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d3monslust · 3 years ago

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𝐇𝐀𝐑𝐃𝐄𝐒𝐓 𝐓𝐎 𝐋𝐎𝐕𝐄 - 𝐀.𝐃.

𝐒𝐔𝐌𝐌𝐀𝐑𝐘: Only setting up traps for them , Andy didn't see any of this coming

𝐖𝐂 : 3,151

𝐖𝐀𝐑𝐍𝐈𝐍𝐆𝐒: pregnancy, mentions of miscarriage & abusive relationships , cheating , manipulation , violence

𝐀/𝐍 : tumblr deleted the original and I thought for couple of minutes I haven’t backed it up to the point I had a panic attack :) also I worked really hard for this , any kind of interaction is appreciated!!

////////////////June 7th 2020\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

Every story has a happy ending , where the villain gets defeated and the heroes win , but in eden , no one could recognize the corruption and the decent. Everyone hid their darkest and filthiest desires deep down inside them , in their abyss of their souls . Andy knew that , from first hand . He was still getting to know the place , the idle juveniles laying in the sandy beaches , the laughs of the middle aged men echoing through the thickness of the trees’ leaves . A literal paradise ... with no God .

Dolan had promised his wife to keep her safe, and eventually after his decadence , he was more fazed than anything . Their inseparable form could be made out from kilometers ago, their vivid and full of life auras leaving hints of sunshine from time to time . Winning the couple of the year and being stunned was not in their plans but the did not dodge it . Until Dolan started venturing at inexcusable bars , reciprocal pink lipstick decorating one side of his neck while he reclined next to his bond , mumbling about his ambiguous accomplishments. He had her to the point , Mariah felt overwhelmed. The weight of his nifty assets , the gravitas of his clumsy , yet anticipated acts made her scream and wince .

But Mariah David Dolan , did not intend on giving up so easily , only because her husband was demonstrating his incompetent self . Haphazardly, or not , the female found herself at Sherlock’s , who fasty evaluated and corrupted all of her nasty problems . Taken the right measurements, Mariah decided to treat themselves to a dinner , the brunette averting his gaze back from his laptop to his wife. “Did something happen ?” Mariah never cooked , even at special , “crowded” occasions , she wouldn’t lay a finger at the metallic kitchenware . “No . I just though about all the work you’re recently hooked with. A nice dinner with your wife would help you blow off some steam” smirking at the fit of the last words, she left Dolan alone, drowning in his intellectually safe thoughts.

The capriciousness of the vexing atmosphere made the couple exchange some absurd looks. With Andy being the always tired one, sexual intercourse was lost long ago . “Something you would like to say ?” “No .” She went for a debate , any sort of the key for relationships , communication. If that clink unraveled , there would be no sweet salvation for the married couple . “Well , I want to say something.” Andy whispered a silent “go on” as one of their housekeepers wiped off him some of the pasta’s sauce . “I’m pregnant .” the brunette almost choked at the hear , she couldn’t be . “What ?” voice so small , the trait of vulnerability showing .

The fraction made his stomach toss and turn with anticipation, his dreams for the unknown slowly falling apart . “I’m pregnant on the 3rd month .” eyes infested with fury , the blue like sea color dissipated. “And when were you planning on telling me , hm ? When the waters would broke ? Or when the bump would start to show ? Or when you couldn’t fucking miscarriage?” his excessive, painful words ventured to withhold her insurmountable fury . Unceremoniously, his unbeatable character almost took back his sharp words , the marvel Mariah always waited for could intervene their scold and corrupt his grudge . Albeit she had cried and prayed for that baby to come , her husband didn’t yearn it .

“Did you talk to the gynecologist? Can you ?” he stated chastely , reclining his tensed back to the chair . Who could envision Andy Dolan with a child ? The reluctance became vexing , the tension had to be dwindled if she wanted to keep that inexcusable -for him- child . “Yes . We ... discussed and he said that I cannot ... get rid of it .” her unconvincingly words passed from the one ear to the other . He abruptly threw his crystal glass at the respective wall , agitating the woman to run to clean the mess . The hot , ambiguous tears wetting her cheeks . “Cant you just love me ?” she mumbled , her fasty movements elicited a cut from the sharp glass . She hissed at the pain , she wanted to resemble the perfect , sincere , housewife Andy pleased . To conquer the theme , so as to stand next to him with all her lucid pride while clutching his right hand .

And the things became even worse , chaos consuming the island , darkness drowning the residents . But the worst was Andy’s behavior shift . The unintelligible man faltered and his intriguing about his serene family faded , woefully leaving only his malice and possession . Fighting with his own demons , his rigid and virile facade came and ended up resented . The 24-hour absence of the paternal figure made the child cope with egregious insults and quarrels . Curling up in her little bed , her hands covering the ears as not to listen his beloved parents . Was her the reason they fought every night ? And as the family withered , Andy prepared to hit with sweet and sour vengeance .

“Please ...” the woman begged , the tears blocking her already blurry vision . Fatigue in her system degenerating, she tried to refrain this , but Dolan’s wrath could not be avoided . “Please what , hm ? You had a fucking debt ! Look after that damned child . And I swear to god Mariah ^ if something had happened to my daughter!” he scolded . “Oh come on ! Stop acting like you care ! You never did ... you never cared about your family .” His intimidating methods would usually work , and if not he would try for the vicious skin-to-skin contact . Slapping her and looking her terribly weak silhouette, squirming and crying under him . She remained frigid , not wanting to get that answer , Mariah ran to the basement , advancing around the marble halls like a lost puppy . Andy rubbed his stressed temple , waiting for his own kind of wonder to come and take him from this type of hell . The paradise where demons are hidden .

Andy never wanted to become one of them. That vicious, hungry, creatures . Demons . The olds said that if somebody approached the North river he would see a little red creature . A graceful , gorgeous demon . That was bullshit , demons didn't exist , his friend Michael had told him , that poor man - he had taken the subject of claiming to be the Antichrist of the end times too thick . He ended up at an asylum - good man , sick brain . “What are you thinking ?” . God , or whoever , heard him sent him his guardian angel . The nifty woman was everything he wished for . A real living angel . And that chaste, naive flirt shifted into this; whatever that was.

“Nothing to be honest . But let’s not talk about me , hmmm ?” the girl nodded heartily . Y/N had found her person , the one she could trust and never receive betrayal , the one she could cry at and talk about her insurmountable problems . Their meeting was casual - one , two drinks exchanged , some additional winks and the saccharine act of sex to help Y/N realize her feelings. When she was with him , the blithe and sybarite feeling would bloom inside her , becoming as beautiful as a sanguine rose . She chuckled at his works , could describe him as selfless ? No . But to her ... yes . Her despondent self hid his abusive and possessive persona . For her eyes and only , Andy Dolan was a god , innocent and perfect . “I wanted to ask about ... the divorce ? When are you two signing it ?” he had to be astute and answer handily . But they answer was always the same “Oh sweetheart, don’t worry . Mariah is a bit pertinacious but I’ll persuade her , okay ?” and she would fall at the trap , again .

“You’re always answering the same !” maybe today she would revolt and fortunately leave the poisonous love of Andy’s . His eyes shone dangerously, he didn’t want to do this . “Y/N’s not like Mariah” he would remind himself , but the poor girl was sticking her nose almost everywhere . “Aren’t you pleased , hm ? I took you from that fucking clinic , I helped you withdraw and this is your thank you ? I’m disappointed in you , Y/N .” his esoteric character on sight again . His cogent and invidious words caused the sentient girl spill the salty water . The male disdaining to help or comfort . “You deserve this anyway .” she stumbled back , her apprehension increasing whilst seeing him standing up from the bed . That absurdity had to stop , but he had saved her and it was her time now .

As Andy returned home , and the futile try to persuade his wife about the divorce exhausted him , he found himself at his daughter’s room . Observing her sincere and innocent moves . “Daddy ?” “Yes , Baby ?” his far-fetched sweet talk made the two smile in sync . The blonde’s smile making daddy crack . “Can I tell you something?” Andy nodded , hoping the child wouldn’t have read any of his recreational messages . “Mommy told me the reason she doesn’t want you two to break up !” his eyes lit up at her appendix . Perhaps it was the money or the child but anyway - Andy had to know . “What’s that ?” patting his lap for the girl to sit , Hera made herself comfortable at the warmth of his legs . “She said that she won’t let you fool around with every individual who has two holess.” “She said what ?!?!” “Yes , yes but what did she mean when she said “every individual with two holes .” ?” “Not now , Hera .” he quickly placed the kid down , as she sulked at her daddy’s extraordinary behavior.

By the time Andy stated the predicament , Mariah had ruminated on her terms . She should have said this , fuck she really shouldn’t . Her dull and attention-seeking words pushed her husband’s last buttons . “Are you fucking braindead ? What was that you said to my daughter ?!” she knew where that debate would end up . Condescendingly , she wrapped her arms around his neck . Her touch-starved grating amusing his carnal urges . Not wanting to dwell on the situation , Andy let it happen . Her amorous posture , the well-med hair , how didn’t he feel it coming ? Her hands traveling at his shirt’s buttons while Andy’s fingers went for her top . Discarded clothing were soon decorating the floor of their kitchen . His greed for more would eat him up one day . And he waited - patiently and calmly for that day . Her tenuous dominance caused waking up his boredom. But his prurient mind , thought otherwise.

She licked his upper lip , Andy letting her tongue slip into his mouth . The sloppy kiss turning into something more passionate, more loving . “I’ve missed this .” she mumbled in between breaths , making a smirk plaster on Dolan’s face . “I’ve missed you .” he hushed her by kissing her , the loving , lingering kiss making butterflies fly in her stomach . “Andy ?” he groaned at the call , not wanting to eye roll , he approved the question and motivated to go on . “Do you love me ?” “Yes. Only you . And no one else . I know things are hard right now but I’ll make it up to you.”

Bare bodies tangled . Two bodies in one . His hips snapped viciously at hers , hand grabbing a harmful fist of hair . Abruptly pulling it back , making Mariah hiss at the sudden contact of pain . The persona she would only see , not even Y/N , the sadistic one . Her head touching his sweaty torso , the tears in her eyes strengthening his stamina . The coil in her stomach tightened and as the loved noticed it - his hands traveled between her puffy lips , toying with her little bud . “I’m .... im-” her muffled cries interrupting her . “I know baby . Cum , cum with me .” and the coil in her belly broke synchronized with his . The addicting feeling of euphoria engulfing them both . “You did so well .” his sugary words causing her pride to rise , awaking her love for him . Just like the old times . “I love you , Mariah .” she perched at his tight embrace , inhaling his intoxicating scent . “Mhm me too .” she had to savor the moment . Mariah didn’t know what could possibly find her tomorrow .

