Saturday, December 19, 2009

Kvetch Up

1. Saw 'Misfits' on Channel 4 OD. When TV is good, it's good plus you can watch it in a sedentary position surrounded by lots of food.  The programme revolves around a bunch of mismatched youths made to do community service for relatively minor misdemeanours, who somehow develop superhero powers in a freak storm. In each episode, it becomes more clear that the whole fictitious town has been affected. 'Misfits' is basically a post-watershed urban 'Eerie Indiana' with ASBOs and a super-cool soundtrack. 

The writing is mostly impeccable - all the characters have superpowers that somehow compensate for their weaknesses. For example, Simon the requisite geek has the power of invisibility. Curtis develops the power to see in the future as if to compensate for his lack of foresight in screwing up his running career. Most brilliantly, the obnoxious mouthy lead character Nathan is the only one who seems to have not gained a superpower, much to his annoyance.

The series' excellent mix of film pastiche, uncritical depiction of teenage life (drugs, etc), and adventurous storylines (in the context of tv) make it seem really modern...the only thing that makes all this almost meaningless is the absolute misogyny in the depiction of the female characters. Even the minor female characters are similarly afflicted.

Alisha, a good-time party girl, with a penchant for lewd miming (can't believe this isn't an art form) pre-storm, suddenly develops the power of being raped. Or rather, making men on accidental contact so excited they immediately want to have her. Cue lots of bizarre scenes of her being attacked by men, who aren't exactly assailants in that as soon as she manages to fight them off, they lose all memory of having tried it on. Strangely, her new demure self allows her to have a relationship with Curtis.

The depiction of Kelly the 'chav' character is far more interesting, in that she develops the power of mind-reading, which can at least be utilised in a regular super-hero type way. However, her realisation means that she is soon aware of herself as an object of simultaneous lust and disgust, and spends much of the first episode contending with the lustful thoughts of the male characters (rather than doing anything cool with her new abilities). Alisha is possibly one of the few superheroes ever to have a disempowering power, though if you include minor female characters in the series...

There is Alopecia woman who can make people's hair fall out (because hers fell out once) and a pensioner woman who is briefly young again mainly for the purposes of shagging the lead character who rejects her in disgust when her power fades in the middle of the act. Hopefully, all of this will be rectified in the second series, though I'm not sure what use Alisha's power would possibly be, as it seems to have served its purpose as a corrective lesson already.