#Hope your day is devoid of toxic masculinity and it's consequences!

[ruins-of-tragedy]

Thoughts on season one's episode eight to twelve of RWBY. This was the most fun batch so far.

Season 01 Episode 08: Players and Pieces

- "Welcome to the world of bloody evolution..."

- The interactions between Ruby and Weiss are so bad for them but so funny for me.

- It's not everyday your sister falls from the sky. And then gets hit by a Jaune projectile. Yang must be so confused. So is Blake. Which, fair.

- Oh my Gods. Nora comes riding in on a monster?! Awesome entry alert!

- "It's broken." Wonder why. ⚡

- Ren cannot anymore... This girl is fast for a sloth. And now she has a chesspiece and a song.

- Blake and Yang are confounded. The bear monster is called an Ursa. Pyrrha has entered the scene with a scorpion on her tail... What a badass move!

- Jaune is still hanging around... 😆. Ruby and Yang scream each other's name in greeting. Nora shouts her own in return, 'cause of course. And here I thought Jaune had more energy.

- The scorpion is termed Deathstalker. Yang blows her lid so bad, a timer for a bomb is activated...

- Done with everything, Yang is. Something tells me so is Weiss, mayhaps.

- Weiss is falling. Is this Jaune's moment to shine? Yes, apparently. And also to break his own back in the process. The line he used when catching her was good though, I will give him that.

- "Great. The gang's all here. Now we can die together!" -Yang Xiao Long

- Ruby has two monsters on her. I hope Yang doesn't have to watch her sister die... Ahhh. Weiss saves the day! And accepts her fate and her shortcomings! Who would have known Ruby almost dying was all it would take.

- While Ruby celebrates her "normal knees," Yang 'shuffles' close and almost crushes her with her love... That run was weird and so funny. Good Gods. The animation really is bad sometimes.

- "Look, there's no sense in dilly-dallying." But I was born for it! Forced to lock in now. UGHHHHHHHHH.

- "Run and live."✨👏🏻😂

- Another win for the horsin' around folks. The other chess figure both Nora and Jaune pick? We call it the elephant here.

- Ruby is leading. Yang is a proud parental figure. Blake noticed. CUTE!

- The monsters also want to "run and live."

- They are fighting together. And well. So COOOL!!!

- Maybe I spoke too soon. But they still trying! And holy hell. I think Thor would be proud of Nora being his representation.

- Blake is badass. I already knew that but it's nice to watch it unfold.

- Team RWBY is getting ready with their weapons. AGHHHHHHHHH! Ruby about to team lead the shite out of this birdie.

- Defining moments coming up!!!

- Team JNPR is moving against the scorpion. WOOOHOO! Jaune is actually a good leader. Nora "nail"ed it. Pyrrha is forever a great warrior. And Ren is getting too old for this. Scorpion down!!!

- This song. Dance battle in my roooom!!!!

- Yang is feeding birdie knuckle sandwiches. Weiss froze its tailend. Blake's lasso is turning into a makeshift catapult. Ruby's plan is about to work, but banter first... Weiss gets offended but what else is new? 😂

- Look at them all working together. ❤️‍🔥😭💖

- Red like roses part two!!!

- Birdie said bye-bye. Or couldn't, I guess... Team Cardinal. CRDL. Huh. So the first letter leads?

- The chesspiece team JNPR or Juniper picked is known as the rook out there? I shall stick to calling them elephants... Jaune is so surprised about being the leader. Pyrrha isn't at all and gives him a celebratory punch that has him falling. LoLLL!

- White knight pieces?! Horsies... Team RWBY. Led by what you are supposed to call them all together. Is Weiss shocked or...?

- Truly an interesting year ahead! Under the same broken moon we find... Torchwick?! Dude. Why do they all have such cool names?!

- OOOOOOooooooooh! Map of Vale. Beacon has been circled. Bad guy needs more men. Can only mean one thing.... Party, party, hallelujah! 🎉😆

- The Torchwick ending. His symbol looks like a boogey man mask... I must look into the soundtrack.

Season 01 Episode 09: The Badge and the Burden - Pt I

- I have been noticing this for a while now. The opening song begins playing first from the right side of my headphones. And then the left end also joins in. I don't remember what they call this, but the people behind this entry piece have done a good job here.

- Ruby is taking her team leader post very seriously. Like a coach. Yang and Blake are also excited about interior decoration. What the fuck does Banzai mean? And did they rehearse striking that pose?!

