Sex In The Tudors, White Queen, and Turn

I hate NetFlix. Before we discovered it, when we had no cable, I watched one TV show a week, The Good Wife, and that only when I was recovering from foot surgery. Other than that, the TV went on for important sports events,  Judy Woodruff, and PBS Kids. 
If you were stuck doing nothing all day, as I was with de-feet, it was Sesame Street or reading or the dubious morality play of Judge Judy, with her sadistic little sermons aimed at poor people with little money and less education. 



Now, half the time we find ourselves parked in front of NetFlix, binge washing. Yes, I could develop the spine to cut it off. But then, what will I do while I fold my laundry? Watch PBS Kids? I could observe Caillou for home decor--I love its bold sense of color--but really. He's four years old and still has no hair? 




Hence The Tudors, The White Witch and Turn, three TV series filled with egregious, unnecessary, glorified violence and, in the case of the first two, questionable sex scenes. I will make certain that none of my children watch any of them, primarily because of the sex. 






Because in all three of these series, there are only two kinds of sex.

1) The kind where Good Women get grabbed by or grab their men (Good or Bad) and have at it with not a single second of foreplay--because these women and men are, somehow, instantly ready every time. 

or 



2) The kind of sex that Bad Women have with Bad Men--and sometimes Bad Guy Victims. Only here, the foreplay is playful and languorous, full of giggles and pauses for more extended silly play. Clearly, both parties are enjoying the fun. (Here, the actress turned spy, Philomena, flirts with turncoat Continental General Charles Lee.)


Why do only the Bad Women get to flirt, take their time and have fun? It's incredibly unfair and not something I wish my children to imbibe as the normal state of things. 

Not that I plan to plant them in front of TV for their sex ed lessons, but the world being the way it is, they are likely to get exposed to this stuff, the way my oldest learned swear words on the last day of first grade (really, Sammy Nesmith, you couldn't have waited one day?) Or the way the kids were introduced to first person shooter games while on a playdate. Or--well, you get the idea. 

I guess this means another slightly awkward conversation with an adolescent. Sometime soon.

Back to folding laundry. Sigh. 

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. 

The Tudors, TV Series, and Tudor Noses

I must say, it can be irritating watching a TV series that pursues modern ideas of beauty, both male and female, when you're watching something about the Tudors. 

Katherine Howard  or Elizabeth Seymour? 

Because those people had noses. Long.  Arched. Pointed. 











Noses that are nothing like, say, Natalie Dormier's little retrousee number. 
Streisand would almost have fit right in. 










Most of the nobility intermarried, which might explain why so many have long, narrow faces. 

Anne Boleyn

Margaret Tudor, Henry VIII's sister.

And tiny mouths. (And long noses. And buggy eyes, as seen here on Henry's third beloved, Jane Seymour, who learned to withhold her virginity from her predecessor, Anne Boleyn.) 

Jane Seymour

A few women of that era might fit our notions of short-nosed, cat-faced beauty, but they are ladies in waiting, and therefore very, very young with noses not yet grown. 

Myself, I get a bit bored of seeing faces that are so much the same. Though, I suppose that might have been true back then--some of those ladies above look like twins. Or triplets. Style. It rules. 

I should be grateful we're not all tweezing our foreheads. How'd you 

like that one,  ladies--and gents?