Beauty and the Beast, or how the enlightened '80's man is...a furry

Beauty and the Beast: Season 1
first season series of '80's tv show starring linda hamilton and ron perlman

i have a question to be asked of life in general. it goes a little something like this:

what is wrong with me?! why do i like things that are almost all bad and hate things that are almost not bad? neil gaiman, though one of my personal bete noir-s, is very close to being good (this is all my opinion, and i don't hold it up as more than subjective truth). his writing style is entertaining. his thoughts are interesting. and, along the lines of the observation that lizzie makes to jane, i've liked many a stupider characterization*. i read stardust; i found it vastly entertaining. granted, it made me feel somewhat dirty, but i've felt dirtier. i collect the '70's harlequin presents series. there is no form of entertainment more gross (this statement can be qualified, but not by a ton).

i think beauty and the beast kind of sucks, is what i'm getting at. most of the dialogue that isn't comic relief is irritating beyond irritation, my friends--you sit there and listen, and at least half of you is like "holy shiznit, batman, i've heard every single one of these lines before," and a good portion of the other half of you is like, "so THIS is the anti-buffy/angel relationship. when the buffy/angel relationship looks into the nietzschean void, this, the linda hamilton/ron-perlman-as-a-furry relationship, is what looks back at it. good 2 know. good 2 know. why wouldn't i want to know that?"

and why wouldn't i? and yet i like the show. i like making fun of it, but i also like it. i don't really get why they can't be together--i don't understand why they refuse to kiss each other--and i don't see how (or why) they propose to resolve such things as "the housing crisis," "the chinatown problem," "the voodoo embroglio," or "the gypsy issue" in an hour, not to mention "the irish conflict" (that one was particularly special, though i myself am partial to their solution to the chinatown problem, which involved vincent attacking a bunch of dudes wielding "the weapons of their ancestors" in order to benefit, a., two semi-vacuous young lovers and, b., script writers who had obviously seen chinatown--or possibly flower drum song**--one too many times). but i like it.

i like it a little bit in the way that i like smallville. smallville is CORNY AS HELL. and in all the seasons that i've seen (and may or may not own), it's never gotten less corny, less predictable, or less ridiculous. but at the same time...in some weird way, smallville seems to really care about these characters that are totally unbelievable and have such stupid lines. and my quasi-immense crushes on both lex and chloe have NOTHING to do with me making smallville's excuses, let me tell you that. i'm so totally unbiased, you'd have to bind me in bias tape to even get me to look at the physical attributes of one of the actors on a given show and i'm telling a bunch of lies here but anyway. romero says (forgive me if i'm quoting this wrong) of hitchcock that he feels like as much as he's drawn into the amazing story of any of hitchcock's films, he doesn't ever really care-care about the characters--i understand this as him saying that it's always a voyeuristic sort of thing one feels for the people in a hitchcock film. a person kind of empathizes with smallville's characters in a way that he or she doesn't quite with a joss whedon character. joss whedon's universes (universae?) are infinitely superior to most anything else out there, but in this one weird aspect--that of, like, viewer empathy (not sympathy, but empathy) with the characters--smallville wins by a tiny margin.

and i feel like beauty and the beast has a similar strength. cliched it most certainly is. in a good many ways i'm like, "what the hell is wrong with you people and why are you all acting like this? it being the '80's is an excuse, but you're going to need a better one." but, like, how it deals with its minor characters--brings them back, doesn't dick around with their backstories, allows them to maintain integrity--is a good example of how it deals with its main characters. you kind of feel like linda hamilton character is growing and changing in a way that's realistic...and you sort of (if you push it) feel the same way with ron-perlman-as-a-furry. the show doesn't treat her pain or her pleasure lightly, in the same way that it seems like she wouldn't treat such subjects lightly.

also it's pretty incredible (most of the time, at least) how ron perlman manages to convey emotion despite the fact that most of his face is prosthetic and lion-shaped. okay, so it's a dumb dumb show.


*not sure if i've used this "joke" on this blog before.
**satire about flower drum song is subject to being extra-fatuous, because i've never seen it.