Unmarriageable by Soniah Kamal is a modern retelling of Pride and Prejudice, set in modern Pakistan. This premise immediately peaked my interest. I could not wait to see how the setting would influence the story. Little did I know how unchanged the plot would be from the source material.
I have not faced such a frustrating story in a while. I did not even manage to finish the book, making it only to 25%. I could not read on, especially after I was told that there would be no original twists that would deviate the story from the source material. First and foremost, what needs to be brought up is the unrealistic and illogical way this story interacts with Pride and Prejudice. The novel really dug its own grave by making the source material not only exist in the world, not only be known by the characters, but be taught by them! The main character, Alys, knows Pride and Prejudice. She teaches Pride and Prejudice. This implies critical thinking about the text and of course, knowledge of the plot and the characters’ names. She then proceeds to not realize it when her own life turns into Pride and Prejudice, that she is living through plot point by plot point with characters named similar and even identical to the source material, like Darsee. Darsee. If I met a guy called Gandalv I’d already be like “this is weird, is this a Lord of the Rings prank?”. How far are we supposed to suspend our disbelief here? Alys overhears him at the wedding saying the exact same thing as Darcy did in the original, and she is still oblivious. The absurdity is quite clear. And even if you let the whole Darsee thing slip, all the other characters are carbon copies of their source material with slightly different names, just dropped off into another setting. The fact that Alys doesn’t realize she is living the plot of the novel she teaches also undermines her authority and intelligence. When you are studying a book and then the plot literally happens to you, and people all around you are weirdly named really similarly to the characters (and act the same way too!), you should at least be questioning your sanity. INSTEAD OF JUST GOING ALONG WITH IT AND NOT EVEN NOTICING THE PARALLELS. How smart can someone be if they don’t even realize these parallels staring them in the face? It is so so so so damn frustrating. I cannot put to words how annoyed and frustrated and lost for words I am regarding how this story is told. What was brought up in discussion about this novel was that Alys cannot be allowed to draw those parallels, because otherwise she would realize she is in that world and that would just make everything meta and derail the story. Yeah. Exactly. Which is why this makes no sense at all! Other than copying Pride and Prejudice, what does this story bring to the table? It explores Pakistani culture, sure. But there’s no original story that interacts with that culture. It’s just a copy paste of Pride and Prejudice where names and places and cultural aspects around the characters have just been replaced. CTRL + F and replace. What is the literary value of copying a novel point by point? Because it almost feels like Kamal had Pride and Prejudice open in one document on a split screen, and a blank document in the other, and was just rewriting the story line by line. Where is the originality? The creativity? The twist of a modern retelling? It is so dry, without any sense of novelty or interesting explorations or surprising twists. Since there is nothing new, and even some lines can be predicted if you know the original, the story just becomes... boring. Why do I want to read a “new” story if I already know everything that will happen? Unless I am completely off the mark, I am pretty sure retellings are not supposed to be a line-by-line rewrite of a story where things are just replaced without repercussion. The culture, the times, they should influence the story and make it something different. Two characters’ interactions are not going to go the same route as they did in Austen’s time in England, because of course they wouldn’t! Times have changed. Culture influences the way you interact and relate to people. But this just repeats the same story all over again without letting the story breathe in this new reality. There could have been a multitude of twists. The story could have just been about exploring themes of Pride and Prejudice in this new setting and exploring how the clash of characters would play out in the modern world, without taking every single scene from Pride and Prejudice and just copying it in. What’s the use? What’s the point? If I wanted the same exact story, I would just read the original! The way the story repeats the source material brings me back to one of the first fanfictions I ever wrote, where my friends and I fell into the world of Lord of the Rings. We basically replaced the four hobbies and went through every story point in the same way. But at least we realized we were in Middle Earth! We acknowledged that we knew the story and knew where it was going, and it was meta in that way. It was badly written, but it was also one of the first actual long stories I ever wrote. I was an amateur (for all intents and purposes I do not claim to no longer be an amateur). But a reader I am, and I need to get this frustration out of my system. Since my golden LotR days, I have read and written my fair share of fanfiction (as nerds do), and in the fandom community, there is a subgenre called