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From SALVATION to HANNIBAL to OUTLANDER: One Man’s View of Men in Film & Television

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Warning: Conclusion May Contain Triggers
(Some Film Spoilers in Post)

UnknownLast week, my life-partner Tom and I watched Salvation, the Danish tribute to Sergio Leone’s classic spaghetti Westerns, with Mads Mikkelsen as the iconic “loner” whose wife is raped then killed, along with their young son, in the early scenes, and who then searches for vengeance.

images-4Salvation is also a tribute to the iconic Western “lone, good man,” defending the rest of the town, as in High Noon and Firecreek, although no one else in the place stands up with the “hero” to fight evil until the hero reluctantly fights back against the vicious gang himself.

images-2Salvation is a pretty interesting take on the iconic Western: Mads’ character is an immigrant rather than a stranger, and has already settled and prospered enough to bring his wife and son over. Salvation is also a fair tribute to the “Man with No Name” series as well as to the “good man as reluctant defender” Western icon.

Mads’ character does have a name — John — and is a more realistic shot than the character Clint Eastwood made famous in Leone’s films (i.e., it always takes John several shots to kill someone). John is first rescued from the gang by his brother, and then eventually joined by “The Princess” (Eva Green), who appears to have been the captive “wife” of one of the rapists/murderers and who had her tongue cut out by Indians when she was kidnapped as a young girl. The Princess comes to John’s aid in fighting the gang members after they kill John’s brother, and only one other town member lends his aid: a boy whose grandmother was killed by the gang. At first, John refuses the boy’s help, telling him, “You’re just a kid.” He replies, “I’m almost 16.” John then accepts his offer. The young boy dies helping John. At the end, the Princess leaves the town with John (from which I inferred that no one in the town had ever protected her from the gang members).

This post is not a review of Salvation. Instead, it is about a discussion that ensued after my partner Tom made a surprising comment about Mads’ looks in the film, which led me to an epiphany about how one man — my man — judges male actors’ looks in films and television.

Unknown“Mads is actually quite good-looking, isn’t he?” said Tom in the middle of an important scene.

I was shocked. I’d never heard him say something like that before. Not about a male actor’s looks. At first, I thought it was because we were watching a Western, one of Tom’s favorite genres. Then I thought it might be because John was already seeking “justice” by killing the bad guys. But Tom said it when Mads’ character John wasn’t actually looking his best (above). Not classically handsome or anything. So I wondered what had suddenly made Tom comment on a male actor’s looks: something he’s never done in our 22 years together, but which he constantly does about female actors if he finds them attractive. (I don’t know what female actors he finds unattractive because he doesn’t make comments like that.)

images-1“You just noticed that Mads is good-looking?” I said.

“I guess.”

“You didn’t think he was attractive in Hannibal?”images-21“He was a serial killer and a cannibal,” said Tom, as if he had watched more than the final season of Hannibal, which, by the way, he was really watching for Gillian Anderson, whom he continually called “stunning” and “gorgeous.”images-10“You never commented on Mads’ looks before.”

“I guess I never noticed.”

“You didn’t comment on him in King Arthur.”

“Mads was in King Arthur?” said Tom. “He wasn’t that pretty boy, was he?”

“What ‘pretty boy’?”

“The one with two swords.”

“That was Lancelot (Ioan Gruffudd) with the two swords. Mads played Tristan.”

images-14“Which one was Tristan?”

“The one with the hawk.”

Unknown-2“Oh, that was Mads? He was cool. He fought Stellan [Skarsgård, who played Saxon invader Cerdic] at the end.”

images-13“Tristan got killed.”

“Stellan looked over at Clive [Owen, who was King Arthur] to make sure he was watching before he killed Tristan.”

I was stunned that Tom remembered that detail, despite the number of times we’ve watched the film, which is one of our favorites.

“The actor who played Galahad in King Arthur was in Hannibal, too.”

“Which one was Galahad?”

“Hugh Dancy.”

images-7“Oh, that boy,” said Tom after I found a picture. “Who was he in Hannibal?”

“He played the special FBI agent, Will Graham,” I said, showing him another photo. “He was trying to help catch Hannibal.”

images copy 2“I remember that boy now,” said Tom. “They were trying to make it seem like he and Hannibal loved each other, but without their being homosexual.”

By that time, I noticed that Tom was consistently making a distinction between “men” and “boys,” though all the actors we were discussing are grown men. Even if they were playing warrior knights, such as Lancelot and Galahad in King Arthur, Tom was referring to some of them as “boys.” Before I had a chance to ask about this distinction, he made an even more startling comment.

“That boy in Hannibal was about the same as that red-head boy.”

“What red-head boy?”

“That red-head husband in the past.”

By now, I was most sincerely confused, since we were watching Salvation and The Princess’ husband had been dark-haired, and he’d only been killed by Mads’ character a few days before.