- Weiss' long suffering sigh could be heard all over Beacon... Yang's boyband poster, Blake's trailer trees in a painting belonging to Weiss, Blake arranging her books and hiding 'Ninjas of Love.' Do the ninjas like lemons? 😏✨😉. If you know, you know. And Ruby deciding on giving their curtains a makeover.

- From beds on top of each other, to bunk beds. And the second option is actually more dangerous... They really are something special.

- Team RWBY and JNPR be neighbours!!! And need to get to class within five minutes... Ozpin and Glynda are judging them so hard.

- Beowolf?! *war flashbacks*

- Already met DeathStalker and Ursa. Bearbatusk... Nevermore... COOOOOOOOL!

- This teacher must be entertaining to make fun of, am sure. Ruby is sleeping on the first bench. Been there, done that, somehow made it out alive despite my embarrassment.

- So there are four safe spaces or kingdoms. Vale is one of them. Did this full grown man just try to... rizz Yang?

- To that random student doing this: 🤟🏻... Rock on!

- Professor Full-of-Shite... Ruby's drawing is accurate. 😂. Good Gods. This Peter guy really just stole the Beowulf story.

- Ruby is honourable 'cause she understands the importance of sleep. Ruby is dependable because just a moment ago she was balancing an apple AND a book on a pencil that stood vertically. VERTICALLY!

- A true huntsman is supposedly strategic, well-educated and wise... What are the odds Weiss heard the last word as her own name? Very high, it seems. She's bout to fight a Grimm in class now.

- I like their uniforms, but I want the version with pants.

- The Ozpin and Glynda ending where the former's symbol is a gear within a gear, while the latter rocks a crown. The music here sounds so suave and chill!

Season 01 Episode 10: The Badge and the Burden - Pt II

- "A story will be told..."

- Ooooooh! Costume change for Weiss... Cheerleaders Yang, Blake and Ruby are ready as well. So ready in fact that Blake already has a flag of their team. 💖

- Bearbatusk vs Weiss. But it looks more like Ruby vs the Schnee.

- Weiss wasn't made team leader and she is mad at Ruby about it huh... Holy hell, Weiss. Please. That was downright rude. And unnecessary.

- Ruby. You precious little bean. Ozpin is giving off major Dumbledore vibes.

- Weiss and Professor Port's conversation running parallel to the one before. Hmmm... Weiss thinks she should have been the team leader. "That's prepostrous!" 😂. Okie, I like him.

- Ozpin's Dumbledore now. Peter Port, Hagrid. YASSSSSSSS! Someone really needed to dish out the truth to Weiss.

- It's the fact that both Ruby and Weiss received similar advice for me. Try to be the best person first. Everything else will follow after. ✨

- Of course Blake sleeps like she is in a movie. I am Yang but worse. Down to the snoring. Awwwwww! Ruby fell asleep studying. My sister can literally relate right now.

- Coffee with cream and five sugars isn't coffee anymore, methinks. Me likes this version.

- Best leader and best teammate. 💖... Weiss really out here thawing my frozen attitude towards her. I too want bunk beds now.

- Professor Peter Port is his own symbol. 😂👏🏻. Serious music. So good.

Season 01 Episode 11: Jaunedice - Pt I

- Time to open up the door!

- Jaune is getting his arse handed to him. Cardin is blood thirsty. They have headshots?! This school really does it all.

- They WANT them to be on the phone while fighting?! This is the Jaune inferiority complex arc. Kiddo.

- Vytal Festival. The importance is in the name... 😆. RWY is excited. Where be the B?

- "In the middle of the night..." In my dreams. 🎶

- Of course Yang and Nora get along. Yang is hanging onto Nora's every word. Blake has a book, Ren is helping Nora tell the story accurately and Weiss couldn't care less. More accurately, she is interested in cuticle care I guess. Jaune is playing with his food, Ruby and Pyrrha are worried... This table has it all.

- The situation is serious if Blake put down her book... Don't lie Jaune.

- Jaune's in denial. Team CRDL is bothering a lady named Velvet. Fucking hell.

- Cardin is a bully AND a diva.

- They can rocket launch their lockers to custom locations?! Locker launchers... I NEED to be in this school.

- Holy shite. Cardin and team are crossing a line now. Faunus rights really need to be better and implemented well. Wait. Blake is hiding her Faunus self? Awww. 😢

- The Velvet ending. So some folks haven't been given symbols. Gotcha. This music is making me want to cook Team CRDL over a bonfire while I dance in a circle around it. Good stuff!

Season 01 Episode 12: Jaunedice - Pt II

- "In time, your heart will open minds..."

- Jaune is sleeping. I thought he was a good student. Must be having a bad day. The teacher drinks a lot of coffee. Perhaps Jaune needs it too.