Modern AU (Modern Alternative Universe), where the characters are placed into the modern world, which parallels modern retellings, such as of Pride and Prejudice. But these modern retellings truly integrate the world to make it affect the characters. Some plot points of the source material are adapted of course, but I have seen it done in so many smart and clever ways. There is always a reason for the story to be set in this place or that era: it affects the characters, the story, the potential twists which are different to the source material. The stories can stand on their own, as an original creation that borrowed characters and created something different and original out of the story. For example, I have never seen full conversations just be the exact same as in the source material, because since the setting is different, that just wouldn’t make sense. We don’t want the same story in a different setting. We want a new and interesting story based on the themes of the source material, which follows the same guiding lines, BUT which also plays with this new world and actually lets it influence the story. Unmarriageable did no such thing. It is uninventive, unoriginal, and uncreative. It doesn’t bring anything new to the table. It is like someone’s first try at fanfiction if they didn’t know what fanfiction was. I can’t read it, I’m sorry. I just can’t. For me, it’s just unreadable. 1/5
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SPOILER WARNING: Major spoilers for Rings of Power (obviously), as well as spoilers for House of the Dragon and Lord of the Rings (if you haven't read or watched the trilogy yet, what are you waiting for?). Foreword: - I will be posting a video version of this review on Youtube soonish. - Whenever I mention the ‘Trilogy’, I am referring to The Lord of the Rings trilogy by Peter Jackson. It is capitalized because it is the Holy Trilogy. - ‘LotR’ refers to the original Lord of the Rings trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien. Introduction The time has come for another review. Even before Rings of Power aired, I had prepared my first thoughts based on the posters and the teaser images that were released. I’ve put them below, followed by my thoughts on the series after watching. I’m sorry, I am an overwriter, and this post is very, very, very long. As long as LotR itself, some might say. But as someone who has been obsessed with Tolkien’s Middle Earth for the last seven years, I have some m̶a̶n̶y̶ things to say. And if you’re wondering about my credentials, here they are: Though I do not consider myself a middle earth expert, because I know the lore is almost never-ending, I have read The Hobbit, LotR, and the Silmarillion. Additionally, I have watched the Trilogy (extended cuts) approximately 6 times and read its script. My favourite movie of all times is The Fellowship of the Ring (2006), my favourite book of all times is The Fellowship of the Ring (1954), which I read in two days when I first got it. I have a box set of the LotR books and the books smell really nice. In the past I have learned some Quenya, I have built two sh***y versions of Minas Tirith in Minecraft and have also been on the Middle Earth server. Additionally, one of my planet coaster worlds has a LotR themed area where I rebuilt Hobbiton and the eye of Sauron H̶a̶l̶b̶r̶a̶n̶d̶. I can play Concerning Hobbits on the piano, and on the violin I can also play that song, as well as The Breaking of the Fellowship, the themes of Rohan and Gondor, and The Ring Goes South. I have been working on a painting of Rivendell and another of a hobbit house over the past years. I have painted Frodo, and drawn some LotR costumes. One of my first pencils sketches are of Frodo and Gollum. My laptop background as been Valinor from Rings of Power ever since the day the teaser image was released. On the merch side I have a tee-shirt, the one ring with necklace, two LotR calendars and multiple posters. And yes, I wrote PG self-insert LotR fanfiction back in 2015. And no, I will not share it. Last but not least, I watched the Hobbit trilogy in cinemas back in the day, trying to love them despite their flaws, which did not work. Since watching them, I have made my own edit of The Hobbit, reducing it to a one 4-hour film. The expert that I am, what I look for in content within the universe is somewhat of a story that follows Tolkien’s canon. More important, for me personally, however, is for the media to rekindle that original Trilogy aesthetic, while introducing more diversity. My one and only critique of the original Trilogy, after all, was that it was too white and that there were ‘too many men’, as Emma D'arcy would say! Before the storm (February 2022) It’s crazy how, already in February, thanks to the Rings of Power teasers, the internet was in an uproar. I couldn’t help seeing the piles and piles of comments and opinions on twitter. I was terrified. But then I remembered that us Lord of the Rings fans had already witnessed and survived the massacre of the original Trilogy. Does anyone remember The Hobbit trilogy? If not, good for you! I remember as a teenager forcing myself into liking those movies without being honest to myself: they just didn't cut it. They did, however, make for an interesting comparison. What was it between The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings? What did they do wrong and what made the original Trilogy so magical? How can we compare the two? Besides all that is story telling, cinematography and use of visual effects, there are loads of other behind-the-scenes reasons for the Hobbit movies being so bad. I recommend watching Lindsay's videos on that if you're interested: Knowing what The Hobbit did wrong (in my humble opinion), these were my most important points that Rings of Power needed to accomplish to be better:
