William, You Perv

[snacky]

Anyone catch this quick glance in Green Muse, right when Julia says the attack was from behind?



You have to wonder if it's technical rather than carnal speculation.

[wildhorseannie]

Wouldn't surprise after his "skinny-dipping" fantasy.

[snacky]

May 31, 2014 4:22:02 GMT wildhorseannie said:

Wouldn't surprise after his "skinny-dipping" fantasy.

LOL! So true.

That glance was pure genius on Yannick's part, and it reminds us that buttoned-up Victorians weren't pure angels. I wonder if he told his confessor on Sunday? He might have had to do some penance for that thought. XD

As a running gag (re: his recognition of Julia at the train station in Red Planet), it reminds me of Mulder's phone sex calls on the X-Files - a sad weakness of a lonely man.

[wildhorseannie]

As they say, boys will boys...regardless of prevailing cultural trends.

[snacky]

Hmm, I just had a sad thought about In the Altogether.

When William called slightly saucy pictures "pornographic" and tried to explain they took male thoughts to "dark places", Julia might have connected the following dots:

1. In Catholicism sex is for procreation. All other sexual urges, as stated by William, should be suppressed in the "dark" part of the mind.
2. There would be no procreation if William married Julia.
3. Therefore, any sex would be of the "dark" kind in William's book, and perhaps even impossible for him, leading to a passionless marriage.

Ironically that's exactly what she got by making a conventional marriage to Darcy. Bloodlust made it pretty clear what she wanted from William.

This is all for argument's sake, though. I just can't believe the "40 Year Old Virgin" thing. Even with Victorian Morals and William's speeches about the legalities of contraception, there's a lot of circumstantial evidence for nookie and his behavior in both The Murdoch Identity and The Green Muse suggest that if he's in an "altered state" he quickly forgets about The Rules and channels starts channeling his inner Don Juan.

[wildhorseannie]

It's too bad that the Catholic Church encouraged such notions. I think the Brackenreids have the right idea in "Who Killed the Electric Carriage?" You can have passion, inside of marriage, without being focused on procreation. Although, I do think that William was starting to think outside of the Catholic box, as his proposal mentioned the possibility of adoption. Clearly he was willing to rearrange some ideas for the sake of Julia.

[snacky]

Jun 1, 2014 19:52:48 GMT wildhorseannie said:

It's too bad that the Catholic Church encouraged such notions. I think the Brackenreids have the right idea in "Who Killed the Electric Carriage?" You can have passion, inside of marriage, without being focused on procreation. Although, I do think that William was starting to think outside of the Catholic box, as his proposal mentioned the possibility of adoption. Clearly he was willing to rearrange some ideas for the sake of Julia.

lol Mrs. Brackenreid rocks. But then they are demonstrating one of the big ideas of the "Protestant Revolution" - marriage for love (including sexy time). Not that Catholics never married for love or always reserved their passion for their mistresses, re: Monsieur Murdoch, but the Catholic church certainly wasn't preaching that way, and that's one of the things that gave Luther and Calvin, et al their major inroad. Also, sometimes Confession could become an outrageous invasion of privacy in these matters - or rather Protestantism invented "privacy" to justify that discomfort.

Again, I don't think the average Catholic is as doctrinally strict as the Church with a capital C. In the Green Muse, I think William would have gone all the way if Julia hadn't stopped him, and he left off with the idea of "there will be other chances". I think Catholicism also humane, encouraging understanding and forgiveness of human sin. Love also justifies a lot in Catholicism since it's a sort of a second-hand expression of Divine Love. I think for William all the "passion" would be imported under this "Divine Love" category, but the way but fraught with a lot of "dark urges" traps.

As you say, William is in the process of rearranging his ideas: not just for Julia, but as an ongoing growth process.

[lovemondays]

William gives Anna's backside the same kind of glance in "The Murdoch Identity". His fantasy of Julia's naked back in "Still Waters" kind of fits the bill too. We need these pervy moments to remind us that William is not just a handsome, brilliant, focused automaton.

[snacky]

Jun 15, 2014 4:42:00 GMT lovemondays said:

William gives Anna's backside the same kind of glance in "The Murdoch Identity". His fantasy of Julia's naked back in "Still Waters" kind of fits the bill too. We need these pervy moments to remind us that William is not just a handsome, brilliant, focused automaton.

Yeah, I like that moment of secret lust - all the more because if William had stopped to reflect on it he would have regarded it as depravity. (The "mind going to dark places" that so annoyed Julia in "In the Altogether"). Perfect protagonists suck. But this moment of weakness is particularly brilliant because the viewer knows that the protagonist himself would censor that thought had it been spoken out loud. Compare Mulder's porn addiction in the X-Files: that served the same "humanizing" purpose, but that character would totally own it.

I'm even more fascinated by whether William's "dark places" comment drove Julia toward her decision to depart for Buffalo. Did that signal to her once and for all that he wouldn't marry her just for passion, that he had to connect sex to conception because of his religious and moral reasons? Perhaps she wasn't just snapping at him because she was making judgments about whether the women "asked" to be attacked by how they dressed, but also because he had just confirmed her worst fear: that his first thought when he looked at a "saucy picture" was that he had fallen into a state of sin when his mind went to "dark places".

