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I was a bit hacked off that the castrato turned out to be a girl
I think RTD probably struck the right note here though, in terms of bringing in what one might call a queer sensibility whilst keeping Jacko basically heterosexual*.
Jacko starts off all cocky and "I can tell she's a girl unlike the rest of you fools", but he's then convinced that Bellino is a boy and forced to admit/realise that it doesn't really matter, he still would. Only then once he's accepted B as male is he allowed to see B as female - I think it's much easier to be hacked off about the fact that he then says "right, now you don't need to bother dressing up as a boy anymore!", except for the fact that we still have lines about the fact that Jacko is the wife in the relationship, and for the possibility that things will be complicated further in the next two episodes.
I do like the fact that other than pursuing Bellino (and presumably Henriette), we haven't seen Casanova doing much active, successful seducing. Both the girl who first initiates him and the two sisters completely take the lead - and none of these people are 'conventionally' attractive. Now I'm not going to suggest that that's 'subversive' because the same thing tended to happen to Robin Asquith, but it is interesting, as is the fact that these examples portary underage sexuality and heavily implied incest respectively in positive terms.
*Not that I think a writer has to do that, but I get this suspicion that this writer might have set himself that constraint, almost as a formalistic challenge. |
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