crosspost: incest! [June 2014]
Dec. 13th, 2018 07:35 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
anghraineDo you ever regret Showtime's decision to cross the line with C&L in season 3? Or does the story line necessitate it? I thought Jordan was pretty adamant about NOT taking their relationship in that direction.
I’m sorry, anon, but you’re going to get the full blast of my Season 3 rage.
My answer is: yes and no.
The thing is, I really, really don’t like how it was handled. It might not be … immediately apparent, given my hardcore shipping, but I thought it was 1) lazy, 2) incoherent, structurally, and 3) somehow managed to make incest tedious.
(The last is doubly annoying as they managed to present it as bizarrely endearing and innocent for two full seasons and some eight years in-story, even as we saw the relationship shift over time, influencing and being influenced by wider events, changing as the characters evolved—a thread that was rarely the dominant plot but always there, inextricably bound up with the wider story.)
Anyway, the full rant beneath the cut, spoilers for everything
~~~
Um. The odd thing is—and it’s really odd—each scene works fine, in itself. Separately, they’re pretty good. That, tbh, I attribute partly to the decent writing of many of the scenes, and mostly to Holliday and François, who perpetually manage to sell their characters regardless of dubious narrative choices and variable writing, and always have stunning chemistry.
But when you look at the scenes together, it’s a mess. I marathoned Season 3, so it may have been more glaring there, but it’s so bizarre. There doesn’t seem to be any continuity between the different scenes.
[devolving into full-blown ranting now, jump to “Anywayyyyyy” if you don’t want to read it all, or all the way down to “Concise version” for, well, that.]
So you’ve got the “unholy family” scene, which looks like an intentional kiss, but given how (hilariously) stunned Cesare is later, and the obvious fact that Alfonso has not twigged to the incest, apparently isn’t. And then you’ve got the bedroom scene, in which Cesare is both as shocked and uncomfortable as you’d expect any brother to be, and so entranced and overpowered that he loses all will to resist. I mean, the only reason they didn’t start making out right there on her wedding dress is because the maid showed up—and yet the next time we see them, it’s like nothing happened. In fact, if the scene hadn’thappened, it would change absolutely nothing.
We have a couple more—and they tend to feel a bit like “C/L scene, check” with no consequences or continuity into the next and no relation to the rest of the plot. They unequivocally kiss, Cesare runs away, Lucrezia cries, aaaaand switch to other stuff. When Lucrezia crawls into his bed, he’s (again, hilariously) stunned, like this came out of absolutely nowhere; if he hadn’t passionately kissed her some time earlier, his reaction would make just as much sense. But she talks him into it (unsurprising, considering how they’ve always…been), he gets over his scruples, and seems (at last) to have come to terms with it and happy and at peace with the whole thing when we fade to black—
HAHA PSYCH! IT’S ACTUALLY GOING TO BE SEVEN EPISODES OF INCEST ANGST!
Like, his freak-out in 3x04 was surprising given his gleeful smile last time we saw them, but—incest is a big deal, okay, I could give that some slack (though it’s remarkable how little would be changed if his reaction were completely different). Except he’s always vacillating between “no! wrong! our love can never be!!!” and “~love of my life don’t leave me~” without any rhyme or reason. This goes on up to, and including, the last instant of the finale of the entire series.
When he left for France, he was “we can’t do this, we have to try and be happy with other people, preferably from other countries. ~yay exogamy~” That’s their separation, presented very much as their bizarre incest break-up. Then, next time we see them, they’re walking companionably together assuring each other of their eternal devotion and the inferiority of their respective spouses. We don’t see their reunion, we have no idea how they went from breaking up to this, it’s just there.
But, okay, Cesare’s various exploits have changed him, he’s more confident and assertive, maybe—esp given his quasi-confession to Charlotte—he’s reached the point where he’s done caring what people think. Lucrezia obviously never gave a single fuck about that, so I could wrap my brain around it, though it would be nice to see how we got from Point A to Point B.
Anyway, at this point it seems like they are going to have that affair. Or already are. Or something. And in the bedroom scene, he kisses her throat after he recognizes her. Ahhh okay, that’s what’s going on. Hard to think she’d just wander into his room and start stroking his body until he wakes up if she’s ready to find satisfaction in her marriage. And he plainly is not okay with that prospect (he…bites her? Whatever, Cesare). Not that it’s actually likely to happen, but as she keeps insisting that she loves Alfonso (while treating him like a badly-trained puppy), Cesare can’t know that. But then he turns away when the UST escalates, so apparently his incest ban is still in effect. Kind of.