- This Professor is faaaaasst.

- Velvet and the other shadow figure raising her hand when asked about being subjected to Faunus subjugation and discrimination. That takes guts. 💖

- Weiss is a sincere student. Expected. The professor is so excited over Jaune's sudden urge to participate... Much kudos to friends like Pyrrha who try to help during situations such as these.

- Good Gods. Cardin is the son of a gun. A tool. He is less than a soldier. Fucking forker.

- This General Lagune tried to ambush folks while they were sleeping?! 🤬

- Blake's jab was so good. Chef's kiss!

- Professor Oobleck has green hair. I just noticed. Anime reference?

- Jaune and Cardin's after class scolding... "If you can't learn from it... You are destined to repeat it." Some people nowadays really need this lesson on history.

- Jaune gets shoved, Cardin is bad. Pyrrha is the best.

- The view is of Hogwarts. 😂

- Listen. The fact that Pyrrha bringing Jaune to a terrace makes him think about dying 'cause he feels he is messing up so much... Good Gods. This is suicidal ideation. Things be bad.

- Huh. I did not see this revelation coming. Really thought Jaune being at Beacon was entirely familial pressure. He didn't really want to be there or something like that, but had nothing else he was passionate about. Plus, expectations are a whole different can of worms. WoW... Still a familial pressure I guess. Just a lot more from his own end.

- Jaune needs to learn a valuable lesson. Holy hell. Heroes aren't made in a day and heroes aren't forged in solitude. He has already tried doing it on his own. Accept Pyrrha's help! Fucking fuckity fuck!!! This toxic masculinity is such a pain.

- Ah hell. Of course Cardin overheard it all... Shikes. Things got a lot more real here than I was expecting.

- Sneaked into Beacon. Now being blackmailed into helping a student cheat. Jaune. You are making me nervous.

- Sometimes the puns are so perfect and flow in such a natural way, it makes you wonder which came first. The original concept or the double entendre. Jaunedice is one such example. Works on so many levels.

- Professor Oobleck ending. Very mischievous music. Needed that pick-me-up.

(No spoiling stuff. Or I spoil your coffee with hot sauce. Tatas!)

[traincat]

Hi traincat! Hope you're doing well. I figured since you have an extensive knowledge on all things Spider-Man, you would know your way around his rogues! I wanted to ask if you have a favorite or one that you find most compelling and why. Thanks a million!

I think my answers for which rogues are my favorites and which I find most compelling and which are widely viewed as the best and why are all pretty wildly different. I do think the popular assessment that Spider-Man has one of the best rogues galleries in Marvel canon is true. Like, I think the absolute best Spider-Main villain story -- the one that gives you the best sense of the villain as a character and also the one that works best at uniting villain and is Kraven’s Last Hunt, which is just incredible on every level. (Content warning for suicide.)

(Web of Spider-Man #32) Also, like, in terms of design, Kraven is great. Love a big Russian game hunter perpetually bare chested and wearing leopard print cropped leggings. That’s not something you get sick of. Only Kraven Sr. for me, though -- I’m less fond of his son, although I think the whole family affairs in Grim Hunt and Scarlet Spider v2 are pretty fun.

On the other hand, though, I think that some of the biggest villains in Spider-Man’s gallery, namely Norman Osborn and Doc Ock, are overused, although I know why they’re overused and it’s because they’re really good villains. (But also you can only make people pay for the same story so many times with only minor variations before it starts to get old.) I think Norman and Peter are pretty perfect opposites, whereas Otto and Peter are mirror images -- although I think generally Norman stories pull off that opposite nature better than Otto stories reveal him as a mirrored image of Peter. 

I think it’s interesting that Otto is kind of the first “big” villain Peter encounters -- he makes his debut in ASM #3, so there are villains that come before him, but they’re like, the Vulture and the Chameleon. And there are great Vulture stories -- love that flying octogenarian -- but like, I would not put the Vulture in the absolute top tier Spider-Man villains. And the Chameleon is a freak.

Same, girl. (Web of Spider-Man #65) 

More villain talk beneath the cut.

