Author: kampa

On the dawn of its highly anticipated and constantly teased second season, Smiling Friends (2022) ramped up the absurdity with its first episode “Gwimbly: Definitive Remastered Enhanced Extended Edition DX 4K (Anniversary Director’s Cut).” The episode melded the 2D animation of the show with older, low-polygon 3D graphics to represent Gwimbly, the has-been video game character that Charlie and Pim are tasked with helping. This comes along with a heaping helping of criticism for the modern games industry which comes close to satire, but does not meet the political nature of most satire. The following week Adult Swim would air “Mr. President,” pulling Smiling Friends into new territory as they take a more directly political approach to their meaning-making.

The episode opens with Charlie, Pim, and Glep watching coverage of the presidential race on TV. When asked whether he would vote for the incumbent, President Jimble, or the challenger Mr. Frog, Charlie launches into a rant about how he and his colleagues are “peons” who don’t make the decisions, meaning that their vote would be inconsequential. Much of the show does not find its satire in particular examples or corollaries to the real world, but rather launches an all-out attack on the state of US politics as a whole, drawing attention to the overall circus and its own contradictions, similar to how the Simpsons supposedly sets up any idea only “in order to undercut them” (Gray, Jones, 7) Additionally, each character has their own opinion or strategies for going about political participation. In this sense, Smiling Friends is acting as a cultural forum and political satire simultaneously, allowing its viewers to identify with any of the tactics put forward by its characters. Pim becomes an advisor to President Jimble, Charlie uncovers a vast conspiracy that confirms his theories, The Boss prepares his AWP bolt-action rifle ahead of an all-out war, and Glep simply sits there and votes.

What I find most interesting is that Glep is shown to have made a tangible difference in the race when the results are announced alongside his photo, the caption declaring him as the singular vote that turned the election. Compared to Glep, everyone else still finds utility or comfort in their political action, despite the unexpected and disastrous outcome of the election. I find this episode of Smiling Friends to be remarkbly effective with its satire, and it is a welcome change from the consistent parody and social commentary the first season was so loved for.

I recently found out about Netflix’s TV adaptation of The Talented Mr. Ripley through a friend, and, being a huge fan of the original film adaptation starring Jude Law, Matt Damon, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Philipp Seymour Hoffman, I dug my computer out of my backpack and began watching. Of course, adapting a book into a movie into a limited series for Netflix comes with its challenges, the most obvious being the stretching or squishing of a narrative to fit the roughly 10 hours of screentime. However, what caught my eye first was the choice to shoot in black and white, dating the narrative far more effectively than the mise-en-scene in the film did.

This eye for more historical detail shows in some of the other choices made by Netflix’s writers and crew. I wanted to pay particular attention to how the queer subject matter was treated, and in the second episode I was treated to a change that called upon my ability to distinguish between my affect in the moment and the ideological or aesthetic evaluations I would make about the show. The character of Freddie, originally portrayed by Philipp Seymour Hoffman as an American ex-pat whose boisterous personality matched his expensive taste and snooty attitude, is now cast as a local Italian woman whose gender expression more closely reflects the queer life in Europe at that time and plays well with Dickie’s character.

My immediate reaction was disappointment in the new portrayal of Freddie, particularly the performance on the part of Eliot Sumner (who also happens to be Sting’s child). What made me particularly aware of my affect was that I felt confused by it. I was surprised by my own disappointment in this somewhat historically accurate queer representation, one that more effectively uses codes that popular audiences recognize to draw attention to Dickie’s queerness as well. What I ended up determining was this: My immediate reaction to this interpretation of Freddie Miles as a character is that it deflates my excitement about the series as a whole, and that aesthetically it intentionally moves away from the film adaptation’s focus on luxurious European living and towards a focus on the queer thriller aspects that the film flirted with. In addition to this, my ideological evaluation of this moment is cautious but hopeful. While it feels that (shockingly) the film’s queerness had a plausible deniability that popular, mostly straight audiences could work with, the TV adaptation has begun to push that across the line towards explicitly queer identities being shown. While the queerness on-screen has become more and more lengthy (just as Griffin points out in “Evaluating Television”), it still feels limiting or too flippant a change to imply Dickie’s queerness simply by placing him in relation with queer-presenting characters. Despite the film having that sense of plausible deniability, the visual metaphors it employs to signal queerness (such as games of chess or casual nudity between the two men) feel far more rich and descriptive than this narrative change does.

Sadly, I’m scared to continue watching the series, since it has been pretty disappointing overall through the first three episodes, but I also want to stick it out because I love the film adaptation and I love Andrew Scott as well.