Outlander (Season 1, Miniseries; 2014)
If you believe in Dan Brown's novel, 'The Da Vinci's Code', then you may be thinking that the fairer sex once ruled the world. Men, once hunters, spent many hours away from the household while women ran the cave. They were awed upon as being the givers of life as they produced offsprings from their bodies and were given God-like status. This arrangement worked just fine. The pagan worship style incorporated this magical ability into their appreciation of the Forces beyond their comprehension. All that ended over time as Man became gatherers started living in communities and with the advent of a monotheistic way of worship. Men became the more dominant one of the sexes. Even in the Hindu mythology, dominant earlier female characters like Draupadi, Satyavathi and Madhavi disappeared over time.
This is the angle I seem to look when I watch this Highlander themed British miniseries. Outlander or a Sassenach (Saxon in Gaelic) is a kind of derogatory term used by the Northerners upon their self-proclaimed cultured conquerors from the South.
This topic of women empowerment comes about in this series after a 1945 combat nurse, Claire Randall nee Beauchamp, who had just completed a difficult time saving lives in the just concluded world war, goes for her well deserved delayed honeymoon in Inverness. Her husband, an academic, has a keen interest in genealogy and would discuss his research with her. She had developed a passion for herbal medicine. The viewers would find that this knowledge forms the crux of her adventure or misadventure later.
On the morning after a particular pagan ala Halloween celebration, Claire who goes in search of wildflowers gets sucked into a monolith and is transported back in time. When she comes around, she realises that she is trapped in 1743 at the height of the showdown between the kilt-clad brave Highlanders and the highbrow Red Coats, the English.
Claire, herself an English, uses her finesse, wit, medical knowledge and the benefit of history to manoeuvre herself around and to stay alive. She is initially hell-bent on returning to the future. Expectedly, things get complicated. Initially, she was kept as a captive by the Scots only to be suited to a hunk. She also discovers some past unsavoury history of her 1945 husband's ancestor!
It is ludicrous to swallow the idea that the storytellers are expecting us to do; that an educated and liberated woman of the 20th century would fall for an 18th-century savage who has specific visions of the place of women in society and that she could command such respect amongst a somewhat primitive society. What about the language, the choice of words, the ever-changing trend of sentence construction that would make communication with a Gaelic-speaking community a nearly impossible task? Do they expect us to believe that love would conquer all and is strong enough a motivator to stay trapped in time sacrificing all amenities of modern living like electricity and clean drinking water?
Put that all aside, and it is an eye-opener. Humankind has not changed much since antiquity. Two hundred years ago, they were fighting to exert power and to monopolise; nothing has changed since!
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If you believe in Dan Brown's novel, 'The Da Vinci's Code', then you may be thinking that the fairer sex once ruled the world. Men, once hunters, spent many hours away from the household while women ran the cave. They were awed upon as being the givers of life as they produced offsprings from their bodies and were given God-like status. This arrangement worked just fine. The pagan worship style incorporated this magical ability into their appreciation of the Forces beyond their comprehension. All that ended over time as Man became gatherers started living in communities and with the advent of a monotheistic way of worship. Men became the more dominant one of the sexes. Even in the Hindu mythology, dominant earlier female characters like Draupadi, Satyavathi and Madhavi disappeared over time.
This is the angle I seem to look when I watch this Highlander themed British miniseries. Outlander or a Sassenach (Saxon in Gaelic) is a kind of derogatory term used by the Northerners upon their self-proclaimed cultured conquerors from the South.
This topic of women empowerment comes about in this series after a 1945 combat nurse, Claire Randall nee Beauchamp, who had just completed a difficult time saving lives in the just concluded world war, goes for her well deserved delayed honeymoon in Inverness. Her husband, an academic, has a keen interest in genealogy and would discuss his research with her. She had developed a passion for herbal medicine. The viewers would find that this knowledge forms the crux of her adventure or misadventure later.
On the morning after a particular pagan ala Halloween celebration, Claire who goes in search of wildflowers gets sucked into a monolith and is transported back in time. When she comes around, she realises that she is trapped in 1743 at the height of the showdown between the kilt-clad brave Highlanders and the highbrow Red Coats, the English.
Claire, herself an English, uses her finesse, wit, medical knowledge and the benefit of history to manoeuvre herself around and to stay alive. She is initially hell-bent on returning to the future. Expectedly, things get complicated. Initially, she was kept as a captive by the Scots only to be suited to a hunk. She also discovers some past unsavoury history of her 1945 husband's ancestor!
It is ludicrous to swallow the idea that the storytellers are expecting us to do; that an educated and liberated woman of the 20th century would fall for an 18th-century savage who has specific visions of the place of women in society and that she could command such respect amongst a somewhat primitive society. What about the language, the choice of words, the ever-changing trend of sentence construction that would make communication with a Gaelic-speaking community a nearly impossible task? Do they expect us to believe that love would conquer all and is strong enough a motivator to stay trapped in time sacrificing all amenities of modern living like electricity and clean drinking water?
Put that all aside, and it is an eye-opener. Humankind has not changed much since antiquity. Two hundred years ago, they were fighting to exert power and to monopolise; nothing has changed since!
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