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bironicOn the phone with my mother a while back, I mentioned how nice German sounds. She said she finds it too guttural. Since I used to think the same thing, I said maybe she associates it with all those brusque, crazed WWII speeches, and she just hasn't heard the right person speaking German. I was thinking specifically of Thomas Kretschmann, who has one of the smokiest, sexiest voices I've ever encountered.
So when![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pun, no_detective and I ended up talking about accents and languages when I saw them a few weeks ago and one of them repeated my mother's sentiments, I went straight for YouTube and we found this interview. Ja? They were convinced.
Last night I went back for more and found a second one for you. (Look,no_detective, another behind-the-scenes video of a photo shoot.) If you don't have patience for the whole thing, he comes in at about 1:00, 1:40 and 2:50—and his voice joins him about five seconds later. I also enjoyed one of his English interviews, which are more common on YouTube, when he appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel show in December and recapped his life story. (Highlights include Kimmel establishing that East Germany is no longer a country and not knowing how to convert kilometers to miles, and Kretschmann saying his hands are girlish but defending the manliness of "other parts.") And so on, blah blah.
Point is—second point is—that after surfing around for more clips and remembering exactly how attractive I find this man, something clicked in my head. Thomas Kretschmann/John Sheppard. Or rather, Thomas Kretschmann character/John Sheppard. Except I can't think of a character he's played who could cross over with SGA; they're all Nazis except for the CGI future sci fi guy and Dr. Frankenstein and the serial killer, etc. Which, God help me, made me seriously consider writing RPS Thomas/Joe Flanigan. Because there's too much hot there not to be exploited.
And similarities! They could connect over sports (TK was an Olympic-caliber swimmer, and obviously still stays fit; JF/JS likes climbing and surfing and so forth) and wearing t-shirts inappropriate for their age and chain necklaces (see also: second interview link) and big watches and being hot and come on, the hair. Rodney could not keep himself from mentioning the hair if he were to see the two of them together.
ETA: Something more serious that was hiding beneath that post.
Being Jewish, I did grow up with a keen awareness of the Holocaust and that the German government at the time was to blame for it. I remember disliking the sound of the German language because of all the recorded speeches we watched in history and religious education classes.
I also remember sitting at the seder table one Passover and deciding that I hated Egyptians because their ancestors had enslaved my ancestors. Or thinking about deciding to hate them, anyway. (Which was hard, because I loved learning about ancient Egypt. But that's beside the point.) But then in the haggadah there was a lesson about not carrying a grudge, about bestowing forgiveness for past wrongs, and about not holding an entire people responsible for the actions of a few -- or possibly I'm mixing that last part up with Holocaust education, but the moral is the same.
So I immediately dropped my half-fake grudge against Egypt, and at about that time, I also opened up to German language and culture. Which is when I found that I liked it quite a bit. Or I quickly learned to like it quite a bit. By college I was watching a lot of German movies and loving how I could pick up words and phrases because of the language's similarity to English. Before, I'd had no interest. And I fell in love with voices and bodies like Thomas Kretschmann's.
Then there comes another problem, towards the opposite end of the spectrum: should I feel guilty that I'm deriving shallow, sensual pleasure from characters who represent the very soldiers and politicians who perpetrated the Holocaust? Do I run the risk of too easily embracing something that caused irreparable harm in the past? Is it a kind of betrayal? That gets into very sticky territory -- perhaps the same kind that you enter when you find yourself "enjoying" reading/watching/hearing Holocaust narratives. I think it's all right, though. I have the history in mind, always. I don't love the voice of a Nazi character without that qualifier. I'm glad to have the dual perspective, mourning the harm that was done but being able to love the culture for what is good.
So when
pun, no_detective and I ended up talking about accents and languages when I saw them a few weeks ago and one of them repeated my mother's sentiments, I went straight for YouTube and we found this interview. Ja? They were convinced.Last night I went back for more and found a second one for you. (Look,
no_detective, another behind-the-scenes video of a photo shoot.) If you don't have patience for the whole thing, he comes in at about 1:00, 1:40 and 2:50—and his voice joins him about five seconds later. I also enjoyed one of his English interviews, which are more common on YouTube, when he appeared on the Jimmy Kimmel show in December and recapped his life story. (Highlights include Kimmel establishing that East Germany is no longer a country and not knowing how to convert kilometers to miles, and Kretschmann saying his hands are girlish but defending the manliness of "other parts.") And so on, blah blah.Point is—second point is—that after surfing around for more clips and remembering exactly how attractive I find this man, something clicked in my head. Thomas Kretschmann/John Sheppard. Or rather, Thomas Kretschmann character/John Sheppard. Except I can't think of a character he's played who could cross over with SGA; they're all Nazis except for the CGI future sci fi guy and Dr. Frankenstein and the serial killer, etc. Which, God help me, made me seriously consider writing RPS Thomas/Joe Flanigan. Because there's too much hot there not to be exploited.
And similarities! They could connect over sports (TK was an Olympic-caliber swimmer, and obviously still stays fit; JF/JS likes climbing and surfing and so forth) and wearing t-shirts inappropriate for their age and chain necklaces (see also: second interview link) and big watches and being hot and come on, the hair. Rodney could not keep himself from mentioning the hair if he were to see the two of them together.
ETA: Something more serious that was hiding beneath that post.
Being Jewish, I did grow up with a keen awareness of the Holocaust and that the German government at the time was to blame for it. I remember disliking the sound of the German language because of all the recorded speeches we watched in history and religious education classes.