“What red-head husband in the past?” I said.

“The red-head husband in the show with the woman who fell through the rocks.”

images-32“You mean Outlander?”

“If that’s the one where the woman has two husbands,” said Tom, “one in the past and one in the future.”

Did Tom really just make a comment about Outlander?

My Tom?

He’d only watched the show twice — the final two episodes — though he knew the premise, vaguely, and had caught a couple of glimpses of Caitriona Balfe (Claire) and Sam Heughan (Jamie) when they were nude (as he was passing through the room where I was watching Outlander, to return to the room where he was watching sports).

“You mean Jamie, the Scottish husband?”images-10“Is he the boy who got his hand nailed to the table by that ugly man in the prison?”

“He’s the man who got his hand spiked…”

“The boy who got raped by that ugly man.”

“His name’s Jamie,” I said. “And he’s the man who got raped by Black Jack Randall.”

“The ugly guy who threatened to rape the red-head boy’s wife?”

images-32“Black Jack Randall,” I said, certain now that we were, indeed, discussing Outlander.

“That’s the guy who raped the boy?” said Tom, persisting in using the word “boy” to describe Sam Heughan’s character.

“Black Jack Randall raped Jamie.”

“That ugly guy,” said Tom, “who raped that boy and then tried to make it look like some kind of love scene or something.”images-8“They were probably only doing what the writers and director told them to do. I think I read that they were trying to make one of the scenes between the two actors look like Michelangelo’s Pietà.

images“That statue of Jesus after they took him off the cross and his mother was holding him?”

“They might have been trying to make Jamie a symbolic Christ figure… I don’t know. It didn’t work for me.”

“None of it worked for me,” said Tom. “It was disgusting and horrible, what that vicious ugly man did to that poor boy.”

images-36He kept calling Tobias Menzies (Black Jack Randall) “ugly,” and he kept referring to Sam Heughan (Jamie) as a “boy.” I thought I was beginning to understand what Tom was unconsciously saying, but I wasn’t sure.

“You know that the actor who played Black Jack Randall also played Claire’s other husband, right?”

“What did he look like?” said Tom.

images-23“It was the same actor,” I said. “Only his name was Frank when he was her husband in 1945.”

“That’s not the same man,” said Tom after looking at the photo above.

“It’s the same actor,” I said, showing him another view. “Honest.”

images-29“That’s not the same guy.”

“It is the same guy.”

images-33“No, it’s not,” said Tom, looking at the picture (above) with Tobias and Cait. “That guy is not ugly.”

“Is he good-looking?” I said. “Like Mads?”

Tom stared at the photo of Cait and Tobias, as Claire and Frank on their second honeymoon in Scotland, before Claire was transported through the stones at Craigh na Dun to Scotland two hundred years in the past.

“No. He’s not good-looking. Just average. But he’s certainly not ugly like the guy who raped the boy.”

“I swear to you, it’s the same actor,” I said. “Tobias Menzies.”images-43After looking at the side-by-side photo (above) for a while, he said, “How’d they make him look so ugly then?”

“All they did, as far as I know, was put a wig or hair-extensions on him,” I said. “And he acted like he had a facial tick.”

“He is not a good-looking man,” said Tom, handing back the picture of Tobias. “He’s ugly. In fact, he’s extremely ugly.”

“Even as Frank? Her husband in the future.”

Unknown-13“Then he’s just average. Unremarkable.”

“Why not good-looking? When he’s Frank, I mean.”

“Because he didn’t save his wife when he heard her calling at the stones. He just cried like a baby.”

images-47Now I was really caught off-guard. When had Tom seen that? Before the final two episodes, which he watched to be morally supportive of me in case I got triggered since I’d heard there were torture and rape scenes in them, I wasn’t aware that Tom had seen anything substantial in Outlander. 

I knew he’d caught a glimpse of nude Sam in the water because Tom said, “You know men didn’t look like that back then, don’t you? Men don’t look like that now unless they work out at a gym all the time.”

images-36I knew he’d gotten a good long look at nude Cait in one of the sex-scenes with Sam because he was standing there staring until the scene ended, when he said, “Her breasts look better when she’s lying down” before walking away.

I guess he’d also seen Frank weeping at the rocks and heard Claire calling to him, though I’d never realized Tom knew what was going on in the show. I never discussed it with him because he doesn’t like fantasy and thought the premise was silly, and he rarely reads my blogs. (I don’t mind: he reads my books, which is a much bigger commitment, and he knows what I blog about.) I was still confused about Tom’s association between Will and Jamie, however.

“Why did you say that Will Graham in Hannibal was just like Jamie in Outlander?”

“Because one didn’t stop a serial killer and the other didn’t kill the ugly bastard that raped him.”