By comparison, Otto is the first villain to actually serve Peter a real defeat, the first one to humble him. So I think it’s interesting that they come from very similar backgrounds -- both geniuses, both lonely as children, both people who were in danger of becoming very solitary, isolated adults, which Otto did and which Peter did not. They had a mother figure who verged on at times or was actually smothering in her affections, and a salt of the earth type father figure. And Otto gains his powers after suffering an accident with radiation much the same way Peter does. It’s one of the things that disappoints me about Superior Spider-Man, because I don’t think it plays into the idea of Otto and Peter as mirrored images of each other nearly as much as it could have. Even Otto’s Parker Industries originally showed up in a “bad” version of Peter’s life, where he never got bit by the spider and instead becomes a CEO:

(Sensational Spider-Man #41) “You prove yourself to everyone -- except yourself.” Which is what Otto is continually trying to do, and which is what he always falls short of. So it’s interesting that there’s kind of all this set up here and that the actual comics sort of continually fall short of it. 

Green Goblin stories live up to their rep a little better, in my opinion, and they’re better at playing into those parallels. Norman and Peter are both self-made men, but Norman is rich and Peter is not. Peter accepts responsibility and fault; Norman does not. Norman’s life is devoid of women, while Peter’s is full of it. If Norman and Peter are both studies in masculinity, then Norman’s is toxic and Peter’s is not. Peter is capable of growth; Norman is entrenched in this role he’s made for himself -- he is not capable of sustained growth beyond the role he’s made for himself. There’s a reason I think Norman gets used so much and it’s because it’s a heady dynamic to kind of play into -- especially when you go with the relatively more recent angle of things where Norman kind of views Peter as the perfect heir, worthy where Harry is not. Honestly, it’s a good time whenever you’re involving Harry in the mix at all, as someone caught between these two very powerful figures and how the tug-of-war there for ownership of him is just completely soul destroying. 

(Spectacular Spider-Man #180)

But I do think Norman is overused, and it’s gotten a point where in Amazing Spider-Man #800 it was like -- oh, what, he’s going to kill Flash? He’s going to kill someone else Peter loves? He’s killed like half the main-main cast at this point. He’s behind the murder of Peter and Mary Jane’s baby, he’s responsible for Ben Reilly’s death, he killed Gwen Stacy, Harry’s death goes directly back to him, he’s kidnapped May and Mary Jane and Flash and blah blah blah it’s JUST TOO MUCH. It can’t always be this one guy! You can’t just bring him back every 50 issues like “this time Norman Osborn’s gone too far” when he went too far in the ‘70s. Everything since then has just been trying to recapture the moment he threw Gwen Stacy off the bridge. It’s exhausting. I’m begging Spider-Man, as it starts hyping up yet another Norman story for ASM #850, to do something new.

In comparison to Norman, I think Harry’s run as the Green Goblin is fairly flawlessly executed as far as villain stories go, especially in its final hour. Spectacular Spider-Man #200 is really one of my favorite single issues of all time. Harry has the pathos that Norman really never does -- you can feel for Harry in a way that you can’t feel for Norman. And it’s because Harry loves Peter -- really, truly loves him -- that his acts of villainy take on that special edge of cruelty. It doesn’t just hurt Peter that these things are being done; it hurts Peter that these are being done and that it’s Harry doing them and that, in a lot of ways, they both blame Peter for why Harry is doing them, even if at the end of the day it’s in no way Peter’s fault. And then there’s the utterly perfect moment as Harry dies in Spectacular Spider-Man #200, that his act of triumph is that he can’t bring himself to kill Peter, because he loves him too much. It’s perfect. I live in fear they’re going to make Harry a villain again and try to replicate it only to fall painfully short. 

I think the Jackal is actually underutilized because he is in my honest opinion the scariest Spider-Man villain, or at the very least the creepiest. Where Norman can only dream of remaking Spider-Man in his own image, the Jackal actually does that with Ben Reilly -- and, to a lesser extent, with Kaine, his first damaged clone. He’s a good lurker, too, less show-y than either Otto or Norman. He lurked in the background for a while. And in a series where I think you can pick a lot of the villains apart as men who take advantage of their power, having the Jackal be a college professor whose villainous career stems from his obsession with one of his students fits right in. And he’s just creepy. He’s upsetting! The things he does to the clones -- both the Peter and Gwen clones, although I think the comics are not so great at letting the Gwen clones shine as individual characters, which is something I wish someone would actually do something about -- are very upsetting, especially since you can extrapolate from a lot of Kaine’s stories and the things we know bother him and how he’s consistently paralleled against Janine Godbe, that both Kaine and the Gwen clones were sexually abused by the Jackal. (Spider-Man’s not typically shy about examining darker subjects, and while we can only extrapolate from canon with Kaine, it’s extremely there on the surface with the Gwen clones. I mean, he married one.) And honestly, the villain who’s whole schtick is cloning makes more sense as someone who can repeatedly come back from anything than Norman’s deal of Corrupt Businessman Surprisingly Hard To Kill. I’ve said before that Peter appears to have a bit of a loophole in his personal moral code when it comes to violence that either has no consequences or lessened consequences, like when he cuts loose against Wolverine, someone who has a healing factor, or when he buried the Juggernaut, supposedly indestructible, in concrete. The Jackal as someone who could and has clone himself repeatedly opens up similar doorways -- what’s to stop Peter from cutting loose if the Jackal isn’t confined to this one body? There’s a lot to play with there and a lot more interesting spaces to go than, say, having to invent increasingly poor excuses for why Peter hasn’t taken more permanent action with Norman if Norman is always going to return to do harm to someone beloved to Peter.

