I am really behind on posting about the books I read for my fall class. The semester is already done at the time of this posting, and I have already handed in my final paper. But, I will continue, because the readings in this class were good and I have things to say!
Good Omens (1990) was the third book we read for this class. Obviously there are issues with Gaiman, which we did cover to an extent, but we mostly talked about the two author aspect and fantasy elements.
I do have to say that the book was as fun to read as people say. It was funny, witty, satirical, and tongue-in-cheek. The footnotes were a particularly good touch with their added context and hilarity. My favourite joke in the whole thing was the Dick Turpin one. For history nerds, Dick Turpin was a famous highwayman from the 1700s, and so Newt's car is always holding up traffic because its a piece of garbage.
One of my short essays for the class was written about Adam's gang Them and their parallels with the Four Horsemen in the book. Here is an excerpt:
"These comparisons between the kids and the Horseman can be traced throughout the text, and at the climactic airfield “battle” at the end of the novel this correlation is made explicit when the Horsemen are “defeated” by the Them. While the Good Omens television adaptation from 2019 has received good reception from viewers (IMDB), the nuance of paralleling the kids with the horsemen is lost in translation in favour of a more distinct so-called “big bad” for the viewers: Satan. The Ruler of Hell plays a much larger role in the world-ending season finale versus the existentialism defeat of the Four Horsemen which is more prominent in the text. The defeat of the Horsemen in the adaptation is minimized to allow the angel and demon to influence Adam in his final defeat of Satan, thus stripping away the agency and victory of the children that is built over the course of the novel."
My professor has highly encouraged me to expand on my short essay and submit it for publication somewhere. There is little scholarship out there about the kids in Good Omens, which is a fact I encountered while researching for my essay. A project to look forward to later!
I also agree with the popular opinion that Crowley and Aziraphale's friendship is brilliant. Their banter after millennia of crossed paths it top-tier. The television adaptation really plays up their relationship and David Tennant and Michael Sheen do a superb job embodying the Angel and Demon. Most of the scholarship out there is focused on the will-they-won't-they Queer undertones between Azirphale and Crowley that are present not only in the book but also significantly highlighted in the adaptation.
Part of this class also included a focused study of one of the characters from one of the texts we read. I did mine on Anathema Device from Good Omens because she is one of the few female characters in the novel and she is the embodiment of the prophecy subplot in the novel. One aspect I drew attention to was the issue of consent between her and Newton Pulsifer. They only hook up because the prophecies tell them too, and it was a really interesting nuance to shed some light on.
I could go on and on about the TV adaptation more, but I won't. I was actually late to the party when it came to watching it because I really wanted to read the book first. Finally did that, and then was able to accurately compare the book and show to each other (adaptation studies is the main focus of my master's degree). There is also already a lot out there written about the adaptation, as I noted, but it seems my contribution (if published) will be a bit different.
No comments:
Post a Comment