TERRAZA BAJA COLINA BAJA COLINA ALTA N° Nombre común VE CO
10.4. Valoración económica del CO2 almacenado en los bosques del área de estudio
Rounding out our triumvirate of power are two actresses who exemplify the commitment and creativity that actors bring to their roles. Romola Garai (Emma Woodhouse) and Anna Chancellor (Miss Bingley) have more in common than having played roles in televised Austen classics.65 Chancellor and Garai
demonstrate both the centrality of acting to television and the power that actresses (and actors) wield in utilizing their characters as a means of self- expression and self-creation. If writing, according to T.S. Eliot, equals blood made ink, then actresses (and actors) are ink made blood.66 Yet, actresses, sans
their characters, embody the fraught struggle for power wherein subsuming yourself into your role is a necessity for great acting at the same time one utilizes acting to reveal the truth.
65Anna Chancellor’s turn as Miss Bingley was in the (in)famous Colin Firth adaptation of Pride
and Prejudice (Wri. Andrew Davies. Dir. Simon Langton (1995) BBC One, 1995. DVD.). Like Chancellor, Garai acted in a television mini-series adaptation of Austen [Emma. (Wri. Sandy Welch. Dir. Jim O'Hanlon. (2009). BBC One,2010. DVD.)].
66To be fair, Eliot actually stated: “The purpose of literature is to turn blood into ink.”[T.S Eliot,
24
Chancellor and Garai are among the multitudes of actresses who have protested the misogyny that adheres to certain aspects of their profession. Chancellor, for instance, “realize[d] that not being the heroine also has its advantages. ‘For a lot of women my age, now is a cooling-off period,’ she says.”67 Of course, youth can be as problematic as age. In another interview,
Garai reveals: “When I was very young, I was encouraged—and when I say encouraged, I mean forced—to lose weight for a job. . . . It’s destructive, and I can’t handle it, psychologically. I think it’s a way to remind women that they’re not really in control.”68 Garai has frequently spoken out against the cultural
constraints placed upon women in magazines, particularly so-called lads
magazines (e.g., Loaded), and the pressure to conform: “It’s difficult because if I refuse to do any magazines at all, my work, I think, would suffer in a very
immediate way. But when I appear in these magazines, I know I’m being
‘trimmed’. I’m being airbrushed a lot.”69 She continues, “And I know that people
are accepting those images and are under the impression that that is really how my body looks, that I’m hairless and sexless and weigh 90 lbs. That really
worries me. And I really don’t know what to do except talk about it [italics
67Tim Lewis, “Anna Chancellor: My Life Was Chaotic, But It Turned Out Okay.” (The Observer. (20 Aug. 2011). Web. < http://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2011/aug/21/anna- chancellor-interview-the-hour> 16 Jan. 2015.)
68Jennifer Vineyard, “The Hour’s Romola Garai on the Show’s Perfect Timing, the Sexist Fifties Revival, and Refusing to Lose Weight For a Role.” (Vulture. (24 Aug. 2011). Web.
<http://www.vulture.com/2011/08/romola_garai.html> 16 Jan. 2015.)
69Anita Singh, “Romola Garai: As a Size 10 I’m Too Fat for Hollywood” (The Telegraph.(06 Nov. 2012). Web.< http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/celebritynews/9657151/Romola-Garai-as-a- size-10-Im-too-fat-for-Hollywood.html> 16 Jan. 2015.)
25
mine].”70 If one upholds the oft-repeated truism about acting, then Garai wields
her ‘real’ life to reveal the damaging fictions surrounding its misconstructions. Lest one think that actresses are only as important as the truths they tell about the dangers of acting, Chancellor’s and Garai’s actual work fashions their heroick function as much as their querying of the costs of acting. Although Anna Chancellor’s importance to a department of literature might arise more from the luster of her origins (Byron and Jane Austen belong to her family tree), her distinguished theatrical, television, and screen career render her useful to our dissertation. In person, Chancellor was once described by one interviewer as “looking [like] a beautifully designed weapon.”71 Though perhaps better
known for her role as “Duckface” in Four Weddings and A Funeral, “it was playing the hard-bitten 1950s foreign editor [Lix Storm in The Hour] that reminded people of her acting skills.”72
The Hour is oft compared to Mad Men and The Newsroom. The Hour’s creator Abi Morgan averred, “I’ve allowed journalists to be heroic in the 1950s in a way they are not, unfortunately, allowed to be today. I was very driven by the heroism[italics mine] of journalists who did investigate. . . . Who could take
70Singh “Romola Garai: As a Size 10 I’m Too Fat for Hollywood”
71Lloyd Evans, “Feel the Force: Lloyd Evans isn’t Fooled by Anna Chancellor’s Flirtatious Scattiness.” (Spectator. (29 Jun. 2013): 55-56. Academic OneFile. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.)
72“Duckface Puts Another Feather in Her Cap; The Boho Actress, Whose Family Still Use Her Four
Weddings and a Funeral Nickname, is Leaving Audiences Awed with Her Noel Coward in the West End.” (Sunday Times [London, England]. 7 July 2013: 27. Infotrac Newsstand. Web. 21 Nov. 2013.)