Finally, I’m in a weird spot with personal favorite villains because honestly my instinct is to say the Lizard. And that’s an issue because of one fairly recent storyline and everything that’s spun out from it: Shed (Amazing Spider-Man #630-633), the storyline where Curt Connors loses all control over the Lizard, kills, and partially devours his son Billy. Like, I LIKE grim dark Spider-Man comics, and Shed is honestly too much for me -- not because of the Lizard’s actions, but because in the story Peter fails to save Billy. And I say not because of the Lizard’s actions because I think, as fun as a giant lizard man in purple pants and a lab coat can be, I think Curt Connors makes for one hell of a supervillain metaphor for domestic violence. 

(ASM #365)

(Spectacular Spider-Man v2 #13) And it’s very compelling. There’s a lot of things to explore down that alley. But once you actually go as far as having the Lizard kill his son, you can’t take that back. And the problem is, that’s what Spider-Man comics have tried to do post-Shed. It feels weird and deeply out of character to have writers assume that Peter could forgive the murder of any child, let alone a child he knew, and have him continue his relationship with Curt Connors. It’s a weird message to go “yeah, he ate his kid, but he wasn’t in control, and he made up for it via cloning, so we’re all good now.” Like imagine trying to spin that in any horror movie. It doesn’t work -- that your villain kills his kid and then clones him and pretends everything is okay now would be the plot of the horror movie. Spider-Man is a series fundamentally built on the fact that actions have consequences, and sometimes those consequences are utterly unfixable. Peter can’t go back and intercept the burglar to prevent Uncle Ben’s death. He can’t clone Uncle Ben and wipe that incident out of history. So to have a story like Shed in continuity as something that doesn’t alter Peter’s perception of Curt Connors forever doesn’t work.

Anyway that’s why my favorite villain is the Shocker. Love that quilted bastard.

[mywindowslookwriting]

A Partial A24 Ranking

A24 is an American production company, known for creating indie megahits like Midsommar, Moonlight, and The Spectacular Now. Unfortunately, I haven’t seen any of those. But irregardless, here is my (partial) A24 ranking, of just the ones I’ve seen.

10. Mid90s (2018) dir. Jonah Hill

The directorial debut from actor Jonah Hill is a ‘slice-of-life’ look at teen skateboarders, with some nice cinematography, 90s nostalgia, but also unfortunately a huge helping of toxic masculinity and lack of consequences. The main characters toss around slurs casually, and they cheer when the thirteen-year-old boy protagonist has his first sexual experience with a much older girl – who was possibly 22-23 at the time of filming. Drug use is romanticized, and the ending finds characters still static and without consequences for their bad choices. Honestly, if you like skateboarding movies, just watch Skate Kitchen.

9. The Bling Ring (2013) dir. Sofia Coppola

The true story of a group of wealthy L.A. teens who robbed various celebrities like Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan is turned into a surface-level enjoyable film. I enjoy Sofia Coppola’s work, and the film takes the viewer on a wild ride of privilege and celebrity, but it has a tendency to feel like the viewer is being given the keys themselves, with Coppola not really having anything to say about their actions. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it leads to a film that feels a little devoid of meaning.

8. Eighth Grade (2018) dir. Bo Burnham

A surprising directorial debut from a comedian, Eight Grade looks at, well, the last week of eighth grade as a socially awkward girl tries to survive until high school. As a movie, it’s so deeply apt it’s insane, and features some great acting from Elsie Fisher as the protagonist, but the only reason I couldn’t rank it higher is because there was so much second-hand embarrassment – as anyone who used to be a child now thinking about everything they did as a kid understands – that it was hard to watch. That being said, I still definitely recommend it.

7. The Florida Project (2017) dir. Sean Baker

In the shadow of Disneyland, kids living in motels play, go on adventures, and get into trouble while the adults in their lives struggle with money and hard choices. The contrast plunges the viewer back into childhood, but makes the adult issues blindingly clear in a moving snapshot that feels like hot summer on your skin as it moves from slow-moving happiness to fear to frustration to anger, and finally, maybe, hope.

