Thoughts about Cocaine Blues

All throughout January and in the first few days of February did I have my own rewatch of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries from Cocaine Blues to Death do us part. I watched one episode a day, but when I was done I realised I should have taken the opportunity to discuss them a bit on this blog too. Therefore I will be doing it now and also involve my Lego project. I will not be doing one episode a day, but I will try to at least do one episode a week and see how it goes. First up is of course Cocaine Blues. This was the first one I saw (almost two years go on 22 February 2016) and one of the episodes I have discussed the most in the past.

I did find the show through Essie Davis. I had become a fan of her after watching the Babadook back in December 2015 and started looking up what more she had done. Basically I was hooked from the very beginning. I loved Phryne Fisher from the moment she stepped onto that gangway and met Mac at the harbour in Melbourne.

The plot is about the honourable Phryne Fisher who gets back to Melbourne after some years abroad. She is met with her best friend Dr. Elizabeth “Mac” MacMillan who becomes her most trusted confidant throughout the first episode. The audience soon learn about Murdoch Foyle kidnapping Phryne’s sister Jane when they were kids and that Phryne’s main reason for returning to Australia is to make sure he will not get out of prison. Phryne is also invited to a luncheon at her old friend Lydia Andrew’s house, but Lydia’s husband has been murdered.

At the Andrews’s house, Phryne encounters some of the people who will be more and more important as the show goes on: Dot Williams, Jack Robinson and Hugh Collins. We are also introduced to Phryne’s aunt, Prudence Stanley. When Phryne gets there, Dot comes out of the house telling her that John Andrews has passed away and Phryne immediately gets interested. During a visit to the bathroom where he was found, she meets Jack for the first time. I have talked about their meeting before and I stand by what I said back then. 

Jack is easy to misjudge during this first episode. He is a bit arrogant and stand offish and I first saw him like a typical “cop” having troubles with the lady detective, but there is a twist to him and he grew on me as the series progressed. 

Dot is hired as Phryne’s companion and will also become very important to her. She is certainly the character who grows the most throughout the series. In my blog entry discussing Ruddy Gore I compared her to the invisible child Ninni who is brought to the Moomin family in Tove Jansson’s book with the same name.

Like with Jack it is so easy to misjudge her and she is timid and afraid of everything (especially electricity!), but under Phryne’s care, she grows into a strong, confident young woman over the first two seasons. In the third season she sort of regresses somewhat, but I will get into that more when we get to those episodes.

Through the Andrews’s other maid Alice who has been dismissed after John Andrews got her pregnant, Phryne also gets to know Bert and Cec and the social theme of the episode: illegal abortions. The episode shows that abortions will always happen no matter what the law says and if it is illegal, it can end up severely hurting women while no one will be able to charge the ones carrying them out so the women are often used and might even die. 

In one scene, Bert says that Lenin made abortion legal in the Soviet Union in 1920 and I thought I really had to look it up. It turned out to be true and one of the strangest things I have looked up. I really never thought it was a subject I would look into, but at the same time I am glad I did.

Even though dealing with the past is my profession, I have never really had an interest in the 20^th century. I more or less live by the motto: The older the better. I have always thought you should enhance the holocaust and the Second World War because it is really important that we never forget how horrible that was, but Phryne has given me a real interest in the century in a totally different way. It showed me that there are still stories that needs to be told and I am glad I found it.

Phryne and Jack - the first meeting

I have already written my thoughts about this on Facebook, but I thought I should write it here as well.

In the TV version of Cocaine Blues, we see Phryne Fisher meet Detective Inspector Jack Robinson for the first time in Lydia Andrews's bathroom where her husband John Andrews has been found murdered. I really do think their reaction to each other here is very interesting and it sets up the tone for the entire show in regards to their relationship.

I have talked a lot about Phryne as a character before and how complex she is in regards not least to gender norms (The latest was in the entries Blood and Circuses - TV vs book and Phryne and the gender norms of the 1920's.) and in this particular scene in the bathroom we actually get to see her using both her feminine and her masculine sides.

Phryne is good at charming people. She usually either does it with her "feminine" flirty, seductive side or her "masculine" cleverness and cunning. She is also good at knowing when to use which. The fact that she is not so good when it comes to Jack in this scene tells a lot about what a special place he will come to have in her life after this first meeting. Jack is not exactly like other men in  Phryne's life and because of this she often ends up hurting him by treating him like she would any other men.

Phryne first tries flirting with Jack. This action gives us a small glimpse at her past as a poor girl in Collingwood and also how she has been dealing with the police before. This comes up again in for example Blood and Money when she tells Jack about the swallow brooch and she gives us a much more thorough view about it.

Phryne: You know, the first thing I ever stole, the police let me keep. 
Jack: Really? 
Phryne: This little brooch in the shape of a swallow. I saw it in the pawnbroker's window, and I coveted it for a whole year until I seized the opportunity.
Jack: And you were caught? 
Phryne: Well, someone lagged. 
Jack: Ah. Then you talked your way out of it. 
Phryne: Well, I told the police that my grandmother had given it to me and my father had hocked it for a bottle of beer.

~ Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Blood and Money

Unlike Constable Hugh Collins, who she wins over straight away in the bathroom scene in Cocaine Blues, Jack turns out not to be so easily charmed. Therefore, we see Phryne changing tactics using her cleverness and cunning side instead. But, before giving a thorough analysis of the crime scene. Interestingly enough, she at the same time, also jokes a bit about the stereotype Jack seems to think she is.

Jack: Miss Fisher, I appreciate your curiosity for crime.
Phryne: Well, every lady needs a hobby.

~ Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Cocaine Blues

It is evident by the looks Hugh and Jack give each other that they did not expect her competence, but Jack still will not let himself get charmed by her. So Phryne tries again, going back to the flirting and finally makes him give her his card...

Phryne and gender norms of the 1920's

As I have said in my previous two entries there is a lot to talk about Blood and Circuses. However, I felt like the entry about Phryne's character was so long, that I could not discuss everything in one entry. This entry will therefore more or less be considered "left overs" from the Blood and Circuses TV vs book one.

In both TV episode and book, a transexual person is murdered. On TV, the person is called Miss Christopher and has met up with a doctor who promised to help her become a woman. In the books however, he is called Mr. Christopher and seems to want to be treated like a man even though the magician Robert Sheridan falls in love with him and wants to treat him like a woman (Christine). The book also involves Miss Molly Younger who is engaged to Mr Christopher and is as it turns out also transsexual.

Mr. Christopher and Miss Younger. Man-woman and woman-man. They were made for each other and no one else would fit.

~ Kerry Greenwood, Blood and Circuses (book)

Interestingly enough, transsexuality sort of fits well into the time period. During the first world war one can say that women broke through a gender wall. They proved that they could drive cars and aeroplane, repair them when needed and also replace them in industries and other businesses. This, more than anything, led to women gaining their democratic rights in many countries. But it also created a new ideal for women.

This first wave of emancipation gave women access to a new world and the ideal symbolised their new freedom and confidence. They were no longer only restricted to the home, but could take their place in the public as well. This clashed against the earlier gender segregations of Western society and the gender norms became visible and could therefore be discussed and renegotiated.

In 1922, Victor Margueritte published the book La Garçonne* which became immensely popular among young women. The book moves around in the borderland between the gender norms. It tells the story of Monique Lerbier who handles her fiancé's infidelity by living a free, hedonistic life-style with multiple sexual partners. The book sold in over one million copies and became a cult book for young women who wanted to rebell against the older gender norms and Victorian prissiness which had sort of trapped their mothers and grandmothers. It created a fashion in which women should dress either in clothes traditionally considered male or in figureless dresses and wear cloches. They were also encouraged to cut their hair short (The winter of 1926 had over 50% of the women in Stockholm short hair.). Margueritte's book is not mentioned (as far as I have read) the Phryne Fisher books, or in Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, but it still makes me think about both Phryne and her best friend Elizabeth Macmillan (Mac). I also wonder if it created the so called "lesbian subculture" in Paris that is mentioned in Cocaine Blues (book) when Phryne wonders about Lydia Andrew's sexuality.

Elizabeth "Mac" Macmillan

But not only did the female role change, the male did as well and while the woman became more masculine, the men turned to a more feminine style. One might wonder how this all came about. To make a long story short, I think it has a lot to do with a chaning lifestyle in general due to democratisation, urbanisation and industrialisation, but mostly I think it had a lot to do with the first world war. Both Kerry Greenwood's books and Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries brings up how society to a large extent was thrown into a feeling of despair after the Great War. In a way I find the above quoted (and by me translated) part of Swedish contemporary singer Karl Gerhard's song Jazzgossen (Jazz boy) fitting. It talks exactly of those old, traditional gender values with the knights in shiny armour who fight over the fair maidens. A violent culture that can be seen as having culminated in the war. In this way, the ideals became a rebellion against those who were in place before the war and which was held responsible for it. What we can see during the 1920's is a renegotiations of the gender roles. Women became more masculine and men more feminine. In a way this makes a story bringing up transexuality fitting into this world.

 This is just a short overview and I probably will have reasons to go back to it in future entries to the blog as I progress in my reading of Kerry Greenwood's books. Phryne is, after all, the personification of the new woman of the 1920's.

Sources:
Andersen, Jens 2015. Denna dagen, ett liv. En biografi över Astrid Lindgren, Swedish translation: Urban Andersson.
Hirdman, Yvonne & Lundberg, Urban & Björkman, Jenny 2012. Norstedts Sveriges historia 1920-1965.
The photo of Phryne was borrowed here and the one of Mac here.

*I have not read this book myself. Only a general description in Jens Andersen's Astrid Lingren biography Denna dagen, ett liv. This is what I base my knowledge of it on.

Wandering Wombs in Cocaine Blues

Rewatching the pilot episode of Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries, Cocaine Blues (which I have talked about before here.) got me thinking. Phryne Fisher finds powder in Lydia Andrew's bathroom which her friend Elizabeth "Mac" Macmillan identifies as a nerve powder usually prescribed to women for their hysteric tendencies.

As you can see in the gif to the left, one of the maladies that Mac mentions is wandering wombs. The descriptions of this ailment made me interested and thinking of another, more modern one, but I will get to that later. First I think there is a need to talk a little about what the wandering womb was thought to be.

The term is first known from Ancient Greece, but it is by  some thought to originate in Egypt. The Ancient Greeks thought of it as the most dangerous sickness for women and famous Greek names such as Plato and Hippocrates talk about it. It also worked as a way to legitimize men's power over women.

The womb was thought of as the main reason as to why men and women were so different. It was also considered the greatest weakness of women because of its tendencies to wander, causing the women to et hysterical. Aretaeus of Cappadocia even go as far as to call it an animal inside an animal and with this revealing the Greek (mainly Athenian) view on women.

Aretaeus also says that the womb can be "lured back" into place using sents. Either nice scents applied inside the vagina or bad ones inhaled through the woman's nose. Another Greek, Soranus, on the other hand argued that the womb itself was not mobile and that the reason why the scent therapy worked was that it got the muscles to relax.

Other things that were prescribed were having sex (like Mac also says) and making women pregnant as often as possible to keep the womb occupied.

The notion of the wandering womb was spread to Rome and Byzantine and from that to the Arabs who prescribe sneezing (which I found out actually also was considered to be able to stop the heart, but that is a different story).

The womb was not longer thought of as being able to wander by the 16th century, but the thought of female hysteria was more long-lived and spread widely through society in the 19th century.

It is easy to write off things like the wandering womb from Ancient knowledge as complete nonsense in light of the knowledge of modern medicine. Female hysteria can probably be considered to be mostly a social construction.

Based strictly on the descriptions of symptoms (and not the female hysteria diagnosis) a diagnos that springs to my mind is endometriosis. The cause of this is actually tissues from the womb which can actually be said to have "wandered" outside of the womb causing terrible pain for the affected woman during menstruation. Being in terrible pain can certainly cause hysteria in anyone both male and female.

Cocaine Blues - TV vs Book

"Considering your last employers were a drug baroness and a rapist, surely you'd find me a moderst improvement"

~ Phryne Fisher, Cocaine Blues, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

I just realised that the two latest books I have read have had titles related to songs. Mördar-Anders is a song by Cornelis Vreeswijk. and Cocaine Blues a song by Johnny Cash. However, it is not the songs I want to talk about in this entry, but the differences between the book Cocaine Blues by Kerry Greenwood and the TV adaptation by Every Cloud Production. There are some differences and I found myself enjoying it since the book seemed fresh even for someone who has watched the TV episode a couple of times.
There are certain basic parts of the plot that are similar. Phryne goes back to Australia after having spent some time living in the United Kingdom. Her reasons for returning is somewhat different though. On TV she comes back to prevent the man who was charged with the kidnapping of her sister to get out of jail (a plot line running through the entire first season of the TV series). In the book, she is being sent to Australia by a Colonel and his wife to find out why their daughter Lydia (married Andrews) is sick so often. Lydia Andrews also appear in the TV adaptation, but seems to be an old friend of Phryne. She, her husband John and Phryne's aunt Prudence (who does not appear at all in the book unfortunately) invite Phryne to a luncheon that is cancelled because of the murder of John.

Dr Elizabeth Macmillan (On TV usually called Mac) is another of Phryne's old friends. In the book, she travels on the boat together with Phryne, but on TV she is already in Australia, meeting Phryne when she arrives. After the abortion who nearly kills Alice (Greenham in the book. Hartley on TV) Bert and Cec brings her to Mac and alerts Phryne to her condition.

On TV Alice works as the Andrews maid together with Dorothy "Dot" Williams (who has a slightly different background and the last name Bryant in the book) and John Andrews forces himself upon her and she ends up getting pregnant. In the books the background is somewhat different and even though it feels like "the situation" still seems to have arisen through a somewhat forced sexual encounter, she does not work for John Andrews and he is not the father of her child.

There are indications that John Andrews is a rapist even in the books however. His wife seems to have trouble with sex because of this, thinking Sasha is going to rape her when he and Phryne capture her.

"(---) She finds sex loathsome, that is plain. Dirty. Disgusting. Her husband has mistreated her; no woman is born icy..."

~ Sasha De Lisse, Cocaine Blues

Actually I have to say that I do enjoy Lydia's character better in the book. On TV, she succeeds in killing her husband and that is the main plot of the episode. In the book she just plans to poison her husband and we get a little more background to her being the King of Snow. Actually I found the description of the King of Snow interesting. The character was throughout the book up until it was revealed to be Lydia described as a male. Lydia even admits to taking over the role from a woman in Paris, so it seems like the title has been used of a woman for quite some time.

Because I do so much enjoy the character of Detective Inspector Jack Robinson in the TV series, I was sad to see he was quite passive in this book. While rewatching the episode however, I realised that he is not really so much in that one either. Phryne encounters him more there than in the book, but they still does not interact as much as they do in later episodes. I have heard that his character and relations to Phryne are rather different in the books than on TV, but I do not want to have any prejudice towards his book persona until I have got to know him. As we have seen there are some differences in pretty much all characters between book and TV and the book introduces a couple of other characters as well while others are left out. One character I would have loved to see on TV is the female police working with Jack, WPC Jones.

I have to say that I do enjoy both the book and the TV episode and I think there are things they both do better and worse than each other. I prefer how both the abortion, the murder and the drug dealing plotlines are all entwined in the TV episode. It gave a better structure to the story. However, I love that Phryne's social commitment is so much stronger in the book. You see her going to dinner with the socialites of Melbourne and reacting to them trash talking the poor.

'I hope that you did not give him anything, Mr Sanderson!' 
'Of course I did, ma'am.'
'But he would only spend it on drink! You know what the working class are!'
'Indeed, ma'am, and why should he not spend it on drink? Would you deprive the poor, whose lives are band and miserable and comfortless enough, of the solace of a little relief from grinding poverty? A sordid, sodden relief perhaps, but would you be so heartless as to deny the poor even that pleasure in which all of us indulge at your generous expense?'

~ Cocaine Blues

One of the things I also prefer with the book is the solution of the mystery. On TV, Phryne kind of needs to be "rescued" by Jack and it is very unclear if they are able to catch Lydia and finish the cocaine trade. In the book Phryne saves herself! Together with Sasha, she manages to capture Lydia and it is clear that Lydia's helpers also get caught by the police. I find that ending more satisfying seeing as Phryne is no damsel in distress. (To be fair, it is one of a rather few episodes in which Jack needs to come help her out of trouble though.)

(I also would have loved for the scenes in which Phryne kisses Bert to have been in the TV episode as well, but I guess you cannot have everything you want...)


Pictures from here and here.

Kerry Greenwood - Cocaine Blues

Her heart was beating appreciably faster, and she took more rapid breaths, but she was enjoying herself. Adventuresses are born, not made.

~ Kerry Greenwood, Cocaine Blues

Finally, I started reading the books about The Honourable Phryne Fisher by Kerry Greenwood. The first one is, like the pilot of the TV series called Cocaine Blues (1989). I have talked so much about the TV series and how great it is in previous entries to this blog and I will try not to repeat myself to much.

The first "real" post I wrote was about Phryne. Book Phryne is slightly different than TV Phryne, but just as great. (I still cannot help picturing Essie Davis, as I read and I will probably be doing it while reading the other books as well.)

From reactions on TV Phryne on the internet I realise that she is quite uncommon for a female character in pop culture of today and in a recent fan questioning on his website, the actor Nathan Page (who plays Jack Robinson on TV) said: "It’s about bloody time women characters take the lead roles." It makes me quite sad that popular culture does not entirely trust women to carry plot lines in all sorts of media, because to me it is very obvious that they can. In fact growing up in Sweden I was kind of spoon-fed female characters similar to Phryne from a very early age. Astrid Lindgren has written quite a few of them, for example Pippi Långstrump (Pippi Longstocking), Madicken and Ronja rövardotter (Ronja, the Robber's Daughter). I think they are all similar to Phryne, a topic which I have also touched upon before.

Essie Davis as Phryne Fisher in Cocaine Blues

The book is, obviously, about the Honourable Phryne Fisher who travels back to her native Australia. Unlike in the TV series, she does not have a sister who went missing when they were children, but she has been sent by a retired Indian Colonel (who's name you do not get to know other than "the Colonel"). She is to investigate why his daughter Lydia (married Andrews) has been sick so often.

When Phryne gets to Melbourne, she gets herself involved in much more trouble with drug dealers and illegal abortion. The plot is made up of, mostly, the same ingredients as the TV episode. However, they are arranged somewhat differently and I think that is great because now the story felt fresh. I missed Hugh Collins and Aunt Prudence though and Jack Robinson was a little too passive and most of the time non-present and I could not help wondering why they have changed Dot's name. In the book she is called Dorothy Bryant and on TV Dorothy Williams.

There are more themes to talk about in this book and I promise to get back to them in later posts. However, I feel the need to share some thought I have about abortion rights and how it is problematised throughout both books and TV episode. Obviously it was illegal in Australia in 1928. According to Jack Robinson in the TV episode, it could give the woman 10-15 years in jail. (If I have understoood it correctly it is still not legal everywhere in Australia even today.) In Sweden it has been legal since 1938 (The law has been through some changes. The most recent one in 1974.). What I thought interesting was that Vladimir Lenin made abortion legal in the Sovjet Union in 1920 (A fact that "the red-ragger" Bert is soon to provide to Jack in the TV episode and that I had to look up and can say it is true.).

"This was the factory foreman's idea, not mine"

~ Mary, Unnatural Habits, Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries

To me it is pretty obvious that a woman who gets pregnant unwillingly always will try to have an abortion even though it is illegal, which Cocaine Blues also illustrates. There will always be "bad men" like Butcher George that will exploit women "in trouble", sometimes in the most gruesome ways. They are fully aware that the women cannot complain or go to the police because they are commiting a crime just as much as the abortionist. It is really a society that creates tragedies, especially since it was very frowned upon if the women gave birth to a child after having got pregnant against her will (even if she had not willingly participated in the sexual act).