Part 8: Love Me Do
Wherein the years fly by, and everybody swaps tartan for turtle-necks
I’ve admitted in previous entries that I’m woefully ignorant of the intricacies of my own country’s history, and have tended to glean most of my impressions of life in the 18th century highlands from fictional sources, Braveheart and Rob Roy among them. Although Outlander is yet another fictional source to add to my pile of well-intentioned misinformation, atleast the show has recently half-inspired me, half-shamed me into picking up a few history books.
I’m ready to share with you already, class. The following passage, which appears early in John Prebble’s 1963 book ‘The Highland Clearances’, seemed to jump up from the page and lodge itself into my brain: “Beyond the mountains the Highlander was despised and hated. Mi-run mor nan Gall, he called it, the Lowlander’s great hatred. And this hatred was to persist until Walter Scott and his imitators took the Highlander out of his environment, disinfected him, dressed him in romance, and made him respectable enough to be a gun-bearer for an English sportsman, a servant to a Queen, or a bayonet-carrier for imperialism.”
I wonder if Outlander, despite its unflinching portrayal of blood, death and violence, has been guilty of this ‘disinfection’ of Highland culture through the romantic figure of Jamie. It’s certainly guilty of the disinfection of the Highland sex life. As I’m on record as saying, many times over, I rather imagine that sex in those days was more of a leaky, itchy, dirty, pus-filled sort of an affair, as opposed to a slow, sexy and cinematic experience: warts-and-all, both literally and figuratively.
Putting my sex obsession aside for a moment, I think it’s fair to say that late 18th century Scotland is unknowable. Not unimaginable, but unknowable. We can draw on a range of physical, historical and literary evidence to construct a workable facsimile of the era in our minds, or on our screens, but we’ll never know for certain if the world we’ve created looks and feels right. We’ll never know exactly what it smelled like, what it sounded like, what it tasted like. If the future is an undiscovered country, then the past is an undiscoverable one.
We don’t, however, have to travel too far back in time to reach the limits of our knowledge. It struck me while watching ‘A Dragonfly in Amber’ that the 1960s are just as unknowable to me as those heather-strewn highlands of the Jacobean era, despite the wealth of audio-visual evidence, and the functioning memories and recollections of the hundreds of millions of still-breathing people who lived through that decade in all its swinging glory. Although the 1960s finished only ten short years before my triumphant emergence into this world, they might as well have been the 1860s for all the connection I feel to them.
I suppose the recent past can seem so otherworldly in large part due to how quickly the world moves these days. Whereas the gaps between us used to be measured in multiples of generations, the size, scale and frequency of the leaps we’re now making in science, technology, industry, law, ethics, and art can render a person socially and technologically obsolete within a handful of years. There isn’t a generation gap: there’s a generation minefield, and it’s expanding every day.
TV and pop culture has helped both to enshrine and demarcate the different decades of the late 20th century. The 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s all seem unique and wholly distinct from one other, even though the blends, blurs and overlaps between them would’ve made them difficult to tell apart if not for our habit of partitioning the stories of our lives into acts, blocks and scenes.
Of course, each ‘distinct’ era means different things to different people depending upon which stage of their lives they’re experiencing as they pass through them. My great-grandmother, for instance, was unlikely to have spent the 1960s lounging around a squat, smoking joints and listening to the Monkees. Likewise, I’m reasonably sure that my grandmother didn’t shave her head on the morning of January the 1st 1980 and then spend the rest of the 80s togged up in denim, and throwing bricks at police cars while chanting ‘Death to Thatcher’s fascists!’
AMC’s stunning, 60s-set series Mad Men first brought the duality of the decades home to me. When Don Draper and his debauched colleagues in ad-land come into contact with 60s counter-culture, they’re amused, bemused and repulsed by it in equal measure. It runs past them, and over them, but not to them, or from them. Their world isn’t one of swinging hips, pop music and loose-fitting fashions, but of double-breasted suits, stiff upper lips, jaunty-angled hats and incredibly heavy-drinking at all times of the day and night. Don Draper may have been living through the 1960s when we met him, but he came of age in the 1940s, and that era and its attitudes left an indelible mark on his head, heart, and… many other organs, too. In many ways, the world that washes over us in our adolescence tends to preserve the larger part of us in, well… amber.