////////////////

And as Andy distanced himself from Y/N, he kept his promise and made up the tangle. At least everything that could be fixed . The insuperable bond they created was ineffable. The somnolent love , almost dead , rose back from the dead . His pernicious and arcane self opened at his therapist . The Dolans couldn’t be happier . Apathy no longer lived between them . No invidious implication wafting around the tensed atmosphere. Just some more scarce , anticipated details and Dolan would finally fall into blithely.

Andy planted the usual good morning kiss on his wife . Excusing himself for his aimless absence on lunch and venturing to the car . The fraction of 2 to months without seeing Y/N, made him tacit. Where was the power Dolan’s hold ? He couldn’t falter, not now. He would withhold and keep things conservative. His conscience screamed no , but he shut it off , not wanting to trust his instincts . Choosing the obliviousness.

Approaching her modern like house , the cars of topical police confused his comprehension. Incompetent to walk inside , albeit he promised not to care - a part which was got circumvented - some of his worry remained to Y/N . “Officer , is she okay ?” the concern in his eyes made the blue - dressed man doubt his accusation . “Sir , are you Mr.Dolan ?” the man let his white scribbling block down , paying full attention to the brunette . “In the flesh .” two more patrols approaching, no feeling of timidity in their eyes . His envision had to be mendacious . A prosaic one , more realistic. “Andy Dolan you are arrested for the murder of Y/N Y/L/N” his conception blurred, everything changing into automatic. His eyes caught the figure of his wife talking to another police man - she wouldn’t? Would she ?

Everything happened so quickly, the metal handcuffs were clutched onto his hand, the ignominious state making him sentient. He would go to prison and there was no denial in that . At least he would leave Eden .

/////////////// Now \\\\\\\\\\\\\\\

He had learnt the news . Mariah was in all this . She had been informed about Andy’s illegal affair , not only with women but with drugs , too . On the one side, she had managed to plan her husband’s perfect suicide but the contradiction she received made her tentative. Therefore she visited the professionals . Sherlock’s beneficial - for both Mariah and him- and handily trap got Dolan arrested . They had planned everything, even the littlest detail . The plan was easy , yet complicated.

He would wake up at 7:15 a.m. as always . Head to the kitchen to make his morning coffee , catch up with Mariah who would accidentally leave the house . His phone would remind him about his last meeting with Y/N , where she would end up thing with him . Or what Mariah had decided to do for her . Y/N had left the island months ago when Mrs.Dolan appeared in her house and threatened to kill her and her soon-to-be-born child. As Andy would drive his way , Sherlock would leave his fingerprint everywhere , placing them carefully at the edges of the gun . Next step would be Y/N’s doppelgänger, nice and murdered next to the white rug .

The unbearable route of the dull prison . The thousand of men behind the metal bars , hungry for every kind of fight and sexual intercourse nettled his every atom . Compelling himself not to communicate with anyone , Andy , who had received a life imprisonment lost and the last bit of faith . There was no salvation for him , it never existed . “You have a letter .” the word taking him out of his dwelling thoughts. His family never sent him letters , not that they were coming . Drugs were forbidden, or that was the law applied . “Sender ?” “Unknown .” Andy wasn’t in the mood for playing games . This almost one years in prison erased all of his lenient future. Additionally, alleviating his last mendacious fantasies about life .

Taking the rigid piece of paper , the handwriting of a woman caught his attention . Refraining himself from toring it apart and throwing it to the trash can , he want for abstinence. Cutting the edges with a small knife which used to hide right down his pillow , the form a photo fall on the floor . Inhaling a piece of pure reluctance , Andy took the shiny piece of paper between his hands . The silhouettes of two girls laughing at each other quirked his eye brow . But her ineffable and disheveled beauty stopped his breath . A baby adjoining her side , made him caught the implication . The transparent eligibility to join this family causing him to incandescent. That was his child and his Y/N .

Last thing , eyes traveling at the bottom of the photo

- SHOT WITH NIKON 456 | 6/4/2021 | 7:56 p.m.

And they were alive .

////////////////////////////////////////

Tag list ; @ferndolan @brooklinn13 @lavenderahs @mllxngdonswife @kitty4860

If anyone wants to be removed or added just say it lol

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symptoms-syndrome · 4 years ago

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Since folks seem to be talking about "exotrauma," which seems to me what I would call pseudomemories, I thought I would chime in with my experience.

TW for discussions of war, racism, and violence under the cut. Nothing too graphic, but proceed with caution.

Disclaimer: I am not a professional. To be honest, I don't even know a ton about this sort of thing. These are all my personal experiences and feelings, and are not meant to be a greater statement on pseudomemories as a whole.

Growing up, war was a common theme in both my birth parents families. My mother and her family escaped from East Germany after World War Two, and on my father's side, both his parents were veterans, one of whom fought in the Korean War, as well as passionate Revolutionary War reenactors. He also later married a woman who was a refugee from Vietnam.

I heard a lot of stories about war, told with sadness or pride, depending on who I was hearing it from. My paternal grandfather talked proudly of killing people "just like you and your father," and my maternal grandparents talked about impossibly long food lines for small rations, and waking up to find they were missing a family member who had spoken against the government.

My home life was also chaotic and scary, and very overwhelming.

With all these factors combined, it's not surprising to me that I have parts with various "memories" of war. Fighting in wars or surviving during them, or just having some sort of personal history or belief with no "memories." How much are "genuine pseudomemories" and how much are daydreams that have been replayed so much they're mixed up in my mind is ambiguous, but regardless they're there. Some parts feel these memories are real and truth, and some parts know these memories aren't real, but have trouble letting go anyway, and some have completely accepted their previous memories as untrue. It's a spectrum for me.

I, personally, have never experienced war. I hopefully never will. My pseudomemories, or whatever else is going on that puts these visions in my mind, are very likely not an accurate depiction! I never studied war, I never even did well in history class.

They are accurate, however, in one regard: the way I feel when those "memories" play, or the way that those parts feel, is the way I felt while experiencing my traumas. In some cases, maybe my parts are lying about what they experience. But in the end the result is the same, the same emotions and feelings.

There are a lot of parallels that I can notice. Feeling like things are out of control, scary, and inescapable. Feeling like I have no power to stop everything going on around me. Feeling a sense of duty, the idea that I have to do something or other "for the greater good."

My mind took those feelings I was experiencing, and held them against my beliefs about my home life. And they didn't fit! I believed my home was safe, and that my parents loved me and were caring. My brain couldn't find where my fear and other overwhelming feelings fit into this idyllic idea of my home life I held close to my heart. So they found another place for them.

Those feelings were like a grain of sand that's layered and layered and layered into a pearl. It didn't make sense for me to feel scared and overwhelmed in a home that was safe, so there had to be another reason. My brain took something else, people's stories of war, and wrapped up these feelings in a package that seemed to make sense. Now that I'm able to look back and see that my home life is not what I thought it was at the time, these pseudomemories make less sense. I can see why I actually felt scared and overwhelmed.

But some parts have held onto these memories because they make more sense to them, and wrenching them away before they're ready to process the truth of my/our history might do more harm than good. Slowly letting that information seep across my entire system in a safe and gentle way is probably my best method for me. Maybe once those parts accept the reality of my/our upbringing, they'll feel less need to hold so tightly onto those alternate explanations for our trauma.

Whatever explanation different parts might have for the feelings I/we experienced, in the end the emotions, thoughts, and core beliefs are what matter. Dealing with those feelings etc is my personal primary focus, regardless of the background they seemingly come from.

#pseudomemories #i know i also have some issues w psychosis that could be a part of the mix #it's all very very complex for me #war tw #ask to tag

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blackswaneuroparedux · 5 years ago

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The Many Lives of Lee Miller: Surrealist icon who photographed World War Two

If you were one of the few women photographers accredited by the U.S. Army at the start of World War II, chances were you were far from the front lines. Military regulations at the time dictated that female photojournalists, unlike their male counterparts, were not to enter combat zones.

But Lee Miller, the Poughkeepsie-born photographer and noted Surrealist operating as British Vogue’s war correspondent, was not one to be constrained.

Miller had made a habit of not taking no for an answer long before she accompanied American forces to document scenes such as the Blitz; nurses operating hospitals after D-Day; women serving across the armed forces; and just-liberated concentration camps.

Elizabeth ‘Lee’ Miller was born on the 23 of April 1907 in Poughkeepsie, New York. She was the middle child of Florence and Theodore Miller, a mechanical engineer and avid amateur photographer. She was something of a tomboy, always ready for the next big adventure and to try the biggest stunt.

Her first coup was gracing the cover of U.S. Vogue in 1927 at age 19. Lee Miller was walking down a crowded street in Manhattan. She was ravishingly beautiful: blonde hair stylishly bobbed, lips painted red, her slim figure clad in the latest fashions from Paris.

Perhaps it was Paris she was thinking about so deeply. Whatever it was it absorbs her entirely that as she stepped off the sidewalk she didn’t see a car speeding towards her.

At the last minute a man whisked her to safety. He turns out to be none other than the publisher Condé Montrose Nast. As soon as he saw the woman he saved, he decided she must model for his magazine.

A few short months later, Lee Miller’s face, drawn by Georges Lepape with the New York skyline for a backdrop, stares out from the cover of Vogue.

That cover launched Lee Miller’s modelling career. Within months she became a fixture on the New York social scene, hobnobbing with the likes of Charlie Chaplin, George Gershwin and the Vanderbilts.

Fashion greats such as photographer Edward Steichen zipped her into Lanvin and Lelong, draped her in pearls, swathed her in velvet. In one picture she models a Chanel evening gown covered with geometric embellishments, her body resembling a glorious art-deco building.

Lee was fêted and pursued by suitors. A glassware manufacturer even moulded a champagne coupe in the shape of her breast. It was all very glamorous but, for Lee, not wholly satisfying. Later, remembering her New York years, she said, ‘I looked like an angel but I was a fiend inside.’

This contradiction – stemming from a traumatising childhood into early adulthood,

Her father, Theodore, was an amateur-photographer and had begun to photograph his naked daughter long before that, in 1914, when she was seven. According to Miller herself, in that year, she, then known as Elizabeth, had been sent to stay with family friends while her mother was in hospital.

During the trip, she had been raped by a sailor; the attack left her with gonorrhea. For the next year, the child was subjected to daily douches of potassium permanganate, and k twice-weekly visits to the hospital to have her cervix painted with picric acid. Everything she touched at home was immediately sterilised.

It was during this year that Theodore had begun to photograph his daughter in the nude, his first composition being a take on the French artist Paul Chabas' September Morn, a painting of a nubile girl bathing, which had caused a scandal when it was shown in New York in 1913.

For his own picture, Miller required his daughter to pose, nude but for slippers, in the deep Poughkeepsie snow: the resulting picture was called "December Morn". Theodore made it using a stereoscopic camera, so that, viewed through accompanying glasses, his naked child appeared three-dimensional.

The early childhood experience would plague her throughout her adult life, and arguably cause her to constantly try to reinvent herself, wondering if she ‘ever was meant to fit together’.

Those reinventions – as a key figure in the Surrealist movement, fashion photographer, muse and tormented war correspondent – have made her the subject of plays, film scripts (Nicole Kidman wanted to play her in a film written by David Hare that was never made).