“You think Will should have killed Hannibal?”

“Of course, he should have.”

“He pushed Hannibal off a cliff,” I said.

“No, he hugged him off a cliff and they both fell together, like they were lovers about to have sex or something. And they probably survived for another season. So it was just stupid.”

I was starting to understand this film world-view. A male character’s being “stupid” can make the actor playing him a “boy.” A male character not killing another male character he knows to be a serial killer can make the former one a “boy.” A male character’s not killing his rapist can make him a “boy.” After all, the first time Tom ever remarked about Sam Heughan as Jamie, when he saw him nude in the water, he referred to him as a “man,” saying that “men” didn’t have bodies like that back then. After Jamie was raped by Black Jack Randall, he and the actor playing him became a “boy.”

I wondered what “boys” were —  attractive, unremarkable, or ugly — in the world according to Tom.

“Do you think Jamie’s good-looking?” I said.

“Which one’s Jamie?”

“The red-head husband in the past.”

“The one who gets tortured and raped.”

“Right.”

“He’s a boy.”

“But is he good-looking?”

“He’s a boy,” said Tom. “With a weight-machine body.”

“Is he ‘average,’ like her husband Frank. Or ‘ugly,’ like Black Jack Randall?”

“He’s just a kid,” said Tom.

So, no comments or judgment on a boy’s looks, even if the “boy” is an adult male actor.

“But you think Mads is attractive.”

“He’s a good-looking man,” said Tom.

“But you never thought he was good-looking in Hannibal,” I said. “I even asked you about it.”

“I said I didn’t notice.”

“What about Mads in this picture?” I said.

images-20“He looks good in glasses. He’s very manly.”

“It’s from The Hunt.”

“What’s that about?” said Tom.

“See the little girl? She’s one of his Kindergarten students who says that he molested and raped her. The whole town…”

“Is he guilty?”

“What?”

“Did he hurt the little girl?”

“No,” I said. “She doesn’t even realize what’s she’s saying about him.”

“How can she not realize that?”

I explained that her older brother and his friend had been watching porn on their tablets, and showed it to her in passing, as a joke, saying something like, “Look at that big ugly cock.” Later, the little girl, who was unconsciously jealous that she wasn’t getting enough of her belovèd teacher’s attention, told one of the administrators at the school that she didn’t want to see “Lucas’ (Mads) big ugly cock anymore.”

“So Mads didn’t ever do anything to the little girl?” said Tom.

“No. Never. But everyone assumed she was telling the truth because of what she said.”

“But he was really innocent.”

“Totally.”

“I’ll have to watch that some time,” said Tom. “And he does look very handsome in the glasses.”

Unknown-11

This is our 22nd year together; we love films and watch them all the time, yet I never realized that Tom judges a male actor’s looks by what his character does in a role. Tom’s only one man, so I’m not saying that he’s representative of all men, but he’s my man, and that makes this an important revelation to me. Whether Tom consciously realizes these distinctions he’s making about a male actor’s looks — and I’m guessing that he does not — this is what they seem to be.

If a male actor’s character sexually assaults or otherwise tortures or physically brutalizes children, women, or other men, he’s “ugly.” If the violence does not happen on-screen and the other parts of the story-line are compelling, then, at the very least, Tom doesn’t seem to notice any physical attractiveness or ugliness in the male actor, as with Mads in Hannibal. He played a serial killer but Tom rarely saw any on-screen violence because he only watched parts of the final season, i.e., the episodes containing Gillian Anderson.

If the male actors’ characters don’t save their women — even if it’s because they cannot go through the stones at Craigh na Dun themselves — they’re just average-looking, plain, or unremarkable.

But the most important — and saddest — part of the distinction Tom (unconsciously) seems to be making between male actors as “men” or “boys” is this: if the male actors’ characters are raped (as Tom was, repeatedly, when he was a six-year-old boy, by his father’s best friend), then the actors, no matter their age, are “boys.”

And boys need to be protected from “ugly men” (as my poor Tom was not protected by his own father, though Tom told him, and others, what was happening).

Women, too, need to be protected from “ugly men,” and the women don’t have to be “stunning” or “gorgeous” to need such protection.

They can be ordinary women like me.

That’s why Tom watched the final two episodes of Outlander with me: because when I was a child, I was repeatedly tortured, molested, and raped (by my father, step-father, and mother, the last of whom raped me with implements when I was 11, causing so much internal damage that I could never have children). Tom feared that the scenes of torture and rape in Outlander, though they were happening to a man, would “trigger” me. Just as the horrific rape scenes in Casualties of War or The Accused “trigger” me. (In fact, I’ve never actually seen more than a few seconds of either of the rape scenes in either film: I can’t even listen to them.)

Tom was there to protect me, even if it was from a film or a television show.