The posters... When I first saw the faceless posters, I had my first doubts: did these costumes feel lived in? Authentic? I'm not a costume expert, so, at the time, I still wasn't sure I had an answer. But then came the face reveals. Funnily enough, the first picture I saw wasn't an official one: it was en edited picture of Disa, where someone had added in a beard. It looked something like this: My opinion? Hell yeah! We finally get to see what Gimli was talking about and what we had never seen before. Plus, it's low-key trans representation in a way, or at least breaking the gender binary, because where else would we get to see afab dwarves with beards?! Then, I found out that wasn't the real picture. Needless to say, my disappointment was immeasurable and my day was ruined. From that point on, I had doubts they'd add female dwarves with beards. Another day to be disappointed in the inability of producers to look ahead and dare something, take a risk, go all the way. I was less disappointed by the elf without the long hair, but still a bit shocked. Cause it's like their thing. And on and on it went, with people pointing out the inaccuracies between book descriptions and images. Personally I'm just confused as to why. Why didn't they give Elrond black hair? Like, what was stopping them? I mean, it really isn't a big deal, it's just a hair colour, but I've only listed three things here. Three inaccuracies based solely on the pictures they released. Of course, this could also all just have been a commercial ploy to bring about an uproar, but to be honest, I was kind of tired of it all. I was hesitant to watch it when it came out, scared of the potential cringe. At that point, the hype has definitely died within me. The trailer Lastly, the trailer. What could I say? The settings looked great. The rest? Might as well have been a trailer for season 3 of The Witcher. Like lots of others, I think we can agree that the feel of Lord of the Rings wasn't there based on the trailer alone. All this material made me so disinterested that I actually didn't even watch the official trailer when it came out months later, as far as I can remember. But then, as the show came out, I felt that, as a LotR fan, I had no other option but to watch it... My thoughts on the showTL;DR: 😍 : the landscapes. 😕 : the aesthetic not fitting the Trilogy; not worth the billion budget. 🥱 : a boring intro. One can’t deny that the landscapes shown on screen look beautiful and aesthetic. But is that enough to be a good series? I must admit I would personally watch a whole show set in Middle Earth where it’s just shots of different places and landscapes. I'd absolutely love it. However, the Rings of Power landscapes didn’t give the same feel as the Trilogy, if that can be understood. There are some shots that really try to be aesthetic, but when I see them, I don’t immediately think, oh, that’s in Middle Earth from the Trilogy. The landscape that came nearest to something out of the Trilogy was Numenor in my opinion, but that was just because it looked similar to Minas Tirith. I'm just sad we didn't get to see more of the locations, to see them like they're lived in. In the Trilogy, it just felt different. We got to see more of places like Minas Tirith or Edoras, to give two examples. Here, it felt like the different locations just weren't explored as much. The village in the Southlands reminded me more of Game of Thrones than the Trilogy. The Valinor was beautiful, but still didn't catch that Trilogy aesthetic. Finally, all the landscapes from the hobbits made me think of the Hobbit movies, and let's just say, that’s not the best thing. Can we also for a second mention the powerpoint-level 'Mordor' revelation? Whose idea was that? It would have been so epic for Oren to say "Mordor", with rolled Rs and all. But no, we got a title change. Why?! There's also one shot of Galadriel riding her horse and for some reason, the shot is in slow motion. I believe it appears towards the beginning of the last episode. It looks... jarring. Let's just put it that way. Was the immense budget worth it? NO. While watching, I wondered sometimes where they put all that money. Together my family and I calculated how much money was spent on average on each second of the show. Turns out, every second cost more than I used to make as an English teacher in France - in two years! Sad! Where did that money go? Because it definitely wasn’t into the writing. Was it in the effects? It was interesting in any case, watching House of the Dragon in parallel. Because even though in HotD, one could sometimes tell where there was a green screen, it was easier to forgive because of the story: there was drama, it was intense. Every episode had a payoff, a revelation, a significant event. The only significant events I remember from Rings of Power is the battle in the southlands and the Sauron revelation. Nothing else stuck with me, but we’ll get more to the story later. A boring opening! From the very beginning, this one got me. The intro. Look, I know it may signify something, that there can be a real reasoning behind it, but at the end of the day, it’s just boring! For any arbitrary viewer, the intro is minutes long of sand, I guess. The music is forgettable, and the intro as a whole is just way too long. It’s funny how the stretching and uninteresting aspect of the opening predicted how the rest of the show would go... TL;DR: 😍 : The diversity; chemistry between some of the actors. 