Coming up this week!

This week, I will face my greatest challenge:

GLUTEN FREE, DAIRY FREE CHOCOLATE CUPCAKES WITH PEANUT BUTTERCREAM FROSTING

BYE FOR NOW!

Lemon Cheesecake in honour of 30 Rock

A friend recently told me I say things that remind her of Liz Lemon, the hero of NBC's 30 Rock and my life. And I was incredibly flattered. Then I realised I'd probably been consciously and subconsciously quoting LL since I started watching the series.

Since Tina Fey started doing Weekend Update with Jimmy Fallon on Saturday Night Live, I have loved her. Funny, smart, left-handed (y'all don't know how much I love finding people who, like, me are left-handed. Seeing that familiar ink smudge up the side of someone's hand, or the incredibly dangerous way we hold knives and scissors - that's what it sounds like when doves cry), Tina is everything I want to be in this world.

Liz Lemon is one of the great TV characters. She works hard; takes things seriously when no one else will; she's sceptical of romances and friendships because, well, Dennis Duffy and Jenna Maroney; and loves food more than people. Nearly all of which I can relate to. Oh, and her eye-rolling skills are second to none. I've learned a lot about my own eye-rolling from Liz.

And lizzing.

That is a combination of laughing ang whizzing.

Tina Fey is my champion, spirit guide, spirit animal (are they two different things?), role model, and hero. It's through her comedy, and characters like Liz Lemon, who remind women that we don't have to compromise anything to be funny, and that we can work hard and have a family and we shouldn't have to feel guilty or apologise about anything we achieve or don't achieve along the way.

I had been putting off watching the final series of 30 Rock because, well, I didn't want the magic to end. And when I did finally watch it, I was so happy. And so sad. Happy because it was the perfect ending to the series, and sad because, well, no more LL sparring with Jack, no more crazy Tracy schemes, no more Jenna talking about being on carm-a-rah, no more of Kenneth's slightly crazy optimism, or Frank's wildly inappropriate trucker's caps. It could have been a bit cheesy (only makes cheesecake an even better choice), but it was a fitting end for all of the characters.

So, as a tribute to Liz and her wonderful adventures, I decided to make a Liz Lemon Cheesecake. Yeah, ok, not that complicated, really. It's just lemon cheesecake with the word Liz in front of it, you say. But if you think that, sir or madam, you're dead wrong. And a jerk. Because Liz Lemon cheesecake combines all of the best parts about Liz: cheese, and cake. Ok, it combines two things about Liz. And her name. Ahem.

Because last week I modified a simple recipe and, well, some (me) might say I fucked it up, I decided to try using a simple recipe and not modifying it. Much. The recipe is available here, so check it out.

It's essentially a biscuit base with butter and, er, biscuits, and a cheesecake mixture of cream cheese, vanilla essence, condensed milk, lemon juice, and lemon zest. No way to ruin this one, right? Ha! Er...

So. First step, crushing them old biscuits. The recipe suggests Marie biscuits (coincidentally, the name of my Aunty), but I took a risk (bought the ingredients before I found a recipe), and bought Malt biscuits. To crush them, you might use a food processor or one of those mortar and pestle things, but if you're me, you don't have any of those things. So you're (me) just going to crush them with a meat tenderiser or potato masher. Fun!

It's not as fast or as immediately accurate as a food processor, but what could be better than that quaint, homemade charm? Actually, it works really well. I did eventually give up, so it's not perfect (or perfik, if you're a diehard Darling Buds of May fan, which, come on, of course you are). But it looks ok.

Also, if you're me, you're not going to have a quiche dish or one of those other clear baking dish things, so think creatively about what you might put this motherfudging cheesecake in. A cup. On a pizza tray. In a friend's hand.

Sweet Fanny Durack! Where did that come from? And it has yellow on it. How appropriate! Here's an extra yellow tea towel to maintain the illusion I planned this all in advance!

So the base looks...ok. I can't tell if maybe it's a little dry and needs more butter, but since I'm not baking it like I might a base for, say, a slice, I'm not going to care too much about it. NO BAKE MEANS NO BAKE. And because my super cute retro homestyleeee pie dish is small, I had enough left over to fill another dish. Or shallow plastic container. Both now in fridge.

Now, for the next step, I get to crack open my new, improved, electric mixer. My $25 mixer. How do you like that? I upgraded. Just bought one cheap mixer for the price of two and a half cheaper, incredibly shoddy electric mixers. VALUE.

