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Happy associations
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feliciter who associates me with
1) Woxinchangdan, and by extension
2) Chen Daoming
3) Dragons
4) Literature, in a prodigiously wide range of genres and languages
5) Snow - because of youraccounts of shovelling heaps of it seasonal-themed entries :D And so I natter
1) Woxinchangdan
(This could be the subject of a whole book.)
In some ways this series should be called The Great Betrayal. The massacre of the cutting, the awful subtitles, and the second script writer's inability to match the nuance of the first's-- just one stab after another. I don't know how the original story outline went, but my own major source of dissatisfaction is the location of the Yue prisoners in that damned quarry, out of Fu Chai's sight and oh so clearly out of Fu Chai's mind as well. The action then becomes WZX vs Gou Jian, with Fu Chai as the guy who occasionally wanders in on a horse. Quite aside from disrupting the conflict between the (supposed) two principle figures, it makes Fu Chai look incompetent and out-of-it, a role he should have left behind in episode 17 or thereabouts.
I'm willing to admit my yaoi goggles may be blinding me to what the script writers had in mind. If in fact it's all supposed to be about Gou Jian vs Wu, then I suppose I must just shrug. If in fact there's supposed to be strong indications of stock heavy!Fu Chai, then yeah, stock heavies we have. If Second Writer assumed-but-naturally that Fan Li x Xi Shi should overwhelm anything Fan Li's done before then, well, I must simply accept the disjunct between that and episode 16. But the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it. Everything could have worked so brilliantly (read: the way I wanted it to) and instead there are tantalizing moments and unforgettable scenes and a lot of 'nothing to my purpose.' Like The Magic Flute-- glorious music amidst an unutterable mess of a libretto.
However, I still believe that I'd register all this differently if I knew what the actors were really saying. Language and nuance are so important to my appreciation of just about anything, that their absence is like listening to music when one speaker is on the fritz. You can't hear the whole thing.
And once again, my obsessions, let me show you them: the classic diction (I'm assuming it is) of Woxinchangdan lets me hear words and constructions that I know only from studying hanzi. I have no ear at all, but if I ever register the differences in tones, it'll be from listening to Chen Daoming's dialogue.
Which brings us to
2. Chen Daoming
I expected the series to be what Japanese manga was to me earlier-- utter disjunct from anything I was familiar with in the outside world, total connect with stuff that occupied the dark backward and abysm of my Id. It wasn't, which is fine. Even Japanese live action connected only peripherally with the subconscious stuff. (Note that my Japanese fannishness started with live action historicals, from Kurosawa to Mito Komon.)
Uncle Ming *is* an utter disjunct from anything I'm familiar with in the outside world, but I could never have conceived of something like that myself. Again with the musical metaphor-- he's a tune in a key I'm not familiar with, that keeps trying to modulate into one I do know when I try to sing it myself. Then I go back and look at the original and yes, as the Japanese say, 'it is different' (meaning No.)
And *still* I know I'm not seeing him quite right because too much cultural context is missing. But what's there is pretty damned impressive. The expressiveness of his eyes, the nuances of his tone, the habitual gestures and body language he gives his characters: fascinating to watch, and rewarding because it's clearly not unconscious. I don't know if he thinks it out beforehand or plays it as it comes to him, but it feels miles away from the body language of western actors that slash fans rely on so strongly to justify their pairings.
I'll admit to a western bias here-- I prefer him as Gou Jian over any other role I've seen, and even as himself. For one thing he has no eyebrows, which always bothers me. (This because I do have eyebrows.) And his mouth is disturbing. Too soft, too sensual; not unpleasing, understand, but disturbing. If I watch Chen Daoming himself I understand *exactly* whypaleaswater says he's yin. I may not know what yin is exactly, but whatever it is, that's it. I can see him playing languid aristocrats and esthetes, no problem. Gou Jian however is... if not more yang, at least a different kind of yin. Deeper, hotter, more passionate, more chiaroscuro. That's pre-Wu; post-Wu is-- I never know if he's Moral Ed or a truly chilling negative.
3. Dragons
Where did those dragons come from? Partly it was the Gaiden becoming so much more resonant than the main series, and within the Gaiden, Goujun being so different from the other characters.
