Netfixation — what a wonderful, weird illness
I think I am going to be all right.
I was taken down with a mental illness recently, which I diagnosed as Netfixation.
In this epoch of Covid, I am a late bloomer. I arrived on the farm in the Camdeboo with no signal, no TV, no WiFi, not even a draatloos . Just me and a few 1970s Mills & Boon romantic-erotica novels which had the garden project workers, ous who arrived with adventure bikes and degrees, in stitches.
We ’ d read the most outrageous sections around the fire and fall about.
Then came disaster and progress, that wind which destroyed the farmhouse, followed by those tech guys from Graaff-Reinet who spent two weeks pointing the swanky white dish they’d attached to the back wall of Gite du Pondok between the large stones keeping the roof down, at Vredekop in the far distance.
But when Wi-Fi came on, so did the Netflix menu, and, phew! did I binge or what.
I was tipped off about how cats love it when their custodians hit the couch and become a human pillow for weeks on end, and even get grumpy when the illness is cured and the couch is vacated.
I surfed away, and got hooked on three series and a couple of flicks. Yoh!
The sis tucked into When Calls the Heart, and I do admit to teasing her about its puritan roots, and antiquated Republican notions of clean, rigid, conservative, courting rituals. Totally unrealistic, but she said it was an easy-peeler and relaxing. The climactic moments were a kiss — aren’t they all, I guess.
I piled into Outlander, Sense8 and Anne with an E.
I had a Scottish granny so Outlander s
’ gory and lusty trek through the 1745 Scots Jacobite rebellion piqued my curiosity. The stars, a lithe Irish former supermodel, and a Scottish hunk with a trucker’s pectorals, took us through a litany of whippings, snogging, and penetrations until I could almost imagine the duo rolling their eyes at yet another round of facial sandpapering.
But the story was great and we travelled the world. I was just amazed at the breadth of the scope of experience we were offered. Hey, I even thought I could feel the scriptwriter’s exhaustion with the sex scenes when, after a 200-year break, the couple get back at it, and instead of a most intimate reigniting embrace, she near breaks his nose on impact. Dark humour the best antidote to keening boredom.
But it was pretty hetero, and in fact, springboards off the beefcake’s deal with the devil, when the sadist homosexual Brit captain has his way with him as a trade-off for the heroine’s life.
Not particularly progressive, but each to their own. You can almost feel the twinkle in the eye of the scriptwriter when gay men are redeemed by the loving support for our constantly embattled straight-as-a-dirk hero by a closeted moffie British officer and administrator. The scene where the handsome Scots hulk politely offers his favour to his saviour smacks of wickedly subversive humour.
The takeaways were great fun and we travelled the world on olde sail ships, from digging potatoes in Scotland to the French King Louise XIV attempting unsuccessfully to do his grand lever business in the morning while watched closely by a roomful of coiffured aristocrats seeking his favour (it actually happened) at which point our oke offers the sage advice: Try some pap. OK, so he said porridge.
The days I spent living in this series came to an abrupt halt when the stars shipwreck on a beach, and are told they have arrived on the shores of “America”. The end. Of course to be continued.
Sense8 took me to the other end of the universe, to the sizzling edge of contemporary human sexuality.
I watched it flat-out before consulting with my queer daughter who laughed out loud and said: “Dad it’s all about transgender identity, which is not the same thing as sexuality! ”
Now this is a complex phenomena, which auntie Google shortcuts as people whose sense of identity does not correspond with their birth sex.
And what a rort it was. It had everything
— sci-fi, corporate fascism, but mostly it ranged across the veld of diversity, people finding each other in the face of a rigid, conservative, hostile and violent society.
It was sumptuous, and thrilling and I learnt a lot in what is essentially a long essay on who our genes, personal desires and fate lead us to hook up with.
I have seen a lot of dark, radical art, but orgies portrayed in such a beautiful, nonthreatening way, was a first. Modern movie making influenced by music videos and make-your-own YouTube visual theatre seemed to get going in the early noughties with movies like Julie Taymor’s Across the Universe in 2007, Guy Ritchie’s Sherlock Holmes in 2009 and Danny Boyle’s 127 Hours in 2010.
Sense8 fits right in with magnificent imaginary leaps and dark, rich playfulness. The orgy scenes are actually more about the human form, a roil of glowing hues and textures moving together. It is such a expressionistic statement of human togetherness and is so carefully crafted to avoid lewd obsession, that I felt, er, touched.
There is something to be said about stripping away all the pseudo-urban mythology, and coming to termswith simply being homo sapiens driven by a fabulous, oversized organ called your brain.
Wasn ’ t this the magnificent central point being made by The Matrix in which our mediated reality — where we live, love, and die — is a social, mental construct? That flick makes it’s biggest statement when all the ideological shackles are swept aside and the truth is revealed — we are all human batteries being sucked dry of our life-force energy by technology, the machines. An extreme metaphor perhaps for the swingeing greed of global capitalism’s one percenters, my faves.
So, if you want to be hip and inform yourself of who is doing what to who out there, then Lara (formerly Larry) and Lilly (Andy) Wachowski’s Sense8 is the one right now.
However, the series that truly absorbed me was Anne with an E. This little show is probably the most moving and subversive of them all. From the poster it looked all sugary like those Girls’ Annual books my sisters used to read, but I was throwing darts and Netflix was saying it was trending so I gave it a whirl.
Jissie, this was shattering stuff. Lucy Maud Montgomery’s sad story Anne of Green Gables, set in 1908 about a 13-yearold orphan, has been thoroughly and lovingly reworked by superstar writer and director Moira Wally-Beckett (Ms Breaking Bad).
My eyes were on stalks. This is an essential non-age restricted (7+) drama for the family, but I advise the teens to hold their parents’ hands on the couch. Conversely, this is a moment to walk through teendom into adulthood feeling informed and enriched.
Life through the eyes of Anne, so brilliantly played by fiery redhead Irish-Canadian AmybethMcNulty, has something for everyone. We watch as adults and teens on a journey that is simultaneously deeply conservative, and also truly transformative. We travel on horseback and train through rural and urban prejudice to one single point, for me, where the entire boy-girl, boy-boy, coming-of age story hangs on the lifelong relationship of two arts-loving lesbians. Just like that. Works for me.
Haaibo. There’s a hot wind blowing through the window of my fly-infested box, summer and a freezing storm collide tonight, and the mates, most in their 60s, are prepping their bikes for a four-day ride through the Northern Cape Karoo after the rain. I will be there!
Yeah, to be young and beautiful again with the help of Delores Koan, my motorcycle, and to hell with all this mediated messaging!
Time to get up and get real.