😕 : Styling problems with canon material; some casting choices. The casting in my opinion was one of the high points of the series. Even before the series aired I was glad to see the diversity in the casting, and when it did air, it was even better because for the most part, they fit their characters very well. Other reviewers had given me doubts about Galadriel before the show aired, but I absolutely loved her character and Morfydd's acting. Some of the dynamics were so much fun to see on screen, as some of the actors had great chemistry. Don’t get me started on Galadriel and Halbrand, or Elrond and Durin. As I said about the posters, the one downside was the fact that some of the styling choices didn’t align with the descriptions in the books. Like, I would love to know the exact reasoning behind the creators as to why the elves don’t all have long hair. Why not? Was the fashion just different back in that age? But worse still, the dwarven women not having beards!!! I feel like starting a revolution, my goodness! Sophia Nomvete was absolutely stunning as Disa and I loved the character, but why did she not have a beard?! Female dwarves having beards is not just canon in the novels, but it’s even mentioned in the Trilogy! While we’re on the topic of dwarves, why didn’t we get to see the dwarf children? I was so excited to see them! I hope we get to see them in a second season. Moving on to the dwarves, here are some other casting choices that didn't stick with me (though in some cases, it's also the styling and costumes that made things worse): Some of the actor choices just completely plunged me back into the Hobbit trilogy. Gil-galad looked like someone had taken an elf right out of The Hobbit’s Mirkwood and Bronwyn looked just like one of the characters from Lake Town. That’s not necessarily bad, but let’s just say, one might want to avoid anything reminding of the Hobbit Trilogy. I don’t think anyone wants to remember those happened – I sometimes even forget they did, which is great! I can’t imagine what it’s like being a hard core Star Wars fan. Gosh I’m sorry for them. (Says I, who learned the whole script to Revenge of the Sith haha). Two other character casting choices which didn't really fit, in my opinion, were Isildur and Celebrimbor. Isildur, for his part, looked like an off-brand younger version of Jeffrey Dean Morgan. In of itself that doesn’t really matter, but I don’t know, he just didn’t feel like Isildur, or an ancestor of Aragorn. Celebrimbor just really didn’t cut it. I don’t know why. Maybe because he looked way more like a Hobbit than an Elf. But looking at the casting as a whole, I think they did a pretty good job. But what good is the casting if the characters themselves and their stories are just plain old boring? TL;DR: 😍 : Character dynamics; Elrond/Durin friendship; Galadriel/Halbrand dynamic/betrayal. 🥱 : Everything with the hobbits; the other stories for the most part. A bore there was, a bore, a bore… ^ Whoever got that reference, congrats. While House of the Dragon had me and my family on the edge of our seats at every turn, we were accumulating yawns watching Rings of Power. We even joked about how we all almost fell asleep at least at some point in every episode (perhaps with one or two exceptions). I didn’t know a show could go so slow! For the first three quarters of the show, we get no pay offs, no big events. As such, my sister and I were expecting that it was all building up to some epic battle that would last at least the two last episodes. So you can imagine our disappointment when we only got one battle in the Southlands and then, nothing else! The hour-long wait during all those episodes was not worth the pay-off! Why the hobbits? From the beginning, the general consensus with the people I was watching Rings of Power with, was that the story-lines were too all over the place. There were too many characters that were being followed at once. I think the series would have been much better off focusing on three, maximum four different characters, and make most of them cross each other’s path at some point, as they did with the battle in the Southlands. It’s like crossovers: it’s satisfying seeing seeing different characters and then have them all come together at some point. That’s the main problem with the Hobbits and… Gandalf? (I guess? Which doesn’t make sense but okay). If you edit the episodes and delete all the scenes with them, do you know how much that would affect the main plot-line? Not a bit. The Hobbits don’t have any impact on the other stories. Absolutely nothing. Nada. In the grand scheme of the first season, the hobbit story-line feels absolutely useless. If anything it feels like forced "fan service". I put that in quotes, because real fans know that Gandalf doesn’t go there. The fans this is directed at are the ones who have watched the films and are just waiting to see familiar characters. That’s the worse kind of fan service and again, in comparison, House of the Dragon avoids these problems by just not throwing nostalgia