TY - JOUR
AU - Richard, David, Evan
AB - Abstract This is a review of Big Little Lies (2017-), adapted from the novel by Liane Moriarty. Adaptation, Big Little Lies, Nicole Kidman When Nicole Kidman won the 2018 Screen Actors Guild award for Outstanding Actress for her performance as Celeste in Big Little Lies (developed by Kidman and her co-star Reese Witherspoon in collaboration with David E. Kelley), she breathlessly announced on the podium that the experience was like ‘fantasy colliding with reality’. Although Kidman was possibly speaking the platitudes of a humble winner, her words also testify to the difficulty faced with untangling the phenomenal critical and popular success of Big Little Lies from its cultural context. Indeed, the television series cannily presaged the exposure of the entertainment industry’s own ‘big little lie’. Largely instigated by the revelation of the systematic sexual exploitation and abuse committed by executive producer Harvey Weinstein, the Time’s Up and #metoo campaigns aimed to peel back the glittering surface of Hollywood to reveal its dark heart, an industry rife with systemic depravity and violence. The connection between her character—a wealthy woman held hostage in her violent marriage to her Jekyll-and-Hyde husband, Perry (played by Alexander Skarsgård)—and the milieu that framed its reception was not lost on Kidman. At the Golden Globes, for instance, Kidman pointed out how ‘[Celeste] represents something that is at the centre of our conversation right now: abuse’, while at the Emmys she commented that Big Little Lies ‘shone a light on domestic abuse… It is a complicated and insidious disease. It exists far more than we allow ourselves to know. It is filled with shame and secrecy, and… this award shines a light on it even more’. And what better means to ‘shine a light’ on domestic abuse and familial tension than through the very domestic medium of television? Big Little Lies adapts Liane Moriarty’s 2014 novel into a seven-part miniseries (a second season to extend beyond the novel is currently in production and will be directed by Andrea Arnold). The adaptation transplants the drama from Pirriwee—a fictionalised version of Sydney’s Northern Beaches—to Monterey, California. This transnational shift perhaps speaks to Moriarty’s global popularity that well exceeds her Australian origins. Indeed, despite being an internationally best-selling author, Moriarty maintains an amount of obscurity in Australia, leading the Sydney Morning Herald to describe her as ‘the most successful author you’ve never heard of’ (Hooton). Moriarty makes clear that her invisibility is not solely the result of cultivating an elusive authorial persona, but rather is the result of gender inequalities that structure the publishing industry. As Moriarty explains, her books are often critically dismissed as ‘Women’s Literature’ (perhaps even more casually dismissed as chick-lit) or ‘Domestic Life’ dramas, saying that if she published her novels as ‘“Liam Moriarty” [she’d] be treated differently’ (qtd. in Hooton).1 Thus, gender inequality and frustration are not only contained within the world of Big Little Lies, but also frame its context. Big Little Lies is about the secrets and lies—some big, some little—that its characters keep and tell in order to keep up appearances. Madeline (Witherspoon) buckles under the pressure of maintaining a ‘perfect’ life, struggling with her adolescent daughter, Abigail (Kathryn Newton), and her passionless marriage to Ed (Adam Scott). Passion is also Celeste’s problem, but she and Perry have too much, their relationship a toxic cocktail of anger, sexual desire, and abuse. Meanwhile, Jane (Shailene Woodley) suffers ongoing trauma and shame from being raped, and she worries if her son Ziggy (Iain Armitage) inherited his father’s violent nature. All seven episodes were written by David E. Kelley, known for compelling (if at times infuriating) television series like Ally McBeal (1997–2002), and were directed by Jean-Marc Vallée, whose cinematic pedigree—honed by Dallas Buyers Club (2014) and Wild (2014)—‘elevates the pulpy material,’ as critic Sonia Saraiya attests. Further, Big Little Lies was produced for HBO, the American cable channel that specialises in what Jason Mittell terms ‘complex television’. As Mittell argues, the complicated and elliptical narrative structure of many contemporary television series requires a ‘poetic approach’ to