Those of you who visited this blog late last night--and my stat-box says there were about twenty of you--may have seen a partial review of the first section of If There Be Thorns. It was late, I was sleepy, someone at Blogger put the Post button next to the Save button . . . mistakes were made.
Just wanted to post an apology and an explanation of why that post is no longer here. You weren't hallucinating, and there was nothing wrong with your browser. But hey! At least there's proof that If There Be Thorns is a thing that will happen!
Meanwhile, Part Seven of the Petals on the Wind recap is up, and we're one week away from the new Flowers movie!
Sunday, January 12, 2014
Saturday, January 11, 2014
Petals on the Wind, Part Seven: In Which Cathy Marries in Haste
Fun Fact: the file from which I'm working is titled "Peddles on the Wind" which always makes me think of this:
We are on the cusp of Part Three, the shortest section of this book at about fifty pages. It's also, strangely, a very eventful section: Cathy embarks on her violent first marriage, achieves her dream of becoming a world-renown ballerina, and becomes a mother and a widow at roughly the same time. Yet the plotting issues that have plagued the first three-fifths of the book are largely non-existent. In fact, this is a section Andrews inexplicably glossed over long periods with a handwave even when the story might have done well to linger on a few scenes. There's barely even a Christmas to mark the passage of time.
There are other things, though. Horrible things. Implication-y things.
Anyway: very short section, but a longish review. We have an entire marriage to get through, so let's get to it!
We are on the cusp of Part Three, the shortest section of this book at about fifty pages. It's also, strangely, a very eventful section: Cathy embarks on her violent first marriage, achieves her dream of becoming a world-renown ballerina, and becomes a mother and a widow at roughly the same time. Yet the plotting issues that have plagued the first three-fifths of the book are largely non-existent. In fact, this is a section Andrews inexplicably glossed over long periods with a handwave even when the story might have done well to linger on a few scenes. There's barely even a Christmas to mark the passage of time.
There are other things, though. Horrible things. Implication-y things.
Anyway: very short section, but a longish review. We have an entire marriage to get through, so let's get to it!
Thursday, January 9, 2014
Lifetime Orders Flowers in the Attic Sequel, and Other Less Impressive Updates
Lifetime Orders Flowers in the Attic Sequel
I never thought I'd say this...but Lifetime loves us.
The real news is in the headline. The remainder of the article is just a summary of the upcoming FitA remake. I hope that this level of optimism mean that the film is going to be great.
While I'm here and since it's on topic, the next Petals on the Wind post will be up on Saturday. It, too, is going to be long, since I'm trying to cover Cathy's entire first marriage in a single entry. The pacing is just weird in this section. Keep an eye out!
I never thought I'd say this...but Lifetime loves us.
The real news is in the headline. The remainder of the article is just a summary of the upcoming FitA remake. I hope that this level of optimism mean that the film is going to be great.
While I'm here and since it's on topic, the next Petals on the Wind post will be up on Saturday. It, too, is going to be long, since I'm trying to cover Cathy's entire first marriage in a single entry. The pacing is just weird in this section. Keep an eye out!
Thursday, January 2, 2014
Background Blogging: I Sense a Theme
Checking my stats after the long absence reveals a certain trend in my search hits.
"incestuous rape Flowers in the Attic": This blog discusses the rape scene in Flowers in the Attic: Part Six, which is the secondmost viewed entry on this blog by several hundred hits, surpassed only by the entry on the Andrews estate's court case with the IRS.
"flowers in the attic rape": Yes, same section.
"flowers in the attic chris and cathy make love": Cathy and Chris don't make love in that book. They do in later books, but in the first one, it's straight-up rape.
"flowers in the attic nude": There is a lot of casual nudity scattered around Flowers in the Attic, particularly in the section covered in Part Five. There is no nudity in this blog, unless you count that one picture of Burt Reynolds.
"flowers in the attic sex excerpt": The whole scene? It's not very graphic compared to some of the scenes in say, Petals on the Wind, and it's rather short, and it's, well, a rape scene. There's an earlier scene where Chris and Cathy kiss and make out a little that's probably more satisfying on the sensuality front.
"flowers in the attic porn": I'm sure it exists, although a quick search reveals that, if it's out there, it's surprisingly difficult to locate amid the tons of cheeky articles that describe the book as "softcore porn for preteens." Andrews' own sex scenes tend to be soft focus. You'll have to go to the fanfiction for anything more graphic than that.
At any rate, there's no porn in this blog, and there's no porn in Flowers in the Attic, except for maybe scenery porn. Andrews does love to describe her sets.
In a bit of mood whiplash, however, I'd like to talk about some other search results that really bothered me for a number of reasons.
"was vc andrews raped/was vc andrews molested/vc andrews was an incest victim"
Serious talk about incest and some analysis of Andrews' oeuvre under the cut.
"incestuous rape Flowers in the Attic": This blog discusses the rape scene in Flowers in the Attic: Part Six, which is the secondmost viewed entry on this blog by several hundred hits, surpassed only by the entry on the Andrews estate's court case with the IRS.