elements at us all the time. For one, we didn’t get to see Winterfell, or the wall. And that’s good! I’m glad we didn’t! In the hobbits’ defense, I am not going to lie, I did love the costumes and makeup for them. But my goodness was the story boring and stretched out, like butter over way too much bread. With all the characters storylines, the only ones I ended up caring about were Galadriel’s and Elrond’s. Galadriel because she had a mission, a quest, and I wanted to see her fight to get to her goal. Elrond because of his friendship arc with Durin. I apologize for those I might offend but I could not care less for Isildur’s story. Or the queen. Or whoever she is. The king of Numenor, for example, passed right over my head, I didn’t even know his name when he died in the last episode. Which is so contrasting with how they handled Viserys’ death in HotD. At least I knew his name lol. Though I started off fairly interested in Arondir’s character and story, that too diminished over time. I don’t know. The whole story just didn’t feel interesting. (I’m actually amazed I remembered his name!). Even in the episode with all the action (Ep. 6), there are still logical story problems. The volcano exploding is cool and all but water doesn’t make a volcano active – it just leads to an explosion (yes, I'm somewhat of a scientist myself). Secondly, in the wide shots, we see volcanic bombs falling far away from each other, like every 5 kilometers, but in the close up shot of the village, they seem to be falling every few meters. In any case, I might have to re-watch the show to provide more detailed comments on the different events that happen, seeing as I’ve forgotten most of them. Who is Sauron? A part of my interest in Galadriel’s story was that I too wanted to see Sauron in action. I was almost at the edge of my seat when they found the stronghold in the first episode. That the other elves decided to stop following her when they were there was very disappointing, but I was still looking forward to eventually have Galadriel cross paths with Sauron. Now, you may think I’m a bit stupid, but for the first few episodes, I didn’t stop to realize that Sauron could take on a mortal form, or might simply have a body underneath that armour. I guess always seeing Sauron in his fab attire just made me assume that was his daily wear. So I’m guessing I was a bit late on the train of ‘who is Sauron’, because I didn’t know I was supposed to be looking for him. It was when the orcs were calling that Oren ‘father’ that it dawned on me. He might not be wearing his armour! That scene made me fear that Oren was Sauron. Because from the get-go, I could tell he wasn’t. My reasoning, you ask? He was simply not giving Sauron vibes. By the way, did you know? Oren’s actor is the same actor as Uncle Benjen in Game of Thrones! Shocking, I know! After one of the men asked Oren if he was Sauron and he punched him, if I remember correctly, that was when I knew for sure that he wasn’t meant to be Sauron, and that maybe I should keep my eyes out. So I kept my eyes open. Sort of. Because at that point, Halbrand was already one of my favourite characters. He was giving me Aragorn vibes, more so than Isildur that I was confused and thought maybe Halbrand was in fact Aragorn’s ancestor. I don’t know what I was thinking, don’t come for me! In my defense, the fact that they are so similar is, in retrospective, super interesting because that would make the dynamic between the characters more interesting in the Trilogy, and would make battle in Return of the King all the more satisfying (even if they decided to not make Aragon fight Sauron directly). Either way, because I thought Halbrand was genuinely a new character for us to get an Aragorn kind of guy in the show (which I was really happy about), he wasn’t really on my radar. On the other hand, the theory that the wizard was Sauron? That was out of question for me, and I’ll tell you why. I knew that if the writers made Sauron as confused and disorientated as that character, his whole power dynamic would just diminish. The wizard’s character might have supernatural powers, but as a character he seemed helpless. If that had been Sauron, the whole idea of him being a deceiver would have just broken down in my opinion. So it was pretty clear to me that this Gandalf character was not Sauron from the get-go. It’s a theory, a film theory. Towards the second half of the season my sister and I had quite the time, as we decided to make one wild character theory after another – anything to make the series less boring. We started crafting these intricate theories, like how Theo was actually Gandalf, or Poppy Proudfellow was Sauron. Needless to say, we had a blast with our outlandish speculations. Though, again, I might seem a bit oblivious to obvious signs (I don’t know how fast others have been in figuring Sauron out), I’m glad Sauron’s identity only slowly dawned on me. Halbrand, as I said, was kind of off my radar mainly because I was happy just having a new character without dwelling on it too much. The first time I realized something was up was after Galadriel had captured Oren and he asked Halbrand whether he knew him (or the other way around, I can’t remember). In the scene, Halbrand looks back at Oren with a peculiar look before going out of the hut. That was the moment I realized Halbrand might be Sauron. From that moment on, the series was much more fun to watch, because I