untangle its narrative threads and evaluate ‘how serial television can reach aesthetic achievements’ (216), a perspective shared by Sarah Cardwell, who suggests that the evaluation of televisual aesthetics can only but lead to ‘the development of a more thoughtful, considered and lucid television criticism within the academy’ (2013: 29). For Cardwell, adopting an ‘aesthetic vision’ to evaluate an artwork necessitates careful attention to ‘the formal, sensory and “design” qualities of the artwork’ along with conscious reflection on how these properties are emotionally and meaningfully taken up by the critic (32). Cardwell’s claims regarding the value in adopting an ‘aesthetic attitude’ in the evaluation of television as works of art has significant implications for the formal politics of adaptation for television in general and the specific case of Big Little Lies as a re-vision of Moriarty’s novel. In her important work on adaptation, Cardwell argues that an ‘aesthetics of adaptation’ should direct the critic to attend not only to ‘narrative significance but also … the visual pleasure they provide—their texture, sensuality, and form’ (2007: 58). As I have recently argued, a phenomenological approach to adaptation offers provocative possibilities for such work; employing the philosophy and critical methodology of (film-)phenomenology attunes the critic to the sensory, affective, and emotional structure of the work under examination, and prompts critical reflection on its significance for both the adaptation and its beholder.2 More concretely interrogating the phenomenological dynamics of an adaptation is especially crucial in the case of Big Little Lies because it is fundamentally about how we ‘look’ in terms of both how we present ourselves for others and also how we look around at our world. Indeed, Big Little Lies alerts us the danger of being taken in by the surface of things, of being seduced by an image that has been merely constructed for us, and it issues a warning to never judge a book by its cover. For instance, the novel’s Madeline learns the price of adopting such a superficial ‘look’. Madeline is what Jane calls a ‘glittery girl’, the kind of woman who ‘[decorates herself] so affectionately, like Christmas trees, with dangling earrings, jangling bangles and delicate, pointless scarves’ (Moriarty 14). Madeline is a caricature of feminine excess (Witherspoon is well cast to embody Madeline, as she is known for characters that hinge on an excessive or strategic performance of femininity, such as in Legally Blonde [dir. Robert Luketic, 2001] and Vanity Fair [dir. Mira Nair, 2004]). Unlike Jane, who describes herself as ‘the only colourless thing’ in the world (Moriarty 94), Madeline is a vivacious swirl of colour and perfume that chirps, giggles, and gossips, teetering all the way on strappy stilettos (and often into champagne-induced intoxication). Madeline’s self-awareness (she is, after all, painfully conscious of her image) means that the reader does not condemn her superficiality and her desire for the glamourous; however, Madeline herself does eventually wonder if it was her superficial gaze at the world that allowed her to be tricked by Celeste’s own glamour, failing to see that her seemingly perfect life was an ornate, fastidiously constructed façade. Just like Madeline, it is easy for the viewer to be seduced by the glittery glamour of Big Little Lies, as the series seems to be set in a world where everyone is beautiful and rich. Although there is a lot of talk about work (particularly the battlelines that are drawn between the ‘career women’ and stay-at-home mothers) no one seems to ever do any. Indeed, it is fitting that the work we do see is that of Madeline, whose enthusiasm for meddling in the lives of others and control-freak personality makes her well-equipped to help stage a community production of Avenue Q. However, most of the time the characters of Big Little Lies just stand around their beachside palatial houses that seem torn from the pages of Architectural Digest. Just as in the classic domestic melodramas of the 1950s, the interior architecture serves as a visible manifestation of the inner turmoil and anxiety of its inhabitants. Although these houses are impressive in their scale and tasteful décor, they are too perfect, too styled: they do not appear lived in as homes. With the exception of Jane’s apartment, which is cluttered with the expected detritus