This matters because: I learned my fandom in Japan, in Japanese, which is why the phrase 'the Other' (as in 'writing the Other') has always confused me a little. In fandom as I've known it for fifteen years the only Other present is me-- outsider looking in, trying to make sense, with my little Japanese and less Chinese, of what's going on, eavesdropping on the people this thing was meant for to see what they think of it. (It bothers me that I can't do that with Woxin fandom, which is why I'm so despreately grateful for the Singaporean educational system.)
So maybe I honed in on Goujun because he's the outsider in the Gaiden world- or rather, I read him as such. And he's gorgeous, which the real outsider, Gokuu, isn't. And besides he canonically has three brothers who come in colours. Mhh-- coloured dragons.
And all the rest came from the right brain, unthinking, because I assure you if I'd thought about it I'd have done it so much different.
4. Literature
In my youth there was no Net and I hung around with English majors and I had agoraphobia and my parents had a lot of books. Hence I spent a lot of time indoors, reading the stuff my friends were talking about as well as other stuff that kind of interested me (like Genji and Red Chambers.) I haven't read half as much as I seem to have: faking it was the other thing my English major friends taught me.
5. Snow
Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver
Mon jardin, ce n'est pas un jardin, c'est la neige
as Gilles Vigneault famously sang. 'My country is no country, it's the winter, My garden is no garden, it's the snow.' This is not quite true of Toronto, or not as true of TO as of anywhere else save the west coast. For years I didn't notice snow particularly. But my feet are disaster areas, and walking on snow and ice grows more and more painful with every year, so for a good half decade now I've shovelled other people's snow around the neighbourhood just so that I can get to work and the supermarket.
That said, there was no excuse for the amount of snow we had last year.
feliciter who associates me with1) Woxinchangdan, and by extension
2) Chen Daoming
3) Dragons
4) Literature, in a prodigiously wide range of genres and languages
5) Snow - because of your
1) Woxinchangdan
(This could be the subject of a whole book.)
In some ways this series should be called The Great Betrayal. The massacre of the cutting, the awful subtitles, and the second script writer's inability to match the nuance of the first's-- just one stab after another. I don't know how the original story outline went, but my own major source of dissatisfaction is the location of the Yue prisoners in that damned quarry, out of Fu Chai's sight and oh so clearly out of Fu Chai's mind as well. The action then becomes WZX vs Gou Jian, with Fu Chai as the guy who occasionally wanders in on a horse. Quite aside from disrupting the conflict between the (supposed) two principle figures, it makes Fu Chai look incompetent and out-of-it, a role he should have left behind in episode 17 or thereabouts.
I'm willing to admit my yaoi goggles may be blinding me to what the script writers had in mind. If in fact it's all supposed to be about Gou Jian vs Wu, then I suppose I must just shrug. If in fact there's supposed to be strong indications of stock heavy!Fu Chai, then yeah, stock heavies we have. If Second Writer assumed-but-naturally that Fan Li x Xi Shi should overwhelm anything Fan Li's done before then, well, I must simply accept the disjunct between that and episode 16. But the pity of it, Iago, the pity of it. Everything could have worked so brilliantly (read: the way I wanted it to) and instead there are tantalizing moments and unforgettable scenes and a lot of 'nothing to my purpose.' Like The Magic Flute-- glorious music amidst an unutterable mess of a libretto.
However, I still believe that I'd register all this differently if I knew what the actors were really saying. Language and nuance are so important to my appreciation of just about anything, that their absence is like listening to music when one speaker is on the fritz. You can't hear the whole thing.
And once again, my obsessions, let me show you them: the classic diction (I'm assuming it is) of Woxinchangdan lets me hear words and constructions that I know only from studying hanzi. I have no ear at all, but if I ever register the differences in tones, it'll be from listening to Chen Daoming's dialogue.
Which brings us to
2. Chen Daoming
I expected the series to be what Japanese manga was to me earlier-- utter disjunct from anything I was familiar with in the outside world, total connect with stuff that occupied the dark backward and abysm of my Id. It wasn't, which is fine. Even Japanese live action connected only peripherally with the subconscious stuff. (Note that my Japanese fannishness started with live action historicals, from Kurosawa to Mito Komon.)
