todayiamadaisy (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
todayiamadaisy) wrote2016-06-11 11:27 pm
todayiamadaisy) wrote2016-06-11 11:27 pm
Entry tags:
A Kiss from the Heart
Here is last week's cardigan photo:
I didn't get round to posting it last Sunday and planned to do it Monday, and then the week from hell broke out at work. Sigh. Oh well, it's a long weekend now, so I don't have to think about it until Tuesday. Except I will. I will brood and brood.
Anyway, I promised![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
heliopausa that I would report on a new Australian TV series called Cleverman. I mean, I was going to watch it anyway, so it was an easy promise to make. I watched the first episode, and have recorded the second. Cleverman is about an Aboriginal superhero. It's set in a near future (or maybe an alternative now), in which a group of people known as Hairies live in uneasy mix with humans. I don't want to say the Hairies are mutant humans, because I'm not sure if they are; they might be a completely different species. At any rate, they look like Michael J Fox in Teen Wolf. The Hairies are part of the Aboriginal community, although they are required to live in a restricted area of the city. Not only that, the government is capturing escaped Hairies, and sending them to some sort of extremely grim prison, which I am sure we will find out more about in future episodes.
The story is really about two non-Hairy brothers, Waru and Koen. Waru is the Good Son, who is a community leader for the Hairies; Koen is the Bad Son, who has left the restricted community and owns a bar with his white friends. Koen is running a scam in which he helps Hairies leave the restricted community disguised as humans, then calls the authorities and turns them in for a reward. Their uncle is the Cleverman (what that is is not fully explained yet), and when he dies, Waru thinks he will become the next Cleverman. Only then Koen wakes up with miraculous powers of healing (he grows a finger back) and one eye turned bright blue. Dun dun DUN! What will happen next?
I enjoyed this, I must say. I think I would have enjoyed it anyway, but the fact that it was created by and based on Aboriginal culture adds something different. I would not for a second hold myself out as knowledgeable about Aboriginal culture, but even I can pick out a few links from my limited frame of reference - the Hairies are a riff on yowies, for example. It's not just ancient references either; the police taking the Hairy families are horribly reminiscent of Australia's Stolen Generations, which is uncomfortable viewing (and rightly so). Anyway, I recommend it if it appears on a TV near you.
One thing that frustrates me about the fantasy novels written by Australian authors that I've read is that they tend to be set in the same European hinterland that many other fantasy novels are set in. Wolves and wintery yuletide celebrations and such. Where are the kangaroos? It's possibly a marketing thing; maybe publishers think there is a bigger market for seasons the "normal" way round? "Sure, you've got dragons in this book, but celebrating yuletide in summer? No-one will believe that!" But watching Cleverman made me wonder if white Australian writers also prefer it that way so they don't have to consider the implications of a shared land. If they plonked a faux medieval European society into the Australian landscape... do they pretend there never was an Aboriginal population? Appropriate it? Tackle the realities of colonialism and dispossession? Not make it a faux medieval European society in the first place? Hmm. Perhaps in between brooding this weekend, I can ponder how that could work.
Tomorrow: This week's cardigan photo!
I didn't get round to posting it last Sunday and planned to do it Monday, and then the week from hell broke out at work. Sigh. Oh well, it's a long weekend now, so I don't have to think about it until Tuesday. Except I will. I will brood and brood.
Anyway, I promised
heliopausa that I would report on a new Australian TV series called Cleverman. I mean, I was going to watch it anyway, so it was an easy promise to make. I watched the first episode, and have recorded the second. Cleverman is about an Aboriginal superhero. It's set in a near future (or maybe an alternative now), in which a group of people known as Hairies live in uneasy mix with humans. I don't want to say the Hairies are mutant humans, because I'm not sure if they are; they might be a completely different species. At any rate, they look like Michael J Fox in Teen Wolf. The Hairies are part of the Aboriginal community, although they are required to live in a restricted area of the city. Not only that, the government is capturing escaped Hairies, and sending them to some sort of extremely grim prison, which I am sure we will find out more about in future episodes.The story is really about two non-Hairy brothers, Waru and Koen. Waru is the Good Son, who is a community leader for the Hairies; Koen is the Bad Son, who has left the restricted community and owns a bar with his white friends. Koen is running a scam in which he helps Hairies leave the restricted community disguised as humans, then calls the authorities and turns them in for a reward. Their uncle is the Cleverman (what that is is not fully explained yet), and when he dies, Waru thinks he will become the next Cleverman. Only then Koen wakes up with miraculous powers of healing (he grows a finger back) and one eye turned bright blue. Dun dun DUN! What will happen next?
I enjoyed this, I must say. I think I would have enjoyed it anyway, but the fact that it was created by and based on Aboriginal culture adds something different. I would not for a second hold myself out as knowledgeable about Aboriginal culture, but even I can pick out a few links from my limited frame of reference - the Hairies are a riff on yowies, for example. It's not just ancient references either; the police taking the Hairy families are horribly reminiscent of Australia's Stolen Generations, which is uncomfortable viewing (and rightly so). Anyway, I recommend it if it appears on a TV near you.
One thing that frustrates me about the fantasy novels written by Australian authors that I've read is that they tend to be set in the same European hinterland that many other fantasy novels are set in. Wolves and wintery yuletide celebrations and such. Where are the kangaroos? It's possibly a marketing thing; maybe publishers think there is a bigger market for seasons the "normal" way round? "Sure, you've got dragons in this book, but celebrating yuletide in summer? No-one will believe that!" But watching Cleverman made me wonder if white Australian writers also prefer it that way so they don't have to consider the implications of a shared land. If they plonked a faux medieval European society into the Australian landscape... do they pretend there never was an Aboriginal population? Appropriate it? Tackle the realities of colonialism and dispossession? Not make it a faux medieval European society in the first place? Hmm. Perhaps in between brooding this weekend, I can ponder how that could work.
Tomorrow: This week's cardigan photo!