What, then, must it feel like for Claire, who began her journey at the end of World War 2, jumped to the beginning of the second Jacobite uprising, and now finds herself a middle-aged woman living in the age of beatniks, Beatles and Bob Dylan? Who is Claire now? And who are Claire and Jamie without each other?
‘Dragonfly in Amber’ sees Claire return to Scotland to attend the Reverend Wakefield’s funeral. Along for the ride is her now-adult daughter Brianna, who’s as snappy, sarcastic, and sassy as she is just occasionally very grating. The Reverend’s adopted son, Roger, serves as their host, splitting his time between eulogising, drinking whisky and rocking that faux folk-singer look. I’m pretty sure Roger is going to try to, if you’ll forgive the crudity, well… roger… Brianna. Frank is with them all in spirit, if not in body, on account of him being so hip that he’s actually dead.
He’s not the only one…
Back in 1746 – if you’ll permit me to nip through the stones for a second – it’s time to bid a rather gruesome farewell to Dougal.
I knew Dougal was going to die. Not only because narratively, and perhaps even historically, there was no other way, but because somebody let the cat out of the bag without meaning to. Or, I suppose you could say, they put the cat into the bag and killed it right there in front of me. It can be dangerous to share binge-watch re-caps in Outlander fan forums on Facebook when you’re seasons behind the herd, and happen to share a first name with one of the show’s main characters. One blissfully unaware lady accidentally tagged me in a post to tell me that Jamie killed Dougal, without meaning to tell me, or even realising that she had. Don’t cry for me, ladies and gentlemen. I knew the risks going in. Besides, the particulars of Dougal’s death were thankfully still surprising.
Dougal’s death felt a little sudden and perfunctory, but I guess the character had already made his big exit – certainly his emotional one – in the previous episode. The tears he cried over his brother’s body – and those he coaxed from my eyes – were plenty enough for both brothers. When it came time for Dougal to actually die, by a Clamie tag-team take-down no less, there was nothing left to feel.
Dougal’s fierce patriotism and nationalist zeal had been so firmly established that when he overheard Claire and Jamie discussing the best way to bump off Bonnie Prince Charlie, there was a grim inevitability to what came next. Culloden would’ve killed him anyway, but death decided to knock a day early for Dougal. I guess the bureaucrats in the afterlife had occupancy issues to consider for the following day, so tried to stagger admission a little on the Scottish side.
Ah, Claire and Jamie. You know what they say about the couple that kills together, don’t you? That they, uh… suffer… from… some description of shared post-traumatic stress disorder together…em, I’d assume. That’s not very catchy is it? I’ll try again: the couple who kills together, em, chills together?Would a murder bring you closer as a couple? I suppose it would. In its own perverse and shocking way, it’s rather an intimate act.
Even still… they probably shouldn’t make a habit of it.
Anyway, time to go back to the future.
The segments set in the 60s begin with Claire and Brianna being haunted by Jamie’s ghost, and end with the tantalising, life-altering revelation that Jamie might not be as dead as Claire had believed. Even though, you know, he’s still dead, because it’s 1968, and Scottish people don’t tend to live past 50, never mind 200. But you know what I mean.
Claire’s goodbye to Jamie, as she touched ‘his’ grave-marker on the battlefield at Culloden, wasn’t sad or emotionally affecting at all, and I DIDN’T CRY, SO FUCK OFF. (coughs) OK? I did NOT cry…
STOP GOING ON ABOUT IT, CAUSE IT DIDN’T HAPPEN.
OK?!
It’s hard for me to judge how well the Outlander team has captured the essence of 1960s Scotland, but it seems to me that you can’t go far wrong with putting everyone in turtle-neck sweaters.
Whatever else the show may have got right, I found myself deeply sceptical that an Inverness college in 1968 would have been a place of fervour, passion, bustle and enthusiasm. I cringed a little as Gillian Edgars – aka Geillis the Witchy Wifey – led a chant of ‘We are Scotland’ inside the college. It wasn’t the sentiment that registered as incongruous – after all, I’m a card-carrying member of the SNP, and passionately pro-independence to boot – but the articulation. I suspect that the American writers responsible for adapting this episode for TV, Toni Graphia and Matthew B Roberts, let a little bit of spiritual Americana bleed into the mix.