He protects me now, in any way he can, because no one protected me when I was younger.

Just as no one protected him when he was a boy.

When I finally realized what Tom was saying during our talk after his comment about Mads’ being “actually quite good-looking” in Salvation, I went into the other room and wept with grief.

For both of us.

Unknown-10Epilogue

As I mentioned in the original post of this topic (above), Tom has long since stopped reading my blogs, though he always asks what I’m writing on. Always. For every single post. When I showed him some of the remarks and responses I was getting to this original post, and told him that it had gotten over 60K unique reads in less than 24 hours, he seemed confused.

“Why does everyone in your Facebook Outlander groups and on Twitter keep saying I’m sweet?” said Tom. “Why do they say the blog is ‘heartbreaking’? I thought you said it was on my view of men in some films and a couple television shows.”

“It is, based on the fact that you commented, for the first time ever, on a male actor’s being ‘actually being quite attractive’. Mads. In Salvation.”

“Mads is good-looking,” said Tom.

You never said Mads was attractive when he was in Hannibal. I mentioned that in the blog. Then I put in the things you said about Jamie… the red-head husband in Outlander… about his being a boy.”

“He is a boy,” said Tom. “He couldn’t protect or defend himself from being raped, just like I couldn’t defend myself when I was raped as a little boy. And no one helped the red-head husband. Like nobody helped me. So he is a boy.”

“Some of the very thoughtful readers who responded wanted you to know that the character, Jamie, heals and becomes more of a man in the later Outlander books,” I said. “They don’t know what will happen in the show, of course…”

“He’s a man already. Or he was before the rape,” said Tom. “Now he’s a boy. And no matter how much healing he does, or how much of a man he becomes, that wounded, damaged little boy will always be inside him.”

“So you intentionally called him a ‘boy’?”

“Did I call him a ‘boy’?” said Tom.

“You did. Consistently. I thought you might be doing it unconsciously.”

“I guess I was, since I don’t remember it. But he is a boy if he gets his hand nailed to a table and gets raped over and over by another man,” said Tom. “He can’t protect himself. He can’t fight.”

“Then you really didn’t expect Jamie to just jump up afterward and kill Black Jack Randall?”

“He was in a prison. In the dungeon. How was he going to get out? He couldn’t have killed that guy,” said Tom.

“Why’d you say that he should have killed the rapist then?”

Tom was silent for a while.

“I guess I said that because I wanted to kill my dad’s friend every single day of my life,” said Tom. “Right up until the day he died. And you know how I feel about my dad never protecting me. Same as you feel about all the people you told, the ones who never saved or protected you.”

Because he’d mentioned me, but I’d never heard him call any female actors “girls,” I asked about Claire’s character in Outlander.

“What about Claire… the red-head’s wife… what if Black Jack Randall had raped her?”

“Look,” said Tom, “there would have been nothing she could have done about it. If she didn’t manage to run away before he caught her, then she couldn’t have stopped it. Rapists are despicable. You can’t fight them. You don’t know if they’re just vicious, disgusting people, or if they’re pedophiles, or if they’re serial rapists, or if they’re serial rapists about to flip over into serial killers. If you fight too hard, you might die.”

“What I wanted to know is this: would she have become a ‘girl’ if she’d been raped, instead of a woman?”

“She’d be a woman, just like you,” said Tom, “with that permanently damaged little girl inside her. That wounded little girl will always be in you, no matter how fierce or independent or sweet or loving or protective you are. That raped little boy will always be in her red-head husband. Same as he’s in me. Even if nobody else knows about it. You can’t go back and make it never happen.”

“So, you were unconsciously calling the red-head husband a ‘boy’. Just like you called the Special FBI Agent in Hannibal a boy, and he didn’t get raped.”images-15“He couldn’t kill Hannibal, even though Hannibal was obsessed with him,” said Tom. “Maybe if he’d snuck up behind him as soon as he’d figured out Hannibal was a serial killer and cold-cocked him, he might have had a chance to cut his throat before Hannibal gutted him like a fish. But you don’t have any chance with serial killers. Hannibal would have killed and eaten that boy eventually.”

“I guess the part that annoyed you, then, was how the shows tried to make the rapes like love scenes, or a serial killer relationship like a love story.”

images-16“Hannibal might have wanted something from that boy, but he didn’t love him,” said Tom. “He had sex with Gillian. But he didn’t love her. Even she said she knew he’d end up killing and eating her. You can’t change serial killers. You can’t change serial rapists or pedophiles. The only thing they love is themselves and hurting other people. You know that. Your own mother was one.”

I sat for a moment, thinking about everything he’d said, and how he’d called the victims “boys” unconsciously, because, in the 22 years we’ve been together, Tom has never come right out and admitted that his father’s friend repeatedly raped him when he was a little boy. He always said he was “only molested” and “performed fellatio” — forced fellatio — on his rapist.

images-31“By the way, be sure to tell them I’m sorry,” said Tom. “The people in those Outlander groups.”