had something to keep a lookout for. I was obsessed with my theory being right. If the series was not going to reveal that Halbrand was Sauron, I was ready to throw it all out of the window. I felt as though I had figured everything out. I finally had a theory I was proud of and loved and I was going to be so disappointed if it wasn't true. I’m sure that there were other people who theorized the exact opposite, praying that Halbrand wasn’t Sauron. And I am very sorry for them. Bad luck, I guess. But to be fair, if I hadn’t realised Halbrand was Sauron, I honestly wouldn’t have minded him not being Sauron. Then the last episode aired. That was when I became 100% sure, figuring out that Halbrand had given himself the wound on purpose to get to Eregion. When I saw him go to Celebrimbor, my last doubts subsided – it was more than obvious. I must admit, the second half of that episode was one of the most exciting parts of the show to watch. We finally got to really see the process of the creation of the three elven rings – which is kind of in the title of the series! And of course, watching Galadriel figure it out herself was so much fun to watch. Ah, betrayal stories, they’re the absolute best. Halbrand finally revealing his true identity was sooo entertaining and satisfying. I would have really loved to see more of Anakin-Skywalker-Halbrand but I guess that would have to wait for a second season? (Sorry, but the shot of him simply walking into Mordor? I thought he was about to confront Obi Wan Kenobi over a river of lava). Either way, I love what they did with the dynamic between Galadriel and Halbrand/Sauron. It was so satisfying to watch the enemy she had been searching for the whole series to have been with her the whole time – drama, I love it! This twist, of course, would be a potential reason to rewatch the series. But I don’t think I need to add that I will be skipping some of the other story-lines while doing so. I’m interested to see how having seen this series will influence the way I watch the Trilogy. I wonder whether I will look at Sauron differently, though I highly doubt it. The downside of all of this was that in LotR and the Trilogy, Sauron was more a symbol of evil and less a character in off himself. Now, for Gen Z, Sauron may as well become your usual Anakin Skywalker/Kylo Ren, aka hot bad guy (I’m sorry I couldn’t come up with other examples, I know there are thousands of others out there). I mean I knew he does take the shape of a "fair man" when deceiving the others to create the rings. But needless to say this changes the way the character is seen as a whole. At the end of the day I have one question: What have I done to deserve becoming a simp for Sauron himself? I used to be a respectable LotR fan. I didn’t simp for any of the characters. Not even Aragorn – yes, I’m superior like that. And now look at me. What would Tolkien say? Sad! My rating Of the eight episodes of the series, only two were somewhat enjoyable to watch. That is a success rate of 25% (yes, I did the maths all on my own, I’m also somewhat of a mathematician myself). That’s disappointing for a series that spent a billion on eight petty episodes. Was it predictable? Totally. To be fair though, the show is still better than I had anticipated, as I had expected something far worse. See, I’d prefer a really boring series to a really cringey series any day. Is it LotR expert approved? Barely. Is it worth rewatching all of it just for the good bits? No. There’s just too much boring to make it worth it. Though it might seem like I’m really mad at the series, but I’m not, I swear. I’m glad because, at the end of the day, this series doesn’t destroy any big aspects of LotR, at least not for me. As someone obsessed with LotR, I can live with Rings of Power. However, what I will fight against are new versions of LotR books being published with posters from Rings of Power on their cover. Get that away from me! Anyway, that’s my long review. If you’ve made it this far, congratulations, you’re insane! SPOILER WARNING: this post contains mild spoilers for Heartbreak High. Last night I finished watching season one of Heartbreak High. I don’t know what it is about queer high school dramas but I just love this stuff. Besides, I mostly write YA, so it’s right up my alley. After watching a few episodes and with the hype around it, I thought I’d finally do a first review/essay on this blog (since it's not all supposed to be about writing. Shocking, I know!). To be fair, though, this isn’t really a review per se. I just thought I’d talk about some ideas as well as similarities and differences between this show and two other prominent (in my eyes) teenage high school dramas, Euphoria and Sex Education, and their relation with the reality of high school. So this is maybe more of an essay, though a personal one at that, because I’ll also be talking about my experience of high school, as a student, but also as a teacher (yeah, I really did get to experience the best of both worlds!). realism and expectations... I know very little about the high school experience in America and even less in Australia. I was in middle school in the US for one tiny year and then spent all my high school years in a scientific high school in the middle of the Alps (taking a shot every time I mention the Alps in my posts would make a great drinking game haha). The media and, unfortunately, the news, is where I get my information about the