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Jan. 16th, 2012 09:47 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
skygiantsVacation messed me up, so I am one cycle behind on my Terry Pratchett reread, but this should not imply any lack of enthusiasm for Moving Pictures because, you guys, I LOVE Moving Pictures. I have always loved it, probably far more than its deserts, and I don't know why this is.
And the thing is that it makes total sense that I love it now. It's about Hollywood and the birth of film! It actually does a pretty hilarious job of condensing and Discworld-izing all the myths about how the Lumiere Brothers banged their projectors on the ground, and lo and behold, Clara Bow sprang out fully-formed and became the It Girl! It has the race for sound technology, which I actually wrote a paper on this semester, and the celluloid fires, and the birth of on-screen advertising, and all these things that are completely hilarious if you are interested in film history - which I was not actually much at all until recently. So this cannot explain why it's been one of my favorites since my first read-through more than ten years ago.
This is the book that introduces Ridcully, who was one of my favorite characters as a kid, which may partially explain it -- although I always forget that this book is the one where that happens. (I don't think of Moving Pictures as a wizard book, I think of it as a standalone, but it totally is a wizard book.) In fact most of the permanent cast of lulzy wizards first appear here, with the possible exception of the Dean, since this Dean is staid and rule-abiding and every other time that the Dean shows up he is the wildest and most immature of ALL WIZARDS EVER. Anyway, I like the permanent cast of lulzy wizards, so maybe this is part of my abiding fondness?
And there is also the fact that the pre-climax slapstick orgy is completely hilarious and the high-speed broomstick-wheelchair chase gets me every time. Sometimes I am a very easy sell.
But I think the actual reason I like Moving Pictures so much is that it always feels to me like the creepiest Discworld novel. I mean, Pratchett has used eldritch horror before and will use it again, but the Creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions don't really scare me so much. Ghost towns whose history you are doomed to repeat? Sleepwalking to wake strange things without any control over your own actions? The permanent movie theater where all your friends will sit staring glassily ahead forever, until the roof caves in on their heads? That creeps me out.
Anyone else agree with me? Other votes for creepiest Discworld book?
(Reread caveats: . . . oh dear, the treatment of the trolls is really awkward in this book, isn't it.)
And the thing is that it makes total sense that I love it now. It's about Hollywood and the birth of film! It actually does a pretty hilarious job of condensing and Discworld-izing all the myths about how the Lumiere Brothers banged their projectors on the ground, and lo and behold, Clara Bow sprang out fully-formed and became the It Girl! It has the race for sound technology, which I actually wrote a paper on this semester, and the celluloid fires, and the birth of on-screen advertising, and all these things that are completely hilarious if you are interested in film history - which I was not actually much at all until recently. So this cannot explain why it's been one of my favorites since my first read-through more than ten years ago.
This is the book that introduces Ridcully, who was one of my favorite characters as a kid, which may partially explain it -- although I always forget that this book is the one where that happens. (I don't think of Moving Pictures as a wizard book, I think of it as a standalone, but it totally is a wizard book.) In fact most of the permanent cast of lulzy wizards first appear here, with the possible exception of the Dean, since this Dean is staid and rule-abiding and every other time that the Dean shows up he is the wildest and most immature of ALL WIZARDS EVER. Anyway, I like the permanent cast of lulzy wizards, so maybe this is part of my abiding fondness?
And there is also the fact that the pre-climax slapstick orgy is completely hilarious and the high-speed broomstick-wheelchair chase gets me every time. Sometimes I am a very easy sell.
But I think the actual reason I like Moving Pictures so much is that it always feels to me like the creepiest Discworld novel. I mean, Pratchett has used eldritch horror before and will use it again, but the Creatures from the Dungeon Dimensions don't really scare me so much. Ghost towns whose history you are doomed to repeat? Sleepwalking to wake strange things without any control over your own actions? The permanent movie theater where all your friends will sit staring glassily ahead forever, until the roof caves in on their heads? That creeps me out.
Anyone else agree with me? Other votes for creepiest Discworld book?
(Reread caveats: . . . oh dear, the treatment of the trolls is really awkward in this book, isn't it.)
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Date: 2012-01-17 05:16 am (UTC)I love when you reread a book at just the right time. Pyramids, The Truth and Thud are my votes for creepiest as they all have parts that make me go, I don't want to read you late at night.
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Date: 2012-01-17 01:00 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-17 03:16 pm (UTC)...okay, that wasn't very good.
Anyway, I personally thought Thud was creepy on account of mysterious inexplicable symbols which follow you around creating themselves from the detritus of ordinary life and marking you out for death. The Truth is probably dark light?
I can't remember what was creepy about Pyramids though. Been a while. Hurm. Zombies, there were. And dimension-wrangling and gods running amok, aye?
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Date: 2012-01-17 07:06 pm (UTC)You got just what creeped me out about Thud, I love it and it's one of my favorites but oh that symbol is frightening.
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Date: 2012-01-18 04:07 am (UTC)And yeah, it's the neverending cycle of stagnating time and the undying villain who exists on an eternal loop cycle that's creepy about Pyramids. There are mummies, but they are actually kind of adorable . . .
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Date: 2012-01-18 05:12 am (UTC)(And then Teppic went traveling with the Doctor, the end.)
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Date: 2012-01-17 10:39 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-17 01:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-17 06:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-18 04:09 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-18 02:11 am (UTC)To take a question from my own post ( http://www.steelypips.org/weblog/2012/01/pratchett_09-10.php ) :
I can't tell whether it's a shot at the Hollywood establishment and mainstream movie-making, to have the thing that limits the movies' ability to capture the audience be a giant Oscar statue. Or is it meant to suggest a countering of crappy mindless movies, like the SciFi Channel's monster-of-the-week things? More likely the second, I guess, since I tend to think of the pop culture satires as being gentler (as they rely so much on specific knowledge of the things being satirized), and the first would be a lot broader attack on the medium.
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Date: 2012-01-18 04:24 am (UTC)Although to be honest, taken as a giant metaphor, the whole message is a bit bizarre: theater and books are okay, but creativity channeled straight to the audience is taking things TOO FAR and MUST BE STOPPED?
I mean,
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Date: 2012-01-18 01:47 pm (UTC)If I were to take the message seriously, I would say active engagement v passive consumption (on the theory that live theater is more collaborative w/audience even when not explicitly designed as such), but again, there's real affection for movies there too, so it is kind of muddled.
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Date: 2012-01-19 06:36 am (UTC)Yeah, that's the thing -- that, and serious acknowledgment of the work that goes into it, with Ginger's speech about people who are brilliant moviemakers who have found their calling who otherwise might never have. There's sort of a conflict between the plot/overt message, which dictates that Holy Wood needs to die, and the tone and feel of the book, which is kind of in love with cinema in spite of itself.
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Date: 2012-01-20 01:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-18 04:05 pm (UTC)Sorry, I am always so inane in my comments to your entries. I appreciate your thinky-thoughts! I just rarely have my own. ♥
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Date: 2012-01-19 06:37 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-19 11:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-01-20 01:08 am (UTC)Somehow, I don't think of this book as especially creepy - though it is, I admit - so much as tense, the way Fifth Elephant and Reaper Man and Thud! and so on are.