“About what?”

“I know they really like that red-head husband. I’m sorry if they got upset because I said he was a ‘boy’. The actor’s a guy. Even if he kinda looks like a kid.”

“Someone wrote in comments that she thought they might have purposely cast that actor because of his boyish looks.”

“Then they knew he was going to become a boy, too. Because of the torture and rape.”

“Maybe,” I said. “They might have just thought he was pretty.”

“Pretty doesn’t make you a ‘boy’.”

“The actor who played the Special Agent in Hannibal is boy-ish.”

“When a serial killer’s got you in his sights,” said Tom, “or the writers of Hannibal make him act like he loves you, you’re a boy because he’s gonna get you eventually. There’s nothing you can do except run away as fast as you can. If you can’t do that… well, you know… It’s the same as when you were a kid. If nobody listens to you, and no one protects you, you’re gonna get hurt. Bad. And that kind of damage never goes away. Not completely.”

I kissed him on the cheek.

“The person who said you were ‘a good, good man’ meant that you were sweet for watching Outlander’s last two episodes with me, knowing they contained rape and torture, in case they triggered me.”

maxresdefault“You’d do the same for me,” he said, putting his arm around my shoulders. “You’re my Eva and my Claire.”

Unknown

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Filed under Actors, Hannibal, Memoir, Movies/Films, Movies/Television, Outlander, Rape, Violence

The OUTLANDER Smackdown: Book vs Show, Part Two

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Warning:
Disappointment Galore

UnknownIn Part One of the Outlander Smackdown: Book vs Show, I went very meticulously through the first few episodes of the Starz’s show, based on the bestselling books by Diana Gabaldon, comparing episodes and chapters, scenes from the show and dialogue from the book, looking for the good and the weaker in both versions of Outlander.

I have just spent the last two days doing the same thing for the remaining episodes of Season 1 Part 1, and I was intending to analyze each episode in the same way.

But something happened.

Something in me cracked.

I saw more hours stretching ahead of me writing a blog comparing the show adaptation to the book than I’d spent watching the show’s 16 episodes and than I’d spent reading the first book in the series.

I felt weighed down, depressed, and unhappy.

After all, there is only so much you can say about a show that gets further and further away from the book as each episode progresses.

There is only so much you can say about a book that has so much reader love which is, unfortunately, not being translated into love of the show.

So, that’s what I decided to talk about instead.

What is it that’s in the book Outlander that the readers love so much that has not been translated into the show?

What is it in the show that has turned away even non-readers of the book, i.e., what has failed in the Starz adaptation of Outlander as a stand-alone drama?

Jamie & Claire

imagesIt’s clear that the major attraction for readers of the book is the relationship between the time-transported Claire (Caitriona Balfe) and her Scots husband Jamie (Sam Heughan). The wedding episode probably had more viewers than any other. It certainly got more pre-air-time publicity, press, and viewer memes.

The number of photos on the internet of women imitating that wedding  — from having their gowns designed like Claire’s (above, top), to having their grooms wear kilts, to having their poor grooms grow their hair long so they’ll look more like Jamie — is staggering. (I don’t imagine that it’s the grooms who are saying, “Hey, Honey, how about if I grow my hear real long and shaggy and wear a kilt to our wedding, and you can dress yourself up to look like Claire?”)

images-36Readers are clearly transported by and deeply emotionally invested in the relationship they see between Jamie and Claire, which readers of the book interpret as love.

On forums and Outlander pages, they complain that the love between Claire and Jamie in the book is not shown in the adaptation.

I guess I didn’t see any great love between them, in either the book or the show.

I saw physical attraction, on both sides, but I didn’t see love.

The Wedding Ring

images-14The wedding ring, which is a symbol of the love that readers see between Claire and Jamie, is nothing more than a key in the show: a poor substitute for the beautifully described ring of the book.

The ring, that bothered me.

Why a dull key? Was it supposed to be a symbol? Was it supposed to be the key to Jamie’s heart or something?

images-7It wasn’t anything like the gorgeous ring described in the book, even if Claire didn’t get the book-ring during the ceremony: Jamie used his father’s wedding ring instead, a lovely ring with a ruby, which she gave back to him on their wedding night.

The key-ring of the show was pathetic and insulting.

The Pearls

images-15In the show, Jamie gives Claire his mother’s pearls on their wedding night, when they’re alone. In the book, he gives them to her before they marry. That part of the story works either way for me. She got the pearls on the same day, so it didn’t really matter to me exactly when she got them.

The pearls were lovely.

His wanting her to have his mother’s pearls was even lovelier, book or show.