(Throat kissing is okay, sex is not. Whatever, Cesare.)
But then he loses his shit at the threat to her, and there’s the meeting on the road. He just completely throws all other considerations aside. He’s kissing her mouth and face and throat in front of her husband and his captains, swearing they’ll never be separated again, and Lucrezia looks thrilled. Okay, it’s not like they can really go back now—
Oh wait let’s just pretend it never happened. Again. And he’s going on about how there’s nothing scandalous about them, they are totally normal Spaniards (WHATEVER, CESARE) and …what is even happening at this point? Pretty much everyone acts as if they’re having an affair, so maybe …? And his behaviour towards her dramatically shifts and he behaves with smothering protectiveness alongside sharply increased antipathy to Alfonso and we get a very pared-down Sinigallia (that’s a rant for another day). Which would make sense if their relationship had, FINALLY, undergone a drastic shift—
Nooooope, it’s the final episode, Lucrezia is talking about how Cesare has shamed Alfonso and somehow her husband knows. Ummm, what? First, through this season Lucrezia has been the one pushing things while Cesare either goes along with her or backs away (and generally speaking, if either of them is dominant in their relationship, it’s her). Secondly, “somehow”? YOU MADE OUT RIGHT BEFORE HIS EYES. HOW COULD HE NOT KNOW?????
Right, never happened. Or something. Anyway, from the way they talk it seems like something has happened, they’re really having that affair, Cesare certainly touches her as if they are—but when she lifts her head to kiss him, seeming to expect that he’ll be cool with it, he backs away. Bzuh?
ngl when she says she is tired of him constantly backing away, I was just ME TOO, LUCREZIA, ME TOO. SO TIRED OF YOUR INCONSISTENT ANGST CESARE GET THE FUCK OVER YOURSELF. Except she also says he’s been doing it all their lives—*cough*RETCONBULLSHIT*cough*
All this stuff is Season 3 and within about two years, max. For the first two seasons/eight years, Cesare did anyyyyything but back away from her. Really, if you look at the season 1 and 2 C/L scenes, he’s participating in the borderline-incest every bit as much as Lucrezia, and seems completely unconcerned about it. Based on the first two seasons, there is absolutely no reason to expect that Cesare has an incest squick. He talks about running away and getting married, ffs. This is all season three nonsense.
Anyway, Lucrezia says she forgets about him when they’re apart but is completely overpowered when she’s in his physical presence or being touched by him, in direct defiance of what we ourselves have witnessed over the course of all three seasons. This has never been about Cesare’s incredible sexual magnetism (…seriously?) or even their incredible mutual attraction. Every indication, every step of the way, has been that they love each other, as siblings, so intensely and unreservedly and adoringly that they’re constantly passing back and forth over the boundary between familial and romantic love—there isn’t a boundary, for them.
They’ve continued to primarily conceptualize their relationship as a sibling one, referring to each other as brother and sister (both to others and between themselves), prioritizing the sibling tie, Lucrezia speaking of his inability to protect her as a failure as a brother, etc, but always with that enraptured romantic edge. It’s explicit in the dialogue that they love each other, worry about each other, think about each other, as—y’know, people who care about one another do (yes, Virginia, even people who are physically separated!). They’re capable of leading independent lives with their own interests and priorities (a good thing!), but their reunions are ecstatic and they talk passionately about missing each other. Not three episodes earlier Lucrezia’s witch friend saw her love for Cesare by magic powers or w/e.
(Season 3, y’all.)
So we continue the parade of “wait, what?” with Cesare implying that their feelings actually came from hell or the devil or some such. (He earlier said he didn’t believe in hell. Whatever, Cesare.) In any case, it’s the series finale and he’s stillpulling his NO! BADWRONG! SIIIIN! EXCUSE ME SWEET INNOCENT MURDERING LITTLE SISTER I HAVE PEOPLE TO LIGHT ON FIRE~
*looks at watch* We’re running out of show here—
Oh, okay, he decides to kill her husband and set her up as regent of Naples because he trusts and respects her more than anyone else (how this relates to the out-of-nowhere gilded cage shit is anyone’s guess). Her husband attacks him before he can actually do it, all because of an affair THAT IS NOT HAPPENING (*grump*) and fails so hard that he falls on Cesare’s sword (?) and Lucrezia ends up mercy-poisoning him (she’s an expert in poisons now, I don’t know how or when any more than you do, but that’s another complaint for later).
So Cesare finds her collapsed and bloody at Alfonso’s side, panics, realizes she’s overwrought rather than dead, washes her down, kisses her neck, and at fucking last gives up the fight and whispers “mine.”