6. Room (2015) dir. Lenny Abrahamson

Based on a book, a woman (Brie Larson) kidnapped and trying to raise her son (Jacob Tremblay) in a single room. It’s emotionally devastating, with superb acting – Brie Larson won an Oscar for her role -, and although it cut a lot and isn’t entirely faithful to the source material, but that’s okay because it’s such a moving and eventually heartwarming drama film.

5. Never Goin’ Back (2018) dir. Augustine Frizzell

In the hot Texan world of Never Goin’ Back, poverty is a given. So why shouldn’t two best friends celebrate one of their birthdays at the beach, even if it means spending their rent money? The movie is funny, many of the girls’ antics are hilarious, and a beautiful celebration of the many forms – and frankly, insanely homoerotic in this case – of female friendship. It has its flaws, putting it lower on the list, but Never Goin’ Back makes it easy to laugh, or to give opportunities to look deeper into its meaning.

4. The Farewell (2019) dir. Lulu Wang How far would you go for family? Would you lie to them about having terminal cancer so they are happy for their last few months? For families in the western world, this question is unfamiliar, something no one would consider doing, but the film’s look at a Chinese family reuniting under the pretense of a wedding in order to spend time with the protagonist’s grandmother for the last time is intensely relatable because it is about family. Whether laughing or crying, the Farewell deftly tackles messy family lives, and all you can learn from others just by listening.

3. 20th Century Women (2016) dir. Mike Mills

In the rapidly-changing landscape of late 70s California, an older single woman is struggling to raise her teenaged son, so she enlists the help of his best friend and a punk artist boarding in their house. The cinematography and structure takes risks, with colour pouring out of highway scenes, and the future lives of characters being revealed, but it’s not artsy and inaccessible. It’s surprising that a male director could have represented different types of women and their struggles, but he did it, and he did it well.  

2. American Honey (2016) dir. Andrea Arnold

Lead actress Sasha Lane was discovered on a beach with her friends during spring break. Her character is invited to travel through America selling magazines with other misfit teens in a grocery store parking lot. The almost three-hour long movie is as sprawling as the sky in the south and midwest of America. It’s a hot summer day that feels refreshing, not stifling. It’s young love and lingering closeup shots. It’s the American dream, updated. American Honey is almost three hours long, freeform and calm, beautiful and frantic. It’s a languid summer day, and the cool glass of water you inhale afterwards. Simply, it is American Honey.

1. Lady Bird (2017) dir. Greta Gerwig

Trying to escape your hometown. Arguing with your parents. Falling in love, or maybe not. Dancing at prom with your best friend. Moments of universal high school feelings add up to a superb directorial debut from writer and actress Greta Gerwig of one seventeen-year-old girl in her last year of high school. Appearing on the surface as a straight-forward coming-of-age film, the focus on the women of the film that rarely finds time to stray to love interest characters makes it feel fresh, especially helped by wonderful acting from Saoirse Ronan and Laurie Metcalf. It’s an alternative glimpse of life packaged into a mainstream tale of relatability that makes it A24’s best film.  

-written by sagan, september 4th 2019

[sleeplessinsiswati]

Toxic Masculinity—A Contagious Kind of Pollution

Yeah, yeah, yeah. My bad, I know I’m late.

*grumble and murmuring*

My bad. Look, i said my bad.

*lower murmuring*

Look, in my defense, I had the post locked and loaded on the queue and then my internet went out. Boom. Now can we get on with what we came here for?

_________________________________________________

As you may know about me, bell hooks is one of my favorite authors. She has inspired me, moment after moment and time after time, to grow and love myself and others more wholly and fully.  In her writing she uses a combination of autobiographical, common-sensical language and academic, theoretical research to shed light to the various topics. Here, I will attempt to scratch at the masterpieces of her work, and use both theory and my experience to shed the light of truth concerning what I know about what the world has come to refer to as toxic masculinity.

Your story may be different than mine, but toxic masculinity is something that affects each and every one of us. Let me state again, masculinity is not the issue here; there is nothing wrong with “being a man” or being strong or having power. The issue comes in when notions or ideals of manhood force boys and men to be emotionally unavailable, makes us believe we are not enough as human beings, or encourages us to exploit and take advantage of others in an ultimate quest for power. There’s no way around the reality that this is no way to live, and there is the crux of the argument—living. Most of the things that we come to know and associate with being a “man” and “manhood” have to do with survival. Hunting, fishing, fighting, scanning a room and sizing people up, sports, fitness, taking a hit and not complaining, the list goes on and on. Most of these are guys grasping at straws, trying to get a piece, a bit more power than they had before, in order to survive. But this is not living. 