Reinvention of otherworldly beauty was also so evident in all her photographs. But Lee wasn’t happy as a model. A sketch she drew in her journal in 1930 shows a woman standing against a studio backdrop, daggers pinning her into place, as another woman in a hat looks on. No wonder, then, that she was hungry to forge her own identity beyond the camera’s frame – a frame that, to a woman who had been looked at by men her entire life, represented an implicit power imbalance.

She gave up her modelling career and set sail for Paris, intending, as she provocatively stated, to ‘enter photography by the back end’.

Bags of confidence, together with letters of introduction from Edward Steichen, convinced Man Ray to take her on as his assistant. He was instantly enchanted and their professional relationship blossomed into a love affair so tumultuous that it affected them both for years afterwards.

Miller was to befriend other iconic Parisian artists like Max Ernst and Picasso and intellectuals like Jean Cocteau. She would vacation with some of the most prominent figures in the art world at the time. Picasso would paint Lee six times and the two remained friends throughout the rest their lives. Picasso wanted to bed her but she held her distance.

It was Lee Miller, not Man Ray, who discovered the photography technique known at "solarisation" bu turning on a light in their darkroom before the negatives had fully developed. It creates a dark line around the subject of the photograph and created groundbreaking images at the time. Ray is often credited with this discovery and he used it often in his own work, but it was actually Lee Miller who made the first picture of its kind on accident.

Man Ray’s portraits of Lee are sensuous and romantic, but even he never seemed able to see her as a whole, often depicting her body broken up into pieces.

He painted her lips floating disembodied in a mackerel sky in ‘Observatory Time: The Lovers’, and in his photographs her breasts, neck and eyes are removed from their context, palpably humming with sexual energy, the ultimate surrealist objects.

In December 1930, Miller's father, Theodore, had come to Paris from Poughkeepsie, New York, to see his daughter. Like any good parent might, he had taken pictures of her. Unlike most fathers, these photographs were shot in the nude, in the bathtub of their shared hotel suite. Lee Miller was 23.

The shots Man Ray took of Lee and Theodore Miller, she in a demure print frock and curled, child-like, in her father's lap, are deeply weird. They seem less of a father and daughter than of an older man and his much younger lover.

Perhaps Ray had heard rumours that Theodore had been Lee's actual childhood abuser, or he may have imagined it for himself. (No charges were ever brought against the unidentified sailor-rapist.)

In terms of age, Ray's own relationship with Lee was also ambiguously paternal: he was 17 years older than her, a pattern that would mark all her relationships with men. At any rate, Theodore and Ray seem to have gotten along famously. Together, the two men photographed Lee, nude, lolling on a bed with three other naked women.

It is hard not to see all this in psychological terms, if not in moral ones. Cursed with a perfect beauty, Miller became a focus of Ray’s internal need to violate. For Man Ray, this was aggravated by the masculine drive to compete.

If the countless celebrities photographed by Man Ray – Wallis Simpson, Aldous Huxley, Virginia Woolf, Picasso, Chanel, Schiaparelli, himself – the one he went back to most obsessively was Lee Miller. You can see why. Miller was a physical ideal, the kind of perfectly moulded, ice-blonde beauty beloved of Hitchcock; flawless, or at least imaginably so.

Lee Miller and Man Ray's exciting, passionate and tumultuous relationship ended and Man Ray did not take it well. In fact, one of his most famous pieces, Indestructible Object, includes her eye ticking on a metronome.

Ray's instructions to fans on how to make their own version of the work suggest the violence of his anatomical method. "Cut out the eye from a photograph of one who has been loved but is seen no more," he writes, bitterly. "Attach the eye to the pendulum of a metronome and regulate the weight to suit the tempo desired. Keep going to the limit of endurance. With a hammer well-aimed, try to destroy the whole at a single blow."

That done, the photographer, ever the drama queen, sat for a self-portrait called "Suicide" with a noose around his neck and a gun pointed at his head.

Hell hath no fury like a Surrealist scorned.

When their affair ended, Lee moved back to New York and opened her own studio, where she worked ‘in the style of Man Ray’, as she advertised in a bold appropriation of his name.

She hardly needed the help. Clients such as Saks Fifth Avenue and Elizabeth Arden paid handsomely for pictures by the woman who was herself ‘one of the most photographed girls in Manhattan’.

But in just a few years the Lee Miller Studio closed when Lee married an Egyptian, Aziz Eloui Bey, and moved with him to Cairo. She felt stunted by Egypt’s restrictive society but produced some of her best work there, driving into the desert with her trusty cocktail kit in the boot to take photographs of the landscape.

Her husband, however, let Lee spend extended holidays in Europe with the Surrealist set, where she met painter and art collector Roland Penrose, the man who eventually became her second husband. They would be happily married for the rest of their lives until death. She at last found someone who accepted her whole. But it still wouldn’t be enough for Lee.

By 1939, it was time for another reinvention. War broke out, the Blitz rained down on London, and Lee, urged on by her friend, the photojournalist, collaborator and sometime lover David Scherman, got accredited as a war correspondent for (of all places) British Vogue.

Her editor, Audrey Withers, expected soft-focus photo-essays about war privation, but Lee had other ideas.

Her reportage was gruesome, intimate and important. On the front lines at the siege of Saint-Malo, Lee documented the Americans’ first use of napalm and described a company ready for action, ‘grenades hanging on their lapels like Cartier clips, menacing bunches of death.’

She shot close-ups of the faces of German Nazis who had committed suicide in Leipzig and took powerful portraits of starving prisoners following the liberation of Dachau and Buchenwald.

When she arrived in Paris during the Liberation the first thing she did was go to Picasso's studio. There they are pictured smiling holding each other tight, probably beyond relieved that they were both alive. Picasso is quoted saying in astonishment "the first Allied soldier I should see is a woman- and she is you."

When Hitler fled Munich at the end of the war, Lee and Scherman were the first of the press corps to reach his apartment, where they drank his cognac and napped in his bed. They propped a picture of Hitler on the rim of his bathtub, set Lee’s dirty combat boots on the bathroom rug and took the now-famous photograph of her bathing in Hitler’s tub.

The war made Lee feel alive.

The image of Miller in Hitler’s tub was the one that led to the end of her Vogue career. The public was outraged at what they interpreted as flippant disregard for the ravages of war. Being accused of insensitivity inevitably took its toll, but it was what she saw, felt, and experienced during those years that would eventually send her into a struggle with depression.

She loved her uniform, tailored on Savile Row. She loved roughing it: washing in her helmet and subsisting on K-rations. And for a woman always searching for meaning in her life, documenting the war for readers back home gave her purpose. ‘Believe this,’ she cabled to Vogue, and the pictures she sent back were indeed horrifying. They came at a cost: Lee was never able to distance herself from her subject. She threw her entire self into her work.

Lee suffered mightily postwar.

The trauma of what she had seen haunted her for the rest of her life. Today we would call it PTSD. In postwar England, Lee was told by her doctor ‘we cannot keep the world permanently at war just to provide you with excitement’.

On her return to London after the war, she was feted. "Who else has written equally well about GIs and Picasso?" her editor said. "Who else can swing from the Siegfried line one week to the new hip line the next?"

Desperate to ward off a sense of anticlimax, she returned to eastern Europe. But soon she was pregnant at 40 years old and finding the prospect of motherhood scarier than any front line.

She missed the action, despite suffering post-traumatic stress. She also felt increasingly sidelined: in staid, patriarchal postwar Britain, her husband was the one in demand.

Finding the inspiration to write and take photographs became harder and eventually she gave it up entirely, hiding more than 60,000 negatives and contact sheets in the attic and becoming so tight-lipped on the subject that even her own son, Antony, knew nothing about her war work until he was an adult. An entire piece of herself was boxed up and placed out of sight.

Depressed at her loss of looks and gain in weight, she found solace in drink and cooking elaborate gourmet meals for her guests at Farley Farm House in East Sussex, her home until her death in 1977.

She could have written a very good cookbook by all accounts. She was a virtuoso chef.

She remained friends with the Paris crowd. In particular she was close to Picasso. Lee Miller's son recalls going over to Picasso's home as a child. He even wrote a book about the time he bit Picasso, as a child, called ‘The Boy Who Bit Picasso’.

Lee even reconciled with Man Ray. Lee and Man Ray last met in London in 1975, at Man Ray's retrospective at the Institute of Contemporary Arts. By now, he was in a wheelchair and Lee Miller was a drunk.

Lee Miller died of cancer in 1977. By the end she was overweight, an alcoholic, ravaged by depression, and tortured by her husband’s affair with a trapeze artist. Anyone meeting Lee Miller then would have been surprised to know that she was once considered the most beautiful woman in the world, second only to Greta Garbo.

But just as she, and her reputation, went out of sight for years. There has in recent years been a resurgence of interest in Lee’s photography, bringing her legacy, and her enduring appeal, further into the light.

As a female icon she never saw herself as a victim. It's remarkable that Miller was able to delight in her body (and in the pleasure others took from it). She saw sex and love as two very different beasts. She was very comfortable living out the truth as she believed it."Emotionally, I need to be completely absorbed in some work or in a man I love," she wrote, but she didn't see why going to bed with someone should upset whichever man she was currently in love with.

Lee insisted that she couldn’t be kept and that women should be able to be as sexually free as men. She was radical, and people made her suffer for it - Man Ray included.

Strikingly beautiful, she was used to submitting to the male gaze and even subverting it. A less spirited woman might have been crushed by these alpha males, but Miller, unfazed, determinedly transformed herself from passive model to active artist.

Her son, Antony Penrose, observed in his 1998 biography of his mother, The Legendary Lee Miller: Photographer, 1907–1977, her unique background capturing uncanny moments and haunting, bizarre portraits during the heyday of the Surrealist movement served her well in war photography. Penrose wrote:

“Unexpectedly, among the reportage, the mud, the bullets, we find photographs where the unreality of war assumes an almost lyrical beauty....On reflection I realise that the only meaningful training of a war correspondent is to first be a Surrealist—then nothing in life is too unusual.”

But it was the very nature of unconventionality of her career trajectory that hampered her historical reputation.

Her early association with the Paris Surrealists - particularly her role as Man Ray's "perversely enchanting muse" - overshadowed her own artistic accomplishments.

Her abandonment of photography, and the consignment of all her work to her own attic also limited her impact during her lifetime.

Her association with fashion also coloured the interpretation of Miller's work. As her biographer Carolyn Burke states, "to this day, her life inspires features in the same glossy magazines for which she posed...this approach turns the real woman in to a screen onto which beholders project their fantasies", and further perpetuates the legend of Lee Miller as an "American free spirit wrapped in the body of a Greek goddess".

The force of her beauty, effervescent personality and high octane biography will always remain central to interpreting her work.

