In honor of Pride I'm spending this month looking at writing techniques in queer stories. This week I'm focusing on two great queer shows, GENTLEMAN JACK and EUPHORIA.
GENTLEMAN JACK was another show I finally watched during the pandemic. And in some ways its writing approach is similar to that of EUPHORIA.
For instance, as I've written about already, JACK's pilot is a 60 minute symphony of bold choices made by our protagonist Anne Lister, all of which not only gives enormous definition to her character but absolutely makes us love with her. Give a character big, risky choices and we are going to invest in them.
But having done that work in the pilot, GENTLEMAN JACK the uses the next few episodes to reveal parts of Anne that are a lot less attractive. In the pilot she's our hero, moving at the speed of light. But then in 102 and 103 we've got her manipulating the seemingly fragile Ann Walker because she's attracted to her (and also maybe because she needs her money -- a truth she and the show repeatedly dance around). And even as she proposes marriage to Ann, she won't consent to her sister Marian or her servant marrying who they choose.
Given all that Anne faces as a queer woman in rural 19th century England, we as audience make all kinds of assumptions as to the kind of person she is and values she has. To suddenly reveal that actually she's still very much of her time and unenlightened in ways you wouldn't expect is a great twist.
As
in EUPHORIA, there's a "Let's let the audience feel what the supporting
characters experience" element to this, us unsettled and spun around by
Anne just as her family and friends are.
But creator Sally Wainwright's choice to lay out the opening episodes in this manner is also a further way of locking us in as audience. Having set us up to make one set of assumptions about Anne and then knocking some of them down, we no longer know what's going to happen next. It's a show we have to watch to find out.
TOMORROW: EUPHORIA'S MANIA SHELL GAME