I also remember sitting at the seder table one Passover and deciding that I hated Egyptians because their ancestors had enslaved my ancestors. Or thinking about deciding to hate them, anyway. (Which was hard, because I loved learning about ancient Egypt. But that's beside the point.) But then in the haggadah there was a lesson about not carrying a grudge, about bestowing forgiveness for past wrongs, and about not holding an entire people responsible for the actions of a few -- or possibly I'm mixing that last part up with Holocaust education, but the moral is the same.
So I immediately dropped my half-fake grudge against Egypt, and at about that time, I also opened up to German language and culture. Which is when I found that I liked it quite a bit. Or I quickly learned to like it quite a bit. By college I was watching a lot of German movies and loving how I could pick up words and phrases because of the language's similarity to English. Before, I'd had no interest. And I fell in love with voices and bodies like Thomas Kretschmann's.
Then there comes another problem, towards the opposite end of the spectrum: should I feel guilty that I'm deriving shallow, sensual pleasure from characters who represent the very soldiers and politicians who perpetrated the Holocaust? Do I run the risk of too easily embracing something that caused irreparable harm in the past? Is it a kind of betrayal? That gets into very sticky territory -- perhaps the same kind that you enter when you find yourself "enjoying" reading/watching/hearing Holocaust narratives. I think it's all right, though. I have the history in mind, always. I don't love the voice of a Nazi character without that qualifier. I'm glad to have the dual perspective, mourning the harm that was done but being able to love the culture for what is good.
no subject
Date: Jun. 21st, 2009 12:57 am (UTC)I think as long as you don't have a fetish for people in Nazi uniforms, you're in the clear.
And if you DO develop a fetish for people in Nazi uniforms, I think your Jewishness probably makes it okay.
If I develop a fetish for people in Nazi uniforms, there might be trouble. I'd probably have to make large donations to the JDL to make up for it.
no subject
Date: Jun. 21st, 2009 01:02 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 21st, 2009 01:18 am (UTC)Fortunately all of my weird fetishes are just weird.
no subject
Date: Jun. 21st, 2009 01:00 am (UTC)Also, hey, thanks for the links at the top! I hadn't known the actor, but he definitely brings sexiness into the language.
Actually, I felt exactly the same way about Arabic -- thought it was a pretty ugly and scary language, until I heard it spoken in The Band's Visit; throughout the whole movie, really, and in this scene in particular. Small town loser Papi asks the visiting Egyptian Haled what it's like to sleep with a woman, and Haled replies, "I can tell you, but only in Arabic." The actor, Saleh Bakri, is so sexy it's ridiculous. I still have no idea what he actually said there, but I want him to say it to me.
no subject
Date: Jun. 21st, 2009 01:09 am (UTC)Thank you for the link, too -- I haven't seen that movie, although possibly you've told me about it? -- and for sharing your thoughts.
Not to make light of things, but maybe diplomacy could start to make use of attractive actors to heal rifts between cultures that have been taught to hate each other!
no subject
Date: Jun. 21st, 2009 01:14 am (UTC)And if we were going to write off every culture for having done wrong... I don't think we'd have any cultures left!
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Date: Jun. 21st, 2009 07:28 pm (UTC)I also found it funny that we both posted about our embarrassment over considering an RPS pairing. :)
no subject
Date: Jun. 21st, 2009 09:10 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 21st, 2009 09:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 22nd, 2009 12:24 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 21st, 2009 09:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 22nd, 2009 12:23 am (UTC)no subject
Date: Jun. 22nd, 2009 05:55 am (UTC)Re: second part of your post, I come from at once a similar and very different cultural background. My country was occupied by the Germans in WWII, my grandparents lived through it, and our studied history was always interwoven with very personal and physical reminders of the war all around us - from the family albums at home to the town monuments to the field trips to mass graves of WWII victims, many of whom were related to our families. (Of course, there was also quite a system of representational history in place, nation-wide, and with it came quite a bit of fetishization of this history; it's difficult not to with the sheer scope of suffering and destruction our nation endured in WWII - except when it grew into victimization fetish, and that's a whole other set of problems.) As is the way with the reality of surviving, we basically incorporated this living past into our understanding of life - and moved on. This is why I sometimes consider other cultures to be rather... well, innocent: there's a big difference between theorizing that, under the "right" circumstances, man is wolf to man - and knowing it - and then also knowing that life goes on. It's a matter of philosophy, not just a history lesson.
Anyway, once this point sunk in, it became clear to me (and many others) that violence is not unique; history is not just WWII; and there is a difference between past (the reality) and history (the retelling of the past in its many forms). Life is ambiguous, and so are the most extreme of its events. This knowledge, and the scope of this perspective, enables people to see this ambiguity - and more importantly, to FEEL IT. But I think sometimes representation gains too much importance, especially for people who don't have the personal in addition to symbolic in their experience of the past. I see this very often in the younger generations back home, actually; if I'd been born a generation later, I would not have had the same scope of experience - the grandparents would be gone, the schools would not teach in such personal ways, and the connection with national history would be done through representations rather than recognition of own past. And, since these generations' experience of WWII happens through symbols and vicarious traumatization, they attach greater meaning to representations - because they are the emotional trigger. Personally, I have zero guilt over enjoying German media or language or even WWII movies, because they are so clearly separate from the reality of my past as a Serb. If I were younger, though, I doubt that would be the case.
Well, that was rambly. Remind me not to post comments to super-interesting entries after 1am.
no subject
Date: Jun. 22nd, 2009 03:25 pm (UTC)Eh, complex issues are complex. But I'm curious about all this; is it the sort of thing you'd care to talk about at some point? You know, when we get tired of debating the finer merits of gay porn and tentacles and such.