sex? This is why it's never important to distinguish among Regency, Victorian, and Edwardian periods: they are all Parthenogenetic Eras and therefore indistinguishable.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

In fact, I'm pretty sure that in this production, dispensing with the nuisance of propriety of dress serves in aid of signalling Historical Times With Sex -- thus the need to show as much unbound, uncovered, long hair as possible, plus leaving off any portions of feminine Tudor dress that don't resemble a corset-styled prom dress. Certainly there are plenty of dangly bits on display between intrigues.

I think I'm as disappointed as I am just because the costuming for dear old The Six Wives of Henry the VIII was quite decent.

[lauriemann.livejournal.com]

Or look at the Cate Blanchett Elizabeth movies, where the costumes where almost always correct, but sometimes the story went astray?

I got Showtime briefly when The Tudors first came on (love historicals, but felt Jonathan Rhys-Meyers was hopelessly miscast). I canceled my subscription after a few weeks because I hated the history fuck that was going on so much.

On the other hand, I did fall madly in love with Weeds, and saw most of that over about a two week period. Need to get caught up on Season 3 someday.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

I dunno about the costuming always being correct in the Blanchett movies. Fabric choices were going pretty badly astray in the second one, among other problems -- they were just less egregious.

Although we get Showtime (and absolutely everything else -- a side benefit of Hal's employer being a subsidiary of Comcast), we've been watching The Tudors courtesy of Netflix. At this point, though, I may send the second disk back unwatched. Ptui.

[lauriemann.livejournal.com]

I remember in the first Cate Blanchett Elizabeth, many of the costumes matched or were similar to portraits of the era. I agree that, in the second one, this may not have been so true.

On the other hand, the Helen Mirren Elizabeth had strikingly accurate costumes.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Er, wasn't Helen Mirren playing a different Elizabeth? Or am I confused? I haven't seen that one.

And I don't remember having any particular gripes about the first Blanchett Elizabeth, so I wouldn't be surprised to discover it was accurate.

[lauriemann.livejournal.com]

Helen Mirren did a great Elizabeth for the BBC that HBO showed a couple of years ago (with Jeremy Irons).

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

Ah, I was aware of her portrayal of Elizabeth II in The Queen a year later, but not the HBO piece.

[maryread.livejournal.com]

Well duh, Mirren's Elizabath, that was only the fifties and sixties! (and seventies) (...) practically living memory, among the dinosaurs that still roam the earth. And there is such a vogue for those Happy Days now. Flower Power and that. Much confusion here about the exact shades of green that are really the latest.

I am sorry to hear about the Tudors. They had such good stories too.

Don't the Italians generally get these details better than, like, Hollywood? ever since sword & sandal days, continuing through the spaghetti westerns, and Zefferelli's R&J.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

It seems Helen Mirren has played both Elizabeths -- I and II -- and only about a year apart.

Dunno about the accuracy of the Italians, but The Tudors was an Irish-Canadian co-production, and I'd certainly expect either or both to do better than this.

[don-fitch.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I first encountered that ages ago, when some Historical (American) movie -- maybe "The Music Man" -- came out. The women were supposed to be perfectly (or at least reasonably) Respectable Middle-Class Women, but they were wearing obvious facial make-up. (Yeah, I know that the elderly Eliz. the First painted her face like a house, and women of the French Court... but in the America of that time, women wearing the makeup used in this movie would have been instantly identified as whores, which they weren't supposed to be.) Mind you, I'm not the kind of person who consciously notices that the bowl of fruit on the table includes the variety of apple known as 'Delicious' decades (much less centuries) before it was developed, or that the flowers in the Rose Garden are hybrid teas a century before their time.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

No, of course you're not that kind of person. :) :) :)

And I do know, in general, that popular period dramas are most likely to go Deeply Wrong when it comes to women's hair and make-up, because those are two areas where the production design is likely to be wholly contemporary. A fun game with historical films is playing Spot The Era of Production based on the hair, make-up, and undergarments in the women. In fact, in re-watching the Gregory Peck Moby Dick recently I was struck by how little contemporary influence you could see in it. Then again, there aren't a lot of women in it, either...

Still, as I say elsewhere, I think I was lulled into a mistaken sense of expectation of high costume quality by the last big Henry the 8 miniseries. Not that there's any rational reason to expect one to resemble the other in terms of production values.

I didn't want to watch the show BEFORE your review

[u-must-b-joking.livejournal.com]

Now I know I never will. Thank you!

[cluefairy-j.livejournal.com]

I stopped watching after two episodes.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

We've seen three, but I may well skip the second disc and send it back unwatched.

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Moreover, waving naked titties around isn't actually a substitute for story-telling.

A topic I touched upon in The Drink Tank #150.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

That would be the Heavily Illustrated, Not At All Worksafe all corset issue?

[stevegreen.livejournal.com]

Indeedly-doo.

[shikzoid.livejournal.com]

Jonathan Rhys-Meyers is certainly putting together an interesting resume. He's played Steerpike, Elvis and Henry VIII. Too bad he can't act. Maybe next time he'll get to wear normal clothes.

[akirlu.livejournal.com]

He's also in Velvet Goldmine playing a fictionalized David Bowie -- definitely not a normal clothes role. I do think he can act just fine, but I am not whelmed with The Tudors as a vehicle.