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fortunatelylori · 5 years ago

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Sandtion: The Sense and sensibility connection - a meta collab with @and-holly-goes-lightly

As some of you may have gathered, @and-holly-goes-lightly and I are salt mates (this is a tumblr term I have learned only recently and am planning to run into the ground. You have been forwarned. I don’t want any complaints down the line!)

It all started about a year ago, with this:

And progressed steadily until we ended up here:

Occasionally, between ogling pictures of naked men, we discuss serious issues as well. Those end up as metas for your consumption, most of the time.

It’s a colaboration that works well. I write long metas, she writes really good ones. We enjoy. We have fun.

Given that we both obssesively analyze tv content and that we tend to reach about the same conclusions, we have been planning on doing some project together for a while now.

I think if 2 months ago someone had told us that Sanditon would be the tv show that would see us join writing forces, we would have been more than a little shocked.

But here we are … hoplessly obssessed with Austen’s unfinished novel and ITV’s unfinished tv show (get the hint, ITV?!?! I hope you do. Chop, chop! You can’t live on Downton Abbey reruns for the rest of time, you know)

So on this most special of days, @and-holly-goes-lightly and I bring you the motherload of Sandtion metas. Two crazy writers, one tv show, one simple title:

Sandtion: The Sense and Sensibility connection

It’s no surprise to anyone, at this point, that Andrew Davies wears his Austen influences on his sleeve in Sanditon. You can find easter eggs for most of Austen’s work, from the famous Pride and Prejudice to the obscure Lady Susan.

However, Sense and Sensibility seems to be one work that hasn’t insipired much comparison from the fandom. And it’s perhaps for that reason that Sandion’s last two episodes were so hard to digest and why so many question marks were raised in regards to Charlotte’s characterization.

In this project we aim to dispel some of that confusion and attempt to put into prespective the character arcs of both Sidney and Charlotte in:

Sidlotte: A parallel journey between Sense and Sensibility by @fortunatelylori

As well as delve deeper into Charlotte’s POV through out the season finale in:

Charlotte Heywood - From Sensibility to Sense by @and-holly-goes-lightly

We hope you enjoy our take. Please don’t forget to leave us your comments in the reply section. This is a new format for us and we’d love to hear from you on how you like this kind of collaborative work.

Sidlotte: A parallel journey between Sense and Sensibility

As I was reading the now infamous Theo James interview, I was reminded of the “unusual” visual representation of Sanditon. It really does look quite different to most Austen adaptations which are defined by the sunny, sanitized domesticity of the English garden.

Sanditon doesn’t look like that. It’s rough and a little wild. It presents a world in the throes of change, with gales, nudity and darkness lurking around the corners. I think it’s those visual cues that made Theo link it to Wuthering Heights with its Yorkshire gloomy moors and harsh winds.

But that just goes to show you Mr. James has not done his proper Andrew Davies research (Tsk, tsk, me thinks he will need to do a few more nude scenes to atone for it) because the wind swept beaches, the wilderness of the English countryside, the cowboy motif? They all go back to this:

I imagine the visual style of Sense and Sensibility 2008 was in part generated by an attempt to separate it from the very famous 1995 version (the quintessential sunny English countryside film) and in part as a response to the earthier approach Joe Wright took for his now very influential version of Pride and Prejudice (2005).

But I do think Sanditon owes more to S&S 2008 than just its visuals. I’ve talked about this in the past but Sanditon, to me, is really Davies’ homage to Austen’s entire body of work so the more you dig and analyze, the more similarities and parallels you are going to find between Sanditon, its characters and the rest of the Austenverse (I really hope this is just a thing I say in a sarcastic way on tumblr. Not everything needs to be a –verse, people!).

Episode 8 really brought this theory into focus for me. In my review I said that the finale marked the tonal shift of the story from the naïve, hopeful and mostly comedic territory of Northanger Abbey and Pride and Prejudice towards the darker, more reflective tone of Persuasion and Sense and Sensibility.

Of course, comedy and witticisms are a core trait of all of Austen’s work. Her voice is so powerful that she is always an extra character in her own stories. However, Persuasion and S&S are also permeated with a sense of loss and angst that her other works don’t really have.

They’re more mature I suppose one could say. And it’s that maturity that plays a role in the shift that occurred in the season finale of Sanditon. Because Sanditon is really all about Charlotte Heywood. We enter this world with her and we follow her coming of age story throughout the season. And that story is marked by a pretty steep transition from the romantic, hopeful heroine represented by Marianne Dashwood to her restrained, sensible sister, Eleanor.

One of the things I liked the most about S&S 2008 was how much more balanced its view on Marianne and Eleanor was. In the 1995 film, it always felt as if Marianne was presented as a cautionary tale while Eleanor was the heroic nurturing woman who endures everything stoically and is rewarded for her restraint in the end.

But that’s not really, to my mind, the message Jane Austen would like us to get out of S&S. Just like with Pride and Prejudice, Austen is shining a light on the folly of both extreme sense and as well as extreme sensibility. It is not wise to jump head first into situations having only Lord Byron’s poems as your guide but it’s also equally unwise to constrain yourself to the point where you are unable to confide in anyone, to the point where you deny your feelings and end up a passive participant to your own life.

With Charlotte Heywood, we get to explore both those behavioral patterns.

The change from Marianne to Eleanor doesn’t occur in episode 8, by the way. It occurs at the end of episode 6 and carries through to the finale. That’s why people, including myself, were taken aback by Charlotte’s apparent change in demeanor in episode 7, from the girl who always spoke her mind (even when she shouldn’t) and wore her heart on her sleeve to the outwardly detached, apprehensive young woman who was waiting for the other shoe to drop even as the man she loved was about to propose to her.

It would be easy to blame this transition on poor execution and I do believe the shift was too sudden and it was a mistake to have it start off screen (in between episode 6 and episode 7). However, the arc itself is not a mistake and it’s actually very clever.

For one because it allows us to explore this story both from the naïve, romantic perspective as well as the angst filled one.

Secondly, and most importantly, because it works in tandem with Sidney’s arc, who is going through the exact opposite journey from the emotionally repressed outlier to the open hearted tormented hero, representative of the Byronic romantic ideal.

What was supposed to happen is that by the end of episode 8, Sidney and Charlotte would meet in the middle, she as a more controlled romantic, he as a warmhearted stoic. What Davies gave us instead is two ships that passed each other in the night and have, by their last scene in episode 8, completely exchanged places.

So I think it’s important to go back to the beginning and analyze how the meeting between the naïve romantic Charlotte and the world weary Sidney ended up altering them forever and how, while deeply painful for both of them at the moment, their separation and behavior shift will end up benefiting them when their eventual reunion occurs (whether or not ITV decides to renew this series, Charlotte and Sidney WILL get married and have 2 to 3 adorable children because this is an Austen story and I will accept nothing less, damn it!)

One of the most important scenes in the whole season for me was the carriage scene in episode 6. I wrote a whole meta on it that you can find here and I have to go back to it in order to reference this extremely important exchange that sits as the lynchpin of this meta:

Sidney: And what do you know of love? Apart from what you’ve read?

Charlotte: I would sooner be naïve than insensible of feeling.

We’ve spent a great deal of time analyzing this scene and how pivotal it is in the story of Sidney as the motivator behind his lowering of his emotional guard. But I don’t think we’ve spent nearly enough time asking ourselves what this exchange tells us about Charlotte.

Because this doesn’t just announce a change in Sidney, it also foreshadows one for her. Sidney is correct in implying she doesn’t really understand love because she’s never experienced it. She is, however, about to realize that she’s in love with him and thus her assertion that she’d rather be naïve than insensible of feeling is just about to be tested.

And the surprising result is … Charlotte fails at her own paradigm. For the rest of the season, she will never be as emotionally open as she is in episode 6.

Charlotte is unable to remain the open book, expansive girl in the face of first supposed unrequited love and then as she experiences loss. She, instead, withdraws inward and begins building up her walls just as Sidney did after Eliza left him.

I think Davies understands Austen’s ultimate message that you fall into the extreme of sense or sensibility at your own peril, which is why he chooses to have his main two characters traverse opposite journeys so they can be brought closer by the end of the story (in season 2 of course).

That’s because at the core of all of the fights and misunderstandings between Charlotte and Sidney sit two problems:

Sidney Parker does not believe in the good intentions of other people. He is operating from a place of hurt and feeling under attack. He is essentially under the impression that the people he comes into contact with have ulterior motives, and none of them are good. And you can’t really blame him for that distorted image of reality when you consider what the two most meaningful relationships in his life have been up until this point.

On the one hand you have Tom who weaponizes even the most benign of compliments:

Tom: At least I have your prowess on the cricket field to be thankful for.

Sidney: Well in truth you have Lord Babington to thank for that. I am here at his behest to give him support in his time of romantic need. God knows he shall need it.

Tom: You’re a good friend, Sidney … I don’t suppose you could try just one last time… [to go ask for money]

On the other hand, you have Eliza Campion who says stuff like this with a straight face:

Sidney: You didn’t have to wait for me, you know.

Eliza: I’ve waited for 10 years. What’s another quarter of an hour?

While researching this meta and also trying to figure out my Christmas fic, I’ve come to realize that both Tom and Eliza are using a victim narrative to get what they want from the people around them. What Sidney has learned from these relationships is that nothing in life comes for free. Any compliment, any sign of affection comes with a price tag or an eventual let down.

For her part, Charlotte Heywood is suspicious of Sidney because he doesn’t make himself easy to understand.

Charlotte thrives on communication and she tends to empathize and like people who share, or overshare, information with her. Her opinion on Tom shifts the moment he starts including her in his Sanditon projects. She is apprehensive of Otis for quite a bit of episode 4 but ends up completely on his side the moment he talks about his past as a slave and making innuendos about Sidney, despite neither one of those things really resolving her initial reasons for being apprehensive.

This behavior is really down to Charlotte’s upbringing in a very large but very happy family. Or as Eleanor Tilney in Northanger Abbey would put it:

Eleanor: I think you have had a quite dangerous upbringing. You’ve been brought up to believe that everyone is as pure in heart as you are.

