Smokey the Magnificent

There are those who would say that knowledge is useful as a means of most perfectly expressing our appreciation of creation. There are others who think it is important in that it separates us from the beasts; others who feel it is our duty in order to most thoroughly appreciate Sacred Scripture.

They are, of course, wrong, although all these reasons are important. The primary reason for knowledge is that it allows you to recognise when movies get stuff wrong. Which is of course vital to the pursuit of smugness and the attainment of trivial conversation, both of which are very important things.

Things that bug me in movies naturally fall into my own categories of interest. Hair, for example. As any female who has spent hours fruitlessly attempting to recreate hairstyles from Star Wars: Episode 2 is aware, movie hairdressers are a devious bunch. Though they presumably know how hair works themselves, they bank on the ignorance of the movie-going public to get away with some truly unlikely hairstyles - braids that appear from nowhere, updos that require far more hair in length and thickness than the character possesses, hairstyles for respectable medieval women which blow loose in the breeze, supposed terminal lengths which are barely waist-length, and so on. The oddest example I’ve seen recently was in the animated Beowulf, in which the women sported hairstyles containing  braids that were longer than the loose hair. As any turnip knows, braiding makes hair shorter, not longer - meaning that these animated wenches must have cut one back section of hair a good foot shorter than the braided portions, which would seem to be a strange thing to do. Of course, given the other dubious anatomical features present in, for example, Grendel’s mother, I suppose it is only to be expected.

And of course, historical movies are always a blend of period accuracy and contemporary sensibilities in any case. I highly doubt actresses in Renaissance movies don actual lead makeup for the cause, or forgo using shampoo and conditioner for the duration of filming. And how many actresses conform to the physical standards of beauty prevalent at the time? It just doesn’t work - look at the BBC Pride and Prejudice. Sure, Jane probably would have been considered prettier than Lizzie at the time, but watching the film with modern eyes it seems so obvious she isn’t that all the references to Jane’s superior beauty strike a false note. Given this, I suppose filmmakers figure we wouldn’t be able to cope with a leading lady with unshaven legs or a size 14 figure, let alone wimples and bound hair.

Still, some of the circumstances in which heroines wander around with flowing tresses are quite bizarre. As the owner of flowing tresses myself I happen to know that wind and physical activity quickly turn “flowing” into “matted, dingy and beginning to spontaneously dreadlock”. Adding wood fires into the mix makes them downright dangerous. So to see Eowyn wandering around Rohan, of all places, exposing her perfectly-groomed wavy hair to the howling wind really just reinforces the fact she had a death wish. Even when she’s on the lam riding horses and hauling sacks of potatoes, it doesn’t seem to occur to her to put her hair up. Funnily enough this can be excused during her battle scenes, as neatly-braided hair would have drawn even more attention to herself amidst the shaggy-locked Riders, who apparently found through trial and error that the quickest way to a glorious death is getting hair in your eyes in the middle of a battle. Honestly, is it any wonder the Free Peoples were in jeopardy? At least Galadriel had the sanity to remain a soothing background presence for the sake of her coiffure - and one notes that the actual saviors of Middle-Earth were two of the few characters with short, sensible haircuts.

Another thing that bugs me in films is childbirth - a common peeve among crunchy seditious types, I believe. I read a study once comparing the rates of exotic childbirth complications in film and TV to real life, which was illuminating; but that’s not what bothers me so much as the general attitude of pace. Aaarggh, she’s in labour! Here’s the car! Here’s the lift! Here’s the wheelchair! Here’s the IV! Thirty seconds of screentime, tops; twenty-five hand-held shots in all. One gets the impression of someone running to the bathroom to be sick, which (although a genuine facet of labour generally unrecorded on film) is rather more sudden and urgent than the average childbirth.

Gone with the Wind (the book, not the film), for all its flaws, actually did a decent job of portraying the monotony and dreary lagging of childbirth. Films and TV, not so much. Rachel’s birth in Friends took an appropriately long time, but the realism was counteracted by the fact that she seemed to be perfectly normal and oblivious to events between contractions and had to be told when she was ready to push.

The really odd one is Star Trek. Again, I recognise that the series was made in space-time as well as portraying it; but still. How come every combination of species gives birth reclining? The Bajoran “no pain during childbirth” thing was intriguing, but in general it’s all much of a muchness - screaming, tricorders, oh-dear-the-baby’s-in-distress-we’ll-have-to-transport-it-out. Very dull of the writers, really. Shouldn’t Klingon women at least be gritty and cling to a knotted rope or something?

Another one, of course, is religion. This was brought home to me recently during an embarrassing moment in Bible study, where I was temporarily unable to distinguish between facts about the Ark of the Covenant gleaned from the Old Testament and those picked up from Raiders of the Lost Ark. But it’s the more insidious dumbing-down of religion that bugs me. Take Shepherd Book from Firefly, who responds to River Tam’s criticisms of the Bible not with devastating presuppositional argumentation but a lame line about how “You don’t fix faith, it fixes you” - in other words, it’s OK to believe a load of drivel as long as it makes you feel good. Now, religion being what it is I’m sure this is a true portrayal of the opinions of many, and I don’t object to a different point of view being portrayed per se (especially by a possibly fraudulent Shepherd); but I suspect this was Joss’ way of being terribly sensitive and enlightened about religion, and given many other references in his shows it’s clear he just doesn’t get it.

All this does occasionally hamper my enjoyment of movies. Helpdesk Man, of course, has it worse. Being knowledgeable in computers, swordfighting, science and biomechanics I’m pretty sure he feels actual pain whenever a character destroys a computer by firing into the monitor or indulges in a bout of aim-at-the-sword-not-the-opponent duelling. In this instance my lack of science education is kind of an asset - it never occurred to me to find sound in space a problem until he pointed it out, and I am deliciously free to make up my own mind as to whether replicators/transporter technology/cloaking/phasers/warp drive are possible, fictional or currently in existence.

Other things that don’t bug me include horses - which my horsey friends tell me are always switched around in movies for budgetary reasons, hoping we won’t notice, which clearly I don’t - vehicles, costume authenticity and architecture. Just think how much richer and more frustrating the movie-going experience would be if I were able to simmer about the non-period use of cotton blend, the blatant mixing of Gothic and Baroque architectural elements or the implausibly high engine sound of a…. um, car that makes a different engine sound. I could be like those mysterious contributors to IMDb who point out that a film set in 1954 features a 1955 Chevy in the background, an observation which never fails to astound me.

So tell me, Gentle Readers: what peeves you in film? Are you a doctor who cringes every time CPR is performed incorrectly; an expert in multiple-personality disorder who fins most portrayals of it inaccurate; or a psychobotanist who simply feels left out?