Frank & Claire

images-12I didn’t mind the show’s changing the fact that Frank (Tobias Menzies) and Claire had originally been married in the same chapel where she and Jamie were eventually married. It was dramatically successful to show that Frank’s “impulsive” civil marriage — before introducing Claire to his parents for the first time — could be regarded as “romantic.”

Besides, it worked better with the contrast of the two marriages to have Frank & Claire marry on the spur of the moment in a courthouse civil ceremony, and to have Claire agonize over marrying Jamie “for convenience” in a religious church ceremony after she’s transported to the past.

Unknown-2A religious ceremony that Jamie takes so seriously he comes late: he’s had to clean up, get his own clan plaids, and look good for his intended bride.

Even if the Frank and Claire marriage wasn’t in the book as an impulsive civil ceremony, that part worked fine for me in the show.

The Great Love

images-21To be completely honest, I didn’t see any great love between Claire and Jamie in the book itself. What I read repeatedly in Diana Gabaldon’s Outlander was Claire’s comparing her feelings for Jamie to the “temporary” and “physical attraction” that many “doctors, nurses, and patients” had experienced during the War (chapter 16).

Claire even admitted to having felt such attractions herself during her time as a combat nurse, though she had always refrained from acting on them, thus not ever being unfaithful to her husband Frank (also, chapter 16).

images-1She also admitted that she had long been aware, in her time-transported life, of Jamie’s attraction to her, though she also compared that to the attractions wounded soldiers had for their nurses in the War.

I saw physical attraction in the book.

Not love.

I saw physical attraction in the show, on Claire’s part, that might have grown into love — I couldn’t tell based on some of her atrocious behaviour to Jamie.

images-9I also saw guilt, on her part, for being attracted to Jamie because she was already married to Frank and also because she’d never acted on those feelings for anyone else, during the War.

images-2What I never saw in the show was her admission that she had ever had those feelings of attraction for anyone during the War, that she had noticed the physical attraction between other people during the War (leading to their having affairs), or that those physical feelings were any different from her attraction to her own husband Frank.

That means the viewers were left to interpret the fact that Claire felt more physical attraction for Jamie than for Frank, which is definitely open for argument in the book, and to interpret that as meaning that she had never felt it for anyone else except Jamie, which is most clearly not what Claire says in the book.

Unknown-1In the show, however, Jamie clearly seemed more than physically attracted to Claire early on: he seemed to have feelings for her from the beginning. Certainly he had them by the time they married, or he wouldn’t have gone through all that trouble to make it a beautiful wedding. In the book, Jamie also eventually tells Claire that he had strong feelings for her — not just sexual ones, though those, too, were present — from their first meeting.

images-8In the book, Jamie told her his “conditions” for the wedding: that it be in a church with a priest, that she have a gown, and that she have a ring. But he didn’t tell her those things on their wedding night. He told her much later. And it was only then that readers might have gotten the idea that Jamie had more love for Claire than she yet had for him.

In the show, he told her those “conditions” on their wedding night, before their first sexual encounter. Since I hadn’t read the book at the time I saw the show, I didn’t know how to interpret Jamie’s “conditions.” I know that I didn’t interpret them as “love,” however; I thought that he simply viewed marriage as a life-long commitment, as his parents’ had been, and so he wanted a nice ceremony.

Claire’s Narration

images-3I admit that it is difficult — but certainly not impossible — to have all the elements of a book written in First Person Point of View, with a narrator’s intimate thoughts and feelings revealed to the reader, put into a dramatic adaptation as a Voice-Over. Screen adaptations are visual, and sometimes that’s better than what you can get in a book: viewers get more historical information about clothing, hairstyles, etc in a dramatic adaptation much more quickly than they do in a book (and, in any event, Gabaldon leaves out most of the historical description in Outlander, so in that arena, the show is an improvement).

But nothing can replace the intimacy of being inside one character’s head for a prolonged period of time. And there have been successful Voice-Overs in dramatic adaptations. The Oscar-winning Isabelle Huppert version of Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary is a case in point: it manages to be so faithful to the book that even the ironic Voice of the Author is presented as the Voice-Over commentary on the characters and their behaviour as the viewers see the action on-screen.

I’m not saying that everything Claire thinks in Outlander is profound, earth-shattering, or will change your interpretation of her behaviour. However, having watched the show before reading the book, I can assure you that leaving out virtually all of Claire’s thoughts does, indeed, significantly change not only her own personality, but her relationships as well.

Claire & Jamie,
the Adaptation

images-18Her relationship with and physical attraction to Jamie is one of the most important things that gets changed from book to show. In the book, Claire clearly and repeatedly compares what she feels for Jamie to the brief  “physical” entanglements that happened between strangers thrown together in intense moments during the War. Physical attractions that she also felt, though she does not specify whether she felt them for doctors or for wounded soldiers who were her patients, but attractions that she felt strongly enough to resist so as not to be unfaithful to her husband Frank.