Incidentally another Andrew Davies adaptation …

In Charlotte’s mind, people who are open emotionally and speak their mind must be good people. After all, she is this way and she certainly always has the best of intentions. When someone doesn’t do that, or worse they evade and try to manipulate, she distances herself from them, as is the case with Edward and Clara.

And since Charlotte views meaningful communication as the ultimate sign of trust, it’s this withholding of information, this emotional barrier she can sense in Sidney, that makes her mistrustful of him. She can’t understand his emotional withdrawal for what it is – a response to trauma - because she’s never experienced it. And as such she will always fundamentally misunderstand him.

We see these two character hang ups rearing their ugly heads again and again in their conflicts:

Episode 1

Sidney: And what have you observed about me upon our small acquaintance?

Charlotte: I think you must be the sensible brother of the three. I may be mistaken but it seems to me that your younger brother, Arthur, is a very … contrary nature. Alternately over lethargic and over energetic. While your elder brother, Tom, could be called over enthusiastic. I’m afraid that despite his good nature, he neglects his own happiness and his family’s in his passionate devotion to Sanditon. Don’t you agree?

Sidney: Upon my word, Miss Heywood, you are very free with your opinions. And upon what experience of the world do you form your judgments? Where have you been? Nowhere. What have you learnt? Nothing it would seem. And yet you take it upon yourself to criticize. Let me put it to you, Miss Heywood: which is the better way to live? To sit in your father’s home, with your piano and your embroidery, waiting for someone to come and take you off your parents’ hands? Or to expend your energy in trying to make a difference? To leave your mark. To leave the world in a better place than you found it. That is what my brother, Tom, is trying to do. At the expense of a great deal of effort and anxiety, in a good cause in which I do my best to help and support him. And you see fit to … to criticize him … to amuse yourself at his expense.

Fortunatelylori: … I have a theory that the reason why Sidney’s been forced into prostitution by the end of season 1 is because he used the argument of the fucking patriarchy to defend Tom The Worst Parker. Gee, Sidney, us women would love to go out there and change the world but your male friends are forcing us to stay home with our pianos and embroideries to make sure they take full advantage of our ovaries. Please take several seats!

Fortunatelylori: Also … fyi … Tom isn’t protecting England from the French or helping Warren de La Rue develop the freaking light bulb. He is trying to run a dime a dozen seaside resort and failing miserably at it so spare us the change the world one naked ass at a time speeches.

Charlotte is baited by Sidney, the emotional recluse, into oversharing which she can’t help herself from doing because even at this early stage she has a crush on him and wants to impress him with her insight. He takes that rather kind take on his brother Tom and spins it into a narrative of inexperienced superficiality and mockery because that’s what he’s conditioned himself to think about people.

Episode 2

Charlotte: Our conversation at the party … I expressed myself badly and I fear you misunderstood me. I didn’t mean to disparage your brother or to offend you. Indeed I have the greatest admiration for what you and he are doing here in Sanditon. You were right to rebuke me and indeed I am sorry. I hope you won’t think too badly of me.

Sidney: Think too badly of you? I don’t think of you at all, Miss Heywood. I have no interest in your approval or disapproval. Quite simply, I don’t care what you think or how you feel. I’m sorry if that disappoints you but there it is. Have I made myself clear?

Fortunatelylori: Badly done, Sidney! Badly done indeed!

Not much to say about Charlotte in this one as this argument is ALL on Sidney and his trust issues. In his world, this kind of earnest apology and brave taking of responsibility is always a precursor to a guilt trip or a victimization episode. So he has become very adept at shooting down any such attempt forcefully.

It’s only in episode 3, when he sees Charlotte helping Mr. Stringer without any expectations of reward and her accepting his apology without any hint of emotional blackmail that Sidney is able to lower his guard and begin to see Charlotte for the honest, kind and generous human being that she is:

Fortunatelylori: Awwww! This is Sidney essentially seeing his unborn children in Charlotte’s eyes. (that is the most romantic lyric in the English language and no one will convince me otherwise)

However, what ends up happening? Sidney lowers his guard just in time for Charlotte to reactivate her suspicions which leads to their most explosive fight to date:

Episode 4

Sidney: Did we not agree that you would look out for Georgiana? Keep her out of trouble? I should have known you weren’t to be trusted.

Charlotte: And I should have known, despite your professed concern, you care nothing for her happiness.

Sidney: I would ask you to refrain from making judgments about a situation you don’t understand.

Charlotte: I understand perfectly well!

Sidney: Of course you do! Even though you’ve known Georgiana but a handful of weeks and him but a matter of hours.

Charlotte: That was time enough to learn that Mr. Molyneux is as respectable a gentleman as I have ever had cause to meet.

Sidney: You seem to find it impossible to distinguish between the truth and your own opinion!

Charlotte: The truth? You wish to speak of the truth, Mr. Parker? The truth is you are so blinded by prejudice that you would judge a man by the color of his skin alone.

Sidney: You speak out of turn.

Charlotte: Why should I expect any better from a man whose fortune is so tainted with the stain of slavery!

Sidney: That is enough! … I do not need to justify myself to you.

They essentially spiral out of control in this scene. Sidney’s trust issues come back and his lack of feed-back to Charlotte’s accusations make her provide increasingly horrible explanations to fill in the blanks.

Because their fights tend to be very intense (they are both people with very strong personalities), it’s easy to think of the two of them as simply not being compatible.

But their issues aren’t a matter of compatibility but rather an inability to find the right channels on which to communicate with each other, despite both wanting to.

Which brings us to episode 5

I love these little acting choices Theo James makes. This sigh is so evocative because it’s pretty clear it’s not frustration or boredom, but rather Sidney still reeling from her accusations in episode 4.

On the other side, Charlotte looks at him and thinks he is distant and non-affected and because, despite being angry, she still wants to connect with him, she tries so hard to use Sidney’s acerbic wit against him and keeps attempting to poke the big grizzly bear:

Charlotte: I assume you are here for the cricket.

Sidney: Never short of assumptions, Miss Heywood.

Unable to find a chink in his cold shoulder, Charlotte tries again at the cricket match:

Charlotte: Good luck to you too, Mr. Parker. Although I imagine you don’t think you’ll need it.

Sidney: Yes more assumptions, Miss Heywood?

Sidney is so pissed at her in this episode, not even her low key flirting with James Stringer galvanizes him.

But then something quite unexpected happens … Without actually realizing it, Charlotte manages to find the right channel to communicate on:

Stringer: You haven’t got another player to replace him. We win.

Charlotte: I’ll play.

With the wide eyed enthusiasm of a true romantic, Charlotte taps into the core of what Sidney desperately needs in his life. She doesn’t just help and support him when he needs her to but crucially she doesn’t put a price tag on it.

Charlotte: Is that a smile I detected?

Sidney: Oh, I doubt it …

Charlotte doesn’t enter the cricket match because she wants to use that gesture to ask Sidney for money for her pyramid scheme or gaslight him into thinking her betrayal was actually her “waiting” for him. Charlotte does it because she wants to see him smile. And just look at him …

Unfortunately that momentary progress is derailed again when Georgiana is kidnapped which will eventually lead to the carriage scene in episode 6 where Charlotte’s need for feed-back clashes with Sidney’s trust issues in their most revealing conversation.

It’s tempting to look at this argument and think Sidney is the only one who is in the wrong and who needs to change. But that would be missing a few important aspects of the story.

Charlotte: Otis never meant to place Georgiana in harm’s way. Any more than I did.

Sidney: And yet you both did.

I think a lot of people, Charlotte included, fall into the trap of believing that if someone didn’t intend to harm someone else that means they haven’t actually done something wrong. Which is why there are still people in the Sanditon tag that are resisting the idea that Tom Parker is a villain. Surely he never meant to hurt his brother and he didn’t force him to propose to Eliza, so why is everyone so hard on him?

But like Charlotte had to learn with Otis, just because Tom didn’t intend to cause Sidney harm doesn’t change the fact that he very much did.

In this case, Charlotte’s major mistake was not that she helped Georgiana stay in touch with Otis. Charlotte’s mistake was in assuming she had the whole 1000 piece puzzle completed when she only had about 200 pieces in place.

Charlotte: All I ever cared about was Georgiana’s happiness.

Sidney: What did you think I cared about?

Charlotte: That is anyone’s guess!

Sidney: I’ve done the best I can by Georgiana.

Charlotte: No! At every turn you have abdicated responsibility. If you truly cared for her welfare, you would have watched over her yourself.

Sidney: It is a role I neither sought or asked for.

Charlotte: Of course not! Because you are determined to remain an outlier. God forbid you give something of yourself!

Sidney: Please do not presume to know my mind, Miss Heywood.

Charlotte: How could anyone know your mind? You take pains to be unknowable. All I know is that you cannot bear the idea of two people being in love.

Despite admitting she doesn’t know his mind, Charlotte can’t help herself from filling in the blanks with what she assumes is a conscious desire to be uncaring. Because she doesn’t have the life experience to come up with another answer.

For his part, Sidney is hurt by her lack of trust in him but unwilling to trust her enough in return to tell her the whole story. Still her words do affect him enough to make him begin to lower his barrier and give Theo James one of his best acting moments:

Sidney: And what do you know of love? Apart from what you’ve read?

Charlotte: I would sooner be naïve than insensible of feeling.

Sidney: Is that really what you think of me? I’m sorry that you think that. How much easier my life would have been if I were …

Fortunatelylori: I just … he’s very good … that is all

It would be very tempting to assume that since Charlotte admits to being naïve once the whole Otis and Georgiana’s situation is revealed:

Charlotte: It’s all so overwhelming! I hardly know what to think anymore. (beat) About anything! I’ve always felt so certain of my judgment. But now I see that I have been blinded by sentiment and naivety. How could I have gotten it all so wrong? No wonder your brother has such a poor opinion of me …

and Sidney begins to show more outward concern for the people around him and validate Charlotte in ever increasingly romantic ways:

Charlotte: I know … I’m too headstrong. I’m too opinionated. I’m too …

Sidney: No. You are not too anything. Don’t doubt yourself. You’re more than equal to any woman here.

