Daily Archives: April 9, 2025

Top Tens – TV: Top 10 Fantasy & SF TV Series (3) SF: Peacemaker

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(3) SF: PEACEMAKER

(2022: SEASON 1)

 

“I cherish peace with all my heart. I don’t care how many men, women and children I have to kill to get it”

I mean, the opening credits sequence alone would earn a place in my top ten. And Eagly too of course.

Peacemaker was introduced – on screen at least – in James Gunn’s The Suicide Squad in 2019 (the good Suicide Squad film, not the bad one), along with his credo for “peace” quoted above.

I wouldn’t have guessed that out of all the characters in that film, Peacemaker would be the one to get his own spin-off TV series, also directed by James Gunn – but it totally works, as Gunn brings his blackly comic signature style from the film to the TV series, with added hair metal flair.

Of course, it helps that the titular anti-hero protagonist is having something of a crisis of faith, not least the whole-heartedness of his credo – notably including guilt and remorse over its casualties, one in particular. And we get to see his traumatic origin, particularly at the hands of his father – played with vile relish by Robert Patrick.

Once again, Peacemaker finds himself being used as a tool – or weapon – by Task Force X, against an invasion by mysterious entities known as Butterflies, prompting Peacemaker to compare it to Operation Starfish in The Suicide Squad.

And it’s not just Peacemaker’s show – the other characters, particularly the other members of Task Force X, bring their A-game as well. My personal favorite is the cheerfully sociopathic Vigilante, although I’m not sure how faithfully his screen incarnation is adapted from the comics

 

FANTASY OR SF?

 

I’m going with the genre classification of SF – after all, it does involve an alien invasion (and Gunn tends to lean more into the SF side of comics when adapting their properties). However, like most comics or works adapted from them, it’s the distinctly softer kind of SF.

 

HORROR

 

Gunn has roots in SF horror back to his film Slither and it often shows in his works – as here, where there are distinct SF horror elements in the Butterfly alien invasion.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****
A-TIER (TOP TIER)

Top Tens – History (WW2): Top 10 Second World Wars (Special Mention) (18) Indonesian War of Independence

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Map of the United States of Indonesia, December 1949 by Milenioscuro for Wikipedia “Indonesian National Revolution” under licence https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/deed.en

 

 

(18) INDONESIAN WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

(1942-1949)

 

And now we come to the focus of my wild-tier special mentions for conflicts or wars after the Second World War, but which took definitive shape during that war – the wars in east or south east Asia.

Of course, we’ve already seen one of the biggest such wars in my previous special mention for the Chinese Civil War, but it is also one that encapsulates many of the features of “the deadly confrontations that broke out–or merely continued–in Asia after peace was proclaimed at the end of World War II”.

“Under occupation by the victorious Allies, this part of the world was plunged into new power struggles or back into old feuds that in some ways were worse than the war itself”, compounded by the circumstance that “the U.S. and Soviet governments, as they secretly vied for influence in liberated lands, were soon at odds”.

“Within weeks of the famous surrender ceremony aboard the U.S.S. Missouri, civil war, communal clashes, and insurgency engulfed the continent, from Southeast Asia to the Soviet border. By early 1947, full-scale wars were raging in China, Indonesia, and Vietnam, with growing guerrilla conflicts in Korea and Malaya. Within a decade after the Japanese surrender, almost all of the countries of South, East, and Southeast Asia that had formerly been conquests of the Japanese or colonies of the European powers experienced wars and upheavals that resulted in the deaths of at least 2.5 million combatants and millions of civilians.”

Unlike British India, Indonesia had to fight a war of independence, also known as the Indonesian National Revolution, against the Netherlands that had ruled it as the Dutch East Indies – expanding from the original holdings of the Dutch East India Company in 1603 through to its full extent under the Dutch government until Japanese occupation in 1942.

There are some ironies here. That was the Dutch government in exile, as the Netherlands had been occupied by Germany in 1940, so the Dutch government found itself exiled twice over with the loss of the Dutch East Indies to Japan. Also, while Indonesia may not have had British India’s more “peaceful” cession of independence, it had fewer casualties from its war for independence than British India had from its partition into two states. Indeed, it was fortunate that its war for independence involved comparatively few casualties among the new or continuing wars that emerged in east or south-east Asia after the Second World War.