of toys, drawings, and books of a single-parent household, the domestic spaces of Big Little Lies do not bear the marks of domestic intimacy. Made from concrete and stone, Celeste’s house is like a cold mausoleum that seems to grow from the rocks of the cliff upon which it sits: Bluebeard’s Castle in California. Renata Klein (Laura Dern) lives in what looks like a modern art gallery, complete with furniture that looks like it could bruise and a pool that appears to merge with the infinite vastness of the sea. Even Madeline’s house lacks warmth. Although she and her family are often seen interacting in the kitchen, its décor serves to estrange, rather than unite, the family. They eat dinner in a single file around their oversized marble island bench like strangers, dwarfed by the giant glass cabinets that climb the soaring walls. The excess of Madeline’s kitchen renders these scenes set in the ‘heart of the home’ as a parody of domestic life. The sprawling domestic spaces—frequently filmed in long shots to show the spatial and emotional distance of characters—are more like stages upon which they (often histrionically) perform, just like characters in Madeline’s production. Indeed, from the opening credits the television series directs the viewer’s attention to the fact that we are watching a performance. At the end of the credit sequence, the main players walk to the camera in a single file and take turns staring into the lens to meet the spectator’s gaze. As they are all dressed as Audrey Hepburn (the narrative climax occurs at an ‘Audrey and Elvis’ themed fundraiser), the series immediately questions the authenticity of these characters who are instead framed by their ability for masquerade, trickery, and disguise. That we are all social actors who can adopt a variety of roles and disguises as necessary is of course a central theme of Big Little Lies. In the novel, Celeste laments that at times she ‘couldn’t quite remember how to be’, likely caused by her constant performance of perfection, hiding her traumas beneath her beautiful surface and ‘Mona Lisa expression’ (Moriarty 30, 424). While in the television series, Jane tells Madeline and Celeste that she sometimes ‘[gets] this sensation … like, if only I were here. It’s like I’m on the outside looking in’, examining her own performance and monitoring her behaviour as the violent memory of her rape bubbles to the surface and intertwines with reality. The series’s mise-en-scène also (and quite literally) reflects the characters’ self-surveillance of their performance, as it is littered with mirrors and reflective glass into which the characters frequently peer. So too are characters often framed by the oversized glass windows of their houses or filmed through doorways and the windscreens of their cars. Not only does this give the appearance that these characters are seemingly imprisoned by their lifestyles, but the frame-within-frame effect further shores up how the series repeatedly directs the spectator to consider its characters as performing a role. The emphasis on artifice throws uncertainty over what is authentic in Big Little Lies. However, ‘authenticity’—particularly surrounding the series’s treatment of domestic abuse—was certainly part of the series’s critical agenda. Speaking with television host Ellen DeGeneres, Kidman says that she ‘wanted to give truth to such a complicated story and … wanted it to be incredibly real for the audience and so I threw myself into it … to the point that I would come home at night with … bruises’. As she goes on to say, she hoped that the depiction of the sickening violence suffered by Celeste was authentic so ‘that when people watch [it] as an audience they can go “Oh! I can feel that somehow this is real”’. The show is successful in this regard, as Perry’s violent outbursts are shocking in their suddenness and intensity as he grabs, pushes, punches, and smothers Celeste. Indeed, at times we do not even have to witness Perry’s violence in order to feel Celeste’s trauma. In one memorable sequence, the camera films the sounds of Perry attacking Celeste as they emerge through an air-conditioning vent. Then, the camera suddenly cuts to a choking close-up of Celeste’s lolling head as she weaves in and out of consciousness, herself choking as her hair hangs over her face like a shroud. Further, the series’s cinematography often implicates the spectator as an active participant in the action. Filmed