Sunday, April 19, 2020

Edible Pandas

I've finished watching The Windsors TV series now, and loved it. I don't have a dog in this race and I can't sort out the truthiness from the truth, but the show is hilarious.

Those who can sort it out agree. The Guardian says:
" 'But these characters are nothing like us', they – the real royals – might say. True, they’re not (also some very peculiar vowel sounds, especially from Hugh Skinner as Wills).
But that really doesn’t matter. What does is that this is ballsy and rude [Fresca notes: only "rude" by Very Polite Standards]; very silly and very funny.
And actually, beyond the riotous hilarity, there are real issues in here – the point (or not) of the royals, their duties, the sovereign grant, Charles’s various agendas...."
I looked up the royals and found a fabulous article by Hilary Mantel: "Royal Bodies", London Review of Books, February 21, 2013.

What a writer. Her sentence "Marie Antoinette was a woman eaten alive by her frocks" has enough potential energy to launch a trilogy.
(I haven't read her Thomas Cromwell trilogy, but her early novel Fludd is one of my favorite books.)


Mantel compares the royals to, among other things, pandas:
"Our current royal family doesn't have the difficulties in breeding that pandas do, but pandas and royal persons alike are expensive to conserve and ill-adapted to any modern environment.
But aren't they interesting? Aren't they nice to look at?"
 Let's put those two things together--being eaten and pandas...

2 comments:

  1. And both the royals and pandas are reliable tourist draws, with all the attendant costs and benefits!

    I haven't seen this show, but we really need to watch it! Is it on Netflix? I'll have to do some research...

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  2. Good point about pandas, Steve!
    Yes, I watched "The Windsors" on Netflix. Hope you like it.

    ReplyDelete