Today Miller has been recognised as among the most original and ambitious photographic artists of the 20th century, and a subtly transgressive artist, who - as Lynn Hilditch asserts in Lee Miller, Photography, Surrealism and the Second World War - took off from her Surrealist background and "pushed the boundaries both of art and war photography, often using unconventional methods to comment on such multifaceted issues as sex, gender, death, and war"

#lee miller #history #photographer #world war two #art #beauty

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arcticdementor · 4 years ago

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Generic reasons for any technocracy’s overdoing things include those associated with the intrinsic nature of elitism. The corporate-minded folks who run the Red Dot (a.k.a. Singapore) consist of the high ranks of the People’s Action Party and the senior managers who direct its ministries, agencies, and two sovereign wealth funds. To give an extreme but not entirely uncharacteristic example of the tightness of this networked and not infrequently family intermarried elite, the CEO of Temasek is the wife of the current Prime Minister (who is the son of Singapore’s first and most illustrious Prime Minister). Ho Ching and Lee Hsien Loong—although several rungs down the ladder from the late iconic duo of Lee Kwan Yew and Kwa Geok Choo—are Singapore’s current power-political couple; when they walk together arm-in-arm, small explosions issue from the heels of their shoes.

…

All insular and confident political elite clusters tend to generate a sense of privilege—earned privilege, perhaps, but privilege all the same. When coupled with the longevity of high status and a perception of success at doing the “job,” a certain rigidity of personality, defensiveness about criticism, and, at times in some people, arrogance about their own presumed infallibility can result. It can also lead to a belief that the über-elite are entitled to warp and wind the law to their own purposes. The tendency isn’t new: See II Samuel, chapter 12, for an example concerning King David and a family friend named Nathan.

…

Which begs a better question: What are the historical and cultural facets of overdoing it, in part at least, “with Chinese characteristics”? Since I am not and never will be expert on anything Chinese, I rely for parts of an answer on Singapore’s 89-year-old sage Wang Gungwu—whom I have read, known, and worked with now and again for 25 years. For present purposes, three insights demand a hearing.

First, the paternalistic nature of leadership in Singapore owes much to a path dependency planted amid its 1965 origin, and it has little to do with anything culturally Chinese. When Singapore was thrust into independence against its will, the leadership faced a parlous situation in which maintaining social order and political control was paramount. Traumatic 1964 race riots were vivid in their working memory. The trauma of the 1942-45 Japanese occupation was still felt, partly in the form of the psychological shock of the sudden, ignominious dethronement of British superiority that rattled the self-confidence of the Chinese elite whose members had modeled themselves as Westernizing Anglophones.

…

But second, yes, Singapore’s paternalistic political culture does owe also to the Taoist/Confucian prism that splits civil light into the colors of Chinese culture. It is a deep shaping factor that is much more powerful than a mere two generations of Anglophonic affections and affectations.

At least as much as China itself these days, whose intellectual traditions have been whipsawed by forced-march Marxism-Leninism and its partial relaxation, Singapore’s elite prizes orderliness above all else. There is right and wrong, diligence and laziness, loyalty and disobedience. Despite the existence in the Analects of a right to oppose unrighteous, ruinous rule, history has bequeathed the de facto obligation that authority and expertise are due respect and honor. There is, in short, a natural hierarchy inherent in all things that guides virtuous behavior, and in that hierarchy all things fit together. Reality exudes symmetry. Ambiguity and loose ends make some people in all cultures nervous, but in Confucian-accented Singapore, those personality types dominate.

…

Another illustration of the general point can be gleaned from something as anodyne as a high-end restaurant experience. At most very high-end Western restaurants, menus offer at least some choices. At nearly all very high-end East Asian restaurants, chefs dictate what is best among the foods available, and know how to cook and present them. Both a Westerner in a high-end Western restaurant who refuses to choose and an Easterner in a high-end Eastern restaurant who deigns to choose are inexplicable in their respective cultural contexts.

This difference echoes across political cultures: Multiparty politics and wide-open elections are menu-like; one-party paternalistic systems are not. Asian democracies are unlikely ever to fully mimic Western types, whatever other reasons may also explain differences.

The difference appears, too, in the nature of counsel in high bureaucracy. In the United States staffers are expected to present options to the President. This is the Goldilocks method: Create three options, one too meek and one too bold, so that the President will choose B, the option in the sweet middle. East Asian staffers do not typically relate to their principals in this manner. If a responsible executive asks an expert his or her view of what to do, that expert gives one view. To offer alternatives would signal indecisiveness and a lack of self-confidence and self-respect, and no East Asian leader—emperor of old or head-of-state at present—wants a wavering adviser, the kind of person, Dean Acheson once commented, who writes memoranda not to inform the reader but to protect the writer.

…

Rather, the great man approach to historical interpretation is the baked-in default mode of the Far East. LKY succeeded in part because he understood and went with the “soft” authoritarian cultural flow, not because, as some have argued, he was a crazed megalomaniac. He was not; he was merely blunt on occasion, as when he remarked in April 1987 that, “I am often accused of interfering in the private lives of citizens. Yes, if I did not, had I not done that, we wouldn’t be here today. . . . We decide what is right. Never mind what the people think.”

Gungwu explains that Chinese do not hold much with airy abstractions, preferring pragmatics when it comes to politics. They speak of the “thought” of the flesh-and-blood great man—from Mencius, Lao Tzu, and Confucius all the way to Mao, Deng, and now Xi—rather than of disembodied abstract theories. LKY was Singapore’s great man, shaping the first half-century of its independence like no other, and his legacy is his “thought”—even if most here avoid calling it that, at least when speaking English. But some get real close: A popular 1998 book about LKY is entitled Lee Kuan Yew: The Man and His Ideas.

Third, that the high political elite here embody this paternalism is quintessentially mandarin in origin, but its broader institutional shape owes something as well to the aforementioned Chinese elite’s Anglophonic choices and experience. A lot of what the British brought to Singapore worked pretty well, and Singapore’s first generation of independence leaders were wise enough not to want to screw with it for the mere sake of change. A new photography exhibit at the Sun Yat-sen Museum, highlighting early commercial photo studios here, illustrates the backdrop. The featured photos show well-to-do Chinese dressed in then-stylish Western garb, down to the pocket watch chains emerging from vest coat pockets.

Thus, between the crisis of birth etched into the psyche of the managing elite, a perduring Confucian heritage, and a deliberately adopted (and adapted) Anglophonic legacy, you have the basic formula for the singularly Singaporean technocratic character. With it, you also have the formula for how the “family firm” state occasionally overdoes things.

#adam garfinkle #the american interest #singapore #confucianism

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tsfanart · 6 years ago

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Summary Hype

So, as some people know already, I'm excited to announce that I am officially vowing to post new writing every single day in June!

Do I have all the stories finished yet? Weeeellll...no. But I do have them all planned out!

So with that being said, here are the (rough) summaries of all those stories, in order:

The Apartment--Logan and Patton go shopping to buy things for their new apartment, but as Patton continues to act childish, Logan begins to regret agreeing to live with him. (Platonic Logicality AU)

Babysitting--Roman is just your typical teenager who loves his friends and despises his little brother. So when he's forced to babysit Virgil the night of a huge party, he is less than pleased. (Brotherly Prinxiety and Abusive Platonic Roceit Tiny!AU) [Request from Anon]

Jackets and Jump Scares--Roman is walking his dog one day when said dog escapes and knocks down a poor, innocent stranger, who happens to be terrified of dogs. But when Roman comes over to help him up and they lock eyes, the stranger starts to consider that maybe dogs aren't so bad after all...when they have cute owners. (Romantic Prinxiety AU) [Request from @soullessapple]

Misunderstood--Roman is just finishing up reading a book in his room--but when he gets up to put the book away, he discovers that reading in his room makes the book characters come to life. (Platonic Logince, Royality, and Prinxiety Canon)

Audition, Part 1/3--Set just a couple weeks after Moving On, Logan is starting to realize that Thomas is never going to sign up for that astronomy class--and he struggles even more to come to terms with it when he discovers that Thomas is auditioning for a new play instead. (Platonic LAMP Canon)

Teacher's Lounge--Logan is an English teacher at a middle school who's sick of being compared with Patton, the more fun, laid-back math teacher. But at the same time, he can't help feeling attracted to the man either... (Romantic Logicality AU) [Request from @paradoxicalpatton]

Eavesdropping--Roman overhears Virgil and Logan venting to each other one night about how his snarky comments make them feel. He's surprised to find out that this is how he comes off, and he sets off to make things right. (Platonic Analogical and Prinxiety Canon) [Request from @challybop]

Not His Fault--Virgil is having a perfectly normal night at a house party, when Patton drags him out of the room to inform his that Logan has tagged along. Now Virgil has to track down his little brother while Patton tries to keep him calm. (Brotherly/Protective Analogical, Logicality, and Remy/Logan; Platonic Moxiety; Romantic Logince AU)

Audition, Part 2/3

A Friendship to Foster--Shortly after the events of Accepting Anxiety, Virgil has a nightmare. Logan discovers him, and, despite not being good with emotions, does his best to help now that Virgil is one of them. (Platonic Analogical Canon) [Request from @katatles-the-fish]

Choose What We Want--Sixteen-year-old Logan just wants to get his homework done. His kid brother Patton, however, has other plans. (Brotherly Logicality Tiny!AU) [Request from Anon]

Admiration--Logan enters his son Patton's classroom one day to talk to his teacher about the boy's behavior. He exits the classroom having developed a newfound respect for his son entirely. (Paternal Logicality AU)

Audition, Part 3/3

Sleepover--Patton is having a tough time and reaches out to Roman for support. Roman is right there to help him. (Platonic Royality AU) [Request from Anon]

Ghost Stories--Logan agrees to spend quality time with Virgil that involves the latter telling ghost stories, and finds himself regretting it later that night. (Platonic Analogical Canon) [Request from Anon]

The Teddy Bear--Sometimes when Virgil is overly tired, it's harder for him to cope with his cognitive distortions. (Implied Abusive Anxciet, Virgil-centric LAMP Canon)

Movie Night, Part 1/5--College freshman Patton is really eager to introduce his cool roommate Logan to his new friends, but Logan is insistent that he doesn't have social skills, and most people dislike him for a reason. (AU; Platonic Logicality for Part 1)

Drop It--Patton helps his overwhelmed best friend take better care of himself during exam season. (Platonic Logicality AU) [Request from @princessbelix]

The Science Fair--Logan stands on the edge of the auditorium, beaming with smug pride because he's just sure that his genius son is going to win the science fair for the third year in a row. But when a new student's father comes over to thank him, Logan gets thrown for a loop and is forced to reassess his priorities. (Platonic Logicality and background Prinxiety; Paternal Logince and Moxiety; AU) [Request from @haikyuupaladin]

New Roommate--There's something strange about Thomas' new roommate, but the Sides can't agree on just what that weird thing is. (Platonic LAMP (if anything) Canon)

Movie Night, Part 2/5 (Platonic LAMP)

It Takes Time--Virgil knows that he tends to open up to Patton more than the other way around. But for Patton to not even tell him what's bothering him is a new development. (Platonic Moxiety Canon) [Request from Anon]

Unexplained Nervousness--Patton finds Virgil having a panic attack in the middle of the living room one day and must communicate with him to understand best how to help. (Platonic Moxiety, Ambiguously Canon) [Request from @aquilacalvitium]

The Opposite of My Job--Remy was just trying to get Logan to rest up. But his new method ends up being a bit more than he bargained for. (Platonic Remy/Logan, Canon)

Movie Night, Part 3/5 (Platonic Logicality)

The Peacekeepers--Logan and Roman are used to fighting. They expect it from each other. But Virgil and Patton are supposed to be best friends--and when the two of them get in a fight, it's up to Logan and Roman to help them patch things up. (Platonic Logince and Moxiety Canon) [Request from Anon]

Rough Day--Virgil doesn't always know how to help Patton handle his chronic pain--but he finds that just listening to how he feels can go a long way. (Platonic LAMP, Ambiguously Canon) [Request from @leslie-withers-experiment]

The Banana Battle--Roman just wants to have a nice breakfast one morning, but he can't get Deceit to leave the kitchen. (Enemies!Roceit Canon)

Movie Night, Part 4/5 (Platonic Logince)

Movie Night, Part 5/5 (Platonic Logince)

I guess if people are particularly interested in these I could start a preemptive tag list for certain stories? :P I dunno. But I'm hoping at least some of these do well!