This is why the first step to growth, and leading a healthier life absent of toxic masculinity, is reflection. You must look over your life, your experiences and genuinely ask are you living or are you surviving. Patriarchy, being a system where men and masculine energy dominate spaces of power or with power and women, children, and weaker men are seen as inferior and vessels willing to be dominated or controlled, makes us believe that survival is the ultimate resource and that there are constant, looming threats to us accomplishing this goal. Though at times this may be true, it is not always true, and if we walk through life always scanning rooms with balled up fists we doom ourselves to early graves filled with bitterness, emotions we’ve never experienced, and a life devoid of love. There is more to life than reliving childhood traumas day in and day out, but that more does not come without being able to reflect and to heal. 

I don’t remember at what point in my childhood I started hating my dad; I know that it was not always that way. There’s a distinctly fond memory I have with him—wrestling my older brother and I, both of us no older than seven at the time, he pinned us down and stood on our chests saying, “ Who’s the man? Who’s the Man?” Gerald and I were half hysterical laughing, half having an asthma attack, and shouting, “ You’re the man! You’re the man!” He laughed saying, “ No, God’s the Man. Say, God’s the Man.” We giggle between gasps, “Okay, God’s the Man!” Mom came on to the scene from the back room of our duplex and looked at Dad with that look that only Black mommas can deliver; we were sorry that we got dad in trouble, but to this day I love that time in my life, I love that memory. 

Perhaps it was the pressures of two lives, two similar personalities, and an age difference spanning over three decades that caused there to be so much friction between us; don’t ask me what the first argument was even about, because I couldn’t tell you. I think that it was the silence that ultimately led to it all. Questions not asked by a son out of fear, and questions left unanswered by a father unaware of the shadow his figure casted. What I do know is that early on in my adolescence I became disillusioned with childhood, with being looked down upon and thought to be foolish, and I know it had a lot to do with Dad and things he said, or how he said them. Something as simple as walking into the room that Gerald and I shared, looking around and making an expression, and finally looking at us and shaking his head was all Dad needed to do to express his disappointment. Honestly I appreciated the silent expressions a lot more than the verbal ones, which seemed to have a back-breakingly painful bite to them. Gerald grew to be calloused and joke about it, but I was raw to it; words more than belts and punishments are what would break my spirit. Around fifth grade I realized that love didn’t really matter, or at least it didn’t mean anything—I loved my dad and he kept smoking cigarettes even after my brother and I begged him to stop; I loved my mom but I couldn’t tell her what I felt about the world because she couldn’t protect me from it; I loved my brother but I felt he constantly belittled me, silenced me, and made me feel like I was stupid (I’m sure he took a few pages from Dad’s book, in this way); I loved myself, or I thought I did, and yet I constantly belittled myself, telling myself that in this world I would have to be stronger. Love could not change anything about life, it just made you feel like you couldn’t even more.

Eventually I gave in to this belief system—years passed and I graduated to full blown “I don’t give a fuck about anything”. I was afraid, powerless and with those tools as weapons I was ready for anything at any time because I felt I had nothing to lose; I felt I had lost so much of my soul already, it wouldn’t matter even if I lost my life. Hotheaded athlete, I knew how to mask my shrewd and heartless demeanor with cool, chauvinistic locker-room thuggery. I acted chill, I wanted to be chill, but in my mind, at any moment I was a shoulder bump away from a full blown “nigga moment”, as so accurately defined in The Boondocks. I was a ticking time bomb, an emotionally unavailable mess all throughout high school, and college was more the same with less of the guard rails.

But before we keep going forward, let’s go back. Black Baton Rouge has become well-known in modern society (before the Alton Sterling murder) for one reason in particular, as far as I am concerned, —Lil Boosie. Now, I’m not talking about “Zoom” or “Wipe Me Down” Lil Boosie, that’s mainstream Boosie. I’m talking “Set It Off”, “Murder Was the Case” Lil Boosie; Boosie that I met that one time at the Mall of Cortana and he said, “Wassup, lil niggas” Lil Boosie. That one. The Boosie BR natives knew growing up was trap before trap was cool. Street, gutta, whatever you want to call it, Black BR loved it and they had to have it. Hell the whole world came to love it, but Baton Rouge had to have it so much that they had to mimic it; kids, even, began to walk with certain swaggers, talking lingos picked up from lyrics. It was a damn masterpiece from a mastermind, and there was no escaping it. The problem though, is what this success for one man meant for many boys (like me and unlike me) growing up in that era. Is being a man being that kind of man? The kind of man in these songs? Why do these boys think less of me because I’m not a “man” like they think they are? Do they know they’re faking?

