Bex’ Struggle Last October on EastEnders

On TV, the soap #EastEnders has brought, to the screen, life in Albert Square, in London, since 1985.

Other than on BBC iPlayer, #EastEnders airs here in my region of the world late-nights on the weekend, months behind its latest broadcast in England.

There are confrontations and there are obstacles.  If nothing else, it’s a bit of fun.

Watching EastEnders in October 2019, not long before the thirty-fifth anniversary of the show, I can remember a little how it was watching the thirtieth anniversary, five years ago, when the soap revealed that the Beale girl, Ian’s daughter, had been murdered, a mystery.

What interested me in particular now, to the extent I am saying something about it here, is the going away party for Bex to celebrate her acceptance to Oxford.  Bex, before she relented, was a Gothic girl, ranking in the subculture of the disenchanted.  I think Bex had interests in high school theatre, and in playing the guitar, as when she did at the Vic.

https://heatworld.com/entertainment/tv-movies/eastenders-teenage-suicide-bex-fowler/

She is pretty while presenting emotionally adrift.  EastEnders characterizes Bex as an intellectual, artsy teen, moody and pointedly smarter than her peers, conflicted.

She performs songs in an earlier episode, taking the stage in the Vic, when she is beginning to take on the role of a neighbourhood talent, a bright artistic girl struggling, given her ability to make waves.  What I’m moved to write about is the character’s decision, the night of her party before she goes away to school, her friends and family celebrating her acceptance to Oxford, to pen a suicide note, and to overdose on pills, tears in her eyes, by herself in her bedroom.

Often EastEnders diverges from its responsibilities as a soap, presenting sometimes troubling storylines, while entertaining.

The suggestion that a brilliant, youthful, and gifted character, with circumstance thumping for herself, would settle on the extraordinary choice to end her own life, made me think.  Youth suicide is extremely sad, and it perplexes me that Bex would make that decision, bringing hurt on herself, and on everyone who knows and loves her.  The song that soundtracks the tragedy for Bex is the Gary Jules version of the Tears for Fears song Mad World, music adding to a sense of despair and confusion that Bex is experiencing.

“The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had,” the song presents lyrically, as Bex drifts into near-death sleep.  Time-lapse photography shows the lights going out in the Vic, and the encompassing night sky giving way to a cloudy morning, when Bex may be lying there dead in her bedroom.

Elsewhere in the TV landscape, that tapestry of storytelling that is compelling, the song Mad World has received another place of honour in a TV soundtrack, in another show, in another nation.  Maybe strangely, but provocatively, Season 2 of the CW’s Riverdale has likewise presented Mad World.

https://www.insider.com/riverdale-veronica-archie-varchie-relationship-timeline-2019-1#archie-goes-to-the-semi-formal-dance-with-betty-and-veronica-2

By Episode 8 of Season 2, the Riverdale character Jughead has risen in the ranks of bikers, the Serpents. Archie and Veronica are presenting Mad World to their friends and family until the tension between them hits a breaking point, and they leave without finishing the song.

The group, a significant number of who are Serpents, are disappointed.  Betty thinks fast and takes the stage, picking up where Archie and Veronica stopped.  Betty quickly takes Mad World to a different level, assuming the role of dancer and drawing the Serpents in.

Jughead watches with shock, and maybe with interest. With his yearnings to use the Serpents, it isn’t unusual that Betty would in like manner expect another job.  Both EastEnders and Riverdale hit big audience numbers, and anyone who sees TV could note a similarity between the two Mad World scenes.

For Bex, it is about an early closure, and for Betty, it is tied in with seeing Jughead order the Serpents.  Bex’s mistake in EastEnders reflects a character who feels alone, despairing so much that she decides to take her life.

Perhaps it could even be derived that she knows about Riverdale from TV.  EastEnders is set amid reality.  The EastEnders characters watch “real world” TV and hear real-world music in the Vic.

Bex, simply, doesn’t deserve death.  She is a beautiful, intelligent, talented young woman, for who opportunity is knocking.

https://stocksnap.io/author/kristinhardwick

I like both shows, but there is a kind of question of how appropriate Bex’s act of self-destruction is.

The Mad World scene in Riverdale could, I see, be haunting, if it is relatable.  In EastEnders, the pendulum has swung away from the physical, to become a forebear of doom.  Both shows have a sense of appreciation for popular music, when songs present loud and clear.