American high school experience, which of course I take with a pile of salt. My seven year-old self, on the other hand, probably truly thought American high school students broke into song every lunch to sing Stick to the Status Quo. Needless to say, these shows are somewhat expected to hold up a mirror to the high school experience. My question then is, to what extent do these series really showcase authentic high school experiences, especially when it comes to relationships, sex, and drama? This may come across as extremely nerdy, but my experience or knowledge of drama in high school came nothing close to any of the above mentioned series. Maybe it was because I wasn’t interested in sex, or because I was just hanging out with geeks, but I heard and took part in like literally no drama at school. That is unless you count drama as in theatre drama in which case yes, I did dabble in that area, having been the co-founder of the school's drama club. There were no relationships or gossip thereof that I was interested in. Thinking back I knew only about one relationship as far as I remember between one acquaintance from my class and I guy I barely knew. Could I have produced any gossip about that relationship? Absolutely not. I knew they were together and that was it. Done deal. Finito. As you may have gathered this far, those years came nowhere close to what I’ve seen depicted in media. Maybe it's a difference between schools in English speaking countries and in France, but I’m suspecting that it’s just because the school I went to was pretty academic. Definitely not because I was (and am still) a nerd and had no interest in all that drama back in the day. On a somewhat related note, there's a similar aspect of unrealistic depiction when it comes to high school parties. Could any party depicted in these dramas have been an actual high school party in real life? I know that the budget of these shows is more than enough to create aesthetic and grandiose settings, but by going all the way, the shows inevitably lose the authenticity of mediocre but realistic school parties and shows. Especially the Snow Ball in Stranger Things is just clearly too good to be true. Pictured above: A party from Euphoria; the theatre show from Sex Education; the Snow Ball from Stranger Things. But back to all the drama, the worst of school I’ve personally seen pertained to middle school – as a student and as a teacher. Then again, all of what I witnessed was bullying and violence, towards other students and towards teachers. There wasn't really any other sort of drama. Speaking of teaching, having been a teacher for a year (more than enough!), I had a somewhat hard time seeing the treatment of Jojo Obah, the teacher in Heartbreak High, but at least I can say that that aspect was more than believable. Though, to be fair, if I had been in her place, nothing would have ever convinced me to return. After all, my students also told me I was a great teacher, and so did my colleagues, but my goodness, if you want to become a teacher you better have a heart of steel, because kids are evil. So neither my high school experience nor middle school experience came close to these series. However, that's not saying that there was never a time when life didn't feel like it was pulled out of one of the shows. As a matter of fact, my University experience definitely had a vibe more similar to Heartbreak High than anything else. Relationships were all over the place and my friends and I could draw relationship maps that would have looked just like those in the first episode. It’s kind of ironic, as Universities are so much vaster and bigger than high schools and yet, it was like we were living in this tiny world of drama in every corner. It was in that aspect that the show comes closest to my experience of ✨ reality ✨. But these shows don't portray University experiences: they're about teenagers in high school. So when sex is brought to the forefront of their experiences, this can lead to other questions. relationships and sex in high school dramas One of the downsides of the shows like the ones I am presently talking about is the sexualization of the teenage experience. I think it's really great that the shows really try to raise awareness about aspects surrounding sex such as STDs and consent. In the end, the shows are probably teaching people more about sex than school sex education ever did. But still, does this really reflect the high school student experience? And does that even matter? Whether the shows are realistic or not, they send a message of what might be expected of teenagers of that age. I'm definitely not saying that the shows are pushing a message that people should be in relationships at that age, I'm just saying that by portraying their experience as such, it makes it seem like not being a part of it means one is not in the norms, or missing out on the teenage experience. The people who are left out are the ones who don’t feel like delving into the waters of relationships and sex yet, or at all. I like what they did with Cash and asexual representation, but at the end of the day, the whole series, just like Euphoria and Sex Education, centrally evolves around the idea that most (if not all) high schoolers engage in sex, and a lot of it at that. Even in Sex Education, when we get characters who are scared of being left behind, they still end up being in relationships! I wonder how teenagers who watch these