October 29th, 201108:17 am - The Grimm writersI watch very, very little TV, but last night I caught the premiere of a paranormal-cop show called Grimm. It reminded me a little of the controversy about the new Shakespeare movie. It's an OK show but needlessly adds a senseless premise: The eponymous cop is a descendant of a family, whose best-known members are Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm, with the ability to see monsters that look like normal humans to others. The monsters, in this episode at least, are a kind of werewolf with a tendency to prey on females who wear red and have the initials R. H. (devinsong had better watch out!) What the show is saying, of course, is that the Grimms were like Lovecraft's Pickman, getting their stories from real life. Since the Grimms didn't create original stories but gathered folk tales and lived fairly normal lives, it's extremely hard to suspend disbelief for this premise. It doesn't help that, as far as I can remember, the Grimms wrote only one story that features a talking wolf and it has well-known antecedents. I don't want to draw the comparison with the Shakespeare movie too closely; no one (I hope) is going to come away from this show thinking the real Grimms wrote about real werewolves. The similarity is that both depend on the audience's not knowing much of anything about famous authors. Fantasy by definition depends on implausible premises, but the writer needs to do something to work around the implausibility. Werewolves that look human except to a few people are an example of doing something. Not even addressing the generally-accepted origin of the Grimms' stories is an example of depending on the audience's ignorance of the problem.For some reason, makers of movies and TV shows especially like to give the Grimms this treatment, making them observers of or even participants in a supernatural world. I can't think of any shows that do the same to Andersen or Perrault. Maybe it's the name "Grimm" that fascinates?Tags:culture(2 comments | Leave a comment)From:sodyera Date:October 29th, 2011 06:05 pm (UTC) **(Link)**I just saw the first episode. It took me half an hour to get the clue, but OMFG, HE'S BUFFY!(Reply) (Thread) From:madfilkentist Date:October 29th, 2011 06:14 pm (UTC) **(Link)**The way I thought of it was that the monsters were Buffy monsters. But yes.(Reply) (Parent) (Thread)
devinsong had better watch out!) What the show is saying, of course, is that the Grimms were like Lovecraft's Pickman, getting their stories from real life. Since the Grimms didn't create original stories but gathered folk tales and lived fairly normal lives, it's extremely hard to suspend disbelief for this premise. It doesn't help that, as far as I can remember, the Grimms wrote only one story that features a talking wolf and it has well-known antecedents. I don't want to draw the comparison with the Shakespeare movie too closely; no one (I hope) is going to come away from this show thinking the real Grimms wrote about real werewolves. The similarity is that both depend on the audience's not knowing much of anything about famous authors. Fantasy by definition depends on implausible premises, but the writer needs to do something to work around the implausibility. Werewolves that look human except to a few people are an example of doing something. Not even addressing the generally-accepted origin of the Grimms' stories is an example of depending on the audience's ignorance of the problem.For some reason, makers of movies and TV shows especially like to give the Grimms this treatment, making them observers of or even participants in a supernatural world. I can't think of any shows that do the same to Andersen or Perrault. Maybe it's the name "Grimm" that fascinates?Tags: culture(2 comments | Leave a comment)