Many Outlander readers apparently interpret those intense sexual feelings that Claire discusses as love. Especially when she compares Jamie’s feelings for her to those she witnessed and felt in the War, and when she compares her own attraction to Jamie to those War-emotions.

That is all lost in the show.

Because it’s lost, because even the mention of the capability of physical attraction to other men by Claire is lost, then viewers who have not read the book don’t understand the relationship between Jamie and Claire. It seems like a sexual fling.

One that will burn out quickly.

One that, unfortunately, is not even convincing in the first place.

At least the book’s narration provided some awareness on Claire’s part that she did have sexual feelings for men other than her husband Frank, and that she was able to recognize when men — soldiers, patients, Jamie — had them for her.

Also, the book’s narration made it blatantly clear that, as a married woman, Claire chose when to act on those sexual feelings, and that she had only acted on them with Jamie.

Claire & Frank,
the Adaptation

Unknown-1One of the strengths of the show is dramatically portraying the relationship between Frank and Claire. Readers don’t seem to like it, however, as they continually insist that they thought “Claire married Frank for safety,” that Claire and Frank had a “Teacher-Student type of relationship,” or that “Frank and Claire never had oral sex.” Those are all interpretations of the book because the book is very vague on the relationship between Frank and Claire, whether it be their sexual connection, their friendship, their love, their marriage, or their long separation during the War.

In fact, except for the physical attraction between Jamie and Claire, the book is just as vague about virtually everything sexual. Only two sexual encounters (detailed below) are graphic. The others are all alluded to.

images-37Concerning Frank and Claire’s relationship between book and show, however, Claire does mention, in chapter 24, for one paragraph, that Frank must be worried sick about her having disappeared, that he must be looking everywhere for her, and that he must have gone several times to Scotland Yard for news of her.

When I praised episode 108 in a blog post last year, where Frank was brought back into the storyline, I got “corrected” in comments.

I was informed that Frank never appeared in the book again, so the show was just “wrong.”

images-4While it’s true that Frank doesn’t appear in the book after early chapters, Claire often mentions him. In that paragraph in chapter 24, she worries about what Frank is going through, mentioning everything he must be doing to find her. The “Everything” Frank’s doing is what the show chose to dramatize. It was perfectly acceptable for the adaptation to show Frank doing those things since they didn’t have Claire’s narration as a Voice-Over very often.

It worked.

But readers apparently forgot some of those things between Frank and Claire in the book.

So they complained that the show had made them up.

No, the show expanded or dramatized some, like the paragraph that I just indicated, and it interpreted others that author Gabaldon left vague.

Frank & Claire
& the Joy of Sex

images-33Readers are delighted to admit that Claire and Jamie have a great, intense, virtually continuous sexual relationship, which the readers seem to interpret as love. And this is despite the fact that Claire complains about Jamie sexually, saying that he was “too hungry and too clumsy for tenderness” and that “his concern” for her “safety” was “at once endearing and irritating” (chapter 15).

That ain’t in the show.

Readers seem to forget that it’s in the book.

They also seem to forget that Claire and Frank do have sex. It’s always alluded to, but never written about in any great detail. So we don’t know if Claire liked, loved, or just endured sex with Frank.

But the aspect about Claire and Frank’s sex life that really riles readers/viewers is whether the two of them ever had oral sex, if Frank just wasn’t as interested in performing oral sex on Claire, or if he wasn’t as energetic in that particular area of their sexual relations, if Jamie was the first to perform oral sex on her…

Oy, vey, the annoyed reader/viewer discussions on that particular topic, which is left vague and open to huge interpretation in the book, though Claire is shown enthusiastically enjoying oral sex with Frank on the show.

The sexual relations between Frank and Claire are just never described as vividly or in as much detail as the one detailed sex scene that’s described between Claire and Jamie.

Only one sex scene between Claire and Jamie is given in graphic detail, and that  one is so much like a rape that Claire begs Jamie repeatedly to stop, telling him he’s hurting her, but he doesn’t, so she hurts him back, with vicious scratches and bites (chapter 23).

Both are bruised, battered, and sore the next day.

Ouch.

Black Jack Randall & Jaime
and Rape

images-36Is it mere coincidence that the only other graphic sex scene(s) in the book are the rapes that Black Jack Randall (Tobias Menzies, in a dual role) commits on Jamie in Wentworth Prison, related to Claire by Jamie, after she goes all “General Patton” on him — book and show —  in “To Ransom a Man’s Soul” (season 1 finale, episode 116)?

It was hard enough to read, they were so graphic.

Watching those rape scenes was horrific.