Uncle Ming *is* an utter disjunct from anything I'm familiar with in the outside world, but I could never have conceived of something like that myself. Again with the musical metaphor-- he's a tune in a key I'm not familiar with, that keeps trying to modulate into one I do know when I try to sing it myself. Then I go back and look at the original and yes, as the Japanese say, 'it is different' (meaning No.)
And *still* I know I'm not seeing him quite right because too much cultural context is missing. But what's there is pretty damned impressive. The expressiveness of his eyes, the nuances of his tone, the habitual gestures and body language he gives his characters: fascinating to watch, and rewarding because it's clearly not unconscious. I don't know if he thinks it out beforehand or plays it as it comes to him, but it feels miles away from the body language of western actors that slash fans rely on so strongly to justify their pairings.
I'll admit to a western bias here-- I prefer him as Gou Jian over any other role I've seen, and even as himself. For one thing he has no eyebrows, which always bothers me. (This because I do have eyebrows.) And his mouth is disturbing. Too soft, too sensual; not unpleasing, understand, but disturbing. If I watch Chen Daoming himself I understand *exactly* why
paleaswater says he's yin. I may not know what yin is exactly, but whatever it is, that's it. I can see him playing languid aristocrats and esthetes, no problem. Gou Jian however is... if not more yang, at least a different kind of yin. Deeper, hotter, more passionate, more chiaroscuro. That's pre-Wu; post-Wu is-- I never know if he's Moral Ed or a truly chilling negative.3. Dragons
Where did those dragons come from? Partly it was the Gaiden becoming so much more resonant than the main series, and within the Gaiden, Goujun being so different from the other characters.
This matters because: I learned my fandom in Japan, in Japanese, which is why the phrase 'the Other' (as in 'writing the Other') has always confused me a little. In fandom as I've known it for fifteen years the only Other present is me-- outsider looking in, trying to make sense, with my little Japanese and less Chinese, of what's going on, eavesdropping on the people this thing was meant for to see what they think of it. (It bothers me that I can't do that with Woxin fandom, which is why I'm so despreately grateful for the Singaporean educational system.)
So maybe I honed in on Goujun because he's the outsider in the Gaiden world- or rather, I read him as such. And he's gorgeous, which the real outsider, Gokuu, isn't. And besides he canonically has three brothers who come in colours. Mhh-- coloured dragons.
And all the rest came from the right brain, unthinking, because I assure you if I'd thought about it I'd have done it so much different.
4. Literature
In my youth there was no Net and I hung around with English majors and I had agoraphobia and my parents had a lot of books. Hence I spent a lot of time indoors, reading the stuff my friends were talking about as well as other stuff that kind of interested me (like Genji and Red Chambers.) I haven't read half as much as I seem to have: faking it was the other thing my English major friends taught me.
5. Snow
Mon pays, ce n'est pas un pays, c'est l'hiver
Mon jardin, ce n'est pas un jardin, c'est la neige
as Gilles Vigneault famously sang. 'My country is no country, it's the winter, My garden is no garden, it's the snow.' This is not quite true of Toronto, or not as true of TO as of anywhere else save the west coast. For years I didn't notice snow particularly. But my feet are disaster areas, and walking on snow and ice grows more and more painful with every year, so for a good half decade now I've shovelled other people's snow around the neighbourhood just so that I can get to work and the supermarket.
That said, there was no excuse for the amount of snow we had last year.
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Goujun - truly IS different from the others in Gaiden. He is beautiful and gorgeous and a great character to lose one's heart to.
and and ...Too soft, too sensual; I have to say Ohno Satoshi's mouth works me just the same way too! ^_~ similarly with The expressiveness of his eyes, the nuances of his tone, the habitual gestures and body language he gives his characters: fascinating to watch, and rewarding because it's clearly not unconscious.
But I suppose with Ohno he is more familiar with the stage than he is with tv. Maou being hi first drama role. So I don't know if his acting is to do with applying stage theatrics. But I wouldn't know having no real experience one way or another beyond 'sitting back and enjoying the experience' ^__^ Sorry I kind of got carried away on my uhmm favourite topic. ^_~
Does Chen Daoming have any stage experience at all?
Literature: Hubby. Is an Eng. Major. Coming from a science discipline, I am glad to be surrounded by you literature types. ^__^
I like snow sometimes and not other times.