Just for future reference: modern and semi-modern Scottish people don’t tend to gather excitedly to pronounce unabashedly life-affirming sentiments to all who will listen; unless they’re so drunk that they can hardly hold their fish supper aloft, or locked in the fury or fervour of a football match’s assault-ridden aftermath.
In the corridors of colleges and polytechnics the country over – even now – Scotland’s youth are far more likely to be found huddled in hostile sub-groups, nary a second of eye-contact shared between them, kicking, shuffling and grumbling their way down the blank-walled corridors, with blank minds to match. I’m willing to suspend my disbelief long enough to believe in shards of stone that can send people hurtling through time, but a Scottish college brimming over with happy, healthy and reasonably attractive people? Come on, Outlander. There are limits to my credulity.
And who’s got these students whipped into a frenzy with all their talk of patriotic duty? Hey, everyone, Geillis is back! Well, she’s not back, if ye ken whit a mean, for she hasnae left yet. Och, dinna fash, it’s the time travel, ye ken. Spins yer heid, so it dis.
I guess it doesn’t matter too much to non-Scottish ears, but I always found something a little off-kilter with Geillis’ accent. It was almost-nearly-sort-of-okay, but the enunciation was too over-stated, and it had a weird twang to it. It was obvious to me that the actress wasn’t a native Scot, but I’ll tell you something, I respected her attempt all the more once I discovered that she was Dutch. Everybody thinks they can do a Scottish accent (in reality, there are a multitude of languages, accents and dialects in even this small country), but few can do it well. Lotte Verbeek, when I say that your attempt was almost-nearly-sort-of-okay, believe me, that’s a supreme compliment.
Geillis functions to bring us full circle to the first season of the show, and to make fresh connections going forward. The burning tableau Geillis makes of her alcoholic husband in the centre of the stones, and her subsequent disappearance into the winds of time, make a believer out of Brianna, who up until that point had been understandably sceptical of her mother’s story of having been impregnated by an 18th century highlander after falling through a magical portal into the past.
Now that Brianna knows the truth, and Claire knows that Jamie survived Culloden, how will she get back to him? And how can she be sure she’ll be able to jump back into his time-line at the correct point – even supposing that he lasted much past Culloden? More importantly, how can she leave her daughter behind to go gallivanting through time once again?
Only time will tell.
Here’s to season three.
A few final, disjointed thoughts
- There’s a lot of accent horseplay and sleight-of-hand in Outlander. In this episode, Brianna, a character born and raised in America, attempts a Scottish accent, which moves Roger to pronounce: ‘That is the worst accent I have ever heard.’ Even funnier, the actress who plays Brianna, Sophie Skelton, is actually English. So she’s an English woman pretending to be an American pretending to be Scottish. Hats off to you, Sophie. That’s a tricky hat-trick.
- I’ve also just recently learned that Duncan Lacroix is ENGLISH! Jesus, that threw me. Again, there was always something just a teeny, tiny bit unusual about Murtagh’s accent, but Lacroix always inhabits Murtagh so completely, that I didn’t even stop for a second to consider the actor’s heritage.
- There are a lot of lovely little touches in this episode. Like when Brianna asks her mother – ‘Do you miss him?’, meaning Frank, the man she’d always believed to be her father. The look of hesitation on Claire’s face, and the torturous duality of her answer, all unbeknownst to Brianna, works really well.
- Claire to Roger, as Geillis’ husband smoulders nearby. “Roger – go get help.” Em, I think we’re a little past that, Claire. You’re not the world’s most perceptive doctor, are you?
- There’s a neat, if a little on-the-nose, symmetry at play here: Geillis burned her husband, and got burned in return. Hell begets hell. And Dougal and Geillis beget Roger, by the looks of it, give or take a few begets.
I’ll be back with season three of my binge-watch in 2019. Thanks for coming on this journey with me, and rediscovering your favourite show through fresh eyes. It’s been a blast, and as much as I may sometimes jest, I’m really enjoying it so far.
READ THE REST – Click below
Why I want to binge-watch Outlander
Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 1, Eps 1 – 4
Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 1, Eps 5 – 8
Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 1, Eps 9 – 12
Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 1, Eps 13 – 16
Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 2, Eps 1 – 4
Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 2, Eps 5 – 7
Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 2, Eps 8 – 10
Jamie’s Outlander Binge – Season 2, Eps 11 – 12
Pingback: Jamie’s Outlander Binge: Season 3, Eps 1 – 3 | Jamie Andrew With Hands