The Allure of a Despot

The real fascination of a character like Henry VIII is that we all know him. We've all had a parent like him or a spouse or a boss. Someone who rules by terror, who likes to watch people hop, {who loves the freedom to grab women by the pussy} and who doesn't care whom he beheads.

The parallels reflect more than a liking for sumptuous decor and the habit of multiple wives. Like Henry VIII, Trump was raised with an abusive father who coupled rage, emotional neglect, and velvet gloves. Like Henry, Trump was the younger son, his older brother supposed to be the heir. As the darling of his father's empire, Henry VIII had a whipping boy, someone who was punished in his place whenever he misbehaved. Trump had a teacher who he punched in the face when he was only twelve--with no real consequences afterwards. 

Like Henry VII, Trump's father was a man so crooked it was probably hard for him to walk straight and he passed onto his son an empire where his word was law.  Roy Cohn was Trump's Cardinal Wolsey, a man behind the scenes who turned the scion of an empire into a unrepentantly immoral fighting bastard. With Cohn as his teacher, Trump, like Henry VIII, learned that it was perfectly acceptable to cheat the commoners who work for him, rage at them, cut their pay or stiff them completely--with everything based on a whim. 

I have always thought that watching the Tudors was a lot more fun than living among them must have been. And it wasn't just people at court whose heads rolled. Millions of commoners had their lives uprooted, destroyed or brutally ended simply because Henry wanted to divorce his wife and couldn't do it, and nobody--but nobody--could say no to the man. 

Now, with a Republican Congress and Senate willing to ignore all evidence of wrong-doing, and a Conservative Republican Supreme Court, Donald Trump is set to rule our Land. 

May God Save America. 

Why, Oh Why, Do I Keep Watching the Tudors?

So, okay. In the beginning, the Tudors had a terrific protagonist--a sexual, feminist, conniving religious zealot, being manipulated by Cardinal Wolsey and her family until she ceased to be malleable. 
You can't beat Anne Boleyn as a character, although her ending is, of course, a bit abrupt. And she was well-played, by flat-faced, crooked mouthed actress, Natalie Dormier--although, like the other women on the series, she does not ever wear a chemise. 
Then, we should have had someone to latch onto with Sir Thomas More, though as played by Jeremy Northam, he seemed so low-key as to be half asleep. 

Of course, he, too, abruptly leaves the tale. 




Cromwell makes another fascinating protagonist, here shown as nearly a religious hero, though played with such contained intelligence by the curly-mouthed across, James Frain, that he still winds up someone to follow. 

Until--bye bye head. Another swift ending. 



For a brief moment, a terrific heroine enters the picture--an intelligent young woman in some crazy German headgear, who is being sold to a violent, murderous king who, it turns out, cannot stand her--and in fact, declares after feeling her up, that her breasts are to soft for her to be a virgin. 
We can cheer this woman, with no allies, no power and an axe looming over her neck, as she maneuvers her way to not just safety, but a happy household. (Although The Tudors destroys it all by having her willingly lie with the great rutting boar she narrowly avoids as a husband.) 

Then, the series veers into actual (well, not actual, but nearly actual) child pornography, as a sweet, lustful, wild-child (in this production) Queen Katherine Howard dances near-naked in the rain in an open courtyard where anyone in the castle can easily look, and the King watches, too, in delight. And then, of course, as is historically accurate, she rehearses in advance the act of putting her childlike head--totally naked. (!) At which point, you throw up your hands in despair and if you are intelligent, quit--or if you are one of those people who has to finish the book even if it's bad, just to figure out why it's bad, you keep on watching. (Katherine Howard is here played by another actress with a flat little face and a crooked mouth, Tamzin Merchant.) 


By this time, if you have any knowledge of history at all, you are frantically trying to imagine the real Henry of this era, who looked like this, and not like this: 



Of course, at the very beginning of the series, Henry already looked like this, so there you go. 

I will admit that it is sheer stubbornness that keeps me watching at this point. Plus, wondering where the laundresses are working on all those chemises that the woman should have been wearing, throughout the show. 
That, and the fact that finally, they cast a woman with a genuine Tudor nose--the radiant Joely Richardson, who is, inexplicably and against all custom, allowed to part her hair on the side, and who is playing a woman who, in her portraits, had a little pug in the middle of her face. 

Through this all, Jonathan Michael Francis O'Keefe, better know as Jonathan Rhys Meyers, has grown a beard, and devolved into one of those whispering actors, speaking his lines very softly in a fairly good imitation of Richard Burton with laryngitis. 

Thomas Gomez as Wang Khan and John Wayne as Gengis. 

Oh, well. Maybe I should switch learn my history from something more historically accurate, like that fine film, The Conquerer, about  Temujin, otherwise known as Gengis Khan. 

Charleton Heston as William Clark and Donna Reed as Sacajawea.

Or I could study Lewis and Clark, via the film Far Horizons. 








Or, as I've mentioned before, learn about the history of Thailand from The King and I. 

(Real King Monghut on the left, real Anna below.) 

I guess ya pays your money and ya takes your chance.