Which Charles Bukowski Was Karen Reading in Californication

Being a writer has never been and so exciting than in Californication. Sexual practice, books and stone'n'roll is Hank Moody's motto.

The primary character of the serial Californication created by Tom Kapinos, Hank Moody (David Duchovny), is a novelist, merely non the mutual blazon. Witty and not so bad looking, Hank lives in the Venice district of Los Angeles, living out a rock 'n' roll version of the "Californian life" with his agent as best friend (Charlie Runkle played past Evan Handler). For the audition's nifty pleasure, Hank'south life is skirting—and sometimes outrageously crossing—the edge of American morality.

Tom Kapinos chose to take the creativity concept literally by intertwining real life and fiction, which give more than depth to the main character. For Hank has more than than his surname, his glass of whisky and his old fashioned typewriter in common with Charles Bukowski's modify-ego Hank Chinaski.

A cocky-destructive graphic symbol

Hank Moody has few things in common with the cannon of the intellectual, lonesome and withdrawn writer one could take in listen. He persists making his life difficult, plunging correct down into moving waves with his optics closed, creating his own problems by playing the office of the melancholic and outcast poet like his proper name "Moody" implies. In love with Karen (Natascha McElhone) Hank keeps endangering their relationship by seeing other women, drinking and behaving selfishly.

For Hank would take been tedious if he had always lived the well-off "Californian life". The fact that he was non rich, and even non prepared to be, but made his fortune past creating a piece of work makes him a legitimate and downwards to globe author. The series plays well with the audition's expectations in this sense. For case, the ellipsis on Hank's simple lifestyle when he lived in New York, where he was a common, unknown man who writing on an quondam typewriter in a barren loft that he shared with Karen.

Similar Harry in the motion picture Deconstructing Harry by Woody Allen, Hank is "out of focus". Information technology seems that when Hank plays the hero or the perfect admirer, he always fails at it. Having "incredible talent and flush[ing] it downwards the toilet" ("Pilot") turns him into the "perfect" touching writer. The white folio trauma acts similar a thrill creating tension in the plot and worrying audiences who gamble on his destiny. Merely shots, like the i in which Hank finishes Lew's Ashby biography reassure the audience.

The anti-hero questions and raises controversies a character with less personality would take failed at. Californication challenges right-thinking American values—family, sex, love and behavior— by giving the main character unusual features from regular television serial.

Sexual practice, drugs and rock'due north'roll

Yet, contrary to Woody Allen's antihero, Hank is the famous author of Hollywood who lives a "sexual practice, drugs and stone 'n' curlicue" life.

In season 5 episode 1, Mia Lewis (Madeline Zima), the xvi year old daughter of Karen's boyfriend Neb Lewis (Damian Young), praises him "yous're a fucking rock star". The symbolic of rock 'north' curlicue attitude plays a pivotal part in the series for they characterize our anti-hero through a contemporary bespeak of view, which the audience can recognize as a certain ultimate rock dream. The brusk simply intense friendship between Hank and the stone ring leader Lew Ashby, is key to the creation of Hank's "rockstar" characteristics. Hank mirrors the rocker lifestyle— music, women, prostitutes, parties, sex, drinking— through his remarks after disapproving Lew'south behavior: "Jesus Christ, I simply realized what it must exist similar to live with me".

Stone 'n' roll clues are obvious but intentional for the series target. From the obvious tribute to The Cherry Hot Chili Peppers' hit, to Hank'due south novel titles which as well refer to rock songs —such as "God Hates Us All" from the band Slayer. Hank's black and white shirt manner, electric guitars in the house, vinyls lying on the flooring, former dusty convertible black car with one broken calorie-free. His daughter Becca listening to hard stone and playing guitar hero. All this wrapped with rock music soundtracks and drug habit problems set the scene in club to grasp a certain target audience in quest of rebellion.

Beyond fiction

However, if Hank is supposed to be a author, and so why are there very few scenes where Hank is writing? Unlike movies, series needs far more action and reactivity. Equally David Duchovny highlights:

"it is really horrible to play writers considering it's unremarkably really boring. It's non dramatic" (LA Times)

Knowing some blue scrap audience expectations regarding the narrative, the series plays a lot with intertextuality. From the mediated life of David Duchovny to the obvious relationship betwixt Hank Moody and Hank Chinaski, 1 of Showtime's best hits is total of literary winks.

Media coverage of the fact that the former actor of 10-files went into rehab for sex-addiction which could take prevented him from continuing his career every bit an player, but instead the director Tom Kapinos judged it equally an interesting—if not commercial— opportunity since David Duchovny's life looks alike his office as Hank Moody.

However, this is not the only case where Duchovny'south function in the serial resembles his ain reality. Having a PhD in English Literature, Hank's alter ego on screen confesses to the LA Times that he dreamed of becoming a writer:

"I thought I would write. I thought it was a skilful job with good vacation time to where I could take four months a year and exist able to do what I wanted to do, which was write (…)".

