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Le Saboteur posted:Oddly it's mainly shot in Cambridge, Ontario which looks nothing like Cambridge Massachusetts really. That explains a lot, I was confused when the show starting naming places in the Boston area when it obviously isn't set in Boston. The New England setting does seem bizarre, by setting it in such a cosmopolitan location they do end up needing to explain how the culture became so homogeneous in such a short time when the culture of the Boston area is pretty heterogenous. That said, I don't think that really hurts the show because the ambition and scope of what this story is portraying is ultimately way bigger than just New England. This is a great show, its not small one that's just banking off a specific political moment in a specific place in time but one that is paying tribute to all the moments in history where dystopian societies similar to those portrayed in this show have already formed. The point of this story isn't for a political scientist to present a credible explanation for how this could happen, because much of what is being portrayed are things that have already happened in different places and times in history. Like it is tough to think of Caimbridge turning into a place that executes homosexuals as a matter of day to day life, but it's not hard at all to think of societies that do. Like one thing I've heard mentioned frequently as an inspiration for this story was Romanian Decree 770, where contraception and abortion were made illegal in unless you already had four or five children to try and boost the population of Romania. That historical reference gels extremely well with the idea of secret police suddenly, violently and brutally enforcing dehumanizing social mores. But if you want to set that story in Boston, it does make a million times more sense for it to be motivated by Christian religious extremism than Soviet-Block Communism or Islamic Theocracy. Seeing modern Caimbridge devolve into a Christian theocracy is a tough sell, and given that they didn't film the show there I don't really blame people familiar with the area if they have trouble buying into it, but that isn't a very important aspect of the show. This isn't just a narrow minded cash-in looking to shock you by say, showing the lynching of homosexuals and minorities off the side of the Bunker Hill monument for easy, empty shocks. This is a character driven show that focuses on how each of these characters are human beings and contrasts it with a society with an irredeemably cruel and utilitarian attitude towards human sexuality. Seeing the "trial" in episode 3 is loving brutal, not because we recognize these women as cosmopolitan New Englanders from our world but because we see them as people with dreams, aspirations and love that society cruelly and coldly destroys with the same detached, industrial attitude as an assembly line turning out engine blocks. That said I don't like the sound design very much. I love the orchestral music a lot but some of the pop songs feel very out of place and clash terribly with the tone in my opinion. Worse, some of the dialogue seems mixed in a way that is too quiet, so much so that I missed a few lines and hand to rewind to make them out (thanks Hulu). Otherwise this is an excellent show so far, easiliy one of the better depictions of a dystopia I've seen in a long time. A lot of socially conscious stuff can focus too much on just one moment in a way that can make things feel dated, but by mixing the hypothetical elements with the historical reality of societies that have attempted this sort of social engineering the show ends up having a more timeless feel than it otherwise would had it focused too much on contemporary political science with the narrow context of 2017 era New England.
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Apr 30, 2017 02:27
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Chef Boyardeez Nuts posted:I will refuse to accept the setting until I see that: This is a good joke, but it's also a good example of what I mean. Boston without the Red Socks as an institution is probably more absurd and incredible than a Boston that treats women like cattle, but that doesn't really undercut the point the show is actually making. It's just fun to point out as a way to laugh and relieve some tensions after episode 3 ends with one gay woman being hung as hastily and coldly as a loving Christmas ornament followed and her lover, who is fertile and thus too valuable to kill, undergoes a forced clitorectomy to keep her from experiencing sex as anything but a means to bear children ever again. Goddamn, this show pulls no punches and is all the better for it. Bifner McDoogle fucked around with this message at 02:48 on Apr 30, 2017 |
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Apr 30, 2017 02:46
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