I love the outfits. Also there are books.
Jun. 19th, 2023 06:37 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
which_chickI love the outfits from The Untamed. They look great. They are clearly DESIGNED to look great both at rest and IN MOTION (fans self) and I am incredibly down with all of that.
In the throes of my enjoyment I briefly considered about the number of layers involved and how the actual clothing industry worked in history and stuff because the sheer yardages involved in dressing JUST Lan Wangji, for example... and I get that cultivators are rich and stuff, but still. Happily, a brief google on that front assured me that while there may be some definite historic borrowing on the style front, the outfits in The Untamed are roughly as historically accurate as the outfits in Game of Thrones or the outfits in The Lord of the Rings. That is, they're not. They do not really TRY to come from a real time or place. The Untamed takes place in Long Ago (there aren't, like, cars or cell phones) Fantasy (magic works, the dead walk the earth, a flute is a viable weapon in large-scale combat) China and the outfits used in the show are just as real as the setting is.
So, the designers and costumers for the show... basically made shit up and chose to emphasize more stuff that looks good than stuff which might be (imagine the biggest air quotes ever) historically accurate for the time period in which this shit took place, that very clearly being back when people in the Middle Kingdom flew about on the blades of their swords. People who know more about historical outfits in the-region-currently-known-as-China or CLAIM to have that knowledge on the internet express the thought that the designers definitely looked at the entire sprawl of "possible long-ago outfit options" and selected from that smorgasbord freely plus added in a cup or three of "Looks Cool" sprinkle toppings to generate the clothing aesthetic of the show. (And probably also the sets which I have not yet begun to look it, it being so very difficult to look at much of anything else if that idiot with the flute is on screen.)
This is, and I really should not have to say it, NOT A WRONG APPROACH TO COSTUMES for a story set in Long Ago Fantasy China. It's fine. Not gonna judge when people understand how to dress men in completely impractical yet delightful outfits that look great while still covering almost every inch of them below the collarbones and above the wrists. (There is no wrong way to dress Wei Wuxian.)
In other news, there are books for this and I am reading the books in a legit pay-for incarnation. The books are a bit more flexible with the timeline because reasons but also I guess you can say stuff in books that you cannot put in live action television in China. The books have explicit romance stuff. The live action television... has to imply. Am still on fence as to which of those is more fun. (It is laughable, given how this thing is filmed, blocked, and acted, to pretend that the people making the live action thing were unaware of the provenance of the storyline that they were hired to portray. They knew. The script is the script and the dialogue is the dialogue, but the filming and the blocking and the acting is a love story. I do not know how it got past the censors.)
In the throes of my enjoyment I briefly considered about the number of layers involved and how the actual clothing industry worked in history and stuff because the sheer yardages involved in dressing JUST Lan Wangji, for example... and I get that cultivators are rich and stuff, but still. Happily, a brief google on that front assured me that while there may be some definite historic borrowing on the style front, the outfits in The Untamed are roughly as historically accurate as the outfits in Game of Thrones or the outfits in The Lord of the Rings. That is, they're not. They do not really TRY to come from a real time or place. The Untamed takes place in Long Ago (there aren't, like, cars or cell phones) Fantasy (magic works, the dead walk the earth, a flute is a viable weapon in large-scale combat) China and the outfits used in the show are just as real as the setting is.
So, the designers and costumers for the show... basically made shit up and chose to emphasize more stuff that looks good than stuff which might be (imagine the biggest air quotes ever) historically accurate for the time period in which this shit took place, that very clearly being back when people in the Middle Kingdom flew about on the blades of their swords. People who know more about historical outfits in the-region-currently-known-as-China or CLAIM to have that knowledge on the internet express the thought that the designers definitely looked at the entire sprawl of "possible long-ago outfit options" and selected from that smorgasbord freely plus added in a cup or three of "Looks Cool" sprinkle toppings to generate the clothing aesthetic of the show. (And probably also the sets which I have not yet begun to look it, it being so very difficult to look at much of anything else if that idiot with the flute is on screen.)
This is, and I really should not have to say it, NOT A WRONG APPROACH TO COSTUMES for a story set in Long Ago Fantasy China. It's fine. Not gonna judge when people understand how to dress men in completely impractical yet delightful outfits that look great while still covering almost every inch of them below the collarbones and above the wrists. (There is no wrong way to dress Wei Wuxian.)
In other news, there are books for this and I am reading the books in a legit pay-for incarnation. The books are a bit more flexible with the timeline because reasons but also I guess you can say stuff in books that you cannot put in live action television in China. The books have explicit romance stuff. The live action television... has to imply. Am still on fence as to which of those is more fun. (It is laughable, given how this thing is filmed, blocked, and acted, to pretend that the people making the live action thing were unaware of the provenance of the storyline that they were hired to portray. They knew. The script is the script and the dialogue is the dialogue, but the filming and the blocking and the acting is a love story. I do not know how it got past the censors.)
no subject
Date: 2023-06-23 05:28 pm (UTC)I remember meta about the costumes and also about the time period. I think some fans found a time period that mostly works for the kind of hanfu style the characters are wearing, but IIRC it didn't fit with some other stuff and the end result was *handwavy* ehhh sometime long ago. XD Which is super fine since this is fantasy after all; we're not going for the historically accurate court drama (which there are a lot of, I think, "prestige dramas" that at least try to get their historical stuff accurate).
(And yes, Xiao Zhan wears all these costumes exceptionally well! XD)
The sets are also... uhhh... well, most of it was shot at Hengdian World Studios, where pretty much everything is filmed. If you watch a lot of dramas, you will repeatedly see the same locations. Hell, if you watch any kind of Chinese media, you will recognise stuff - one particular outdoor corridor jumped out at me in Hero and Mulan. XD And then there's the river with the stony bank that's perfect to stare contemplatively into the water at, which Wei Wuxian does very nicely, as does Wen Kexing in Word of Honor. XD
Censorship in China is a huge problem for these shows, especially if they are based on BL (Boys Love) novels. Homosexuality is not... completely forbidden but it's also not supposed to be encouraged in any way, and nowadays any kind of obvious homoerotic scenes get cut. Everyone making CQL was well aware what the source material contained and they wanted to depict the romance as much as they were able, and they found many good ways. What they did could mostly be excused with "brotherhood" and "close friendship" etc. Also, the ending had to be recut (Japan got the original version). But overall, when CQL came out in 2019, the censorship board wasn't yet as extreme in their view as they're now.
They had another crackdown on cdramas after the huge success of Word of Honor (because even though there's also no kissing etc. they got away with a lot) and there are many dramas based on BL/danmei (the Chinese book genre) that are in limbo because of it. Some dramas came out edited to hell, I think, but overall it's a really shitty situation. (Don't ask any of the 2ha/Dumb Husky fans about Immortality, they'll likely start crying.)
MDZS is also locked on the online website where it was published, as were the author's other webnovels because of their explicit content or just... the romance in general (because TGCF/Heaven Official's Blessing was never very explicit). The whole censorship thing is a huge discussion point in cdrama fandom in general. It's, uh, complicated.
The novel also is much more morally grey and they way Wei Wuxian uses the dead is something that simply can't be shown on Chinese TV, it's a religion/culture thing. That's why we got the black smoke and "puppets" instead of zombies/undead people which they obviously are... That's also why Wei Wuxian isn't as morally grey in the show, because as the protagonist he can't be too evil.