Bet the writers never intended that analysis! XD

Anyway, I noted the Anna scene and glad that William's pervy little secret is being reinforced as a character trait. You could also say that's what's going on when he checks Julia out at the train station in Angry Red Planet, too.

Ps. Someday William will have to confront what a hypocrite he can be about women - particularly in regard to contraception.

[lovemondays]

It is a dilemma that for all his forward thinking, William still holds some very old-fashioned beliefs. Most of those I believe are driven by his religious upbringing. He has been actively questioning the strict teachings of the Church to the point in "Till Death Do Us Part" he tells his priest that he doesn't know if he can continue to follow those teachings on blind faith alone.

I don't think the 'dark places' comment had anything to do with Julia leaving. She told herself that it was a chance to heal the living, but her truth was she felt inadequate to be William's wife because she was sterile. It was her way of forcing him to have "the life he deserved".

Julia snapped at William because he was spewing the claptrap idea that women are responsible for the behaviour of men, especially in the sexual arena. Historically that kind of idiotic reasoning is how men have maintained their superiority over women. Look at the word hysterical. There have been several of those type of repressive references throughout the seasons. William is still a product of his generation, no matter how forward-thinking he can otherwise be.

[lovemondays]

I think my favourite moment of mutual lust happened in "Future Imperfect" when William and Julia briefly touched on the subject of animal husbandry. They were both falling into it and then took a breath and pulled themselves back. I stop breathing every time I see that.

[snacky]

Jun 15, 2014 5:27:27 GMT lovemondays said:

 her truth was she felt inadequate to be William's wife because she was sterile. It was her way of forcing him to have "the life he deserved".

Julia snapped at William because he was spewing the claptrap idea that women are responsible for the behaviour of men, especially in the sexual arena. Historically that kind of idiotic reasoning is how men have maintained their superiority over women. Look at the word hysterical. There have been several of those type of repressive references throughout the seasons. William is still a product of his generation, no matter how forward-thinking he can otherwise be.

But the "dark places" comment told Julia that she would not be enough for William because of her sterility. If William had looked at the photo and said, "Hey, she's kind of hot...!" Julia might have thought, "We might not have children, but we will have a lot of fun together! William likes it hot!" Instead she was stuck with the knowledge that William feared passion as something "dark".

But I agree Julia was also snapping at William's "claptrap" about women's clothes, and that William's attitudes were a product of their generation.

Circling back to William's perviness, I wonder if he is "James Bond" in those fantasies -- because that would be a hilarious contrast with his actual clumsiness when dancing.

On the other hand, William was pretty suave after a few sips of absinthe in The Green Muse. He probably has some moves.

[snacky]

Jun 15, 2014 5:43:08 GMT lovemondays said:

I think my favourite moment of mutual lust happened in "Future Imperfect" when William and Julia briefly touched on the subject of animal husbandry. They were both falling into it and then took a breath and pulled themselves back. I stop breathing every time I see that.

I can't help putting that one in the pervy context, so that scene cracks me up every time. XD

William is coming across as kind of sleazy while he's trying to seduce Julia (with no marriage proposal on the horizon).

Julia seems to be trying to hint that it's time for William to get around to proposing, but at the same time she seems astounded that William is being that aggressive and wants to encourage that.

Then William just leaves. What kind of follow through was a planning or was that it?

Makes me ROFL every time! XD

[lovemondays]

You've got to think that the follow through from that might reach furniture breaking heights XD.

James Bond, hahahaha! Good one. IMO, William sees himself as a very intelligent 'every man'. And I don't think the word suave is even in his vocabulary, extensive as it is.

I'm still trying to pin down the 'dark places'. In religious terms that would be lust. A powerful force that can leave one feeling out of control. Sex however, wouldn't be a bad thing, just something that should be done within the confines of marriage. So racy pictures whether pornographic or not, would lead to lustful feelings about a woman who is not one's wife, which is bad. Such a conundrum.

[snacky]

Jun 15, 2014 6:12:48 GMT lovemondays said:

You've got to think that the follow through from that might reach furniture breaking heights XD.

James Bond, hahahaha! Good one. IMO, William sees himself as a very intelligent 'every man'. And I don't think the word suave is even in his vocabulary, extensive as it is.

I'm still trying to pin down the 'dark places'. In religious terms that would be lust. A powerful force that can leave one feeling out of control. Sex however, wouldn't be a bad thing, just something that should be done within the confines of marriage. So racy pictures whether pornographic or not, would lead to lustful feelings about a woman who is not one's wife, which is bad. Such a conundrum.

Sadly the writers will never let us be a fly on the wall for the James Bond fantasies: furniture might fly in that one. While William does model himself as the proper "middle class" man at work, I do think he has a few other fantasy selves stored away, and one of them is very much a Ladies Man. That's the one that came out in The Green Muse. In his view, knowledge is powerful in every respect, including giving the ladies what they want. There's no question he's read *every* book on that subject. I wonder if he even has a few of those "pornographic" books he was so quick to condemn. (For "research" purposes, of course.).

I agree "dark places" = lust. Perhaps also depravity, perversion, anything that seems to deviate from some church-sanctioned norm or that seems to be about acting on animal instinct instead of following the civilized practices of love and marriage? William's ambiguity was in itself intriguing, because we don't know whether he meant mere desire or that the picture actually triggered some scene out of Marquis de Sade for him. The more proper the Victorians were, the more "sinful" the thoughts they had to repress: and William is a very, very proper man.