#hype #thomas sanders #sanders sides #sanders sides fanfiction #long post

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hozukitofu · 6 years ago

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Minato, some points

Hello and welcome to Words for Namikaze Minato, our beloved Yondaime Hokage, sensei and elite killing machine:

It baffles me sometimes that he suggested or recommended (I'm sorry for not being up to date with canon to ascertain this) Kakashi into ANBU, you know, the local not-so-secret ninja killing squad. Kakashi has PTSD. He fought in a war. He was made a victim of a teammate's cruel suicide. He watched another got crushed under a rock. He lost an eye, got a Sharingan implant AND THEN gained his Mangekyou. All under a week (in that range somewhere). Any more killing would just destroy the child. He's a child soldier. Any child or human or anything vaguely breathing in him will be gone if he continues killing. Which is conveniently when Minato told him to join the kill squad, which obviously is the best choice and ONLY choice for him, like taking a rest for a year or seeking therapy or talking about his trauma is forbidden and must not be mentioned. He ruined that child, directly or indirectly, by recommending him into ANBU

Also did he like, teach his genin squad anything? I saw them go on missions together and the infamous Bell Test, but did he...like, train the brats? Do they know jackshit about war? Do they know how to fend for themselves? I understand that wars excuse a lot of morally ambiguous acts, and turning children into child soldiers for the state is one among many - so if the state, Konoha, said 'Let the children fight and be puppets for the adults', how come there was no,,,Crash Course 101: Survival Guide for Dummies in A Literal War. Or did I miss out on that in canon - I wouldn't know, I barely glimpsed at the manga

Minor detail, but did he comfort his genin team after the onslaught of trauma or the beloved saying of - 'Well genin are children and they've been in a war and Good Shinobi must suppress their feelings' - because the saying is stupid and they are babies and honestly, I'm 19, I'm young, but if a 13 year old under my tutelage had something distressing happened to them, I would have the human decency to comfort them and check up on them, so that they don't self-destruct and rot away in their confusion. But hey, what do I know, I'm only a kid

I get that he has a responsibility to the village and the village comes first, which I absolutely get, because he's in charge and the safety of everyone relies on him. But in taking that job, he would, at some point, have to make the call between his family and the state, in which case there is pain either way. I don't know how well the Nart fandom us with Agamemnon, but he chose the state over his family and ultimately failed as a father. Minato, though he saved the village from being smashed to smithereens, left his wife and unborn child to the protection of others leading up to the Konoha Nine Tail Smash and Scream episode, sealed a literal demon inside a baby, and then died protecting that baby and consequently the village. Now it's actually just sad because he failed BOTH his son in not protecting him enough and leaving him orphaned and left the village without a leader in the tumult of a Literal Demon Rampage

I just don't think shoving a demon made wholly of chakra into your unborn son was the best choice he could have made but once again, I actually don't know how that all works. Maybe I'm reaching, but he is intelligent. The role of a leader is to protect the safety of the vulnerable citizens in the state, and pregnant women who house chakra demon along with unborn infants are, shockingly, very vulnerable. Protection for Kushina should have been made tighter. Hell, why does Kushina need protection, isn't she a sealing master, can't she help with the protection effort too? Notwithstanding that, Minato should have been checking regularly on the time bomb that is Kushina about to deliver his spawn and the seals that jail the Nine Tail in. If he's not protecting then he should be maintaining. Or researching ways to store the demon outside of a human host. There are seals for everything. You telling me, smart and ruthless fighter with a high scores in the Academy, along with a surviving member of a deadly sealing village, could not come up with an alternative that wasn't Hey let's put the demon into our unborn child? It's just, he's supposedly a genius. Don't geniuses have contingency plans for basically everything? Why is he planning on the spot and willingly throwing his child to the fray? Shouldn't his paternal instincts and love stronger than the village safety? Sealing the kyuubi into Naruto is more for the village than his son and it makes me upset how when he is dying, he prioritises the village before his little crying blonde son, who, reasonably, should be protected by the village and shouldn't have to protect the village at literally hours into the world

New Road to Ninja! Minato just makes me furious, honestly. Maybe I'm too liberal. Maybe I'm too soft. But raising a hand against your child as a discipline method is just inhumane. Okay, Naruto is being an angry, typically rebellious teen. We've all been there. Teenage years are fraught with parents wanting to tear their hair out because their wayward spawns are so infuriating. And they won't goddamn listen. I get it. I have younger cousins and a brother. I was myself, an angry and stupid teenager. Still am. But that does not excuse, under any circumstances, violence against your child. You, the parent, the idol, the caretaker, the guardian, the everything your child look up to, you have just betrayed that trust by raising your hand and striking your child. It does not matter how hard or not you've struck them, it's the ideology and belief that this is the only way to get them to listen and no other method works. It angers me. It angers me that Minato, who is gentle and understanding and kind and sweet, would hit his visibly angry for no reason and confused son, who ought to be a beloved piece of himself and should be reasoned with. Naruto is angry, yes, and reckless, and could have endangered the mission, but he is with sense and explanations will eventually make it through his head. The utter betrayal a child feels when struck by their parents is inexplicable. The child has only you and you have betrayed their unwavering belief in you as an adult. Any reasonable adult would not just hit any child on the street, so why would their own child make any difference to a stranger? Kinship and blood should not be a leeway to excusing violence against your ward. That is illegal and gross and utterly disappointing. Naruto does not respect Minato anymore than he wasn't when he was hit. Minato's disciplinary methods were just edging towards him establishing superiority over his son and staking a claim on the fact that he is his son and he can do whatever it is imaginable to get him to listen, which is just ew and ineffective. Minato's words are what got through to Naruto, which then rendered the slap across the face, hard, pointless and just plain violent. Naruto listened, and talking to him would have been achievable if, you know, Minato regard him as an equal and use his words, which he didn't. When a parent strike their child, they demean their ward and it is a behaviour I can't accept no matter what the reason behind it is

I also understand that he is a fictional character and his actions are entirely up to how Kishi dictated. I do want to put it out there that I love and admire him, as a shinobi and a leader, but probably not as a parent and teacher, not after I've given out these points. Of course, they are only my own rambling thoughts and nobody is under any obligation to listen fully to what I say. You can argue and debate against it, of course, but I don't believe this will attract much traction, just keep it critical and respectful!

#minato namikaze #naruto #kishimoto #Some Rants #i just have a lot of feelings about this subject matter

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mhevarujta · 6 years ago

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In the penultimate episode of Killing Eve’s riveting first season, a Russian double-agent known as Konstantin (Kim Bodnia) comes home to find a highly trained assassin waiting to kill him. Ironically, he was the one to train Villanelle (Jodie Comer). As they sit across from each other, her gun pointed at him, he waxes poetic about what makes his protégé so special. “You are more powerful than any other person because of what you have in here,” he tells her, gesturing to his heart. Though Villanelle keeps her weapon trained on him, her eyes shine with tears as she listens. He continues: “You’re so different. You have something strong. You should be proud.” Despite his attempt to appeal to their paternal bond, she orders Konstantin to take more of pills—her way of granting her former handler a dignified death. Moments later, he chucks a whiskey glass at her face, hits her upside the head with a nearby log, and successfully finagles his escape. Turns out his sentimental monologue was just a ploy to distract Villanelle, so she would let her guard down. Nevertheless, his words transfix his audience because of how true they ring. Villanelle is different from any kind of assassin we’ve seen before, and not only because she’s a woman.

The series, based on the novellas by Luke Jennings, centers around a cat-and-mouse game between Villanelle and MI5 agent Eve Polastri (Sandra Oh). Crime dramas led by capable female investigators recently saw an uptick in popularity with shows like The Fall and Top of the Lake. We’ve also seen plenty of women playing killers, usually painted as femme fatales, in the past. Yet, having two women anchor a spy thriller offers an entirely new kind of dynamic. “They give each other life in a way that’s more complex than a romantic relationship,” series creator and showrunner Phoebe Waller-Bridge explained in an interviewwith The New York Times. “It’s sexual, it’s intellectual, it’s aspirational.” It’s also refreshingly free from the male gaze.

That’s not to say that Villanelle isn’t a fantasy of sorts. For starters, she can pull off murdering someone by weaponizing a hairpin and while wearing a diaphanous, periwinkle Burberry dress with white lace trim. Indeed, it’s her style that catches Eve’s attention in the first place. Her colleagues initially assume they’re looking for a male suspect in the death of a Russian politician, but Eve suggests that only a woman could have gotten close enough to slice the victim’s femoral artery without him noticing. Indeed, to get to her many victims, Villanelle disguises herself in a variety of stereotypically feminine roles—such as a nurse, waitress, or sex worker—which allow her to appear less threatening to her targets. Gender bias also helps explain why she’s able to operate under the radar for so long. All of Eve’s male superiors fail to connect the dots between a spate of killings across Europe. Only women, M16 officer Carolyn Martens (Fiona Shaw) and Eve herself, correctly identify the handiwork as belonging to an individual female assassin.

Eve admiringly describes Villanelle’s ability to outsmart even the best among the intelligence community, even going so far as to describe herself as “a fan.” Through Eve’s eyes, Villanelle transforms from an object of male desire to a female one. On the surface, she personifies qualities of traditional femininity: beauty, glamour, sex appeal. She covets designer clothing and perfume. Other times, she comes off as childlike, eager for Konstantin’s approval and delighting in practical jokes. But Villanelle equally subverts gender expectations by demonstrating that she’s as physically dominant and in control as any man—if not more so. Likewise, her sexual fluidity flaunts the burdensome heteronormativity prescribed by a patriarchal society. It is precisely this mobility, this freedom to move between different feminine models, that Eve appears to envy.

