Fleabag

fight the real enemy imo

― Simon H., Thursday, October 3, 2019 8:05 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

how

Speaking of a backlash..

https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2019/aug/29/fleabag-stage-theatre-show-phoebe-waller-bridge

lol, that piece is very dumb.
i saw the televised performance; it was good but served as proof of how skilled she and her team are at translating her vision to a larger audience. The show is a definite quantum leap forward.

there's one subtextual bit of that piece about how we write characters that are horrible people, and whether past depictions differ from the more contemporary due to our tolerances of what we allow in our fiction. 2013 still seems relatively contemporary, but from a writer working in cultural commentary I can see where there's some blanket changing of the rules that is in no way evenly distributed among people who have never read a thinkpiece

re: the show, I'm still on s1 but the slow revelation of what happened and why everyone keeps asking if she's okay is fantastic

how

lots of competing theories on this but pretty sure "tut-tutting creatives for signing with the incorrect godless conglomerate" can be safely ruled out

Which of the three millennial women describing how they felt about this work by a millennial woman would you say was the dumbest, Ulysses?

And when did you stop beating your three dumb millennial wives?

There isn't anything else in the article though - it's just a roundtable of three women discussing the play (and the TV series, and how things have changed in the last 6 years).

forks said that (I infer, from reading half of it) the structure and content of the Guardian piece were fruitless and unenlightening about the performed text. He did not say anything about the intelligences of the participants, nor about how their gender or age relate to their intelligence, nor that their age & gender should qualify one’s apprehension of their personal reactions.

(I’ve read smart things written by at least two of the participants. As a conversation in the bar, after a show, between folks who know each other, nobody comes off as fundamentally dipshitted. As a ‘printed’ article reflecting on the original play and how its context has altered since first production, it’s at best an 1/8th-arsed aide-mémoire toward writing up a roundtable.)

The structure is literally them talking - the content is literally them talking (I assume cleaned up in the usual ways, I'll grant it's not just tape recorder audio) - there isn't a distance between "this article is dumb" and "the participants are dumb".

Thread's taken an odd turn tbh.

Fair.

roundtables are inherently dumb no matter the participants

*King Arthur pauses, sadly deletes half-written post*

lol

smart people say dumb things all the time, particularly in round tables

I didn’t think anything they said was particularly dumb, but the central theme of the conversation took a route through examining how an intentionally offensive character monologue from 2013 was offensive in unintentional ways in 2019 and that didn’t feel fruitful.

Tbf that Guardian round table is extremely bad

I thought the discussion of how it feels like a cash-in, and how the intimacy of the original experience was lost (my immediate mental comparison was a "band plays their classic album in full" tour), was interesting.

That was the only good point, the rest is garbled and inane. The show is far more complex and interesting than the commentators were giving it credit for

Lol at DJP's post, yes to Brad's "round tables are bad" assessment, and yes exactly to mh's comments

I was laughing at this line:

I’ve just been at the Edinburgh fringe, where I saw 50 more exciting shows.

I mean, it might be gauche to drop names in a roundtable like this, but if other shows are worth going to and would hold appeal for this audience, NAME SOME!
That kind of phrasing -- and the following admission that the Waller-Bridge's show is probably pulling traffic to the West End that may not usually attend -- is recognition that the audience might not be fringe festival-goers and it comes off as "well, they're not REAL theater fans.."

Anyone who goes to 50+ comedy shows at the Edinburgh Fringe needs locked up, for their own safety.

I've had Nathan Barley on the mind lately and I immediately went to the scene where the presumably sympathetic character is trying to escape "cool" writing and get a job with a traditional journalism outfit and is trying to pitch a review of his favorite wines and all he comes up with is "French, Spanish..... South French.."

And agreed, people who like binging things at festival shows and people who will go to a one-off incredibly popular theater event have some overlap, but it's not the same demographic!

i kinda thought the Guardian group-chat piece was obviously banal on the face of it and that it didn't require much more explanation but, since you explicitly called me out on it Andrew, I'll co-sign sic (tho i did read the whole thing!) and fgti's assessments above.

That article trafficked in concern trolling ("There are several fat jokes. I was sitting next to a large guy, who was laughing, but I wondered how he felt"), poor frame-of-reference ("It was like MTV Unplugged"), faux-naiveté that self negates itself in the same paragraph ("The monologue is solid but nothing hugely special. And the staging is incredibly ordinary... when you think how many plays are struggling for a stage, it feels slightly unfair when the same thing gets done again. But then, has there ever been a one-woman show in the West End that has been so financially viable? ") and just generally added nothing to the conversation beyond coming up with some real bizarre talking points ("Also what complicates that moment is that Waller-Bridge has the perfect body" <- according to who?). I guess the big takeaway is that Waller-Bridge seems to be "cashing in" on her and her work's popularity by staging a play lots of people want to see? Isn't that how commerce works?