26
the time to unravel and grow a story. And good journalists still do that.”73
Morgan avows, “There’s still room for that kind of journalism. I feel The Hour is kind of a war cry for it.”74 In addition to providing a “war cry” for good
journalism, Morgan “was particularly keen to give it quick-fire dialogue. For inspiration, I watched His Girl Friday and The Apartment again, films where the dialogue is so elegant and heightened and yet quick-fire. I also wanted to write a group of characters who could return week by week.”75
Discussing her role as Bel Rowley, Garai notes the combination between the needs of television and realism: “But there’s no question that a woman of my age—I am 30—would be doing that job. And there’s no problem with that, The Hour is a drama after all.”76 She continues, “And I do think Abi quite
deliberately made Anna Chancellor’s character Lix an important part of the dynamic so there was a representation of a woman working in the office who was more age-appropriate.”77 At the same time, “The problem is that with shows
like ours we’re essentially having a dialogue about contemporary politics.
73Andrew Romano, “News, War, and Martinis." (Newsweek 160.24 (10 Nov. 2012): 47-48. Print.) The article may also be found online under a different title “‘The Hour’ Glamorizes the Glory Days of Journalism.” (Newsweek. (3 Dec. 2012). Web. <http://www.newsweek.com/hour- glamorizes-glory-days-journalism-63513> 16 Jan. 2015.)
74Romano “News, War, and Martinis”
75Catriona Wightman, “‘The Hour’ Writer Rejects ‘Mad Men’ Comparisons.” (Digital Spy. (13 Jul. 2011). Web. < http://www.digitalspy.ca/british-tv/s177/the-hour/news/a329592/the-hour- writer-rejects-mad-men-comparisons.html#~oOGhK7VfI8i9zr> 16 Jan. 2015.)
76Denise Martin, “Romola Garai on The Hour, Domineering Women, and Pretend Journalism.” (Vulture.(28 Nov. 2012). Web. < http://www.vulture.com/2012/11/romola-garai-on-the-hour- and-pretend-journalism.html?mid=imdb> 16 Jan. 2015.)
27
[Producers] want Bel to be a woman in her thirties because that’s a character that viewers are going to link in with, even if it’s not absolutely accurate of the period.”78
Garai makes intriguing connections between Bel Rowley’s career options in the 1950s and the current nostalgia for the 1950s:
I think that’s the problem with the fifties revival: If you can’t be openly sexist, you can at least return to a time that was. Return to corsets, to the explosion of the cosmetics industry, to a really dark time for women in terms of the power dynamic at home. I don’t think the women of that time would have hoped for their
granddaughters to yearn to return to inches of makeup, to the obsession with appearances, and the narrow definition of what it was to be beautiful. Bel has no interest in being in front of a
camera, but she wouldn’t have had much of a chance anyway. That wouldn’t have been an option. So Bel’s lucky in a way that she really wanted the job of producer, that it wasn’t second best for her. It wasn’t the booby prize.79
As is often evident when actors and actress discuss their characters, Rowley’s realness to Garai is palpable.
Garai utilizes Rowley’s professional and personal struggles to construct a feminist critique of the travails facing a twenty-first century woman as much as her 1950s grandmother.80 Garai avows, “I have always been interested in gender
politics, so I’m not that keen on doing things that don’t represent a truth about
78Martin “Romola Garai on The Hour, Domineering Women, and Pretend Journalism” 79Vineyard “The Hour’s Romola Garai on the Show’s Perfect Timing.” See also, Catriona
Wighman, “‘The Hour’ Romola Garai: ‘1950s Nostalgia is Dubious’.” (Digital Spy. (19 Jul. 2011). Web. < http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/tv/s177/the-hour/news/a330574/the-hour-romola-garai- 1950s-nostalgia-is-dubious.html#~oOIp9PMFxwJO9y> 16 Jan. 2015.)
28
women.”81 Additionally, Garai has utilized her position to protest misogynistic
magazines and has called upon Tesco (one of the major British grocery chains) to stop selling “lads” magazines.82
Mary McDonnell, who will star in chapter six of this dissertation, explains the dangers that arise for actresses who desire to change the world, or at least their roles: “It’s like coming into power through the back door and wondering if you’re going to get to the front of the house before the whole thing blows up.”83
While Mary McDonnell might be the closest alternate example within our dissertation’s pages of another woman who wields her fictive persona for feminist purposes, it is important to realize the centrality of actresses, and actors, as cultural critics in their own right.
The dissertator can be said to be a tripartite goddess of sorts: writer, critic, and actress. Fulfilling the complicated, and often conflicting, scripts assigned to the persona of “dissertation writer in an English literature department” can be both heady and head-smashing-against-desk inducing. However, through the assistance (or enslavement, if you consider the piracy of the action) and enlightenment provided by both the figures whom we have just
81Wighman “‘The Hour’ Romola Garai: ‘1950s Nostalgia is Dubious’”
82For more on the story, see Garai’s interview outlining her position to Daniel Boffey, “Lads’ Mags: ‘I’ve Been Part of the Problem–Let Me Be Part of the Solution’.” [The Observer.(12 Oct. 2013). Web.< http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/oct/13/lads-mags-problem- romola-garai> 16 Jan. 2015.) and Naomi McAulliffe “So Romola Garai Once Appeared in Lads’ Mags. Shock! Horror! Hypocrite!” (The Guardian.(14 Oct. 2013). Web.
<http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/14/romola-garai-lads-mags-campaign- hypocrite > 16 Jan. 2015.)
83Fiona Morrow, “Girls Just Want to Sound Plausible: Battlestar Galactica is Back-But It’s Had a Feminine Makeover.”(The Sunday Times [London, UK]. (17 Oct. 2004). Web.
<http://www.thesundaytimes.co.uk/sto/culture/film_and_tv/tv/article241800.ece > 16 Jan. 2015.)
29
encountered (Espenson and Bell, Maureen Ryan, and Garai and Chancellor), the dissertator can learn to wield her pen-power wisely and construct her own heroick identity.