The Indonesian independence movement began well before the Second World War, but the occupation by Japan from 1942 to 1945 “was a critical factor in the subsequent revolution”. Firstly, Japan “spread and encouraged Indonesian nationalist sentiment”, even if more for their own advantage. Secondly, the Japanese occupation effectively “destroyed and replaced much of the Dutch-created economic, administrative, and political infrastructure”. Hence I’ve chosen 1942 as the starting date for this special mention.

And the Indonesian independence movement came out swinging straight from the end of the war, with their declaration of independence on 17 August 1945 – only two days after the announcement of Japan’s unconditional surrender (and prior to the formal ceremony of surrender on the U.S.S. Missouri).

The Dutch were able to regain some control of major towns or cities when they returned as a significant military force in early 1946. In the interim, other Allied forces occupied Indonesia or at least parts of it, primarily the British as it was assigned to Britain’s South East Asia Command.

Ironically, despite surrendering, the former Japanese occupying forces found themselves on both sides of the war. The overwhelming majority of them complied with the terms of surrender to assist the Allied forces to maintain order, albeit both Japanese and Allied forces often sought to avoid direct confrontation with Indonesian nationalists. However, some Japanese holdouts joined the Indonesian national revolutionaries – as did some defecting Indian soldiers from British forces.

Ultimately, Dutch forces were not able to extend or preserve the control they regained, partly because of the military situation facing “well-organized resistance with popular support”, but primarily because of international diplomatic and political opposition. That opposition came from neighboring Australia – where Australian maritime workers in their characteristic style boycotted loading or unloading Dutch ships – but also India, the Soviet Union, and most significantly, the United States. The opposition from the United States was the most significant because it threatened to cut off economic aid to the Netherlands under the Marshall Plan. The Dutch gave in, ceding sovereignty to Indonesia in 1949.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

X-TIER (WILD TIER)

Top Tens – Mythology: Top 10 Books (Special Mention – Subject) (3) Classical Mythology

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Pentheus being torn apart – Attic red-figure vase painting

 

(3) CLASSICAL MYTHOLOGY:

EURIPIDES & APULEIUS – BACCHAE & GOLDEN ASS

 

I believe in all the gods – especially the goddesses!

And the nymphs – I’m in it for the nymphs.

Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey are of course my primary books of classical mythology, ranking in second spot in my Top 10 Mythology Books, as classical mythology itself does in my Top 10 Mythologies. and Top 10 Mythologies.

However, it’s not all Homer. Indeed, Homer ranks his own special mention – this special mention is for books on the subject of classical mythology other than Homer or within the Iliad, Odyssey and Trojan War.

Books on the subject of classical mythology (or religion) already feature prominently as entries in my Top 10 Mythology Books or special mentions – Bulfinch’s Mythology with its first volume predominantly on classical mythology, Robert Graves’ The Greek Myths, Walter Burkert’s Greek Religion, Bettany Hughes on Aphrodite, Paul Robichaud on Pan, and Natalie Haynes on the Olympian goddesses and other female figures of classical mythology. More generally, Barbara Walker’s Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets as well as the Penguin Dictionary of Symbols have numerous entries on subjects of classical mythology.

However, I have two keynote books for this special mention, both of which are by writers in the classical period itself, Greek and Roman respectively – the Greek dramatist Euripides and Roman writer Apuleius, with their works The Bacchae and The Golden Ass respectively.

I mean, that right there – just the phrasing of Bacchae and Golden Ass – encapsulates my personal  philosophy, my mythos if you will, of classical mythology. Indeed, the phrase Golden Ass encapsulates my personal philosophy of everything – my life has been a quest not for the grail, but the golden ass.

 

“Appear, appear whatsoever thy name or shape!

O mountain bill, snake of the hundred heads,

Lion of the burning flame

O god, beast, mystery, come!”

Firstly, The Bacchae by Euripides – literal Dionysian deus ex machina in the original folk horror story and clash of church against state  or cult against throne.

The greatest Greek tragedy – indeed one that has been argued to be one of the greatest ever written – in the usual style of Greek tragedies, which is the gods will screw you over and there’s nothing much you can do about it, even with that weird chorus telling you what’s happening, and even if they liked to call it nemesis for your hubris.