And yes to the suggestion that round tables are generally terrible reflections of writers' capabilities; they're mostly good for fast turnaround and for paying writers partial wages for more words. I'm unfamiliar with the work of all three off the participants in that piece and wouldn't label them as "dumb"; I put the blame more at the foot of the Guardian. It's manufactured backlash clickbait and not well edited.

Since you seem to be implying that I feel otherwise AF, I'll state the obvious here and note that while many millennials can and do write well (about fellow millennials and other topics too!), not ALL millennials can and do write well (about fellow millennials etc) and that being a millennial does not necessarily impart some meaningful insight to the whole of your generation's actions.

tbh there's probably a comedy vein that could be mined about woke millennials cautiously analyzing their surroundings and entertainment media for the correct sympathies and signs while dropping clunkers like "has the perfect body"

Dear Woke People

tbh my own brain has been poisoned by The Discourse which results in a condition where you're unable to have normal conversations where you've internalized new cultural norms and you're in a state of intellectual disrepair constantly hoping you're saying the right things

Well, yeah, the panellists seemed to be, at times, not criticizing the show on its own merits, or engaging with the complexity of its characters, but dissecting whether or not the play/show lived up to their own view of the discourse.

Stating that "a woman taking advantage" (Snapes) might've been written differently post-#MeToo displayed a real lack-of-awareness about the thesis of the show? The show is about people taking advantage, including (especially) Fleabag?

I read it again to make sure that I wasn't wrong that it was a really bad round table, and I'm not wrong. I wanted to scream: she is supposed to be fallible. Did you miss the part where she accidentally kills her best friend by fucking around too much. Did you see the part where her best friend was the only healthy relationship in her life.

Maybe the show is way more simple than I made it out to be, but I don't think it is? I think it's a really complicated and critical show?

And to answer the question "when has there ever been a one-woman show on the London West End that has been so financially viable" like you've seen 50 shows at Edinburgh Fringe but you've never heard of Shirley Valentine?

I didn't watch the first season until recently, and most of the good analyses I read-- in particular, the Kathryn VanArendonk piece for Vulture-- were about the second season. I didn't read any good analyses of the first season, which, to me, had a lot to unpack. Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated!

The problem with any discussion about something that's very popular and already critically acclaimed, let alone a stage show that spawned a successful television series, is the inherent premise that whatever you're watching is good. So you're stuck with tangents about whether it's of its time, or if it holds up after a beloved descendant television program.

The unstated premise I was left with is that the stage show is, in fact, good. People enjoyed it. The large man (!) laughed.

hah, I posted that before your comment, fgti, but it's another angle on the same thing! season two reviews are viewing season one through season two glasses

Season two is generally considered better because it's written for TV - season one landed well because even a well-regarded Fringe show isn't going to be seen by nearly as many people as a TV show in a decent slot - I don't think I've seen anyone saying "I saw the stage show and the first season was better" - which is an obvious angle to send some appropriate people to look at the stage show and discuss it.

I remember this review at the time, which is more straightforward and less thinkpiecey:
https://www.villagevoice.com/2016/09/23/fleabag-is-the-egocentric-comedy-heroine-of-your-dreamsnightmares/

well if you count the televised National Theater as "seeing the stage show," I saw the stage show and the first season was better! Like way better!

Good write-up!

I'm very, very curious about Fleabag's relationship to promiscuous sex. The "best sex of Fleabag's life" scene-- the 55 year old man pounding her while she gazes at the camera-- was shocking to me; mostly because I was sitting there wondering how important, in this scenario, was "the gaze of the audience"? How much of sexuality, to the promiscuous among our ranks, is performative? Idk I have so many questions

if i remember correctly, the punchline to that joke in the theatrical version (and maybe the series? it's been awhile) is the older guy moaning "YOU'RE SO YOUNG, YOU'RE SO YOUNG" which plays to the heart of fleabag's deeply self-doubting sense of intrinsic worth as object and maybe little else. Being desired, by anyone, gives her meaning; being objectified allows her to dodge questions of personal worth because objects don't cause pain or feel pain or need to prove anything. the looks to the "audience" in the series (and literally, to the audience in the play) certainly do play with that dynamic and also with her sense of "performing" for something bigger and more moral than fleabag to give meaning to her life... or that was some of my take at least.

being "young" isn't something fleabag has earned, it's something she's rapidly losing and she's not getting anything in exchange. forcing power to kowtow to that brief lacuna of desirability is clearly more of a turn on than the sex itself for her. we see a lot more of that with the priest where - initially especially - the turn on is in the taboo as much as it is the person. not to spoil, but it's clear to both parties that she's unlikely to stay if he leaves the cloth and that's part of what the ending of s2 is about

I wasn't sure if he was saying "YOU'RE SO YOUNG" or "YOU'RE SO GOOD", or both. And what you're saying tracks with her statement that she LOVES picking up men, but derives less pleasure from the physical act itself as she does from the psychology of it.