That their clashing world views are now aligned. But the truth is, Sidney isn’t the one to explain to Charlotte how it was that he became “insensible of feeling”. It’s Tom that tells her that story (and then promptly bungles whatever help he might have provided his brother). Sidney’s trust issues remain which is evident even as late as episode 8:

Babbington: I believe she’s tamed me.

Sidney: Yes … I just imagine how that might feel.

And

Sidney: I have never wanted to put myself in someone else’s power before.

Don’t get me wrong, I melt every time I hear that second line but it is indicative of the fact that love still feels like an inherently risky and dangerous thing for Sidney where he is obliged to hand over his power to someone else and pray that person doesn’t abuse it the way Eliza did.

For Charlotte’s part, Sidney beginning to reveal more of himself and show her the true man underneath the armor, makes her fall more and more in love with him. And the more she loves him, the more afraid she is of outwardly showing it. His confusion over his feelings for her and Eliza’s reappearance in his life, cause her to attempt to fill in the blanks again in episode 7. First by proxy, while talking to James Stringer:

Charlotte: You are far too sensible to form such a misguided and futile attachment.

Stringer: Why should it be futile, Miss Heywood? For all you know your feelings are repaid 5 times over.

Charlotte: I allowed myself to believe so for the briefest of moments. But I cannot deny the evidence of my own eyes.

And then directly:

Sidney: I hope you weren’t too offended by Mrs. Campion. It was only meant in jest.

Charlotte: Is that all I am to you? A source of amusement?

Sidney: No. Of course not! You’re … Forgive me.

Charlotte: On the contrary, you’ve done me a great service. I am no longer in any doubt as to how you regard me.

So what happens in episode 8? Well, they essentially trade places, going from this:

Charlotte: I hope you won’t think too badly of me.

Sidney: Think too badly of you? I don’t think of you at all, Miss Heywood.

To this:

Sidney: Tell me you don’t think too badly of me.

Charlotte: I don’t think badly of you.

In one of my metas I made the point that Sidney Parker IS Charlotte Heywood’s coming of age story: he is her first love, the first man she is sexually attracted to, her first kiss and well … unfortunately also her first (and hopefully only) heartbreak.

By being forced to deal with her own sense of loss and the pain of being separated from the person she loves, Charlotte will finally be able to understand the true nature of Sidney’s insensitivity of feeling. Instead of causing her suspicion or apprehension, she will be able to connect with it because she’s lived through it herself.

As for Sidney … I don’t think it’s a coincidence that in the end he is forced to do to Charlotte what Eliza did to him all those years ago. He chooses to marry a wealthy woman he does not love and disappoint a poor woman whom he does love.

I think given that his motives are obviously altruistic while Eliza’s were not (both per Tom’s story as well as her general character as revealed in the show so far), the point of the similarity is not to bring him closer to Eliza. Certainly not when he’s looking at Charlotte like this:

Which means that him being forced to contend with what happened 10 years ago by reliving the incident, this time in the role of the aggressor, is there to increase his level of vulnerability and put him in the place of the earnest person trying to reach out for emotional connection and having to fight to pull down the walls he himself helped put up in Charlotte.

You know what they say … If you really want to know someone, walk a mile in their shoes. No one ever said those shoes would be comfortable.

#sanditon #sanditon meta #sidlotte #sidlotte meta #jane austen adaptations #sidney parker #charlotte heywood #sense and sensibility #sanditonmetacollab

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son-of-alderaan · 7 years ago

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From one controversy to another, we move on to Star Wars — the 50 Shades to the Marquis de Sade of Mother!. The reboot orchestrated by Abrams has had its fair share of detractors, with keyboard warriors furious that the galaxy far, far away isn’t entirely run by middle-aged white men.

Is Gleeson aware of the controversy? “Look, that f******...” he begins, before calming himself a bit. “Having a problem with a female lead or a diverse cast? That doesn’t even cross my mind as being an issue, because if that’s a problem for you, then your opinion doesn’t matter to me. If you’ve paid the money, you’ve bought the right to an opinion. But, also, movies have to change.”

Has there been any attempt on the third Star Wars film to appease the issues a certain section of the fan base had? “Well, this is where my eagerness not to cause waves probably perks up, but I’ve not been aware of any corrective measures. It just feels like the third part of a trilogy.”

Domhnall Gleeson used to think he would be dead by the time he was 30, so the fact that he’s speaking to me at all is great. The actor is 35. Seriously, though, why did he think he would be done with this earth by now? “Argh, some stupid thing,” he says in a high-pitched voice. “Maybe I had a dream? But, past my 30th, I was, like, ‘What is going on?’” He pauses to take it all in. The bar. His glass of water. The soft lighting. Every moment precious. “It was odd,” he says quietly, seriously. “But it definitely gave me a weird drive to get things done.”

He must be exhausted. Just a glance at his CV reveals a restless actor in the rush of a career that’s busier and more varied than most. In the five years since his breakthrough lead in About Time, a temporarily diverting Richard Curtis romcom, Gleeson has been directed by Angelina Jolie, Alejandro Iñarritu and Darren Aronofsky, has starred in two Star Wars films and has coaxed the best performance out of Tom Cruise for more than a decade in the irrepressible American Made. He has the randomness of an actor desperate for any old part, except that these are big films and he is good in all of them. No wonder he is wired when we meet. He’s a man on 23 jobs at once, who has no idea which part he is playing next.

What is next, though, is The Little Stranger, Lenny Abrahamson’s classy take on Sarah Waters’s gothic novel. The book is about Dr Faraday (Gleeson), born into a low class, but obsessed with a nearby manor house and the woman who runs it, Caroline (Ruth Wilson). The rich family are selling land to build council houses; miseries are many and awkwardness is rife. Gleeson and Wilson are both terrific in largely tacit roles. And, though the film is being sold as a ghost story, it really isn’t one. Rather, it is about society and need, and how you die in the class you were born in.

Gleeson — whose first name is pronounced “Doe-nal” and who is the son of the excellent character actor Brendan, not to forget a welfare-officer mother, Mary — is erratic company. He’s friendly and funny, telling me how he spends his days (watching George Harrison documentaries) while laughing so loudly and squeakily, it sounds like a cave of bats being gassed. But there is also, always, a barrier. This is in part because he has the hair and make-up of the villainous General Hux in Star Wars, which he had been filming earlier that day. It makes him look like an oppressive sheet. But mostly the wall is there because he hates talking about his life or opinions and just seems unflaggingly professional. Exactly the sort of actor directors adore.

“He’s an utter joy to work with,” gushed JJ Abrams, who directed Gleeson’s first Star Wars, The Force Awakens, and is back for the third in the trilogy. “I love him,” said Jolie, who cast him for the Second World War survivalist epic Unbroken.

I tell him the clippings just portray him as someone who is nice. He smiles, of course. “Having an edge is not something I aspire to,” he says, unflustered. “But I’ve done roles that definitely explored parts of myself that are more than just being a nice fella. I’d rather do it that way, via work, than go out and slate people.”

So he doesn’t want to be contentious? “I would care if I hurt someone,” he says. “And I’m aware my opinions change. I don’t see the point. I’ve plenty of negativity in my life. Plenty of negative emotions. But I’d rather just go there in my work.”

I mention that I emailed Waters before meeting him to ask what she thought about his casting as Faraday, given that neither his CV nor his interviews are exactly littered with hints that he could play a frigid weirdo like the doctor she wrote.

“When I heard Domhnall had been cast as Dr Faraday, I thought, ‘OK, that’s interesting,’” Waters wrote. “In the films I’d seen him in, he plays youthful, endearing characters, and the Dr Faraday of the novel is a bit older and not madly likeable.” Gleeson nods as he hears this. At first, he had been sent the script for a different character. “I understood I wasn’t the obvious choice, because I wasn’t the obvious choice to Lenny.”

Once you have seen the film, it’s hard to think who else could have done it as well as he does — and his casting is testament to the fact that directors are finding it increasingly hard to imagine a role Gleeson can’t play. (He’d make a great Neil Kinnock.) In American Made, he is cocky and outrageous. In The Little Stranger, he is terrified and quiet. And, yes, it’s acting. Chameleon talent is the entire point. Gleeson is just better at it than most.

Faraday’s a mess, isn’t he? “He’s not well, you know?” Gleeson says with some sympathy. “He suffers from an emptiness that can never be filled, because it’s a desire to be something he cannot be, which is of a different class. There’s just so much bitterness, and lust and anger against women. All those things add up to a man unable to connect. Lenny said, ‘If you carry something explosive, you walk carefully.’ And I think Faraday has this. Part of him understands that he has this facility for violence, maybe.”

He is, I offer, a bit “incel”. Gleeson looks blank, so I fill him in. It stands for “involuntary celibate” and is the creation of a group that came to light in April in Toronto, when a man drove his car into women because he believed they owed him sex. “That’s interesting,” Gleeson says carefully. “It’s what a lot of film noir is about, wondering where a man’s place is. With Faraday, it’s more complicated, and the power thing is different, as Caroline is a woman, but she’s from a class he aspires to. I think he’s lonely. I loved him. I connected to him while we were doing it.”

Gleeson was born in 1983 and started acting in his late teens. He still lives in Dublin, like his family. His dad’s mainstream fame came late, so it wasn’t an acting family as such. He is hardly Scott Eastwood to Clint, so he had to earn his success. He was helped by the playwright Martin McDonagh, who cast him in The Lieutenant of Inishmore on Broadway at 23: a role that gave the actor a Tony nomination. Yet despite all this, Gleeson remains very, well, normal. His conversation, for instance, is about living in a messy flat, or Deliveroo, or his grandparents’ Catholicism and his fears about his lack of faith. “I don’t believe in anything afterwards,” he says. “Wish I did.”

In the absence of the comfort of religion, Gleeson listens to advice from his grandmother. “She used to say, ‘If you’re going to make some-thing, make something beautiful.’ If you try to put some good out in the world through your actions, that’s how you live on.”

Why then, I wonder, did he make Mother!, the Darren Aronofsky film that includes a dismembered baby? Gleeson played a man who fights his own brother. Did he read the whole script? “I did.” Even the baby bit? “It will be excessive and offensive to some people, but, for me, it’s not,” he says. “I thought it was an angry film about something that deserved to be angry about.” He has seen the film twice.

The first time Gleeson felt that he belonged as an actor was during his time on Anna Karenina, Joe Wright’s 2012 theatrical film version of the Tolstoy novel. Before that, during auditions or on film sets, he had felt out of place, but Wright wanted his cast to get to know each other, so planned umpteen rehearsals and bonding sessions. “Tom Stoppard was doing yoga with us. It was mad.”

Surely, though, thanks to Star Wars and working with Cruise, he is up there now? He pauses. “There is still something to be got over, and it’s less to do with the fact they’re stars. The power differential is not based on position in the industry, but hours of me watching them, as opposed to them possibly not having seen me in anything.”

That awe happened when he met Leonardo DiCaprio on The Revenant. Surely it’s happened to others meeting him, too? “A couple of people,” he says. What did they say? “They said very nice things.”

#domhnall gleeson #general hux #episode ix #the little stranger

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directlywithlizzie · 6 years ago

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Director’s Notebook: Miss Bennet - Christmas at Pemberley

Our patron saint of rom-coms, Jane Austen, depicted in an 1810 portrait by her sister, Cassandra.

Pride, Prejudice, and Christmas I was approached by Craig Willis about directing Miss Bennet: Christmas at Pemberley sometime in early 2018 with the question: “Are you interested in directing a sequel to Pride and Prejudice by Lauren Gunderson for our holiday show? Jeanette will do the costumes.” Lauren Gunderson? Jane Austen? Holiday show? Jeanette? Check! Check! Check! Check! My response was an immediate and enthusiastic: “Hell yeah!”

Miss Bennet is my third Gunderson piece at OCT, having had the good fortune to direct Silent Sky and Revolutionists! in past seasons. I have nothing but positive feelings about both experiences. I truly enjoy Gunderson’s work, which in my experience is witty and thoughtful and melds well with my own comic sensibilities. I always enjoy directing for its various challenges regardless of the piece (I said “yes” to taking on Miss Bennet while in the dystopian throes of 1984). But there is a certain pleasure I get from working on something that I know will give people warm, fuzzy feelings and laughter. This is exactly what people (audiences, the cast, the production team) need in a time of year where it gets dark by 5:00 pm and we’re all slightly on edge with the various stresses of the upcoming holidays. Thus far, rehearsals have been a pleasure . . . getting to spend my evenings with a talented group of fun and charming people? Awesome! And just imagine how lovely that will be when they’re all decked out in gorgeous Regency attire!

Jane Austen: Her Blessed Lady of the Rom Com Miss Bennet is a rom-com in every sense of the word. While generally speaking, I don’t love this genre, there are good and bad examples of it and I have certainly directed my share of rom-coms. Miss Bennet happens to be a very good example of a modern rom-com. Here, Gunderson and her collaborator Margot Melcon have created story that satisfies the mechanics of the genre while capturing Jane Austen’s wit and style and offering a sensitive and nuanced exploration of friendship, family dynamics, and forgiveness. Yes, of course the lovers smooch in the end, but there is so much more to the story.

While rom-coms in their contemporary manifestation have a long history stretching back to the days of Classical Roman Comedy (or as I describe them to my Theatre History students: “A story of a dumb young girl and a dumb young boy who are too dumb to figure out how to get together without the intervention of their smarter and more interesting servants”) we owe a debt to Jane Austen and her keen eye for observing human foibles and revealing the humor in our struggles to understand each other.

The author of six full-length novels (two published posthumously), Austen was one of the first female authors to make a living as a writer. Her works have been cherished by generations of readers. In spite of her successes, the details of her biography are clouded with mystery and by an attempt on her family’s part to control her image after her death at the age of 41. For example, Jane had written over 3,000 letters to her sister Cassandra, but for some reason most of the letters were destroyed in 1843. What was Cassandra trying to hide? What scandal could be so offensive? We may never know. And much like with Shakespeare, we are left to speculate based on the works she left behind.

Austen, the daughter of an Anglican rector, lived between the worlds of the elite society of the English gentry and the lower classes. She was educated and afforded opportunities to express herself creatively to friends an family. But, her precarious financial situation limited the choice in suitors for herself and Cassandra. Neither sister married while both suffered bad luck in love. Cassandra’s fiance, Thomas Fowle, died of Yellow Fever and little is known about Jane’s relationship with Tom LeFroy other than it ended rather abruptly, likely upon the intervention of his family.

Given the rather disappointing romantic biographies of Jane and Cassandra, it seems logical she might retreat into her imagination and create unconventionally witty protagonists who, like the Austen sisters, possess little fortune, but unlike them, the Bennet and Dashwood sisters secure happy endings with loving (and often fabulously wealthy) husbands.

The 2005 film version of Pride and Prejudice directed by Joe Wright.

Pride and Prejudice, first published in 1813, is likely Austen’s most enduring and beloved novel having inspired multiple film, television, and theatrical adaptations. The story centers around Lizzy Bennet, the smart and lively second eldest sister in a family with five daughters, and her rocky road towards love and marriage to the enigmatic and wealthy Mr. Darcy. The world of Longbourn and Pemberley are populated with a vivid cast of characters including the insufferably tedious Mr. Collins, the long-suffering anxious Mrs. Bennet, and the beautiful snobbish Caroline Bingley. As Lizzy and Darcy navigate the complications of love and courtship in the rigidly-structured British aristocracy, Austen exposes the challenges young women face to lead happy and fulfilling lives when so few options are available.

Miss Bennet is set two years after the end of Pride and Prejudice. Lizzy and Mr. Darcy are happily married as are elder sister Jane and her beloved Charles Bingley. Considered unsuitable misfits by Caroline Bingley and the formidable Lady Catherine de Bourgh in the original story, Jane and Lizzy have triumphed over pomposity and become wives rich and handsome men. While Lizzy and Jane didn’t come to their happy endings easily, most of the objections to them were due to perceptions of their family. Mr. Bennet raised his daughters to have their own minds and do as they pleased without caring for what reputation such an unconventional upbringing might inspire among their peers. With little money to provide dowries for his daughters and their estate to be left to their male cousin, the Bennet sisters have little to bring to a marriage other than whatever charm they might possess. In the end, this is all well and good for Jane (considered the most beautiful and kind young woman in their community) and the confident and self-possessed Lizzy. But what of the three younger Bennet sisters?

As chronicled in the novel and further explored in Miss Bennet, Lydia’s flirtatious behavior sparks a scandal that may very well have destroyed what little good reputation the Bennet family had were it not for the secret intervention of Mr. Darcy. The other two sisters, Kitty and Mary, are among the least developed in the novel.

Jane Austen provides little information about middle sister, Mary, the romantic heroine of Miss Bennet. Unlike Lizzy and Jane who are both attractive in looks and personality, she is awkward and coarse. She is portrayed as bookish and dour, lacking in the social graces her older sisters possess. Younger sisters Lydia and Kitty are pretty and confident while Mary flounders in the middle, seemingly destined for the life of a spinster.

Gunderson and Melcon devise the plot for Miss Bennet based on a single line from Pride and Prejudice in which Lizzy writes home to her family: “Mr. Darcy sends you all the love in the world that he can spare from me. You are all to come to Pemberley at Christmas.” The stage is set, as it were, revisiting seven characters from the original novel including the happily wed Lizzy and Darcy, the soon-to-be parents Charles and Jane, Lydia, Mary, and Lady Catherine’s sickly and awkward daughter Anne de Bourgh. A new character, Arthur de Bourgh, distant cousin to Darcy, joins the family for Christmas after recently inheriting the de Bourgh estate of Rosings. Will this newcomer and Mary find love and happiness or will their romance be thwarted before it has a chance to bloom? I think we all know the answer to that question. What makes Miss Bennet such a delightful piece of theatre is not the inevitable rom-com happy ending, but the further development of the quirky characters and nuanced relationships we are familiar with and the more contemporary lens through which they are viewed.

I will explore the themes and characterizations in the next post! For now . . . I need to get ready for rehearsal!

#janeausten #missbennet #directing #alifeinthetheatre #oregoncontemporarytheatre #eugenetheatre #dramaturgy #laurengunderson

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meupila · 7 years ago

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Blade Runner 2049 (2017)

Seen on October 6th 2017 in a 2D cinema.

A beautiful film, powerful story, and immersive experience. It left me feeling like its protagonist– exhausted, confused, and yet somehow at peace.

I am certain there was symbolism that went way over my head, but I thoroughly appreciated what I was able to register. The theological parallels with the figures of the savior, the holy virgin, and the immaculate conception pushed my expectations along subtly but surely. I was as devastated as K / Joe (Ryan Gosling) when I found out that I would not get to follow the path of the hero after all. The question seemed to become: if you are not the hero of the larger narrative, what is your role?

K, much like the audience, becomes a witness to a miracle. When it becomes clear that he himself is not the miracle, he must choose either to fight to preserve it or to sink into indifference/nihilism. Either choice would be understandable in his circumstances, and both would make for relatable stories, but Blade Runner 2049 takes us down the path of fighting for a larger cause– a path shared by many characters in the film. Sapper Morton (Dave Bautista) fights to keep hidden the story of the Replicant birth; Rick Deckard (Harrison Ford) leaves his loved ones to protect the miracle they'd created; Lt. Joshi (Robin Wright) desperately fights for social order; Niander Wallace (Jared Leto) is keen to transform civilization. They are all driven by a grand vision larger than themselves.

Therefore, the climactic fight between K and Luv (Sylvia Hoeks) is significant not only in the lives of those involved but also as a conflict between self-preservation and self-sacrifice. By this point, K's motivation is mostly devoid of ego, while Luv's main concern remains to be "the best of the angels". Somehow, Luv's shameless egotism made me sympathize with her– there is some of that in all of us. Perhaps by fighting her to the death, K completely kills what remains of his own ego. Perhaps by watching it, we experience part of that too, and this may explain why I was on the edge of my seat during this fight, unable to pick a side, and dreading either outcome. The encounter is visceral and genuinely tense, with the water pulling everyone closer to their death, relentless and impersonal. The blue and yellow hues from the fallen vehicle were a creative way to light this crucial scene, making the struggle all the more ethereal.

The cinematography (Roger Deakins) and visual effects were stunning throughout the film. In retrospect, the range of landscapes presented to us is remarkable, but during the film, they flowed naturally. Every moment was filled with marvelous detail, but worldbuilding never overshadowed storytelling. The vast cityscapes, mind-bending architecture, deep colors, and the wondrous reflections that lit so much of this film all seemed but backdrops to a powerful central narrative. In between being utterly lost in the emotional and personal, I would suddenly become aware of the amazing world underneath.

I have yet to research the extent to which Ridley Scott was involved, but it is obvious the film owes a lot to Denis Villeneuve's clear vision as a director, and to a good script by Hampton Fancher and Michael Green. The mojo is consistent, the structure is creative, and it's clear these filmmakers didn't take us for fools.

The acting was excellent. Mackenzie Davis as Mariette had a magical significance about her, and the overlaid performance with Ana de Armas as Joi was visually striking as well as emotionally potent. Armas completely sells the character of Joi, a disembodied entity that is totally genuine in its desire to be, to have a body, and to please K. The fact that Joi is a mass-produced product does not change the sincerity she projects, nor how easily we and K buy it.

Robin Wright as Lt. Joshi was very much human, with her arrogance and sensitivity blatantly exposed. Her final moments with Luv were painful to watch, and for a moment Wright embodied all of us in the face of the unyielding machine. When she downed that glass of whiskey, she knew what was coming, and so did we. In contrast, Jared Leto as Wallace was somewhat opaque and obscure, but I suspect this is how the character was intended to be. We get a glimpse of an overwhelming ambition and idealism driving him, but it felt distant and cold to me– human, but not in a way I liked. This should not be surprising, as after all there are very few Niander Wallaces in the world, and their calculated vision must be alien to most.

Harrison Ford, returning as Deckard, appears fairly late in the film and adds a reluctant charm, grounding the film at a point when it could have easily gone off the rails. He plays someone who has made tough choices and has long since learned to live with them. I wonder what a day in the life of Deckard would have looked like, drinking whiskey with his dog and tending to his bees amidst the surreal ruins of Las Vegas. One particular scene especially owed its poignancy to Ford's powerful performance: when Wallace throws into question Deckard's life and love as pre-determined and devoid of meaning, we get a long close-up of Ford's face and witness a sequence of subtle transformations. The terror that flickers across his eyes, and the weight that sets down upon him, and the inexplicable strength that he somehow musters to speak the words, "I know what's real," were thrilling to watch and a perfect vessel for my own experience of those same emotions.

The soundtrack (Hans Zimmer, Benjamin Wallfisch) and overall sound design worked wonders, completing the feel of the universe and driving home the dread and hope. I felt some kind of rage writhing beneath the music, subtle and powerful, and it hinted at the unimaginable inner experience of K and the Replicants in general. Who is to say what it is like to be an artificially intelligent bioengineered being? I have no idea, but rage is a primal experience I find easy to imagine in others.

Ryan Gosling's task of portraying K's utter fury and desperation cannot have been easy. Like Pinnochio, K is tossed between the lures of pleasure, dreams of family, and a quest for the truth. His relationship with Joi is fragile, touching, and tragic. His anger and hope in finding a father figure, Deckard, is ultimately baseless and heartbreaking.

On the one hand, his character is ultimately an alien– something entirely non-human; at the same time, his struggles mirror an experience that humans have utterly monopolized: the journey of defining oneself and one's path. The only reason this film works at all is that we can relate to K, but the main reason it works so well is due to the uneasy reminders that, in the end, he is not one of us.

There was a sense in me that his experience cannot possibly be authentic – a feeling clearly shared by K himself, who is constantly reminded that he "has no soul"– and yet I was convinced that those same feelings in me would be as valid as can be. As his doubt slowly seeped into me as well, I began to wonder about my own human experience: what makes it authentic?

In some sense, Blade Runner 2049 explored not so much what it is like to be an AI, but what it is like to be human. Perhaps the writers hid a jewel in an inconspicuous joke quipped by Deckard in the casino– when K asks him if the dog he lives with is real, Deckard smirks and says, "Why don't you ask him?"

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trendingnewsb · 7 years ago

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‘Black Panther’ Is What Superhero Movies Are Meant To Be

So it is written in the pop-culture bible: No superhero story is complete without a dark night of the soul, that pivotal moment when a costumed crusader questions his or her ability to protect the world or else reaches an impasse about how to do so.

This crossroads occurs in Marvel’s newest chapter, “Black Panther,” but it feels more like a “Lion King” homage than a comic-book cliché. After the titular warrior T’Challa has been crowned ruler of the African nation Wakanda, his late father appears to him against the violet twilight, just as Mufassa materialized in young Simba’s hour of need. “I am not ready to be without you,” the mourning T’Challa tells his papa, who gently promises that T’Challa has spent his life training for this precious juncture. He’s gonna be a mighty king, so enemies beware.

A mighty king indeed, one whose story vastly outshines the 22 movies and 15 television series logged since the so-called Marvel Cinematic Universe began in 2008 and the DC Cinematic Universe launched in 2011.

Like many a franchise, “Black Panther” steeps itself in well-trod mythology ― Arthurian folklore, James Bondian valor, and, yes, a fitting dose of “The Lion King,” which itself borrows from “Hamlet.” In most instances, particularly when it comes to the mind-numbingly homogenous superhero craze, listing the tropes we’ve seen a dozen times over is a dispiriting exercise. Not here.

Thanks to the careful work of director Ryan Coogler, who co-wrote the “Black Panther” script with “American Crime Story” scribe Joe Robert Cole, the movie’s familiar elements are more comforting than tiresome. That’s because what bookends them is fresh and more invigorating than anything this genre has produced in the 21st century.

Walt Disney Studios

Chadwick Boseman and Michael B. Jordan in “Black Panther.”

Of course, a lot of that is owed to the fact that no superhero flick has ever looked like this. None has had an almost exclusively black cast, and most are likelier to take place in the far reaches of outer space or some version of New York City than they are a fictional utopia in Africa.

And even the brightest spots in the Marvel and DC catalogs don’t feature characters as nuanced and interesting as the ones seen in T’Challa’s homeland, where muscular women are heroes, warring with other nations is not the answer, armored rhinos act as guards and everyone’s attire glitters so spectacularly it might as well have catwalked straight off a Wakanda Fashion Week runway.

As the poised but restrained T’Challa, Chadwick Boseman, our de facto biopic master thanks to his roles as Jackie Robinson (“42”), James Brown (“Get On Up”) and Thurgood Marshall (“Marshall”), once again proves himself a sturdy leading man. He’s aided by a choice ensemble that includes Lupita Nyong’o and Danai Gurira as captains of a squadron of female operatives, “Get Out” breakout Daniel Kaluuya as T’Challa’s right-hand confidant, MVP Letitia Wright as T’Challa’s quippy tech-whiz sister, Angela Bassett as his royally robed mother, Forest Whitaker as an Obi-Wan-esque archbishop who oversees the crowning of Wakanda’s monarch, and Martin Freeman as an American CIA envoy who joins T’Challa in protecting his paradise.

In an inspired casting choice, it’s Michael B. Jordan, a stud among heroic studs after “Fantastic Four” and his previous Coogler collaborations (“Creed” and the fantastic 2013 indie “Fruitvale Station”), who proves to be T’Challa’s foil. Sporting a mean mug and a gritty dreadlocked updo, Jordan plays Erik Killmonger, a fallen angel who returns to the birthplace that exiled him with one mission in mind: overthrowing T’Challa and bandaging the emotional scars hardening his superpower-hunting soul. Killmonger seeks vengeance that would demolish Wakanda’s isolated, technologically rich culture ― the very culture that has avoided colonialism and relieved its inhabitants of the systematic racism blanketing the globe. He’s a potent villain because he’s a human first.

Walt Disney Studios

Angela Bassett in “Black Panther.”

T’Challa and Killmonger’s conflict yields a smattering of battles, as is routine for any comic-book spectacle’s third act. And the action itself is far from perfect. Like too many films of this ilk, it’s smothered in gaudy computer-generated renderings and edited for maximum velocity, detracting from the intimate character beats Coogler has laid out. However judicious it is overall, “Black Panther” further proves these movies would be better with less capital. Even our craftiest filmmakers can’t resist hitting that extra VFX keystroke when allotted, in this case, a reported $200 million budget. Jumping from the lush flora and fauna of Wakanda ― that resourceful land where sunrises and sunsets punctuate unfathomable sci-fi beauty ― to the overcooked culminating fight sequences is like a rude jolt in an otherwise smooth roller coaster. (Credit for the aforementioned beauty goes to director of photography Rachel Morrison, whose work on “Mudbound” just made her the first woman nominated for the cinematography Oscar.)

To its benefit, “Black Panther” isn’t overflowing with these gangbuster action scenes. In fact, a couple of its most thrilling moments are ritualistic outdoor hand-to-hand skirmishes set atop a multihued mountain where onlookers’ uniforms form a rainbow of colors.

Even down to those onlookers, this is far more character-driven than anything Marvel has done, and I don’t mean “character-driven” in the vein of, say, “Thor: Ragnarok,” a romp that tried oh-so-hard to reinvent the wheel via canned, quirky humor. Here, everyone is steeped in the mythos of their ancestry but committed to a more diplomatic future. To wit, “Black Panther” thawed my superhero-agnostic heart, which, with all due respect to the objectively well-made “Dark Knight” and the first “Spider-Man” go-round, hasn’t truly adored one of these movies since Tim Burton was making Batman. Until now, at least.

“Black Panther” gives voices to people we rarely see in big-budget, mythology-heavy Hollywood productions, and it does so with just enough serenity to avoid feeling like a factory-produced cog in the interconnected Marvel wheel. No superhero tale is apolitical, but this one’s social undercurrents, about protecting neighbors and banding together to furnish a better society, are especially resonant as our government tells us how to make America great again. Coogler is among the best in his class: All hail Wakanda, where history bridges the past with what’s to come.

“Black Panther” opens in theaters Feb. 16.

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jakeperalta · 6 years ago

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Shades of pink Ask: Pink Lace, Cameo Pink, Paradise Pink, Ultra Pink, Shocking Pink

Pink lace - If you could ask one yes or no question and get a truthful answer, what would it be?

this is so hard idk!!! assuming i could ask some omniscient being then i guess something like “will i be happy?” but also i think i’d be scared to know the answer

Cameo pink - When do you think it is acceptable to lie?

if it’s protecting someone, either literally their safety or their feelings (only to a certain extent though, like you can’t justify cheating and not telling someone on account of saving their feelings)

Paradise pink - Is there a subject you could talk for hours about? Write exactly 100 words about it!

there’s a lot of subjects i could talk for hours about but i’m gonna go with pride & prejudice 2005 (also this is a very short excerpt of what could be a 3000 word essay)

Obviously Jane Austen is a legend for giving us the plot andthis adaptation is the most perfect rendering to screen imaginable. The castingof every character? Amazing. The Bennet’s family dog? SO CUTE!!! The cinematographyis so beautiful; the score is incredible (love u Dario Marianelli). The scenewhere Lizzie and Darcy’s ungloved hands touch? Bitch!!! The part wherethey’re dancing and the rest of the people disappear!!!! The iconic proposal/argumentand “I love… I love… I love you, most ardently” and the almost kiss in thepouring rain literally invented romance. Joe Wright I owe you my life.

Ultra pink - How are things better now than they were six months ago?

i’m about to move out of the student house i hate and i’m closer to finishing my degree

Shocking pink - What pisses you off the most?

god um.. the fact that rich people could literally save the planet from climate change but just don’t, the amount of greasy little demon men like donald trump in positions of power, brexit, the whole kardashian/jenner family.... i could go on but i feel like dwelling on it will put me in a bad mood

shades of pink ask game!

#thanks for sending!#ask games #Anonymous #answered

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gokinjeespot · 7 years ago

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off the rack #1183

Monday, October 9, 2017

Happy Thanksgiving to all you Canuckleheads out there. I am thankful every day for the blessed life that I have but today is extra special because Penny is roasting a turkey for us. I love roast turkey and turkey leftovers. Went out to the lake this morning with my buddy Shane for the last fishing trip of the year and was lucky enough to land some nice fish. One of my catches was a pike that put up a good fight. Unfortunately, it took a strong run when I got it close to the boat which broke my line. There went one of my favourite lures. Stupid pike.

Punisher: The Platoon #1 - Garth Ennis (writer) Goran Parlov (art) Jordie Bellaire (colours) Rob Steen (letters). My patience has been rewarded. Garth Ennis is back writing a Punisher story. We are going back to Frank's first command in Viet Nam in this prequel as a writer interviews four of Frank's fellow soldiers. This story gives us a look at a younger Frank Castle and I am looking forward to more insights into one of my favourite Marvel characters.

Batman #32 - Tom King (writer) Mikel Janin (art) June Chung (colours) Clayton Cowles (letters). "The War of Jokes & Riddles" concludes in this must read issue. This story supplants "The Court of Owls" as my favourite Batman story because there's the added depth of emotion that's given to both Bruce and Batman. I don't remember either saying those three little words before, but this admission to Selina/Catwoman I will always remember. This changes a lot of stuff.

Paper Girls #16 - Brian K. Vaughn (writer) Cliff Chiang (art) Matt Wilson (colours) Jared K. Fletcher (letters). And they're back on the racks again after a 3 month hiatus. This time the girls pop into the year 2000 where the Y2K computer glitch is a reality. This is a rare time travelling story that I like.

Spirits of Vengeance #1 - Victor Gischler (writer) David Baldeon (art) Andres Mossa (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). With a title like that you know the Ghost Rider is going to be in this new comic book, but which one? I'm not a big fan of any of these four Spirits of Vengeance but Victor and David did a good job of making me want to know what happens next so I will keep reading. It helps that we have yet to meet one last member of this fatal four.

Batman: White Knight #1 - Sean Murphy (writer & art) Matt Hollingsworth (colours) Todd Klein (letters). This is a new take on the Batman versus Joker story. I was surprised by who the White Knight is and how he came to be. There is also a little teaser concerning Alfred that makes me want to read more of this 8-issue series. Sean has a knack for making old characters look fresh so let's see what the punch line will be.

Rat Queens Special: Orc Dave #1 - Kurtis J. Wiebe (writer) Max Dunbar (art) Tamra Bonvillain (colours) Micah Myers (letters). Get to know more about one of the Rat Queens's friends in this beautifully illustrated special. Dave is not one of those nasty Lord of the Rings Orcs.

Jessica Jones #13 - Brian Michael Bendis (writer) Michael Gaydos (art) Matt Hollingsworth (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). It's part 1 of "Return of the Purple Man". Didn't they kill off this villain on Netflix?

Batman: The Dawnbreaker #1 - Sam Humphries (writer) Ethan Van Sciver (art) Jason Wright (colours) Tom Napolitano (letters). Welcome to Earth-32 where a Green Lantern ring finds a traumatized Bruce Wayne instead of Hal Jordan and bestows upon him vast powers. Thus is born the darkest knight. I was enjoying this immensely until the cheesy Dawnbreaker oath. Boy did that stink. Ethan's art made this as pretty as the break of dawn though, so all is forgiven.

The American Way: Those Above and Those Below #3 - John Ridley (writer) Georges Jeanty (pencils) John Livesay (inks) Nick Filardi (colours) Travis Lanham (letters). Every revolution has its hot heads and this one is no different. Politics brings out the worst of humanity it seems.

Avengers #672 - Mark Waid (writer) Jesus Saiz (art) VC's Cory Petit (letters). I figured it was a good time to jump back onto the Avengers bandwagon here with part 1 of a 6-part crossover with the Champions called "Worlds Collide" where the younguns help to prevent a major disaster. Mark writes both books and I have been enjoying what he's been doing on the Champions. This Avengers team consists of Nadia Pym/Wasp, Jane Foster/Thor, Sam Wilson/Falcon, Vision, Peter Parker/Spider-Man and Hercules. The interrelationship between the heroes is what I find most entertaining.

Hal Jordan and the Green Lantern Corps #29 - Robert Venditti (writer) Rafa Sandoval (pencils) Jordi Tarragona (inks) Tomeu Morey (colours) Dave Sharpe (letters). "Fall of the Gods" concludes with Hal and the Corps saving Orion and High Father's lives. Now the New Gods owe the Corps one.

Astonishing X-Men #4 - Charles Soule (writer) Carlos Pacheco (pencils) Rafael Fonteriz (inks) Rain Beredo (colours) VC's Clayton Cowles (letters). The Shadow King controlled Old Man Logan does what he does best in London while Fantomex, Mystique, Rogue and Gambit whoop it up in the Astral Plane. One of those four falls to the bad guy. The suspense is killing me.

Spider-Man/Deadpool #22 - Elliott Kalan (writer) Todd Nauck (art) Rachelle Rosenberg (colours) VC's Joe Sabino (letters). And Arcade loses again. This here is one book that I can read with my brain turned off. There's no deep thinking involved and I need that sometimes.

Nick Fury #6 - James Robinson (writer) Aco (pencils) Hugo Petrus (inks) Rachelle Rosenberg (colours) Travis Lanham (letters). That's it for now folks. 6 issues and 6 missions of the most colourful adventures of Nick Fury Jr. I hope to see these creative people back on the racks soon.

Star Wars: Darth Vader #6 - Charles Soule (writer) Giuseppe Camuncoli (pencils) Cam Smith (inks) David Curiel (colours) VC's Joe Caramagna (letters). A fresh new Darth Vader emerges from the battle with the Jedi that he got his new Kyber crystal for his lightsaber from after Vader does some DYI repairs to his armour. Now he's ready for Palpatine's next mission. This time he's heading a team of Jedi killers so there is bound to be conflict.

Spider-Man #21 - Brian Michael Bendis (writer) Nico Leon (art) Justin Ponsor & Jason Keith (colours) VC's Cory Petit (letters). Miles' sojourn in Japan ends with a bang. The mystery man that helps him out is a mystery no longer. Next up, a new Sinister Six, which means there will be plenty of action.

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avanneman · 8 years ago

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Baby Driver: Jon Hamm doesn’t know Shakespeare

youtube

Actually, that should read “Edgar Wright, writer/director of Baby Driver, doesn’t know Shakespeare”, but Big Jon said it in the picture, and who knows Edgar Wright, amirite? But it’s all Edgar’s fault that poor Jon (aka "Buddy") is stuck with the line “Romeo, Romeo, wherefore art thou, Romeo?” when it should be “Romeo! Romeo! Wherefore art thou Romeo?” And, therefore, entirely inappropriate for the scene, in which Hamm is seeking to find, and murder, “Romeo”, aka “Baby Driver”, in a parking garage.

It’s inappropriate because, of course, Juliet is not asking “Where are you, Romeo?” No, she’s asking “Why is your name Romeo?” though what she really means is “Why did you have to be a Montague, instead of the scion of some noble family that my family (the Capulets) is not feuding with? Then I could marry you! For what’s in a name?”