These were the type of thoughts that got me chin-checked on more than one occasion, questioning what someone saw as their manhood, or them thinking I was calling them soft. I was a huge fan of Dr. King in my younger days, nonviolence and all, but I made up in my mind after one good fight that Dr. King must have never been to Scotlandville, Baton Rouge, a day in his life, and that was that for nonviolence as a way of life in my mind. In a classic case of if-you-can’t-beat-them-join-them, I entered the wade pool of cool poses and posturizing. If a scrap came I didn’t think twice about it, and I was willing to take whatever bruises and lumps came with it from the school or the fight. Not like I was built or raise for all’lat, but didn’t seem like there was much other option. 

Now let’s press play, back at the start of my university academic career. I had finally made it to the platform where I wanted to be—college freshman, class president, track team, chapel assistant, so on and so forth. And the shit felt as plastic as a maxed out credit card. The aggression, the fight that I had come to know and hate and love—for all its pain and all  its suffering, I missed it; it was home, my home. Not much more than a self-righteous leader already, I quickly threw off the mask of who people wanted me to be as the smart, politically correct leader after freshman year, and allowed my passions to roam freely. I did what I wanted, when I wanted, for no reason other than I wanted to. 

It wasn’t until I nearly lost my opportunities to continue my studies and was threatened with the potential for never finishing undergrad, that I sat down and contemplated what went wrong, and why. It was then that I had to take a journey through my mind, into my past and confront the decisions I made, the reasons I made them, and the consequences of those actions. It was here that I discovered and acknowledged the pain in my past. The memories of desperately wanting the approval of my father, and simultaneously being pained by not living up to his seemingly impossible expectations; Times where he seemed to be emotionally unavailable hurt me more than any belt whooping ever could; fleeting thoughts of being silenced or crying inconsolably from feelings of inferiority or brokenness. From these starting points I came to resent the presentation of manhood before me in my father, and the power that came with it, with hoping to one day overcome (or overpower) it by whatever means necessary. That bitterness spilled over into other systems of power and I came to resent almost all, if not all, forms of leadership. Being on the lower rungs of the power dynamic at home and the frustration that came with it did not get any better in the world beyond those four wals; I was short, readily referred to as “nappy-headed”, and emotionally vulnerable. The ego bruises and self-esteem damage I received from early on in my public school career led me to believe that I had to become someone powerful, or to have power, in order to not be disrespected. This belief would haunt me from the moment of its beginning up to this very day. 

Once I realized this, and I was able to accept that for the vast majority of my life I had been living in my past burdened by unforgivness, that I had not been the person I really wanted to be, I began a journey of learning to become for the first time. It was exciting being able to unlearn ways in which I had limited my own humanity for fear of not being perceived as manly or displaying some form of power, but it has also been very painful at times. Admitting to yourself the damage that you have done to others, the damage you have done to yourself, and the damage that has been done to you is not easy. There are people who to this day I feel I owe apologies to, for things that I said or ways that I treated them, Black women in particular; for the sake of recovering acknowledgement I didn’t receive in my youth but desperately wanted, I took advantage emotionally of women who otherwise loved me, cared for me, and wanted to see the both of us to succeed. Some people, most people, are afraid to look into their pasts and examine the truth of their actions because they do not want to face that there may be consequences to their actions; even towards themselves there is unforgivness and bitterness. The truth is, without confronting our past we are bound by them and they have power over us. Only by being able to non-judgementally examine our actions, accept that they were wrong, and pay whatever toll to move forward, can we begin our journey of healing. 

Even I was afraid to begin my journey of unlearning toxic masculinity thinking that I may be vulnerable to the world and it’s threats, but I have come to find my wife and best friend, a life of love and laughter and carefree living, and wholeness through this adventure of learning. Yes, I am now more likely to cry in public and yes I share my feelings more with others, but I now see that instead of living a life silencing parts of who I am and distorting other parts of me to seem more angry or more threatening than I feel, I can just…be. 

And that, for me, is enough. 

Pain is universal: we all experience it, feel it, and suffer. But the only thing equally as universal, and infinitely more powerful is the healing from that pain; that healing is love. I challenge you to ask what ways has toxic masculinity been a part of your life, and then challenge your self to live a more whole, more alive life. Only by ending this vicious cycle can we stop the pollution of toxic masculinity, and breathe the fresh air of self-acceptance, self-love, and truly show our love for others. 

Peace.