Within the genre, Villanelle represents an alternative to the femme fatale archetype. Though her sexuality remains an integral part of her character, she is not defined by it. Nor do the writers attempt to rationalize her behavior with any past trauma or sexual assault. The series altogether avoids relying on the misogynistic trope of using rape to “empower” a female character or fuel a revenge narrative. Instead of an encounter with a man serving as the catalyst, Villanelle’s liaison with an older woman inspires her first act of homicide, which includes the symbolically loaded castration of her lover’s husband.

If Villanelle embodies a woman’s fantasy to be fully in possession of herself, then Eve’s character grounds us in reality. Despite the appearances of having a fulfilling job and loving marriage, her restless spirit betrays a resistance to the institutions and systems she must work under, as exemplified by the bureaucratic trappings of her job or the monotony of monogamy. At one point, she jokes with her husband about a hypothetical yet methodically thought-out plan to do away with him. She would never actually go through with this, but someone completely uninhibited like Villanelle could. In this way, the female assassin represents what Eve cannot do and the life she doesn’t have.

On the other hand, Eve reminds us not infrequently, in case we risk becoming too enamored with the fantasy, that Villanelle is a psychopath. She likely commits horrific acts of violence for violence’s sake. She does not seem to care why her employer, a mysterious organization known as The Twelve, contracts her to do their bidding. “I want to do my job really well,” she simply says, reflecting her task-oriented sensibilities. Her indifference to the bigger picture and absence of real purpose may be her greatest foibles. Whereas Eve never seems to lose sight of what’s at stake in her mission to stop Villanelle from hurting more people, even at significant cost to her own career and marriage. It is precisely this dichotomy—the way these two characters play off each other’s conflicting desires and principles—that makes the show so compelling to watch.

When Eve and Villanelle come face-to-face in the finale, they openly admit to their mutual feelings for each other. “I think about you all the time,” Eve confesses. She leaves it ambiguous as to whether the other woman represents anything beyond a psychological obsession. Meanwhile, Villanelle expresses an explicitly sexual attraction to her pursuer. Although the season-ending cliffhanger deprives us of a conclusive reckoning (or consummation) of their relationship, what continues to drive the story is how the two women see each other. In this way, Killing Eve truly liberates itself from the male gaze.

#killing eve #killing eve review #killing eve meta #killing eve article

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blackkudos · 8 years ago

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Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (November 29, 1908 – April 4, 1972) was a Baptist pastor and an American politician, who represented Harlem, New York City, in the United States House of Representatives (1945–71). He was the first person of African-American descent to be elected from New York to Congress. Oscar Stanton De Priest of Illinois was the first black person to be elected to Congress in the 20th century; Powell was the fourth. Blacks in the South were disenfranchised and excluded from politics until after passage of civil rights legislation in the mid-1960s.

Re-elected for nearly three decades, Powell became a powerful national politician of the Democratic Party, and served as a national spokesman on civil rights and social issues. He also urged United States presidents to support emerging nations in Africa and Asia as they gained independence after colonialism.

In 1961, after 16 years in the House, Powell became chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, the most powerful position held by an African American in Congress. As Chairman, he supported the passage of important social and civil rights legislation under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Following allegations of corruption, in 1967 Powell was excluded from his seat by Democratic Representatives-elect of the 90th Congress, but he was re-elected and regained the seat in the 1969 United States Supreme Court ruling in Powell v. McCormack. He lost his seat in 1970 to Charles Rangel and retired from electoral politics.

Early years

Powell was born in 1908 in New Haven, Connecticut, the second child and only son of Adam Clayton Powell Sr. and Mattie Buster Shaffer, both born poor in Virginia and West Virginia, respectively. His sister Blanche was 10 years older. His parents were of mixed race with African and European ancestry (and, according to his father, American Indian on his mother's side). They and their ancestors were classified as mulatto in 19th-century censuses. Powell's paternal grandmother's ancestors had been free persons of color for generations before the Civil War. By 1908, Powell Sr. had become a prominent Baptist minister, serving as a pastor in Philadelphia, and being called as the lead pastor at a Baptist church in New Haven.

Powell Sr. had worked his way out of poverty and through Wayland Seminary, a historically black college, and postgraduate study at Yale University and Virginia Seminary. In the year of his son's birth in New Haven, Powell Sr. was called as the pastor of the prominent Abyssinian Baptist Church in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. He led the church for decades through major expansion, including the fundraising for and construction of an addition to accommodate the increased membership of the congregation during the years of the Great Migration. That congregation grew to a community of 10,000 persons.

Due to his father's achievements, Powell grew up in a wealthy household in New York City. Because of his partial European ancestry, Adam was born with hazel eyes, fair skin and blond hair, such that he could pass for white. However, he did not play with that racial ambiguity until college. He attended Townsend Harris High School, then studied at City College of New York before starting at Colgate University in upstate as a freshman. The four other African-American students at Colgate at the time were all athletes. For a time, Powell briefly passed as white, using his appearance to escape racial strictures at college. The other black students were dismayed to discover what he had done. Encouraged by his father to become a minister, Powell became more serious about his studies at Colgate, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1930. After returning to New York, Powell began his graduate work and in 1931 earned an M.A. in religious education from Columbia University. He became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, a fraternity started by and for blacks.

Later, apparently trying to bolster his black identity, Powell recounted that his paternal grandparents were born into slavery. But, his paternal grandmother Sally Dunning was at least the third generation of free people of color in her family. In the 1860 census, she is listed as a free mulatto, as were her mother, grandmother, and siblings. Sally never identified the father of Adam Clayton Powell, Sr., born 1865. She appeared to have named her son after her older brother Adam Dunning, listed on the 1860 census as a farmer and the head of their household. In 1867 Sally Dunning married Anthony Bush, a mulatto freedman. All the family members were listed under the surname Dunning in the 1870 census.

The family changed its surname to Powell when they moved to Kanawha County, West Virginia, as part of their new life there. According to Charles V. Hamilton, a 1991 biographer of Powell, Anthony Bush "decided to take the name Powell as a new identity", which is how they were recorded in the 1880 census.

Adam Jr.'s mother Mattie Buster Shaffer was also of mixed race. Her parents had been slaves in Virginia and were freed after the American Civil War. Powell's parents married in West Virginia, where they met. Numerous freedmen had migrated there in the late 19th century for work.

Career

After ordination, Powell began assisting his father with charitable services at the church and as a preacher. He greatly increased the volume of meals and clothing provided to the needy, and began to learn more about the lives of the working class and poor in Harlem.

During the Great Depression in the 1930s, Powell, a handsome and charismatic figure, became a prominent civil rights leader in Harlem. He recounted these experiences in a 1964 interview with Robert Penn Warren for the book Who Speaks for the Negro?. He developed a formidable public following in the community through his crusades for jobs and affordable housing. As chairman of the Coordinating Committee for Employment, Powell used numerous methods of community organizing to bring political pressure on major businesses to open their doors to black employees at professional levels. He organized mass meetings, rent strikes, and public campaigns to force companies, utilities, and Harlem Hospital, which operated in the community, to hire black workers at skill levels higher than the lowest positions, to which they had formerly been restricted by informal discrimination.

For instance, during the 1939 New York World's Fair, Powell organized a picket line at the Fair's offices in the Empire State Building; as a result, the number of black employees was increased from about 200 to 732. In 1941, he led a bus boycott in Harlem; the Transit Authority hired 200 black workers and set the precedent for more. Powell also led a fight to have drugstores operating in Harlem hire black pharmacists. He encouraged local residents to shop only where blacks were hired to work. "Mass action is the most powerful force on earth," Powell once said, adding, "As long as it is within the law, it's not wrong; if the law is wrong, change the law."

In 1938, Powell succeeded his father as pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church.

Political career

New York City Council

In 1941, with the aid of New York City's use of the Single Transferable Vote, Powell was elected to the New York City Council as the city's first black Council member.[3] He received 65,736 votes, the third-best total among the six successful Council candidates.

Congress

In 1944, Powell ran for the United States Congress on a platform of civil rights for African Americans: support for "fair employment practices, and a ban on poll taxes and lynching." Requiring poll taxes for voter registration and voting was a device used in southern states in new constitutions adopted from 1890 to 1908 to disenfranchise blacks and many poor whites, in order to exclude them from politics. Such devices, together with the social and economic intimidation of Jim Crow, were maintained in the South into the 1960s to keep blacks politically powerless.

Powell was elected as a Democrat to represent the Congressional District that included Harlem. He was the first black Congressman from New York State.

As the historian Charles V. Hamilton wrote in his 1992 political biography of Powell,

"Here was a person who [in the 1940s] would at least 'speak out.'... That would be different ... Many Negroes were angry that no Northern liberals would get up on the floor of Congress and challenge the segregationists. ... Powell certainly promised to do that. ...

"[In] the 1940s and 1950s, he was, indeed, virtually alone.... And precisely because of that, he was exceptionally crucial. In many instances during those earlier times, if he did not speak out, the issue would not have been raised. ...For example, only he could (or would dare to) challenge Congressman Rankin of Mississippi on the House floor in the 1940s for using the word 'nigger.' He certainly did not change Rankin's mind or behavior, but he gave solace to millions who longed for a little retaliatory defiance."

As one of only two black Congressmen (the other being William Levi Dawson) until 1955, Powell challenged the informal ban on black representatives using Capitol facilities reserved for white members. He took black constituents to dine with him in the "Whites Only" House restaurant. He clashed with the many segregationists from the South in his party. Since the late 19th century, Southern Democrats commanded a one-party system, as they had effectively disfranchised most blacks from voting since the turn of the century and excluded them from the political system. The white Congressmen and Senators controlled all the seats allocated for the total population in the southern states, had established seniority, and commanded many important committee chairs in the House and Senate.

Powell worked closely with Clarence M. Mitchell Jr., the NAACP representative in Washington, to try to gain justice in federal programs. Biographer Hamilton described the NAACP as "the quarterback that threw the ball to Powell, who, to his credit, was more than happy to catch and run with it." He developed a strategy known as the "Powell Amendments." "On bill after bill that proposed federal expenditures, Powell would offer 'our customary amendment,' requiring that federal funds be denied to any jurisdiction that maintained segregation; Liberals would be embarrassed, Southern politicians angered." This principle would later become integrated into Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Powell was willing to act independently; in 1956, he broke party ranks and supported President Dwight D. Eisenhower for re-election, saying the civil rights plank in the Democratic Party platform was too weak. In 1958, he survived a determined effort by the Tammany Hall Democratic Party machine in New York to oust him in the primary election. In 1960, Powell, hearing of planned civil rights marches at the Democratic Convention, which could embarrass the party or candidate, threatened to accuse Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. of having a homosexual relationship with Bayard Rustin unless the marches were cancelled. Rustin was one of King's political advisers and was an openly gay man. King agreed to cancel the planned events and Rustin resigned from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Global work

Powell also paid attention to the issues of developing nations in Africa and Asia, making trips overseas. He urged presidential policymakers to pay attention to nations seeking independence from colonial powers and support aid to them. During the Cold War, many of them sought neutrality between the United States and the Soviet Union. He made speeches on the House Floor to celebrate the anniversaries of the independence of nations such as Ghana, Indonesia, and Sierra Leone.