Okay, that does require a little unpacking, not to mention some actual knowledge of the play, which, clearly, exceeds Eddie’s grasp.1

So, if you hadn’t already guessed, I’m not a fan of Baby Driver, despite its 98% “Smash” (“Smash” as in “good”) rating from Rotten Tomatoes, which, I guess, is not infallible. Baby Driver is itself a mannered, misbegotten smash of Bonnie & Clyde, about which I’ve raved, Pulp Fiction, and Blue Velvet, neither of which I thought were worth a pixel.

I went to Baby Driver expecting/hoping for some shallow, bad-ass, R-rated summer entertainment, and the film started off well, with “Baby Driver” (Ansel Elgort) as this sweet, silent bad-ass “driver”, a pretty boy version of Michael J. Pollard’s semi-autistic yet good-natured and ever efficient C. W. Moss. A whole film dedicated to a modern-day C. W! Sounds like fun!2

And so it was for the first fifteen or twenty minutes, Baby rockin’ out on his iPod to some golden oldies while waiting for the grown-ups to finish with their bank-robbin’. Grown-ups, well, they don’t always do things right, so that sirens are wailing even before Baby can pop the clutch3, but that ain’t no matter. We’re in for some serious, serious rubber burnin', without the sense of moral and aesthetic shame that inevitably comes from watching a Vin Diesel movie.4

But after that great beginning, the film starts going sideways. Seems Baby only does his driving because he’s in hock to suavely evil crime lord Kevin Spacey, who may as well be sleep walking for all the nuance he brings to the part. Even worse, Baby takes his hard-earned cash home to his deaf black foster dad Joseph (CJ Jones), who, fortunately, is not Morgan Freeman, though he’s so nobly suffering he may as well be. Baby signs with Joe, and anybody who watches movies knows that anyone who can sign and speak is part angel.

Yeah, this is kitsch on top of kitsch—as a matter of fact, it’s superkitsch—but why stop now? Only sissies quit when they’re ahead. Baby’s creative too! He records what people say, adds some percussion and riffs and turns it all into a sort of “found art”, kind of like an aural Joseph Cornell!

Of course, this idyll has to be busted, though it’s hardly Baby’s fault. He meets this really sweet chick (Lily James as “Deborah”), a chick as sweet as he is, and if you guessed she’d be a waitress, well, you guessed right. Yeah, it’s young love, true love, like a fifties Chevrolet ad come to life, if you know what one of those was.

Oh, and I forgot to tell you, Baby still owes Kev “one more job.” Yes, one more job! You have to hit those clichés on the head, boy! Otherwise, they’ll get away from you!

The gang for the last job includes the seriously bad ass “Bats” (Jamie Foxx), an obviously slumming Jon Hamm,5 and his crazy bitch wife “Darling” (Eiza González), a hundred and seven pounds of implausible, gum-poppin’ malevolence. So what could go wrong?

Well, everything, of course. But the twists, the double crosses, and the blow outs just don’t have the bang of the first fifteen minutes. We’re deep in Quentin Tarantino land, with repetitive outbursts of unlikely, mannered violence—though, to be fair, Wright entirely lacks Tarantino’s compulsive sadism, and I mean that entirely as a compliment.

But the real killer for me is not Wright’s stylized violence (Elza blazing away with an Uzi in either hand, for example, which would pretty much guarantee that she couldn’t hit anything),6 but his pathetic sentimentality. Very much unlike Tarantino or David Lynch, Wright lacks the nerve to kill off a single sympathetic character. The Baby/Debbie lovey-dovey dialogue is so syrupy that you half wonder if Debbie is setting him up—if the film is setting you up. Is Debbie going to take Baby’s cash and blow his head off as a final twist? Nope. She waits five years for him to get sprung from the federal pen so they can ride off into the sunset together. What a letdown!

Afterwords Like Tarantino, Wright is seriously into retro cultural references—music, films, etc. That’s because a director’s “world” is limited to old movies. They can’t make contemporary cultural references because no one’s made a movie about that yet. The most egregious occurs when crime boss Spacey tells the gang to pick up some “Michael Myers Halloween masks” for the heist, leading to some confusion. Did he mean “masks of the character Michael Myers in the 1978 Jamie Lee Curtis classic Halloween” or “masks of Michael “Austin Powers” Myers for Halloween”? If you thought that was funny, you probably call Mom’s basement “home”.

It's "arguable", I guess, that it's supposed to be Buddy's error—that he's a Philistine as well as a murderer—but that strikes me as a stretch. The "correct" reading of Juliet's line was the subject of a Peanuts cartoon sometime near the close of the last millennium. ↩︎

Michael J. Pollard—“the homuncular, elfin, inexplicably popular” Michael J. Pollard, in Leonard Maltin’s bizarrely uncharitable characterization—worked that CW thang to the hilt, “playing virtually the same offbeat, imbecilic character” throughout his career, to Maltin’s further dismay. Jesus, Leo! Did you never get laid? ↩︎

Baby’s almost surely not working a stick, but idioms can’t always keep up with the technology. ↩︎

Still, one has to feel sorry for Vin, having to share “his” franchise with “the Rock”—because it was so successful! ↩︎

It seems very likely that Hamm will simply never get past Don Draper. When you hear that voice, you know the guy is suite smart, not street smart. You’re elegant, Jon, you’re elegant. Just accept it, and get on with your life. ↩︎

The mêlée gets so intense that one of the lenses of Baby's shades pops out, in ridiculous homage to the bit in Godard's über classic À bout de souffle, already too cutely reprised in Bonnie & Clyde. Once was too much! Twice is ridiculous! ↩︎

#Baby Driver #edgar wright #movies

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theglitteryturtle-blog · 8 years ago

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Jessica Walker 4138569 -CACS102

Jessica Walker 4138569

CACS102

Keywords:

1. Subjectivity

Barker believes that subjectivity is how we go through experiences and define ourselves through those experiences. An idea of being, constantly being influenced by those around us (Barker 2007).

I know that I am the person that I am today because of my life experiences. Those good and bad experiences have made me the woman that I am. I feel like this relates to the character River in Serenity. She is surrounded by dead bodies, and normally she can use her psychic ability and hear what’s happening around her. Though in this case she can’t hear the spirits speaking. In the link below we can see her trying to cope with her surroundings and trying to deal with her experience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1I4DR3kFCw

Image of River becoming the person she is through subjectivity.

(Above) Still image of River from the movie Serenity, 2005, directed by Joss Whedon

Gif of Star showing how she reached her state of being through subjectivity. She is being determined and impulsive from her experiences.

(Above) Gif of Star and Marco in the episode Raid the Cave/Trickstar, Star Vs the Forces of Evil, 2017, directed by Dominic Bisignano, Aaron Hammersley and Giancarlo Volpe

2. Essentialism

Is how people are perceiving you and how they categorise you in their mind. It is believed that essentialism is who you are when you were first born (Hall 1996, pg. 597). Essentialism groups people into categories I know that I am normally categorised as the red head, short, geeky girl. I tried to break away from people’s essentialism when I bleached my hair and dyed it different colours. Making people categorise me in a different way. I was then categorised as the girl with brightly coloured hair who keeps changing her hair colour. This relates to the character Ramona Flower’s in Scott Pilgrim Vs the World. In the link below Scott is having a hard time trying to see her outside of the category he put her in when she dyes her hair. The essentialism that he placed her in has changed and he starts to panic, because Ramona has changed from what he originally thought of her.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxMwWmPXpMk

Gif of Scott trying to see ow Ramona does not fit in his essentialism idea of her.

(Above) Gif of Scott and Ramona from the movie Scott Pilgrim Vs the World, 2010, directed by Edgar Wright

Gif of Jake showing that he has a definite essentialism idea of a character.

(Above) Gif of Jake in the episode The Jiggler, Adventure Time, 2010, directed by Larry Leichliter

3. Unconscious

The Unconscious is a part of our mind which is believed to have repressed memories and unthinkable thoughts. Freud believed that the unconscious is always struggling to free itself into our conscious mind (Mansfield 2000 pg. 30). That it is pleasure seeking Id, while our conscious is more reality focused ego. I know that I have repressed memories, and there are times where these thoughts try to bubble to the surface of my mind.

I relate this to the Adventure Time episode where Finn has a repressed memory which keeps torturing him in his sleep. We can see in the link below that he knows that he has repressed memories and refers to it as his “vault”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bxSFxh8jqU

Gif of Jake telling Finn that his unconscious is trying to re-surface memories that he’s kept hidden at the back of his mind.

(Above) Gif of Jake from the episode The Vault, Adventure Time, 2013, directed by Nate Cash

Gif of BMO trying to let their unconscious repress their experience.

(Above) Gif of BMO in the episode Ocarina, Adventure Time, 2014, directed by Andres Salaff

4. Overdetermination

Freud believed that there is a life split. This split is of the conscious and unconscious mind. The conscious mind is made up of social and culture, whereas the unconscious mind is made up of threats and dark impulses. (Mansfield 2000, pg. 30)

The unconscious mind tries to express itself in other ways which we have no control over. Such as slips of the tongue, jokes or parapraxis. I think that it is interesting to analyse someone over nervous habits and things that they are not aware of saying when they are on auto pilot. I feel judged when people try to read me through these expressions. I feel like this relates to the link below of Lapis and Jasper in Steven Universe. When they are fused as one person, their personalities clash, and Lapis is trying to repress Jasper. Much like the conscious trying to repress the unconscious.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXKq2W9ZySo

Gif of Jasper stuck in a prison of overdetermination with Lapis.

(Above) Gif of Jasper from the episode Chille Tid, Steven Universe, 2015, directed by Rebecca Sugar

Gif of Lapis fighting with her overdetermination.

(Above) Gif of Lapis in the episode Alone At Sea, Steven Universe, 2016, directed by Kat Morris

5. Sensory Knowledge

Sensory knowledge is how we perceive the world around us. We perceive it through feeling our surroundings. If someone were to walk through the forest in the dark, they could use their feet to feel the earth, and use their hands to touch the trees in front of them (Howes D 2005). It’s like if I get up in the middle of the night to go to the bathroom in the dark. I feel like this relates a lot to the character Finn in Adventure Time. Like the time where he tries to escape a cave with his eyes closed In the link below. He must feel his way through using his sensory knowledge.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEgy2yNTck0

Gif of Finn un-doing three blind folds that he had put on himself so that he could use his sensory knowledge.