with the loose fluidity of a Steadicam, the frame woozily wobbles to lend the series a queasy voyeuristic feel, as if we are complicit in the dirty secrets of these characters. Thus, there is something jarring in the aesthetic texture of Big Little Lies, as ‘fantasy collides with reality’, to recall Kidman’s words on the winner’s podium. Writing about HBO’s adaptation of Mildred Pierce (dir. Todd Haynes, 2011), Pam Cook claims that the mini-series’s similar aesthetic combines the highly stylised with the ‘authentic’ to produce ‘a friction between verisimilitude, offering access to the truth, and artifice, which disguises and questions truth’ (379). Indeed, the way that Big Little Lies’s aesthetic creates a feeling of ‘friction’ is significant, as although at first glance it has a smooth and glossy surface, the series makes palpable its characters’ traumas. In her interview with DeGeneres, Kidman explains that she was pleased to adapt Big Little Lies through the medium of television as she ‘likes being in people’s homes’, and that she ‘[feels] closer to people’ that way. Beyond the medium’s domestic association, attending to the aesthetic structure of Big Little Lies reveals how it hides its politics in plain sight. As violence and trauma erupt through its glittering surface, Big Little Lies binds us to the affective and emotional ‘truth’ of its characters, reminding us that there is always more than what first meets the eye. Footnotes 1 For instance, Australian author Christos Tsiolkas—whose 2008 novel The Slap (adapted for Australian television in 2011, and again for the American NBC network in 2015) similarly skewers Australian suburbia—is described by Kerryn Goldsworthy as ‘a novelist of uncompromising political and moral seriousness, a ruthless examiner of the effects of middle-class values and capitalist society on individual lives’ and has been acknowledged with a suite of literary awards. 2 See David Richard, “Film Phenomenology and Adaptation: The ‘Fleshly Dialogue’ of Jane Campion’s In the Cut” (forthcoming in Adaptation), which outlines the value of the ‘phenomenological reduction’ to adaptation studies in more detail, analysing how Susanna Moore’s first-person novel is made tangible to the spectator by appealing to what I term their ‘tactile orientation’. REFERENCES Cardwell , Sarah . “ Adaptation Studies Revisited: Purposes, Perspectives, and Inspiration .” The Literature/Film Reader: Issues of Adaptation . Eds. James M. Welsh and Peter Lev. Lanham: Scarecrow , 2007 : 51 – 63 . ———. “ Television Aesthetics: Stylistic Analysis and Beyond .” Television Aesthetics and Style . Eds. Jason Jacobs and Steven Peacock . London : Bloomsbury , 2013 : 23 – 44 . Cook , Pam . “ Beyond Adaptation: Mirrors, Memory, and Melodrama in Todd Haynes’s Mildred Pierce .” Screen 54 . 3 ( 2013 ): 378 – 87 . Google Scholar Crossref Search ADS Goldsworthy , Kerryn. “Reading Australia: The Slap by Christos Tsiolkas.” Australian Book Review . 2015 . 13 Apr. 2018. https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/reading-australia/christos-tsiolkas/the-slap-by-christos-tsiolkas. Hooton , Amanda. “How Sydney Author Liane Moriarty Sold Six Million Books and Inspired an HBO Series.” The Sydney Morning Herald . 2016 . 13 Apr. 2018. https://www.smh.com.au/lifestyle/how-sydney-author-liane-moriarty-sold-six-million-books-and-inspired-an-hbo-series-20160701-gpw7ul.html. Kidman , Nicole . Interview by Ellen DeGeneres . The Ellen DeGeneres Show . Warner Bros. 9 May 2017 . Mittell , Jason. Complex TV: The Poetics of Contemporary Television Storytelling . New York : NYU Press , 2015 . Moriarty , Liane. Big Little Lies . Sydney : Pan , 2014 . Richard , David Evan . “ Film Phenomenology and Adaptation: The ‘Fleshly Dialogue’ of Jane Campion’s In the Cut .” Adaptation , forthcoming, 2018 . Saraiya , Sonia. “Big Little Lies.” Variety . 8 Feb 2017. 14 Feb. 2018. http://variety.com/2017/tv/reviews/tv-review-big-little-lies-hbo-reese-witherspoon-nicole-kidman-jean-marc-vallee-1201979575/. © The Author(s) 2018. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. 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TI - People in Glass Houses: Big Little Lies on the Small Screen
JO - Adaptation
DO - 10.1093/adaptation/apy007
DA - 2018-11-29
UR - https://www.deepdyve.com/lp/oxford-university-press/people-in-glass-houses-big-little-lies-on-the-small-screen-ugvugHmeK0
SP - 285
VL - 11
IS - 3
DP - DeepDyve
ER -