"flowers in the attic rape": Yes, same section.
"flowers in the attic chris and cathy make love": Cathy and Chris don't make love in that book. They do in later books, but in the first one, it's straight-up rape.
"flowers in the attic nude": There is a lot of casual nudity scattered around Flowers in the Attic, particularly in the section covered in Part Five. There is no nudity in this blog, unless you count that one picture of Burt Reynolds.
"flowers in the attic sex excerpt": The whole scene? It's not very graphic compared to some of the scenes in say, Petals on the Wind, and it's rather short, and it's, well, a rape scene. There's an earlier scene where Chris and Cathy kiss and make out a little that's probably more satisfying on the sensuality front.
"flowers in the attic porn": I'm sure it exists, although a quick search reveals that, if it's out there, it's surprisingly difficult to locate amid the tons of cheeky articles that describe the book as "softcore porn for preteens." Andrews' own sex scenes tend to be soft focus. You'll have to go to the fanfiction for anything more graphic than that.
At any rate, there's no porn in this blog, and there's no porn in Flowers in the Attic, except for maybe scenery porn. Andrews does love to describe her sets.
In a bit of mood whiplash, however, I'd like to talk about some other search results that really bothered me for a number of reasons.
"was vc andrews raped/was vc andrews molested/vc andrews was an incest victim"
Serious talk about incest and some analysis of Andrews' oeuvre under the cut.
Wednesday, January 1, 2014
Flowers in the Attic Remake, Long Trailer
At the request of an anonymous reader, I've uploaded a copy of the longer trailer for the new Lifetime remake of Flowers in the Attic, which comes out 18 January. As of the last week of December, Lifetime was sending out C&D orders to websites hosting the leaked long trailer, so this video's stability is in some doubt. Likewise, let me know if there's trouble watching the video here. I've never used Blogger's video upload function and can't vouch for its reliability.
I have the trailer saved to my hard drive and can shoot you a copy on request. It can also be found for now at DailyMotion. If someone knows a different source, or if there's other trailers available (other than the official 32-second promo), please let us all know!
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Film Recaps: Flowers In the Attic (1987)
Happy New Year, readers!
Considering what a cult phenomenon the original Andrews books were at their peak, it amazes me that they only ever had one major media tie-in. Oh, the idea gets shuffled around now and then--there was a plan to film the Landry Saga as a television series, and the Rain thing happened--but nothing ever seemed to come of it until recently, when, out of nowhere, Lifetime announced the forthcoming remake.
There's a lot of potential factors for this long delay. Andrews was notoriously reclusive. Marketing might have forced her to deal more with the public than she cared to. She also seems to have been as protective of her intellectual properties as she was of her privacy; it's known she demanded script approval and that she went through five scripts before selecting the one that eventually got produced She did not, however, reject the treatment by Wes Craven; that was someone else's bad decision. You can read the Craven script here, where it is available courtesy of the amazingly vast Complete V.C. Andrews site. It has incest!*
Finally, the immediate aftermath of Andrews' death was fraught with so much red tape that perhaps no one wanted to touch the mess.
In the end, someone did film an Andrews novel. Just one. And it was panned so solidly that no one dared mention its name again.
Warning: this review is very long and very gif-heavy, because give me an avi of FITA and a copy of Photoshop and I just can't stop.
Considering what a cult phenomenon the original Andrews books were at their peak, it amazes me that they only ever had one major media tie-in. Oh, the idea gets shuffled around now and then--there was a plan to film the Landry Saga as a television series, and the Rain thing happened--but nothing ever seemed to come of it until recently, when, out of nowhere, Lifetime announced the forthcoming remake.
There's a lot of potential factors for this long delay. Andrews was notoriously reclusive. Marketing might have forced her to deal more with the public than she cared to. She also seems to have been as protective of her intellectual properties as she was of her privacy; it's known she demanded script approval and that she went through five scripts before selecting the one that eventually got produced She did not, however, reject the treatment by Wes Craven; that was someone else's bad decision. You can read the Craven script here, where it is available courtesy of the amazingly vast Complete V.C. Andrews site. It has incest!*
Finally, the immediate aftermath of Andrews' death was fraught with so much red tape that perhaps no one wanted to touch the mess.
In the end, someone did film an Andrews novel. Just one. And it was panned so solidly that no one dared mention its name again.
Warning: this review is very long and very gif-heavy, because give me an avi of FITA and a copy of Photoshop and I just can't stop.
Sunday, December 29, 2013
The Suspense!
Watch this space on New Year's Day for a surprise!
A big surprise.
::side-eyes the ever-growing Word file::
A big, big, twenty-seven-pages-and-counting surprise . . .
A big surprise.
::side-eyes the ever-growing Word file::
A big, big, twenty-seven-pages-and-counting surprise . . .
Monday, November 18, 2013
At this point I wouldn't trust me either.
I have tried very hard to keep my personal life experience off this blog (because, you know, we're so professional here), but from its inception, this blog has been plagued with setbacks, such as the time my town was leveled by a tornado, the time I nearly died of pneumonia*, and my father's death last year, in addition to my intensive school schedule.