(Above) Gif of Finn from the episode Hall of Egress, Adventure Time, 2016, directed by Andres Salaff

Gif of Jake using his sensory knowledge to feel the pats on his tummy.

(Above) Gif of Jake from the episode Gut Grinder, Adventure Time, 2010, directed by Larry Leichliter

6. Creative Influence

Our creative practice is influenced by others before us. A person creates art because they have been inspired by others creative art (Mkpanang 2016). It’s similar to the time I researched Yayoi Kusama and was inspired by her spot art, that I experimented and created some of my own spot art. Kusama was a creative influence on me. I feel like this relates to the character Mabel from Gravity Falls, when her creative influence is another character called Gabe. We can see in the link below that Mabel see’s Gabe put on a puppet show, and she is so inspired that her creativity comes out in a puppet show that she performs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGBBPA-abWQ

Gif of Gabe rollerskating towards Mabel, powering Mabel’s creative influence more.

(Above) Gif of Gabe in the episode Sock Opera, Gravity Falls, 2014, directed by Matt Braly and Joe Pitt

A drawing I did when my creative influence was a friend who used two mediums I hadn’t thought of using together, water colour and charcoal.

7. Authenticity

Authenticity is one’s true and honest self. Derived through showing one's bad self and how we express ourselves through this (Brooks 2001, pg. 9). I like to think of myself as a nice person, but when I’m hungry I get quite angry. One time I yelled at the worker at subway because he was asking me too many questions instead of handing me my order. I don’t think of myself as angry, but I guess that my true authenticity is angry when I am hungry. I think this relates perfectly to the part in Adventure Time when Magic Man steals Jake’s sandwich (@ dur 1:40 Perfect Sandwich video in the link below). Jake show’s his authenticity when he screams for his lost sandwich, thus showing his true self through his behaviour.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC-VKlJBYPI

Gif of Jake showing his authenticity by crying and eating a sandwich that he stole back from Magic Man.

(Above) Gif of Jake in the episode Time Sandwich, Adventure Time, 2013, directed by Elizabeth Ito

Picture I drew of my abstract authenticity. Showing how I think and feel.

8. Creative Identity

Creative Identity is how one connects with their creative work. It is how a person portrays themselves in their art and how they carry themselves as a being (Chia-Chun Hsiao 2016). My creative identity is constantly changing and is impulsive. I don’t have a set medium that I like to create art with, and my clothing style ranges from medieval to goth and everywhere in-between. I feel like this is similar to the character Star in Star Vs the forces of evil in the link below. Her creative identity is always impulsive, and her style of clothing changes from warrior princess to cute. Her motif is her red devil horn headband. Star uses her magic wand for her art and everyday lifestyle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_UHWepLEh0

Gif of Star impulsively changes her hair with magic, showing her creative Identity.

(Above) Gif of Star and Marco in the episode Monster Arm, Star Vs the Forces of Evil, 2015, directed by Aaron Hammersley

Gif of Star showing her creative identity by wearing her medieval princess outfit.

(Above) Gif of Star in the episode School Spirit, Star Vs the Forces of Evil, 2015, directed by Aaron Hammersley

(Above is a picture I drew) I thought that a drawing I did of my hand in different colour pencil relates to my creative identity and how I drew my own hand with different coloured pencil represents that I am a person like everyone else, but different in my own unique way.

9. Fractured Identity

Fractured identity is thought to be made up of several personalities. Most of these personalities are fragile and un-whole, almost the opposite to other personalities (Hall 1996, pg. 598). This would make the person a constant being of confusion. One of my friends has a dissociative identity disorder and it’s always hard knowing which state of mind she is in. She doesn’t remember certain events and her characteristics change. I feel like this relates to the link below with the characters in Steven Universe, when Pearl, Amethyst and Garnet fuse to make Alexandrite. They all have very different personalities and when they all fuse to become one person, that individual is contradictory to itself, much like a fractured identity.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urrj8Wm8Hqc

Gif of Alexandrite hungrily eating some food then spitting it out again. This is because of the fractured identity that Amethyst and Pearl are having. Amethyst is the one who wanted to eat food, and Pearl is the one that did not want to eat it.

(Above) Gif of Alexandrite in the episode Fusion Cuisine, Steven Universe, 2014, directed by Ian Jones-Quartey

Gif of dipper’s visual fractured identity. Though both in the above picture are the same personality, and one is not being darker than the other here.

(Above) Gif of Dipper in the episode Double Dipper, Gravity Falls, 2012, directed by Joe Pitt and Aaron Springer

10. Social Identity

Social identity is how those around you perceive you and how they portray you. Barker believed that, through social identity, people set up expectations of us, using their opinions to define us (Barker 2007). It’s like the action of someone else uploading an unflattering picture of myself, and hundreds of people seeing that picture and then thinking that’s what I normally look like.

I think this is similar to Steven Universe, when Jasper is confronting Garnet and saying that she’s “seen what you really are” (@ dur 1:04 Stronger than you video link below). Jasper’s social identity of Garnet, is not how Garnet sees herself. Garnet doesn’t fit the description that Jasper has set in her mind.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VODMpjXjzWk

Still image of Jasper thinking that she knows Garnet’s true social identity.

(Above) Still image of Jasper in the episode Jail Break, Steven Universe, 2015, directed by Ian Jones-Quartey

Gif Of Mabel thinking that she knows Dipper’s social identity, and is confused when he doesn’t act the way that she is expecting.

(Above) Gif of Mabel in the episode Dungeons, Dungeons & More Dungeons, Gravity Falls, 2015, directed by Stephen Sandoval

Bibliography:

Anais Reilley, Gravity Falls Sock Opera Clip- Mabel Meets Gabe, online video, Gravity Falls, 18th of September 2014, viewed on the 19th of March 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WGBBPA-abWQ>

Barker 2007, Cultural studies [electronic resource] : theory and practice / Chris Barker, University of Wollongong Australia library, viewed 6th of March 2017, pg. 219, <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/lib/uow/reader.action?docID=585413>

BeachCity Pearl, (Steven Universe) Stronger than you, online video, Steven Universe, 10th of May 2015, viewed on the 18th of March, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VODMpjXjzWk>

Brooks, P 2001, Troubling confessions: speaking guilt in law and literature, The University of Chicago Press, Chicago

Cartoon Network UK, Adventure Time | Perfect Sandwich | Cartoon Network, online video, Adventure Time, 31st of July 2015, viewed on the 18th of March 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC-VKlJBYPI>

Chia-Chun Hsiao and Pei-Wen Wang 2016, Creative Role Identity, Work Motivation, Instructional Skill for Creativity, and Creative Instructional Behavior, University of Wollongong Australia library, viewed on the 20th of March, <http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=3&sid=0c64ec6b-d815-433a-8a54-a2fe1a0bc689%40sessionmgr4010&hid=4111&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=edsdoj.7e2e59fd36f0471b9a74129acb9322d9&db=edsdoj>

Denss the Princester, Adventure Time S07E24 The Hall of Egress (Clip 2), online video, Adventure Time, 6th of March 2016, viewed on the 19th of March 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UEgy2yNTck0>

Hall, S, Held, D, Hubert, D, Thompson, K 1996, Modernity: an introduction to modern societies, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford

Howes D 2005, Skinscapes Embodiment, Culture, and Environment, University of Wollongong Australia library, viewed on the 19th of March 2017, <https://tr.uow.edu.au/uow/file/c398f3eb-629e-4ea6-a106-7e170534093e/1/howes-2005-27-39.pdf>

James Waterson, Adventure Time - The Vault (Long Preview), online video, Adventure Time, 10th of September 2013, viewed on the 18th of March 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_bxSFxh8jqU>

Johanne JuHa, Starco - Dear future husband, online video, Star Vs the Forces of Evil, 25th of July 2015, viewed on the 20th of March 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W_UHWepLEh0>

KANGAYWEST, Steven Universe - Alien Horror Mom (Alexandrite), online video, Steven Universe, 6th of November 2014, viewed on the 20th of March 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Urrj8Wm8Hqc>

Mansfield, Nichols 2000,

Subjectivity [electronic resource] : theories of the self from Freud to Haraway / Nick Mansfield, University of Wollongong Australia library, viewed 18th of March 2017, pg. 30 <http://ebookcentral.proquest.com.ezproxy.uow.edu.au/lib/uow/reader.action?docID=286495>

Mkpanang, John T. 2016, Influence of Creative Style and Gender on Students' Achievement in Physics, University of Wollongong Australia library, viewed on the 20th of March 2017, <http://eds.a.ebscohost.com/eds/detail/detail?vid=1&sid=0c64ec6b-d815-433a-8a54-a2fe1a0bc689%40sessionmgr4010&hid=4111&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWRzLWxpdmU%3d#AN=EJ1099556&db=eric>

Mr Sparkle, Changed her hair, online video, Scott Pilgrim Vs the World, 25th of March 2011, viewed on the 18th of March, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sxMwWmPXpMk>

Steven Universe Clips, Steven Universe - Steven Connects With Malachite (Clip) Chille Tid, online video, Steven Universe, 19th of June 2015, viewed on the 18th of March 2017, <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RXKq2W9ZySo>

Yourlittlecrown, "please, god, make me a stone", online video, Serenity, 15th of May 2011, viewed on the 18th of March 2017, < https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r1I4DR3kFCw>

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krissysbookshelf · 8 years ago

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Free Ebooks (1-31-17)

The Intelligence of Love by John de Ruiter: What if the answers to life’s deepest questions were right in front of you, and all you had to do was open your eyes in a new way? The Intelligence of Love puts into words how profound honesty changes life from the inside out, and how the vastness of human consciousness begins with an open and soft heart.