In 1955, against the State Department's advice, Powell attended the Asian–African Conference as an observer. He made a positive international impression in public addresses that balanced his concerns of his nation's race relations problems with a spirited defense of the United States as a whole against Communist criticisms. Powell returned to the United States to a warm bipartisan reception for his performance, and he was invited to meet with President Dwight Eisenhower.

With this influence, Powell suggested to the State Department that the current manner of competing with the Soviet Union in the realm of fine arts such as international symphony orchestra and ballet company tours was ineffective. Instead, he advised that the United States should focus on the popular arts, such as sponsoring international tours of famous jazz musicians, which could draw attention to an indigenous American art form and featured musicians who often performed in mixed race bands. The State Department approved the idea. The first such tour with Dizzy Gillespie proved to be an outstanding success abroad and prompted similarly popular tours featuring other musicians for years.

Committee chairmanship and legislation

In 1961, after 15 years in Congress, Powell advanced to chairman of the powerful House Education and Labor Committee. In this position, he presided over federal social programs for minimum wage and Medicaid (established later under Johnson); he expanded the minimum wage to include retail workers; and worked for equal pay for women; he supported education and training for the deaf, nursing education, and vocational training; he led legislation for standards for wages and work hours; as well as for aid for elementary and secondary education, and school libraries. Powell's committee proved extremely effective in enacting major parts of President Kennedy's "New Frontier" and President Johnson's "Great Society" social programs and the War on Poverty. It successfully reported to Congress "49 pieces of bedrock legislation", as President Johnson put it in an May 18, 1966 letter congratulating Powell on the fifth anniversary of his chairmanship.

Powell was instrumental in passing legislation that made lynching a federal crime, as well as bills that desegregated public schools. He challenged the Southern practice of charging Blacks a poll tax to vote. Poll taxes for federal elections were prohibited by the 24th Amendment, passed in 1964. Voter registration and electoral practices were not changed substantially in most of the South until after passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which provided federal oversight of voter registration and elections, and enforcement of the constitutional right to vote. In some areas where discrimination was severe, such as Mississippi, it took years for African Americans to register and vote in numbers related to their proportion in the population, but they have since maintained a high rate of registration and voting.

Political controversy

By the mid-1960s, Powell was increasingly being criticized for mismanaging his committee's budget, taking trips abroad at public expense, and missing meetings of his committee. When under scrutiny by the press and other members of Congress for personal conduct—he had taken two young women at government expense with him on overseas travel—he responded:

I wish to state very emphatically... that I will always do just what every other Congressman and committee chairman has done and is doing and will do."

Opponents led criticism in his District, where his refusal to pay a 1963 slander judgment made him subject to arrest; he also spent increasing amounts of time in Florida.

In January 1967, the House Democratic Caucus stripped Powell of his committee chairmanship. The full House refused to seat him until completion of an investigation by the Judiciary Committee. Powell urged his supporters to "keep the faith, baby," while the investigation was under way. On March 1, the House voted 307 to 116 to exclude him. Powell said, "On this day, the day of March in my opinion, is the end of the United States of America as the land of the free and the home of the brave."

Powell won the Special Election to fill the vacancy caused by his exclusion, but he did not take his seat, as he was filing a separate suit. He sued in Powell v. McCormack to retain his seat. In November 1968, Powell was re-elected. On January 3, 1969, he was seated as a member of the 91st Congress, but he was fined $25,000 and denied seniority. In June 1969, in Powell v. McCormack, the Supreme Court of the United States ruled that the House had acted unconstitutionally when it excluded Powell, as he had been duly elected by his constituents.

Powell's increasing absenteeism was noted by constituents, which contributed, in June 1970, to his defeat in the Democratic primary for reelection to his seat (by Charles B. Rangel). Powell failed to garner enough signatures to get on the November ballot as an Independent, and Rangel won that (and following) general elections. In the fall of 1970, Powell moved to his retreat on Bimini in the Bahamas, also resigning as minister at the Abyssinian Baptist Church.

Marriage and family

In 1933, Powell married Isabel Washington, an African-American singer and nightclub entertainer. Like Powell, she was of mixed race. She was the sister of actress Fredi Washington. Powell adopted her son Preston, from her first marriage.

After their divorce, in 1945 Powell married the singer Hazel Scott. They had a son named Adam Clayton Powell III. In the early 21st century, he became a university administrator, Vice Provost for Globalization at the University of Southern California.

Powell divorced again, and in 1960 married Yvette Flores Diago from Puerto Rico. They had a son, whom they named Adam Clayton Powell Diago, using the mother's surname according to Latino tradition. In 1980, this son changed his name to Adam Clayton Powell IV, dropping Diago, when he moved to the mainland of the United States from Puerto Rico to attend Howard University. (His half-nephew, 8 years younger, was also named Adam Clayton Powell IV.)

This youngest son of Powell, known as A.C. Powell IV, later was elected to the New York City Council in 1991 in a special election; he served for two terms. He also was elected as a New York state Assemblyman (D-East Harlem) for three terms. After he and his wife had a son, they named him Adam Clayton Powell V. In the 2010 Democratic primary election, A. C. Powell IV unsuccessfully challenged the incumbent Charles B. Rangel for the Democratic candidacy in his father's former Congressional District.

Family scandal

In 1967, a U.S. Congressional committee subpoenaed Yvette Diago, the former third wife of Powell Jr. and the mother of Adam Clayton Powell IV. They were investigating potential "theft of state funds" related to her having been on Powell Jr.'s payroll but doing no work. Yvette Diago admitted to the committee that she had been on the Congressional payroll of her former husband, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., from 1961 until 1967, although she had moved back to Puerto Rico in 1961. As reported by Time Magazine, Yvette Diago had continued living in Puerto Rico and "performed no work at all," yet was kept on the payroll. Her salary was increased to $20,578 and she was paid until January 1967, when she was exposed and fired.

Death

In April 1972, Powell became gravely ill and was flown to a Miami hospital from his home in Bimini. He died there on April 4, 1972, at the age of 63, from acute prostatitis, according to contemporary newspaper accounts. After his funeral at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, his son Adam III poured his ashes from a plane over the waters of Bimini.

Legacy

Seventh Avenue north of Central Park through Harlem has been renamed as Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Boulevard. One of the landmarks along this street is the Adam Clayton Powell Jr. State Office Building, named for Powell in 1983.

In addition, two New York schools were named after him, PS 153, at 1750 Amsterdam Ave., and a middle school, IS 172 Adam Clayton Powell Jr. School of Social Justice, at 509 W. 129th St. It closed in 2009. In 2011, the new Adam Clayton Powell Jr. Paideia Academy opened in Chicago's South Shore neighborhood.

Representation in other media

Powell was the subject of the 2002 cable television film Keep the Faith, Baby, starring Harry Lennix as Powell and Vanessa L. Williams as his second wife, jazz pianist Hazel Scott. The film debuted on February 17, 2002, on premium cable network Showtime. It garnered three NAACP Image Award nominations for Outstanding Television Movie, Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie (Lennix), and Outstanding Actress in a TV Movie (Williams). It won two National Association of Minorities in Cable (NAMIC) Vision Awards for Best Drama and Best Actor in a Television Film (Lennix), the International Press Association's Best Actress in a Television Film Award (Williams), and Reel.com's Best Actor in a Television Film (Lennix). The film's producers were Geoffrey L. Garfield, Powell IV's long-time campaign manager; Monty Ross, a confidant of Spike Lee; Adam Clayton Powell III; and Hollywood veteran Harry J. Ufland. The film was written by Art Washington and directed by Doug McHenry.

Works

(1945) Marching Blacks, An Interpretive History of the Rise of the Black Common Man

(1962) The New Image in Education: A Prospectus for the Future by the Chairman of the Committee on Education and Labor

(1967) Keep the Faith, Baby!

(1971) Adam by Adam: The Autobiography of Adam Clayton Powell Jr.

Wikipedia

#Adam Clayton Powell Jr.#11-29 #04-04

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dna-two · 5 years ago

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9 facts about paternity testing

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blackkudos · 5 years ago

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Adam Clayton Powell, Jr.

Adam Clayton Powell Jr. (November 29, 1908 – April 4, 1972) was a Baptist pastor and an American politician, who represented the Harlem neighborhood of New York City in the United States House of Representatives from 1945 until 1971. He was the first person of African-American descent to be elected from New York to Congress.

In 1961, after 16 years in the House, Powell became chairman of the Education and Labor Committee, the most powerful position held by an African American in Congress. As chairman, he supported the passage of important social and civil rights legislation under presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Following allegations of corruption, in 1967 Powell was excluded from his seat by Democratic Representatives-elect of the 90th United States Congress, but he was re-elected and regained the seat in the 1969 ruling by the Supreme Court of the United States in Powell v. McCormack. He lost his seat in 1970 to Charles Rangel and retired from electoral politics.

Early years

Powell was born in 1908 in New Haven, Connecticut, the second child and only son of Adam Clayton Powell Sr. and Mattie Buster Shaffer, both born poor in Virginia and West Virginia, respectively. His sister Blanche was 10 years older. His parents were of mixed race with African and European ancestry (and, according to his father, American Indian on his mother's side). (In his autobiography Adam By Adam, Powell says that his mother had partial German ancestry.) They and their ancestors were classified as mulatto in 19th-century censuses. Powell's paternal grandmother's ancestors had been free persons of color for generations before the Civil War. By 1908, Powell Sr. had become a prominent Baptist minister, serving as a pastor in Philadelphia, and as lead pastor at a Baptist church in New Haven.

Powell Sr. had worked his way out of poverty and through Wayland Seminary, a historically black college, and postgraduate study at Yale University and Virginia Theological Seminary. In the year of his son's birth in New Haven, Powell Sr. was called as the pastor of the prominent Abyssinian Baptist Church in the Harlem neighborhood of New York City. He led the church for decades through major expansion, including fundraising for and the construction of an addition to accommodate the increased membership of the congregation during the years of the Great Migration, as many African Americans moved north from the South. That congregation grew to a community of 10,000 persons.

Due to his father's achievements, Powell grew up in a wealthy household in New York City. Because of his mixed European ancestry, Adam was born with hazel eyes, fair skin and blond hair, such that he could pass for white. However, he did not play with that racial ambiguity until college. He attended Townsend Harris High School, then studied at City College of New York before starting at Colgate University in upstate as a freshman. The four other African-American students at Colgate at the time were all athletes. For a time, Powell briefly passed as white, using his appearance to escape racial strictures at college. The other black students were dismayed to discover what he had done.Encouraged by his father to become a minister, Powell became more serious about his studies at Colgate, where he earned his bachelor's degree in 1930. After returning to New York, Powell began his graduate work and in 1931 earned an M.A. in religious education from Columbia University. He became a member of Alpha Phi Alpha, the first African-American, intercollegiate Greek-lettered fraternity.