I felt there was a startlingly clever mirror to Fleabag's relationship to sexuality in Godmother's sexhibition. Godmother is essentially doing the same thing as Fleabag has been doing the entire series-- performing sex publicly-- but Godmother's audience is the art community, where Fleabag's audience is the viewer. Godmother's sexhibition felt very much in-the-same-vein as Fleabag's initial disclosure (it's not actually about the physical act of sex itself), and then Godmother perfectly criticizes Fleabag, and the entire show in general: "this show is not about sex. It's about power."

Godmother's attempt to use sexuality to install herself as matriarch in Fleabag's family is successful; in contrast, Fleabag's attempt to exist freely, liberated, promiscuously, sexually-- all the while asking herself (or her father) "am I a good feminist?"-- backfires, and directly results in the suicide of her best friend. (The scenes between Fleabag and Boo called to mind something my sibling is often says: "Friendship is the highest form of romance." More recently, they've started replacing "friendship" with "communism" but ymmv I guess.)

A later revelation occurs in Fleabag's conversation with Kristen Scott Thomas's character. Fleabag attempts to exert her power in seducing this older lesbian, but the lesbian wins out-- and imparts to Fleabag an important "lesson" about getting older, and I paraphrase, "after menopause, all that shit stops mattering, and you are free to be who you truly are. A woman in business." Is this a lesson? Or is this another maguffin? The lesbian is suggesting replacing one structure of capital (sexual promiscuity) with another (business), is this meant to be ironic? Or is this meant to actually "teach" Fleabag to find pursuits toward self-worth outside of her sexuality?

(Part of the reason I fell in love with this show is that I oftentimes feel like a Harry in a world of Fleabags. I'm just out here trying to understand promiscuous sexuality and how it works for those who engage in it.)

it works better the less you analyze it (in personal encounters, not in the context of a show about a character that starts off promiscuous) because of the fear your prospective partner might be sexually promiscuous for a reason that turns you off

which, I guess the show covered in the context of the very attractive man who talks about how small her breasts are during sex, among other proclivities

he's handsome, we'll try not to think too much about the rest

The lesbian is suggesting replacing one structure of capital (sexual promiscuity) with another (business), is this meant to be ironic? Or is this meant to actually "teach" Fleabag to find pursuits toward self-worth outside of her sexuality?

Godmother's attempt to use sexuality to install herself as matriarch in Fleabag's family is successful

Wow yeah I forgot about that detail. I forget about so many aspects of this show when I think about it! I had forgotten about "fucked me up the arse" dude

Also I adored the "people are shit" "yes.. but they're also all we've got" moment, directed a little too on-the-nose but the sentiment was nice

works better in the play thru waller-bridge's interp of the guy, imo.

incredible show -- the number of great elements to it is difficult to narrow down, w/obvious accolades going to PWB, but everyone is great. Colman's warmth barely covering her controlling nature and skillful manner of cutting nimbly where it hurts the most is a tricky performance to pull off, the trick being that the only people who see it are the ones she wants to show it to, while everyone else remains charmed and understandably so (if you view it from the perspective of those who don't know her well). A perfect depiction of charisma and false warmth towards others used to keep oneself at the center of attention. Sian Clifford, whom I'm not familiar w/, is this character we're maybe invited to expect to dislike but she's really so likable despite her flaws and short-temperedness w/Fleabag, since we see her through the latter's eyes and despite their falling-out at the end of S1 they just love each other so much and the empathy for the character is so deep. a lesser show would have (and lesser shows have, habitually) created characters exactly like this who are set up to be villains of sorts. not remotely the case here.

also i don't buy the whole premise that PWB's character is presented as this beautiful and funny and hip person, i think the key point there is she's full of so much self-loathing and depression that she can't get past it to see what others do see in her, those moments exist to highlight glimpses into the frailty of everyone else and their own self-image issues coupled w/her own perception of herself being wrong. i mean of course certainly FB spends more time in the series making errors in judgement and being insulted by the people she loves (or being fucked w/by the cruel significant others of those she loves) than she spends it getting compliments.

a lot of the show reminded me of some of the Arnaud Desplechin films i've seen. Kings and Queen, in particularly. just w/regards to certain elements of emotional brutality coming to the fore. it's been a long time since i've seen that one, so i'm not sure how much that comp holds water tbh.

i didn't think the priest was too creepy, i think it was a fairly even-keeled depiction of a flawed man of the cloth caught between two places. he seems like maybe he used to be a male version of FB and has found some solace in this new life and thru no fault of her own she tempts him back into it, and he can't go all the way with leaving it in the end. i thought the depiction was sympathetic enough. i'm saying this w/my perception clouded as the son of a guy who left a seminary to pursue a nun who left the convent and it didn't work in the end so idk.

Fleabag claiming her sister's miscarriage as her own in the first ep of season two is her Jesus moment imo