Besides, since he was one time a teaching assistant similar Hank in flavour 3, Duchovny feels more at ease performing the function of a writer :

"I understand the self-loathing and the resentment, and the subject field that it takes to sit in front of a typewriter or computer every single twenty-four hours, whether it's going well or non going well… I didn't need to inquiry how to be a professor because I'd already been a teaching assistant when I was pursuing my Ph.D.; information technology was a very clear retentivity." (The Daily Beast)

Though he said to the newspaper he only "dabbles" while writing poetry or fifty-fifty screenplays, his role equally a writer—and maybe his ain identification with it—plays a skilful function in creating an effect of "reality", and offsets the fact that Californication does non show the work of the author considering few shots show Hank Moody writing for real.

Hank Moody vs Hank Chinaski

The poem "How to be a Great Writer" past Charles Bukowski, sums up all:

"you've got to fuck a great many women

beautiful women

and write a few decent dear poems

and don't worry about historic period

and / or freshly-arrived talents.

more and more beer (…)".

Hank Moody is easily recognizable in the very self-inspired Bukowski graphic symbol Henry "Hank" Chinaski who ever appears to be an alcoholic writer living in Los Angeles. Similarly, the straight writing of the scenario , such every bit the employ of "real life dialogs" with a lot of rudeness and swearing or fights and sexual practice shots,signify Bukowski's style. Besides, as if to set the scene, the starting time two episodes of Californication brand direct references to a collection of the American writers' poems untitled Notes of a Muddy Old Man : Hank Moody is dubbed twice a "dingy old human being", start by his "lover" Karen, then by Mia. Other references are likewise made during the episodes and seasons, such as when Karen reading one of Bukowski's collection of poems Sifting Through the Madness for the Earth, the Line, the Way.

In Bukowski'due south novel Women, the similarities of characters with Californication are obvious from the first pages. Like Hank Moody, the "sex activity, drugs and stone 'n' roll" life of Hank Chinaski is the story of a man who has a unique love, Lydia, whom he had a daughter with, but who messes it up considering of his infidelities, alcoholism and borderline way of living.

The name Californicationrefers also to the novel written by Bukowski, Hollywood. The book is virtually the man's daily life striving at the writing of a screenplay, which in real life turns out to exist the picture Barfly directed by Barbet Schroeder. In season four of Californication, Hank Moody accepts to write a screenplay of his book Fucking & Punching, which like in Bukowski's novel takes time to accept place. Similarly in season five, a rap singer "Apocalypse Samurai" asks him to write the script for his film.

The "reality effect" is likewise highlighted when Hank Moody'due south features non only friction match those of the fictional graphic symbol Hank Chinaski just the real Bukowski. Alcohol abuse aside, Hank has some difficulties managing his glory similar Bukowski admitted in a French show : "I did not write to exist famous (…) to me that's a terrible evolution (…) it does not delight me".

Hank implies such paradoxical thinking for he flirts with the Los Angeles jet ready but keeps his cleaved convertible.

Making quality TV

A proficient scenario is one of the most important features defining quality for any type of media since it implies the narrative and the aesthetic, hence the author is the key element in the cosmos of any Quality Goggle box series.Making Hank Moody the main grapheme in Californication is therefore not past chance but choice,to reflect one of the primordial properties in Quality television.

The intertwined intertextuality, giving an attribute of "hyper-realism", are there to remind the audition that they are watching a peculiar course of television, if not something else than television equally the channel HBO claims:"It'due south not TV, it'southward HBO". For Californication, Tom Kapinos uses the writer as a direct reference to its blueish chip demographic for he knew they would know well-nigh the literary references of Charles Bukowski and winks at David Duchovny's personal life. As well every bit for the "sex, drugs, and rock 'northward' coil" contents that not but matches Bukowski'southward writing style, merely too creates harsh realism and controversial matters.

In the aforementioned way, Showtime could have non fabricated it more realistic for they published the fictional book written by Hank in the serial for real, under the same championship (God Hates U.s.a. All) and with Hank Moody as the writer. They have erased a part of reality, the real author'southward name, to transpose a fiction into existent life.

The aim of the series is not to perform what the reallife of a writer is, but what the audience wants a writer to be like.Californication is like any others series : its goal is to attain the biggest audience every bit possible by transferring fantasies of the public into a pleasant, laughable and watchable story. Hank Moody has all the features to make a skillful character since he is artistic and his life "rocks". In the same way as Bukowski does in Hollywood, Californication gives in its own way, a critical arroyo to the Hollywood machine, the book industry and the people who play a function in it. Hank is represented every bit a rebel author, the 1 who is out of the mainstream and who dislikes, even if he participates in information technology, the cultural business organization of L.A.

Bibliography

Bukowski, Charles. Hollywood : a novel. Edinburgh: Canongate, 2007. Print.
—. New poems book four. London: Virgin, 2005. Print.
—. Notes of a dingy one-time homo. [San Francisco: City Lights Books, 1973. Impress.
—. Women. London: Virgin, 2009. Print.

McCabe, Janet, and Kim Akass. Quality TV. London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 2007. Impress.
Moody, Hank, and Jonathan Grotenstein. God Hates Us All. New York: Simon Spotlight Entertainment, 2009. Print.
Villez, Barbara. "Ecritures Médiatiques : les Séries ( Writing Series/ Series Writing)." Compendium. 2013 2012 : n. pag. Print.

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