#009: Knives Out for Susan
Pop culture and home comforts for June (yikes)
The front door
Over on Tor.com Matt Mikalatos has been doing The Great C.S. Lewis Reread, which he’s been working on since October 2019 and only slowed down a bit during last year’s upheavals, so props to him. For this series he’s re-reading all of C.S. Lewis’ writings, in particular revisiting and reconsidering the Narnia series as an adult. I know everyone who’s read the series has their own opinions on it (referring to Aslan as the ‘magic Jesus lion’ kind of irks me. Look it just does ok), but I grew up on these books and on the movies that came out in the 90s and have a real soft spot for them. We borrowed The Silver Chair from the library I don’t know how many times (probably because Tom Baker played Puddleglum and my parents were big into Dr Who) and the strange fairytale-ness of it all really stuck with me.
Mikalatos’ most recent exploration is of the final book, The Last Battle, and the problem of Susan. If you haven’t read these books it won’t mean anything to you, but Susan’s exclusion from Narnia is one of those wounds inflicted in childhood by an otherwise brilliant story, like Mufasa’s death in The Lion King or Bambi’s mother’s death in Bambi. Basically it’s said that Susan can’t return to Narnia because she’s interested in lipstick and nylons *gasp* *pearl clutch*.
But Mikalatos provides a decent argument that Lewis was trying to make a different point with Susan’s exclusion and just did it quite badly. He instead imagines a scene that was removed from the book where her absence is properly explained and she is not abandoned and forgotten by those who love her. This really helped that pre-adolescent Susan-shaped wound heal for me, and that got me thinking about stories and movies that we consume as kids and how they affect us. Reading these books as a pre-adolescent I was more than a little scarred by the poor treatment of the only adolescent girl in Narnia. I also know people who were devastated for years by the death of Mufasa, and the evil queen in Snow White has definitely caused some nightmares.
Library
Books
Defying Doomsday (2016) and Rebuilding Tomorrow (2021)—These two anthologies from Twelfth Planet Press were both crowd-funded into existence, and thank goodness. They’re both anthologies of short stories, and the first one, Defying Doomsday, is based on the premise that it’s not always the ‘fittest’ that survive; it’s about being determined, persistent and inventive. Each story is about a character with a disability or a chronic illness surviving in a apocalypse. The apocalypses vary, as do the disabilities and illness, and each story is intense and incredibly inventive: the first few pages establish the nature of the apocalypse the individual must survive, and the particular abilities and durability of the protagonist.
Rebuilding Tomorrow, released last year, follows exactly the same premise, but this time we’re checking in on many of the stories from the first anthology. Because it’s not just the apocalypse you need to survive; it’s how your rebuild all your tomorrows.
Lounge
TV
Tom Cardy—Last fortnight I set the bar far too high with that video of Cale Brown so you should just expect everything else going forward to be at least a little disappointing, but I promise to try my best.
Tom Cardy is a YouTuber who does parody songs. I guess you could say he’s like an Aussie Weird Al… but would you want to?
Anyway, he pops up on Triple J every now and then with prequels and sequels to well known songs, like Hilltop Hoods’ ‘1955’ (his versions: ‘1355 and ‘4055’), Gotye’s ‘Somebody That I Used to Know’, Tame Impala, Amy Shark, Jimmy Barnes, etc.
He also writes his own entirely original material, such as my favourite so far: a song about ordering a big breakfast, titled ‘Big Breakfast’. It really captures something about that decision-making process.
Movies
Knives Out (2019)—A brilliant whodunnit in the spirit of Agatha Christie, but with the excellent black comedy and humanity of Jojo Rabbit (minus the war). Eighty-five-year-old Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer), celebrated murder mystery writer, has died apparently by suicide and now his family are squabbling over their inheritance.
But someone has anonymously hired Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) to prove that Harlan was actually murdered. Was it one of the disgruntled family members, many of whom had been cut off by Harlan the night before his murder? Was it his hired nurse, whom he has grown steadily closer to during her employment? Or did he really kill himself?
I love a good locked room mystery. I love a cast of interesting personalities. I love the theme of rewarding kindness over manipulation. This movie really has it all.
It’s also a trip seeing Chris Evans play a bad guy after all those Avengers movies. Throughout this movie he’s a rude, entitled, privileged, racist piece of shirt, but he also has some great one-liners that you don’t want to laugh at, but you kind of can’t help yourself.
[referring to Blanc’s Southern accent]
“What is this, CSI: KFC?”
So rude.
And yet, hilarious.
Kitchen & Garden
Food
Flourless Lemon Ricotta Cheesecake
It sounds super fancy, but it’s not that hard to make, so I don’t think it counts. It comes out a bit dry (probably thanks to the coconut flour), but a little birdie told me that eating it with a lot of thickened cream or a huge dollop of cream cheese takes care of that.
I told it. The birdie is me.
You can find the original recipe here, I just make a few tweaks because I like it extra lemony and the method is super wordy. We know how to check a cake is ready, you don’t need to spell it out. I also use a loaf tin and not a round springform pan because I’m not the queen of England. Get a grip.
Ingredients
4 tbs butter
1/2 cup Stevia
4 eggs
1 cup ricotta cheese
1/2 cup lemon juice (unless you don’t like it lemony, in which case put less in)
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 cup almond flour
4 tbs coconut flour
2 tsp baking powder
pinch salt
Method
Prep over to 170C, line a baking tin with paper. Thoroughly mix almond and coconut flours, baking powder and salt. In a separate, larger bowl, cream butter vanilla and Stevia until smooth. Add one egg, beat through thoroughly. Add ricotta and lemon juice, mixing together thoroughly. Mix 1/3 of the dry ingredients, plus another egg, into the wet mixture. Do this again and again for the remaining dry mixture and eggs, making sure it’s completely mixed each time. Pour batter into baking tin and smooth it down, then bake for 50 minutes. I recommend checking it at 30 minutes as it can burn quickly.
Keeps best in the fridge, eats best warmed for a few seconds in the microwave + cream/cream cheese.
And another thing…
It’s meme o’clock
It’s Pride month!
I don’t watch much RuPaul’s Drag Race, but maybe I should start.
The Brew is created and sent from the lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin nation and I acknowledge the Traditional Owners of the land on which I live and work, and pay my respects to the Elders, past and present.
I feel like I could sit down with you and talk all day and never run out of conversation. And that's saying something!