Later, apparently trying to bolster his black identity, Powell would say that his paternal grandparents were born into slavery. However, his paternal grandmother, Sally Dunning, was at least the third generation of free people of color in her family. In the 1860 census, she is listed as a free mulatto, as were her mother, grandmother, and siblings. Sally never identified the father of Adam Clayton Powell Sr., born in 1865. She appeared to have named her son after her older brother Adam Dunning, listed on the 1860 census as a farmer and the head of their household. In 1867 Sally Dunning married Anthony Bush, a mulatto freedman. All the family members were listed under the surname Dunning in the 1870 census.

The family changed its surname to Powell when they moved to Kanawha County, West Virginia, as part of their new life there. According to Charles V. Hamilton, a 1991 biographer of Powell, Anthony Bush "decided to take the name Powell as a new identity", and this is how they were recorded in the 1880 census.

Adam Jr.'s mother Mattie Buster Shaffer was also of mixed race, with African-American and German ancestry. Her parents had been slaves in Virginia and were freed after the American Civil War. Powell's parents married in West Virginia, where they met. Numerous freedmen had migrated there in the late 19th century for work.

Career

For instance, during the 1939 New York World's Fair, Powell organized a picket line at the Fair's offices in the Empire State Building. As a result, the Fair hired more black employees, increasing their numbers from about 200 to 732. In 1941, Powell led a bus boycott in Harlem, where blacks constituted the majority of passengers but held few of the jobs; the Transit Authority hired 200 black workers and set the precedent for more. Powell also led a fight to have drugstores operating in Harlem hire black pharmacists. He encouraged local residents to shop only where blacks were also hired to work. "Mass action is the most powerful force on earth," Powell once said, adding, "As long as it is within the law, it's not wrong; if the law is wrong, change the law."

In 1938, Powell succeeded his father as pastor of the Abyssinian Baptist Church. In 1942 he founded People's Voice, a newspaper designed for "a progressive African American audience, and it educated and enlightened readers on everything from local gatherings and events to U.S. civil rights issues to the political and economic struggles of the peoples of Africa. Reporters and writers for the papers included influential African Americans such as Powell himself, Powell's sister-in-law and actress Fredi Washington, and journalist Marvel Cooke." It also served as a mouthpiece for his views. After he was elected to Congress in 1944, other people led the paper, but it finally closed in 1948, after being accused of communist connections.

Political career

New York City Council

In 1941, with the aid of New York City's use of the single transferable vote, Powell was elected to the New York City Council as the city's first black Council member.[3] He received 65,736 votes, the third-best total among the six successful Council candidates.

Congress

In 1944, Powell ran for the United States Congress on a platform of civil rights for African Americans: support for "fair employment practices, and a ban on poll taxes and lynching." Requiring poll taxes for voter registration and voting was a device used by southern states in new constitutions adopted from 1890 to 1908 to disenfranchise most blacks and many poor whites, in order to exclude them from politics. Poll taxes in the United States, together with the social and economic intimidation of Jim Crow laws, were maintained in the South into the 1960s to keep blacks excluded from politics and politically powerless.

Powell was elected as a Democrat to represent the Congressional District that included Harlem. He was the first black Congressman elected from New York State.

As the historian Charles V. Hamilton wrote in his 1992 political biography of Powell,

Here was a person who [in the 1940s] would at least 'speak out. '... That would be different ... Many Negroes were angry that no Northern liberals would get up on the floor of Congress and challenge the segregationists. ... Powell certainly promised to do that ...

[In] the 1940s and 1950s, he was, indeed, virtually alone ... And precisely because of that, he was exceptionally crucial. In many instances during those earlier times, if he did not speak out, the issue would not have been raised. ... For example, only he could (or would dare to) challenge Congressman Rankin of Mississippi on the House floor in the 1940s for using the word "nigger". He certainly did not change Rankin's mind or behavior, but he gave solace to millions who longed for a little retaliatory defiance.

As one of only two black Congressmen (the other being William Levi Dawson) until 1955, Powell challenged the informal ban on black representatives using Capitol facilities previously reserved for white members. He took black constituents to dine with him in the "Whites Only" House restaurant. He clashed with the many segregationists from the South in his party. Since the turn of the 20th century, Southern Democrats had commanded a one-party system, as they had effectively disenfranchised most blacks from voting since the turn of the century and excluded them from the political system through barriers to voter registration and voting. The white Congressmen and Senators controlled all the seats allocated for the total population in the southern states, had established seniority, and commanded many important committee chairs in the House and Senate.

Powell worked closely with Clarence Mitchell Jr., the representative of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in Washington, D.C., to try to gain justice in federal programs. Biographer Hamilton described the NAACP as "the quarterback that threw the ball to Powell, who, to his credit, was more than happy to catch and run with it." He developed a strategy known as the "Powell Amendments". "On bill after bill that proposed federal expenditures, Powell would offer 'our customary amendment,' requiring that federal funds be denied to any jurisdiction that maintained segregation; Liberals would be embarrassed, Southern politicians angered." This principle would later become integrated into Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Powell was also willing to act independently; in 1956, he broke party ranks and supported President Dwight D. Eisenhower for re-election, saying the civil rights plank in the Democratic Party platform was too weak. In 1958, he survived a determined effort by the Tammany Hall Democratic Party machine in New York to oust him in the primary election. In 1960, Powell, hearing of planned civil rights marches at the Democratic Convention, which could embarrass the party or candidate, threatened to accuse Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. of having a homosexual relationship with Bayard Rustin unless the marches were cancelled. Rustin, one of King's political advisers, was an openly gay man. King agreed to cancel the planned events and Rustin resigned from the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.

Global work

In 1955, against the State Department's advice, Powell attended the Asian–African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, as an observer. He made a positive international impression in public addresses that balanced his concerns of his nation's race relations problems with a spirited defense of the United States as a whole against Communist criticisms. Powell returned to the United States to a warm bipartisan reception for his performance, and he was invited to meet with President Dwight D. Eisenhower.

Committee chairmanship and legislation

In 1961, after 15 years in Congress, Powell advanced to chairman of the powerful United States House Committee on Education and Labor. In this position, he presided over federal social programs for minimum wage and Medicaid (established later under Johnson); he expanded the minimum wage to include retail workers; and worked for equal pay for women; he supported education and training for the deaf, nursing education, and vocational training; he led legislation for standards for wages and work hours; as well as for aid for elementary and secondary education, and school libraries. Powell's committee proved extremely effective in enacting major parts of President Kennedy's "New Frontier" and President Johnson's "Great Society" social programs and the War on Poverty. It successfully reported to Congress "49 pieces of bedrock legislation", as President Johnson put it in an May 18, 1966, letter congratulating Powell on the fifth anniversary of his chairmanship.

Political controversy

I wish to state very emphatically... that I will always do just what every other Congressman and committee chairman has done and is doing and will do."

Opponents led criticism in his District, where his refusal to pay a 1963 slander judgment made him subject to arrest; he also spent increasing amounts of time in Florida.

Powell's increasing absenteeism was noted by constituents, which contributed, in June 1970, to his defeat in the Democratic primary for reelection to his seat by Charles B. Rangel. Powell failed to garner enough signatures to get on the November ballot as an Independent, and Rangel won that (and following) general elections. In the fall of 1970, Powell moved to his retreat on Bimini in The Bahamas, also resigning as minister at the Abyssinian Baptist Church.

Marriage and family

In 1933, Powell married Isabel Washington (1908–2007), an African-American singer and nightclub entertainer. Like Powell, she was of mixed race. She was the sister of actress Fredi Washington. Powell adopted Washington's son, Preston, from her first marriage.

After their divorce, in 1945, Powell married the singer Hazel Scott. They had a son named Adam Clayton Powell III. In the early 21st century, Adam Clayton Powell III became Vice Provost for Globalization at the University of Southern California.

Powell divorced again, and in 1960 married Yvette Flores Diago from Puerto Rico. They had a son, whom they named Adam Clayton Powell Diago, using the mother's surname as a second surname, according to Hispanic tradition. In 1980, this son changed his name to Adam Clayton Powell IV (dropping "Diago" from his name) when he moved to the mainland of the United States from Puerto Rico to attend Howard University. Adam Clayton Powell IV, also known as A.C. Powell IV, was elected to the New York City Council in 1991 in a special election; he served for two terms. He also was elected as a New York state Assemblyman (D-East Harlem) for three terms and had a son named Adam Clayton Powell V. In 1994, and again in 2010, Adam Clayton Powell IV unsuccessfully challenged incumbent Rep. Charles B. Rangel for the Democratic nomination in his father's former congressional district.

Family scandal

In 1967, a U.S. Congressional committee subpoenaed Yvette Diago, the former third wife of Powell Jr. and the mother of Adam Clayton Powell IV. They were investigating potential "theft of state funds" related to her having been on Powell Jr.'s payroll but doing no work. Yvette Diago admitted to the committee that she had been on the Congressional payroll of her former husband, Adam Clayton Powell Jr., from 1961 until 1967, although she had moved back to Puerto Rico in 1961. As reported by Time magazine, Yvette Diago had continued living in Puerto Rico and "performed no work at all," yet was kept on the payroll. Her salary was increased to $20,578 and she was paid until January 1967, when she was exposed and fired.

Death

In April 1972, Powell became gravely ill and was flown to a Miami hospital from his home in Bimini. He died there on April 4, 1972, at the age of 63, from acute prostatitis, according to contemporary newspaper accounts. After his funeral at the Abyssinian Baptist Church in Harlem, his son, Adam III, poured his ashes from a plane over the waters of Bimini.

Legacy

Representation in other media

Powell was the subject of the 2002 cable television film Keep the Faith, Baby, starring Harry Lennix as Powell and Vanessa Williams as his second wife, jazz pianist Hazel Scott. The film debuted on February 17, 2002, on premium cable network Showtime. It garnered three NAACP Image Award nominations for Outstanding Television Movie, Outstanding Actor in a Television Movie (Lennix), and Outstanding Actress in a TV Movie (Williams). It won two National Association of Minorities in Cable (NAMIC) Vision Awards for Best Drama and Best Actor in a Television Film (Lennix), the International Press Association's Best Actress in a Television Film Award (Williams), and Reel.com's Best Actor in a Television Film (Lennix). The film's producers were Geoffrey L. Garfield, Powell IV's long-time campaign manager; Monty Ross, a confidant of Spike Lee; son Adam Clayton Powell III; and Hollywood veteran Harry J. Ufland. The film was written by Art Washington and directed by Doug McHenry.

Powell is portrayed by Giancarlo Esposito in the 2019 Epix cable series Godfather of Harlem.

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