Your purism is showing.... (bit of a Gormenghast rant)

[matrixrefugee]

Still reading "The Art of 'Gormenghast'" whilst reading "the bricks" (as tomboy_typist has eloquently dubbed them), and a quote from Mervyn Peake himself jumped out at me:

If I had set the story in Paddington, I should have been restricted by the need for urban accuracy.

I bought the DVDs because I got tired of trying to watch the miniseries on YouTube and having to put up with glimpses of raving looney comments from the purists yelling about the art design being too colorful or the lighting being too brilliant. If Peake deliberately wanted the setting to be a bit hard to place, there was nothing wrong in the art design crew borrowing design ideas from hither, thither and yon, from everything from nineteenth century Spain, Tibet, to Byzantium, China, etc. etc. etc. The Chinese influences are straight on, since Peake grew up in China, after all. It gives it a sense of timelessness with an odd air of familiarity at the same time. Stephen Fry, who plays Bellgrove the headmaster in the miniseries, pointed out (in his introduction for the "Art of..." companion book) that people love to describe Gormenghast as "gothic" and then he proceeds to point out how there's so many applications of the word that it's become meaningless (Interesting, since one of the major themes of the bricks is how things that are overused lose their meaning...).

Another thing the purists seem to love to yell about are the changes made in Steerpike's character in a bid to make him a bit more sympathetic, specifically the fact that he's been hideously abused by Swelter (need I elaborate, given things I've written about that happened in my own extended family?). And to be honest, I think the producers just made this a bit more obvious. There's one passage in the bricks where some of the kitchen boys are horsing around and Swelter drags two of them aside for the purpose of "disciplining them" (which Flay thankfully interrupts)... and while the writing is subtle -- it's one of the few genuinely frightening passages in a series which has a lot of black humor to temper the weirdness -- it doesn't take much imagination to figure out what Swelter Has In Mind... If a reader misses that, I wish I still had their innocence.

Speaking of the bricks... I've just started the third "Titus Alone", which I hadn't read when I first read the series years ago (I think I'd gotten as far as the first few chapters of the second book when I stopped due to the omnibus having to go back to the library). It's very different in style, but still in the same darkly ludicrous spirit as the first two. And I have to admit, I'm as surprised by the world outside Gormenghast as our young hero is, though in my case it's a matter of "Oh... there is a vaguely recognizable modern industrial world beyond the stones..." albeit a steampunk transitioning into dieselpunk one. (Someone on Wikipedia described it as steampunk, but I kept getting these Art Deco-ish mental images for the design of the building where Titus literally crashes a swanky party)

And dare I say, we've now got a Titus in headspace, whom I'm tempted to eventually throw into the Mansion and see what happens. He's about fifteen and seems sulky, but he's actually rather pensive underneath it. Tsuzuki took an instant liking to him, but as soon as Muraki found out who the kid is, his polite air became a mask to hide the plotting...

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[tomboy-typist.livejournal.com]

Great meta! Do you mind if I flag this to the folks over at gormenghastfans?

Also, just a note that you have a typo in my username. *snork*