Review: The Haunting of Hill House at Strange Horizons
My review of Netflix's miniseries adaptation of Shirley Jackson's The Haunting of Hill House is up at Strange Horizons today. I ended up feeling deeply conflicted about the show. Like many Jackson fans, I was initially dismayed by its decision to rip out the original novel's story and replace it with something in which only a few character names and details are recognizable. Then I was won over by the excellence of this substitute story, and the way it combined supernatural haunting with thoroughly mundane family drama and the effects that unacknowledged tragedy can have on families. And then, as the series's storytelling started groaning as it approached its conclusion, I started to notice how its deviation from the novel reaches much further than changing the plot, to a complete misunderstanding of what Jackson was trying to do with her story, particularly when it comes to gender. The Netflix version of Haunting prioritizes male characters and treats women as tragic victims, which is something that Jackson would surely have strenuously objected to.
Still, I've found that Haunting has lingered with me in the weeks since I watched it (certainly far more than Netflix's other major October offerings, like the third season of Daredevil and the reboot of Sabrina, both of which ended up feeling centerless, and uncertain about their main characters). I'm not sure if I can exactly recommend it, but if you do choose to watch it, you'll find plenty to chew over.
This is also a good opportunity to mention that the Strange Horizons fund drive is running, and with only a week left, is still quite short of its goal. The magazine has continued to do great work in the last year, and in the reviews department in particular, there has been some fantastic writing in 2018: Nandini Ramachandran on The Shape of Water, Maggie Clark on The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt, Vajra Chandrasekera's excellent overview of this year's Clarke Award shortlist (part 1 and 2), Erin Horakova on Netflix's reboot of The Worst Witch, Matt Hilliard on the middle two books of Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series (part 1 and 2), and many others. If you want this work to continue, please consider making a contribution.
Still, I've found that Haunting has lingered with me in the weeks since I watched it (certainly far more than Netflix's other major October offerings, like the third season of Daredevil and the reboot of Sabrina, both of which ended up feeling centerless, and uncertain about their main characters). I'm not sure if I can exactly recommend it, but if you do choose to watch it, you'll find plenty to chew over.
This is also a good opportunity to mention that the Strange Horizons fund drive is running, and with only a week left, is still quite short of its goal. The magazine has continued to do great work in the last year, and in the reviews department in particular, there has been some fantastic writing in 2018: Nandini Ramachandran on The Shape of Water, Maggie Clark on The Wrong Stars by Tim Pratt, Vajra Chandrasekera's excellent overview of this year's Clarke Award shortlist (part 1 and 2), Erin Horakova on Netflix's reboot of The Worst Witch, Matt Hilliard on the middle two books of Ada Palmer's Terra Ignota series (part 1 and 2), and many others. If you want this work to continue, please consider making a contribution.
Comments
So I have hope for Sabrina, which couldn't decide if it wanted to be camp or serious in the first season. I like all of the supporting characters and the setting, so there are good things to build on. I liked your idea about the parody of religiously conservative society and think that would be an interesting path to take it. I read the story as a gender-flipped Harry Potter - what does it look like when the not particularly smart, not particularly hard-working child magic user who, because of circumstances of her birth, has the entire wizarding world bent over backwards acknowledging her as the golden child is a woman. Given that witchery is seen as both empowering for women but in order to be a practitioner you have to be on the outside of normal society, there's a lot to be explored there. The show has some ideas about that, but like with your parody idea, never really commits to being about any one thing and is instead kind of about a lot of things.
Meanwhile, the Berlanti shows that I do think found themselves in their second seasons were the ones who had a strong understanding of their core from day one. Arrow was mess in its plotting throughout most of its first season, but it knew who Oliver was, and has never really lost sight of him. Legends of Tomorrow made some important improvements in its second season - get rid of some of the dead weight in the cast, get better villains, commit more strongly to the comedic tone - but the core of the show, a Doctor Who-esque romp that substitutes standard superhero angst for compassion and open-mindedness, was there from day one.
I don't see that Sabrina has itself figured out on that level. The weakest aspect of the show is Sabrina herself, and her character arc over the course of the season is hopelessly muddled. The huge decision she makes in the finale barely even registers, because we have so little sense of who she is, much less what this decision will mean for her. Maybe the writers can figure this out in S2 (though that season is already in the can, so they won't be able to respond to any criticisms of S1 except on the most superficial level), but I'm not sure that this is a flaw that can be made up for so easily.
In her review of the film adaptation of Katherine Anne Porter's "Ship of Fools", Pauline Kael wrote something like, "Once again a male director and male screenwriter have turned a woman's writing upside down and come up with male fantasies." In 1965!
My take on it is that this is Flanagan's interpretation of Hill House filtered through Stephen King. Jackson is a huge influence on King, particularly his ghost stories such as The Shining. But his homages to her are riddled with his own preoccupations - where Jackson was interested in women's frustration and alienation, King is interested in men's anxiety, particularly over fatherhood. My guess is that Flanagan was writing an homage to him as much as to Jackson, and also that - as the fantastic Kael quote notes - he's simply unaware of how he's shifted the original story's focus. Which is terrifyingly easy to do in a culture that so prioritizes men's stories, and is so unused to placing women at its narrative center, that it can completely fail to notice that the latter has happened.