Beating cream cheese is flipping hard, y'all. But then the rest of it was fine. Great story, man. The recipe tells you to use lemon zest and one-third of a cup of lemon juice, but I'm not a diehard fan of lemon (but I am a Die Hard fan. Ahem), so I decided to keep the zest for decoration and just use the lemon juice in the actual mixture. And that is the story of how I learned to waste a lemon by only using the zest, and then only using half of that zest. It did occur to me to just juice the lemon, but I'd already used the juice and, so...I hate juicing, ok? It was never going to happen.

So the recipe says to beat the mixture until it increases in volume (that's what she said?) and I did that, and look! It looks nice!

Again, because I used a pie dish it made two cheesecakes. And I can only imagine how many more it might have made if I hadn't eaten a lot some of the mixture. Add the lemon zest on top for decoration like a boss, and look! It actually looks like a cheesecake someone might eat, right? Right?

Done! So simple, y'all. Let's see if we can't just shotgun the whole in one sitting, eh? But then I got to what might be the saddest instruction on a recipe in the world: "leave overnight to set." WHAT! I want to eat it nowwwwww. I wanted to eat it before I'd even finished making it! What am I going to do between now and being able to eat it?

I would suggest binge-watching (my new favourite term) 30 Rock or reading Tina Fey's amazing book Bossypants. I also suggest doing those things while eating cheese, wearing a slanket.

I learned last week that cooking with nice biscuits means you can shovel the leftovers into your mouth as you go. And for an extra bit of fun, look how I put some cheesecake mixture on one of the malt biscuits!

Try it yourself and see how fun it is... to watch someone else make it and just eat it when it's ready!

UPDATE: I tried the cheesecake and it's, against all odds, delicious. Even though I went overboard on the lemon zest. The base, however, doesn't stay put - it's more a like cheese crumble. But after another piece the base is quite solid and, er, base-y? Maybe it was just at the edges.

Sneak Preview

Here's a sneak peek at what I'm a cooking up for my next baking catastrophe adventure.

I don't want to give too much away, but it's going to involve Liz Lemon, cheese, and cake. Well, those words, at least. Actually, that probably gives most of it away...

But hey, what is the purpose of a text other than to engage with the reader and allow them to form expectations with a view to confirming or subverting them?

Chocolate Blackberry Cupcakes, in honour of Hannibal season One

So I recently finished watching the first season of Hannibal. I know, I know, I'm slow. And also about two months ago I was glued to my computer awaiting updates of its fate. Luckily, Hannibal will be back next year and it's just as bloody well because the season finale ended on a pretty intense note.

For those who may not have seen Hannibal (like anyone really needs me to tell them), it's a television series created by Pushing Daisies and Dead Like Me creater Bryan Fuller. It's essentially a crime or procedural drama based on characters from Thomas Harris's 1981 novel Red Dragon (which has been adapted for film twice: Man Hunter in 1986, written and directed by Michael Mann, and Red Dragon in 2002, written by Ted Tally and directed by Brett Ratner). Will Graham (Hugh Dancy) is a talented criminal profiler, now teaching at the FBI training academy. He is recruited back into the field by the head of the Behavioural Sciences Unit, Agent Jack Crawford (Laurence Fishburne). Will's talent stems from an empathy disorder, which enables him to empathise with and get inside the mind of serial killers. But it comes at a price, making Will very sensitive and potentially mentally unstable, and so Crawford keeps an eye on him with the help of Dr Alana Bloom (Caroline Dhavernas), a Psychology professor, FBI consultant, and former student of renowned psychologist Dr Hannibal Lecter (Mads Mikkelsen). Lecter becomes a friend, therapist, and something of a mentor for Will.

The series has come under some fire for its violence, and average ratings in the US made it something of an endangered species over at NBC. At first I found the series oddly clinical, and the heavy tone and dark atmosphere felt a little forced in conjunction with the procedural element. And I wondered if we'd seen enough of the complicated investigator character whose possible mental illness or social disorder or what-have-you makes them extremely gifted at their work. But Byran Fuller is pretty good at what he does, and I started to like Will Graham and Dr Lecter and remembered that flawed, complex characters are absolutely essential to good television, and suddenly I became hooked. The cinematography is absolutely stunning, and the relationship between Lecter and Graham is so expertly developed. You're not sure if you want Graham to catch Lecter, or vice versa, or if you'll be sad their bromance has to be ruined by such a petty little thing as one of them being a vicious serial killer and cannibal who insists on testing the boundaries of the other's mental health out of little more than professional curiosity. I feel like once we were introduced to Crawford's trainee Miriam Lass (and her fate), everything fell so beautifully into place. I got goosebumps at the end of episode 6, "Entrée."