The haunting going on in these TV episodes has to be executed within the context of plot devices, or else it isn’t effective.  It needs to make ideas click for an audience, or it falls short.  I think both shows want to present specific circumstances to get viewers feeling haunted.

“I find it kind of funny; I find it kind of sad…” Curious that the song lends itself to drama.  You’re welcome to comment and/or follow.  Thanks for visiting.

15 Ways the Most Youthful Adherent to Video Research is Totally Overrated. Part II

I’d been focusing when I could on five more ways you can dispense with some of the time you’re putting into video research.  If you do anything like that and if you think of consuming video content as being video research, then increasingly I don’t think there’s a consensus that anything like video research is useful.
I’m looking back in time when there were different attitudes to video.  I mean that it wasn’t as accessible as it today.  It occurs to me I should argue that if you are committed to any research activity utilizing video, and there’s a ready workaround, you should concentrate on the workaround.

Published on Nov 21, 2018
Free speech in Canada died today https://bit.ly/2BEP6cW

Aerial view of black board with the letter forming hello greeting concept

1. The first part for this post, about chasing an adherent to research, left off with points how you can turn some of your conclusions into blog posts.  Or if you don’t have a blog, there’s somewhere you could start.  I would like to make the point that the best conclusions you can form from watching a lot of videos can indeed be put somewhere, like in a blog, or a podcast, etc.  For example, on Patrick Bet-David’s Valutainment on the internet, I watched Bet-David and Robert Greene discuss Greene’s latest bestseller.
   Bet-David pointed out that Greene sat down with three hundred books to write his latest book, for the pay-off.  That’s the traditional sense of research that I don’t think you should disregard in any way.  There is no way that you can eliminate the process of reading the page, or perhaps your Kindle, from the actual work of doing research.  Sad but true.
2. The traditional sense of video is taking a video camera to a wedding and then selling it to the wedding party.  The best research you can cultivate from a video of that kind is whether a particular family member was in attendance, or perhaps how the bridesmaids looked when they were standing side by side.
   Do you see many wedding videos, apart from celebrity weddings, that make it onto the Internet?  I am not sure there are, particularly as the advent of the handheld video camera has given way to the smartphone camera.
   If you are a young person reading this, and you don’t relate to the idea of a videographer at a wedding, it isn’t that different from a professional photographer taking pictures.  It is just that the videographer mingles with the wedding party and gets a little movie of the wedding.
3. I’m writing there about commercial consumer video, not expensive TV productions.  The thing about the video you watch is that when it is a pricey production, I don’t think you can count on it for insight.  Particularly when focusing on video production for TV, in the nineteen sixties, seventies, and eighties, when the technology was useful enough to shoot material for television, and before computers were beginning to infiltrate it, there just wasn’t a lot of purely informative video.  The novelty on being on video overshadowed a requirement, to be honest.  As soon as the camera was recording, everybody was immediately acting at all times.
   That sounds like a polarized argument, but ninety-nine percent of the time if you were being paid to appear on camera, you were acting to do it.  Speaking jovially, you had to nail it.
4. What happened in the mid-nineteen-eighties?  Computer effects were beginning to be integrated into more and more of the ready video, which starts to become interesting for the possibility that more and better information could be communicated by video.  With more information is born the reality that better information begins to come across.  Purists might disagree, but fast-forward fifteen years and amateur video is not only more accessible but could also be edited on par with the best of people in the trade in previous decades.
   There had been an explosion of video on cable TV which meant more ways to deliver information by video.  Did that mean you could derive better conclusions in the sense that by better I mean better located in reality?  I think so.
   You always want the past back, once you’re past a certain age, but there is some logic, or I am doing my best to apply logic here.
5. The apparent irony is that the development of the computer industry accelerated at a much faster pace than did the growth of video.  I’m tempted once more to stop, but it’s true that by the time video was in its golden years, the computer industry was spritely, pardon the pun, spritely and skyrocketing for many, many people.  I don’t want to mislead you unfairly, but surely some blame for some of the big, really bad troubles that have hit people where there is free access to information lies with what’s just bad information.
   That caution gets sounded frequently, and where before I was tempted to stop then and there, now I really am going to stop.

I have promised one more post on the subject, with five remaining ways you might want to dodge video.  You’re welcome to like, comment, and/or follow.

Photographer:
Sticker Mule

I am humbled by the attention I receive and I shall make some effort to reciprocate interest if I am lucky enough to make a tiny ripple in this pond.
We need to go back to the future

November 26, 2018