But good news! As of December, I will be an honest-to-god graduate of English, meaning that I will have no realistic job prospects AND my investigations into the world of V.C. Andrews will instantly have an air of authority! In addition to this, on January 18th 2014, Lifetime will present its new made-for-TV version of Flowers in the Attic, and they have promised us actual incest this time. Mmm, incest.
Therefore, barring any more life-threatening ailments, natural disasters, or my becoming a complete orphan, this blog will officially recommence January 2014, in time to review the new movie and in anticipation of a resurgence of interest in All Things Andrews.
*Could've been arsenic poisoning. I have it on good authority that the symptoms are identical.
But good news! As of December, I will be an honest-to-god graduate of English, meaning that I will have no realistic job prospects AND my investigations into the world of V.C. Andrews will instantly have an air of authority! In addition to this, on January 18th 2014, Lifetime will present its new made-for-TV version of Flowers in the Attic, and they have promised us actual incest this time. Mmm, incest.
Therefore, barring any more life-threatening ailments, natural disasters, or my becoming a complete orphan, this blog will officially recommence January 2014, in time to review the new movie and in anticipation of a resurgence of interest in All Things Andrews.
*Could've been arsenic poisoning. I have it on good authority that the symptoms are identical.
Tuesday, April 23, 2013
The Unbearable Whiteness of Being an Andrews Character
I'm not really expecting a lot of diversity from my V.C. Andrews. She was a lily-white lady writing pretty, sexy novels to appeal to other lily-white ladies at a time, albeit a relatively recent time (within the past thirty years), when the very idea of racial diversity in media was a concept tossed about by high-minded academics in the company of other high-minded academics, most of them white and all of them very probably drunk. Moreover, the very book that made V.C. Andrews famous took place in a locked room and featured a grand total of six major characters. There's not a lot of wiggle-room for representation within those perimeters.
But she tried, God love her, she tried. The very few people of color in Andrewsland are by and large kind, cheerful, generous people who do their best to ease the lives of the (invariably young, white, and clueless) heroines. When both Heaven and her mother feel out of place in the rambling halls of Farthinggate, they are welcomed into the kitchen by the jovial Rye Whiskey, who dispenses home-cooking and advice. The Dollangangers are led to safety by the mute housekeeper, Henny Beech.
Taken all together, it points to a kind of genteel racism, the logic of which goes something like this: I am a white writer, and as such have no experience with persons of color as individuals. It's not that I don't like them--heavens no! It is just that I fear that I, ensconced in my whiteness, can never do justice to their inner nobility, and also because I am secretly terrified of being called a racist. Therefore I will go out of my way to include them in my work, and furthermore, I will make them dear and kind and decent and well-nigh saintly, prescribing to no negative stereotypes. How can that possibly be racist? It's a Scarlett O'Hara attitude, pointing out that the slaves at Tara get a ham every Christmas while never addressing the moral question that there are slaves at Tara. The trouble with genteel racism is that in the end, it feels as if the author expects a pat on the head for acknowledging the very existence of anyone who isn't white.
But she tried, God love her, she tried. The very few people of color in Andrewsland are by and large kind, cheerful, generous people who do their best to ease the lives of the (invariably young, white, and clueless) heroines. When both Heaven and her mother feel out of place in the rambling halls of Farthinggate, they are welcomed into the kitchen by the jovial Rye Whiskey, who dispenses home-cooking and advice. The Dollangangers are led to safety by the mute housekeeper, Henny Beech.
Taken all together, it points to a kind of genteel racism, the logic of which goes something like this: I am a white writer, and as such have no experience with persons of color as individuals. It's not that I don't like them--heavens no! It is just that I fear that I, ensconced in my whiteness, can never do justice to their inner nobility, and also because I am secretly terrified of being called a racist. Therefore I will go out of my way to include them in my work, and furthermore, I will make them dear and kind and decent and well-nigh saintly, prescribing to no negative stereotypes. How can that possibly be racist? It's a Scarlett O'Hara attitude, pointing out that the slaves at Tara get a ham every Christmas while never addressing the moral question that there are slaves at Tara. The trouble with genteel racism is that in the end, it feels as if the author expects a pat on the head for acknowledging the very existence of anyone who isn't white.
Tuesday, March 19, 2013
"Dance, Ballerina, Dance . . . "
I'm still working on the next section of recap, so to fill some time, please welcome Mr. Nat "King" Cole, singing the song Chris quoted to Cathy during their incredibly awkward semi-nude pool-party in Flowers in the Attic!
Fun Fact! This song topped out at #18 on the charts in 1957, the year Flowers in the Attic begins. Now you can imagine twelve-year-old ballet-obsessed Cathy playing this single over and over on her plastic portable record player and driving everyone in the family nuts.
Fun Fact! This song topped out at #18 on the charts in 1957, the year Flowers in the Attic begins. Now you can imagine twelve-year-old ballet-obsessed Cathy playing this single over and over on her plastic portable record player and driving everyone in the family nuts.
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