Yes, I know Dionysus personally appears, albeit in mortal disguise, to give Pentheus a repenting chance, but he doesn’t exactly go all out in the attempt because it’s much more demonstrative – and fun – setting up Pentheus for the Wicker Man to his Lord Summerisle. Except that the Bacchae makes the Wicker Man look like a picnic.

Anyway, the play by Euripides is based on the myth of Pentheus, king of Thebes, who is opposed to the new god Dionysus and his cult, despite being, you know, actually related to him. No, seriously, Pentheus is the cousin of Dionysus, because that’s how it was in those days, particularly with Zeus. Worse, Pentheus – and much of Thebes denies the divinity of Dionysus. And you can’t be disrespecting Dionysus.

So Dionysus does what any Greek god would do:
Step 1 – disguise yourself as a mortal priest of yourself and be captured only to respond cryptically to questions
Step 2 – drive your female worshippers or Maenads mad and trick Pentheus into spying on them in disguise as one of them
Step 3 – !!!
Step 4 – profit!

And by step 3, I mean sit back as your Maenads, including Pentheus’ own mother Agave, literally tear Pentheus apart with their bare hands in a crazed frenzy, believing Pentheus to be a wild beast.

That leads to a moment of classic horror as Agave proudly bears the head, still under divine delusion that it is the head of a mountain lion, to her own father Cadmus, only to see it for what it really is when Cadmus recoils and calls upon her to look more closely.

From a modern perspective, it’s hard not to identify or sympathize with King Pentheus cracking down on a strange new cult spreading through his city – particularly one with literal crazed worshippers like the Maenads, up there with the followers of Jim Jones or Charles Manson.

The Bacchae resonates on so many levels. I’ve already compared it to The Wicker Man, which replays many of its story beats for horror – and it’s easy to adapt the Bacchae for horror, from folk horror to cosmic horror – Dionysus as Yog Sothoth, perhaps?

More substantially, others have argued the parallels between it and the Gospels, with Jerusalem for Thebes and Jesus for Dionysus (and the Jewish leaders and Pontius Pilate for Pentheus), except of course Jesus is far more morally palatable in his divine coup de grace than Dionysus.

And there’s the Nietzschean interpretations, most famously with his dichotomy of the Apollonian and Dionysian in The Birth of Tragedy – and it is tempting to see Pentheus as a good Apollonian, attempting to hold the line of order against Dionysian chaos. Or the Freudian interpretations with Pentheus as ego trying to hold back the wild ecstasy of the id…

 

“Queen of Heaven, whether you are known as bountiful Ceres, the primal harvest mother, who, delighted at finding your daughter Proserpine again, abolished our primitive woodland diet, showed us sweet nourishment, and now dwell at Eleusis; or heavenly Venus, who at the founding of the world joined the sexes by creating Love, propagating the human race in endless generation, and worshipped now in the sea-girt sanctuary of Paphos; or Diana, Apollo’s sister, you who relieve the pangs of countless childbirths with your soothing remedies, venerated now at Ephesus; or dread Proserpine herself, she of the night-cries, who triple-faced combats the assault of spirits shutting them from earth above, who wanders the many sacred groves, propitiated by a host of rites; oh, light of woman, illuminating every city, nourishing the glad seed with your misty radiance, shedding that light whose power varies with the passage of the sun; in whatever aspect, by whatever name, with whatever ceremony we should invoke you”

And then there’s The Golden Ass by Apuleius – she is the goddess and this is her body!

As a (bawdy) comic prose novel – “the only ancient Roman novel in Latin to survive in entirety” – it lacks the tragic grandeur of The Bacchae, but what it lacks in grandeur, it makes up in, well, golden ass. The titular ass is what the writer is magically transformed into for a series of picaresque adventures, as well as snippets of classical mythology such as the myth of Cupid (or Eros) and Psyche.

He is restored to human form by the goddess – ironically perhaps given its keynote status as one of my top books of classical mythology, the Egyptian goddess Isis, who initiates Apuleius into her mysteries. O yes!

Isis was of course a popular goddess among the Romans, who took to her despite her Egyptian origin. However, in The Golden Ass, Isis is revealed to be not just a goddess, but effectively the Goddess – made manifest and known as other goddesses, including those in classical mythology.

 

RATING: 5 STARS*****

S-TIER (GOD TIER)