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kit-herondale-carstairs · 4 years ago

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TDA Characters on TikTok

Julian: doesn’t post very often because he is a father but when he does it is always him painting or drawing something with lofi music or him sharing a tidbit about one of the children or other family members (Kieran, Cristina, Diana, Emma and Aline included and always with their explicit permission).

- He’s very popular without even trying and most assume he is a young single father (which isn’t wrong).

- Mostly finds himself on cottagecore or parent side of tiktok.

- doesn’t understand all the thirsty comments he gets because “I don’t even show my face, Emma, why would they think I’m attractive?” but always shares them with Emma because they make her laugh.

Emma: Does it for the girls and the gays, that’s it. Posts nearly every day and page is generally a mixture of self defense videos, vintage makeup/dress tutorials, and videos slamming the patriarchy but also always does the latest dancing videos and other trends.

- always tries to get others to join in on her trend videos, mostly joined by Mark and Cristina when she can rope her in.

- Nearly broke tiktok when she got Julian to do the “You could have been nicer to me” trend because NO ONE KNEW THEY WERE DATING AND EVEN THOUGH THEY COULDN’T SEE HIS FACE EVERYONE RECOGNIZED HIS VOICE AND HE WAS SO SWEET WHEN HE OFFERED TO TAKE HER TO HER FAVORITE THRIFT STORE AND BUY HER SOME DRESSES AFTER HE PUT THE “BABY” DOWN FOR HIS NAP.

- - everyone knows the “baby” is actually at least seven but no one ever said his name because he’s too young so everyone collectively knows him as “the baby”

- solidly on gay tiktok even though she’s straight.

Mark: Daily blogs. Everyone thinks he’s shit posting because it’s all wild things like standing in a middle of a circle of flowers and talking about “this pixie named Aelia lives here and she’s a BITCH”. Often shows videos of him cooking or baking wild concoctions that range from “Okay, I’d try that” to “this is why God has abandoned us”.

- Does dancing videos with Emma all the time and often acts as the “creeper” in her self defense videos.

- Caused a meltdown on tiktok when he casually mentioned his “partners” and started creating videos to raise awareness for polyamory.

- Revealed Julian was his brother when he posted a video of Julian yelling at him for a solid minute because “the baby is covered in honey, why is the baby covered in honey, Mark? We don’t let the baby bathe in honey even if he really wants to Mark -”

- solidly on cooking and gay tiktok, often takes a sharp left into “crackhead” tiktok

Kieran: Posts videos of cats he finds and rates them. The lowest ever was a 9.5/10 because “she bit me fairly hard but I scared her and I deserved it for trying to pet her without permission”.

- does not do any trends or reveal much personal information.

- Was always considered wholesome until he (on a dare from Dru) posted a video joking about choking a bossy sub that rounded up on kinktok.

-- everyone went through a brief freak out trying to figure out if he had a partner but it was never solved.

--- No one noticed that Mark posted a video joking about how “one of his partners was absolutely in the doghouse” accompanied by someone sitting in a cardboard ‘doghouse’ around the exact same time.

- solidly on animal tiktok but occasionally veers into kinktok with more (less explicit) dom/sub humor.

Cristina: Does not have her own tiktok but often appears in videos with Emma and occasionally shows up in Mark’s.

- Absolute sweetheart always, even when she is demonstrating a self defense move with Emma, and is always commended for trying Mark’s foods.

-- especially commended when trying the foods while, offscreen, their other partner yells about “Hell food”

- is flattered with all the comments begging her to start her own tiktok but doesn’t feel like she has the time to fully commit to one properly.

Livvy: (She’s alive, don’t @ me) Does absolutely all the new trends and also does various acting POVs

- her soulmate POVs are most popular but she also is known for dueting act-along POVS with other popular creators

- also occasionally posts videos rating the best male actors/superheroes and once got into a long drawn out back to back war with someone on whether or not Captain America really had “America’s ass”

- had a very popular multiple-part series about being a girl in the MCU dating the various Avengers but ended it abruptly after Endgame because “Natasha Romanoff deserved better and it hurts too much”

-she used to post occasional videos where she laments on being the “only single person in the family” but she started getting some very creepy duets and comments from actual adults so she told Julian and they both agreed it would be better for her to stop them

-- Julian did take the time to duet the people being inappropriate and explained very clearly that their actions were wrong and directed towards a LITERAL CHILD and shamed multiple accounts into flat out deleting

Ty: Posts literally whatever interests him. Has two animal series - one where he shares facts about his favorite kinds of animals and one where he showcases various animals he’s found in the tidepools or around the house.

- has done several video series of rescuing animals and has at least one where Julian could be heard lecturing him on trying to raise wild animals in his bedroom again

-- tiktok freaked out because this happened right around the same time as Julian calling out all the creeps on Livvy’s tiktok and no one knew that the twins he talked about were them

- also does videos about his favorite literary works - notably Sherlock Holmes - and true crime/mystery videos

-- he always makes sure to carefully put in warnings for anything remotely violent or triggering and has never had a single video taken down for violating the rules even when he did a multiple part series on the Black Dahlia and how her crime was ‘absolutely solved but because the man who did it was rich and white, he got away with it and probably also killed at least two other women, one of whom was killed in the Philippines”

- sometimes does twin videos with Livvy because she likes them and it makes her happy.

Dru: Queen of witch/horror/true crime tiktok.

- got in trouble with Julian for showing actual runes in videos but everyone just thought they were for the aesthetic so it was fine

- most popular videos is a series where she rates horror movies on how they do on the bechdel test

- sometimes duets Ty’s or Livvy’s videos just to drag them (with love)

- Has a very popular series on “women who snapped” and is known for almost rarely during part 2s (and therefore having to speak very very fast)

- also complains constantly because her videos will get taken down even if they aren’t that violent and includes clips from far worse videos from male creators to point out the double standard

- occasionally dives into tiktok drama just to dabble and then sits on the sidelines and watches it happen

-- 100% built a balloon arch to flex on That Balloon Girl

- solidly on witchtok and horrortok

Kit: King of petty/messy tiktok who also posts random videos about crime and occasional blogs

- switches from either sharing no information to borderline oversharing childhood trauma

- shares videos on borderline illegal ways to get back at exfriends/expartners/exfamily members/general enemies

-- putting fish in people’s vents, subscribing them to magazines under various similar names, sending them glitter in the mail, opening their oreos and taking out the middle of all of them, putting baby locks on their cabinets and in the outlets they can’t see (like under the bed so they can’t get plug in their cellphone charger at night), etc.

- is always eating some sort of snack, no matter what he is doing

- also posts videos about personal safety like what locks will actually keep people out and what ones are easy to break into

--caused several minor freakouts when he casually mentioned his father taught him how to do it

- occasionally posts videos with an adorable toddler and a young couple who he refers to as “mom and dad” even though they look at MOST five years older than him and he often makes parental abandonment jokes/comments

- no idea where he lives because he speaks in an American accent and talks constantly about American/California life but everything around him looks very British

- absolutely dives head first into every tiktok drama and will go for the throat for anyone who makes ableist/sexist/racist/homophobic comments without hesitation

-- his drags are legendarily savage and he has caused numerous problematic accounts to just straight up disappear

- duets videos from Livvy, Dru, Mark, Emma and Julian ( with lots of savage drags) but no one knows how he knows them because he is absolutely somewhere in the UK and all of them are based in California/US

-- he also notably NEVER duets Ty

--- the mystery is finally solved when Kit does a livestream and reveals that he met all of them because he was briefly living with them before getting placed with his family, the young couple who actually are his mom and dad

---- he is very vague about the living situation but everyone assumes he was a foster child

- he once caused a mass freakout on Tiktok (that actually spilled over to twitter and buzzfeed) when he announced he was going back to the US to visit friends and then posted a video with the caption “when you see your boyfriend in person for the first time in MONTHS but he’s too distracted by some wet 🐱”

-- the video panned out from Kit’s unamused face to Ty gently rubbing a tiny wet kitten with a soft cotton towel

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dalasteller · 4 years ago

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shadow and bone spoilers! malina/mal fans this is not for you but it’s not pro-darklina either. i’m an alina x alina supremacist

so, somehow, the show made me like book!malina more than show!malina after weeks of thinking the opposite would be true. i don’t even like book!mal/malina, but my neutrality towards them is nothing compared to how much i detested show!malina.

I WANTED THE TV SHOW TO MAKE ME LOVE THEM. the trailers made me think i would!!! i'd heard screeners and reviewers talk about this epic love story that transcends everything—these two people who would do anything for each other—and i don't disagree, they definitely would. i just wish they would shut the fuck up about it.

sorry.

looking back, i'd rather the show gave us mal with flaws, who wasn't perfect to alina, who would die for her, but still said the wrong thing and flirted with other girls and was afraid of her power at first. archie did a great job. he just couldn't make me love mal, and neither could the writers opting to make him main character no. 2 and alina’s prince in shining armour who supports her endlessly and has never done anything wrong in his life ever. writers, please, why did you think that was a good idea? when i said i wanted a more likeable mal, i meant i wanted his flaws accompanied by positive traits, by compelling backstory, by personality outside of being alina's hot best friend who never noticed her. i didn't mean i wanted a guy who could be wrapped in a gift box and sold as a robo-boyfriend designed for romance.

no, i mean, they really did write him that way.

what i definitely didn't mean i wanted was over an hour of the show dedicated to watching mal’s perspective of hunting the stag and making besties with his military bros and writing letters to alina and getting shot at a bunch of times instead of letting the book characters who were already beloved by fans get the screentime they deserved. what i wouldn't do to have gotten more genyalina and well-written zoya instead of mal dissecting deer shit...

you would think with how much talk about malina basically being soulmates, childhood flashbacks, fighting and nearly dying for each other at least four times (and did i mention more narration about being soulmates?) that i would take the bait and just let malina set sail. but this show held me at gunpoint for eight hours straight and told me that these two are going to have the same cultural influence as new romeo and juliet and that if i disagree i am going to be killed on the spot. because of this, i have now died.

don't tell me what to do, narrative, because i'm not going to do it!

i am also annoyed that they took the time to redesign mal in perfect childhood-friends-to-lovers dreamboat fashion but refused to retcon zoya's stupid misogyny-fueled bitchy YA girl arc and instead made it even worse by having her be racist to alina? what was the thought process there? they seriously fucked her over. i tried to pretend it didn't happen moving forward but why do they want to use racism as a tool for developing a "bully" character anyway, especially a woc? am i meant to forget about it? they lost me there. i feel like the female characters, with the exception of inej, generally weren't given the same care the male characters were. there was a lot of sidelining in favour of mal's redemptive rewrite and the darkling's 15 minutes of half-assed backstory and crying in every scene for some reason. “make me your villain” .... okay, simpboy, i’ll try my best.

i've already talked about why i hated mal's role (i clarify his role, not his character, because there was literally nothing wrong with him and that’s why i hated him so much) but i'm going to address it from the perspective of my love for alina and why i think this decision was so disrespectful to her. alina in the books was already in need of more characterization, time for herself and her internal development as opposed to her relationship with the three male love interests she acquires through the series. somehow this show took a main character already underused in her own story (though at least the books are told from her pov) and neglected her even further. alina is tied almost entirely to her male counterparts, mal especially, but i'd say the darkling is used as a narrative rebound. i think they both have chemistry and can serve a purpose in the story but the emphasis on codependency is impossible to ignore.

in the first four episodes, every scene that could have been alina struggling to settle into a new life and dealing with the emotional weight of her pressure as a saint was instead about mal. she writes him letters, and cries over him, and slips him into conversations that have nothing to do with him, and gets sad after slipping him into conversations that have nothing to do with him, and can't use her power because she's thinking of him, and then only decides to fully accept her power because of his absence.

alina's feelings are lended to nothing but her missing mal. he isn't just her best friend and love, he's this colossal piece of her identity that she doesn't get to exist without, even when he's gone. the show's exhaustive attempt to make mal loveable and make malina an epic love story turns our female protagonist into a sulking, miserable shell of a character everytime he's mentioned, which, by the way, is like, every two minutes. and apparently it's necessary to draw parallels to the same three flashbacks in all of them. i knoowwwwwwww, they held hands and now they can't anymore, i knowwww. they ran through a meadow, i knowwwwwwwwwwwwww.

watching her scenes almost drove me to printing out a bechdel test and ticking off as many boxes as possible.

i hated it. it made me sad.

i wanted more alina. i want her power to be her own. i wanted that tension between her and mal in the books because his flaws gave her a chance to stand up for herself and say that she liked being powerful. that summoning is a part of her and she would never give it up. that there was a tinge of corruption, of greed, of wanting to be the sun summoner, and it was intriguing! mal's issue of not accepting alina's power allowed her to express how much it meant to her. i wanted the alina who said "the night was velvety black and strewn with jewels. the hunger struck me suddenly. i want them, i thought." i wanted a hint of the sun summoner who decided when it got dark and relished in it (yes i know this can be expanded upon in s2). alina has a cocky side, her insecurities are explored and she finds strength in her new gift and eventually has to find strength outside of it, but in the show the catalyst to her powers is mal. always. is it romantic? sure. but it's hard to enjoy the romance when all we see of alina is her romantic connection to mal. can't she be more than that?

