This week, I watched the Netflix series Eric, which Benedict Cumberbatch has called ‘painfully funny’. I can confirm there was a lot of pain, but crucially, a lot of pleasure in how the drama plays with the viewer’s expectations.
What drew me to the drama in the first place was not Benedict Cumberbatch; although I am a huge admirer of his work in Sherlock and The Power of the Dog, it was the puppet show. There have not been enough TV dramas or films set around a kid’s TV show – A Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood with Tom Hanks and Mrs Doubtfire with Robin Williams spring to mind. The contrast between the comedy and the troubled psychology always seems to work well. It appears to be used as a mechanism to display psychological issues with fathers and not mothers, which is interesting.
Why is this format used to reflect this kind of troubled father character? It is puzzling. It’s a bit like the Enid Blyton children’s author stereotype of holding childhood at arm’s length and wanting to revisit their own because they haven’t fully processed it yet. But, in short, it’s about men who need therapy. It’s also a drama about the profession of acting and the chasm that can open up between someone’s private life and the part they play on screen.
This drama is exciting because it portrays fatherly responsibility from a female perspective. Abi Morgan, the female screenwriter, is in an industry where the gender balance is two-thirds of men to only a third of women. I thoroughly enjoyed the fact that a woman wrote this. I often look for female-written dramas on Netflix that I want to watch, which are on my wavelength, returning empty-handed, especially when looking at the crime genre, so I loved this.
As a Sherlock fan, I did look for similarities in this. I won’t give away spoilers if you haven’t watched it, but one scene reminded me of an undercover operation in the episode His Last Vow. It was an unfortunate repetition that threw me away from the story. Of course, viewers who aren’t Sherlocked won’t see this similarity. Their normal minds will remain focused on the story and its phenomenal story.
I’m continuing in my pursuit of art, or amateur painting, as I prefer to call it. As the daughter of a mother who aspired to go to art school in her teenage years, only to be redirected to the office of a laundrette by her parents, I consider myself privileged to have an extremely talented amateur artist on hand to call upon when I get stuck as well as attending Skillshare classes. She’s given me so many hints and tips, probably saving me money and tears.
The best advice she’s given lately is not to view copying other people’s work as non-creative, a failure or a cop-out. I’ve always considered this elevated copying status in music and art puzzling. (I’ve used the word puzzling a lot this week, haven’t I?) I was bullied for tracing pictures I liked at school, with one girl reminding me every minute that it wasn’t my work, but I liked how it gave me a structure to experiment before I got good at drawing. I wanted to paint, but the idea that it’s not good to copy for practice entered my head and stayed there.
The study of creative writing has further cemented this view. Anything other than originality in writing is frowned upon, although you can be inspired by different writers or try on their style. I’m still confused about what makes Roy Lichenstein a copyist in some eyes, while in others, he’s a genius, and I’m equally befuddled as to why we don’t copy the structure of someone’s story to frame our own. Why not copy someone’s opening in their novel if that works for them and grabs an agent's eye? There’s no copyright on a general opening or idea for a book, and I’m unsure why we’re not taught to copy like amateur artists are at art school. In all my decades of being around writers in a learning situation, I’ve only ever encountered one writer who admitted she had done this, and she will remain anonymous.
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