Will's mental health is another thing that is beautifully portrayed in the series, including the recurring image of what fans have called a Ravenstag and what most, and I think Fuller has called on his Twitter, a Wendigo: a black stag covered in what appears to be the feathers of a Raven. It's a metaphor for evil, for the deterioration of Will's mind, and a warning of what Will perhaps knows but doesn't want to see: that Hannibal, someone he has trusted with his life on several occasions, is the most dangerous man he will ever meet.

So I thought, given my ridiculous need to bake things (I can't really tell you why I've suddenly felt the need to make anything more than videos of my cat on Instagram), what better way to celebrate this amazing image from Hannibal than to turn it into a cupcake? A lovely, little cupcake?

For this I've basically used this Nigella Lawson recipe for Chocolate Cherry cupcakes.

The only thing I've changed are the following:

Instead of using cherry jam I used blackberry jam, partly because I thought maybe it suited the dark nature of this creature but mostly because I thought the label said black cherry. I want to tell you I wasn't wearing my glasses, but... I was.

Because the beauty of this recipe is that it's so simple yet delicious, I've decided to make it more time-consuming and difficult by adding antlers, or chocolate-coated pretzels resembling antlers.

The cupcakes were really easy, check out the recipe because it's a good one, and the batter smelled amazing. Here are some pictures of how it went down.

Nigella's recipe makes 12 cupcakes, but my batter made 9 cupcakes, and I filled the patty cases about two-thirds of the way full. I never actually know precisely how much to spoon into the cases, so I just use this massive measuring spoon I have. I'm sure people much more coordinated and, well, legit good at this racket can use an ice cream scoop. I've tried before. And failed.

Shit! Look at that! They turned out ok! They actually sank a little before I could take a photo of them (the ole iphone battery went flat), but that's ok. YOLO. Or something. But I just read the recipe properly and it says to use self-raising flour. I used plain flour because that's what I'm used to and not seeing the addition of baking soda and/or baking powder in the recipe didn't make me think twice at all. Whoops. I did just taste one and it was gooey inside, kind of like a pudding or friand, or a cupcake I fucked up by using the wrong flour. Great! Exactly what I was going for! Dark, rich, and weird on the inside. Sounds like Will's evil Patronus to me!

Now, onto those chocolate-dipped pretzel antlers! I melted 100 grams of dark chocolate in the microwave. Ain't nobody, and by nobody I mean me, got time for trying to melt it in a bowl over a saucepan full of water. Also, I'd just used the saucepan to make this mother flipping cupcake batter.

After realising it's super hard to break the pretzels to look like antlers, instead of giving up like a normal person, I kept trying. And sort of succeeded. The great thing about making these pretzels antlers is that you end up eating almost an entire bag of pretzels to get enough broken pretzels to resemble antlers. Silver lining! Coincidentally, silver lining is what I placed them on when I was done! Because I had no baking paper. Professional!

Now the fun part: making, and not eating in the process, the ganache. Cream and chocolate, y'all. Straight from Nigella's amazing recipe. A recipe that would be more amazing if you use the ingredients listed in it. Yay!

When you've essentially blown up all of your $10 electric mixers, you're hoping whisking by hand is actually possible even if you're not Nigella. And the answer is... yeah, I guess you can. It looks like ganache, ok? So...I think it worked.

I can already tell which one is going to be hidden in the photos of the finished project. Encouraging!

Now time for those antlers I made earlier, and... wow. They actually don't look that bad.

Against all odds.

There's definitely a resemblance there... Right...?


So there you go. Chocolate Blackberry Cupcakes with chocolate dipped pretzels, inspired by the NBC television series Hannibal. That seem like they're sort of ok to eat. Now go and watch the show. And check out the official Tumblr.

Little-known fact: I was reading Wikipedia (translation: getting all of my information about the show from Wikipedia) and there was this little piece: David Tennant just missed out on playing Dr Hannibal Lecter. Knowledge!

UPDATE: I made the cupcakes again using black cherry jam (I didn't imagine it!) and used milk chocolate for the ganache and they went exceedingly well!

The Green Light

Ever since I saw Baz Lurhmann's adaptation of The Great Gatsby I've been obsessed with figuring out exactly why I didn't like it. I hadn't read the book in a while, and yesterday I reread it and now I think I understand why - it's because Baz and I both made the mistake of thinking of both Nick and Gatsby as tragic heroes, two naive young men ruined by the excess of the Jazz Age.