shows feel when they haven’t really thought about sex that much, or weren’t interested. Even if it’s subconscious, would it really be surprising if they felt a bit of pressure to be like the characters and not be left behind? I honestly don’t know how these shows would have changed my perspective on my high school years had I watched them at the age of 15-17. For context, back in the day I was watching Supernatural and reading Hunger Games. No real high school experience pointers there. The nearest thing I got to high school representation were either fantasies like H**** P***** and Percy Jackson, or just flat out depressing stories like Perks of Being a Wallflower. While pretty dark at times, these depictions really didn’t focus that much on teens having outright sex in their high school years, unlike the series at hand. I’m guessing it also has to do with a generational shift. Back in the day you couldn’t just bring out a series like Euphoria without probably getting a huge bunch of outrage and backlash. Whatever the reason, whether it had to do with how things tended to be censored before, or that writers are just more explicit nowadays, we can’t deny that explicit shows are more and more common and therefore less shocking to general audiences. Back in the day, the most explicit show I watched was Game of Thrones, and I thought that was, at times, a lot. So I can't even fathom my younger self watching Euphoria. Thank goodness it hadn't come out back then! That show has been, by far, the most explicit show I have ever watched. And I still don’t know how I feel about it. In that sense, Sex Education is much less explicit and does a bit of a better job using different situations to tackle different issues. Heartbreak High definitely doesn’t go the route of Euphoria-type explicit content, and that was, ironically, a nice break from the usual teenage series. Am I starting to sound like a boomer? I don’t know, but in any case, I stand by the fact that every scene needs to have reason to be there and tie in to the plot, and definitely shouldn’t just be there for shock value. Again, trust me, I’m a film graduate. Is Heartbreak High the Australian Euphoria?I’ve seen people talk about how they saw Heartbreak High as the Australian Euphoria, and while there are definitely similarities, at their core, they still differ quite a bit. Similarities exist, certainly. One can definitely draw the parallels between Euphoria and Heartbreak High, even visually. There’s one scene in particular that I'll use as example because while watching it I was like: 'that's Euphoria!'. It's a scene from the finale episode of HH that looks like it might have been pulled directly from the other show, both involving one of the main characters running away from cops down an almost identical looking street. I know that comparison is just based on visuals, but the scene really stood out as a visual parallel. On the story side, while there are overlapping elements, like high school relationship drama and drugs, the perspectives we get are quite contrasting. The shows differ mostly in the fact that Euphoria really centers around Rue’s experience and perspective as a drug addict, whereas HH feels a tad more decentralized from the main character. The general feel of the shows also differ. While there are dark moments in HH, Euphoria as a whole is much darker than the latter. Another notable element that differentiates the three shows is the setting. In Sex Education, we get a weird mix between Britain and America. Euphoria, on the other hand, is easy to recognize as taking place in California. But HH breaks away from both shows by being set in Australia. I know the series is a reboot of an Australian series of the same name, but it's still nice to get media from other English speaking countries. I couldn’t even tell you the last time I saw a show taking place in Australia. Needless to say, it’s a nice change from the usual. I love seeing series that really feel authentic and where foreign watchers will not necessarily get the jokes, references, or slang. That’s what I love about series taking place in France for example (and no, I’m not talking about Emily in Paris. I will never ever watch that show). That’s what I also enjoyed about watching all the different versions of SKAM back in the day. It gives viewers the opportunity to see how the cultures make the stories different. ✨ My rating ✨ So yeah, those were some elements I thought were interesting to talk about, let me know what you think! This definitely was neither a very serious essay, nor a professional review, but still, I thought I’d give the series a rating anyway. If it wasn't clear from what I've written above, I thoroughly enjoyed Heartbreak High. It had great casting, well developed characters, and a good plot that kept the story enticing until the end. There was also very nice representation, including authentic autistic representation which I don’t believe I’ve seen before. I could go on a rant about Good Doctor but I won’t. To put a long story short, I don’t see why neurotypical people should ever play neurodivergent characters. Though really rough at times, all in all, it was a feel-good series with a lot of wholesome moments. The ending was satisfying and didn’t leave too many loose ends, all while keeping enough elements open-ended to definitely garner a second season. J. Dietz’s certified rating: ⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ |