To those of you who aren’t aware, American Gods, an adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s novel, is coming to Starz sometime this year (sometime this Spring??? ODIN’s TEETH I NEED TO KNOW!), and it is very literally going to be the BEST show you’ve seen all year.
Check out all our American Gods Coverage Here
For those of you who have already caught up with what’s new and what’s been simmering since Comic-Con, here are a few tasty tidbits from the production to hold us over until we know when we will finally see Shadow in motion.
Say Hello to Vulcan
Vulcan doesn’t appear in the original novel, but he will in the show, and for one of the best reasons I can think of. Gaiman himself originally floated the idea of the Roman god of metal work and the volcano, and Bryan Fuller is masterfully handling the addition as the newly transforming god of guns.
Because Vulcan’s an OLD god, a guy with baggage and a history with Wednesday, instead of being purely on one side of the conflict or another, he’s straddling the line. Old god origins with new god loyal devotees. I cannot wait to see Corbin Bernsen bring Vulcan to a middling show down with Ian McShane’s Wednesday. I cannot WAIT to view the treatise on gun devotion in the new world. It’s almost too much genius to deal with.
Sweet Jesus
Readers know that American Gods doesn’t spend a lot of time on the Judeo-Christian deities, but Jesus Christ will make an appearance in Jeremy Davies. I’m imagining his craven character in Saving Private Ryan as similar to the way he’ll play the Son of God: sweet and bumbling and a little scared of Kristin Chenowith’s Eostre (Ostara/Easter). Even his official character description fits that bill:
Resurrected on Ostara’s feast day, Jesus has always been generous in sharing the Easter holiday with the ancient goddess. But the overly empathetic Son of God would be crushed to know that Ostara harbors some deeply buried resentment over the issue.”
And speaking of Easter … look at this perfect bonnet on her perfect head, via Bryan Fuller’s dream of a twitter account:
It’s almost as beautiful as our colorful selfie with Shadow:
I matched my hair to that balloon canopy just for you, Ricky Whittle.
Sex Positive
If you paid attention to American Gods at SDCC, they are recreating the Bilquis man-eating vagina scene verbatim. What a way to finally get straight-from-the-book attention from a Starz adaptation (ahem). Here for it.
But it seems like the showrunners are not just banking on Bilquis (her role will be bigger than it is in the book), but are also sticking with Bryan Fuller’s philosophy of sex-positivity versus the horrible sexual ideology we usually see on the small screen. He said in this piece by Maureen Ryan for Variety late last year, “America as a country has a very fucked-up attitude regarding sex and sexuality, so there is something [troubling] about the punishing of characters for their sex and sexuality.”
And that attitude led to the writer’s room rule: NO RAPE IN THIS SHOW. Can we take a minute and SLOW CLAP THAT?!?! Michael Green gave probably one of my favorite quotes in the same Maureen Ryan piece. I want to get Amy to cross-stitch it for me.
“For a long time, incest and rape were go-to story points, and I don’t think they’re edgy, they’re just gross. The disposability of it as a plot point is not anything I can engage in. For me, there’s no quicker way to get me to turn off a story. I’m just done.”
If only every show runner and writer’s room carried the same mandate. Truth is, American Gods has some crazy sex in it – it’s certainly not devoid of depictions of sexuality. If Fuller and Green are keeping it true to the novel and true to their sex positivity, we are in for some transformative stuff we have yet to see. Shadow’s amazing sex with Egyptian Cat Goddess, Bast, anyone?
Ok.