Pretty sure “at fucking last” is not the intended emotional response to what is a dark and unsettling scene, but there you are.
So when did he change his mind? What changed his mind? Will he backtrack five minutes later?
YOUR GUESS IS AS GOOD AS MINE. Literally the last moment of the show and ????????????????
Anywayyyyyy.—So, I’m not thrilled with C/L in Season 3. But it’s not that it happened, it’s how it happened.
It is really, really difficult to escape the feeling that Neil Jordan—or someone, but from his comments I’ll assume it’s him—didn’t actually want to deal with the incest plot beyond the subtext level. It’s also difficult to escape the feeling that by Season 2, there was every intention of heading there at some future point (the dance of incestuous forehead touching with Vanozza and Alfonso watching suspiciously, Cesare spinning a wistful fantasy about running away to get married, the kneeling scene, the delivery of the knife, I could go on).
We know that Neil Jordan didn’t think that, c. Season 1, his Cesare and Lucrezia were incestuous on paper. I think what he initially intended was the incest version of smarm—an ostensibly platonic relationship that is written in exaggerated terms, with romantic tropes and imagery, intensely sensual, so intimate that the usual barriers fall away, emotionally supercharged, far and away the most important relationship of the characters’ lives, but stopping short of actual romance. But through some baffling misjudgment, what he actually wrote is obviously and innately romantic—and that’s how Holliday and François played it.
We also know that he fought with them over that (“loud arguments” in François’ words). He wanted them to tamp down on the UST because it was coming across as incestuous and they were pretty much “bzuh? of course it is, that’s how you wrote it.” Given the final product, it seems pretty plain that they won out. If you look at the promos, the covers of the DVD, etc, it also seems that someone/people at Showtime pushed that angle pretty hard. The smarm approach granted the whole thing so much sympathy and sweetness that it’s difficult to even condemn unless you have a cast-iron squick. On top of that, François and Holliday’s acting and explosive chemistry sent it careening into juggernaut land.
I think that by the time Season 2 came around, they were kind of stuck with it. The media, the fans, Showtime execs, the actors, pretty much everyone read it as romantic and had certain expectations from that. Incest is hardly something you can raise as a possibility and just leave hanging. Season 2 C/L is essentially transitional: escalating from the relative innocence of Season 1 to the point where an affair seems a very real possibility. But it’s not actually writing that; it’s still subtext, if of a spectacularly unsubtle kind. And by Season 3, it’s painfully clear that NJ was running out of steam generally (he said so iirc). I can’t be certain, but given that, I suspect that developing something he’d never really wanted was not a high priority.
(Glancing at The Borgia Apocalypse does not, ah, alter my opinion on this point :P)
Okay. Concise version:
- IMO Neil Jordan initially wanted to have his cake and eat it too—to flirt with incest subtext without actually going there. However, he missed his mark and the responses from Showtime, the fans, the media, and François and Holliday themselves forced his hand after Season 1.
- I don’t regret the decision to cross that line in Season 3, because I think the decisions of Season 2 made it necessary. I don’t think the story of the Borgias inherently requires it (while their relationship seems a bit, um, peculiar, I think irl it was never more than emotionally transgressive).
- I intensely dislike the pacing of it, the structure, the failure to develop it beyond come-here-go-away, and the accompanying swerves in characterization. I think NJ was burning out by then (generally) and never wanted to go full-throttle incest anyway, and the plot got shortchanged.
- otoh, François and Holliday are great and the individual scenes are generally pretty fab, they just don’t fit together well. Since they’re separated by the rest of the plot, it’s not as glaring as it might be.
no subject
on 2018-12-14 09:14 am (UTC)no subject
on 2018-12-17 08:56 pm (UTC)no subject
on 2018-12-18 08:24 am (UTC)no subject
on 2018-12-14 06:47 pm (UTC)Also I felt there was some Ursula 2.0 going on with Lucrezia when she pushed for Cesare to love her and then withdrew, and given I hated Ursula that never sat well with me.
Jordan's boredom with the show and his insistence on trying to make us root against the characters and this relationship that he'd spent all that time making us root *for* has never impressed me and the least said about the bad fanfic that is the Apocalypse the better ;)
I think your concise summary is spot on.
no subject
on 2018-12-15 04:14 am (UTC)no subject
on 2018-12-17 07:27 pm (UTC)I don't know much about the behind the scenes roles, but in particular I think S3 is pretty beautifully acted (and shot). The lines are baffling, but there was definitely an effect where I'd be sold while watching and then five minutes afterwards: "wait, what??"