That said, I feel like Hugh didn't fail his family in the days leading up to Olivia's death, and I'm confused why in your review in Strange Horizons, you say that's the case. Hugh doesn't seem to notice any obvious signs of supernatural activity except for the Night of the Storm, and tbh even if he did, any rational person would probably refuse to believe that anything was actually happening. But he often isn't the direct victim of supernatural apparitions, so if you're a parent and your kid says that there was someone in the room with them, you check all the places they possibly could be and then dismiss it as a bad dream and most of the time you'd be right. I mean, there's no real reason why Hugh would immediately think that the House is haunted. And keep in mind that Olivia does know that the house is haunted but never tells Hugh what she's seeing or her suspicions. However, when Olivia starts becoming more and more unstable he does notice and kindly suggests that she get away from the house and spend time with her sister to re-calibrate. But she doesn't and instead comes back to the house in the middle of the night. Once Hugh realizes that she's back, he stops her from killing their kids and makes sure that they're safe. Given the unforeseen circumstances that happened in the House that NO ONE could've prepared for, he did a pretty good job. And IIRC, he's the only member of the family that answer's Nell's final calls and goes to reach her, but he's too late as the house's pull is too strong.
The ending of the Haunting was pretty weak as suddenly the house went from being malevolent and unknowable to being this kind of benign force where the ghosts all see them off and the groundskeeper takes his wife to be resurrected as a ghost. And there were monologues in the last episode, especially between Hugh and Olivia, that made it feel like they were reading directly from a book, and not in a good way.
One thing that I didn't get at all about the ending was how Hugh makes Steven keep his death a secret from the rest of the family and the show treats this like it's a noble thing, like Steven's shouldering responsibility, when so much of the show up to the finale was about how Hugh's secret keeping tore the family apart.
Overall though, as you said, the show really does stick in the mind after its done.
On the other hand, the show isn't even remotely about Steven. Hugh wasn't enjoining Steve to keep his death a secret (presumably Steven went back to the family and told them that Hugh died after he and Steven went back into the house, rather than before). The secret that Steven was supposed to keep was that Olivia was a murderess before she died.
By the way, as we are told, Nell wasn't calling her family for help. She was checking up on Luke. My take is that presumably due to "the twin thing," she knew he had left rehab and was in very significant danger. That's why she sacrifices herself to the house - to try to save him, which she does. Similarly she stops taking her medication when Luke enters rehab and has stopped taking his "medication."
Steven is denial and this has affected his life by turning him into a professional liar and caused him to refuse to have the children his wife wants (his denial of the reality of ghosts led him to the false conclusion that his family was insane. Nell tries to break through his denial when she confronts him and this is why the first thing she does after death is appear to him as a ghost.
Shirley is anger, causing her to fake perfection so she can be mad at other people's imperfections. I also didn't notice immediately that Shirley, like all the women in her family, is "sensitive." She has prophetic dreams and sleep talks them ("Nell is in the red room" and, of course, penguins really don't like macaroni). This sensitivity does her no good because she doesn't accept it.
Theodora is bargaining. Her bargain is she will accept what happened as long as she doesn't have to feel anything about it. Ghost Nell accepts this bargain by taking away all her feelings with the implicit question, "Is this really what you want?" (Obviously she concludes it isn't.)
Luke is depression which he medicates with smack.
And Nell, of course, is acceptance and heals her family at the end with her love. "I'm sorry if I didn't listen." "It wouldn't have changed anything. I need you to know that. Forgiveness is warm. Like a tear on a cheek. Think of that and of me when you stand in the rain. I loved you completely. And you loved me the same. That's all. The rest is confetti."
When I was ten, he declined extremely rapidly over the period of about a week or two, becoming more erratic, much more explosive, and actively dangerous. This came to a head one night when my older brother had to physically restrain him from sexually assaulting my sister while my mother called the police to have him forcibly removed.
Could I blame my mother for letting it reach that point? Sure. But hindsight is 20/20, she loved the man (before his illness), and the decline was very sudden and rapid. If it had been me, perhaps I would have acted sooner or even kicked him out long before it reached that point. But, in the end, I simply can't bring myself to apportion to my mother any significant amount of blame. Anyway, that's why I have an almost hostile reaction to the suggestion that Hugh is to blame for Olivia. Things like that are very complicated and assumptions that we are so superior that obviously we would have handled it better are, in my view, pure speculations, and possibly even delusions. I have no idea how well I would handle my wife if she ever became seriously mentally ill, particularly if it was very rapid, even though I have given a great deal of thought to things like that over the decades.
Anyway, I do believe the series is a work of genius and it has stuck with me as well. The more I think about it, the better I like it.
I suspect this may have happened because the suits wanted the security of some sort of built-in fanbase even though we all know that fanbase is very small. I recall my horror at Archie comics being turned into a "dark, sexy teen soap opera." I'm not an Archie comics fan at all, but I do know that Archie comics was not that. For all I know it might be a great show in its own right, but why not just write your own dark, sexy teen soap opera? The answer, I strongly suspect, is that the suits are terrified of creating anything wholly new without the security that there is at least some group of people out there who will be predisposed to watch it. I'm not second-guessing them. They're the ones who get fired if their multi-million dollar gambles fail and I assume they know the business side better than I do. From an artistic perspective, it is very unfortunate though.
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