I identify extremely closely with Nick. The opening lines of the novel really true with me. I feel as though my inability to assert myself while among unwanted company and my fear of confrontation means I often listen to unwarranted and unsolicited confidences. I also end up in situations I don't want to be in out of fear of offending someone and my shyness in strange situations means I end up sitting through weird events unable to really say anything. And perhaps I was feeling sorry for myself, because I started to feel that The Great Gatsby was a cautionary tale about an easygoing young man who, through the thoughtless actions of one group of people, is reduced to a negative, judgemental, critical person. He sees Gatsby punished for his dogged pursuit of a dead dream and it makes him sick.

But upon rereading I was reminded why I identify so closely with Nick Carraway and found that I was wrong to have romanticised him so much, to the point that I'm now embarrassed for all the times I bemoaned Nick's fate even more than Gatsby's. Because Nick isn't a naive, forgiving young man when we meet him - he's trying to tell us that following a piece of his father's sage advice lead to all of this trouble. He thinks now his father's advice stemmed more from a natural snobbery than any real need to understand other human beings and as a consequence, Nick was unwittingly pulled into the worlds of rich men afraid of losing their kingdoms and revealing their weaknesses to someone who didn't really want to know.

The Buchanans, Jordan Baker, Gatsby - they all use Nick to serve their own purposes, and whether Nick realises this early on I'm not sure, but I think some part of him always has a sense of Deja vu, that he's been here before. That though he might be at a fantastic party with fantastic people drinking fantastic champagne, he's still somewhere else pretending to be asleep while forced to hear too much information about someone he doesn't really know. Not only that, but he knew that this 'sharing' would be done in such a false, melodramatic way. Nick likes to believe he's that person who refuses to judge people immediately ("Reserving judgements is a matter of infinite hope. I am still a little afraid of missing something if I forget that, as my father snobbishly suggested, and I snobbishly repeat, a sense of the fundamental decencies is parcelled out unequally at birth."), but it seems as though it ends up being more trouble than it's worth.

He likes Daisy, Jordan and Gatsby and this is why he forgives them those moments he sees straight through them, Gatsby most of all. He's drawn to this man whose speech "just missed being absurd," his romantic dream of having built a magnificent life all for one girl, and his neverending hospitality. But it all seems so shoddy, and as a consequence it falls down so easily. The girl was never that interested - once all of the other girls started getting married and having fabulous lives Daisy grew impatient and rather than wait for Gatsby she married the first rich man who caught her eye. Gatsby's entire life is built on one invention after another; he's a poor farmer's son who runs away; joins a rich old sailor whose scheming wife pulls the rug out from under him when the sailor dies; he lies to a rich girl in order to get what he wants; he builds his empire on gambling and bootlegging and lies about it. Gatsby must have honestly believed that this was all just a shortcut to success: once he had Daisy in his arms again he could start a real, proper life and be a gentleman. But as Tolkien said, shortcuts make long delays.

And the trouble was, he never would have that life. And just as he wasn't the man he liked to think he was, Daisy wasn't the girl he thought she was, either. It suddenly seems obvious, perhaps maybe not to Nick, that none of Gatsby's guests turn up to his funeral. He never cared about those parties or those guests; it was just a desperate need to be loved by someone who never showed up to them, and when she did she hated them and he cut them and all his guests out just like that. Why Nick expected any loyalty only serves to show how much he actually liked Gatsby despite the fact he "disapproved of him from beginning to end." But Nick couldn't help but be drawn to these people (even when he's angry with Jordan he's still half in love with her), which is probably why the events of those months leave him feeling like the whole of the East will haunt him for ever.

There are a few moments when Nick sees straight through all of them: he guesses at Tom's desperate need to assert control over his life at that first dinner party; he figures out Jordan's a liar who will do anything to maintain her facade of bored iciness; that Daisy has perfected the art of seducing everyone to get what she wants. It's in the way she pretends at being cynical and that she stays with a man who so obviously cheats on her - it's how she escapes the reputation she probably deserves. This is also why she will never leave Tom for Gatsby. With Tom she's assured protection or at the very least, a status akin to being a victim. When she realises Gatsby's good name can be so easily torn away with a few well-placed questions, she sees there's no way she'll be protected from the scandal of running off with a 'bootlegger.'