For the writers and producers of the show to have shown Jamie’s shame at his involuntary orgasm without having Claire explain why his body had ejaculated due solely to the continued pressure of BJR’s member on Jamie’s prostate gland was absolutely shameful.

And I don’t care if that bit of information would have been anachronistic or not.

She was a nurse. She’d seen battlefield atrocities. She would have known what Shell-Shock was (now called War-Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder): General Patton was disciplined for slapping two boys suffering from it, so the condition was well-known during World War II.

Whether Claire would have known about rape-PTSD or not, the show did every boy and man a huge disservice by not explaining why Jamie’s body ejaculated involuntarily, shaming him because he thought it was pleasure. Some reviewers even mistakenly assumed that Jamie actually experienced pleasure.

I know that many premium cable channels — and Starz may be one of them — give their producers and writers complete creative freedom. In this instance, by allowing this kind of misinformation about male rape to be shown, Starz failed its viewers. Male bodies may react because of the type of physical stimulation, but it is not pleasure: it is still rape.

Not permitting Claire to “correct” Jamie’s misinterpretation of his body’s involuntary ejaculation during the rape was shameful, even if it might have been anachronistic (and I admit that I do not know if it would have been anachronistic, but I don’t care. That information should have been given to viewers by Claire’s giving it to her husband Jamie).

In any event, Starz, Outlander producers and writers, the actors themselves, and everyone else connected with the show had a moral obligation to all male rape victims to make it clear that Jamie’s body’s involuntary ejaculation did not mean he was experiencing pleasure: he was still being raped.

Just changing the words from “buggering” to “making love,” like Gabaldon did in the book, did not make the source of Jamie’s shame clear, as the continual flow of comments to me from my post on that issue indicate. Yes, that was how Jamie described it in the book. No, Claire did not correct him in the book. She didn’t even comfort him. She was too busy going General Patton on him.

That doesn’t mean the show shouldn’t have made it clear to all their viewers that Jamie’s body’s ejaculation was involuntary, that it was not caused by pleasure. There are viewers who insist that episode was particularly graphic only in an attempt to win Emmy nominations for Tobias Menzies, but Jamie’s rape was graphic in the book as well.

The difference is that reading about Jamie telling Claire about the rape put more emotional distance between the violent act and the book’s readers.

The adaptation showed it, slamming the viewers in the gut with it.

If the book and show were going to slam the readers and viewers with male rape and a victim’s involuntary ejacualtion, then everyone, from Diana Gabaldon to Ron D. Moore to Starz to the actors, had a moral obligation to all male rape victims — as well as to the women in their lives — to explain why Jamie misinterpreted his body’s involuntary response and why he subsequently felt so much shame that he wanted to commit suicide (by refusing to eat or drink).

In the book, Jamie wants to die because he thinks he’s going to lose his severely damaged hand, while, in the show, he wants to die because Black Jack Randall “broke him,” body and soul, by “making love” to him.

Shame on you, DG, RDM, Starz, et al.

Book vs. Show

images-1How do I think the show was, overall? Fair to middling, I guess. It was much  more interesting in Season 1 Part 1, despite its slow parts. But as a stand-alone drama, it deteriorated dreadfully in Season 1, Part 2.

How do I think the show compared to the book?

Not too well, I’m afraid.

We got some interesting things in the show that were not in the book — the addition of Father Bain and the exorcism fit well with the witch-trial, for example, and Claire’s helping deliver Jenny’s breech-baby was much more in line with her having been a nurse than her helping deliver a breech-foal by shoving her hand and arm up into a horse’s uterus.

Also, sometimes Claire’s Voice was inappropriately acerbic in the book: her openly yawning and complaining about the “boring” length of Ned’s defense of her during the witch-trial was incredible. How could a woman from 1945, who would know that women were regularly burned as witches even for inconsequential things like looking different, or saying things that others didn’t understand (e.g., “Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ”) but whose words were taken as “casting curses,” how could a woman like that yawn openly during a trial in which her own life was at stake? (no pun intended)

Sometimes, the show did improve on things in the book.

But many of the things in the show that were not in the book did not improve the adaptation at all. In fact, some of the changes damaged the story and its characters. Jamie’s constant change of character, from episode to episode, left me confused as a viewer, and annoyed after I read the book since Jamie is quite consistent in the book.  Discovering that book-Jamie knew Latin, Greek, and was more fluent in French than Claire stunned me. All that tripe with the Duke of Sandringham was dull-ness in the extreme. Claire’s constantly stating that she had to get back to Craigh na dun and to Frank always seemed tacked on by the writers of the show: the character didn’t seem to feel it.

Maybe those additions or changes didn’t work because they weren’t in the book.

Then again, maybe they didn’t work because the adaptation wasn’t as good as it could have been.

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Filed under Actors, Authors, Books, Movies/Television, Outlander, Rape, Violence