#anti malina #i dont use tumblr and i hate discourse so just block if this take bothers you because i can’t be asked to engage in an argument on here #sab spoilers #shadow and bone #shadow and bone spoilers #tgt #alina starkov #anti malyen oretsev

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villainever · 5 years ago

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Killing Eve + making worlds and workplaces for women

killing eve very frequently – and obviously quite rightly – gets discussed as a feminist screen text, but i feel like we often talk about the individual characters, how fantastic they clearly are, and how flawed/developed/multifacted/interesting they’ve grown to be. but another thing killing eve does phenomenally well is subvert power structures and institutions, and populate them with women in a way we rarely see. for example, in season 1, eve’s MI5 office is unusually gender-balanced for television (it’s her, elena, bill and frank), and when carolyn is introduced, she’s immediately painted as almost an urban legend – elena raves about how incredible she is and how much she’d love to work with her, and we’re positioned to view her with intrigue and awe. this “mysterious, unreadable, probably damaged but definitely utterly competent and slightly amoral” character would typically go to a man – probably a slightly misogynistic one who’d gradually form a “grudging respect” for the women on his new team, as the women act as a device to coax him into the New Modern World and soothe his trauma. but carolyn gives this archetype an internal makeover and new vitality, and neatly sidesteps stereotyping: she’s not a “bitchy boss”; she never yells, or insults; she’s at times eerily calm, and methodically works her way through problems. this is especially poignant when we think of male characters who rail against female leaders for being “too emotional”, and proceed to spend half the movie throwing tamper-tantrums. at the same time, though, she doesn’t feel emotionless to prove a point, or simply to be the stoic; we get a very real sense of her pragmatism and cold war-conditioning, and the interlocking mechanisms of her many layers. carolyn’s character (both her writing and shaw’s acting) are totally genius, but the main point im trying to raise here is that the parts of Mentor and Career Aspiration are inhabited by a woman, and 60yo woman going full-speed at that – not someone who’s barely 39 but treated as basically a retiree.

next, we’ve got carolyn’s boss, played by zoe wanamaker in 2x04. yes, she’s not in the show for long – although she may make a reappearance? not sure – but her value is more symbolic than anything. in her scene, we get the impression of her power (she gets to make carolyn wait :o), and while she’s also a severe older woman, she’s very much distinct from carolyn in personality, which is pretty unique; often, writers will prescribe bulk-identities to all their minor characters who fall into certain groups, out of a mix of laziness and ignorance. anyway, wanamaker’s helen is shown eating (another rant-worthy point is how the frequency and ease with which killing eve’s women are portrayed as actually eating food is tragically radical), and she lashes out at carolyn before soothing herself easily once again – she’s capricious and less reserved and measured than carolyn, but equally potent. we also get a strong vibe of a long and complex working relationship between these two, effortlessly implied by the writing and performance and even if we never double-back to it, it colours how we view carolyn and the system that i’ll (eventually) get around to making my argument about.

lastly, there’s julie, who plays the medical examiner in 2x01, and conducts the exhumation autopsy on allistair peel. she comes across as professional, capable, no-nonsense, but also warm and gallows-funny, hugging carolyn and sympathetic to eve’s slightly strange reaction to the corpse. like helen, she’s not in the show long, but it’s more her relevance as a symbol i want to discuss.

so what am i getting to by going on about carolyn and these relatively minor characters? well, i want to talk about how killing eve establishes for itself something of an ‘old girls’ club’. an ‘old boys’ club’ is the network of connections that form between (generally upperclass) men who went to the same schools or worked in the same companies, who get each other opportunities in a pay-it-forward kind of way throughout life; it’s one of the many ways that sites of privilege are maintained as sites of privilege. but with these older female characters, who all know and support each other, give each other second chances or off-the-books help, killing eve constructs its own version. through these interactions, we have the sense that carolyn is a part of a group of women across the government who ensure certain things happen at certain times for certain people.

even outside this senior boss ladies network, we have elena, eve and jess, who support and challenge and contradict each other – all successful women with different skillsets, trajectories, relationships, etc., and none of whom are white. not only does this show pass the bechdel test in under three minutes, but that conversation is between two women of colour. one of the many things i love about killing eve is that while it acknowledges (and even leverages) the disadvantages that marginalised groups face – e.g. villanelle is able to exploit conforming to the western ideals of femininity to lure men into a false sense of security; the ghost is able to pass through places unnoticed, etc. – it never makes that the core of the narrative. it isn’t focused on reinforcing these systemic barriers over and over, which is something a lot of shows do when they’re trying to be progressive, and all they end up doing is reminding us of the setbacks we face and how it’ll be a long, arduous struggle to improve things. instead, killing eve gives a nod to this sexist, racist, homophobic reality, but sidelines it, the way minorities are so often sidelined. rather than make all eve’s bosses and colleagues men “for the realism”, it throws a few male characters in there and then focuses on the women (look how much screentime kenny and hugo get compared to jess, another first-tier secondary character). it reimagines the chain of command as belonging to women, it takes power and allocates it how it sees fit. i adore this, because if someone said to the writers, “umm… i feel like there should be more men in charge… that’s just how it is…”, their response would probably be, “so what?” it wants to spend time with complex women in complex situations, so it just puts them there; there’s no spinning of the wheels to justify how so many women got to these high-ranking jobs in an institution designed to keep them in the lobby. it certainly never pretends women don’t have to cater to men and their sensibilities (take carolyn comforting frank in season 1), but it doesn’t get caught in ‘liberal’-dude-writer “look at these (skinny/pretty/fantasy-fulfillment) women push through the system and affect change from behind the scenes by showing their cleavage to *trick* men into doing what they want ;) girlpower, ladies”. it lets women BE the scene, unapologetically, without feeling pressed to explain or defend or negotiate by stuffing an equal number of male characters in. we get konstantin and aaron peel and various ambassadors or clerks who are men, but these are all characters on the outside looking in. killing eve isn’t arranging women as spaced out and in competition with each other; aside from villanelle, they’re all on the same side (and villanelle’s temporarily teamed up with them anyway), and they work together, while still being allowed internal tensions and clear relationships. i originally just intended to talk about how killing eve built us an old girls’ club, but i had More Thoughts, so that’s why this essay doesn’t stay totally on-thesis from here on, even though it is all about women and their positions in the narrative/workplace. another note – these women, for the most part, aren’t there to be love interests. we obviously have eve/villanelle, but they both have their own fully-developed characters, plus, their love interests are each other, not men. we have carolyn, but her affairs don’t control her storyline; they flit in and out, and are of far more signifiance to the men than to her – she’s an older woman who controls her sexuality, but doesn’t have any interest in letting it overtake her work (and we don’t have that ridiculous “uptight bitch learns to put relationship with basic bro above her lifelong career dream”). we have gemma, but while her narrative function is to give niko a final straw to leave, and to push eve further, she has agency in her arc; SHE is the one who pursues niko, and she does this in a respectable and understandable way. she’s not the “sexy temptress” who “lures” him away, and nor is she an “innocent” that he actively chases.

also, NONE of the women have their qualifications questioned. there is no “is carolyn experienced enough to have so much free reign?”, no “how did eve get to MI5?”. the way we’re always told to with male characters, the show expects us to accept that they’re fit for their roles. this is highlighted when eve kind of stumbles into being an authority on female assassins. she doesn’t have a phd in psych or anything, but she clearly has an affinity in her area, and she VERY quickly learns to own that. the first time carolyn calls her their resident expert, eve is a bit surprised, but then she’s just like, “huh, guess i am”, and runs with that confidence. these women are all tough, but they don’t have to dig out their own spaces. theyve got them, and the audience isn’t gently directed into wondering whether they actually should. we KNOW they should. unsurprisingly, considering much of killing eve is written/overseen by women, but this isn’t done for Woke Points. there’s no constant self-conscious grandstanding about how many women are in the series. the actors and writers talk about it in press, because theyre EXCITED, theyre THRILLED to finally have this, but that comes from a genuine place of joy to be involved in such a project, rather than a hapless grab for viewers. the female characters aren’t half-baked stocking-stuffers to net the 18-35W. theyre Actual Characters. bottom line is, isn’t it so nice? isn’t it so lovely to be watching something, and have women be in the foreground AND the background? to not have to smurfette effect, the “one of the main characters is a girl, can’t you just shut up now? smh so greedy”? to have minor female characters not as sexy set-dressing or rivals or “ew she’s ugly here’s what we don’t want our protagonist to be hahah amirite lads”? we get to see ourselves over and over, in so many different iterations. killing eve’s women aren’t just “empowered”, they HAVE POWER. they are in positions where they can use that power for good or bad or both, but they have sway and influence and we don’t have to watch a 22yo ingenue assimilate to a 98% male workplace. female characters in killing eve are REAL and PRESENT and we have an entire textured world that isn’t just modern, it’s extra-modern. we have our cake and eat it too: there are women throughout the workplace hierarchy but we still get a critique of how men manipulate the game, and both are managed expertly to ensure we get the social commentary AND get to enjoy the experience of watching women be intelligent and morally grey and sophisticated and manipulative and and AND. in conclusion, i will no longer be accepting applications from media that doesn’t have women in their cast because it “isnt realistic”. killing eve is tearing it up out there, and it’s almost overwhelmingly relieving to get to experience media like this.

*btw, im not trying to imply there are no women actually working at MI5. im sure there are many, but this is more a commentary on media interpretations (james bond, etc.), and the male dominated government landscape in general.

#killing eve #ke #killing eve s2 #killing eve season 2 #villainever #mine #villainever writes #villanelle #eve polastri #carolyn martens #ke analysis #villaneve #villanevest writes

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hamliet · 6 years ago

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Disney Princesses as Strong Women: Pocahontas’s Power to Choose Her Path

That one Disney Princess movie without a happy ending.

As per my requisite disclaimer, there is absolutely room for (a lot of) legitimate criticism of Pocahontas, especially around its portrayal of culture, history, and race, and this is not going to invalidate any valid criticism of the film or of Pocahontas, but rather offer a different perspective on her film and specifically on Pocahontas as a Disney character in the Disney film, not as a real person.