Which I suppose leads me back to Baz. With the exception of Strictly Ballroom and a teen crush on Leonardo DiCaprio that resulted in a temporary obsession with Romeo + Juliet, I'm not a huge fan of Baz Lurhmann's films. There's just something I can't warm to - the excess, the frantic pacing, the theatrical acting. It's just not my jam. Maybe it will be one day. But I can't say his style doesn't lend itself to Gatsby's tale of excess, because in a way it does. All of the characters in one way or another embody that excess and that melodramatic flair. But I think it only works if you assume that The Great Gatsby is a romantic tragedy, which I'm sure can be read as such. But I don't, not at all, and I think it took seeing the film to remind me that for me at least it's not a romantic tragedy, and Nick isn't a poor, naive sap whose life is ruined. It's why the framing device of having Nick in a sanatorium, encouraged to work through his anger, alcoholism and depression to write about Gatsby just doesn't work for me. I actually hate it. And it's why I feel that even when the film is incredibly faithful to the book it manages to get it wrong, somehow. Perhaps I feel the spirit the film is trying to capture is the wrong one. And for me, the moment Nick has while drunk at Tom and Myrtle Wilson's secret apartment in the city seems, to me, to give it all away:

"I wanted to get out and walk southward toward the park through the soft twilight, but each time I tried to go I became entangled in some wild, strident argument which pulled me back, as if with ropes, into my chair. Yet high over the city our line of yellow windows must have contributed their share of human secrecy to the casual watcher in the darkening streets, and I was him too, looking up and wondering. I was within and without, simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life."

Nick isn't drawn into this world, unwilling to leave. He's pulled in, always trying to leave, a tiny part of him wanting to stay but feeling as though he shouldn't. His disconnection from the events seems to stem not only from his father's advice but also from his literary nature (he wrote in college and hopes to take it up again by documenting the time he spent in the East), and perhaps that's why I feel so much like Nick Carraway is my spirit animal. But it's also the reason Nick would never be in a sanatorium - he always knows he's not really part of that world. He's the only one who ever seems to work, who ever has a sense of the need to work hard to achieve something. He likes that world, he has fun, but he never feels like he's fully engaged in it. There's never a sense that he entirely likes any of these people. Guests he has fun with at one party reveal themselves to be self-destructive bores at the next. His descriptions of some of them suggest disdain or indifference, momentarily brightened by a certain manner of speaking, or an unexpected act of valour, or a realisation that they genuinely believe what they're doing is right. He despises Daisy and Tom's actions but he can't bring himself to hate them. He remembers, "without resentment, that Daisy hadn't sent a message or a flower." When he meets Tom some time later he refuses to shake his hand and tells him off, but when he hears Tom's side of the story he realises that he will never change Tom's mind and doesn't see the point of bearing a grudge. He even concedes, in a way, that Jordan Baker nails his character the last time they speak:

"'You said a bad driver was only safe until she met another bad driver? Well, I met another bad driver, didn't I? I mean it was careless of me to make such a wrong guess. I thought you were an honest, straightforward person. I thought it was your secret pride.'"

He can't even tell her she's wrong, replying, "'I'm thirty,' I said. 'I'm five years too old to lie to myself and call it honour.'"

I suppose Nick can be accused of being an unreliable narrator, or being reprehensible in his actions, and I can see that Baz has softened the blow by making him a little tragic. I suppose to me, however, it feels like a cop-out. Nick's not perfect; it's obvious his detachment from the events can make him seem a little cold and unforgiving, but I feel that Nick is deeply affected by what happened, but in his own way. I think this is his apology for pretending to be forgiving when deep down he isn't. Maybe he feels that he might not be much different from them after all, especially after Jordan's reprimand. He could be unreliable, or secretly in love with Gatsby, or an arsehole, but putting him in a sanitorium feels too melodramatic. The writing in and of itself is the therapy - Nick doesn't need any outside encouragement to think of it in this way because he already has that literary bent.

Perhaps it's never so obvious that Baz has perhaps misjudged Nick Carraway than it is at the end of the film. Maguire's delivery of the final paragraph of the novel seems to show a misunderstanding, or rather a need to think better of, Nick's character. He talks of infinite hope early in the novel but is sceptical it can ever be achieved. And rather than Gatsby being a celebration of infinite hope, he's proof for Nick of its non-existence:

"Gatsby believed in the green light, the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. It eluded us then, but that's no matter - tomorrow we will run faster, stretch out our arms farther... And one fine morning -
So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past."