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IMO what's fascinating (in the scene-stealing tightrope-walking sense) about Gou Jian as a character is that sense of yin nature playing a yang role - not the actor's role, the social role of prince/warrior/ruler. And it's because he's something different at core that he's able to reemerge at the other end when all the top level stuff got broken down. But there's no indication either that he was internally at odds with what he was before, which is probably how a Western production would have played it, to match the Western definition of consistency. But yin is at core adaptable which means that at core it is what it is not...
The quality did strike me as I was watching, vividly; it's still very hard to define and I'm not sure I got it right just now. XD;
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Association Meme: Comment to this post, indicating that you'd like to play, and I'll give you 5 subjects/things I associate you with. Then post this in your LJ and elaborate on the subjects given.(optional)
And then people go off and natter about themselves, which is what all memes really involve.
that sense of yin nature playing a yang role
Bingo. At last I see why
And it's because he's something different at core that he's able to reemerge at the other end when all the top level stuff got broken down... But yin is at core adaptable which means that at core it is what it is not...
Yes yes yes. The plus side of fluidity-- it adapts, it changes, but it doesn't break. It may be different from what it was before, but the change is organic, not 'broken apart and put together again'. When Fu Chai breaks, he has to die because he /can't/ be different from what he was before.
As for consistency, one can be consistently a changeable, or perhaps multi-faceted, sort of person. One could have guessed from pre-Wu Gou Jian and his many many faces that that's what he is.
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I can see how in a western-based fandom it can get dicier, because the creative eye that sees is generally a white one, and may itself regard other-than-white as different or unknowable. Even so-- that eye is also generally a straight and male one, but that doesn't stop most people from introducing gay characters and female ones written as people, not different or unknowable Others. Being a fan writer /starts/ with turning yourself into people who aren't you and looking at the world through their eyes. One does it with Vulcans and Egyptians; it should be easier with West Indians and PRC Chinese, because theirs is a documented here and now reality, accessible to anyone with a net connection.
So no, not rocket science.
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Does Chen Daoming have any stage experience at all?
I haven't heard that he does. Mostly a TV actor with a solid number of films to his credit, is my impression. But the series I know of contain a large number of historicals, so the elegant diction may be attributed to that.
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Or you might come away wondering whether the body and verbal language don't always match because of character acting, or bad acting.
Which of course brings one back again to Uncle Ming, where one can be assured of the former.
2) PostWu!Gou Jian in Moral Ed is a chilling negative upon stripping all the lessons away (not a nice soul that harbours revenge as its raison d'etre for 20 years, even discounting all the paranoic actions after he actually conquered the place.)
3) Thank you for explaining about the dragons! I know very little of Saiyuki, and much less of the Gaiden, but most of what I know I learnt from you.
4) Interestingly I read more now than I did before discovering the Net. (and then I surf a bit about the book afterwards.)
5) Ouch. Here's hoping that the weather clears ASAP (when is that, usually, in TO?)
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Actually Gou Jian historically has been seen as a yin kind of person. What the Chinese historical text stresses is that he is able to appear subservient while still harboring his hatred for 20 years. That was not considered the action of a noble man. Then after his victory putting Wen zhou to death and sending Fa Li away, again the sign of someone who could use talent, but could not tolerate them when there's no longer use for it. What Chen Dao Ming did was to inject a note of yang into someone who was historically considered yin. And yet do it in a way that is generally consistent. It's quite subtle, and it's not surprising that the second writer couldn't get it -- he thought this meant the Gou Jian should be yang, which he clearly is not.
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5) When does it stop snowing? Some years it never really starts. Some years there are highs of 20C in March to be followed by great 20 cm dumps of snow in April. Spring is totally a lay your bets season.
I really would like to see someone else's Gou Jian just for comparison purposes.
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The Chinese are very conflicted with Gou Jian and Yue. On one hand they think he is a 阴险小人， a devious and ignoble man, on the other hand they admire the kind of persistence that drives him, in the same way they admire the mythical old lady who made a needle by grinding down an iron rod. What uncle Ming did was to connect his persistence to the idea of the Way of the Heaven, and by extension the spirit of the Spring and Autumn. It's quite daring by Chinese standards -- there were many who hated the series because they think it's a revisionist view of Goujian.