Out of all the Disney films, though, I do want to add an extra disclaimer for Pocahontas. It has a lot of cringe-worthy and outright inaccurate and offensive racial portrayals. The song “Savages” in addition to having extremely racist terms used in it, equates Native Americans with the colonists, and while the message of the song would make sense in the Romeo and Juliet situation the film portrays it as, it does not work in the context of a real historical issue where there was a clear aggressively racist, genocidal, and plain morally wrong side (the colonists), especially when the oppression of Native Americans is still very much a thing. However, I want to focus this meta on Pocahontas’s fictional character within the film, because I think there’s a lot to like in terms of who she is. That being said, divorcing from context is hard, so there’s a tension there. If anything I say is insensitive, please let me know.

So Pocahontas opens with the colonizers setting sail from England with the song “Virginia Company,” which includes the lyrics:

For the New World is like heaven And we'll all be rich and free Or so we have been told By the Virginia Company So we have been told by the Virginia Company

The emphasis on “so we have been told” sets up one of the themes Pocahontas’s character exemplifies: the idea of choosing your path versus following lies and promises given by people who are probably motivated by their own selfish desires (Governor Radcliffe). The riches the song describes are, of course, not there, but the colonists follow the hope of it and wind up missing the forest for the trees. Essentially, Pocahontas encourages critical thinking and moving one’s concerns from just one’s own life to one’s place in the world.

The beginning also sets up John Smith as a foil to Pocahontas. From the very beginning, he’s fundamentally concerned about himself, constantly talking about his wants and adventures. In the song, “Mine,” which emphasizes the greed of the colonists, Smith, who has no interest in gold, chimes in “hundreds of dangers await/And I don’t plan to miss one!” He’s only thinking about his own desire for the next thrill, telling the other colonists that he’s “been to dozens of new worlds” and doubts this one will be unique, and comments that he expects the Native Americans to be basically the same as other people: “If they’re anything like the [people] I’ve fought before...” His perspective is entirely centered on himself: he views adventures and new lands and other people also as things for himself, instead of seeing himself as part of a whole world.

Pocahontas is a bit different, but she also struggles to learn responsibility throughout the film. It’s noted to Powhatan in his introduction (when he asks where his daughter is) that she “takes after her mother” and “goes wherever the wind takes her.” Cut to Pocahontas and Nakoma (a good friend, this movie miiiiight pass the Bechdel test? It’s kinda borderline), and Pocahontas jumps off a cliff. However, Meeko jumps after her and is terrified, symbolically warning that even though her freedom is not the selfishness of John Smith, her choices still affect others both positively and negatively at times as well, as we’ll see them affecting her father, Kocoum, Nakoma, and more.

Powhatan tells her "you are the daughter of the chief. It is time for you to take your place among the people," and gives her the necklace that belonged to her mother. Pocahontas is often compared to her mother: the first two scenes I mentioned, and Grandmother Willow also tells Pocahontas her mother once asked her the same question about what path to take in life. There is perhaps the suggestion that people are expecting Pocahontas to take her mother’s path, but as Grandmother Willow encourages, she has her own choices to make.

The answer, after all, as Grandmother Willow says, is to “listen.” Empathy and learning are paths to being able to make wise decisions, after all. This will be emphasized later when she begs her father to “try talking to [the colonists]” instead of resorting to war. Towards the climax of the film, Smith comments that the colonists won’t want to listen to reason because "everything about this land has them spooked." A creepy figure then appears, howling as if to emphasize his words--but it turns out to be Percy, Radcliffe’s dog, symbolizing that what’s really spooking the colonists is themselves.

When Smith and Pocahontas meet, he almost shoots her, and then falls in love with her, which is the story calling him out on the violence he previously bragged about.

When she runs, he tries to stop her from leaving by forcing her to stay via grabbing her canoe.

But Pocahontas is not having that. He tries to speak to her in English and they realize they can’t understand each other, so he offers her his hand--symbolic of listening. Notably after this the language issue goes away which again, don’t think too hard about it it’s a children’s story, but symbolically it seems to represent the idea that once they’re listening to each other, they can understand each other.

When Smith goes all White Savior on Pocahontas, claiming that “we'll show your people how to use this land properly... build houses” and Pocahontas points out their houses are just fine, he patronizing counters “you think that your houses are fine only because you don't know any better." And she leaves. Pocahontas is not here for your racist patronization instead of listening to her. They then launch into “Colors of the Wind,” with its fitting lyrics about how they all have a place in the world, but it’s essentially not all about them and encourages respect for “every rock and tree and creature.” You desires matter, but so do other people’s.

When she says she has to go because she can hear the drums signifying that her people are in trouble, the exact same scene as their first meeting plays out, except this time he lets her leave instead of trying to stop her. He lets her make her own choices.

When Pocahontas starts spending more and more time with John Smith, Kocoum warns Nakoma “tell her not to run of... she listens to you.” In response Nakoma snorts and says, “Sure she does,” because well, Pocahontas doesn’t, and she doesn’t tell her best friend what’s going on until it’s too late. This leads to tragedy when Nakoma tries to help her by sending Kocoum to help her because she worries for her friend’s safety, and Kocoum is killed. As he dies, he tears Pocahontas’s necklace from her neck, symbolically threatening to tear her connection with her mother’s free path.

And yet John Smith is unquestionably the one more at fault for bringing about the tragedy. Radcliffe tells an impressionable Thomas that “a man's not a man unless he learns how to shoot.” Oh hey white America hasn’t changed at all.

Smith then gives him advice, teaching him how to shoot from his presumably many experiences shooting...

...but Thomas then uses the gun to save Smith but kill Kocoum.

Smith then takes the blame for Thomas, sacrificing himself for a kid who’s really naive and was only trying to follow in the footsteps of Smith, his idol. And Pocahontas then throws herself onto Smith, protecting him at the risk of her own life as well. As she runs to save him, she sings “I don’t t know what I can do/Still i know I've got to try" jumping over a gap between two rocks because symbolism.

This shows Pocahontas growing, taking responsibility for what is about to happen to Smith. They stop the war, but Smith is shot because he again realizes that he should take responsibility because he’s the one who came here in the first place (and the... smokescreen... reason the colonists were marching on them) and jumps in front of Powhatan to save him.

He asks Pocahontas to return with him. Her father gives her his blessing to do so. But she turns him down, though she loves him, because she says, “my place is with my people.” But instead of having her path written for her, she has made her own choice, and she made it by listening. It was time she take her place among her people, but she needed to define that place herself, and listen to the world around her to arrive there, instead of simply acquiescing.

And so he leaves and cue a tragic ending, but for the children. But Pocahontas’s character has a lot of power and emphasis on growing up and what that entails: learning, listening, guidance, making mistakes and growing from them. I really like her character a lot, and it’s certainly one of the more thematically... realistic as opposed to optimistic Disney films.

Up next, one of my favorites: Esmeralda! Yes I know she isn’t technically a princess but to quote the Genie from Aladdin, she’s a prince[ss] to me, so I’m writing about her :P For previous entries in this series, see here:

Snow White’s Self-Esteem

Cinderella’s Courage and Compassion

Aurora’s Autonomy

Ariel’s Adventurous Spirit

Belle’s Bravery (and Boundaries)

Jasmine’s Justice

#disney meta #disney princesses #pocahontas #john smith #racism tw

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mentalcurls · 6 years ago

Text

7. Ho fatto un casino

It’s been almost a week but here I am, back with my thoughts on episode 7 of the 1st season of Skam Italia. I talk about being calm and cool and chill, about toxic masculinity and the parallelisms between Silvia and Eva. The results for the Bechdel test for this episode are at the end as usual. Enjoy!

the episode starts on the most lovely note: the girls, alone, having a conversation about about a really interesting, engaging and thought-provoking topic *drumroll* the Villa guys. Yay.

the silence of the girlsquad while Silvia talk about Formentera, the perplexed stares

Eleonora is holding back from commenting so hard! Her “What are you doing with that sandwich?” is a bit judge-y, sure, but not as judge-y as the instinctive “What are doing destroying that poor sandwich?” I would have gone for

that fake nonchalance from Silvia! She’s being low maintenance! She doesn’t need to talk, it’s cool that the guy she likes made out with another girl, it’s fine! She didn’t take it badly, “ti pare”?

IDK why but I love Ele looking back towards Eva to look for confirmation and support when Silvia seems not to know what she’s talking about

Silvia is cool as a cucumber and just casually piling on justification upon justification and diverting the conversation as far from Edoardo as possible

she’s so casual!!! She made out with someone while she was so drunk she can’t even remember who it was and it’s whatever!! Chill!!!

and to continue the streak of super casual, nonchalant people, here’s Eva asking about Federico, just out of innocent curiosity, you know

that thank you kiss (that goes on for nearly 20 seconds) is completely chill as well

Gio: promises Eva 2am crepes also Gio: actually only ever brings Eva coffee from a vending machine that he only got because the machine ate his money in the first place

Eva casually asking Gio where he is going with his friends, despite complaining a lot in previous episodes about said friends and the person Gio becomes when he’s with them: not out of character at all, Gio won’t notice anything! She’s suave!

cue Gio noticing, but being too kiss drunk and letting himself be convinced (and oh how the tables have turned! This is some mild gaslighting from Eva!)

super casual, super smooth public declarations of love

and then Federica, cool as anything, asking about Marti’s relationship status

this clip was titled “Il panico” and I love this title so much. I would have gone for something like “And everyone was chill” but this antiphrasis-cum-Silvia-quote is pretty good too

going back a second, Marti’s face while Gio and Eva kiss! He’s awkward and avoiding looking at them exactly like the other girls, but there’s so much annoyance there too! We’ve already seen him break up at least one of their kisses (first clip with the “A zozzoni!”) and I bet he’d totally pull an Ammucchiate!Niccolò here if he thought he could get away with it

that pool is a really cool place, I really want Marti to take Nico there at some point cause it fits his aesthetic for romantic places perfectly

how smooth, how suave of Gio to lose control of his skateboard and end up falling on his ass in the mud

Marti’s hair! It’s tremendous! Baby, cut it please, I’m begging you (AND I KNOW THIS IS AN UNPOPULAR OPINION OK but you can’t deny he needs a bit of order on that head)

M: “I see things are going better” E: “Yeah, [...] everything is fine” COOL AS CUCUMBERS, the both of them. The fake nonchalance. The facade of chill.

then Eva swallows, takes a deep breath and it all comes crashing down

Eva is 100% talking to Marti instead of one of the girls because they would obviously tell her off for listening to a dumb boy’s advice and she’s scared they would turn on her for “making” another boy cheat like it happened with Laura over Gio, when in reality the girls would/will take her side both with the Federico/Alice situation and the Giovanni situation; on the other hand, she is convinced from their previous conversation Marti is on her side, she’s looking for validation of what she did when she took his advice despite feeling stupid for taking it herself, but she also wants someone who will tell her off for cheating on Gio, who maybe will fight her about it cause it’ll be cathartic, so Marti is the obvious choice of confidant here

and Marti is taken aback: I don’t think he expected Eva to actually go to Laura, Laura to actually tell the truth and most of all to cause such an earthquake with a half-assed line about going to the source

is Marti that concerned about Federica that he really thinks of her first when Eva tells him about kissing “Fede” or is he that unaware of what Eva’s social life has looked in the past few months and of the hierarchy at school? Both, I suspect. He’s a disaster.

“Hai capito” he’s so shook! He doesn’t know how to react! His mind starts going a million miles an hour

and again! He’s Gio’s best friend, he’d put himself in front of a bullet for Gio, but he makes it sound like he’s siding with Eva, like he’s giving advice based on what’s best for her and Eva believes him without a second thought! I just can’t with these kids. She even thanks him!

the shots focused on Gio skateboarding down in the pool are from both Eva and Marti’s point of view not only in the sense that they come from their position, where they’re sitting close to one another, but because they both see him in the same way: boyfriend material

what’s Silvia doing wearing that ugly jacket?? I mean she looks great anyways, but it’s so ugly and plasticky and it doesn’t compliment her figure at all??

and oh, this poor baby. She’s been so brainwashed into believing a) that she needs a man; b) that her self-worth lies in the social status of the man she’ll get herself; c) that men treating women like shit is par for the course and a sign they actually like them, they’re just being manly she just. Doesn’t. Get. It. Her first thought when Eva asks about Federico is that she likes him, not that she likes gossip, or that she needs blackmail to get rid of the guy who we know and the girls know has been hitting on her, despite knowing she has a boyfriend (which would have been my first thought tbh). She thinks that Edo’s silence is jealousy and she’s absolutely devastated when she finds out about the lows teenage boys can get to when it comes to status, sex and proving their masculinity

Eva and Silvia’s clothes have similar colors in this clip, but inverted (pink shirt and blue jacket for Silvia, blue t-shirt and red-purple shirt over it for Eva) which I think is significant: everyone knows Silvia’s been with Edo because she’s advertised it to be more popular, while Eva’s doing her best to prevent her story of her kiss with Fede from coming out, so the colors are inverted; at the same time, they are part of the same color families because Silvia and Eva have both “been” with one of the Villa boys and therefore they’re both on that wall and in both their cases there’s a third guy involved (Gio and Rocco Martucci); Eleonora on the other hand is in black, neutral.

and Ele calls the wall “posto di merda” and I couldn’t agree more: it is a sanctuary of sexism and misogyny, a place specifically created to celebrate the guys’ sexuality, while demeaning and ridiculing girls for theirs, along of course with other, “lesser” boys who are not in their circle and don’t have as much sex (in the Villa guys’ perception) as them or don’t get girls as hot as theirs: it’s obviously the new frontier of a classic of toxic masculinity, comparing dick sizes, with a dash more misogyny thrown in for good measure, and it’s public in a way notches on the bedframe (another great toxic masculinity classic) aren’t, since those are a twisted way of demonstrating how good you are in bed to women along with how you’re a casanova not looking for anything serious, the wall is a self-congratulatory group activity for the elite, accessible to anyone in theory, but unknown to most people; the only thing I have to say that’s even just vaguely positive about the wall compared to the Penetrators sweatshirts in the OG is that it’s less about “possession” of the girls, who are still objectified, but are not marked in an outward way to indicate they “belong” to a specific group or a specific member of the group

EVA, GUARDAMI EVA: why the fuck would you call him? You already know he won’t take you seriously, he’s never taken you seriously while talking to you face to face, why would he be any better on the phone!

Eva just really doesn’t know how to lie. She’s shit at it, with anybody. The only secrets she manages to keep are those who only require her to omit the truth without having to make up excuses: the only lie we see her successfully tell is about spending Easter with Sara and Laura, while was with Gio, and even then she kind of betrays herself later when she tells her mom her and Laura haven’t been talking much since they were put in different classes

I’ve been disproved! She successfully pretends Fede is her mom on the phone right then. Whoops.

cue Federico disregarding Eva’s requests and instructions because he’s a self-centered, sexually objectifying ass as usual and calling her and making fun of her

I don’t have much to say about the conversation between Gio and Eva on the couch, except that Gio is obviously avoiding the words “drug” and “marijuana” because he wants to ignore the potential addiction he has shown he could develop, that conversation in which people disagree on something important but them man distracts the woman by being silly always make me uncomfortable cause I feel he thinks her thoughts are valid and that Eva must be feeling so shit when Gio tells her he’s decided to tell her everything and never lie AND IT’S BECAUSE OF MARTI who told her not to communicate with Gio

fully siding with Eleonora on the wedges discourse

so much sarcasm in that conversation at Baretto

Sana’s first response to Silvia, who treated her like shit and was racist towards her, is to repay her in brutal honesty, and it’s honestly cruel sometimes, but genius cause what can Silvia do or answer?

“Sticazzi degli altri” and this moment is so important! Everything the girls have been trying to teach Silvia in the past few months about self worth, confidence, about not giving too much weight to other people’s opinions and about feminism coagulates in this single moment for Silvia: she couldn’t be low-maintenance enough for Edoardo to keep her? Fine, now she’s gonna be fucking high maintenance and loud and proud and hand him his ass.

except it’s all facade, she’s still a scared, naive girl who’s a bit of a pushover inside, so when she actually confronts her monster she caves immediately when the interaction doesn’t play out as she envisioned, and in the end she comes out of it destroyed and with the idea that being confident, proud etc. is only harmful for her social status

Silvia can’t even get Edo to listen at her! Not until one of the other girls arrives and calls him out

that “Ciao!” is the epitome of the fake confidence Silvia’s portraying, she’s trying to be cool and suave and destroy him like Ele or Sana would (and will)

and what an haphazard, unthreatening group the girlsquad looks when compared to the Villa guys, all in black, far taller, forming a more compact front, arms on shoulders, exchanging looks behind Edo

“If you think you can reduce me to an X on a wall” that would be bad enough! But even worse, Silvia is not even an X, she’s not even on Edo’s radar enough for him to know her name, despite her giving him her first time!

Silvia is a cautionary tale for teaching girls about consent too, both because of how she handled the sex with Edo and making out with Martucci, and conversely because despite all the signals and implied messages from Edo telling her no, that he’s not interested in her, she still continues to go after him

and like, I said before that I got why Edoardo is doing this, but he’s such an ASSHOLE about it, I wanna punch him in the face so bad

he throws her off straight away, pretending he doesn’t know what she’s talking about (Silvia should have predicted that, really, as I said before, it’s an ELITE thing, not many people are supposed to know about it so why would Edo acknowledge that something exists, that he knows anything about it and that it’s a secret Silvia has been allowed into too?

then he interrupts her! And I don’t think I need to say anything more about manterrupting than what has already been said

Silvia is completely frozen. This is the man of her dreams. She had sex with him. Only a little over a week earlier. The entire world crashes down on her. He doesn’t seem to remember her at all.

and after confusing her, breaking her heart, disproving her theory, treating her like a child and humiliating her, Edo just has to dig a bit deeper still and mock her

re: Ele’s roast, I’m just gonna 👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏👏

the girls though: while Edo is talking to Silvia, Sana and Ele are simmering with barely contained rage, while Fede is as chided as Silvia is and Eva is worried about Silvia, but also about Federico, I bet she was checking what he was doing out of the corner of her eye for the whole conversation; then when Ele talks, and afterwards, while they leave, their bearing completely changes, they stand up straighter, their chins are high and they leave with nonchalance and an air of superiority

Giovanni complaining about not answering perfectly a particularly hard question he was asked in a test is such a classico mood though

Eva is so cute, being worried for Silvia and checking in on her

Alice has anger management issues obviously, but I stan Mr Boccia’s female colleague who is an impressive example of female solidarity and teaching the right messages, even if her methods are not very conventional of pedagogically great; basically the whole PE department in this school is 💯

and then there’s the fight: Alice arrives with a group of friends, like a proper ambush; I love killer Sana with the dictionary, that poor girls on the other end of things will have some very nasty bruises; all the girls get in the fray, even Silvia and they form a shield behind which they hide Eva

Ele is super interesting to me here: she’s in proper boxer stance, like she knows how to fight, and she probably does, doesn’t she? What with being a beautiful girl in a big city in a sexist world and what with Filippo being her brother and gay and flamboyant and probably getting bullied when they were both younger. On top of this, as soon as Alice calls Eva “troia” she gets mad as a hornet ‘cause she just can’t stand people who use the derogatory terms that condemn women simply on the basis of how much sex they’ve had and stigmatize sex workers, especially when it’s women against other women (see also ep.1 with Laura calling Eva “puttana”)

and after that, much as she won’t believe it, Silvia’s moment with Edoardo is forgotten; more importantly, though, Alice and Federico’s fight during PE is forgotten, as is the fact that this situation is his fault since he cheated; no, the thing that lasts in people’s mind is the catfight between girls outside the school gate and how that redhead from 3B is a whore

Bechdel test: this episode doesn’t pass the Bechdel test. I’ve thought quite a bit about it, because there are technically two conversation that pass the test: one while the girls are at Baretto, in which they talk about Fede’s pink wedge shoes, but I decided not to count it just like I didn’t count the conversation on the windowsill about Margot in the last episode, cause it fades in and the topic changes after just a few seconds; the other immediately follows and it consists of Silvia telling the others she got 7 in Maths and that she found the ananas cake on a website: I decided not to count this one because it almost completely one-sided and Silvia starts talking about Edoardo the very next minute.

This post is part of my complete series of meta about Skam Italia season 1. If you’d like to read more of my thoughts about the other episodes, you can find the mastepost linked in the top bar on my blog under SKAMIT: EVA. Cheers!

#skam italia #skamit s1 #eva brighi #martino rametta #skamit meta #giovanni garau #silvia mirabella #edoardo incanti #eleonora sava #federica cacciotti #sana allagui #federico canegallo #alice (skam italia)#skamit #a. writes #1x07 ho fatto un casino

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almaasi · 6 years ago

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reaction post typed while watching SPN 13x23 “Let The Good Times Roll”

idk what you guys thought but I LIKED IT and here’s why!!!! (EXCEPT THAT THING WITH THE KNIFE??? WHAT THE HELL???)

04:02pm

so it only took 45 minutes to an hour to find somewhere to watch this, my thanks to @trisscar368 for helping me out!!!

eventually found it streaming rather than downloading, would not recommend but HEY IT WORKS (for now) [http://gorillavid.in/zbtu97hfei65]

this feels like it’s 2008 all over again, trying to watch doctor who after school

OKAY LET’S GO

i’ve seen a bunch of major spoilers but i know cas doesn’t die so i’m good. apparently it’s A Boring Episode but also MICHEAL and LUCIFER so

idk idk let’s just watch the thing and find out what happens

04:04

rowena: is there, i dunno, music? CARRY ON MYY WAYWAR---

fuck

04:09pm

feels good having bobby there

BOBBY’S REACTION TO TRUMP IS THE BEST EVER

“and you call where WE come from ‘apocalypse world’?”

04:11

cas: “they’re talking about whether kylie jenner would make a good mother. consensus is no”

hey give her a chance

i mean i know nothing about her but she seems... teachable?

dean: “yeah well, that’s why i’m a chloe man”

WHOOOOOP dean loves his girly trash tv i see

brown werewolf: “now that is why i’m a chloe man”

dead brown person alert :|

how naive i was to think he might be left alive because he got a speaking line and made himself a dean parallel with that single line

04:16

mary: “do you really like the rain?”

bobby: “when it’s this beautiful, i do”

lest anyone forget bobby is a gentle down to earth sweetheart

soft papa bear

“rowena and charlie are road-tripping it through the south-west”

WOULD WATCH THAT SPINOFF

but #savewaywardsisters first

04:19

dean: “can you imagine? you, me, cas, toes in the sand, couple of those little umbrella drinks, matching hawaiian shirts, obviously”

PLEASE

“....some hula girls“

mmmm *squints at how that part was said after a....... pause, off-screen with the camera on sam*

04:24

dean to jack: “it’s not about being strong....... i don’t know what you went through over there... but i know you came out the other side. because you ARE strong”

good papa dean words

much love for him and his emotional avaliability

04:26

dean: “whatever you’re dealing with, whatever comes at us, we’ll figure out a way to deal with it. together. we’re family, kid”

sam said it to dean, dean said it to jack

i guess the next step is ...jack saying it to cas?? SOMEONE’s gotta say it to cas

but also WOOOO DEAN’S CHARACTER DEVELOPMENT REGARDING JACK SINCE THE START OF THE SEASON

04:32

is it just me or is this a seriously unfortunate racist-looking coincidence

desperately hoping this wasn’t the guy who killed maggie

(i don’t think it is, which means maybe this is a “don’t jump to conclusions” kind of storyline which has a race-relations subtext??? i wish it meant nothing besides jack’s need to protect others, but given the lack of living characters of colour on this show, the minute a person of colour shows up, it BECOMES about the fact they’re not white, bECAUSE they always die, invariably)

anyway, my point is: this is problematic

also the red shirt. as in “red shirts always die” ??

edit: thank goodness....... RED HERRING

“3 sheeps” poster in the background

i remember this symbolism from something earlier but can’t remember exactly what

i’m thinking lambs to the slaughter, or being part of a flock, or being herded into something they’re wrong about, being naive, following each other one by one into the unknown

wow reading tarot has improved my “make a list of all the obvious symbolism” skills

04:39

the fact cas is suffering with the angel language whistle is interesting?? i thought it hurts dean because he can’t understand it

which means.......cas isn’t understanding this noise?

or maybe he is understanding, it’s just real loud

04:42

enjoying sam being protective of cas

lucifer: ........”the three amigos.... sam, dean, and the other one”

that’s probably how a lot of people see team free will tbh

how sad

lucifer: “you want a lightsaber?”

jack:

vroom

we mAY HAVE LONG SAID HE’S TOO PRECIOUS FOR THIS WORLD BUT WE NEVER MEANT FOR HIM TO LEAVE

04:50

that awkward moment when you’re trying to solve a murder and your adorable magic grandson comes home with the devil

the face you make when the devil makes an ableist joke about your son and then says “no offence”

(the ”i would murder you but there’s enough dead bodies in here right now” face)

04:56

maggie: “kinda seems like you have... you know, bigger.... satan-y... problems”

bless this girl

05:00

dean: “as shakespeare once said: eat me, dick-bag”

tbh shakespeare probably did say that at one point or another

add shakespeare to the list of dean’s bisexual heroes

(follow up thought: what if when cas could time-travel, he and dean and sam went to go explore shakespeare’s town and dean made.... Friends)

05:04

lucifer’s talking to jack about their future space travels

i mean i think it’s fairly obvious, lucifer was the one who killed maggie, so he could bring her back and impress jack

maggie said “i didn’t see their face but i saw their eyes” and that means it was either lucifer or michael with the glowing eyes, and micheal said to dean “you’ll be the first life i take in this world” which leaves lucifer

stinking nasty manipulative trash angel

05;07

micheal, while strangling dean: “could’ve done this quick, but i wanted to enjoy it, that moment when the soul leaves the body”

yeeeah okay sure, speak aloud your reasons you’re stalling for time while jack figures out how to get back

05:10

jack to lucifer: “you’re not my father. you monster”

HUZZAH

for the record i’m... reaLLY ENJOYING THIS episode so far

it’s all big and mighty and magical but the core of the story is a boy trying to find his family and figure out the truth behind his manipulative father

i’m so glad it led to this because i am HERE for this kind of story

the world hangs in the balance, but it’s not dean, cas and sam trying to save everyone, it’s jack trying to find his place among loved ones, and by following his desire to help people he’s learning what he needs to know

i fucking love this okay

05:14

lucifer: i just need your power--

OH NO I SPOKE TOO SOON

OH NO

05:17

michael: “this is the end. of everything”

I SEE DEAN’S COGS WHIRRING AND I WORRY

nine years of not saying yes to micheal and now it’s happening isn’t it

05:20

jack’s pained little whimper :c :c :c

05:21

dean: “i am your sword”

CHILLS

05:22

dean: “CAS I DON’T HAVE A CHOICE”

cas: D:

PERFECT MOMENT FOR AN AGGRESSIVE KISS but nope that would be too much like goodbye

05:24

third option rather than sam or jack trying to kill each other: they pick up lucifer’s blade and kill lucifer with it

05:26

WHAT

??????

BAD IDEA????

JUST STAB LUCIFER????

jack: i love you

NOO ;;A;A;A;A;A;A;A;;A;A

DJSGJD

I’M NOT ENJOYING THIS 0/10 WOULD NOT RECOMMEND

PLEASE STOP

05:27

WELL FUCK

hi there

WHHHOOOOOOO

meanwhile back at the bunker: cas has the weirdest traumatic boner

05:29

THE WINGS KEEP GETTING BIGGER

05:31

interesting angel flying physics here

dean flails while sailing slowly backwards

i mean i know he’s on a suspension wire but technically waving his arms about ought to affect his position

05:33

LITERALLY SAM COULD’VE DONE THAT TO BEGIN WITH

WHAT EVEN WAS THE POINT OF THIS

HE COULD’VE ACTED LIKE HE WAS ABOUT TO STAB JACK AND THEN GO WHOOSH AND STAB LUCIFER

SAM HAS FUCKING NOODLE ARMS HE COULD’VE DONE IT WITH HIS EYES CLOSED

JEEZ

05:35

okay but i’m laughing right now

are you telling me this is what happens if lucifer accidentally trips and falls on his knife

where did that golden blade come from anyway

has lucifer just been carrying it around this whole time?

COULD ANYONE HAVE PICKPOCKETED THAT KNIFE AND STABBY STABBY >>> EXPLODING FLYING FLAME DEVIL ??

WHAT BRAIN CELLS WAS LUCIFER MISSING TO HAND THAT BLADE TO SAM WINCHESTER IN THE FIRST PLACE

OR GO INTO BATTLE WITH MICHAEL WITHOUT THE KNIFE

OR TO HAVE THAT BLADE ON HAND IN THE FIRST PLACE ??????????

I’m sorry i just find this hilarious

i mean good fucking riddance to this trash angel but wow what a way to get there

all of this was so easily avoidable ?? i seriously don’t understand what possessed sam to think “aw yeah let’s pick up this magic devil blade to KILL MY OWN SON and/or HAND IT TO HIM SO HE CAN KILL ME” instead of “umMMM the devil just gave me a magic knife and is trying to tell us to kill each other maybe we should kill him with it”

I HOPE SOMEONE IN THE WRITER’S ROOM HAS A REALLY GOOD EXPLANATION FOR THIS

05:45

HAPPY RELIEVED SAMMY

why do i feel like everything’s about to go terribly terribly wrong, worse than before

05:48

i mean micheal!dean looks good though

despite everything i think dean would approve of the outfit

like he actually looks a little bit TOO attractive

definitely not to be trusted

you know when people just look TOO handsome and shiny and perfect and they’re TOO charming and you know something’s up

this guy’s got danger written all over him in sleek & elegant calligraphy

05:50pm

mmmmmmmmm okay, it’s over

i liked it ?

felt old-school, kinda like a buffy episode or an x-files episode

things i’m happy about: everyone lived and lucifer died!! this is a pretty cool progression of events and i’m interested to see where it goes (not EXCITED, i’m not EAGER, but i am interested). that black dude was not the one who killed maggie. maggie survived!!!

things i’m not thrilled about: the fact sam didn’t just stab lucifer in the face when he was right next to him holding the magic knife?????? i don’t get it and i don’t think any kind of meta is actually gonna be able to explain how ~UM EXCUSE ME JUST ONE SECOND~esque that moment was

no bechdel test pass

jack’s personal arc this season was great and i love him

as always, this show is riveting to me only because i care so much about the characters, and i cannot tELL YOu how fucking pleased i am that this show’s universe is now a universe where bobby, charlie, mary, rowena, dean, cas, sam, jack, jody, donna, claire, the other wayward girls, and billie ALL EXIST AND ARE ALIVE

seriously could’ve done with some kevin too, i’m still bummed that he’s died TWICE now and isn’t back permanently yet

but HOLY SHIT THE REST OF THEM ARE ALL ALIVE

GIVE ME A TEAM-FREE-WILL-MAJOR SEASON WITH ALL THE SQUAD ALIVE AND KICKING ASS AS A GROUP

like... save dean as a group, then one by one discover that dean and cas have been locked in a room without clothes for three days, then save the world and retire forever as a happy, healthy hunter squad with their gay dads

FUCK YEAH

overall, this episode is maybe a 9/10 just because that FUCKING KNIFE man. i dunno what to think about that.

like .........why

i also want cas to have a season arc!!! a positive one!!! where he actually accepts love and expresses affection and receives AUDIBLE AND VISIBLE AND TANGIBLE affection from others!!!

and for fuck’s sakes stop killing people of colour, give us more women of colour who are good and don’t die, pass the bechdel test more often

AND ABOVE ALL GIVE US WAYWARD SISTERS I WANT THAT SHOW SO BADLY AND EVERYTHING IT REPRESENTS

IT WOULD FILL IN ALL THE GAPS THAT ARE MISSING FROM THIS SHOW

PLEASE

#13x23 #let the good times roll #Elmie watches things #spn spoilers #season 13 #post of postiness

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201908195caic2021 · 4 years ago

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Hollywood and race – Cinema Left Black and White in the Past, Will Hollywood Do the Same?

“Spike Leeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!” exclaimed Samuel L. Jackson when announcing that Spike Lee had won his first Oscar in 2019 for the BlackkKlansman . Lee responded by jumping into his arms…It was the celebration of a long-awaited formal welcome into the Hollywood family, the culmination of an almost 40-year career in which Lee had been trying to carve out a space as a commercial filmmaker.

For so long Hollywood has had a race problem, seen all way back in 1915 with The Birth of a Nation and from then on forging stereotypes of African Americans into the American minds. Stereotypes such as the Mammy, the “magical Negro”, the “best friend”, the “sassy black woman”, the “violent gang-banger” which all have little interiority and only serve to further the main plot. Gone With the Wind is deeply embedded within American culture and is arguably at fault for the stereotype of the mammy, as well as the white celebrated saviour; whilst the black characters are racial props to boost white goodness also seen in The Birth of a Nation where heroes are the KKK. The Birth of a Nation is the foundation that American cinema is built upon, a film that screened at the White House, prompting President Woodrow Wilson to declare it “history written in lightning”. It was celebrated for its technological mastery of visual storytelling, yet its narrative is nothing more than racist propaganda. Hollywood’s role in disseminating such demeaning, dehumanized, stereotypical images can no longer be ignored.

Nancy Wang Yuen’s book Hollywood Actors and Racism explores African Americans in films and their disadvantage in achieving roles when up against their white opponents. “Despite having a greater presence, African American actors still face limitations. A significant number of film and television shows have no black characters. In 2013, the percentage of African Americans in more than half of the top-grossing films was smaller than in the US population, while nearly a fifth of these films had no African American characters at all. Similarly, 16 percent— 37 percent of all cinematic, television, or streaming stories in 2014– 2015 failed to portray a single speaking or named African American on screen.” At the 2015 Oscars which was hash-tagged OscarsSoWhite as not one person of colour was nominated alongside, racial tensions throughout the year such as the high-profile shooting of unarmed black men by the police which yet again provided fodder for discussions about race in Hollywood.

After the 2015 #OscarsSoWhite, Spike Lee along with Jada Pinkett Smith and Will Smith, planned to boycott the next ceremony in protest of the whiteness among the nominees. The New York Times calls for representation for African Americans stating; Hollywood continues to ignore the simple fact that people of color want to see their lives reflected in the movies they watch. Representation is not a lot to ask. If we’re going to boycott the Oscars, we also need to boycott the movie studios determined to ignore the box office success of movies featuring people of color. We need to boycott the people who are so reluctant to produce movies made by people of color. We need to boycott this system that refuses to acknowledge life beyond the white experience as rule and not exception. Hollywood has left us with little choice. In the article How to fix Hollywood's race problem from The Guardian in 2016 commented that one could argue that every year at the Oscars is a whitewash – only one woman of colour has ever won best actress (Halle Berry), and only 7% of best actor winners are men of colour (with nearly 40 years between two of the black winners, Sidney Poitier and Denzel Washington). Some commentators, such as Andrew Gruttadaro, have even suggested that it’s not the Academy’s fault that “this year, no black people deserved a nomination.” Despite the lack of representation of people of colour there were a lucky few who made it onto the screens; Idris Elba, Samuel L Jackson, Tessa Thompson, Michael B Jordan and Will Smith. The problem isn’t just a lack of recognition come awards season – it’s Hollywood’s staggering lack of representation across all of its films.

In 1988, Eddie Murphy said: “I will probably never win an Oscar for saying this, but what the hey, I gotta say it … I came down here to give the award, but I feel we have to be recognised as a people. I just want you to know that black people will not ride the caboose of society or bring up the rear any more.” Chris Rock, (hosted the Oscars in 2016) on twitter posted “The #Oscars. the White BET Awards” referring to the lack of diversity, for a second year not one black actor was nominated for main categories. Over a quarter of a century later, we have utterly failed to meet those demands.

Douglas Kellner’s book Aesthetics, Ethics, and Politics in the Films of Spike Lee (1997) notes that “Spike Lee’s films constitute a significant intervention into the Hollywood film system. Addressing issues of race, gender, and class from a resolutely black perspective, Lee’s films provide insights into these explosive problematics missing from mainstream white cinema.” Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing (1989) depicts flawed characters, not conforming to stereotypes or the idea that it is a black filmmaker’s responsibility to show African Americans in a positive image. Do the Right Thing also highlights America’s race issues which are still relevant today such as, police brutality towards African Americans evident by the shooting of Michael Brown in 2015 and George Floyd in 2020.

At the Oscars in 2019, Spike Lee is sat where Jack Nicholson was sat, who would notice Jack was gone when Spike Lee is sat in his seat, Lee is a lot more of a statement. What does it take to be nominated for an Oscar? Age and privilege? Race? whiteness, maleness, heteroness — in an industry that privileges all three, after several decades you acquire the kind of legendary status where you don’t stand on ceremony because everyone else is standing for you. At the 2019 Oscars the seats are no longer occupied solely by the old white men who once claimed all the accolades for building the industry. But now taking their seats are Spike Lee, Oprah, Cicely Tyson — not only for their own achievements coming up within a much less diverse industry, but for how they, like so many older people of color in so many other industries, have set the stage for the younger generation facing a less hostile world, built on the work of their predecessors. Remembering Kim Basinger’s speech in the 1990 ceremony mentioning Spike Lee’s Do the Right Thing, which she said told “the biggest truth of all.” Whether or not it was intentional, Barbra Streisand’s presentation of BlackKklansman as one of the best picture nominees this year echoed Basinger’s words. “It was so real, so funny and yet so horrifying because it was based on the truth,” Streisand said of the film. “And truth is especially precious these days.”

Though there has been little improvement in films representation over the past decade, television is seeing increased diversity within the Oscars. Three out of the four acting trophies went to people of color, while two black women — Black Panther’s Carter for costume and Hannah Beachler for production design — made history in their categories. As Lee alluded to, this is only possible through changing optics, the slow trickle of diversity into the establishment that builds, generation upon generation, toward a welcome deluge. The result is a new and improved Hollywood that reflects reality over antediluvian ideals, in a world that is moving in the same direction — from politics, to science, to tech, to everything. Indiewire’s Eric Kohn managed to freeze a symbolic moment after the Oscars in which Spike Lee, trophy in hand, asked Black Panther director Ryan Coogler how old he was — 32 to his 61 — before saying, “Man! I’m passing it to you.” It was Lee acknowledging his own legacy in the direct presence of its heir. As he had said during his speech earlier in the night: “We all connect with our ancestors. We will have love and wisdom regained, we will regain our humanity. It will be a powerful moment.”

Looking back at Hollywood movies throughout the years it is evident that the African American stereotypes have been fixed in the American minds. The film industry’s failure to represent people of colour runs far deeper than #OscarsSoWhite. The Bechdel test has been used to measure female representation in films; where two female characters would have a conversation on something other than men. Attempts have been made to use the Bechdel test when looking representation of African Americans and people of colour who talk to each other about something other than their race. Will this test encourage Hollywood to fix it’s race problem?

Guns! Violence! Swearing! Or maybe a comedic character, is this what we think when we see African Americans in movies? We grasped at the rare appearances of actors of colour – we loved badasses including Billy Dee Williams in Star Wars (cape!), Samuel L Jackson in Pulp Fiction (guns!), and Tina Turner in Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome (wig!). But more often, characters fell into tired stereotypes. Hollywood films may present a person of colour but they are mainly stereotypes or just there as a side character as seen in the Harry Potter film series where only six minutes are spoken by characters of colour, in American Hustle 40 seconds, Black Swan twenty seconds and in the Lord of the Rings trilogy forty-seven seconds, but only if you count the orcs as black.

Only three of the nominated films passed the racial Bechdel test, in 2016 The Big Short, The Martian and The Revenant which had representation of people of colour whilst the films; Bridge of Spies, Brooklyn and Spotlight didn’t have a single named character of colour. In 2015, only American Sniper and Selma passed. If you look at best picture winners over the past 15 years, six pass our test (including 12 Years A Slave, Slumdog Millionaire and Crash) but seven do not have a single named character of colour.

looking at these films we see that characters of colour are still in the stereotypical roles Hollywood has made for them. The Guardian highlights that; there are undoubtedly historical settings that might require very specific casting (though the erasure of people of colour from the historical narratives of films such as Suffragette is grating). We’re not going to insist on a black man being cast in Valhalla Rising any more than we would insist on a woman being cast in The Shawshank Redemption. But the whitewashing of Other narratives is an epidemic in Hollywood today.

These historical type films that feature racism such as 12 Years a Slave, even with its horror and brutality, serve as a comfort to white people seeking to feel a distance between the monster that is racism. HuffPost reminds us about how racism is still relevant today; “Progress!” we congratulate ourselves, proud that America has overcome its brutishly violent history. “We used to be horrible people that owned other human beings and now we don’t! We’re a post-racial society now! Go America!” But if we’re talking about reality, the reality of racism in 2013, a reality that generally doesn’t make it to the silver screen, we have to talk about things like environmental racism and structural racism in our systems of education, employment, criminal justice, and more. It is films like 12 Years a Slave, Selma, Malcolm X and more which remind us that racism is still relevant and we’d be foolish to ignore it.

It has taken a long time for Hollywood to represent African Americans and people of colour and in a non-stereotypical way, although now we see more diversity among white and black actors in the Oscars there is still little representation in films. To move past its race problem will Hollywood continue to move forward with more characters of colour represented in films?

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sapphicscholar · 7 years ago

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hi so I didn't know who to ask but in my psych class we're learning about adolescent psychology, & there was this unit on developing interest in relationships. It went way into detail on how the brain changes during that time, which was interesting, but ofc my gay ass couldn't relate. at the end all it said was 'it's different for homosexuals.' I guess I'm wondering if you know of any way to learn about psychology relating to LGBT people? srsly im thirsty for anything in academia I can relate to

(same psych anon) that was a pretty specific question so I guess like do you have any info or know of any links/ websites/places to learn about lgbt history and lives and stuff like that in an academic way? bc I love school & learning but I’ve always wanted to learn more about myself and people like me, but they never teach that in schools.

Oh my gosh SO MANY THINGS! Okay, so, the psych stuff is pretty outside of my knowledge but I asked my gf (she does the science in this relationship while my gay ass just reads a whole lot of books), and she recommends Helen Fisher and looking at the researchers at the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality or the Kinsey Institute, as well as The Sage Encyclopedia of LGBTQ Studies (it’s an online resource a lot of universities subscribe to). But I’d also say that as far as thinking about developmental narratives, LGBTQ memoirs are a great place to start, especially since so many of them go through their own experiences of having to confront this heteronormative, cis-centric narrative that just doesn’t fit them and their lives.

So some good queer history authors are: John D’Emilio (comprehensive, if a bit male-centric), Lillian Faderman (writing all about lesbian history, including more recent history; very well-respected; she’s got some issues in her scholarship that by no means discount it as a whole, but I’m happy to talk more about if you want), Michael Bronski (his Queer History of the United States is really accessible), George Chauncey (it’s just of NYC, but still fun), Estelle B. Freedman, Foucault (though it’s not quite “history,” it’s a kind of history meets theory of regimes of power and how sexuality got tied up in that), Martha Vicinus (I adore her), Valerie Traub (goes all the way back to the early modern period), and so many others who really focus more on niche history, so I won’t list them here. There are some web resources, but I know a lot of them are databases that are subscription-based. I’ll see what I can’t dig up in the next couple of days as far as free websites. I know they exist; it’s just a matter of having the time to look…

Okay, you didn’t specifically say you were interested in literature but bc I taught literature and think it’s a great way to learn about the history of a group, I’m gonna list some anyway and you can feel free to disregard!

Patricia Highsmith, The Price of Salt (or Carol, depends on the year it was printed) – you can also check out the movie! I find the two to be complementary (the book gives you Therese’s POV almost exclusively, whereas the movie shows much more of Carol’s story)

Alison Bechdel, Fun Home is her graphic novel/memoir that’s really excellent, but the comic strip that sort of launched her as a public persona (at least within the lesbian community) was Dykes to Watch Out For, quite a bit of which is available for free online

Henry James, The Bostonians – one of the first recognizable depictions of a queer female character in literature (not really…I’d trouble that as a professor, but that’s how it gets taught in general, and it was one of the first books where even contemporary reviewers were quick to note that there was something “wrong” or “morbid,” which was 19th C. code for what would come to be understood as lesbian sexuality, about Olive Chancellor) – free online, though it’s James at his most….Jamesian, which means it’s not that accessible

The poetry of Emily Dickinson! It’s all free online. There’s a ton of it, though much of it isn’t obviously queer

James Baldwin, Giovanni’s Room – gets into bisexual identity in a way a lot of works don’t do; on the sadder side…fair warning

Virginia Woolf! Especially Orlando or Mrs. Dalloway – the former has been called “the longest and most charming love-letter in literature” (to Woolf’s longtime friend and lover, Vita Sackville-West) and deals with the fluidity of gender and time; the latter has quite a few flashbacks to the brief childhood romance of the protagonist and her friend. Both of them are great, but Woolf, as a modernist, can have a writing style that’s difficult to get into at first (for instance, time really isn’t stable or linear, which is something I adore about her, but definitely takes some getting used to). They’re both available free online through Project Gutenberg

Radclyffe Hall, The Well of Loneliness – it’s a classic, in the sense that it’s one of those books people sort of expect you to have read if you do lesbian literature. It’s certainly an interesting story and told well, but it’s not even close to a happy ending and is rather conciliatory to prevailing norms (though even still it was taken to the courts under the obscenity laws) - free online, though!

Sarah Waters – a contemporary novelist who writes almost all historical fiction about queer women! Some of her stories are better known (e.g. Tipping the Velvet), but they’re pretty much all great. Varying degrees of angst, but definitely an accessible read

Maggie Nelson, The Argonauts – sort of experimental in form (it’s fiction with footnotes!); it deals with a lesbian woman coming to terms with her partner’s transition and her own identity during the process

E.M. Forster, Maurice – even though it was first drafted in the 1910s, Forster edited it throughout his life, and, given the subject matter, which was also autobiographical, and the prevailing attitudes at the time, the book was only published posthumously in the 70s

Colette’s Claudine series – it’s long (multi-volume) but sort of a classic – they’re all old enough to be free online, though the English translation is harder to come by

Eileen Myles – lesbian poet and novelist – I’d recommend Inferno but some of her poetry is free online

Rita Mae Brown – Rubyfruit Jungle and Oranges Are not the Only Fruit are both quite good, though, especially the latter deals with religiously-motivated homophobia, so I know at least my girlfriend, who dealt with a lot of that from her family, opted not to read it for her own mental health.

Tony Kushner, Angels in America – this two-part play deals with the AIDS crisis in America – it’s been turned into a TV miniseries, a Broadway play, and a movie, some of which are available online

Really anything by David Sedaris or Augusten Burroughs – both are gay authors who deal a lot with short stories (a ton of memoir/autobiographical stuff) – the former is a bit funnier, but they both have enough sarcasm and dry wit even in dark situations to make them fast reads

Alan Ginsburg’s poetry

Walt Whitman’s poetry (though it can be really fucking racist)

Binyavanga Wainaina, One Day I Will Write About This Place – does deal with issues of sexual abuse as a warning

Anything by Amber Hollibaugh (she writes a lot about class and butch/femme dynamics – quite a bit of her stuff has been scanned and uploaded online)

Michelle Tea – was a slam poet; recovering alcoholic; fantastically funny and talented author and delightful human being if you ever get the chance to meet her or go to one of her readings

Randy Shilts, And the Band Played On – more a work of investigative journalism than anything, the work is a stunning indictment of the indifference of the US government during some of the worst years of the AIDS crisis, but it also provides a good bit of gay history

Terry Galloway Mean Little Deaf Queer – deals with one woman’s experience of losing her hearing and navigating the world and the Deaf and deaf communities as a once-hearing person – she’s sort of acerbic and always funny;

Jeffrey Eugenides, Middlesex – grapples with intersex identity in a way that’s still far too rare in literature

Theodore Winthrop, Cecil Dreem – just rediscovered about two years ago, this is one of the few pretty happy gay novels from the nineteenth century! Free online!

Leslie Feinberg, Stone Butch Blues – pretty clear from the title, but deals with a butch character’s struggles with gender identity (takes T to pass for a while, but then gets alienated from the lesbian community; eventually stops taking T, but still struggles with what that means for her) – Feinberg’s wife made it free online for everyone after Feinberg’s death (the book had a limited print run, which made finding copies both hard and expensive)

Harvey Fierstein, Torch Song Trilogy – trilogy later adapted for film about an effeminate gay man (who also performs as a drag queen) and his life and family

Oscar Wilde – his novels aren’t explicitly gay, but they often dance around it thematically, at least; his heartbreaking letter, De Profundis, which he wrote to his lover while imprisoned for “gross indecency,” is available online

Anything by Dorothy Alison

Audre Lorde, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name - great as a memoir and a cultural history

There’s so many more but this is so my jam I suspect I’ve already rambled too long

If you’re interested in film, here are a few:

Paris Is Burning (a film about drag ball culture in NYC)

Fire – Deepa Mehta (it’s on YouTube in the US)

Boys Don’t Cry – there is a lot of homophobia and transphobia in the film, so it’s definitely one you’ll want to be in the right mindset to watch (I, for one, have only watched it once)

But I’m a Cheerleader – over-the-top mockumentary-esque film that satirizes conversion therapy and the Christian “documentaries” that claimed to showcase their successes (RuPaul is in it as well)

Desert Hearts – one of the earliest films to leave open the possibility of a happy ending for the lesbian couple

Hedwig and the Angry Itch – deals with gender identity and feelings of not belonging (also a fabulous musical)

Philadelphia – about one man’s experience of discrimination while dying of AIDS

There are plenty of lighter films, but I figure these tend to also talk more seriously about some issues as well

I don’t know if anyone but me made it to the end of this post, but there’s also so much fun queer theory out there that I won’t get into here, but I’m always up for giving more recommendations!

#ask me #anon #professor rambles #lgbtq history #lgbtq literature #book recommendations #film recommendations

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violet--minds-blog · 7 years ago

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‘The Bold Type’ and Surface-Level Intersectionality

Piper Gibson | July 26, 2017

Long time, no write, I know. It’s hard, as a mentally ill person working and going to school and trying to stay politically aware in these trying times, to update this blog. But I’m back with another post, because I am annoyed.

I’ve caught up with The Bold Type, a new Freeform series which is about three friends who work at a women’s magazine and is currently airing its first season. As I’m writing this there’s four episodes, but each is packed with so much that rubs me the wrong way that I’ve been incessantly livetweeting on my (private) Twitter about it. I don’t even know where to start, so I suppose I’ll begin with a few things I like.

I like that it’s a women-driven show. I like that we get to see women in power and at the top of their game. I like that the side characters are kinda diverse. I like that it passes the Bechdel test in a major, major way. I like that they are at least trying to come from an intersectional feminist perspective. That’s actually why I’m really frustrated with this show, but I’ll talk about that more later.

Firstly. Jane, the kind-of main character (To me, she’s clearly the main protagonist, but it could be argued that her, Kat, and Sutton are all protagonists) is boring. I’m sorry. She just is the human embodiment of plain yogurt. I cannot bring myself to care about her budding career or mediocre hetero love life. I don’t care when she wins, and I don’t care when she loses. I guess to some, her story might be interesting, but I just... don’t... care. I feel basically the same about Sutton, but she’s a teense more likable because the glimpses of her backstory spark an interest in me. For Jane, I think the writers were going for a Gifted-Child-Who-Grew-Up-To-Need-To-Please-Authority-Figures vibe, which I can relate to, except I see basically nothing of myself in her. Maybe it’s the bland cishet girl thing, but she’s not doing it for me.

My main problem with this show is that they focus on Plain Jane (low-hanging fruit, I know, but I had to do it), who has the personality of a lightly-salted potato chip, way more than they focus on Kat, who is IMO the most interesting person on the show. For a series that’s at least kind of trying to be diverse, it’s frustrating to me that 2/3 of the main characters are white and cis and heterosexual, but anyway. They have two cis, heterosexual, white woman main characters and then a black woman main character who is questioning her sexuality. Who do you think a large portion of the viewership for a show that claims to be feminist is gonna gravitate towards? Not the pasty heteros, probably.

Kat is dynamic, and interesting, and good at her job, not to mention gorgeous as all hell. Yet they give her storylines like "Black Girl Who Grew Up Upper-Middle Class Has to Have Poverty Explained to Her by White Girl” and “Black Girl Living In Modern-Day America Somehow Doesn’t Understand Why A WOC Immigrant Might Not Want to Interact With Police” and “Black Girl Who Works at a Feminist Magazine Doesn’t Seem to Know About Bisexuality For Some Reason” and y’all. It’s honestly so tiring. I understand that Kat is the one with the majority of the interactions with Adena to set up the queer romance between them (which I love and appreciate) but this also means Kat is their point-girl to explain xenophobia and immigration issues to the audience.

I would like that they’re showing interracial ignorance issues, because people of color can be ignorant about and discriminatory towards other people of color, but I don’t think that’s what they set out to do. I think they wanted this to be a cool, hip, intersectional show, so they do a few kind of performative scenes where the Muslim lesbian woman on a work visa explains to another woman of color why she doesn’t take her hijab off or why she ran when the police showed up after a man assaulted her. At one point, Kat’s white boss actually explains to her that Adena ran from the cops because she could’ve gotten deported, which Kat hadn’t even considered somehow. What this actually does is tell the audience that Kat is ignorant on issues pertaining to women of color, and since Jane and Sutton literally never have race discussions beside one throw-away line about the Civil War from Jane, it feels like race is a topic secluded to only a few WOC characters. The women of color do all the literal and metaphorical emotional labor on this topic on the show, and the white women characters don’t have to deal with it. Which, I guess, is realistic to actual race relations between women, but I would like it to be acknowledged on-screen. For Kat to have to be the person with the brunt of the ignorance on xenophobia and queer issues while her white friends don’t have to deal with it is upsetting, to say the least. Because the show doesn’t address it, to me, it feels like them saying that white women are just so much better and more knowledgeable about these things than women of color, which is just... straight up wrong. I’d like at least one scene of Sutton and Jane not understanding something about race and Kat saying “Just Google it, I’m not gonna do the emotional labor for the both of you,” please, for the love of God.

This isn’t even all of my problems with the show. It revolves way too much around romance and sex for media that seems to say women’s lives don’t have to revolve around romance and sex, for one thing. Both Jane and Sutton’s love interests are white assholes. Sutton’s boyfriend works for the same company as her and as such, is in a position of power over her. At least the show acknowledges that if this were to get out, the high-up board member boyfriend would not be the one in trouble and probably fired. But he’s still touted as this super sweet guy who tries really hard, despite him talking down to Sutton about how young she is and how he “remembers feeling like” there was no time to accomplish things like he’s so much more worldly and intelligent than her. Ew. Dump him, sweetheart.

Jane’s love interest is the. Literal. Worst. His name is like, Tyler or Aaron or something douchey, and he’s my least favorite guy archetype. Tyler-Aaron works for the “rival” men’s magazine about sex and relationships, with stunning article titles like “How To Make Your Girlfriend Fuck Like a Porn Star.” I know. Obviously, White Feminist Jane hates him at first. But I am a smart person, so when I saw them get in a disagreement in which he condescendingly calls her article “cute” and she storms off, I said, “Oh no. They’re gonna fuck, aren’t they.” Because that’s what happens every time a man and a woman dislike each other in popular media. A woman thinks a man is sexist? Yeah, eventually she’s gonna see the error of her ways and they’re gonna have sex.

See, what bothers me about Tyler-Aaron is that they made him a Secret Male Feminist. He tells Jane, “You haven’t read my articles, have you?” after she calls them sexist, and everyone tells her that he’s a pretty good writer and not a bad guy. He told her there’s nothing he finds sexier than a woman speaking her mind, and he wrote one good article about how women feeling like they need to fake orgasms is the fault of men, so he really schooled her, huh? Jane stands there with her mouth agape as Secret Male Feminist struts away smirking, and then within a day or so she’s kissing him. Yawn. Puke. Etc, etc.

This storyline doesn’t work. It doesn’t work because he already was a dick. He already condescended her writing, said she was sexy when she called him out for legitimate reasons, and wrote shitty sexist articles. Him writing one good article or being nice to her now doesn’t change that. And making him teach her something about feminism or prove her ideas wrong is akin to gaslighting. Women are already told every single day that we’re imagining all this discrimination and violence, that sexism is basically over and we need to shut up, that Congress passed X thing or a movie had Y plot so we “won,” and it’s time to move on. We’re told this despite seeing and experiencing this violence on every level, starting with interpersonal and going up to governmental and global. Tyler-Aaron apparently being an okay guy instead of the sexist douche Jane once thought he was (and I still know he is) is basically the show saying, “Hey, crazy feminist, not all men are bad, and some can be feminist, so calm down, okay? Your gut-reaction of a man being sexist and condescending is a fake reaction and you’re just making things up and jumping to conclusions.” It’s gross. And I expect better.

That’s why I dislike the show. It’s clearly trying, at least a tiny little bit, to be feminist and intersectional. It could be a really great, diverse, ground-breaking show. Instead, it is still so limited, racist, and surface-level white feminist-y. Most of what it tries to do, it fails. And, okay, I recognize that it’s important that a show like this, with a large majority of female characters, even exists. But they’re doing a disservice to characters like Kat, a lot of characters are boring and one-dimensional, and they haven’t even mentioned issues like trans or disability rights. It’s just not great writing, folks. Personally, when a show claims to be feminist, I expect it to follow through.

#piper gibson #blog #text #essay #article #media

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mentalcurls · 6 years ago

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5. Cosa ti eccita?

Episode 5, we’re almost halfway throught the season! This time I talk about that thing Martino says, mother-daughter relationships and my journey to empathizing with Edoardo Incanti (for now) as well as the results of the Bechdel test for this episode, of course!

this episode start so nicely: Martino talking shit about each and every one of Eva’s friends

he manages to be racist, sizeist, a slut shamer, classist and sexist and misogynist all in one sentence with this lovely bunch of derogatory definitions; plus he’s an asshole in general and unsupportive of Eva

Elia is right there with him laughing at all that, probably Peccio is too, Gio maybe cracked a smile, but don’t think for a second that anything but Eva’s face and the thought of the conversation they need to have held him back (I’d like to take this opportunity to remind y’all Gio in this remake isn’t as interested in politics as Jonas is in the og)

this is , from what I read online (I only watched S1 months after it aired), one of those scenes that made people angry and I can see why. It wouldn’t have been enough for me to stop watching, but I get why some people did. I do agree that a scene like that shouldn’t not bother you. I am angry that things like the ones Marti says are accepted without comment, that nobody taught him better, that none of the characters have been taught better, much less better enough for any of them to shut Marti up and confront him about the shit he just said; Eva knows it’s wrong, but she doesn’t even try to explain why to him, because she doesn’t have the words to and she feels like it’s be pointless. Eleonora might have been able to confront him and shut him up with one of her vitriolic answers, but it would have been met most likely with “Oh, burn” comments by the other guys. It’s what it’s like in Italy and I don’t think a show that has professes to be as realistic as possible should be attacked for portraying the realistic comments dumb, ignorant boys make or for not forcing a scene when one of the characters is suddenly knowledgeable and eloquent enough to confront all the issues in Marti’s statement. This are 16 years old. I’m Italian and I was “woke”-ish at 16, kept up with politics even, but I don’t think I’d have been able to to it. What Skam Italia did, in my opinion, to counteract Martino’s words in this scene, is show us that his definitions are false, narrow-minded and based on prejudice by giving us an in into these girls lives. No-one can watch Skam and believe Marti’s words. Unfortunately, in a realistic show set in Italy, that’s all we can ask for.

this is also one of the first times we hear Marti discuss girls with the guys and it projects me straight to ep.1 of S2, when we have the “buste di piscio” comment. For all we love our baby deer Martino Rametta like it’s our collective firstborn and we would die for him, he’s a misogynistic fucker sometimes; thankfully by the end of S2 he’s grown up quite a bit (and I hope and pray that the combo of Filippo, Sana and Niccolò will make him grow even more by the next time we see him).

on a lighter note, IL PECCIO IS IN THIS SCENE, IN THE FLESH!

“Tell me what’s the problem” “I don’t have a problem” “Eh, me neither” YEAH guys, that’s why you’re so warm and affectionate

Giovanni, you hypocrite. You complained you don’t want to be one of those couples that are attached to the hip and you acted like Eva was always bothering you, so you told her to make friends; now she has friends, she’s stopped always catering to you and only you, and you’re gonna act mad? You wanted your cake, honey, now eat it!

so is that “You can stay, the guys are gonna go in a bit” thing Gio trying to build a bridge or him beginning the prep for the lie about wanting to go to dinner with Eva’s parents and then bailing on them to get back at her? On one hand, I don’t want to believe my dear Giovanni Garau would do that, on the other this particular set of circumstances with Eva brings out some of his worst traits

ok, I understand Eva and Eleonora want to know why Sana got mad and threw her drink at Laura to empathize with her properly, since they also are not her biggest fans, but their being really oblivious to Sana’s loud “stop bothering me!” signals

“I had to run away like an idiot thanks to you” actually, Silvia, he left you there like an idiot, while he went to be “the big bad man of the house who will solve all the problems” (btw was the house even his? wasn’t it Chicco Rodi’s party, why was it at Edoardo’s place?)

anyways, the reason Silvia is so mad is because what Sana did is so far from the prim and proper, low-maintenance girl Silvia is trying to be, in Edoardo’s eyes especially, and she’s terrified he’s gonna lump her in with her friend, who’s already difficult enough on her own because she insists on being different

aaaaand Silvia goes for the racist insult; at least this time the other girls tell her to calm down and Ele seems pretty ready to give her a piece of her mind, though she stops at the last minute cause she seems to think that while Silvia is this mad she’s a lost cause

SILVIA ACTUALLY GOT A TEXT instead of sending one, Sana would almost be proud

YAS SKAM ITALIA GIVING INFORMATION ABOUT CONTRACEPTIVES

I mean, sex ed is not bad about sexual health and contraceptives here but it’s always good to show “actual” kids being careful

of course, they’re only half careful, given that they’re thinking of unwanted pregnancies, while ignoring the very real risk of venereal diseases, given that they’re talking about unprotected sex with a boy who’s notoriously promiscuous

still, I want to stress how this is a conversation between girls only; the “burden” of thinking about contraception always falls on girls’ shoulders: Silvia doesn’t think for a minute Edoardo might bring and not mind using a condom and just knows she’s the one who needs to be worrying about contraception; Eva took the pill and is now using the ring so we know she’s the one who’s been taking care of contraception in her relationship with Gio, too. It takes two to tango ladies, so why the fuck do we excuse male half of the couple from this part of sex??

honestly, it’s midday so Eva should get out of bed, but that piece of crostata isn’t the kind of thing I’d wake up for

oh, what a beautiful mother-daughter relationship! I’m kidding, but also not. It’s obvious Eva’s mum is not at home much, but she makes an effort to be there as much as she can: she keeps up with her grades, she badgers Eva so she’ll study and when she has some free time even offer to revise together, she brings her breakfast in bed, she’s there to listen when Eva confides in her. She probably feels bad she’s not up to date with Eva’s personal life and guilty that she’s not there for her daughter as much as she wants to be. And Eva screams at her like a proper teenager, but then she does a beautiful thing and actually apologizes, saying the words “I’m sorry”, and despite still lying she tells her mom a bit about herself (sure, there’s external pressure for her to do so in the form of Gio and of her new friends who want to come by her place, but still), she opens up, she communicates, which is really good cause she seems to have good parents, who for example don’t freak out at the mention of a boyfriend but ask her first and foremost if she’s happy

and Eva, what’s the point of saying “Yes, I’m happy” and looking anything but? You be thankful your mom takes it for embarrassment, cause you were not convincing

aaaand Gio hasn’t gotten any lately because of the fight so he’s horny, cute

Gio meets Eleonora! And it’s absolutely uneventful, but then again, it would be: even considering Marti’s classification, she’s not the weirdest and she’s the least interesting out of the girl squad to Gio, cause he’s already getting some, so he doesn’t care that she doesn’t put out

what is interesting is Gio’s worried face when the free clinic gets mentioned: dude, if maybe you were more involved in contraception and collaterals in your own relationship, then maybe your first reaction wouldn’t be worry

the “Prima volta?” lady cracks me up (also, in case anybody doesn’t know, she’s the same person that asks Marti if Nico’s bottle of antidote is a bomb in S2 ep. 7 and - I’ve read somewhere - the stylist of the series)

when Silvia huffed and looked put out at the mention of the clinic on the bus, I was unsure whether it was a fear thing or a “tsk, plebeians” thing, but it appears she’s genuinely scared: girl, why? I get being embarrassed, uncomfortable, but she’s more nervous than if she was taking the maturità exams

Silvia is not mad at anybody, much less Sana, because good, low-maintenance girls don’t get angry, don’t cause commotions, they’re graceful and compassionate and forgiving and nuisances simply don’t exist for them

the doctor is actually so helpful! in the og she was 99% comic relief, 1% actually helpful, but this doctor is nice and warm and encouraging

Silvia’s terrified/disgusted face when presented with a dildo, that’s not a girl who looks ready to have sex

at least Fede seems puzzled but interested

Silvia just seems so dumb in this scene: she doesn’t speak for herself, she is absolutely floored when faced with a sex toy and a condom, she seems to think that taking the pill for to days actually works as contraception, she doesn’t think of asking Eva to use her home to meet up with Edoardo before telling him yes... tbh she almost looks like she’s a bit drunk

still, she just knows how to manipulate people to get her way. She even brings the doctor on her side.

“Do you think it’ll hurt?” considering how unsure and worried you are, YES

Eleonora changing topics as soon as her sex life is brought into question 😏 but also, her lost face when Eva says sex shouldn’t hurt except maybe a bit at the beginning

THANK YOU ELEONORA SAVA FOR SAYING THE IMPORTANT THINGS THAT NEED TO BE SAID

the disgusted face Silvia makes at the word “turned on”???

ok, how good is it to see girls in media talking about sex and about their fantasies without any shaming whatsoever? (The comparison between getting turned on by clothes and animals played for comedy is a bit unfortunate, but imo it doesn’t ruin the positive, accepting mood of the scene)

*Regina George voice* Silvia, stop trying to make jello happen!

ok, so, my secondhand embarrassment levels are always through the roof during this scene

look how taken aback Eva’s mom looks when she sees Edoardo! He definitely looks nothing like the third year boy she pictured when she imagined Eva’s boyfriend, I mean, she was thinking more along the lines of Laura’s boyfriend, that nice boy Giovanni she’d met that one time…

oh, but poor Edoardo too, he’s planning for a one night stand and suddenly he has to deal with parents?? This was not the plan. Does this annoying, kind of pretty girl who wants to sleep with him think he’s her boyfriend or something? What a nightmare. Oh, wait, she’s not even here, is she toying with him in a misguided attempt at playing hard to get? Wait, she wanted him to go to dinner with her parents? Is this some kind of prank? Did he get the wrong house? WTF

AND THE DAD ARRIVES OH GOD when fathers get involved the situation usually escalates, you can feel Edoardo going “Nope. Nope. Think, Edo. Get out of this NOW.”

ok, the redhead he vaguely remembers from the party, great, now can she explain him what’s going on? No, she’s telling him he needs to leave and slamming the door in his face. (Also, first appearance of the boss Eva we see at Silvia’s 80s party in S2, hello gorgeous!)

and Silvia is hiding on the stairs. Which is cute and not at all “sfigate allucinanti”-like (see ep.3). Just like telling a guy to come over but not at your actual place isn’t. It’s fine having to ask your friend to borrow her place, having to sneak in, having sex in a house you don’t know and where you need to be careful not leave signs of your presence, on the bed where your friend sleeps, with her photos on the wall, her knick-knacks on the shelves, her clothes in the closet. It’s totally cool. Even when the guy you’re having sex with is polite and gets there a few minutes early, so he accidentally meets your friend’s parents and nearly panics and definitely learns this is not your place, you know, that’s stuff that happens and it’s absolutely cool. He just calls you crazy.

so really, I never thought I’d see the day, but I empathize with Edoardo Incanti and I understand him ghosting Silvia (not the whole “Who are you again?” conversation, just the ghosting) because she’s clearly in too deep, he’s know that since her first string of texts, and she’s doing borderline creepy things like borrowing her friend’s house to have sex in? And Edoardo is not interested in a girlfriend, much less a stalker, so he just goes for the path of least resistance and disappears, hoping she’ll get over it soo. (Except of course she doesn’t and she confronts him, so really, what’s the best way not to give her any stupid hope? Being cruel. And that’s what he does.)

back to Eva, Gio cancels and Eva TURNS HIS OWN “Non ho parole “ BACK ON HIM how wild

side note, I honestly really really would have wanted to see Paola’s reaction when, at some point, Eva tells her she was dating Giovanni; I just can’t decide what she’d think

Bechdel test: the episode passes the test. We have Eva and Ele pestering Sana about the fight at the party, then the two of the and Silvia discussing the pill, the conversation about Sana’s father’s patient’s restaurant outside the gyno’s office at the clinic and finally there’s a good 75% of the conversation in Eva’s bedroom, between Silvia, Ele, Fede and Eva herself, that actually passes the test. There’s just a couple of mentions of Edoardo in the middle.

#skam italia #skamit meta #eva brighi #martino rametta #giovanni garau #skamit s1 #paola brighi #silvia mirabella #edoardo incanti #federica cacciotti #eleonora sava #sana allagui #elia santini #eva's mom #skamit #eva's dad #giorgio brighi #a. writes #1x05 cosa ti eccita?

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