We'll endlessly pin our hopes on the future, assured that tomorrow is that mythical day when everything we've ever wanted to happen will come to fruition, never realising that while we're looking ahead we're desperately trying to drag the past with us and never succeeding because of this dim belief that what we wanted back then will happen soon, and more to the point, that we'll still want it even now. I can't really think of anything more depressing than that, and I get the sense that Luhrmann and Maguire think that perhaps Nick feels a little better about this than we do. That said, the film's ending is quite affecting, if it weren't for that narration and Luhrmann's constant need to remind us of the story's literary roots by scattering text across the screen as though they're enchanted stars. But there is much to like there, if you can enjoy what film adaptations are - the filmmaker's subjective interpretation of the book's essence. It's not always the same as yours, and it's not always a well-made film, but that doesn't mean filmmakers should stop trying. I suppose my main concern that Tobey Maguire was the wrong choice to play Nick even stems from my interpretation of his character - and a relatively passive protagonist like Nick Carraway goes against every screenwriting rule in the book, so it was never going to be an easy task.

I suppose all of this really only leaves me with one question: if I identify more with this colder, less passionate, more detached Nick Carraway, I wonder what I think of myself now?

Lying to herself 'cause her liquor's top shelf

I used to hate Lana Del Rey. Hated. Face creeped me out. Music was boring. I couldn't stand the story of her rise to fame. It was all so constructed, such slap in the face to authentic music.

But then I couldn't stop listening to Video Games. It haunted me. Then I got the album and couldn't stop listening to that, either. And the more I look at her the more I want to be her.

I read an interview with her in the October issue of Vogue Australia and I can't help but find her incredibly engaging. Talking about film music, Nabokov and her wild past, I can't decide if Lana Del Rey is a construct or if this woman is a genuine artist. But I do know I want her style.

I've been watching her videos on Youtube this morning and I came across one that hit me like a tonne of bricks. They're all amazing, even her supposedly home-made ones, but one felt like an emotional punch to the guts.

It's this one:



Summertime Sadness is so beautiful and affecting and so reminiscent of Sofia Coppola's The Virgin Suicides. I'm not sure why this one is my favourite, and I don't know why it upset me so, but I love it.

And now I love Lana Del Fucking Rey.

Hysteria (Tanya Wexler, 2011)

If Art’s primary function is to provide comment on contemporary society and ensure the tradition of passing down historical knowledge via storytelling, then it seems necessary that the cinema engage in presenting major historical developments that lead to societal or institutional change via an entertaining narrative. Recent examples would include A Flash of Genius (Marc Abraham, 2008), The Social Network (David Fincher, 2010), and The Artist (Michel Hazanavicius, 2011).

Hysteria, directed by Tanya Wexler and starring Hugh Dancy, Jonathan Pryce, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Felicity Jones, and Rupert Everett, is a worthy addition. Dancy is Mortimer Granville, a young doctor fascinated by the scientific developments taking place in London in 1880. It’s a pity that he seems to be the only one. After losing many jobs due to his crackpot ideas about ‘germ theory,’ he accepts a job with Dr Robert Dalrymple (Pryce), an expert in the diagnosis and treatment of Hysteria, a malady experienced exclusively by women. When Dr Granville proves extremely good at, erm, ‘handling,’ his patients, Dr Dalrymple promises future ownership of the practice, and Dalrymple’s youngest daughter Emily (Jones). Meanwhile, his elder daughter Charlotte (Gyllenhaal) causes much disruption to Granville’s life and eventually his heart.

This film is an entertaining and extremely amusing interpretation of the invention of the vibrator in the treatment of women with ‘hysteria,’ an impairment thought to be brought on by an ‘overactive uterus.’ But gender politics rule this film: here, women are thought by men to be mentally unstable because of their very genitalia. Our protagonist, Granville, is forced (often literally) to examine women and their various qualities. When given the choice between the ‘ideal woman’ in the form of the genteel Emily and the ‘hysterical woman’ in the form of the volatile Charlotte, he comes to see that both of these representations of women in Victorian England are fictional. Both women are intelligent, strong and resourceful and never regard one another suspiciously in the competition for Granville’s affections. It’s relatively rare to find a film in which both women are equally suitable for the male suitor – yet the conventions of the romantic comedy means the audience will know who Granville will end up with quite early in the piece.


Both women, and the women who visit Dr Dalrymple, seem more than ready for a personal revolution that leads to a societal one. Granville’s invention essentially becomes the catalyst for this change to occur. Hysteria’s message is that when men put women’s pleasure first, great things can happen. Amen.

Hysteria is now screening at Tower Cinemas Newcastle.