A Gazillion Reasons to Love the Crown: A Listicle

I know we’re all supposed to be watching the Gilmore Girls, and believe me, the guilt I’m lugging around for my failure in this matter knows no bounds, but I can’t do that until I’ve at least finished the first season of the Crown. There are going to be more, right? I’ve heard there are going to be more. I told someone else there were going to be more. I said it authoritatively, like I knew what I was talking about.

As everyone knows, I hate all TV. Ask anyone. I hate all TV. And I’ve gone along for years insulating myself from all cultural knowledge by not ever watching any of the things that I’m supposed to. It’s not that I Read Books so much. It’s that I wander the labyrinth halls of cat videos and parrots mimicking the cries of babies. But then along came the Crown and Matt’s strong arm totalitarian tactics. There I was, reclining on the couch, enjoying the site of a cat trotting along like a horse, and he just Came In and turned in on without a warning or anything, mere hours after I’d said I wasn’t interested at all, that whenever the whole world loved something I knew it was time to retreat into my alienated cupboard.

We haven’t finished the first season, and I’ll try not to fall into the way of spoilers. I’ll try to speak Generally. So here we go, a Gazillion Reasons to Love the Crown (a Listicle).

One John Lithgow. Actually this is reason one through a hundred. Didn’t even know who he was. Hadn’t seen him in anything. Tried to tell someone he was in 30 Rock. So confused. But not him. He’s not confused. He’s Completely Brilliant.

101 The incredible likenesses of the actors for the people they are playing. It’s uncanny, and delightful.
102 The studied refusal to fall into gasping worship for the Royal family, nor to mash them into the ground. It’s like–and I had no idea a modern film maker had the ability to do this any more–it’s like they took the people as human, and just let them be. You remember the whole business of being human? It is, on the one hand, wonderful by moments, and on the other hand, flawed.

Small Extra Rant
So here is my problem with every single movie I’ve seen in the last twenty years (allowing for some glittering exceptions which I will not now detail). The film industry, having no God to worship, has misunderstood the nature of sin and evil. It used to be that a character in a play or a movie or a book would overcome some kind of odds, some trouble, and win the day. There might be an evil lying buried inside the heart, or a threatening storm brewing just over the horizon. There might be a dragon to slay, or an injustice to correct, or a grief to overcome. (I realize this is quaint and ridiculous, but I have to say it anyway.) But now, being more enlightened than all that, we have learned that the greatest evil that exists in all the world is the failure of each individual to discover xer true self, to overcome the trial of not understanding who xhe really is and finally consummating that knowledge through pure self expression. Every single story has been ruined by this meme, not to mention what it has done to the ability of every mind to think it’s way out of a warm comfy safe paper bag. But this meme is boring. This narrative is facile and flat. Evil is more than the absence of self expression, of self knowledge. Evil is a force, a destructive power both without and within. The human quest ought to be to overturn and overcome Evil in triumph. The possibilities for nuanced fascinating story telling are vast and rich if you don’t have to end every story with the True Moral of the heroine having properly discovered and expressed herself.

So, reasons 103-500 to love the Crown are that so far the aforementioned meme is completely absent (with the tiny exception of a tantrum by Prince Philip which turned out to be ok because it wasn’t complexly resolved, it still hangs out there).

501-5000 There is nothing precious, nothing grossly nostalgic in the way each episode is developed.

Case in point, I love the delicateness with which the great darkness of colonialism is portrayed. It’s all in the inflection of the voice, the uncomprehending look in the eyes. You watch and your soul shudders but you manage to feel compassion for everyone on screen. There is no moralizing battle axe of someone coming in to explain to the viewer what is So Wrong in case you, the fool that you are, missed it. It’s just illuminated, suddenly, and you are cut to the heart, and then the camera lifts up and away.

I’m going to have to complete this list another time. I can’t even count as high as a gazillion. But I’m really enjoying this series and I can’t recommend it enough. Tomorrow, because I am wicked, I have to go back and say some more stuff about Florence Foster Jenkins because I feel like that movie illustrates all the loathing I feel for our new modern way of life. Until then, have a lovely day.